Charlie Opera

by Charlie Stella

  Lisa looked up at Denton from her wheelchair. “Why not?” Denton asked.

  “Because Nicholas Cuccia has escaped custody, for one thing. And I say so is the other reason.”

  “You say so?” Denton asked.

  “This is serious, Mr. Denton. A federal drug enforcement agent is in a coma right now because of Nicholas Cuccia. We have reason to believe Cuccia may be looking for Mr. Pellecchia. Until we can locate the suspect, we don’t think you or Mrs. Pellecchia should be left unprotected.”

  “Then take us to the airport,” Lisa said.

  “She has a point,” Denton said. “If this is really about protection.”

  “We don’t have the manpower,” Walsh said. “Sorry.”

  “So we’re detained until this guy is caught?” Denton asked. “Are you serious?”

  “I’m afraid so.”

  “For what? Unless you’re going to arrest us. Are we being arrested?”

  Walsh wasn’t in the mood for a lawyer. “I can do that. If you’d like. I can arrest you.”

  “For what?” Denton repeated.

  “For what?” Lisa added.

  “Assault,” Walsh said. He turned to Denton. “Back at the Bellagio. I think you know what I’m talking about.”

  “This is bullshit,” Denton said.

  “We need to find Mr. Pellecchia,” Walsh said. “Ma’am, do you know where he is? You might save his life. Nicholas Cuccia has killed at least three people today.”

  Lisa spoke without thinking. “His girlfriend,” she said. She looked to Denton. “Right?”

  Denton frowned. Walsh waited. “Mr. Denton?” he said. “You could save the man’s life.”

  Denton looked down at Lisa. She looked up at him with a gentle smile. “I lived with the man for five years,” she said. “I figured it out.”

  Denton nodded at Walsh. “All right,” Denton said. “All right.”

  The puppy lay asleep on Samantha’s lap as Charlie set a cover on the pot of sauce he was cooking. She smiled at him when he took a seat on the couch beside her.

  “Smells pretty good,” she said.

  Charlie leaned across her lap to pet the dog. He kissed Samantha on the cheek. “So do you.”

  “About how long will that sauce take?” Samantha asked.

  “Forty minutes.”

  “Can you make it take forty-five?”

  They kissed.

  “I missed that,” he told her.

  “Me, too,” she said.

  They kissed again. Samantha held ight. It was good holding him again. She missed him. She was glad he was there.

  He moved closer as they embraced around the dog. He leaned into a kiss when he felt something hard under his leg. “What’s this?”

  He pulled a .25 from between the couch pillows.

  “Oh, shit,” Samantha said. “That’s what he shot me with. Beau, Carol’s husband. I just assumed he took it with him.”

  “Yeah, and so did the cops,” Charlie said as he set the gun on an end table. “Which reminds me,” he added as he removed the .22 he had bought from the hookers from his pants pocket and set it alongside Beau’s gun.

  “Where did you get that?” Samantha asked.

  “You wouldn’t believe me if I told you,” Charlie said.

  The puppy was climbing on Samantha’s chest. It licked at both their faces as its tail wagged excitedly.

  “Ooooh, the pretty baby!” Samantha said in a high-pitched voice. “Oooh, the pretty baby!”

  She picked the dog up to hold against her face. Charlie shook his head as he backed away from them on the couch. He said, “I knew I should’ve bought flowers.”

  Chapter 65

  When Minh learned where Charlie Pellecchia was, he grinned. It was the same address Minh had copied on the street where all the police activity had been the day before.

  “Police cruiser park in front,” his man told Minh in broken English. “One cop in car.”

  Minh told his man to make sure he was waiting behind the apartment complex and that his gas tank was full. Then he screwed a silencer onto the end of his weapon’s barrel and picked up an order of Chinese food from a local restaurant.

  Minh planned to make a delivery to the address where the police cruiser was parked. Then, as soon as Minh was inside the apartment, he would shoot Charlie Pellecchia.

  Gold was crouched behind the bushes alongside the narrow gap between buildings where Samantha Cole lived. On the other side of the gap, Iandolli used night vision binoculars to scan the area behind the complex.

  “How long before you figure the Feds roll up?” Gold whispered.

  “They may already be here. Up the block somewhere we can’t see, or on a roof. Who knows? They’re anxious to get Cuccia after what happened.”

  “They’re probably still tripping over their own feet.”

  “Maybe,” Iandolli said. He could tell Gold was nervous. Neither detective had ever been in this type of situation before, laying in wait for a killer.

  Iandolli scanned the area to his left. He held the binoculars steady as he moved slowly from left to right across the tops of the hedges around the pool. When he reached the last hedge to his right, Iandolli noticed somebody walking alongside it. He whispered to Gold to remain quiet.

  The Glock was stuffed inside Cuccia’s pants against his lower back. The agent’s weapon was jammed in the front of his pants. He pulled down the baggy Hard Rock Café sweatshirt he had bought from a souvenir shop to cover both guns.

  It was too dark to spot a surveillance team, but the police cruiser parked up the block couldn’t be more obvious. Cuccia had walked the half mile from the gas station without a problem.

  Samantha Cole lived at number 6325. Cuccia stopped to read one of the addresses on a building to his right. “Sixty-three thirteen,” he whispered to himself. He walked around the corner to the back of the apartment complex.

  As Cuccia passeind tlding on his left now, he counted to himself. He did the same with the next building and the one after that. When he came to a stop again, Cuccia was standing directly behind 6325. He reached for the gun in his waistband when he heard the sound of a motorbike nearby.

  Minh Quan parked two spots behind the police cruiser and crossed the front lawn diagonally to the front door. He carried the bag of Chinese food to cover the Beretta tucked in his pants. When he reached the short stairway, the policeman was out of the car and called to him.

  “Food delivery,” Minh said, affecting a more pronounced accent.

  The policeman eyed him a few seconds until Minh held up the bag of food. Then the cop waved him on and sat back inside the cruiser.

  Minh rang the doorbell two times as he grabbed the gun.

  Chapter 66

  Gold hadn’t prayed for anything in a long time. The veteran detective didn’t have much faith in religion. He believed that mankind made its own bed. He believed in the justice his police work was supposed to provide. He believed in the law.

  But the law had failed miserably for a forty-six-year-old maid going about the business of earning a living, and Gold couldn’t get over her death. Ever since he had tried and failed to revive the poor woman, Gold prayed for the chance to kill the man who had killed her.

  Now that man was standing about ten feet away.

  Iandolli saw the motorcycle make a sharp U-turn in the background. He watched it until he saw Nicholas Cuccia reaching for and holding the gun. Iandolli set the night vision glasses on the grass and stood up in a firing stance.

  “Hold it!” he yelled. “Drop your weapon!”

  “Fuck me,” Cuccia said. He had half-turned toward the sound of the motorcycle. When he looked back, Iandolli sighted his weapon on Cuccia’s chest.

  “Drop it!” Iandolli repeated. “Drop your weapon!”

  Iandolli waited for Cuccia to drop his gun before half-stepping across the back lawn toward the gangster. “Don’t fucking breathe,” Iandolli said.

  Cuccia raised his hands slowly as the sou
nd of screeching tires filled the night air. “Take it easy, big man,” he said. “You could hurt somebody with that thing.”

  “Shut the fuck up,” Iandolli said.

  Cuccia saw another cop coming out from behind the bushes. He was short and bald. The cop held his weapon loosely in his right hand. He was close to a foot shorter than the big cop standing to his left.

  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. 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. “Itrsquo;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.

  Chapter 67

  “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.

  Chapter 68

  Two days later, when the police were finished w
ith 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 televisn.

  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.