Charlie Opera (26 page)

They were pulling into the Bellagio driveway. Thomas drove the white Ford Taurus around the valet parking line to the front entrance. He checked in his rearview mirror for Walsh and the other FBI agents. He spotted the light blue sedan as it pulled to the side of the driveway.

“Let’s go,” Thomas told Cuccia. He grabbed the mobster by an arm and half-dragged him through the lobby. Cuccia tried to pull back, but his jaw hurt from the jostling.

“You’re fuckin’ killin’ me over here,” he moaned through his rewired jaw.

“Don’t give me any ideas,” Thomas said.

“I’m tellin’ you my uncle will never go for it over the phone.”

“That’s not what you said when we left New York.”

“Because I didn’t want to hear you then.”

“Right,” Thomas said. He pulled Cuccia’s arm as he stepped onto an elevator.

“Ouch, motherfucker!”

A woman holding a plastic bucket full of coins gasped at the language.

“Fuck you, too,” Cuccia told the woman.

Thomas smacked the back of Cuccia’s head. The mobster froze from the pain he felt in his jaw.

When they were inside the hotel room, Thomas walked straight to the windows and handed Cuccia his cell phone.

“Make the call,” he said. “Now.”

Cuccia had picked up the binoculars he had used to watch the women around the pool. He set them on a chair and dialed a number in Brooklyn.

“Anthony, it’s Nicky,” he said into the phone.

“Nicky who?” the voice on the other end said. “This is Frank’s Pizza.”

“I know, I know. That thing is ready to go.”

“What thing?” the voice said. “This is Frank’s Pizza. Who do you want? What number?”

“Jersey City. Right. Tonight. Yes.”

“Ba-fongool,” the voice said.

Cuccia turned the phone off and handed it back to Thomas. He picked up the binoculars and feigned scanning the pool area. Thomas turned the phone back on and punched in a few numbers. He held the receiver against his ear and shook his head at Cuccia.

“Nice try,” he said. “Frank’s Pizza. They any good?”

Cuccia was desperate. He swung the binoculars as hard as he could at the side of Thomas’s head. He was shocked when he cracked the DEA agent’s skull. He was stunned to see tiny pieces of bone on the edge of the binocular lens.

Detectives Gold and Iandolli sat in the back of a white surveillance van disguised as a floral delivery service. A third man, dressed in a bright green uniform, drove the van. He wore a microphone transmitter in his left ear.

They were parked across the street from the South of Vegas Motel. Pellecchia had taken a room there. Iandolli was scanning the area for Asian men. So far he hadn’t seen any.

When Joey Francone realized that Anthony Rizzi had skipped out on him, the wannabe mobster threw a fit in the Caesar’s Palace hotel room. He punched at the mattress on the king-size bed over and over. He threw the ice bucket across the room. He forgot about the stitching in his rectum and kicked at the suitcase stand. He flinched from the pain.

He counted his money one more time as he sat on the bed in Rizzi’s hotel room. He had barely enough cash to make an escape and nowhere to go.

Francone was ready to give up.

He stared at the telephone as he tried to compile a list of things he could trade with the FBI about Nicholas Cuccia and the Vignieri crime family. He cried to himself as he realized he didn’t have much to deal for the protection he would need.

Charlie wasn’t sure if it was a short dream or a long one. He had tried to wake himself several times, but the lure of the nightmare was too great. He was sweating when he awoke. He was paralyzed on the bed, straining to remember the dream and concerned about what it had meant.

The villain in
Tosca,
Baron Scarpia, was caught in a giant spider’s web. Samantha, wearing a hooded shawl, was pacing back and forth across a small room. The spider’s web holding Scarpia hung in one corner of the room. Samantha didn’t see it. Each time she paced, she drew closer to the web, and Scarpia reached out to grab her.

Charlie was somewhere outside the room and couldn’t find a way in. Lisa was suddenly outside the room with him. Charlie did his best to ignore his wife. He heard a chorus from his favorite aria over and over:
“ma, nel ritrar costei. Il mio solo pensiero. Ah! Il mio sol pensier sei tu, Tosca, sei tu!”

It meant, “But in portraying this woman my only thought, ah, my only thought is you. Tosca, it’s you!”

He bolted off the bed and splashed cold water on his face. He called Samantha, but she hung up on him. He immediately called back, and she hung up again. When he tried a third time, Samantha finally answered.

