Charlie Opera

by Charlie Stella

  It was nearly ten-thirty in the morning before he was released from the hospital. He took a taxi back to Harrah’s, but Charlie didn’t go straight up to his room. He walked again instead. He took the route past the construction site where he was assaulted the night before. Two uniformed guards stood watch at the front gates as construction trucks lined up to enter the site. The guards checked each driver for identification.

  Charlie stopped at the Palermo model to look for the short man who had befriended him the night before. It bothered him that he was mugged but not robbed. It didn’t make sense. He considered describing the short man to the people working at the Palermo model but decided against it.

  He was getting too many looks from passersby to interrogate anyone. When he saw himself in the reflection of a mirror hanging outside the model bathroom, Charlie was reminded that his head and hands were bandaged.

  When he finally returned to his hotel room, it was a little after one o’clock in the afternoon. Lisa was gone. He remembered denying there was anyone with him to the doctors at the hospital when he was asked if there was someone they should contact. He remembered denying there was anyone at all.

  He wondered then if it had been wishful thinking on his part that there was no one to contact. He looked around the room and noticed something was strange. He crossed the room to the windows then turned around to look the room over again. The room had been tidied up by the housecleaning service, but something seemed out of order.

  He lit a cigarette from a pack on the small table and immediately realized what was different. His wife wasn’t just out someplace getting sun or shopping or working out. His wife was gone.

  It was then that he spotted the note she had left him on his nightstand.

  Chapter 41>

  “I can’t believe I’m sitting here,” Vincent Lano said. He lit a Marlboro cigarette, coughed violently after inhaling, and rubbed his eyes to keep them from tearing.

  “You think maybe it’s time you quit?” Joey Francone asked. He was nearly half Lano’s age at twenty-five. He was dressed in skintight black pants, a black T-shirt, and black shoes. His huge arms bulged under his tight shirt.

  They were parked at the far end of a minimall lot. Lano had moved the rented Ford Taurus under the shade of a row of trees. It was 110 degrees in the afternoon sun.

  “How long they been in there?” Lano asked.

  Francone glanced at his gold Rolex. “A long time.”

  Lano stretched his neck. “Six fuckin’ hours in a plane and now another six hours in a car,” he said. “And then he’s flyin’ out here. For what?”

  “He lost face in front of his crew,” Francone said.

  “Because he slapped some broad? Guess what? He should’ve kept his hands in his pockets.”

  Francone showed disgust at the comment. “First of all, the guy japped him, okay? Second, the guy broke his jaw. In front of people. He’s gotta make it right.”

  Lano turned away from Francone to spit phlegm. “It’s offensive is what it is,” he said. “What it’s become.”

  Francone craned his neck to see across the street. He glanced down at his watch. “Almost seven hours now,” he said.

  Across the street from the minimall was the motel the two men were watching. They were waiting for a woman to leave the motel. Then they would assault the woman and take one of her front teeth. It was what their boss wanted.

  It was also a job that upset Lano. He had never hit a woman in his life. “I guess the joke’s on me,” he said as he took another drag on his cigarette and immediately coughed up more phlegm.

  Lano was fifty-two years old and dying from throat cancer. He was diagnosed with the fatal disease shortly before he left New York, but Lano never shared the information. After thirty-four years in the rackets, the aging mobster didn’t want anyone to know.

  He was a made member of the Vignieri crime family of New York for more than twenty years. He had made his bones the old-fashioned way, killing his first man on orders by his twenty-first birthday. He had killed three more by his thirtieth birthday.

  Now, so many years down the road, confronted by a death he couldn’t avoid, Lano was having second thoughts about the life he had chosen.

  Francone, the young wannabe seated next to him in the front of the rented Ford Taurus, waved at the secondhand cigarette smoke. Francone was a close friend of Nicholas Cuccia, another young punk, who had recently become Lano’s new boss. Francone was a neat freak, nonsmoker, bodybuilder, with maybe five assaults, Lano guessed, to his entire mob résumé.

