Charlie Opera

by Charlie Stella

  “Those fakes, or you just afraid to bet them?” Thomas asked.

  Cuccia smirked when he saw it was the agent. “I was wondering what happened to you.”

  “What’s up?”

  “You’d know, you were doing your job,” Cuccia said. He leaned over to watch a middle-aged Asian woman push five green chips onto the number fourteen.

  Thomas watched the croupier spin the roulette wheel. “No more bets,” the croupier announced.

  “I never understood that,” Thomas said. He pointed at the roulette wheel. “It’s like a bazaar. Everything is a long shot.”

  “No guts, no glory,” Cuccia said.

  Thomas waited until the ball was bouncing on the wheel before he leaned into Cuccia again. “I found out why you’re here.”

  Cuccia ignored the remark.

  Thomas spotted drool in the corner of Cuccia’s mouth. He dabbed at it with a napkin. “You’re dribbling.”

  The gangster was startled. He stepped away from Thomas. “The fuck is wrong with you?”

  “Who was the short guy with Francone this afternoon?”

  “You tell me.”

  “An emissary to Jerry Lercasi?”

  “Who’s Jerry Lercasi?”

  “Yeah, right.”

  “Double zero, green,” the croupier announced as he set the marker on the number at the top of the board.

  Both men watched the croupier take down the losing bets before paying the winners.

  “I spoke to Charlie Pellecchia,” Thomas said.

  Cuccia’s face tensed for a moment. “Who’s Charlie Pellecchia?”

  “Charlie Opera. The guy broke your face for grabbing his wife’s ass.”

  “Charlie who?”

  “It’s what the organized crime unit nicknamed him. The guy cracked your jaw. Charlie Opera. O.C. was in the nightclub when you caught that beating.”

  Cuccia forced a smirk. “Ever hear of Pearl Harbor? The guy japped me.”

  Thomas took another glance around the casino. “I don’t know. I just met the guy. He’s a pretty big boy.”

  “You’re needling me. What’s the point?”

  “Nothing can happen to Mr. Pellecchia. I want to make that clear.”

  “Please,” Cuccia said. “Trust me, I’ve got better things to do.” He pointed to his watch. “In ten minutes I have a date,” he said. “You should give it a try. It’s legal here in Nevada.”

  “I’m serious, fuckwad,” Thomas said. “Or your deal gets flushed.”

  “Fuckwad?”

  “You understand me?”

  Cuccia forced himself to chuckle. “Flushed?” he said. “Like down the same shitter where I was born?”

  Charlie couldn’t sleep. He slipped on his pants and shirt and found his way back into the kitchen. He thought about calling his wife and her lover to see if the DEA agent had contacted them yet but decided to check for messages first.

  When he called his room at Harrah’s, he found he had several messages, all hang-ups. He replayed them and counted fifteen in total.

  A few days had passed since the assaults on him and his wife. If the mob re thoughtwanted him, Charlie figured he didn’t stand much of a chance, regardless of any promise the DEA agent had made.

  He decided to find Nicholas Cuccia. He used a phone book and started with the most expensive hotels. When the operator at the Bellagio told him to hold for the connection, Charlie hung up.

  This time Daria was wearing a white body suit with black high heels. She was racing from a line of cocaine she had just shared with Nicholas Cuccia. She told him that her usual partner, Kim, was recovering from a bachelor party at the Mirage the night before.

  “How many guys?” he asked. He wiped a spill of drool from his chin.

  “Ten,” she said. “But there’s always two or three more once you get there. The service knows it, but they let it slide. Especially when a girl is working solo.”

  His condition required an extra moment to process the information. When it registered, Cuccia was impressed. “Solo? She gonna do ten guys by herself?”

  Daria took a large gulp of vodka from a highball glass. Her eyes required a moment to focus. “Not all the guys will want to do anything,” she said as she shook her head. “Maybe half. Sometimes more. Hey, if it pays enough, why not? That’s the business.”

  Cuccia sipped vodka from his own glass. “I guess so.”

  She laid out another line of cocaine on a small mirror. “What you do is a few of these. And you work fast. It’s over before you know it.”

