Charlie Opera (17 page)

Lano had called Francone from a pay phone on the Strip. He had baited the punk for a reaction that might hint at what Cuccia’s plans were, but the muscle-bound wannabe seemed preoccupied. Francone’s only real concern was about the five thousand dollars Lano had run off with.

Now Lano craved another hit of nicotine. He was anxious to get to Cuccia and Francone before they got to him.

Lano headed south on the Strip. He was thinking about Francone. He would take care of the pretty boy first. Maybe shoot him in the chin Francone was always scratching when he made believe he could think.

Then he would find their skipper, Nicholas Cuccia. Lano planned on shooting the young boss in the mouth. Hopefully, when he jammed the gun in Cuccia’s mouth, he would rebreak the bone Charlie Pellecchia had fractured in the New York nightclub.

Lisa Pellecchia awoke in the late afternoon after having undergone a third oral surgery. She felt dehydrated and exhausted.

She was hooked up to several intravenous tubes. She assumed that that was how she would be fed until her mouth healed. Lisa was aware of what had happened to her, but she wasn’t clear about the damage inside her mouth.

She knew she was missing at least one upper front tooth. She could feel the gap with her tongue if she dared press it against her teeth. When she did brave the pain, the gap felt bigger than one tooth.

So far it had been like a nightmare. She wondered if Charlie was safe or in danger or alive or dead. The man who had punched Lisa was one of the men in the nightclub back in New York. She had recognized him just before her brain could process the information in time for her to defend herself at the motel.

She felt the stitches inside her mouth with her tongue again. She could still taste the blood. She wondered if John was with her at the hospital, if he was resting somewhere in the lobby, or if he was with the police. Lisa was too drugged to move anything except her eyes and tongue. She wished she could move her arm to the remote control to call for a nurse. When she turned her head to find the remote, a streak of pain raced through her head.

She closed her eyes and lay motionless.

Agent Thomas couldn’t make his wife understand the demands of his job. She was fed up with him not being home. She was tired of sleeping alone. She was sick from worrying.

Thomas told his wife things would get better as soon as he finished with the case he was working.

“Another few days,” he told her. “No more than a week.”

They had been married a little more than three years. When she hung up on him, Thomas wasn’t sure if they would make it to their fourth year.

So far the indictments back in Brooklyn were falling around Anthony Cuccia. Two captains directly under the sixty-five-year old underboss were charged with federal racketeering violations. Thomas didn’t know the specifics of the indictments except for the leverage that RICO statutes carried.

Ten years was a long time. Mobsters were trading information for a lot less than ten years. It was added pressure for Thomas. If either of the two captains indicted were to cut a deal of their own with the organized crime task force, his potential drug case against Anthony Cuccia could fall apart. The last three weeks of his surveillance would have been for nothing.

Thomas wished his wife could understand his situation better. It was bad enough trying to baby-sit a wiseguy in Las Vegas. Now he had to sweat out indictments against two mob captains facing a minimum of ten years each. The least his wife could do was show some compassion for his situation instead of breaking his balls.

His eyes were growing tired from watching the television screen when his cell phone rang. He was expecting updates from his supervisor back in New York, but it also could be his wife calling back to haunt him some more. He thought about not answering the phone.

When he heard Charlie Pellecchia yelling at him, Thomas was caught completely off guard.

Charlie used a pay phone near a men’s room in the casino to call Agent Thomas of the DEA. When the agent picked up on the second ring, Charlie said, “It’s Charlie Pellecchia. Your boy just took another shot at me. I was lucky. The punk they sent is on his way to the hospital. I just wanted to thank you for all —”

“Wait a minute! Wait a minute!” the DEA agent yelled. “Talk to me. I just observed —”

“Fuck you!” Charlie yelled. He hung up the receiver and juked his way through the lobby crowd. When he reached the driveway, he could see the flashing lights of an ambulance.

When he stood on the line for a taxi, Charlie spotted John Denton heading his way. Charlie clenched his teeth in anticipation of a confrontation.

“We need to talk,” Denton said. “I know this is weird, but we need to talk.”