“I’m sorry,” he said.

Samantha remained silent on her end of the line.

“Sam?”

“I feel like you ran out on me,” she finally said.

“I didn’t run out on you,” Charlie said.

“That’s what it feels like,” Samantha said and hung up.

“Fuck,” Charlie said.

He hung up the receiver and grabbed the Taurus P22 off the night table. He held the gun in his right hand and stared at it. Except for target practice at a range on Long Island in New York, he had never fired a gun. It had made him nervous having one in the house. He gave up the sport a few months after buying his first handgun, a Smith & Wesson .38 revolver, because he’d left it out one night after drinking with friends from the pistol range. A handgun accident was something that haunted him for the next few days until he finally sold the revolver to a friend.

Now he realized that he might need one to stay alive. He pocketed the handgun until he was inside the rental. He pulled the handgun out and shoved it under the front seat. When he spotted an Asian kid standing near a pay phone alongside the motel office, Charlie slid off the front seat without thinking about the gun.

Walsh directed his men from the suite of Nicholas Cuccia in the Bellagio Hotel. He watched as a team of emergency medical staff tried to stabilize the DEA agent on a stretcher. Thomas was bleeding from an open wound in the side of his head. Walsh recognized bone chips around the wound.

“Have hotel security block every exit in the hotel and casino,” Walsh told one of his men. “Get through to the office for every available man in the area. I want an all-points on Nicholas Cuccia right now. I want an all-points on Joseph Francone as well. I want both of those men taken pronto. Contact the locals. Have them take over security downstairs as soon as they arrive.”

Walsh handed his cellular telephone to another one of his men. “Get DEA on the line right now and explain the situation. We have one of their men down with a possible skull fracture. Give it back to me when you have a supervisor.”

Walsh knew his chances of finding Cuccia were small. His team had waited outside the Bellagio for more than half an hour before he and one of his men decided to check up on the DEA agent. Thomas and Cuccia were scheduled to leave Las Vegas on a nine-o’clock flight. He had tried to page Thomas twice before he suspected something was wrong.

Now the New York wiseguy was missing. Walsh guessed Cuccia had a fifteen-minute head start on them. He wasn’t sure where Cuccia would try to run, but the New York mobster had the cash, a credit card, and the agent’s handgun.

Walsh figured both the airport and the train station would be a waste of time. Cuccia had to know he couldn’t show his face at either place, although most times desperate men did desperate things.

“Get Iandolli on the phone!” Walsh yelled. “Have him call me back pronto. Get a fax of Cuccia to the airport and train station security. Get one to every hotel registration desk in Las Vegas. Get one to the car rental agencies, the tour buses, and the tour helicopters.”

Walsh ordered one of his men to stay behind. He watched one of the medical team insert an intravenous needle in Thomas’s arm. He looked at Thomas’s eyes, but the agent was unconscious. Walsh tapped his Smith & Wesson 9mm strapped in a shoulder holster. He glanced back at Thomas one last time and headed for the door.

“What the fuck?” Gold said.

They were watching the fistfight from the street alongside the motel parking lot. Charlie Pellecchia had approached a man using a pay telephone. When the man turned, Iandolli saw he was Asian.

“Let’s go,” Iandolli instructed his driver.

As the van turned into the motel parking lot, the Asian gave Pellecchia the finger. Pellecchia smacked his hand away, and the fight started.

Iandolli scanned the surrounding area for members of the Black Dragons. When he didn’t see any, he glanced at Gold. Gold was watching the fight.

The Asian kicked at Pellecchia karate-style. The kick missed, and Pellecchia threw a left hook from a crouch and slammed the Asian man across a nearby bench.

“He’s pretty good,” Iandolli said.

The two squared off again, the Asian using martial arts and Pellecchia in a classic boxer’s crouch.

“I fucking kill you, white boy,” the Asian said.

Charlie remembered the same taunt from the day before. He glared at the Asian and realized it was the same kid from the car.

Charlie motioned him in closer. “Go for it,” he said.

The Asian was rotating his open hands in a slow, even motion. Charlie didn’t know if the guy knew what he was doing, but the Asian had exposed a weak spot earlier. Charlie intended to go for it again.

The Asian raised his right hand and quickly kicked Charlie in the left shin.

“Fuck,” Charlie said as he winced from the sharp pain.

