by Don Winslow
64
Jimmy the Kid waits for the hour then turns the local radio news on.
The traffic reporter chirps that both lanes of Highway 78 on the grade just past San Pasqual Road are closed due to a one-car accident.
“A car went through the guardrail and plunged into the canyon,” she says. “However, no fatalities have been reported.”
“Motherfucker” is what Jimmy says.
65
“Your boy Machianno’s on quite a tear.”
“Yes, sir.”
Dave sits across the desk from the regional director. Called on the carpet, as it were.
“First Vena and Palumbo,” the RD says. “Now Pella. For Chrissakes, Dave, a witness in the program, gunned down in his own house! How’s that going to look?”
“Not good.”
“You have a gift for understatement.”
Dave doesn’t reply, proving he does have a gift for understatement.
“Anyway,” the RD says. “It looks like Machianno’s back at his old career. Find him, Hansen. Find him and stop him.”
“Yes, sir.”
Dave gets up to leave.
“And Hansen? Machianno killed a federal undercover agent,” the RD says. “We don’t really want to provide this piece of shit with a lawyer, do we?”
Meaning, Dave thinks as he walks out the door, he’s not being ordered to find and stop Frank.
He’s being ordered to find him and kill him.
66
It takes him two hours to make it to the top of the canyon.
Aching and sore, Frank picks his way through the brush and rocks in uncertain moonlight and fog. He gets to the top and walks along the edge of the road, throwing himself flat when he sees headlights coming. Each time he goes down, it hurts more and it’s harder to get up.
But he has to keep doing it because he knows they’ll be looking for him.
67
Jimmy’s sitting in the passenger seat with one of those big halogen lights. They’d gone to Costco and bought it when they heard the radio news.
“Shouldn’t we get right back there?” Carlo had asked.
“He won’t come up till dark,” Jimmy had said. “If he’s alive at all. Either way, we got plenty of time.”
So they’d gone to Costco.
“It’s a good thing I brought my card,” Jimmy says. Now he shines the light along the side of the road as they cruise slowly up and down the canyon. Tony, Joey, and Jackie are in another car, doing the same thing in the other direction.
It’s like Run Silent, Run Deep, Jimmy thinks, with the Japanese destroyers steaming back and forth, waiting for the American sub to surface. Because it has to come up—it’s running out of oxygen.
Like Frankie M.
“You see anything?” Carlo asks.
“Bigfoot,” Jimmy says.
“Where?”
“I was pulling your pud, asshole,” Jimmy says.
“Hey, that Bigfoot thing is no joke,” Carlo says. “I saw a documentary on the National Geographic Channel. National Geographic don’t mess around.”
Jimmy the Kid isn’t listening. He’s thinking it through.
What he’s thinking is that Frankie Machine is a cockroach.
You just can’t kill this motherfucker.
Yeah, but you got to, so think.
A good hunter thinks like his prey.
So think like Frankie M.
Okay, you’re hurt, maybe bad. You ain’t moving so fast. You’re going to go to cover during daylight and try to move by night. You gotta get out of that fucking canyon, and you ain’t going out the other side, because it’s too steep, too high, and there ain’t nothin’ back there anyway.
So you’re going to come back up the way you came. You’re going to come back up the road because you don’t have a car anymore and you’re going to have to find transportation somehow.
Okay, but how?
You’re fifteen hard miles from the nearest town where you can rent a car. Even if you do, your ID is going to ring bells as a guy who crashed and burned his last rental, but you’re Frankie Machine, so you ain’t gonna even try that.
So that leaves you two choices: You either hitch a ride or you steal a ride.
Nobody in his right mind is going to pick you up, and you ain’t going to stand out in the open on this road with your thumb out anyway, because you know we’re looking for you and so are the cops.
So you’re going to boost someone’s sled.
Cool, but how?
No red lights out here, no stop signs, no gas stations.
So what’s left?
What’s out here where people are going to stop?
Then it hits him.
“Shit,” Jimmy says. “Turn around. Hurry.”
“What’s up?”
“We’re going parking.”
68
Danny Carver is about to get bare tit.
Finally.
What he gets for dating a Mormon girl. Other chicks are passing out blow jobs like Skittles, but Shelly will not give it up at all. Danny’s been at it for three months—taking her to the movies, to the mall, going bowling, playing freaking miniature golf—and the most he can get is a quick kiss, no tongue.
He would have dropped her on, like, date two if she weren’t so goddamn hot. Blond hair, big blue eyes, and that rack.…
It took two months just to get her to go parking with him at all, come out here to the roadside parking lot where, in the daytime, the tree-huggers park their cars to go hiking down in the canyon.
But at night, the place is like health class. You got droves of teenagers out here studying sex ed like it’s going to be on the SATs, and tonight Shelly is into it. Her hand doesn’t even come down on his like a castle gate when he starts to unbutton her blouse.
I am in, Danny thinks.
Thank you, God.
I am in.
“Oh my God,” Shelly says.
Oh yeah. You the man.
“Oh—my—God.”
