Charlie Opera

by Charlie Stella

  “It’s not like that. The guy isn’t hot. He’s a nobody. It’s got nothing to do with business.”

  Freni noticed Cuccia looking toward the blond woman. “Hey, I didn’t come here to look at broads.”

  “Sorry.”

  “Let’s walk around the pool once or twice and see whether or not we can still do business. First, I think I need an orange juice. This heat is giving me a headache.”

  Cuccia bought an orange juice for Freni and a Coke for himself. Freni immediately drank his juice. Cuccia sipped at his Coke through a straw as they continued to walk around the pool.

  “You were that close, huh?” Cuccia asked.

  “Two minutes. Maybe less. I come off the elevator and there he is with two detectives. They went down the hall into his room. I took off.”

  “Shit, I have no idea what that was about,” Cuccia lied. “Maybe the guy got into it with somebody. Or he got mugged or something. Maybe his wife did it.”

  “That’s the other thing,” Freni said. “His wife took off. Then she was mugged.”

  “Huh?” Cuccia said. He acted surprised. “How do you know that?”

  “That’s my business. Except nobody bothered to mention the guy would have a wife with him when he came to Vegas. I was given a name and a hotel. I found out about the wife after my near-miss with the law. Which is the second fuck-up with this job. I don’t intend to walk into a third.”

  “What are you saying? You think my uncle is fucking with you?”

  Freni tossed the empty juice bottle into a trash pail. “I’m saying somebody is jerking off the wrong guy, my friend.”

  “I think maybe it’s miscommunication,” Cuccia said. “Trust me, nobody is out to jerk you off.”

  “Good. Then nobody will mind showing some good faith with this mess.”

  Cuccia let out a deep breath. “What is this, a fuckin’ shakedown now?”

  “Call it a miscommunication,” Freni said. “You still want this guy dead, for whatever the fuck reason, give me a new number. Something I can live with.”

  Cuccia stopped walking again. He looked around the pool until he spotted the blonde. She was with a tall black man. He watched with disgust as the blonde applied sun tan oil to the black man’s legs and arms.

  “Thirty,” he said.

  “Forty,” Freni said.

  The blonde was bending over to kiss the black man. Cuccia nearly choked on his Coke when he saw the black man slip the blonde some tongue.

  “Thirty-five,” he managed to say.

  Freni stepped in front of Cuccia. “Forty.”

  Cuccia frowned through his wired jaw. “All right.”

  “Say it. The number.”

  Cuccia hesitated a moment, then said, “Forty.”

  “Just so there’s no more miscommunications,” Freni said.

  “Can you do it today? Now that I’ve been robbed, I should have some satisfaction here.”

  Freni made Cuccia wait for a reply. “Maybe,” he finally said.

  Cuccia wiped drool he could feel on his chin. He looked for the blonde, but she was gone. He searched the pool until he saw her head come up from under the water. Her wet hair hung straight down. It glistened in the sun. He wanted her.

  “You don’t have to say,” Freni said. “I’m just curious.”

  Cuccia touched the corners of his mouth with his fingers. “What?”

  “What it’s about. Why you wanna kill this guy so bad.”

  Cuccia was caught off guard by the direct question. He pointed at his own chin. “Because he did this. He broke my fuckin’ jaw.”

  Freni turned his head from side to side as he examined Cuccia’s jaw. He squinted as he said, “You want me to whack a guy for that?”

  Cuccia shook his head. “No,” he said. “I want you to whack a guy for forty grand.”

  Chapter 13

  Charlie was too self-conscious for a day at the water park. The lines at the entrance gates were long and crawling with families and young children. He slipped the taxi driver a twenty-dollar bill to go ask the pretty lady with the picnic basket and cut-off jeans to come back to the taxi for a minute.

  When Samantha leaned into the window of the taxi, Charlie said, “Would you hate me if I told you I was too uncomfortable to be around all these kids looking like this?” He pulled his sunglasses off for emphasis.

