“Oh? Are you heading out?”
“Yeah, I think so. Busy day tomorrow.”
“You can stay if you want.”
And he’ll pretend to consider it, then say, “Nah, I’d better get home.”
And then they’ll have a warm kiss and he’ll say, “I love you.”
“I love you, too.”
And then he’ll be gone. To go home, grab a little sleep, and start the whole thing over again.
It’s the routine.
Except tonight turns out different.
7
Tonight, he drives home and there’s a car in the alley.
A car he doesn’t know.
Frank knows the neighbors, knows all their vehicles. None of them owns a Hummer. And even through the now-driving rain, he can see there are two guys sitting in the front seat.
They aren’t pros; he knows that straight off.
Pros would never use a vehicle as conspicuous as a Hummer. And they aren’t cops, because even the feds don’t have the budget for a vehicle like that. And third, professionals would know that I love life, and because I love life, I haven’t, in thirty years, pulled into my house at night without driving around the block first. Especially when my garage entrance is in an alley where I could get cut off.
So if these guys were pros, they wouldn’t be sitting in the alley; they’d be at least half a block down, wait for me to pull into the alley, and then come in.
They spotted him, though, as he drove by.
Or they think they did.
“That was him,” Travis says.
“Bull fucking shit,” J. answers. “How can you tell?”
“No, that was him, Junior,” Travis says. “That was Frankie fucking Machine. A motherfucking legend.”
Parking isn’t easy in Ocean Beach, so it takes Frank about ten minutes to find a spot on the street three blocks away.