Charlie Opera

by Charlie Stella

  He spent the rest of his morning observing the action around the pool with binoculars. When he was bored watching women take the sun, Cuccia used his cellular telephone to call his uncle back in Brooklyn.

  “You call that guy?” he asked.

  “Of course, sure,” the old man said.

  “Because there’s nothing so far.”

  “Oh, one fuckin’ day it’s been.”

  “I’m just sayin’. Checkin’, you know.”

  “Yeah, well, why don’t you stay off the phone. Go get some trim or somethin’. Call one a them joints out there. It’s legal in Nevada.”

  “Right,” Cuccia said. “Maybe I will.”

  Which was exactly what he did. He called Pleasure Times escort service and spoke to a man with an effeminate voice. He told the man he wanted two women, one black, one white, for a possible threesome. He expected the women to do a lesbian routine with a double-headed dildo. He expected them to follow his directions.

  Then he asked if Pleasure Times knew of anyone he might score some cocaine from. The man with the effeminate voice explained that Pleasure Times was a legitimate escort service, which could not procure drugs of any kind for its clients.

  The disclaimer annoyed Cuccia. He told the dispatcher to “just mention the cocaine to one of the girls.” Then he hung up and called the dispatcher a stupid fucking faggot cocksucker.

  Later, he played the radio loud as he took a long, hot shower. He wondered how closely the DEA agent would watch him while he was in Las Vegas. He wondered if he would be able to set up his uncle with heroin charges before the mob indictments back in Brooklyn could affect the deal he had made with the government. He wondered if what the DEA had promised him was even possible anymore.

  When he finished his shower, Cuccia thought he heard his telephone ringing. He stepped out of the shower and turned off the radio. He saw the message light blinking on the telephone and stepped out of the bathroom. Cuccia wiped his head with a towel as he listened to the messages.

  On the first message, Joey Francone reported that Vincent Lano had disappeared the night before. Cuccia scowled as he waited for the second message.

  It was Francone again, his voice somewhat more urgent this time. Lano had taken some money with him.

  “Shit,” Cuccia said. “What the fuck else can go wrong?o;

  He listened to the third message and learned what else could go wrong.

  “I recognized him,” Lisa said without moving much of her mouth. She was struggling to talk. The stitches inside her mouth were still too fresh to stretch. “He was one of the men in the nightclub.”

  John Denton frowned. “What do you want to do?”

  “Nothing. If it is the mob, I’m not getting any more involved than I already am.”

  “They mugged Charlie, too.”

  “Shit. Is he all right?”

  “Apparently. The police thought it might have been him who attacked you. That he sent somebody because of how you left him.”

  Lisa was shaking her head. “This is all my fault. Everything.”

  Denton took one of her hands. “You couldn’t know what was going to happen. And they attacked you, too. Charlie can take care of himself.”

  Lisa was feeling her guilt. What else could happen to them? What else could happen to Charlie? It was all because she hadn’t been able to tell him that she wanted out of their marriage.

  “The doctors think you should stay here another couple of days,” Denton said. “You may need more surgery.”

  Lisa couldn’t think about herself then. She squeezed Denton’s hand and closed her eyes tight.

  The girls from Pleasure Times were named Kim and Daria, although Cuccia had no clue as to which one was Kim or which one was Daria. The white girl was a tall, tan natural blonde with a small chest and green eyes. The black girl was short and muscular. Her breasts were too big and round to be real. She had big lips, though. Cuccia loved a woman with big lips.

  He had guaranteed their payment on his credit card over the telephone. He advanced them another two hundred dollars each before they changed in the bathroom. When they finally emerged from the bathroom, the white one was wearing a lace lingerie outfit with black garter belts and black high heels. The black girl was dressed in a leopard thong bikini and beige boots. Cuccia liked the look. He took a seat in a chair he positioned in front of the king-sized bed to watch the show.

  He guessed the girls had worked together before. They moved through the lesbian routine without him once having to give them directions. There wasn’t a word of discussion between them as they changed positions over and over. Except for his special request for the double-headed dildo routine, Cuccia thought the girls had read his mind.