Charlie searched the crowd behind him for the Asian kid he had spotted on the house telephone in the lobby earlier.

“Charlie?” Denton persisted. “We need to talk.”

Charlie pushed his wife’s lover to move up in the taxi line.

“I’m not asking you to come along,” he told Denton.

“Come along where? I came to you when the police didn’t show up at the hospital. I already called them.”

“You gave them the names?”

“No. I just called the detective I spoke with originally. I left a message for him to call me back. He didn’t call, so I came here. I didn’t know if you got my message or not.”

Charlie shoved his way past Denton as he sat inside a taxi. When Denton followed him, Charlie said, “I’m going there right now. I’m going to see this guy who’s trying to kill me.”

“That’s crazy,” Denton said. “This is the mob we’re dealing with. I’m a lawyer. I can lose my license if I don’t report this. I can’t hold back information.”

Charlie told the driver to take them to the Bellagio.

“It’s insane,” Denton continued. “I already called that detective. I’m just waiting for him to get back to me. I’m not even sure Lisa will want to go along with it, pressing charges. It’s the mob, damn it! You can’t fight them.”

“You’re right,” Charlie said. “You are a lawyer.”

“That’s a cheap shot.”

Charlie glared at Denton.

“Suppose this guy today is setting you up?” Denton asked.

“What guy?”

“The guy who came to the hospital. The one I called you about. Suppose he just wanted to find you. Maybe he already has. Maybe they’re following us right now.”

“Somebody already followed me. That’s what that ambulance was about back there. I was lucky. I’m not giving them a third chance.”

“Which is why you should go to the police with this.”

“I don’t have time to explain it now,” Charlie said. “Nicholas Cuccia, right? That’s one of the names.”

“And a Joey Francone.”

“And a Joey Francone. Fine. Nicky and Joey, welcome to my world.”

“What about Lisa?” Denton asked.

Charlie glared at his wife’s lover one more time.

“I feel like a nap,” Francone said. He was down to his royal blue bikini underwear and muscle T-shirt. He sat back against the pillows propped up against the headboard.

The hooker handed him a refill of his drink, a Stolichnaya screwdriver. “Have another sip,” she said. “It’ll help you relax. Then I can finish relaxing you.”

“I’ll bet you can,” Francone said before sipping the drink.

The hooker stroked his thigh near his crotch. He was stuck in a semierect stage but was too drugged to notice. The hooker sipped at her Sprite through a straw. Her lips formed a smile around the straw.

He had told her as much about his work as he could fit in a twenty-minute conversation. He was waiting to become a made man, he had told her. He was waiting for the mob books to open again back in New York. He was so close he could taste it.

The hooker wasn’t sure what mob books were. She had heard about made men and wiseguys and other gangsters, but she had also heard or read about how gangsters testified against each other once they were arrested. She had watched that special on
Dateline
or
20/20,
or maybe it was on CNN, about one boss testifying against another boss. Or maybe it was the assistant to the boss testifying against the boss. It didn’t matter. It made her dizzy then and it made her dizzy now to think about it. Who cared about the mob or mob books? She had another sucker about to fall asleep right in front of her.

“So, are you really a gangster?” she asked as she watched him slide slowly toward unconsciousness.

“Yesssss,” he said as he started to slur his words. “But you shouldn’t be thcared. I ike you. I rearry rike yourrr.”

“I like you, too,” she said.

“You erra been to Rew Rork?”

“Sure,” the hooker said. “Lots of times.”

Francone’s eyes closed before he could register her answer.

Charlie walked straight to the registration desk in the Bellagio Hotel-Casino to reserve a room. He handed a clerk there his credit card and driver’s license. He asked for a smoking room high up, if one was available.

“You really think this is a good idea?” Denton asked as they waited for the room keys.

“Yes,” Charlie said. “This gets us upstairs.”

The desk clerk handed Charlie a small folder with keys and a minimap of the Bellagio. Charlie signed a card authorizing payment by room number and waited for his credit card to be returned.

“This is crazy,” Denton said.

“I know,” Charlie said. “And sometimes crazy is a good thing.”

