Charlie Opera (29 page)

Cuccia wondered if he could position himself between the two cops somehow and maybe make a move that would cause one of them to shoot the other. He grinned at the image.

“What’s so funny?” the short cop asked.

Cuccia shook his head. He noticed that the big cop was almost in line with a potential crossfire. The sound of the screeching tires grew louder.

“You got me,” he said.

“Yes, we do,” the short cop said.

The big cop stopped short of a crossfire line. Cuccia frowned. He turned toward the motorcycle and saw it was stopped about a block away. The rider was holding a cell phone. The sound of the car making time caught Cuccia’s attention. If both cops blinked, he might be able to get to the gun against his back.

“I surrender,” he told the short cop. “Let’s make a deal.”

“Fuck,” Charlie said when he saw the gun pointed at him.

He had answered the doorbell without looking through the peephole. He had assumed the police cruiser parked out front would deter trouble.

“Back inside or I shoot you right now, white boy,” the Asian man holding the gun said.

Charlie’s jaw tightened as he stepped back inside the apartment.

The Asian man closed the door behind him and set the bag of food on the floor.

“Hungry?” he asked.

Samantha could see both guns on the end table from where she sat on the couch, but they were too far to reach. When the Asian man hit Charlie across the face with his gun, Samantha jumped on the couch and moved a few inches closer to Beau’s gun.

“Please don’t!” she pleaded.

The Asian man pointed the gun at her. “Shut up, lady, or I kill you, too.”

Samantha gasped. The gun was pointed at her chest. She was helpless on the couch. She looked to Charlie and felt her heart race. He had something in his hand.

Samantha gasped again, but the Asian man wasn’t watching her anymore.

“See?” Cuccia told Gold. “Everybody’s happy now.”

Iandolli was about to frisk the killer when he heard a loud crash.

“The fuck was that?” Gold said.

Both detectives turned toward the apartment.

When the Asian hit him across the face with the gun, Charlie saw the gun was muffled with a silencer. He figured he had one shot at saving Samantha, and that was to break the front window to alert the cop sitting in the cruiser outside.

He could feel blood flowing over his left eye. He heard Samantha plead before the Asian threatened her.

Charlie grabbed a crystal ashtray on a shelf above the television and threw it as hard as he could at the front bay window. The Asian flinched as the glass shattered. Charlie saw the Asian come out of his crouch, aiming the gun. Charlie leaned to one side and could feel the television explode next to him. He started to turn into the Asian when he heard Samantha scream.

Gold and Iandolli ducked when they heard the shot fired inside the house. Cuccia reached behind him and grabbed the Glock. Iandolli had turned toward the apartment. Gold crouched low and turned his weapon on Cuccia.

“Freeze!” he yelled.

Cuccia dropped to one knee and tried to draw on the detective. He was fumbling for the trigger when he saw the flash from Gold’s gun. Cuccia felt a jolt against his right shoulder as his arm flung back from the force of the bullet. He lost his grip on the Glock, and it bounced off the grass a few yards away. Cuccia looked up at Gold with a blank stare before seeing a second flash at the end of the gun barrel. There were two more flashes Cuccia never saw.

Minh saw the ashtray coming and ducked. It shattered the front window of the apartment. Pellecchia was off-balance from the throw. Minh shot at his torso but missed. The television screen exploded instead.

As he took a step closer, Minh flinched from the sound of his cell phone ringing. Then he was flying backward into a wall from a pain in his chest that had caught him off-guard.

His face revealed shock as another piercing pain sent him bouncing off the wall a second time. Minh hit the floor and rolled onto his side. He pointed his gun straight up and unsteadily squeezed off two shots before a third bullet struck him in the chest. He dropped the gun as a fourth shot missed his head by inches.

“Open your eyes,” Charlie said.

Samantha was rigid on the couch. Her arms were extended as she continued to aim Beau’s gun at the Asian man on the floor.

“Sam?” Charlie said. “It’s okay now.”

She opened her eyes and immediately started to shake. Charlie stepped toward her as he guided the gun down before taking it from her.

“It’s okay,” he said. “It’s over.”

He took her hands and pulled her from the couch. Samantha was sobbing quietly as she collapsed into Charlie’s arms.

“I feel like a wife-beater,” Denton whispered.

Lisa leaned against his shoulder as the jet taxied slowly on the runway. She held a paper napkin up to cover her facial bruises as a stewardess passed in the aisle.

“I feel like a bandit,” she said.

“You look like one.”

The federal agents had let them go a few hours after news of Nicholas Cuccia’s death was public. They planned to spend a week relaxing in California. Then Lisa would have to call Charlie and start the process of getting a divorce. Denton was anxious to start their lives together. When the jet left the ground, he turned to kiss Lisa on the forehead.

“Finally,” he said.

“Don’t jinx it.”

Denton took her right hand and set it on his lap. “Jinx this,” he said.

Lisa turned to him with a surprised smile on her face. “Why, counselor,” she said.

“Shut up and give me a kiss.”

“Shut up and give you a kiss?”

He winked at her. “I’ve been hanging around gangsters the past few days.”

“Me, too,” she said. She kissed Denton from one side of her mouth.

“That was weird,” he said.

“Tell me about it,” she said.

They held each other’s hand as the jet climbed. They closed their eyes from exhaustion. They were both asleep when the jet finally leveled.

The first person Agent Marshall Thomas saw when he awoke from his coma was his wife. Her image was blurred. He heard her say that she loved him. He heard her crying.

He was out of the coma just under forty minutes. He tried but couldn’t move his arms. He wanted to sit up. He wanted to see without the blurring.