  The special request cost him an extra fifty dollars for each girl, but he was happy to pay it. He was as excited as the cocaine and booze permitted. When the girls finished their routine together, he had them kneel on all fours side by side on the edge of his bed. He went from one to the other, entering them from behind, until he could no longer restrain himself inside of Kim.

  Or was it Daria?

  The black girl left Cuccia a telephone number for her own personal cocaine connection in Las Vegas. He wrote it down on hotel stationery and slipped her an extra fifty.

  When the girls from Pleasure Times were gone, Cuccia poured himself a tall glass of vodka and tonic. He sat back in the same chair he had watched the girls perform from earlier. He used the remote to turn the television set on. He switched channels until he found a local news station.

  Earlier, the man hired to kill Charlie Pellecchia had left a message. He wanted to meet. There were complications, he had said. Something had gone wrong, something about a very close call with the police.

  Cuccia had no idea what the close call with the police was about, except that it meant two things:news lie Pellecchia was still alive, and it would cost more money to have him killed.

  Cuccia was angry that he would have to renegotiate the price of a hit gone wrong. Because he wanted Pellecchia dead, he would be dealing from a very weak hand.

  He waved his own thoughts off as he reached for his drink. He didn’t care what it would cost. Charlie Pellecchia had to die.

  Chapter 11

  The first thing Charlie remembered when he woke up was what the guy who hit him with the pipe had said.

  “Remember Decades?”

  Charlie wondered if he had relived the incident in his sleep. He felt as if he had. He could see the man with the pipe. He could hear his voice.

  The vague familiarity of that voice had bothered him since he was first questioned at the hospital. The man Charlie punched at the New York nightclub had been surrounded with friends. Two of them had tried to get at Charlie but were stopped by bouncers. A few dozen threats had followed. Then there was the one guy who had managed to get up close.

  A young, cocky guy, he remembered.

  The man with the pipe, he wondered?

  “You got no idea who the fuck you just hit,” the cocky guy had said back in the nightclub.

  It was a voice full of arrogance and contempt. It was the same voice he had heard two nights ago.

  “Remember Decades?”

  Charlie licked at his swollen lip. The man with the pipe was the same man from the nightclub back in New York. He had been followed out to Las Vegas.

  He thought about Lisa and what had happened to her. He wondered if she told the Las Vegas police what had happened back in New York. He was about to call her when he remembered she was with her lover. He looked at the telephone. The message light was off.

  “Fuck it,” Charlie said.

  He wondered whether his troubles were over. If it was the mob that had followed him to Las Vegas, was the beating they gave him the night before the end of it, or would there be more?

  Might they go all the way and try to kill him?

  Charlie decided it was over or he would be dead already.

  He checked his eyes in the mirror to see
if his bruises were starting to fade. There were two dark streaks of purple under each of his eyes. He put his sunglasses back on.

  In a few hours he had a date with a woman he was anxious to spend some time with. He wasn’t sure why, but Samantha Cole had intrigued him. He wasn’t sure if it was because she seemed to try to listen to him while she worked a busy bar, or if it was because he was feeling rejected and lonely and Samantha had seemed interested.

  Or maybe it was something more simple, like her smile. He definitely liked her smile.

  He wondered if Wet ’n’ Wild was the right place to spend some time with Samantha. His facial bruises were an ugly sight. He was also nervous about wearing a bathing suit. He was still ill at ease about the extra weight he had spotted in the mirror two days ago.

  He put shorts on over the baggy bathing trunks his wife had packed for him. He picked a navy tank top to stay cool. He brought a loose-fitting shirt to cover the tank top.

  The telephone rang, and Charlie sat on the bed to answer it.

  “Hello?” he said. No one answered.

  “Hello?” he repeated.

  Whoever called wasn’t talking.

  “Right,” he finally said, and hung up.

  “Wear the one-piece!” Carol Curitan yelled to Samantha.

