Charlie Opera

by Charlie Stella

  He had been watching the man he would kill for little more than an hour. A contact inside the casino had provided Freni with Pellecchia’s location from a casino player’s identification card. He noticed that Pellecchia’s head was bandaged behind one ear and that he wasn’t drinking alcohol at the bar. He also noticed the conversation between his mark and the barmaid. The woman wrote something on a napkin before handing it to Pellecchia. It was after the exchange with the barmaid that Pellecchia finally left the bar.

  Freni followed his mark through the casino from a safe distance. He stopped to read a pamphlet advertising a slot machine tournament when Pellecchia turned into the hallway where the elevators were located.

  Freni used a phony room key to get past the security guard standing in front of the elevator bank. He waited less than a minute for an elevator door to open. He touched a floor button and smiled at a black couple riding in the car with him. When the elevator stopped two floors below Pellecchia’s, Freni stepped out of the elevator. He nodded at the black couple as he got off.

  “Good luck,” they told him.

  Charlie was feeling pretty good when he went back up to his room. He had managed to arrange a lunch date with his new friend, Samantha Cole. They were going to a water park where Samantha said she had bought a season pass for the tide pool. Charlie didn’t have a clue what a tide pool was, but he looked forward to learning about it from Samantha the next day.

  He had spent a long time at the bar with her. Although she was busy running back and forth serving customers, Samantha had helped Charlie forget why he was going upstairs to his room alone.

  He managed to forget what his eyes looked like under the sunglasses until he saw his reflection on a marquee inside the elevator. Charlie flipped up his glasses in the reflection and squinted at what he saw.

  “Joe Frazier, Joe Frazier,” he said, imitating Muhammad Ali. “This may shock and amaze ya, but I’m gonna whoop Joe Frazier.”

  Freni walked around the elevator bank to the vending room to wait another minute before heading up to Pellecchia’s floor. He wanted to give his mark enough time to get settled inside his room before knocking on the door.

  Then he would either show Pellecchia the gun or shoot him from the hallway. He would go inside the room and make sure the man was dead. He would hide the body inside the bathroom in the event Pellecchia had called for room service. He would fish through the room for whatever cash his mark may have brought along. Then Freni would leave Las Vegas for a few days and maybe take in the other Nevada tourist attractions.

  When Charlie walked off the elevator, a short, fat man with curly blond hair surprised him. The fat man held one hand up as an identification wallet dropped open.

  “Police,” the fat man said.

  Charlie looked up as he saw another man appear directly behind the short man.

  Freni turned his back to the ceiling camera and screwed the silencer onto the barrel of the 9mm when he was alone in the elevator. He took the elevator up two flights to Pellecchia’s floor and slipped the handgun into his front pants pocket. He kept his right hand on the gun inside his pocket as he stepped off the elevator. When he saw his mark talking with two men, Freni headed straight for the vending room. As he waited there, he overheard some of their conversation.

  “Your wife was mugged.”

  “Where? When?”

  “This afternoon.”

  &ldt happened? Is she —”

  “She’s in the hospital.”

  “Where were you this afternoon, sir?”

  “Huh? What?”

  “This afternoon, sir. Where were you?”

  “Are you fucking serious?”

  “Sir, why don’t we talk inside your room.”

  “You think I mugged her?”

  “Sir, can we talk someplace private?”

  “Fuck, yeah, of course. My room’s down the hall.”

  “If you don’t mind.”

  Freni had heard enough. He waited until the voices were gone. He fished a few quarters from his pocket, bought himself a Diet Coke, and got out of there.

  “What happened to your hand?” the fat detective asked.

  They were inside his room. Charlie and the fat detective stood at the end of the bed. A tall, thin detective helped himself to a look at Charlie’s belongings on the table across the room.

  “It’s worse than that,” Charlie said. He removed his sunglasses. He turned around to show both detectives the bandage behind his right ear.

  “Why didn’t you report it?”