  He wiped vodka from his chin.

  “Is your mouth okay, honey?” she asked.

  Cuccia didn’t hear her question. He was picturing the blonde, Kim, taking on a line of men at the bachelor party.

  “You’re smart to call the service,” Daria said. “There’s been a lot of rollings going on.”

  “Rolling? What, like joints?”

  Daria giggled. “Like johns, silly. The girls cruising the casino bars. They put their johns to sleep and rip them off.”

  He touched one of her nipples through the sheer body suit.

  “Mmmmm,” Daria said. “You about ready, hon?”

  The cocaine was numbing. “I don’t know,” he said. “I can’t feel my dick.”

  Daria giggled again. “I can help you with that,” she said as she reached down to fondle him. “You like that?”

  His eyes were struggling to focus. “Like what?”

  It was very early in the morning when Lano left his hotel room. He took a long glimpse of the sun rising over the mountains before heading for Valley Hospital, where he had located Lisa Pellecchia in room 2116.

  He brought the weapons he had purchased at the gun show with him. Two of the guns remained in the car, along with the hand grenade. He had paid a total of twenty-six hundred dollars for the tiny arsenal. A Smith & Wesson .380 was well concealed in a tightly fitted ankle holster.

  Lano felt a need to absolve himself for the assault of Lisa Pellecchia. It had been one more mistake in a life full of mistakes. Although the assault was something Lano never wanted any part of, he had allowed himself to go along with it. His conditions for taking part in the assault made him sick now. They were cheap.

  “I’ll stand guard, but I’m not touching that broad,” he had told Joey Francone.

  He could have stopped Francone. He should have stopped him.

  The more he thought about the entire fiasco, the angrier Lano was with himself. He couldn’t respect anybody who would hit a woman, much less the likes of Cuccia or Francone.

  Going after the husband also had been wrong. The guy had defended his wife. Who could blame him?

  If it had been Lano’s wife, Cuccia would be dead.

  Lano found his way down a short hallway to an elevator. He took the elevator up one flight. He followed a sign with room numbers the length of another hallway. He stood outside 2116 and immediately felt uncomfortable. A man he guessed was Lisa Pellecchia’s boyfriend sat beside her bed. The man glanced up at Lano and quickly stood.

  Lano held both his hands up. “I just want to talk,” he said. “Just talk.”

  Chapter 23

  They were both sitting up in bed having their coffee. It was still early in the morning. Samantha set her cup on the night table as she told Charlie more about herself and her family.

  Both her parents were still alive. She had an older sister teaching high school back in North Dakota, but they didn’t speak. She had tried to stay in touch with her family, but they were upset with her for leaving them.

  “Sometimes it’s hard for parents to let go,” he told her.

  “What about your sons?” she asked.

  “I didn’t raise them myself,” he said. “They both lived with their mother. I came around once a week. I bought them lunch or baseball gloves or tickets to a rock concert. They were out of the house before I knew it. Before I was married to Lisa. Next thing I knew, they were both in and out of college and doing their own
thing. Sometimes I feel guilty about it, not being there, but they’re both good kids. They turned out fine.”

  She leaned against his shoulder. “Sometimes I miss my family,” she said. “I don’t think they care, though. Not really.”

  “I do.”

  It was a simple two-word statement, but it meant the world to her then. She hugged him.

  “Tell me your favorite opera,” she said.

  “Huh?”

  “Your favorite opera. What is it?”

  “There are a lot. Don Giovanni. Rigoletto. Tosca. One of those three. Le Nozze di Figaro. I get chills from the Mozart overtures. Then there are the German operas. Fidelio, Tristan, Der Rosenkavalier, The Flying Dutchman. I could go on and on about this, you know. I warn you.”

  She laughed. “I can see.”

  “When you get to arias, though, that’s another story,” Charlie continued. “Then it’s Puccini. ‘Recondita armonia,’ from Tosca, is probably my favorite favorite, but that’s because I’m a romantic at heart. Then there’s ‘Nessum dorma,’ from Turandot, ‘Che gelida manina,’ from Bohème. All Puccini. The ‘Improviso’ from André Chénier is a good one, too. And ‘Una furtiva làgrima.’”