  Carol was in the kitchen of Samantha’s apartment. She was aforty-five-year-old, beautiful, full-figured woman with thick blond hair and green eyes.

  Samantha was checking herself out in the mirror behind her bedroom door. She turned sideways for a better view of her waist. She looked at herself up and down in the mirror.

  “I feel better in this!” she yelled. She gave herself one more look in the mirror and opened the bedroom door.

  Carol was in the hallway. She shook her head at Samantha when she saw her in the flower print bikini. “It’s a first date, baby,” she said.

  Certain words or phrases highlighted Carol’s Alabama accent. Baby was one such word. Darlin’ was another.

  “All he’s seen you in so far is your work uniform,” Carol continued. “Give him a dose, darlin’. Either the white one-piece or the coral bikini.”

  Samantha stopped to look at herself in the small hallway mirror near the kitchen. She liked the flower print of the bikini she was wearing. It was red and pink and aquamarine. She stood up on her toes to try to see her bottom, but the mirror was too high on the wall.

  “This covers more of my rump,” she said, slapping herself on one hip. “I don’t want to show him everything day one.”

  “That’s the point, baby,” Carol said. “Even I know that, and I haven’t tried to encourage anybody in fifteen years. You want them to want you.”

  Samantha was nervous about how she presented herself on a first date, although she kept reminding herself that it wasn’t really a date. Charlie’s wife had just dumped him, according to him. He would only be in Las Vegas a few more days. It’s not like they would be seeing each other every Saturday night.

  Which was why she wasn’t so sure Wet ’n’ Wild was the best meeting place for the lunch she had packed. She didn’t want to send the wrong signals. She didn’t want to show too much skin to a guy she might never see again.

  She tugged down on her bikini bottom. “Nope,” she said. “Not this fast. This’ll have to do.”

  “Well, you’re just scrumptious in that one, too, so there,” Carol said. “My lord, how I wish I had your little body to dress up for myself.”

  Samantha chuckled. Carol combed her hair back to tie with a scrunchi. She had recently moved in with Samantha after fleeing from her husband across the country. They had known each other just over six months when Samantha started to regard Carol as family.

  “Maybe I should take him back here and we can all go skinny-dipping,” Samantha joked in her best mock-southern accent.

  Carol cocked a hip. “Darlin’, it’s been so long for me, right now I’d pay just to watch you and your date skinny-dip.”

  Chapter 12

  Cuccia went down to the pool to catch some sun. He was to meet later in the afternoon with the man who was supposed to kill Charlie Pellecchia. It wasn’t a conversation Cuccia was looking forward to but there was no avoiding it. Not if he wanted Pellecchia dead.

  He applied suntan oil to his long, hairy legs. He scanned the pool for a blonde he had spotted through his binoculars earlier. She was a short, muscular woman with an orange one-piece thong. The skimpy bathing suit she was wearing displayed a perfect ass, Cuccia thought. She had golden-tanned skin with long, straight hair and big breasts he was sure were fake. She also wore a waterproof Rolex and earrings with emeralds as big as marbles, he remembered.

  Cuccia also looked for the DEA agent as he scanned the pool area. He was sure the agent would ig a up to break his balls whenever it was most inconvenient. He was trying to stall the government’s move against his uncle. In the event his deal with the government turned sour, Cuccia wanted to be sure that the man who broke his jaw was already dead.

  Charlie Pellecchia had become an obsession for Cuccia. Nothing else mattered.

  He used a cellular telephone to call the room at Harrah’s. When Pellecchia answered the phone, Cuccia remained silent.

  When he finally spotted the blonde he was looking for, Cuccia became unnerved about his recent injury. He was too self-conscious to talk to her through a wired jaw. He quickly turned his head when she looked his way.

  Agent Thomas found the organized crime detective eating pizza at his desk. Thomas was there to try to find out why Nicholas Cuccia and two of his crew were in Las Vegas.

  “You show me yours and I’ll show you mine,” Detective Albert Iandolli said as he folded a slice of pizza. He was a big man, 6-foot-4 at least, 230 pounds.

