Charlie Opera

Chapter 19

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.

He had booked himself a room at a motel just outside of Las Vegas. He spent most of his first day in broken sleep and gazing out the window at the mountains. When he finally slept soundly, Lano had dreamed about his death.

He had the five thousand dollars he stole from Cuccia plus the fifteen hundred he had originally brought to Las Vegas. He guessed he had enough money to live in the desert at least another month.

Except now he was no longer sure he wanted to live another month.

When he saw the advertisement for a local gun show, Lano decided it was an omen. He would use some of the money to purchase a few weapons. Then he would spend another night at the motel on the edge of the desert. If his lungs permitted, he thought he might even get drunk.

When he was finished picking out his handguns, the gun dealer said, “Is there anything else I can interest you in?”

Lano looked up and down the rows of tables. The gun show was being held inside the tennis bubble of a local high school. He saw everything from assault weapons to swords on the tables. He saw military camouflage outfits, army boots, parachutes and catalogs for missile launchers. He wondered what the hell anybody would do with a missile launcher.

He pointed at one on the cover of a military catalog. “Who buys those things?”

“Tell you the truth, I don’t know,” the gun dealer said. “Except we’re supposed to report it when somebody asks for one.”

Lano was curious. “Ever sell one?”

The gun dealer shook his head. “Not a missile launcher, no.” He leaned across the table to whisper. “Grenades, yes. A few. A few mines, too. Claymores, I sold two of those. But never a missile launcher.”

Lano smiled at the gun dealer. “Grenades?”

Francone joined Cuccia by the windows looking out over the pool. Both men leaned against the glass to better view the women lounging around the pool. Cuccia used binoculars.

“You believe the protocol?” he asked Francone. “They send me a fuckin’ mouthpiece instead of one of our own.”

“That guy, Fein, right? Yeah, I didn’t like him either. He seemed like a real smart-ass, you know. Like he was better than me.”

Cuccia followed a short woman in a pink thong bikini as she walked behind the far end of the pool with a drink in her hand. “All Fein wanted was his five grand,” Cuccia said. “My uncle said the guy running things out here don’t come out of his hole. Lives like a hermit to stay off the cameras. Pro’bly has guys like Fein to run his business errands.”

“You do what you gotta do,” Francone said.

Cuccia pulled the binoculars away from his face. “Speaking of which,” he said. “This guy, Fein… he ever do what I just give him five grand to do? Except for that single fuckin’ tooth, I don’t have a clue why I paid him.”

“Everything went fine. Except for Lano. The Pellecchia broad was where they told us she went. The guy broke your jaw they served up on a dish. Fein was the one brought the guy over to us at the construction site.”

“So they did the right thing?”

“Vinnie took off with their money,” Francone said. “It was wrong. Besides the other shit he said and did.”

Cuccia rubbed at his crotch as he watched another woman in a tinbikini giggling in the shallow end of the pool. Three men surrounded her. “Fuckin’ waste, you ask me,” he said, peering through the binoculars again. “Imagine having all this trim around and all you can do is lay low? Forget about it. I’ll take my fuckin’ chances. There’s no way I ignore this, I’m a skipper out here.”

Francone noticed the time. “What do we do about Lano?”

Cuccia was watching the short woman in the pink thong again. She was leaning forward. Her breasts were perfect balls of flesh beneath the thin pink top. He rubbed his crotch a second time.

“Jesus Christ,” he said. “The talent parading around this place would make me crazy, I lived here.” He turned to face Francone. “What about Lano?”

“The guy’s a pain in the ass. We should whack him. We shoulda whacked him as soon as you got upped.”

“What happened?” Cuccia asked again, annoyed he had to repeat the question.

“First of all, he wanted me to fugazy a tooth for you. He wanted me to go to a fuckin’ dentist, you can believe it. He thought we were goin’ too far goin’ after the broad. Everything we did was goin’ too far for Lano.”

“He said that?”

“He said a lotta things, boss. A lotta things.”

Cuccia held his best angry stare. He had practiced the stare in mirrors for years before being made.

“Subversive?” he asked.

Francone scratched his chin unconsciously before looking away. “All negative,” he said. “Yeah, like I said back in New York. He ain’t takin’ to the changes.”

“Don’t beep him no more.”

“What’s the use? I stopped since last night. He’s either gone or dead from those cigarettes he smokes all day and night.”

“If he ain’t dead, he will be. That’s yours. Soon as we locate him, get our money back, you can take him out.”

Francone grinned.

“I may have something else for you,” Cuccia continued. He watched as a tall blonde man joined the woman in the pink thong. “Tony Rizzi is coming out to join us. He thinks he’s ready to make his bones. I think he’s starting to pull back on his money. If I don’t read where this cocksucker Pellecchia is found dead by tomorrow morning, maybe you take Rizzi and take care of everything before we leave.”

Francone looked puzzled. “Rizzi?”

Cuccia frowned through the pain in his jaw. A large man blocked his view of the woman he was watching. “You set Rizzi up. You make him feel good about himself. Like he’s in, you know. Bring him along, pump him up. Then you can whack Rizzi when we get back to New York. He’s starting to hold back his cash anyway. What good is he without that? We’re better off we get rid of him instead of squeeze him. We squeeze him, he might talk. He was a score. The score’s over. We’ll see what he brings out here with him. You bring him with you to get Pellecchia. Let him do it, you think he’s got the balls, except I wouldn’t count on it.”

Cuccia wiped drool from the corners of his mouth. “Hey, you pull it off, this Pellecchia prick and Rizzi when we get back home, I’ll bring it to my uncle. I’ll see I can’t get you made without waiting around the rest of your life.”

A smile crossed Francone’s face. Cuccia shot him a wink before he looked down at the pool again. The big man had moved. Cuccia could see the woman in the pink thong again.

“The things I could do with that,”he said.

Francone scouted the men at the pool for muscle competition. He focused on one guy who was huge. “Steroid freak,” he said.

“Huh?”

“The guy down there. He’s juiced.”

Cuccia furrowed his eyebrows. “Oh, Joey, you got nothin’ better to look at down there?”