  Samantha was smiling at him.

  “What?” he asked.

  “Are there any about a bartender who meets a guy who was just dumped by his wife?”

  “The one where the mob’s chasing him?”

  “But the mob leaves him alone because of a DEA agent.”

  “I don’t know about that DEA agent. He could turn out to be one of the bad guys.”

  Samantha rolled her eyes. “Work with me, Charlie. I was hoping for a happy ending.”

  Carol packed her laptop inside her shoulder bag. She brought an extra change of clothes for the suitcase she kept in the trunk of her car. She wasn’t sure whe; Cau had really found her yet, but she wasn’t taking chances.

  She would run if she needed to run. She could always start over in some other location. If she were just being paranoid about Beau, Carol would return to the apartment after work and continue to handle her situation one day at a time.

  She also didn’t want to upset her best friend. Things seemed to be going well for Samantha and her new boyfriend. Carol knew Charlie had slept over. She had felt in their way at the apartment and left for work early again.

  If anything, Carol could pick up a few more hours of overtime. She knew that sooner or later the extra money would come in handy.

  As she worked the breakfast rush, Carol wondered if she would ever see her friend Samantha again. If Beau showed at the diner, she would have to run from Las Vegas the way she had run from New Orleans and Chicago.

  If Beau were more careful this time, Carol also knew she might die in Las Vegas.

  He still had a few hours before he would have to check out of the hotel. His flight was scheduled to leave today, but Charlie already knew he was staying an extra few days. He recognized the signs for what they were. He was falling for Samantha.

  He decided to take a room at another hotel for the sake of security. If the mob was still after him, he didn’t want to lead them to Samantha. They had already gone after one woman in his life.

  He took a long walk with Samantha through her neighborhood. He let her lead as he whistled a few overtures and arias from different operas to impress her. She joked about how they would soon be surrounded by all the dogs in Las Vegas.

  They were walking for about twenty minutes when a black sports car raced up alongside them. The brakes squealed as it came to a stop. An Asian teenager leaned out of the window, made a gun out of his right hand, and pointed at Charlie.

  “Bang-bang,” he said. “You dead, white boy.”

  Chapter 24

  Allen Fein was craving fast food as he convinced himself that everything was copacetic. It had become his routine whenever he engineered a small score behind Jerry Lercasi’s back. The rush of victory was quickly followed by a few days of nervousness, during which he would live on fast food and stomach medication. It would take a week or two before he would dare look for the next freelance project.

  He thought about making a present of his masseuse to Lercasi. Fein was sure that one or two sessions with his Asian masseuse were all his boss would need before she was hired. The idea of irritating Lercasi’s girlfriend at the gym brought a smile to his face.

  “Poor fucking Brenda,” he said as he pulled into a McDonald’s.

  Renato Freni sat in a booth across from Jerry Lercasi in a Chinese restaurant in downtown Las Vegas. He told the mob boss about his situation with a bad contract from out of town. A tall, thin Asian woman in blue dungarees and a red T-shirt set a place mat. Freni nodded at her.

  “Thanks, hon,” he said. “Just get me a Diet Coke.”

  Lercasi was stirring noodles into his wonton soup. He blew at a spoonful of the hot soup before sucking it off the spoon. He waited until the Asian woman brought the Diet Coke for Freni before speaking.

  “You’re a lucky motherfucker,” Lercasi said. He dipped at the hot mustard with a few dry noodles before popping them into his mouth.

  Freni nodded. “Yeah, I know.”

  “You hungry?”

  “No, thanks.”

  “You sure?”

  “Thanks, really, no.” Freni raised his Diet Coe to salute Lercasi. “I was to write a script, nobody’d ever believe it.”

  Lercasi shook his head. “I wouldn’t. Two times in two days?”

  “I’m either lucky or stupid.”

  “The real issue is your contract,” Lercasi said. “And why it didn’t come to my attention before today.”

  Freni took another swig of his Diet Coke. He wiped his mouth with a paper napkin. “No offense intended. But I won’t deal with buffers. Not in my business.”

