“Why are you coming to me?” Frank asks, even though he knows the answer.

“Because you’re Frankie Machine,” Mouse Junior says.

“What doesthat mean?”

What it means, Mouse Junior explains, is that they’ve “calendared” a sit-down with Vena to hammer out a deal.

“Do it,” Frank says. “If Vena says sixty, he’ll take forty, maybe even thirty-five. You give him a cut of the pie, then you just go out and make a bigger pie, that’s all. There’s enough for everybody.”

Mouse Junior shakes his head. “If we don’t stop it here…”

“You stop it here,” Frank says, “you start a war with Detroit.”

And let me tell you what your old man already knows, kid. You don’t have the troops. But Mouse Junior’s too young to know that. Too much testosterone bouncing around in there.

Mouse Junior says, “I’m not rolling over for this guy.”

“So don’t,” Frank says.

It’s not my problem.

I’m retired.

“Fifty K,” Mouse Junior says.

Thatis high, Frank thinks. There must be more money in this porn thing than I thought. It shows they have resources, but it also shows how weak they are. You don’t normally pay cash to have this kind of thing done-you give it to one of your soldiers in exchange for future business considerations, or maybe getting him straightened out.

But L.A. doesn’t have many soldiers left. Not good ones anyway, guys who could do this kind of work.

Fifty K is a lot of money. Invested well, it would pay a lot of tuition.

“I’m going to take a pass on this one,” Frank says.

“Dad said you might turn it down,” Mouse Junior says.

“Your father is a wise man.”

Actually, he’s a jackass, but what the hell.

“He said to tell you,” Mouse Junior continues, “that he would consider this a personal favor, a matter of loyalty.”