So Frank pats Mouse Junior down pretty thoroughly.

He doesn’t find any wires or mikes.

Or guns.

That would be the other possibility-Mouse Senior wanting to make absolutelycertain that I don’t tell the feds who ordered up the Goldstein thing. But Mouse would have sent one of the few soldiers he has left. Even Mouse wouldn’t send his own kid on a mission to try to hit Frankie Machine.

You want your son to buryyou.

“You want coffee or beer?” Frank asks, taking off his raincoat. He keeps the pistol in his hand.

“Beer, if you got it,” Mouse Junior says.

“I have it,” Frank says. Good, he thinks, it saves me the trouble of brewing up a pot. He goes into the kitchen, grabs two Dos Equis, then changes his mind and takes two of the cheaper Coronas instead. He comes back out, hands them the beers, says, “Use coasters.”

The two kids sit on his sofa like bad students in the principal’s office. Frank sits down in his chair, with his pistol on his lap, and kicks off his wet shoes. That’s all I need, he thinks, a cold. They go through the preliminaries: “How’s your father? How’s your uncle? Give them my regards. What brings you boys to San Diego?”

“Dad suggested it,” Mouse Junior says. “He said I should come talk to you.”

“About what?”

“I got a problem,” Mouse Junior says.

You got more than one problem, Frank thinks. You’re stupid, you’re lazy, you’re uneducated, and you’re careless. What did the kid do, a year and a half of junior college before he dropped out to “help Dad with the business”?

“We-” Mouse Junior begins.

“Who’s ‘we’?” Frank asks.

“Me and Travis,” Mouse Junior explains. “We have a sweet little porno operation running. Golden Productions. We’re getting a piece of half the distribution that comes out of the Valley.”