  Maybe the kid had a hit under his belt. Lano doubted it.

  Too many guys like Francone were next in line to become made men when the mob books opened again. It bothered Lano that punks like the one seated next to him would soon be his equal.

  “Least you could do is take a walk with those things,” Francone told Lano. “Gimme a break a few minutes. I’m suffocatin’ over here.”

  Francone didn’t like Lano or all of the bitching and moaning he did. He, too, had taken the long red-eye flight from New York to Las Vegas the night before last. He, too, had been sitting in the car all fucking day. To top it off, he was missing back-to-back workouts while the old bastard sitting next to him slowly killed the two of them with his never-ending chain-smoking.

  “Fuckin’ kids,” Lano said. He let the driver’s side window all the way down.

  Francone shook his head. It was ninety-five degrees in the shade. He had two choices: he could choke to death on cigarette smoke, or he could sweat to death from the heat. He cracked the rear windows to let some more of the smoke escape.

  “That guy really put this thing together,” he told Lano.

  Lano suppressed another coughing fit. “You make it sound like the Normandy invasion.”

  “The what?”

  “Forget about it.”

  “He could’ve fucked it up,” Francone said. “He got somebody to follow the broad. Who the hell knew she was gonna pull this? Imagine, this guy Pellecchia catches a beating from us and then his wife takes off with another guy?”

  It was true. The guy who had arranged everything in Las Vegas, Allen Fein, told them how Charlie Pellecchia’s wife had split on him in the middle of their vacation. One of Fein’s people at Harrah’s had actually seen the note the wife had left her husband.

  “Poor bastard,” Lano said.

  Francone leered at Lano’s sympathy. “You mean fuckin’ loser.”

  Lano tossed one cigarette and lit another. Francone waved his hands wildly in frustration.

  “I’m sorry,” Lisa told John Denton. “I can’t again. I feel like shit. I feel terrible.”

  She was feeling guilty about how she had left her husband the night before. Now she couldn’t respond to her lover’s touch.

  They met at the airport immediately after Lisa had left a note for her husband. They had taken a room at a motel and made love as soon as they were alone. It had been passionate and exhausting. It had been what they both wanted and needed.

  They planned to leave for California the next day, but now Lisa couldn’t do it without speaking to her husband first. After leaving him a note, a phone message was out of the question. She wanted to meet Charlie someplace. She needed to talk to him face-to-face.

  Denton tried to soothe her tension by rubbing her back. “I understand,” he told her. “It’s okay.”

  “When we’re out of Vegas again,” Lisa said as she reached back to hold Denton’s hand.

  “We can catch a flight to L.A. anytime,” he said. “I can book one a few hours before we’re ready to leave.”

  “I’m sorry,” Lisa said.

  Denton leaned Lisa back against his chest as he kissed her hair. “Don’t think about it,” he whispered. “Just relax.”

  She lay back slowly against her lover’s chest. She closed her eyes as he kissed her hair again. She felt his hands gliding over her shoulders and down her arms. She felt his fingertips on her stomach. She felt his kiss on
her neck as his hands reached for her breasts.

  Lano was leaning against the door of the Ford Taurus as he smoked a cigarette outside the car. It was easier than listening to the piss-ant pretty boy complaining about it inside the car. He heard the passenger door open and slam shut, but he didn’t turn around to acknowledge Francone.

  “Maybe I should just knock on the door and get it over with,” Francone said.

  Lano took a drag on his cigarette, coughed a few times, and dropped the butt on the parking lot pavement. “You really gonna hit that broad?”

  Francone scratched at his chin. ar. It wae of many annoying mannerisms the pretty boy had that turned Lano’s stomach. Francone scratched his chin as if he were about to perform brain surgery whenever he had to give something any thought. As if this situation required thought. The punk was about to assault a woman.

  “Forget the tooth,” Lano said. He pointed to an ice cream truck at the other end of the parking lot. “I say you get yourself an ice cream cone and we call it a day.”