  “I wasn’t robbed. I didn’t see the point. Some guys mugged me.” He turned and saw the tall detective looking through his opera CDs on the table. “Excuse me. Can I help you?”

  “You have any idea why?”

  Charlie was still watching the tall detective. “Huh?”

  “You have any idea why you were mugged?”

  The tall detective stopped looking at the stuff on the table. “And not robbed?” he added.

  Charlie shook his head. “No clue.”

  “Do you know who your wife is with?” the tall detective asked.

  “She left me. You already know who she’s with.”

  “She left you here?”

  Charlie was getting annoyed. They were going through a routine. He wasn’t in the mood. He had his own questions about his wife they hadn’t really answered yet. “I’m here,” he said. “She’s gone. Yes, she left me here.”

  The fat detective became abrupt with his questions. “When was the last time you saw her?”

  “One more time. Last night.”

  “What time?”

  “About seven-thirty, eight o’clock.”

  “Did she leave you then or later?”

  Charlie’s eyebrows furrowed. “I don’t know,” he said, his voice angry. “Later, I guess. I went down to the bar.”

  “Did you argue?”

  “We had a fight. I was drunk. I didn’t hit my —”

  The fat detective interrupted him. “Were you anywhere in the casino you could verify from the time you argued until the time you were mugged?”

  Charlie took a deep breath. “Yes,” he said. “Same place as tonight, in case you were watching. One of the bars downstairs. I played a poker machine there. I hit it. I’m sure I’m on the cameras they use.”

  “Your wife was mugged at a motel on the edge of the strip. She was there with a Mr. Denton. Mr. Denton said one of the men held a gun on him.”

  Charlie knew they had mentioned John Denton to get a reaction. He was too concerned about Lisa to give a shit.

  “Is she all right?” he asked.

  “They knocked out some of her teeth,” the fat detective said. “Worse than what you got.”

  “The fuck could somebody hit a woman like that?” Charlie asked.

  “That’s what we’d like to know,” the tall detective said. “Got any ideas?”

  Charlie had had enough already. “No,” he said. “Or I wouldn’t be standing here wasting my time with you two clowns.”

  The detectives almost brought him in for calling them clowns. Charlie was eventually able to talk himself out of the situation. It wasn’t that he didn’t respect the police investigating Lisa’s mugging, but they had asked him questions in an attempt to trap him. They seemed to have made up their minds about his role in his wife’s mugging.

  After he finished giving them a story without the details of what had happened in New York, Charlie called the hospital where his wife was admitted. He was told she was in surgery and wouldn’t be able to speak without pain for a few days.

  He felt a conflicting rage when he hung up with the hospital. He was furious at the thought of someone assaulting his wife. He was furious at himself for giving a shit. She had dumped him the day before. She had left him for a lover she was cheating with, a lover she had cheated with in the past. Why the fuck should he care what happened to her anymore?

  He sat at the window in his hotel room and looked toward the c
onstruction site where he himself was mugged. He wondered what had actually happened to Lisa and whether her lover had tried to defend her. He wondered if both muggings had anything to do with what happened in the nightclub back in New York the week before.

  Charlie wondered about a lot of things before he could finally fall asleep.

  Chapter 9

  Jerry Lercasi sat up in bed to smoke. He checked his watch for the time as he took a long drag on a fresh Marlboro. He scratched at the hairs on his muscular chest with his free hand.

  He had just finished having sex with his girlfriend, a twenty-nine-year-old woman he’d been having an affair with the past two years. They had spent the night together in a private apartment above his twenty-four-hour gymnasium, Vive la Body. His girlfriend, Brenda, was a manager at the gym. When the big fights came to Las Vegas, she was one of the ring girls at the MGM Grand. It wasn’t the really big time he had promised her two years earlier, but it was better than washing hair in the beauty parlor where he had first met her.

  Now his girlfriend was coming out of the bathroom naked. She was a tall woman with a sleek body and long black hair. She had perfect breast implants and a naturally curvy figure.

