Charlie Opera (19 page)

Sometime during their unspoken problems, Jennifer fell in love with another man.

At first, Gentry had thought that if he ignored his wife’s betrayal, she might come to her senses or grow bored with whomever she was seeing. He loved his wife enough to forgive her. At least he was willing to try.

When her affair didn’t stop, Gentry found he could no longer live with it in his face. When he suspected his wife of using their own home, he decided to end their marriage.

Except it wasn’t as easy to follow through with what he knew was the right thing to do. He became caught up in the sordid details of his wife’s affair. He wanted to know who her lover was. He wanted to know what they were doing.

He had bought a minicamera from a spy shop. So far, he was unable to watch what the hidden camera had already recorded. It was a denial he was terrified to confront.

When she was late returning home, Gentry decided to finally view the tape. Thirty seconds into the recording, he gagged at the sight of his wife kissing another man he immediately recognized. He ran into the bathroom and was sick. His stomach muscles wrenched as he heaved until he was dry. He moaned from crying, but there were no tears.

When he returned, a few minutes later, his wife was naked on the screen. So was the cop between her knees.

Allen Fein had made two stops on his way home. After eating a Big Mac, fries, and hot apple pie at McDonald’s, he stopped at Kentucky Fried Chicken and ordered a small bucket of spicy chicken and French fries. He ate the food in his BMW in the parking lot and later stopped at a Dairy Queen for a chocolate milk shake. He ordered a super-size Coke for the drive home and was sure to stop for a bottle of Pepto-Bismol.

Now he was sitting in pain on his toilet. The super-size Coke cup rested on the marble edge of the bathroom sink. The cup was half empty.

Fein rocked back and forth on the toilet seat as he proposed deals with God to alleviate the stomach pains he was suffering.

“I swear it,” Fein said between gasps of breath. “I’ll never eat this crap again. Please, God. Please. I swear it.”

He broke into a cold sweat. The pains in his stomach were relentless. He wiped at his forehead with the back of a hand as he groaned on the toilet seat.

He thought he heard a noise outside the bathroom. He had been in a rush to use the toilet and had left the door open. He leaned forward on the toilet seat, but a stomach pain set him to rocking again.

“Oh, God,” Fein chanted, “please let me go. Please.”

He heard a second noise outside the bathroom. He guessed it was his cat jumping from the landing above the stairway down the hall.

As his bowels finally started to move, Fein heard yet another noise outside the bathroom. He called to his cat as he wiped sweat from his forehead with the back of his right wrist. He let out a long sigh of relief and started to smile when he looked in the direction of a shadow crossing the doorway. Fein was startled when he saw a stocky man standing there holding a gun.

“Jesus Christ,” Renato Freni said after shooting Allen Fein off the toilet seat.

He held his breath as he stepped closer and fired another round into the accountant’s head.

When he was sure Fein was dead, Freni stepped around the body and made his way back out of the condo. He had completed half of a new contract with Jerry Lercasi. Freni wasn’t thrilled about killing Fein for free, but it was the price he had to pay for taking on the Pellecchia contract without going through Lercasi first.

The thing about doing a hit for a guy like Lercasi was you didn’t get a chance to make mistakes. It was more like the old days. You had one chance. You didn’t fuck it up.

This was a serious consideration for Freni as he headed back toward the Strip. Killing an accountant was one thing. Killing a wiseguy was an entire other matter.

The flash from the camera caused Francone to blink. He felt a searing pain in his lower back as his eyes refocused. When he could see clearly again, Lano was standing there.

Francone realized the pain was from his rectum. He tugged against the restraints on his arms and legs, but it hurt to move. He looked down at himself as Lano started to laugh. Francone’s mouth was cotton dry. He couldn’t speak.

“There’s about eight inches of a twelve-inch dildo up your ass,” Lano said. “You better be careful you don’t turn over and jam it into your stomach.”

Francone was trying to wet his lips. “The fuck are you doing?” he asked.

“Ruining your life,” Lano said.

“We’ll kill you for this. You know that, right?”

Lano winked at Francone as he spoke though a coughing fit. “In case you don’t get it yet, pally, I’m not too concerned.”

Francone tried to move his right leg, but the pain in his rectum sent a spasm up his back. “Fuck!” he yelled.