  Francone finally stopped scratching his chin. He looked around himself and shrugged. “That’s what he said to do. He was very specific. He said knock out a tooth. The boss wants to see a tooth.”

  Lano rubbed his temples. “You think maybe we should move the car first?” he asked sarcastically. “You know, just in case somebody notices you hit a broad, knock out her teeth, then stroll back to this car, get in, and drive away. You know, just so they can’t write down the license number.”

  Francone responded with his own version of sarcasm. “Why don’t you handle the security on this, okay? I’ll take care of the broad. You go get yourself an ice cream. You make it back in time, maybe you can hold off the boyfriend. If it doesn’t offend you, I mean.”

  Lano shook his head. “You ever think maybe you’re saving your boss a big headache coming up with a better solution?”

  Francone was stumped. “Better solution like what?” he asked.

  “Like we find a fuckin’ dentist give us a tooth and bring that to your boss,” Lano said. He refused to acknowledge that Nicholas Cuccia was his boss, too.

  Francone used both hands to wave the suggestion off. “Are you kidding me? Nicky said come back with a tooth from her mouth. Now he’s flyin’ out here to meet us and you wanna try and fugazy a tooth? What happens he wants to see the broad himself?”

  Lano was rubbing his temples again. Where the fuck did they find assholes like this? He was almost glad he was dying so he wouldn’t have to deal with them anymore.

  “We’re already under the radar on this,” Lano said.

  “Under the radar how?”

  “You really think the old man, Tony Cuccia, you think he’s behind this bullshit? He’s been around too long to know better. Bustin’ up a guy is one thing. Even though the guy didn’t deserve it, he caught a beatin’, big fuckin’ deal. But a broad? You wanna crack some broad in the mouth for a tooth because she slapped you one in the face because you grabbed her ass in front of a hundred people?” Lano stopped to cough. “Bullshit,” he added. “It’s wrong. It’s worse than wrong. It’s stupid. This is the kind of thing makes us all look like shit.”

  Francone wanted to strangle the old bastard. Where the fuck did he come off talking about a skipper like that? This was what was ruining the mob, he thought, old-timers who were passed up for promotions and couldn’t adjust. The old prick was talking subversive. If Lano had talked like that back in New York, they wouldn’t have to wait for the cigarettes to kill him.

  “So what are you tellin’ me, Vinny? You’re not gonna go through with this thing? Or you’re gonna rat me out if we get caught?”

  “Fuck you, sonny,” Lano said. “I’m not hittin’ no broad, and I won’t even dignify your other remark. And, tell you the truth, you ever make another remark like that to me again, about ratting anybody, I’ll shove one a my fists down your throat and pull out your clean fuckin’ lungs for myself. You got that?”

  Francone had tony train himself. He thought better of the situation. They had a job to do. He could tell Nicholas Cuccia about Lano’s subversive remarks the next day. Maybe the boss would give Francone the contract to whack Lano. After all the secondary smoke he had ingested today, Francone would whack Lano for the pleasure.

  “Oh, you hear me or not?” Lano asked.

  Francone forced a smile. “Yeah,” he said. “I heard you.”

  She let Denton relax her into having sex with him. It was easy once she was calm again. It was as good as it had always been between them.

  Denton rested peacefully beside Lisa as some of the guilt she was feeling seemed to fade. She lit a cigarette as she moved from the bed to a chair near the window. She pushed back the curtain and looked across the small parking lot. Except for a few cars, the lot was empty. She looked across the street into the minimall parking lot and saw an ice cream truck. She thought about having a milk shake.

  There was a sudden knock on the motel door as she reached for her purse. She pushed back the curtain again and saw two men standing at the door. The younger one, although he stood in the shade, looked vaguely familiar. Lisa answered the second knock before it woke Denton.

  Chapter 5

  The note his wife left him was simple and to the point:

  Charlie, I’m so sorry to do this to you. But I have to do this. I have to do it now. John is with me. I will call you tomorrow. None of this was planned. Please believe me.

  And try to forgive me. I’ll call you tomorrow to work something out.