  Lercasi nodded as he sprinkled a few more fried noodles on his soup. “I can respect that,” he said. “Still, you could’ve asked for a sit with me. You should’ve asked for a sit with me.”

  “This one came from pretty high up,” Freni said. “I had to assume it was approved.”

  “Anthony Cuccia in New York,” Lercasi said. “Except nobody in New York has juice out here. Not without me. And I have a cousin back there to remind them they forget the fact. I don’t like it, New York or anybody else comes to my town and pulls shit without I know about it.” He scooped up some of the soup-soaked noodles with his spoon.

  “Still. I had to assume —”

  Lercasi held up one hand as he rolled the hot noodles around his mouth before swallowing. “Please. Don’t insult me. The old man went directly to you to avoid coming to me.”

  “We go back a long way, me and Anthony Cuccia,” Freni said. “We came up together.”

  “I can respect that, too.”

  “Nothing happened. If that’s any consolation.”

  “What the fuck is this, a game show? I could make noise if I want. I know my options.”

  Freni remained silent. Lercasi said, “You know what they did to the woman, right?”

  “Hard to believe. Somebody knocked out a tooth?”

  “Harder to explain,” Lercasi said. He refocused his attention on a dish of shrimp toast. He cut one in half with his fork. “And much harder to ignore. Between the media and the law. I already had one visit from a local O.C. detective. You’re talkin’ about Feds around this Pellecchia. I expect I’ll hear from them, too.”

  He forked a chunk of the shrimp toast and dipped it in hot mustard. “I was thinking if this Pellecchia guy was to get whacked by one of our city’s many ethnic gangs, something real sloppy like a drive-by, maybe it would divert some of the attention away from us.” He slid the shrimp toast off the fork into his mouth.

  “Or maybe the guy don’t get whacked at all,” Freni said. “That’s even less attention.”

  Lercasi sipped Diet 7UP from a can. “Not necessarily,” he said. “If Pellecchia does turn up dead, it proves the New York crew went ahead without following protocol. I can tax t
hat, too, I want. It’d be clout on my end. We remind the rest of the country that Vegas ain’t the place to air your dirty laundry. Maybe the old man in New York loses his nephew in the process.”

  “Mingada,” Freni muttered. “That sounds like a war.”

  Lercasi cut another shrimp toast in half. “You sure you’re not hungry? The gooks in this joint can cook.”

  “I’m not hungry, thanks.”

  Lercasi spoke while he chewed on another chunk of shrimp toast. “I don’t intend to invade New York,” he said. “So unless they want to bring it out here, I’m not too concerned about a war.”

  “You th me to turn the contract around?”

  “Something like that,” Lercasi said. “Things have been getting sloppy out here lately. You read about that guy skimming the books, right? People are too comfortable. Like whoever the fuck arranged this bullshit thing with the New York crew in the first place. People get comfortable, they think they know what they’re doing. They get lucky, they get more stupid, they cause more problems.”

  “Benny Bensognio?”

  Lercasi slurped soup from his spoon. “Nickel-and-dimer,” he said. “A guy loyal for a long time, got comfortable, decided he could steal. It’s human nature.”

  “Pellecchia is scheduled to check out today,” Freni said. “If you’re serious about a drive-by. You’d have to do it in the fuckin’ airport unless he spends another day playin’ drums.”

  Lercasi shook his head. “Playin’ drums. People got nothin’ better to do.”

  “I’ll pick it up if you want. I already got paid.”

  “Some of these gangs, they’d do it in a church. Drive-by, walk-by, what’s the difference? I already got some people on it. From what I understand, they already made a pass but there was some broad in the way.”

  “Anything else?” Freni asked.

  Lercasi shook his head as he cut off the tail of a fried shrimp. He forked the shrimp into his mouth and used a napkin to wipe his lips. He used a pen to write two names on the napkin. “I got another Benny,” he said. “And somebody else.”

  Freni nodded.

  Lercasi pushed the napkin across the table. His thumb covered one of the names. Freni read the other name to himself.