Charlie Opera (7 page)

Lercasi leaned over to crush out his cigarette in an ashtray on the night table. “Hey, Brenda,” he said. “Don’t break my balls this morning, all right?”

Brenda stopped at the door to turn around and give Lercasi the finger. He broke out laughing.

Twenty minutes later, Allen Fein sat on the couch in the private apartment above the gym while Lercasi combed his hair in front of the floor-to-ceiling mirror behind the bar. The accountant was fidgety on the couch. He examined a pair of crystal dice on a glass coffee table. He seemed nervous waiting for Lercasi’s attention.

“How was Laughlin?” Lercasi asked.

“Huh?” Fein said. He dropped one of the crystal dice into his lap. “Oh, all right. I’m thinking of buying a condo there.”

Lercasi stopped to look at his accountant in the mirror. “You pay those kids you fucked last night?”

“Of course.”

Lercasi finished combing his hair. He turned to Fein as he struck a match to light a cigarette.

“I need a party tonight,” he said, with the unlit cigarette dangling from his mouth. He lit the cigarette, took a long drag, and held the smoke inside his lungs a few seconds before letting it escape. “See what the mayor’s doing,” he added. “Or somebody on the City Council. Make it my party. Something public, where it’ll be picked up on the news.”

“Are you bringing your wife?” Fein asked. He set the two crystal dice back on the coffee table.

Lercasi opened his hands. “Am I bringing my wife? What kind of question is that? No, make it public, and I’ll bring Brenda. Of course I’m bringing my wife.”

“Should I know what it’s about?”

“Somebody skimmed thirty-two six last month from one of Gilly’s books. The somebody had a private line installed in one of his places a few months back for dime players. The tap come in last week. Thirty-two six in one month. Who knows how much the first five months before somebody figured it out.”

The accountant swallowed hard. “I see.”

“That’s already taken care of,” Lercasi said. He sat in a black leather recliner across from Fein. “Is it true you’re getting head in my massage rooms downstairs?”

“No,” Fein said defensively. “I don’t need to get my head in the massage rooms.”

“Brenda says you got some private noodle comes in to do you.”

“Not true. Besides, Brenda hates my guts.”

“Because I don’t need that kind of shit blowing up in my face over here. Some broad using my place to give head. You should know better than that.”

“You know what I like, Jerry. I don’t need to get my joint copped in a gymnasium. I like to look, if anything. The worst she does is remove her top. And I don’t know how Brenda would know unless she installed a camera.”

Lercasi smirked. He liked humiliating his accountant. “Just so long as you know what you’re doing,” he said. “After all, you’re my business manager, no?”

“Maybe you should tell Brenda about that,” Fein said, acting offended then.

Lercasi thought about the tuft of tissue between his girlfriend’s legs. “Brenda’s got other things to worry about,” he said. “Go make a party.”

When Fein left Vive la Body, he ignored the contemptuous stare of Lercasi’s girlfriend at the front desk. He was feeling lucky about having a built-in excuse for being in Laughlin the night before. He had avoided a potentially dangerous question-and-answer period with his boss. Had he not made arrangements to screw a couple of teenagers in the whorehouse in Laughlin, his boss might have looked into Fein’s sudden trip to the mountains.

Now his boss had other business for Fein to take care of. One of the bookmakers operating under Lercasi’s gambling business had skimmed money. Fein didn’t know whether the cash amount his boss mentioned was real, nor did he care to know. The bottom line was he was expected to arrange an alibi dinner for his boss tonight.

Which meant the bookmaker who had skimmed the money was going to die. Probably at the same time the party was going on.

Fein knew some of the names of bookmakers and pornographers in Las Vegas, but he didn’t study them. He figured he’d know within the next couple of days which one had robbed money from his boss. It would be all over the local news.

Nicholas Cuccia opened the package that was delivered to his room and held the tooth that was inside up to the light for examination. It was bloodstained above where the root of the tooth was broken. He winced at the thought of the pain a woman might feel from a broken tooth. He touched his jaw with his free hand. There was no way losing her tooth was as painful as his broken jaw.