Thomas wasn’t sure what had happened to him. He couldn’t remember.

He watched as a nurse adjusted one of the intravenous tubes hanging from a stand. He felt sleepy again as the blur of a white uniform passed in front of him. He looked for his wife again. He saw that she was holding his hand. He closed his eyes as the touch of her hand registered somewhere in his brain.

When Beau Curitan’s body was found, it was by a pair of coyotes on the Arizona side of the Black Mountains. The coyotes had sniffed the flesh through the hastily made grave covered with dried sticks and branches. The blood from Beau’s fresh bullet wounds filled the air with his smell for the predators.

Beau had been shot twice in the back of the head. The coyotes licked at the blood from the bullet wounds first, but Beau’s skull impeded their feast. They pulled at his arms and legs until his body turned to one side. The coyotes found the softer flesh of Beau’s stomach and ate through it until they tasted his intestines. Then the coyotes growled at one another over pecking order.

Two days later, when the police were finished with their investigation and they were finally alone, Charlie dressed Samantha’s leg wound with fresh gauze. They were in the living room. The new window had already been installed, but they were still missing a television.

They were listening to the intermezzo of Mascagni’s
Cavalleria Rusticana
. Samantha sat with the dog asleep in her lap. Charlie finished with the bandages and stood in the sliding glass doorway to the patio. He used the remote to adjust the volume on Samantha’s stereo.

“The dog likes it,” Samantha said.

“It’s therapeutic,” Charlie said. “It’s used to show the passage of time during the opera.”

“How do they wake the audience up?” Samantha asked.

“Gently,” Charlie said. “The ushers come and shake them gently.”

Samantha laughed.

Charlie moved to a chair in front of Samantha. He set her wounded leg across one of his knees.

“This is looking better,” he said.

“It’s going to be hot again tomorrow. One-twenty.”

“We’ll stay inside.”

Samantha petted the dog. “Carol is in California. I hope she’s okay.”

“I’m sure she is. Iandolli, one of the detectives, claims Beau won’t be a problem anymore.”

“Huh?” Samantha said.

“It’s nothing to bank on,” Charlie said. “But I’m sure Carol is safe now anyway. The guy can’t show his face anywhere after what he did.”

Samantha peeled some of the gauze back to air her wound. “Do you really think it’s over now?” she asked. “For you, I mean. For both of us?”

“Not according to Iandolli,” Charlie said. “You decapitated that particular gang, my dear. They’re officially headless. The one I nailed had outstanding warrants besides the new charges.”

Samantha frowned. “I wish I could believe it’s that easy.”

Charlie kissed her. “Maybe this time it is.”

They sat quietly for a while. When the music stopped, Charlie stood up to stretch. Samantha used the empty chair to rest her leg again.

“We’re missing something,” Charlie said.

“What’s that?”

“A nice, light aria.”

Samantha made a face.

“Trust me,” he said, “it’s better than Aerosmith.”

Charlie was at the stereo searching for a CD from the collection he had brought to Las Vegas. He held one up.
“‘Una furtiva làgrima,’”
he said. “Down her soft cheek, a furtive tear.”

He set the disc in the CD player and pressed PLAY. He adjusted the volume as the first few strings of a harp were plucked. He sat on the couch alongside Samantha and kissed her cheek.

“What happens now?” she whispered in his ear.

Charlie pointed to the dog. “We need a bigger place,” he said.

“He can sleep with me,” Samantha said.

“What about me?”

“We’ll see.”

“You still holding a grudge?”

“I should.”

“I was —”

“Shhh,” she said. “I think I love you.”

Charlie could feel the dog moving on her lap. “You talking to me or the dog?”

Samantha reached for him. Charlie picked the dog up from her lap and set it on the couch. “There,” he said. “My turn.”

Donna Bella
was anchored in the shade of the Marine Park Bridge. Anthony Cuccia argued into a cell phone with an associate about a truck seized in a Jersey City warehouse.

“Hey, that’s my nephew’s guy, break his balls,” Cuccia said. “It’s almost a week now I haven’t heard from that one.”

He downed half a glass of white wine as he dropped into a chair. He watched a woman racing on Jet Skis make a third pass by the boat. The woman removed her bikini top this time. She held it in one hand as she passed alongside
Donna Bella
.

“I don’t care there was DEA there,” Cuccia said into the cell phone. “That’s got nothing to do with me, my friend. I’m on this boat all week. Now you tell me this, I’m not getting off.”

The jet skier had turned around and was on her way back. She slowed alongside
Donna Bella,
and Cuccia stood up to get a better look at her breasts.

“Can I use bathroom?” she asked with a Russian accent.

Cuccia heard the accent and immediately hesitated. He noticed that a wallet belt was tied to a steering handle and that the woman was wearing sandals. He glanced at her bare breasts and shook his head.

“Can I use?” the woman asked. “Please.”

“I’ll call you back,” Cuccia said into the cell phone. He turned it off and waved at the woman to come aboard.

The woman smiled as her top fell from her neck. She grabbed it off her leg and held it up for Cuccia.

“Nice,” he said and dropped a rope ladder over the back of the boat.

The woman brought her Jet Ski up against the back of
Donna Bella
as Cuccia leaned over the transom. She revved the Jet Ski engine hard as it touched the back of the boat, and Cuccia lost his balance. He grabbed at the transom to keep from falling.

“What the hell...” he said just before a bullet tore through his neck.

He fell backward onto the floor of the boat and clutched his throat. As he rolled on the deck, he saw the woman level the gun against the top of the transom. He tried to roll away as the next bullet entered his stomach. He coughed up blood before the next bullet pierced his heart.