  She smiled for him. “Can you take me to my car in the parking lot?” she asked. “We’ll figure something out there.”

  She decided to take him back to her apartment instead of guessing where to have lunch together. She set a round white table on the small patio behind her apartment. She opened the table umbrella for shade while they ate.

  They exchanged stories about themselves while they ked at a pasta salad. Samantha learned some more about his marital problems. She, in turn, confessed her own marital failure. When Samantha learned how Charlie’s wife had left him, she was much more sympathetic to his situation.

  “How could she do that?” she asked, then quickly apologized. “I’m sorry. Please, forgive me. I shouldn’t have asked that.”

  Charlie seemed to take it in stride. “It’s a legitimate question. How could she do that in the middle of a vacation? I don’t know. To be fair, though, her note said it wasn’t planned.”

  Samantha couldn’t stop herself from rolling her eyes. “I’m sorry,” she said again.

  “I think Lisa wanted out for a long time,” Charlie said. “This vacation must have been her breaking point.”

  Samantha steered the conversation away from his marriage. She told him about her roommate, Carol. She explained how they had met on the Internet and how Carol was a victim of abuse until she ran away from her husband six months earlier.

  “So you took her in?”

  “She’s run from two places since she left Alabama. The first was New Orleans. Her husband found her there after a few months. Then she ran to Chicago. He almost got her there after another few months. Carol thinks he’s determined to kill her.”

  “How long has she been with you?”

  “A little less than a month. But she keeps one suitcase packed, she carries her laptop computer everywhere she goes, and she hides extra money for the day she says she knows she’ll have to run off all over again.”

  “I assume the law can’t do a thing.”

  “Not until she’s dead. O.J. proved that.”

  “O.J. proved you could get away with it, too,” Charlie said.

  They had coffee in the kitchen. He liked the way she looked in the cut-off jeans and white T-shirt. When she let her hair down, he liked the way it curled in around her face.

  “How far are you from your degree?” he asked.

  “Thirty-four credits. But it may as well be ninety-four. Either I can’t afford to take the classes I need, or they don’t offer them, or I can’t take the time off when they are offered.”

  “I was a two-year wonder before I dropped out to become a window cleaner and get married.”

  “High-up window cleaner?”

  “Very high.”

  “And your kids were from your first wife?”

  “Both.”

  “So, where does the opera come from?”

  Charlie smiled. “My grandfather,” he said. “He lived with us when I was young. Listened to opera all day. You hear something enough, you start to like it.”

  “Or you think you do,” Samantha said.

  “Touché,” Charlie said.

  Samantha mentioned how long it had been since her last relationship with a man and how she was trying to be extra careful with men since she was so close to erasing the final debts from her marriage to a compulsive gambler.

  “So you don’t trust men anymore to punish yourself,” he said.

  Samantha was taken off guard. “Huh?”

  “That’s what it sounds like. You’re pissed at yourself for what happened with your deadbeat husband so now you don’t take chances.”

  She looked at him with
one eye closed. “Is this a trick question?”

  Charlie smiled again.

  “I hada boyfriend from where I work until six months ago,” she said. “A partner.”

  “Like I had a wife.”

  “I guess. Only he didn’t live here. But he wanted too much too soon.”

  “Marriage?”

  “And kids.”

  “Ouch.”

  “Exactly. So we broke up. So it has been a while.”

  “For what it’s worth,” Charlie said, “it’s been a while for me, too.”

  It was pretty late by the time they finished their coffee. He asked Samantha if it would be all right if they went out again before he returned to New York.

  “Take off your glasses,” she said.

  “My eyes are black.”

  “I can tell a lot more about you if I can see your eyes.”

  He took the sunglasses off. She stared into his eyes a moment and giggled. “You look silly,” she said. He put the sunglasses back on. Samantha took them off again. “No. It looks even sillier with them on.”

  “This part of a ritual? Humiliation before a simple yes or no?”