He had spent most of his morning annoyed. The six-hour flight from Kennedy with the DEA agent the night before was bad enough. When Cuccia first checked into his hotel, he noticed the woman doing his check-in staring at his mouth. Then when he looked at himself in the wall mirror behind the registration desk, he noticed he was drooling.

After watching the local Las Vegas news and glancing through the newspapers, Cuccia knew that Charlie Pellecchia was still alive. If the professional his uncle had contracted to kill Pellecchia did his job, the hit man was keeping it a big secret.

All he had so far was the souvenir from Lisa Pellecchia’s mouth. Cuccia set the tooth on a night table and attempted to smile. He felt a sharp pain in his jaw. He slapped the tiny trophy off the night table and cursed under his breath.

He spent the rest of his morning observing the action around the pool with binoculars. When he was bored watching women take the sun, Cuccia used his cellular telephone to call his uncle back in Brooklyn.

“You call that guy?” he asked.

“Of course, sure,” the old man said.

“Because there’s nothing so far.”

“Oh, one fuckin’ day it’s been.”

“I’m just sayin’. Checkin’, you know.”

“Yeah, well, why don’t you stay off the phone. Go get some trim or somethin’. Call one a them joints out there. It’s legal in Nevada.”

“Right,” Cuccia said. “Maybe I will.”

Which was exactly what he did. He called Pleasure Times escort service and spoke to a man with an effeminate voice. He told the man he wanted two women, one black, one white, for a possible threesome. He expected the women to do a lesbian routine with a double-headed dildo. He expected them to follow his directions.

Then he asked if Pleasure Times knew of anyone he might score some cocaine from. The man with the effeminate voice explained that Pleasure Times was a legitimate escort service, which could not procure drugs of any kind for its clients.

The disclaimer annoyed Cuccia. He told the dispatcher to “just mention the cocaine to one of the girls.” Then he hung up and called the dispatcher a stupid fucking faggot cocksucker.

Later, he played the radio loud as he took a long, hot shower. He wondered how closely the DEA agent would watch him while he was in Las Vegas. He wondered if he would be able to set up his uncle with heroin charges before the mob indictments back in Brooklyn could affect the deal he had made with the government. He wondered if what the DEA had promised him was even possible anymore.

When he finished his shower, Cuccia thought he heard his telephone ringing. He stepped out of the shower and turned off the radio. He saw the message light blinking on the telephone and stepped out of the bathroom. Cuccia wiped his head with a towel as he listened to the messages.

On the first message, Joey Francone reported that Vincent Lano had disappeared the night before. Cuccia scowled as he waited for the second message.

It was Francone again, his voice somewhat more urgent this time. Lano had taken some money with him.

“Shit,” Cuccia said. “What the fuck else can go wrong?”

He listened to the third message and learned what else could go wrong.

“I recognized him,” Lisa said without moving much of her mouth. She was struggling to talk. The stitches inside her mouth were still too fresh to stretch. “He was one of the men in the nightclub.”

John Denton frowned. “What do you want to do?”

“Nothing. If it is the mob, I’m not getting any more involved than I already am.”

“They mugged Charlie, too.”

“Shit. Is he all right?”

“Apparently. The police thought it might have been him who attacked you. That he sent somebody because of how you left him.”

Lisa was shaking her head. “This is all my fault. Everything.”

Denton took one of her hands. “You couldn’t know what was going to happen. And they attacked you, too. Charlie can take care of himself.”

Lisa was feeling her guilt. What else could happen to them? What else could happen to Charlie? It was all because she hadn’t been able to tell him that she wanted out of their marriage.

“The doctors think you should stay here another couple of days,” Denton said. “You may need more surgery.”

Lisa couldn’t think about herself then. She squeezed Denton’s hand and closed her eyes tight.

The girls from Pleasure Times were named Kim and Daria, although Cuccia had no clue as to which one was Kim or which one was Daria. The white girl was a tall, tan natural blonde with a small chest and green eyes. The black girl was short and muscular. Her breasts were too big and round to be real. She had big lips, though. Cuccia loved a woman with big lips.