  Lercasi was smiling at her body as she walked across the huge bedroom. He focused on the stripe of neatly trimmed pubic hair. He frowned at the sight of the tissue he could see through her pubic hair.

  “You gotta put that thing in there like that?”

  “Unless I want it to leak,” Brenda said, then mocked him. “Yes, I have to put that thing in there like that.”

  “What is it, like a plug?”

  Brenda stood at the end of the bed. “Exactly. That’s what it does. It stops it from running out.”

  Lercasi made a face. “You gotta describe it like that? It’s disgusting.”

  Brenda rolled her eyes. “Then use a condom, Jerry.”

  Lercasi pointed at her crotch. “Cover yourself,” he said.

  Brenda grabbed the pair of navy leggings she wore to work at the gym. She sat on the edge of the bed and pulled the leggings on. When she arched her back to pull them up over her hips, Lercasi “You have such a beautiful fuckin’ body.”

  “Except I disgust you.”

  He waited for her to roll off the bed. When she reached for a white athletic bra, he shook his head. “Not that,” he said. “There’s no plugs there.”

  Brenda half smiled. “Why don’t you use a condom? If it bothers you so much.”

  “I hate them things.”

  “I hate it when your goo starts running out while I’m working downstairs.”

  Lercasi made another face. “You gotta talk like that?” he said.

  Brenda put her hands on her hips. “You’re the one with the problem.”

  Lercasi thought about it. It was true, he did have a problem with his women appearing anything but perfect. Except he didn’t think it was too much to ask. He put them up, paid all their expenses, gave them phony jobs for play money, and provided them with the best connections in Las Vegas.

  Right now, though, he knew he wasn’t going to win this argument with Brenda this morning. He was fifty-six years old. The young women he kept around him had minds of their own, no matter how much he provided for them.

  “I don’t know,” he said. “My first wife used to do that. It bothers me.”

  Brenda frowned as she put the athletic bra on. “I have to get downstairs. You want me to send that pervert up?”

  “My accountant?” he asked. He knew the girls working in his gym hated Allen Fein. He liked to push their buttons about it.

  “Why do you call him that, a pervert?” he asked.

  “Because he is. He likes little girls. Everybody knows it. He doesn’t even try to keep it secret. We also know he brings in private massage girls. That chink, for one. And we all know what he does with them in the massage rooms.”

  “What chink?”

  “Chink or Vietnamese or Korean or whatever she is. She’s giving him head in the massage rooms. My girls gag at the sight of him downstairs. He makes our skin crawl.”

  Lercasi feigned concern. “He ever make a move on you?”

  “I don’t wear a training bra. I’m not his type.”

  Lercasi tried to picture Allen Fein humping his girlfriend. The image was worse than the tissue plug she had used. “Send him up,” he said.

  “And if Nancy calls again?”

  Nancy was Lercasi’s second wife, a woman he saw as little as possible. “Tell her I’m busy.”

  “Sure,” Brenda said as she stood up. “What do you care? I have to hear it.”

  Lercasi leaned over to crush out his cigarette in an ashtray on the night table. “Hey, Brenda,” he said. “Don’t break my balls this morning, all right?”

  Brenda stopped at the door to turn around and give Lercasi the finger. He broke out laughing.

  Twenty minutes later, Allen Fein sat on the couch in the private apartment above the gym while Lercasi combed his hair in front of the floor-to-ceiling mirror behind the bar. The accountant was fidgety on the couch. He examined a pair of crystal dice on a glass coffee table. He seemed nervous waiting for Lercasi’s attention.

  “How was Laughlin?” Lercasi asked.

  “Huh?” Fein said. He dropped one of the crystal dice into his lap. “Oh, all right. I’m thinking of buying a condo there.”

  Lercasi stopped to look at his accountant in the mirror. “You pay those kids you fucked last night?”

  &dquo;Of course.”

  Lercasi finished combing his hair. He turned to Fein as he struck a match to light a cigarette.

