Charlie Opera (11 page)

Carol used a tissue to wipe her nose. “Positive,” she said. “It’ll only make things worse. They won’t do a thing until he does something to me. I’ll be dead before they ever arrest him.”

“Where will you go?”

“California, I guess. Or north. Maybe where you’re from. I should be able to spot him coming up there, right, darlin’?”

She was trying to joke about it then, but the reality of the situation was unnerving.

Beau Curitan had tracked his wife down in New Orleans and again in Chicago. Both times Carol had narrowly escaped. With nowhere to turn, she accepted the offer of a friend she had met online, Samantha Cole, from Las Vegas.

“I wish he’d just die,” Carol said.

Samantha moved her chair alongside Carol’s lounger. She held one of her friend’s hands.

“I have to run again, I know it,” Carol said. “I don’t know when he’ll show up, but I can truly sense that man is near. He must have paid somebody to look for me. I guess he’s going to run through every dime we ever had to find me.”

“Do you want me to cancel my date? I hate to leave you like this today.”

“No way, darlin’. Uh-uh. You go and you enjoy yourself today. You like that man, I can tell. And it sounds like he likes you.”

They remained silent awhile. Carol wiped her eyes and sat up. She gave Samantha a quick hug.

“It does sound like he likes you,” Carol said.

“Except he’s married,” Samantha said. “I can’t just forget about that.”

Beau Curitan circled the third telephone number on his list with a red flair pen. He had just paid two hundred dollars for the three telephone numbers narrowed down from hundreds more off the CompuServe Internet chat lines. Each of the three telephone numbers represented a possible location where his wife was hiding and were based on the billing addresses and connecting modem lines.

The trick was recognizing Carol’s words in the Internet chat rooms, which wasn’t very hard because Beau knew his wife too well for her to chat without being noticed. He could recognize her favorite sayings and slogans. In fact, there were times when Beau thought he could actually hear Carol speaking the words he would read online as she typed them.

A few weeks ago, he had recognized his wife’s chat style from a screen name called LVBARTENDER35. Beau also recognized a similar style from the screen name RUN&HIDE. Once he gave the two CompuServe addresses, along with a couple of hundred dollars, to a technician, Beau was told the two addresses were from the same line. Then he paid another hundred dollars for the address of the telephone number.

Now Beau was closing in on his wife again. He already drove past the address twice during the day, but Beau hadn’t seen his wife. He called both telephone numbers, but no one answered.

Until now, that is. A woman’s voice he knew wasn’t Carol answered. Beau listened to the woman’s voice before hanging up.

He guzzled half a can of beer before letting go of a loud belch. He turned on the laptop computer he had bought back in Alabama after his wife first took off on him. He plugged the motel telephone line into his modem, then powered up the CompuServe program.

He kneeled back down to type in his password one key at a time.

HUNTER, he typed.

Agent Thomas followed the short, bald man from the Bellagio to a gymnasium he assumed was the one the smart-ass organized crime detective had mentioned the day before. Vive la Body was located alongside a huge condominium development on Spring Mountain Road. A large parking lot blocked the gym from the boulevard.

Thomas managed to verify the owner of the gym as Jerry Lercasi, the head of the Las Vegas mob. The name he wasn’t able to get was that of the short, bald man Thomas had followed to the gym, the same man who had visited Nicholas Cuccia at the Bellagio Hotel.

He assumed the short man was a liaison for the Las Vegas mob. Although he didn’t expect very much help from FBI agents based in Las Vegas, Thomas expected he would learn enough to figure out what the hell Cuccia was doing there.

Half an hour later, after talking with an organized crime task force supervisor in New York, Thomas found out.

He managed to get over to Harrah’s a few minutes after Charlie Pellecchia left the hotel. Thomas used his badge to find out where Pellecchia might have gone. When the girl at the reception desk tried the operator, they learned that Pellecchia had left a message for a Samantha Cole, should she call.

Pellecchia had gone to a music studio on Paradise Road. He was expecting to return to his hotel before five o’clock. Thomas jumped back inside the rental car and whipped around the small circular driveway at Harrah’s. He had a general description and a faxed photo of Pellecchia to identify the man he had learned broke Nicholas Cuccia’s jaw.