“What you do now, white boy?” the Asian said just before he rushed Charlie with a feigned kick and a straight punch that missed.

Charlie’s left hand was still stinging from his first punch. His bruised fingers were throbbing. He stepped to his right and noticed a white van pulling into the lot as he feigned a punch of his own. The Asian glanced at the van and landed a few knuckles on Charlie’s forehead.

Charlie went down low and came up with a hard left to the ribs. The Asian grunted as both his hands dropped. Charlie threw another short, hard hook and this time nailed the Asian in the right temple. The Asian was staggered from the blow. He backpedaled until he went down.

Iandolli returned an emergency page. When someone answered the call, Gold could see Iandolli’s expression change.

“Right away,” Iandolli said into the cell phone.

“What’s that about?” Gold asked.

“That DEA agent, Thomas. Nicholas Cuccia just cracked his head open. Cuccia is on the run. He has a gun. Nobody knows where he is.”

“Give me two guesses,” Gold said.

“He doesn’t know where Pellecchia is,” Iandolli said.

“That was my second guess. We never checked on the one flew in the other day. The one you mentioned with the trucking business. The rich one.”

“Rizzi. Shit.”

“We never checked up on him. At least you didn’t mention it.”

“You’re right,” Iandolli said.

“The Feds know about him?”

“Not from me.”

“I can go,” Gold said.

“You sure?”

“I’m not supposed to be here with you anyway. I might as well sit in traffic.”

“Be careful,” Iandolli said.

Gold motioned toward the scene in the parking lot. He said, “Lucky punch.”

Cuccia used a taxi to take him to a hotel off the Strip. He saw the driver looking at him funny in the rearview mirror, and Cuccia explained how he had been robbed and mugged the day before. He pointed to his jaw. He explained how two black kids had broken his jaw with a baseball bat. His wife, Cuccia told the driver, was still recovering in the hospital.

The driver sympathized. He told Cuccia he should have a gun. “For protection,” the driver said with a Russian accent.

It was an unexpected bonus. Two guns were better than one. Cuccia asked the driver if he knew where a guy could get one. He said, “I’m scared shit, tell you the truth.”

“How much you are to pay?” the driver asked. He tried to examine Cuccia again in the rearview mirror.

Cuccia was contemplating the second weapon and extra ammunition. He would need transportation as well.

“How much?” the driver repeated.

“Huh?” Cuccia said. He leaned forward, an overanxious, desperate, but grateful tourist. “Anything,” he said. “Can you get me one?”

“Not me, no,” the driver said. “But I have friend can get. For two hundred, maybe three hundred dollar, I think.”

“Really?”

“Yes, I think. Where you are staying? Here, this place?”

They were parked off Boulder Highway, alongside a Super 8 Hotel. Cuccia shook his head. “At the MGM. But I thought it was better if I did this from here.”

The driver shrugged. “Is fine here, too. You want to wait, I come back. Anything you are want? Magnum, automatic?”

“A nine,” Cuccia said. “And an extra clip.”

The driver nodded. “I am right back,” he said. “Half an hour.”

“So much for your friend Lercasi,” Charlie told Iandolli.

They were standing in the motel parking lot. Three police cruisers had pulled in behind the van. The Asian was in handcuffs. The right side of his face was swollen.

“I got a call from him before,” Iandolli said. “About Beau Curitan, I think.”

“That’s pretty funny,” Charlie said. He was still catching his breath from the fight. He cradled his left hand in his right hand. He could barely move his fingers.

“The message said the package was delivered,” Iandolli said. “I asked for proof but he hung up.”

Charlie squinted at Iandolli. “Is that supposed to mean anything to me? Jesus Christ, give it a break.”

Charlie opened the door to his rental.

“Where you going?” Iandolli asked.

“Why?”

“Because Nicholas Cuccia is still out there. He almost killed that DEA agent. Gold just went to look for him.”

“And now you’re gonna follow me?”

Iandolli was adamant. “Where are you going?”

“A pet store, if I can find one is still open.”

“A pet store?”

“I owe a woman an apology.”

Minh Quan snorted two lines of cocaine after receiving the phone call from his man following Charlie Pellecchia. When he arrived at the small motel south of the Strip, Minh was just in time to see one of his men handcuffed and shoved into a police van. Another member of his gang arrived on a motorcycle a few minutes later. Minh instructed him to follow Pellecchia.