A knock at the door stopped Lano from laughing again. He did his best to suppress another coughing fit as he stepped back to block the door. A second, louder knock followed.

“Who is it?” Lano asked through a cough.

“The guy from the hospital,” a voice said.

Lano checked the peephole in the door for police. If they were out there, they had moved out of his view.

“Who else is there?”

“The husband,” the voice said.

“Shit,” Lano whispered to himself. He knew there was a chance the husband would get involved. He wasn’t sure about the boyfriend, but the husband was the one who had broken Cuccia’s jaw in the first place.

He opened the door a crack and stepped away fast. He held his gun up for whoever else might be there. “Go easy,” he said. “I’ve got something in my hand.”

Charlie touched his gun and immediately thought better of it. His life wasn’t in imminent danger yet. He could turn around and leave right now.

He had intended on using the same move he used upstairs with Cuccia. As soon as the door opened a crack, he would force his way into the room, shoulder first. But now the guy on the other side of the door was telling Charlie he had a gun, too.

Charlie pushed the door open instead of rushing through it. An older man dressed in black stood with a gun at the foot of one of two beds. The man’s shape looked somewhat familiar.

Charlie definitely recognized the other man. A flesh-colored tube was jammed inside his rectum.

“You must be Charlie Pellecchia,” the man with the gun said. “I’m Vincent Lano.”

Charlie waited for Denton to close the door behind them. He nodded at the man holding the gun. “You’re also one of the scumbags who did this to me,” he said as he pointed at his facial bruises.

Lano didn’t flinch. “I’m sorry about that,” he said. “Really. I followed orders. I was wrong.”

“And what about my wife?”

“I didn’t touch her,” Lano said. He pointed the gun at the ridiculous sight on the bed. “That was this clown. On orders from the guy upstairs.” Lano motioned at Denton with his gun. “I gave him the names. Suite 24-B, in case you haven’t made it up there yet.”

“We just came from there,” Charlie said.

Lano motioned at Denton again. “I went to this guy to give him the information,” he said. “It don’t make me innocent, but I didn’t lay a finger on her. I had no intention of doing that. That isn’t me.”

Charlie looked to Denton. Denton was staring down at the man on the bed.

“Can he get hurt like that?” Denton asked.

Before Lano could answer, Charlie grabbed the base of the flesh-colored tube and pushed it from side to side and down. The man on the bed gasped loudly. His eyes and mouth remained wide open from pain. Blood trickled outside his rectum around the tube.

Denton moved between Charlie and the bed. “Enough,” he said.

“What are you gonna do?” Charlie asked Lano. “Shoot me now?”

“Not if I don’t have to.”

“What if I want to break your nose?”

“I’d think this would stop you.”

Denton was terrified that Charlie would take his personal vendetta to another level. He had already assaulted one mobster. Now there was another one holding a gun. Denton tried to stay between them. He knew he was the voice of reason in the room. He also knew his vote counted the least. Charlie was running on rage. Denton wasn’t quite sure what was motivating the man with the gun.

“Look,” Denton said to Charlie. “We’re in deep enough shit already. And I know I don’t wanna get shot.”

Charlie pointed behind Denton at the bed. “That piece of shit broke your girlfriend’s teeth.”

Denton looked to Lano. Lano said, “He’s right, he did.”

Denton clenched his teeth at the man on the bed. He looked to the dildo but couldn’t bring himself to touch it.

“Not that,” he said.

“Then what?” Lano asked.

Denton walked around Charlie to the dresser. He opened a few drawers and found a white T-shirt. He wrapped his right hand with it and walked back to the bed. He aimed a straight right lead down at the man’s mouth as hard as he could throw it. The man on the bed took the punch flush on the right side of his face. Blood splattered from a split lip.

“There,” Denton said. “Now can we go?”

Charlie shook his head. “I’ll give you one more try before I take out a few of his teeth with my foot. Or you can break his nose. They fractured mine, and I intend to break his.”

“This is crazy already!” Denton yelled.

“If you guys’ll hear me out, I think I have a better idea,” Lano said.

“Really?” Denton asked.

“What’s that?” Charlie asked.

Lano smiled.