Thomas suspected that Nicholas Cuccia was in Las Vegas to kill Charlie Pellecchia.

He glanced at the fax of Pellecchia on the front passenger seat as he drove through the traffic on Sahara Avenue. When the light ahead turned yellow, Thomas cut across a grass divider to make the turn onto Las Vegas Boulevard.

It was well after noon when Pellecchia finally left Harrah’s. Renato Freni was parked in the driveway for more than half an hour waiting for his mark to leave the hotel.

Freni was driving a stolen car with Nevada license tags as he followed Pellecchia’s taxi to a downtown music studio. He parked at the curb across the street from the studio when Pellecchia stepped inside. Freni noted the time and laid his head against the headrest.

Charlie had been angry again when he left the hotel. Lisa still hadn’t called him, and the Las Vegas police had left him feeling like a criminal.

He wasn’t in the mood to lift weights or work out his frustrations aerobically anymore, and his fingers and body were too bruised to hit a heavy bag.

When he decided to vent his frustration on a set of drums instead, he found a music studio where he could rent a private room for twenty dollars an hour. He brought his Cream and Steely Dan CDs to the studio for music he could follow on his headphones.

When Charlie sat at the set of black Pearl drums, he instantly recognized the smell of the percussion wood. He felt the weight of the sticks he had bought at the front desk and noticed they were lighter than the Regal Tips, size 5-B drumsticks he used at home. It was awkward holding them with his bruised fingers. He turned the stick in his left hand upside down for better control and less pain. He took a roll around the tom-toms for a sound check. He winced when the back end of a stick caught his left pinky finger on the rebound.

Freni grew tired waiting in the stolen car. He checked his watch for the time. Twenty-five minutes had passed. His back was starting to ache. He needed to stretch his legs.

He felt the Beretta 9mm inside the waist of his pants. He could just as easily walk inside the studio and take care of business as sit in a hot car all fucking day.

This was what he decided to do. He got out of the car and headed for the music studio across the street. He pulled down the baggy shirt he was wearing to cover his waist. He felt the gun through the shirt as he held the door open for a broad man wearing sunglasses.

Charlie was feeling Steely Dan’s “Big Black Cow
”
as he played the twenty-inch ride cymbal above the hard beat. His head swayed with the rhythm as he carefully press-rolled on the snare. He bounced his sticks off the mounted tom-toms before he turned his beat on the high hat.

Charlie’s head hung cocked to the left as he picked up the pace. He played the beat with a closed high hat until he heard someone yell. When he looked up, a broad man stood in the doorway of the private studio. Charlie hit the STOP button on the portable CD player and pulled the headphones away from his ears.

“They told me you were into opera,” the broad man said.

“Who are they and who are you?” Charlie asked. He held both sticks up straight with one hand against his left leg.

“Agent Marshall Thomas,” the broad man said. “DEA. Drug Enforcement Agency.” He presented a badge to Charlie.

Charlie ignored the badge.

“It’s not about drugs,” the agent said.

Charlie removed the headphones from around his neck. “Is it about opera?”

“Not that either, no.”

“You want to get to the point? I’m paying twenty dollars an hour for this room.”

The door to the studio opened. A stocky man in a baggy shirt stood in the doorway. He looked from Charlie to the broad man and excused himself. “Sorry,” he said.

Thomas stared at the stocky man until he was gone. When he turned back around, Charlie was setting his sticks on top of the base drum.

“A little more than a week ago you were involved in a fight in a New York nightclub,” the agent said.

Charlie nodded.

“The man you hit is Nicholas Cuccia, a captain with the Vignieri crime family in New York. His uncle is the acting underboss.”

“That explains a few things.”

“Nicholas Cuccia obviously has a lot of clout. And very long arms.”

“And big balls and no conscience,” Charlie quickly added. “He attacked my wife and knocked a few of her teeth out.”

“Yes, I know. And he probably had you assaulted, too.”

“And he can’t be touched because my wife won’t press charges or testify. I’ll assume you already know about me and my wife.”

Thomas nodded. “I’m sorry,” he said. “What about you? Now that you know who assaulted you.”

“I assume I can’t press charges, either. Not if I want to live.”

“You could call it even,” Thomas said.

“Except that big-shot gangster hit my wife.”