Her body stiffens and she’s looking over his shoulder.
It’s her father, Danny thinks.
Six-foot-six Mormon who shoes horses for a living.
Danny’s body stiffens.
He looks back over his shoulder.
Bigfoot is in the window.
It’s like one of those stories you used to tell on camping trips, about the guy with the hook. Except this guy doesn’t have a hook—he has a gun. And he gestures for Danny to roll down the window.
Danny does.
“I’m not going to hurt you,” the guy says to Danny, yanking him out of the car. “I just need your vehicle.”
All Danny can do is nod as the guy slips past him into the driver’s seat.
Frank looks at the girl.
“You can get out now,” he says. “And button your blouse, huh?”
Shelly does both.
Frank puts it in reverse and takes off.
69
Jimmy the Kid sees the two teenagers standing out in the parking lot. The boy has a cell phone in his hand.
“We’re too late,” Jimmy says. “We’re too fucking late.”
He rolls down the window. “What kind of car?”
“Are you the triple A guys?” Danny asks.
“What kind of car?”
“A ’96 Celica,” Danny says. “Silver.”
Jimmy the Kid roars off.
“We’re going to have to call my dad,” Shelly says.
70
Frank dumps the Celica off in Point Loma and walks back to Ocean Beach.
If you can call it walking. More like limping, hobbling.
Like some old B-movie monster, Frank thinks, emerging from the swamp. It’s a good thing it’s pouring like hell and the rain-phobic San Diegans are off the streets, so they can’t see this messed-up, bleeding freak lurching along the sidewalks.
They’d call the cops.
And that would be that.
Frank doesn�
��t want to go back to his safe house. It’s risky going back to anywhere, but he has no place else to go. And he has to go someplace—get out of the elements, clean his wounds, get some rest, figure out his next move.
He unlocks the door of his Narragansett Street pad, not knowing what might be waiting for him in there. The cops? The feds? The Wrecking Crew?
But nobody’s in the apartment.
Frank gets out of his wet, bloody clothes and gets into the shower, both to get warm and wash his wounds. The spray stings like needles. He gets out, gently daubs himself dry, and looks at the blood left on the towel. Then he finds the hydrogen peroxide in the medicine cabinet, sits down on the edge of the bathtub, and looks at the deep scrapes on his legs. He takes a deep breath, then pours the peroxide on the wounds. Sings “Che gelida manina” to distract his mind from the pain. It doesn’t really work. He examines the wounds, then pours more peroxide into them until he sees the chemical bubble up.
Then he repeats the process on his arms and chest.
He gets up slowly, finds gauze pads and medical tape, and dresses the wounds. It takes him a long time. Hurts to move his right arm anyway, and he’s tired—bone-tired. Part of him just wants to lie down and give up. Just lie there until they come and put two in the back of his head.
But you can’t do that, he tells himself as he applies the gauze and wraps the tape around it to hold it in place.
You have a daughter who needs you.
So keep your head in the game.
He makes himself a pot of strong black coffee and sits down to think it over.
What the hell was Mike trying to tell you?
That he was working for the feds.
That the feds forced him to set you up.
But why?
Why would they want me dead?
Doesn’t make any sense.
Maybe it was just more Mike Pella bull. Like him going to the refrigerator to get the gun, knowing he was about to make his curtain call, and going out singing some old song they used to like back in the day.
Back in the summer of ’72.
Some folks are born to wave the flag,
Ooh, they’re red, white and blue.
And when the band plays “Hail to the Chief,”
Ooh, they point the cannon at you, Lord…
Ooh, they point the cannon at you, Lord, Frank thinks. Keep going, finish it. There’s something there.
It ain’t me, it ain’t me, I ain’t no senator’s son, son.
It ain’t me, it ain’t me, I ain’t no fortunate one, no…
No, Frank thinks.
Not fortunate one.
Fortunate Son.
And not the summer of ’72.
The summer of ’85.
Summer 1985.
71
Dave Hansen is concerned—on multiple levels.
First, Frank promised he wouldn’t kill Mike Pella, and then he did. Frank Machianno is a lot of things, and one of them is a man of his word. So it’s troublesome.
Second, barely twelve miles away from Pella’s body, a car goes over the edge of the canyon, crashes and burns, and yet no victim is found. The driver is traced back to a rental-car company, except no one named Jerry Sabellico holds an Arizona driver’s license. There was a Jerry Sabellico, but he died in 1987.
So it has all the markings of a professional cover.
A pro crashes a car twelve miles from a murder site where Frank Machianno is the main “person of interest.” You don’t have to be Sherlock Holmes, Larry Holmes, or even John Holmes to put that one together.
Third, the crash was no accident. No professional ever speeds away from a hit, ever. And besides, Frank, in particular, does fifty-five miles per hour in order to get the best gas mileage, and drives slower than that in wet conditions.
Four, Frank went to pick up his mad money at a bank in Borrego. Who knew about the bank? Sherm Simon, and, through him, me. Then Frank goes to see Mike Pella. Who knew about Mike Pella?