Gold couldn’t handle sitting around thinking about what might happen to Donald Gentry when the Las Vegas police finally arrested the young detective’s wife.

“Let’s go do something,” he told Iandolli. “You don’t want me to go to Gentry with this, give me something to occupy my mind.”

“You wanna go talk with the guys from New York? Cuccia, Francone, and Lano.”

Gold started the car. “About the Pellecchia assaults?” he asked. “I don’t really give a fuck about this Pellecchia couple. I have a hard time giving a shit about people who don’t cooperate. I’m not so sure they’re so innocent in all this anyway.”

“So we don’t ask about the Pellecchia couple. We talk about something else.”

Gold pulled away from the curb. “Can we break their balls?”

“Why not?” Iandolli said. “It’s one of the few perks goes with this job. We break their balls and then watch them turn colors.”

“Remind me of our motivation here.”

“My wife’ll tell you I’m just evil sometimes,” Iandolli said. “You, I think, have other motives.”

“Gentry.”

“You have to let the steam out somewhere.”

Gold was approaching an intersection. “Where they staying?”

“Bellagio.”

Gold spotted the lights of the Strip off to his right. He turned right at the intersection. “Fine,” he said. “Let’s go break balls.”

Jennifer Gentry was startled at the sight of her husband with the tequila bottle. She avoided direct eye contact.

“Your boyfriend protect himself, or you just give him a blow job?” Donald Gentry asked his wife.

He was sitting at the kitchen table. Half the bottle of tequila was gone. Jennifer was wearing black leggings and a white sweatshirt. She had just come home from wherever she had spent the past few hours after work. Her look, or maybe it was where she might have been, somehow turned him on.

“You look good in those tight pants like that,” he said. “He run his hands up there, or just slide those pants off nice and slow?”

“Don’t do this,” Jennifer said. Her voice was trembling.

Gentry saw another man undress his wife in the video running in his head. He couldn’t stop his mind from replaying the haunting images. “Nice and slow, right? And while he was down there, he buried his face, right?”

Jennifer tried to remain calm. “Please don’t do this,” she said.

“Do what? I’m not doing anything. You’re the one doing, babe.”

“Please, Donald.”

“What’s his name? The guy you’re doing. Tell me. I wanna hear you say it.”

Jennifer folded her arms across her chest as she tried for strength. “What’s the point, Donald?”

“I want to know,” he said, maintaining a calm voice. “I have a right to know. Since he’s been in my house, fucking my wife on my bed. I think I have a right to know.”

Jennifer’s arms immediately uncrossed as she shook her head. “We never,” she said. “Not here.”

“Bullshit!” Donald yelled. His wife jumped from the volume of his voice. “Yesterday. I just missed you. I came home but you must’ve just left. Your gunk, the sperm gel, was out of the cap. Unless you put it on before you go see him. I know you don’t use it for me. You haven’t for a couple months now.”

Jennifer avoided her husband’s eyes again. “And the bed was messed up,” he added. “And something else.”

She waited in silence with her eyes closed. “What?” she finally asked.

Gentry smirked at his wife.

“What?” she repeated.

“I got it on film.”

When she woke up, Samantha was on her back, and her hands were restrained. A gag had been stuffed in her mouth.

A flabby, pale-skinned man stood over her in the living room. He had a short buzz haircut and a thick Confederate flag belt buckle. One hand held on to the buckle. He held a can of Budweiser in his other hand.

“I’m Beau Curitan,” he told Samantha. “You know, Carol’s husband.”

Then the man leered as he stepped on Samantha’s left thigh.

His field supervisor had been blunt. “If you even think this case is going down the shitter, then cuff the son of a bitch and bring his ass back here right now,” the supervisor had told Agent Thomas.

That was ten minutes ago. Now Thomas was standing at a house telephone in the lobby of the Bellagio. He had been ringing Nicholas Cuccia’s room for the past fifteen minutes. He had called Joey Francone’s room as well. Then Thomas asked hotel security to check on his good friend in suite 24-B, just to make sure he was all right. They had an important business appointment to make.

Thomas was impatient waiting for security to get back to him. He scanned the constant flowing crowds in front of him for the New York mobster he was there to baby-sit. There were too many people to pick out any one person. At least he couldn’t find Cuccia amid the sea of gamblers and tourists.