  Take care of yourself.

  The note was signed: Lisa.

  “It wasn’t planned my ass,” Charlie said aloud. “I should smack him in the back with that god-damned hairbrush.”

  He removed his wedding ring and picked up the telephone. He pressed the room service button, ordered a large pot of coffee, and made his way to the bathroom, where he found the Advil bottle. He dropped four capsules into his right hand, examined them a second, and tossed them into his mouth. He sipped water from a plastic cup to swallow the pills. He turned the shower on to let the steam build. He examined himself in the mirror before stepping under the hot water.

  He had black eyes from his fractured nose. He frowned at the sight of himself. It would be another couple of days before the skin around his eyes turned green and yellow. It would be a full week at least before his skin bruises healed completely.

  The bandage behind his right ear wasn’t too bad. The contusions on both his hands had turned blue-black. The tape job on his bruised fingers annoyed Charlie. He removed the tape that restrained his fingers from bending. He had broken a finger in the past. He would live with the pain.

  He examined his shape in the mirror for the second time in as many days. He knew he needed to work out more aerobically. His big upper body and skinny legs distorted his symmetry. The extra weight around his hips and waist didn’t help either.

  He wondered if that’s what had finally triggered his wife’s leaving him. Lisa was five years younger than Charlie. Her lover was a year younger than she was. Charlie couldn’t help but wonder if it had always been just a matter of time for him and Lisa once she was intimate with John Denton two years earlier. The man his wife referred to in her good-bye note was an athletic attorney in near-perfect shape.

  Was it his shape or his age?

  As he walked the length of Las Vegas Boulevard to avoid the phone call Lisa had mentioned in her note, Charlie contnued to wonder about his wife and her lover. If there were signs of his wife having an affair again, he had missed them a second time. Except for a few telephone hang-ups at the house, Charlie hadn’t noticed anything peculiar.

  They had grown distant the past few months. There were long periods of inactivity between their sexual relations. There were frequent gaps in their communication. They had stopped being friends to each other and had started doing things alone instead of together.

  Charlie thought back to the night of the fight at the New York nightclub. It was a week befo
re they had left for vacation. He had tried to buy tickets for an opera the same night Lisa was supposed to go dancing with a friend. When the opera was sold out, Charlie decided to join his wife instead. She became furious with him. It was as if she suddenly hated him.

  The tension was thick between them at the club, and they decided to leave early. As Lisa wove her way through a group of men around the bar, one of them grabbed her ass. She slapped the man in the face and was immediately slapped back. She landed on the floor at Charlie’s feet, and he reacted without thinking. He ran behind the punch and knocked the man unconscious.

  Now Charlie wondered if Lisa had made plans with her lover that night. He wondered if John Denton was there at the nightclub during the fight.

  It seemed obvious to him now. Charlie had ruined his wife’s plans by going dancing with her. It was why she was so angry with him.

  Of course John Denton was there. He was the “friend” Lisa was supposed to have met.

  When he finished his walk, Charlie realized there was something else bothering him about his fight at the New York nightclub, something about one of the men who had threatened him after the altercation. One of them had made his way up close to Charlie before the bouncers were able to pull him away. He had said something. Maybe it was a name. Charlie couldn’t recall.

  He let it go. He promised himself he wouldn’t wonder about his wife again. She was history. His marriage was over. The sooner he accepted it, the better.

  Chapter 6

  He napped at the pool in the late afternoon. He skipped his second meal of the day when he felt hungry. When he was starving, Charlie picked at a fresh fruit salad from the poolside café.

  When he returned to his room, it was nearly six o’clock. He immediately dressed himself as close to formal as his wardrobe would allow. He wore beige pants with a black polo shirt. He spent several minutes grooming in the bathroom. He had a problem combing his hair straight back with the bandage behind his right ear.

  Charlie decided to finish the week-long vacation. He would take the drive to the Grand Canyon. He would visit Hoover Dam. He would even take the long drive through the desert his wife had wanted.