Minh Quan took the call while he was playing a pinball machine in the basement of the restaurant. He listened intently as one of the men he had sent with his brother to kill Charlie Pellecchia explained how Nguyen was beaten unconscious and was on his way to the hospital.

Quan turned away from the pinball machine as he wiped sweat from his forehead. He checked his watch and spoke in French, the language he sometimes used to confuse surveillance.

“
Suis-le mais ne fais rien
,” Quan said. “
Moi-même, je tuerai ce Blanc foutant. J’y vais
.”

He told the caller to follow Pellecchia but to leave him alone. Quan would kill the fucking white man himself. He was on his way.

First he had a sit-down with Jerry Lercasi. A meeting with the Italian big shot meant there was money to be made. Quan would stay in touch with his men and avenge his brother’s injury after doing business.

She had been drinking Sprite, but the comedian in the silk bikini underwear never noticed.

The hooker managed to find just less than seven hundred dollars in the room, not nearly as much as she had hoped for. She did have a Rolex, a money clip with diamond-studded initials, a couple of designer leather belts, the strap, and the dildo. She kept the handwritten receipt with the inflated price. She figured she might get fifty bucks for the unused items.

Francone lay on his back snoring on one of the twin-size beds. The hooker tied his hands with his belt. Then she tied his feet back to his hands with one leg of his pants.

She left him in the silk royal blue bikini underwear. She had laughed out loud at the sight of the underwear earlier and covered up by saying drinking made her giggly.

She was just finishing making herself up in the bathroom when she thought she heard him move on the bed. She frowned at the thought. She had given him enough codeine to knock out a horse. She put her lipstick in her bag and hurried out of the bathroom. She stopped with a gasp when she saw an older man across the room pointing a gun at her.

Lano’s eyebrows rose about as far up into his forehead as was possible once he was inside his room at the Bellagio. There was the young punk snoring in his sissy silk underwear, hands tied to his feet with a belt and a pair of pants. Lano smiled at the sight until he heard somebody in the bathroom across the suite. He stepped to the side and pulled the .380 from his ankle holster. He pointed the gun at the bathroom until a woman dressed like a hooker stepped through the doorway.

“Huhhhh!” the woman gasped.

Lano took the scene in again, looking from the punk to the hooker, and then back at Francone again.

“You rolled him?” he asked as he lowered the gun.

The hooker put both her hands up for emphasis. “I don’t know what happened to him, mister. He got all funny on me and then he passed out.”

“But he tied himself up before he passed out, right?”

Charlie’s room at the Bellagio was two floors above Nicholas Cuccia’s suite. Before he stepped inside the elevator, Charlie sent Denton to a hotel store for some changes of clothes. He gave him two hundred-dollar bills and a list of items to buy: T-shirts, sweat pants, and two hats. Denton wanted an explanation, but Charlie waved him off as he stepped inside the elevator.

He was feeling rage he hadn’t felt in a long time. He needed to control his anger before it got the best of him.

He had boxed in the New York City Golden Gloves when he was seventeen. After six easy victories in the heavyweight novice division, Charlie made it to the semifinals, where a much faster Hispanic kid defeated him on points. Charlie knocked the Hispanic kid down in the third round, but it was the only solid punch he had landed, a vicious left hook. Three one-minute rounds had just not been enough time for Charlie to stalk his prey.

Knocking the Asian kid unconscious had been instinct. Charlie saw the knife. He saw the kid swing. He reacted.

Breaking the wiseguy’s jaw in the nightclub was a similar reflexive action. He saw the gangster grab his wife. He saw the smack, and he reacted.

Going after the gangster now was no longer instinct. Charlie had decided to take the offensive. He knew who and where his enemy was. He would stalk Nicholas Cuccia, but he wouldn’t take his time about it.

Samantha was desperate to find out where Charlie had gone. She watched the story on the local news about a mugging at Harrah’s Hotel. She knew Charlie had gone there to check out. He told her he would call if anything were wrong.

She picked up the phone receiver at least three times before slamming it back down from fear of making things worse than they already were. When she couldn’t stand the suspense any longer, Samantha called his room at Harrah’s and was told that Mr. Pellecchia had already checked out.