Me.
Well, not me exclusively.
Us.
So Dave has some mixed feelings when he gets on the buzzer and calls young Troy into his office. They’re all working 24/7 on the Machianno file now, and Troy has been at it diligently, helping Dave check DBAs and shell companies to see if they can find any properties Frank might own where he could be hiding.
“What’s up?” Troy asks, adjusting his cuff links.
“I have a lead,” Dave says. “On Machianno’s location.”
“Really? Where?”
Dave gives him an address.
72
Summer Lorensen, Frank thinks.
Nineteen eighty-five—the party on Donnie Garth’s boat, then the scene at his house. That’s what Mike was trying to tell me.
It’s all about Fortunate Son.
Frank looks at the clock. It’s 3:30 in the morning and there’s nothing he can do about it for a couple of hours at least.
The best thing he can do is get a little sleep.
But it’s too much effort to get out of the chair, and it hurts too bad to move, so he just leans back and shuts his eyes.
73
Troy drives carefully through the rain, even though there’s little traffic on the streets this time of night. But he can barely see in the slashing rain—his front and rear wipers are putting up a brave but losing fight against the buildup of water on the glass.
He drives down through the Lamp, gets out of his car near Island, puts his umbrella up, and walks into a phone booth.
An umbrella to walk three steps, Dave thinks, watching him from a car a block away. With a cell phone clipped to your belt.
Who are you calling, Dave wonders, you don’t want a record of?
He doesn’t pause to think about it, though. There’ll be time to grab the phone records in the morning. He has to get over there before the people on the other end of that phone, whoever they are.
74
Jimmy the Kid Giacamone sets the phone down.
“Let’s rock and roll,” he says.
Carlo’s beginning to think that Jimmy is a real asshole.
75
Jimmy knows he’s got to get in and out fast.
A quickie in the sticky.
Wham, bam, thank you, M.
He’s in a race with the feds to see who gets there first. No consolation prize for second place, no gift baskets or all-expense-paid weekends at a second-rate resort, thank you for playing, and we hope you had fun.
Winner take all.
Way it should be.
So Jimmy and the Wrecking Crew roll up at the address hard and fast and with bad intent. No more time for subtlety—just go through the door, shoot anything that moves, hope you get The Machine before The Machine gets you.
That’s good, Jimmy thinks as the car skids to a stop. I should go in the studio and cut that—“Get The Machine Before The Machine Gets You.” Next hip-hop hit out of Motor City.
“Eight Mile” my rosy ass.
He gets out of the car.
The address is a Jack in the Box.
Dave, parked across the street, can make out a crew when he sees one, even in the pouring rain.
76
Dave goes back to his house and works from his study.
It doesn’t take too long. The Patriot Act gives him carte blanche access to phone records, and he has the number that Troy dialed within five minutes. It’s a cell phone, of course, and that’s more complicated.
He still tackling it on his computer when Barbara comes in with a pot of coffee and some oatmeal cookies.
“One of those nights?” she asks.
He nods.
They’ve been married thirty-five years. She’s been through more than one of these nights.
“You look worried,” she says.
“I am.”
“Taking this one personally?”
“I suppose.”
It’s one of the things she loves about him, that he cares about his cases. Th
ey’re not just numbers to him, even after all these years. “Pretty soon,” she says. “A few more months and you won’t have these nights.”
She kisses him on the forehead. “Want me to wait up?”
“I don’t even know if I’m going to make it to bed.”
“I’ll wait,” she says. “Just in case.”
It takes three more hours to wade through the records—then he tracks it down.
Troy called Donnie Garth.
77
Daylight finds Frank in San Diego.
Counting on the fog and the hour to shield him from view.
And the gun at his hip to protect him from harm.
Frank hobbles down toward Eleventh and Island, where the old men sleep on cardboard on the sidewalk. Limping past the line of the sleeping homeless, he listens to their mumbles and their groans, smelling the body odor of caked night sweats and stale urine, and the stink of rotting skin.
He stops at the door of the Island Tavern and bangs on it. The place is closed, but he knows he’ll find the heavy drinkers in there for their eye-openers. After a minute, the door cracks open and a jaundiced eye peeps out.
“Corky there?” Frank asks.
“Who wants to know?”
“Frank Machianno.”
Frank hears some muddled conversation; then the door opens and the old man—Frank searches for the guy’s name, remembers it’s Benny—lets him in and points to the bar.
Detective (retired) “Corky” Corchoran sits on a stool, hunched over the bar, a squat glass of whiskey by one hand, a cigarette in the other.
Frank sits down next to him.
“Long time, Corky.”
“Long time.”
Back in the day—before the bottle and the bitterness got him—Corky was a damn good cop. On the arm, like a lot of guys, he’d take an envelope to overlook the gambling and the hookers, but Corky was a straight arrow on the serious things, and all the guys knew it.
You beat a woman, you hurt a civilian, you killed someone outside the lines, Corky was after you. And if Corky was after you, he was going to get you.