  “I’m sorry. I can get used to your eyes like that. Well, not used to them, but, you know. I’d rather see your eyes.”

  “Well, will you go out with me again?”

  “Of course. Whatever made you think I wouldn’t?”

  “I don’t know,” he said. “The glasses?”

  Charlie stayed through dinner, and they learned a little bit more about each other.

  Samantha loved dogs but was afraid to leave one alone while she worked. Charlie loved dogs, too, but he could never find the time to train one. Samantha loved to cook French cuisine. Charlie could cook a limited number of Italian dishes, hamburger, or steak. She loved to swim. He preferred walking. She had always wanted a house. He couldn’t wait to sell his. She was a basketball fan. He watched football and boxing. They were both morning people, but Samantha required eight hours of sleep to Charlie’s five. She loved country music. He was an opera aficionado.

  “Ah, the hobby that drove your wife crazy,” she said. “I don’t know. You don’t look that old.”

  She giggled into his arms. He was surprised. He held her loosely, barely touching her back with his fingertips. She smiled up at him and pecked him on the lips.

  He was more surprised at the kiss. He held her until she stood up on her toes to kiss him again. The kiss was casual at first, their lips barely making contact. They held it for a few seconds before smiling at each other. Then they kissed again, and their mouths became involved. It was awkward for Charlie with his bruised upper lip. He held her tighter. She leaned into him. They kissed for a few minutes before they eventually backed off from each other.

  They said good night when the taxi he had called finally arrived. She watched him leave from her doorway. She smiled when she saw he turned to look back at her from the taxi.

  Chapter 14

  Detective Abe Gold sipped coffee from a styrofoam cup at the end of a hallway in Summerlin Hospital. At fifty-five years of age, the veteran detective found he couldn’t make it for more than six hours without caffeine.

  He was near the end of a double shift that had started when he was asked to respond to a motel mugging off the Las Vegas Strip. A couple had been assaulted in their room. The woman had been hurt.

  Gold rubbed his temples. Random violence had become too common over the past few years. While Sin C’s base population had blossomed from family-oriented promotional campaigns, a more transient populace had brought random and rampant crime. The woman at the motel appeared to be another victim.

  When he learned that the woman had left her husband midvacation for a younger boyfriend she had had a previous affair with, and that the husband’s name was showing up at another hospital as a mugging victim from the night before, Gold didn’t know what to think.

  The two detectives he sent to talk to the husband had come up empty. Charlie Pellecchia’s story had checked out. Although they knew the husband wasn’t telling them everything, there was nothing the detectives could do about it. Not without a formal complaint.

  The married couple was from New York. They were supposed to be on vacation. Gold wondered if they were a pair of fruitcakes who had decided to take their marital frustrations to Las Vegas to see what the desert heat might stir up.

  Then he wondered if they had arranged for each other to be assaulted.

  Then Gold wondered what the hell the wife’s boyfriend might have had to do with it.

  He finished his cup of stale coffee as the young vice detective he was with ended a cellular telephone call.

  Gold was a short, balding man. At five-foot-five, he had to look up at the young, baby-faced, six-foot detective.

  “You still married?” Gold asked.

  The young detective, Donald Gentry, was the son of Gold’s ex-partner. Since Gentry’s father had died the year before, Gold had become his mentor.

  “I have two more hours,” Gentry replied.

  Gold held up a short, stubby finger. “Better make it one, you wanna stay married.”

  Both men forced smiles. Gold wasn’t looking forward to their conversation. Gentry suspected his wife was having an affair. Gold knew from experience, his own included, that once you suspected an affair, there usually was one.

  “I found her diaphragm gel,” Gentry told Gold. “I’ve been keeping an eye on it. One day it’s there, in her night table drawer, the next day it’s gone. I know she’s not using it with me.”

  Gold was too familiar with the sinking feeling he knew was in the pit of Gentry’s stomach. “I’m sorry,” he said.

