Charlie Opera (27 page)

When a group of police cruisers pulled into the motel parking lot, Minh decided to get out of the area before he was spotted. He drove out toward the desert, where he would wait until he knew where Pellecchia settled for the night.

Then he would kill him.

The Russian was back in fewer than twenty minutes. He handed Cuccia a Glock handgun with a fully loaded nine-bullet magazine. The Russian produced a second fully loaded magazine and dropped it on the bed.

“Was little expensive,” he said.

Of course it was, Cuccia was thinking. “How much?” he asked.

“Four hundred for gun and single clip. Another fifty for extra magazine.”

“Fifty for the clip?”

“Is very fast business. No time to bargain. I take back you don’t want clip.”

Cuccia liked the feel of the Glock in his right hand. He aimed it at the pillows as he turned the gun sideways in his hand.

“Can you take me back to my hotel?” Cuccia asked.

“Sure. No charge, we have deal.”

“You have your car keys?”

The Russian held them up.

“Thanks,” Cuccia said. He turned the gun on the Russian and squeezed off three rounds.

Gold was less than a mile from Caesar’s when a dump truck crossing the boulevard slammed into a jitney and blocked the northbound traffic. He was stuck in the middle lane and couldn’t escape. He leaned on his horn a few times until he realized it was pointless.

Gold flashed his badge at the cars on his left and crept across the lane until a UPS truck blocked his path.

When Francone heard the lock in the hotel door open, he sat up on the bed with the hope that it was Anthony Rizzi. Maybe Rizzi had changed his mind. Maybe he was coming back to give Francone some money after all.

Or maybe it was the federal agents Francone had spotted at the hospital. At that point, he no longer cared which law enforcement agency found him. At least he wouldn’t have to go look for them.

Francone looked puzzled when the Hispanic woman in the maid’s uniform stumbled into the room. He leaned forward when he saw Nicholas Cuccia standing in the doorway holding a handgun. Francone drew back on the bed.

Cuccia pushed the maid inside the room. He checked the hallway before letting the door close behind him. He stood to one side of the door as he spotted Francone moving back on the bed.

“Joey-boy!” Cuccia yelled.

The Hispanic woman backstepped toward the window behind her. Her eyes were focused on the gun in Cuccia’s right hand. Her face was full of terror.

“Na-Nick,” Francone stuttered. “What’s up? How, uh, how’d you get out?”

Cuccia was enjoying watching his protégé stutter. “Same way as you, I guess. Except I had to kill somebody first.”

The maid gasped.

“Easy does it,
signora
. I no kill you.”

“Rizzi took off on us,” Francone said. “I was downstairs with him a while ago. He gave me this bullshit story about getting some money and split.”

Cuccia smiled.

“I swear it,” Francone said. “I was downstairs with him.”

“I guess I’m too late then.”

“Maybe we can still catch him at the airport. At least there’s two of us can look for him now.”

Cuccia looked from Francone to the maid. “Tie her up,” he said. “Fast. Let’s go.”

“Tropicana Avenue off I-Fifteen,” Walsh told the agent driving the car. “There’s a Super Eight there.”

Walsh set down the radio as the car jerked to the left and sped south on Paradise Road. Walsh called a set of backup agents over his radio. “Las Vegas police have a report of shots fired at a Super Eight Hotel on Boulder Highway. Converge at that location.”

“You want to back off the locals?” the agent driving the car asked.

“What’s the point? Let’s just hope this isn’t some estranged husband taking out his old lady and her boyfriend. This guy Cuccia gets out of Las Vegas it’ll be all our asses.”

“Jurisdiction?”

“That’s the least of it. That DEA agent, Thomas. I never should have let him take Cuccia. This is nothing but a Chinese fire drill right now. That kid dies... I don’t even want to think about it.”

“Hold on,” the agent doing the driving said. He whipped the car around a milk truck making a left turn. A taxi attempting the same left turn from the middle lane blocked them from crossing the intersection. The car screeched to a stop inches from the bumper of the taxi.

“Let’s go!” Walsh screamed at the taxi. “Let’s go!”

Charlie didn’t recognize the voice that answered the phone.

“Can I speak to Sam?” he asked.

“Who’s calling?” a woman asked.

“Charlie. Charlie Pellechia.”

“Hold a second.”