  “I need a party tonight,” he said, with the unlit cigarette dangling from his mouth. He lit the cigarette, took a long drag, and held the smoke inside his lungs a few seconds before letting it escape. “See what the mayor’s doing,” he added. “Or somebody on the City Council. Make it my party. Something public, where it’ll be picked up on the news.”

  “Are you bringing your wife?” Fein asked. He set the two crystal dice back on the coffee table.

  Lercasi opened his hands. “Am I bringing my wife? What kind of question is that? No, make it public, and I’ll bring Brenda. Of course I’m bringing my wife.”

  “Should I know what it’s about?”

  “Somebody skimmed thirty-two six last month from one of Gilly’s books. The somebody had a private line installed in one of his places a few months back for dime players. The tap come in last week. Thirty-two six in one month. Who knows how much the first five months before somebody figured it out.”

  The accountant swallowed hard. “I see.”

  “That’s already taken care of,” Lercasi said. He sat in a black leather recliner across from Fein. “Is it true you’re getting head in my massage rooms downstairs?”

  “No,” Fein said defensively. “I don’t need to get my head in the massage rooms.”

  “Brenda says you got some private noodle comes in to do you.”

  “Not true. Besides, Brenda hates my guts.”

  “Because I don’t need that kind of shit blowing up in my face over here. Some broad using my place to give head. You should know better than that.”

  “You know what I like, Jerry. I don’t need to get my joint copped in a gymnasium. I like to look, if anything. The worst she does is remove her top. And I don’t know how Brenda would know unless she installed a camera.”

  Lercasi smirked. He liked humiliating his accountant. “Just so long as you know what you’re doing,” he said. “After all, you’re my business manager, no?”

  “Maybe you should tell Brenda about that,” Fein said, acting offended then.

  Lercasi thought about the tuft of tissue between his girlfriend’s legs. “Brenda’s got other things to worry about,” he said. “Go make a party.”

  When Fein left Vive la Body, he ignored the contemptuous stare of Lercasi’s girlfriend at the front desk. He was feeling lucky about having a built-in excuse for being in Laughlin the night before
. He had avoided a potentially dangerous question-and-answer period with his boss. Had he not made arrangements to screw a couple of teenagers in the whorehouse in Laughlin, his boss might have looked into Fein’s sudden trip to the mountains.

  Now his boss had other business for Fein to take care of. One of the bookmakers operating under Lercasi’s gambling business had skimmed money. Fein didn’t know whether the cash amount his boss mentioned was real, nor did he care to know. The bottom line was he was expected to arrange an alibi dinner for his boss tonight.

  Which meant the bookmaker who had skimmed the money was going to die. Probably at the same time the party was going on.

  Fein knew some of the names of bookmakers and pornographers in Las Vegas, but he didn’t study them. He figured he’d know within the next couple of days which one had robbed money from his boss. It would be all over the local news.

  Chapter 10

  Nicholas Cuccia opened the package that was delivered to his room and held the tooth that was inside up to the light for examination. It was bloodstained above where the root of the tooth was broken. He winced at the thought of the pain a woman might feel from a broken tooth. He touched his jaw with his free hand. There was no way losing her tooth was as painful as his broken jaw.

  He had spent most of his morning annoyed. The six-hour flight from Kennedy with the DEA agent the night before was bad enough. When Cuccia first checked into his hotel, he noticed the woman doing his check-in staring at his mouth. Then when he looked at himself in the wall mirror behind the registration desk, he noticed he was drooling.

  After watching the local Las Vegas news and glancing through the newspapers, Cuccia knew that Charlie Pellecchia was still alive. If the professional his uncle had contracted to kill Pellecchia did his job, the hit man was keeping it a big secret.

  All he had so far was the souvenir from Lisa Pellecchia’s mouth. Cuccia set the tooth on a night table and attempted to smile. He felt a sharp pain in his jaw. He slapped the tiny trophy off the night table and cursed under his breath.