Charlie Opera

Chapter 34

It was a while before Joey Francone awoke from his drug-induced sleep. When he did, Vincent Lano was the first person he saw. Francone’s pupils dilated from the light. His mind was groggy. His speech was slurred.

“Ah-ohhh,” he said, still not aware he was tied. “What the faaaa?”

“Smile,” Lano said.

“What?” Francone said as he struggled to move his arms. He looked around himself a few more times before he realized he was tied. The flash from the camera blinded him.

“What the fuck?” he said as his eyes struggled to refocus.

Lano laid the dildo across the wannabe’s neck for the next picture. Francone struggled to see what it was. Another flash from the camera blinded him a second time.

“What the fuck arrrr ou doin’?”

“Takin’ pictures,” Lano said. He had gone down to the lobby to buy a disposable camera a few minutes after the hooker had left. As soon as Lano saw the strap and dildo, his plans changed. Instead of killing Francone, he decided to take pictures.

He grabbed the dildo by its base and moved it to Francone’s mouth. “Open up,” he said.

The wannabe moved his head to one side. Lano grabbed him by the hair and yanked back until Francone’s mouth opened. Lano jammed the dildo into his mouth. The thick rubber shaft split a corner of the wannabe’s lip. Francone immediately gagged. Lano held the dildo in place with one hand as he took a picture of it with the other. Then he pulled the dildo out as Francone coughed his way out of choking.

“Now,” Lano said, “you wanna position yourself for the next shot, or should I?”

Agent Thomas commandeered a taxi with his badge outside the hotel lobby. He had ordered the driver to run red lights and get him to Harrah’s as fast as possible. They made the drive in just under ten minutes.

Thomas went straight to the security desk inside the casino and flashed his badge a second time. Hotel security was summoned by radio. Ten minutes later, Thomas was inside the room the Pellecchia couple had reserved for their six-night vacation.

The head of hotel security filled Thomas in on the assault that had occurred outside the elevator banks on the same floor earlier. A hotel guest found an Asian teenager sprawled unconscious on the rug. The rug was still stained with blood. Nobody knew what had happened. Security assumed the Asian kid had tried to rob somebody off the elevator. When the kid was finally conscious, the security guard told Thomas, he wasn’t talking.

Thomas couldn’t find anything inside Pellecchia’s hotel room. He called the hotel operator to ask if there was any way to listen to phone messages a guest might have erased.

“Sorry, sir, no,” the operator told him.

Thomas needed to find Cuccia. He needed to get him out of Las Vegas before local law enforcement arrested the New York mobster. The heroin case seemed long lost. Now it was a matter of jurisdiction. If Cuccia managed to kill Pellecchia in Las Vegas, he also might manage to get arrested for the homicide.

Thomas’s race against time had become a sprint.

John Denton had to knock on the door to suite 24-B several times before Charlie opened it. When he was inside the suite, Denton saw a man lying on the floor, unconscious. His mouth was bloody and swollen.

“He didn’t see you yet, &rduo; Charlie told Denton. “So maybe you want to get the hell out of here before he wakes up and does.”

“Is he dead?”

“No. He’s out, though. But I don’t know for how long.”

“What else do you intend to do?”

“Knock one of his teeth out,” Charlie said. “At least one.”