Charlie could hear the woman talking with Samantha. She told Charlie, “One second.”

“I thought you might’ve lost this number,” Samantha said.

Charlie was relieved when he heard her voice. “Never,” he said. “How’s your leg?”

“All right.”

“Can you walk?”

“I can get around. I have a home attendant for the day. Part of my coverage, thank God.”

An awkward moment of silence passed. Charlie swallowed hard. “Can I see you?” he asked.

“Only if you want to.”

“I want to.”

“Would this be a quick visit on your way to the airport?” Samantha asked. “If it is, don’t bother.”

“How about I cook you dinner?”

“Eat and run?”

“Why don’t you give me a break here?” Charlie said. Another moment of silence frustrated him. “I’m on my way.”

He took a deep breath as he hung up the receiver. He was anxious all over again about seeing the woman he knew he was in love with. He looked inside the pet store window for dog cages. When he spotted them along a wall, Charlie went inside.

When the maid was tied and gagged, Cuccia had Francone help her into the bathtub face down.

“You have any money?” he asked Francone.

The look on Francone’s face was pure shock. He saw Cuccia holding a pillow in one hand and the gun in his other.

“Na-na-no,” he stuttered. “I’m ba-broke. I have a few dollars. Somebody —”

Francone started to explain why he was broke when Cuccia shot him in the chest twice through the pillow. Francone’s body slammed into the wall behind the bathtub. He was dead before he stopped sliding down the wall. His body listed to one side on top of the maid.

Cuccia fished Francone’s pockets for money. He stashed it inside his own front pants pocket. He pushed Francone onto his side and turned the hot water in the bathtub on. He could hear the maid trying to scream through her gag.

“Quit moanin’,” he told her. “I ain’t had a bath in three days.”

It had taken Gold more than twenty minutes to free himself from the traffic snarl on Las Vegas Boulevard. When he drove into the long driveway in front of Caesar’s Palace, Gold spotted Iandolli pulling in behind him.

“There was a shooting at a Super Eight Hotel,” Gold told him. “The one on Boulder Highway. The Feds are already there. Some Russian taxi driver except there’s no taxi in the lot.”

“Cuccia?” Iandolli asked.

“On his way here?” Gold said.

“Unless he’s already been,” Iandolli said.

Both detectives pushed their way through the revolving doors into the Caesar’s Palace lobby.

Nicholas Cuccia made his way through the casino to the Caesar’s Palace shopping mall. He followed the flow of the crowd heading out of the mall and rode the moving walkway to the street, where he turned left and headed into the Mirage. Cuccia used two twenty-dollar bills to move up to the front of the taxi line at the Mirage. He jumped into the next car and told the driver to take him to the MGM Grand. As the taxi headed south on Las Vegas Boulevard, Cuccia could see the flashing lights of police cars headed in the opposite direction.

He walked through the main casino of the MGM to one of the novelty stores off the front lobby. He bought himself a “Classic Films” MGM T-shirt and a baseball cap, then exited the MGM on Tropicana Boulevard. He crossed the footbridge over the busy road and entered the Tropicana Casino. He found his way to a bathroom to change into the T-shirt and wash up.

When he felt safe enough, Cuccia sat at a bar with several television screens above it. He ordered vodka rocks. His jaw was hurting, and he didn’t have painkillers. He used a straw to sip the booze. It wasn’t as strong as a painkiller, but it was better than nothing.

As both detectives ran through the casino lobby, Iandolli looked for the federal agents he thought might already be there. When he didn’t spot any, he told Gold.

“I think we’re alone,
amigo
.”

Iandolli drew his weapon from an ankle holster as they entered a tower elevator. A young couple gasped at the sight of the gun. Gold flashed his badge to relieve them.

“Go call security,” he told the couple. “Tell them to block this elevator bank off.”

When the elevator doors closed, Iandolli winked at Gold. “Nice try. But I don’t think the Feds will listen to six-dollar-an-hour security guards.”

“Six?” Gold joked. “Remind me to apply on our way out.”

When they reached Anthony Rizzi’s floor, Iandolli tapped Gold on the shoulder. “I got lead,” he said.

Gold pulled Iandolli back to step in front of him. “Bullshit,” he said. “You have a family.”

Charlie managed to find a three-month-old male bichon frise at the pet store. After paying for a leash, a bowl, a bed, a carrying case, a bag of puppy food, grooming tools, a few teething toys, and vitamins, he asked the heavy-set black woman if she had a bow or a ribbon of some kind.