  “It’s not about Vegas,” Thomas told the detective.

  Iandolli stopped short of taking a bite of the pizza. “What’s it about?”

  “Two connected guys from New York staying at the Bellagio. Their boss came in last night, early this morning. I’m here about him.”

  Iandolli leaned forward to take a bite from the end of the pizza slice. He chewed while he held the pizza over a napkin on his desk. Oil from the end of the slice dripped into a reddish-gold stain on the napkin.

  “And?” the detective asked after he swallowed.

  “I was wondering if the two guys from New York are up to anything here in Vegas. If maybe they found themselves some trouble. Maybe you heard something here on your end.”

  “The other two guys? You just said you were here about their boss.”

  Here we go, Thomas thought. “Detective, I’m not here to break your balls. Please don’t break mine.”

  Iandolli set the slice of pizza on the napkin. “You’re being vague,” he said. “How am I supposed to help you with the information you just gave me? Two connected guys from New York came out here. Two dozen connected guys from New York pro’bly came out here the last two nights. I can appreciate your need to keep things to yourself, being a federal agent and all, but the bottom line is, there’s nothing much I can do for you, you keep talking in circles.”

  “What do you need from me?”

  “Names, for starters. Then I need to know what I’m supposed to be looking for in the way of what the other two might be up to. What specific trouble they might be in. For instance, there’s been a rash of johns getting rolled by hookers the last few weeks in Las Vegas. Guys take a broad up to their room, get drugged, wake up later, and find they’re broke without gambling. That’s one kind of trouble they might find for themselves. Then again, you’d need to speak with somebody from vice about that. You see what I’m saying? It’s all very vague the way you described it.”

  Thomas gave the organized crime detective two names: Francone and Lano. He didn’t mention Nicholas Cuccia. “I need to know if they met with Jerry Lercasi,” he said.

  “Now you’re talking,” Iandolli said. “He’s my turf, Lercasi, but I can tell you right off something might save you a lot of time. Nobod
y meets with Jerry Lercasi. Nobody.”

  “And why is that?”

  “It’s his way. Lercasi doesn’t meet with outsiders. Not here in Vegas. That’s his protocol. Lercasi closd down the wiseguy tour business long before Hollywood made that Casino movie. Wiseguys come here from other cities, they’re on their own. They may meet with intermediaries, but they never get to meet with Lercasi. Including his cousin, another wiseguy, lives in New York. Even that guy doesn’t get an audience. Jerry Lercasi holes himself up most of the time. Doesn’t peek outside of his gym unless he wants to pick up something to eat.”

  Thomas was doing his best not to explode. “What about the intermediaries? Could these two, Francone and Lano, have met with somebody around Lercasi?”

  “Sure. I’ll ask around.” Iandolli was about to pick up the slice of pizza again when he looked up at Thomas with a smile. “Anything else?”

  Thomas sarcastically smiled back at the detective. “You’re right. I am wasting my time.”

  The semiretired hit man showed up wearing a pair of khaki shorts and a flower print shirt. Just like most of the tourists walking the Strip, Cuccia thought. He was a stocky but solid man. He had a thick neck and big shoulders. He seemed to have black hair with gray streaks. A Boston Red Sox baseball cap covered most of his head.

  After they introduced themselves to each other, Cuccia walked Renato Freni toward a concession stand without talking. Cuccia decided to take the hit man’s lead. He glanced around the pool as they walked. The bright orange one-piece was easy to spot. She was sitting at the edge of the pool then, dangling her feet in the water.

  “I missed a shoot-out with a pair of local cops, two detectives, by a few minutes last night,” Freni said.

  “What happened?”

  “That’s what I came here to find out. Why the fuck a pair of detectives are talking with a guy I’m supposed to whack out.”

  Cuccia shook his head.

  “I saw the guy was banged up,” Freni continued. “I saw his head was bandaged, but that’s none of my fuckin’ business. What is my business is I don’t get jerked around. Why didn’t your uncle mention the guy was hot?”