“His men. Not him. But she left you anyway, right?”

Charlie glared at the agent then. “What do you want from me?”

“To warn you, first of all. To make you aware.”

“What else?”

“To make a deal. I’m sure I can back Mr. Cuccia off. In fact, I know I can do that.”

“Why don’t I believe you?”

“Because you’re skeptical?”

“That’s not even close to cute.”

Thomas held up his right hand. “I swear it. Nicky Cuccia won’t bother you again.”

“For what?” Charlie asked. “What is it you want?”

“To keep it between us.”

Charlie narrowed his eyes at the agent. “You’re protecting him?”

“What’s the difference?”

Charlie gave it some thought.

“He won’t go near you again,” Thomas said.

“Like I have a choice,” Charlie said.

Thomas pulled a card from his wallet.

“How do you know about the opera?” Charlie asked.

Thomas fidgeted as he walked the card over.

“Whenever you’re ready,” Charlie said.

“The New York City O.C. unit,” Thomas said. “Organized crime. They saw your opera ticket purchases on your credit card.”

Charlie shook his head. “I don’t get it.”

“You beat up a mobster, Mr. Pellecchia. An arrogant one. I think the New York police got a kick out of it. They put a name to it, not me. They’re the ones calling you ‘Charlie Opera.’”

“Great,” Charlie said.

“You’ll be a legend with the organized crime guys.”

“Whether I want it or not.”

“Whatever. Look, Mr. Pellecchia, the New York task force also knew that Nicholas Cuccia would make a move on you for breaking his jaw.”

“And they didn’t do a thing to stop it,” Charlie said. “They allowed me and my wife to wiggle on a hook like bait. If you’re trying to endear me to your cause, you’re doing a lousy job.”

“It’s not like that.”

“Where’s he staying?” Charlie asked.

“You don’t want to go there. Forget it.”

“Let’s put it this way,” Charlie said. “I don’t like to wiggle.”

The last time Charlie saw John Denton was after his wife had confessed her affair two years earlier. His wife’s admission back then had devastated him. It was an emotional upheaval Charlie wasn’t prepared for.

His first reaction back then was to stalk Denton the following day. His wife’s lover had been in New York on a business trip. Charlie found him leaving The Palm Too steak house. He approached the attorney while Denton attempted to hail a taxi on Second Avenue.

“You know who I am?” Charlie had asked.

Denton stuttered a few times before he could answer. “Yes,” he finally said. “I know you. I know who you are.”

“Good. You and Lisa decide what you want to do and do it. But I don’t want it in my face. Keep it out of my house and off of my telephone. Understand?”

“Yes. Of course. Sure.”

Charlie had wanted to hit his wife’s lover, but he didn’t. He pointed to a taxi on the next block instead. “Why don’t you get yourself a cab before I shove you in front of one,” he had said.

Ten minutes after his first encounter with Denton, Charlie felt stupid for what he had said. It had been a reaction of jealousy and anger he couldn’t control.

Now he was about to meet with Denton a second time. He wasn’t sure how he would react. He was nervous as he walked the length of the hospital hallway.

Before Charlie could think about it anymore, Denton was standing outside the room. Neither man offered the other a handshake.

“How is she?” Charlie asked.

“Bad. They knocked out a tooth. The dentist pulled another two. She’ll need a bridge.”

“Can I see her?”

“She’s in recovery.”

“Did she tell the police anything?”

“Nothing. She’s afraid. She’s very afraid. For you, too.”

Charlie let an uncomfortable moment pass. “There was an agent came to see me today,” he said.

“FBI?”

“DEA. Did he come here?”

“Not yet.”

It was an awkward moment for both of them. Finally Denton said, “I’m sorry.”

Charlie ignored the apology. “Tell her to give me a call when she can talk,” he said.

“I’ll give you three hundred,” Vincent Lano told the gun dealer. He was pointing at a Smith & Wesson .380 on the display table.

The gun dealer, a fat, middle-aged man with a heavy beard, took a deep breath. “I can’t give it to you with bullets for that price,” he said.

“That’s okay,” Lano said. “I’m not done yet.”

He added a Beretta 9mm and a used .38 snub-nosed revolver. The snub-nose was the same type of weapon Lano had made his first hit with thirty-one years ago.