“This puppy a present?” the woman asked. She had a deep throaty voice. It surprised Charlie.

“Huh? Oh, yeah, he is,” he said. “For my wife.” Charlie didn’t know why he said “wife,” but he had.

The woman handed him a folder with the dog’s papers. She asked him to fill in the information. The pedigree was listed on one of the papers in the folder.

“What you gonna call him?” the woman asked just before Charlie filled the dog’s name in.

“Rigoletto,” he said.

“That’s a funny name. Where’d you get it?”

“An opera,” Charlie said. “It’s an opera.”

“Who?”

“It’s an Italian name. From an opera I like.”

“I hope your wife likes the same opera.”

“My wife hates opera.”

“Maybe you want to give her a call and run it by her once.”

Telling the woman that his wife hated opera was a reflex response from being married to Lisa. Charlie thought about correcting himself, but the dog was crying inside the carrying case on the floor.

“She’ll get used to it,” Charlie said.

“The dog or its name?”

From his seat at the bar, Cuccia quickly learned that an all-points-bulletin had been issued for him throughout the state of Nevada. He tugged down on the cap he was wearing and crouched low on his stool.

His swollen facial wounds somewhat disguised the picture on the television. The bar wasn’t crowded yet, but the few people who were seated there glanced up at the television every so often. Cuccia hoped the television was nothing more than a distraction. Since they couldn’t really hear the audio over the sounds of the casino behind them, Cuccia figured the real danger had passed once his face was off the screen.

When he looked up at the television again, he recognized Charlie Pellecchia turning his head away from a microphone. The camera followed Pellecchia a few steps before it turned toward a Las Vegas detective. Cuccia tried to hear what the reporter was saying, but the noise inside the casino was too loud. He asked the bartender to turn up the volume. When the bartender said he really wasn’t supposed to, Cuccia pushed a twenty-dollar bill across the bar and pleaded.

“For two minutes,” he said. “I think that’s my cousin on the news there.”

The bartender turned up the volume as he stuffed the twenty into his tip cup. Cuccia listened attentively as the news aired a previously recorded clip from earlier in the day describing a shooting that had occurred “in the quiet valley neighborhood the day before.”

When the recorded clip finished, the newscaster said, “According to police, Mr. Pellecchia is not a suspect. He was dating Ms. Samantha Cole, a local bartender. Mr. Pellecchia brought Ms. Cole to the hospital. She’s expected to recover fully and was released earlier in the day. The police had no further comment but said...”

Cuccia didn’t bother to wait for the rest of the story. He headed straight for a side exit to Tropicana Boulevard. He made his way across the footbridge to the Excalibur, where he found a bank of pay telephones. He used the phone books to try to find the name he heard on the local news program.

Cole. Samantha Cole.

As they entered the hotel room, Gold and Iandolli both heard the sound of running water. When Iandolli pushed the door open for Gold to enter with his weapon drawn, both men saw the steam coming from the bathroom.

Gold was first inside the bathroom. “Jesus Christ!” he yelled as he pulled Joey Francone’s dead body off the woman lying face down in the hot water.

Iandolli helped Gold pull the maid from the tub. Her face was scalded from the steaming water, but they couldn’t tell if she was alive or dead. Gold removed the gag to administer mouth-to-mouth. He pinched the woman’s burned nose, opened her mouth, and pressed his own against hers. He blew air into her lungs in strong, steady breaths.

The Russian taxi driver they found dead in the hotel had been robbed of all his cash and his taxi. Agent Walsh called the Las Vegas organized crime unit to locate Iandolli. When Walsh finally reached him, the detective filled him in.

“He was just here,” Iandolli said. “At Caesar’s Palace. He came for Rizzi. Another one of his crew that flew up here the other day. He killed Francone. Maybe a housemaid, too.”

“Who the hell is Rizzi?” Walsh asked. “And why didn’t you come to the hotel when we called earlier?”

“Because I was busy. Are you coming here or not? Because I’m not staying. Cuccia is out there somewhere.”

Until today, Agent Walsh had maintained a fairly good relationship with the local police. Detective Iandolli sometimes liked to do things a little off the beaten track, but Walsh always had managed to work with the local organized crime unit.