“Meaning what?”

Frank’s going to make him say it.

“With everything that’s happening in Vegas,” Mouse Junior says, his voice quivering a little, scared. “The Goldstein stuff…Dad would like to know that you’re, you know, on the team.”

So there it is, Frank thinks. It’s two birds with one stone. Mouse Senior gets his Detroit problem taken care of, and he gets an insurance policy on my silence over Goldstein, because I can’t go to the feds with a fresh hit on my hands. And if I don’t do the Vena job, I make myself suspect as a possible rat. So either I take Vena out or I put myself in the bull’s-eye. But if Mouse Senior doesn’t have the soldiers to take Vince himself, why does he think he has the resources to make a run atme? Nobody in the Mickey Mouse Club has either the skills or the stones.

Who could he send?

He’d go outside the family. New York, maybe Florida, maybe even the Mexicans.

He could get it done.

It’s a problem.

“Tell you what,” Frank says. “I’ll get Vena off your back, one way or the other. Set up a meeting with him. I’ll come along. If he sees me there, he’ll be more reasonable. If not…”

He lets it hang there. The rest is obvious.

Travis likes the idea, anyway. “That’ll work, J.,” he says. “If Vena sees that we have Frankie freakingMachine on our team, he’ll shit his pants.”

“No, he won’t,” Frank says. “But he will negotiate more reasonable points.” He turns to Mouse Junior. “You don’t want a war if you can help it, kid. I’ve seen war. Peace is better.”

Something you’ll learn when you get a little older, Frank thinks, if you don’t get yourself killed first. Young guys, they always want to prove how tough they are. It’s a testosterone thing. Older guys see the beauty in compromise. And save the testosterone for better things.

Mouse Junior thinks it over. Judging by the expression on his face, it’s apparently a grueling process. Then he asks, “What about the fifty K?”