  “At least she was taking it out of the house,” Gentry added. “Until this afternoon. I called her from the courthouse. She didn’t answer. I stopped by a few hours later. She wasn’t home. But the bed was a mess, and the gel had been used. There was gunk all around the nose. I probably just missed them. In my own fucking house.”

  “You know who?” Gold asked cautiously. He was concerned that Gentry did know.

  “No idea. That’s why I came to you. To find out.”

  Gold took a deep breath. It had been a long, lousy day. It was about to get worse.

  “Let’s get some coffee,” he heard himself say.

  Nicholas Cuccia expected to see Vincent Lano and the missing five thousand dollars when he opened the door to his suite. Instead, he saw Joey Francone and a short, bald man he had never seen before.

  “Who the fuck are you?” he asked the short man.

  “He’s Allen Fein,” Francone said.

  Fein extended his right hand to Cuccia.

  Cuccia looked to Francone before taking Fein’s hand. “He’da said Allen Funt, the Candid Camera guy, I might know him.”

  “He works for —” Francone started to say.

  Fein interrupted. “I work for Jerryercasi. I’m the one who arranged things.”

  Cuccia clapped twice and opened his hands. “That’s great. And what can I do for you?”

  “There’s a five-thousand-dollar bill outstanding,” Fein said. “One of your men took off with it.”

  Cuccia turned to Francone. “You wanna tell me the rest, or do I have to hear this twice?”

  It was a frustrating position. The DEA had followed the heroin from Florida up the eastern coastline to New Jersey. The heroin was trucked from the New Jersey docks to a warehouse in Jersey City operated by a known associate of Nicholas Cuccia. He had stumbled into the case the night Cuccia killed his partner in the heroin deal, a Russian gangster Agent Thomas had been keeping under surveillance at the time.

  Thomas smuggled Cuccia from the Jersey City warehouse to a DEA safe house, where the Vignieri crime family captain was offered a deal that would save him from spending the rest of his life in jail.

  Cuccia also was under surveillance by the FBI organized crime task force, as well as a New York City organized crime unit.

  Deals were struck betw
een the two federal agencies that permitted the DEA to run the show. Thomas was promoted and reassigned to Cuccia. Part of the deal required Cuccia to sting his uncle, the acting underboss of the Vignieri crime family, with the heroin bust. The hope of the federal organized crime task force was that Uncle Anthony Cuccia would be yet another underboss to turn on the head of a New York crime family. The DEA would take the credit for the operation up to the point of old man Cuccia’s arrest for heroin trafficking.

  An underlying hope had been that Nicholas Cuccia would remain unscathed from the drug bust; that somehow he could remain inside the Vignieri crime family as an ongoing informant. Thomas knew that it was a pipe dream to wish for the stars, but so far the nephew seemed to be buying the hard sell of the various federal law enforcement agencies.

  Still, Thomas’s direct future within the DEA depended on the government game plan attaining some measure of success, the least of which was keeping Nicholas Cuccia healthy enough to make the case against his uncle the underboss.

  The fact that the federal organized crime task force was about to issue indictments against several key people in the Vignieri crime family complicated matters. None of the agencies was sharing significant information. It was a common problem during intensive long-term investigations. Sometimes years of manpower effort and millions of dollars were lost because of animosity between or among the various agencies investigating organized crime.

  The pressure was on Thomas and the DEA to make the heroin bust before the organized crime indictments. But the central figure in the government’s game plan was in Las Vegas with two of his crew for reasons totally unknown to Thomas.

  He suspected it had something to do with the recent injury Cuccia suffered to his jaw. The mobster’s jaw was broken a full ten days earlier. It was the only night Thomas had taken off in three weeks of surveillance. Cuccia had told Thomas that he fell riding a motorcycle. The agent knew the story was bullshit.

  The New York City organized crime unit was the only law enforcement agency that knew what had happened the night Cuccia’s jaw was broken. So far, they weren’t sharing the information.