He had guaranteed their payment on his credit card over the telephone. He advanced them another two hundred dollars each before they changed in the bathroom. When they finally emerged from the bathroom, the white one was wearing a lace lingerie outfit with black garter belts and black high heels. The black girl was dressed in a leopard thong bikini and beige boots. Cuccia liked the look. He took a seat in a chair he positioned in front of the king-sized bed to watch the show.

He guessed the girls had worked together before. They moved through the lesbian routine without him once having to give them directions. There wasn’t a word of discussion between them as they changed positions over and over. Except for his special request for the double-headed dildo routine, Cuccia thought the girls had read his mind.

The special request cost him an extra fifty dollars for each girl, but he was happy to pay it. He was as excited as the cocaine and booze permitted. When the girls finished their routine together, he had them kneel on all fours side by side on the edge of his bed. He went from one to the other, entering them from behind, until he could no longer restrain himself inside of Kim.

Or was it Daria?

The black girl left Cuccia a telephone number for her own personal cocaine connection in Las Vegas. He wrote it down on hotel stationery and slipped her an extra fifty.

When the girls from Pleasure Times were gone, Cuccia poured himself a tall glass of vodka and tonic. He sat back in the same chair he had watched the girls perform from earlier. He used the remote to turn the television set on. He switched channels until he found a local news station.

Earlier, the man hired to kill Charlie Pellecchia had left a message. He wanted to meet. There were complications, he had said. Something had gone wrong, something about a very close call with the police.

Cuccia had no idea what the close call with the police was about, except that it meant two things: Charlie Pellecchia was still alive, and it would cost more money to have him killed.

Cuccia was angry that he would have to renegotiate the price of a hit gone wrong. Because he wanted Pellecchia dead, he would be dealing from a very weak hand.

He waved his own thoughts off as he reached for his drink. He didn’t care what it would cost. Charlie Pellecchia had to die.

The first thing Charlie remembered when he woke up was what the guy who hit him with the pipe had said.

“Remember Decades?”

Charlie wondered if he had relived the incident in his sleep. He felt as if he had. He could see the man with the pipe. He could hear his voice.

The vague familiarity of that voice had bothered him since he was first questioned at the hospital. The man Charlie punched at the New York nightclub had been surrounded with friends. Two of them had tried to get at Charlie but were stopped by bouncers. A few dozen threats had followed. Then there was the one guy who had managed to get up close.

A young, cocky guy, he remembered.

The man with the pipe, he wondered?

“You got no idea who the fuck you just hit,” the cocky guy had said back in the nightclub.

It was a voice full of arrogance and contempt. It was the same voice he had heard two nights ago.

“Remember Decades?”

Charlie licked at his swollen lip. The man with the pipe was the same man from the nightclub back in New York. He had been followed out to Las Vegas.

He thought about Lisa and what had happened to her. He wondered if she told the Las Vegas police what had happened back in New York. He was about to call her when he remembered she was with her lover. He looked at the telephone. The message light was off.

“Fuck it,” Charlie said.

He wondered whether his troubles were over. If it was the mob that had followed him to Las Vegas, was the beating they gave him the night before the end of it, or would there be more?

Might they go all the way and try to kill him?

Charlie decided it was over or he would be dead already.

He checked his eyes in the mirror to see if his bruises were starting to fade. There were two dark streaks of purple under each of his eyes. He put his sunglasses back on.

In a few hours he had a date with a woman he was anxious to spend some time with. He wasn’t sure why, but Samantha Cole had intrigued him. He wasn’t sure if it was because she seemed to try to listen to him while she worked a busy bar, or if it was because he was feeling rejected and lonely and Samantha had seemed interested.

Or maybe it was something more simple, like her smile. He definitely liked her smile.

He wondered if Wet ’n’ Wild was the right place to spend some time with Samantha. His facial bruises were an ugly sight. He was also nervous about wearing a bathing suit. He was still ill at ease about the extra weight he had spotted in the mirror two days ago.

He put shorts on over the baggy bathing trunks his wife had packed for him. He picked a navy tank top to stay cool. He brought a loose-fitting shirt to cover the tank top.