Charlie Opera

Chapter 44

Agent Thomas didn’t know what to expect as he searched Cuccia’s suite at the Bellagio. He was assuming he’d find Charlie Pellecchia’s body in one of the closets or maybe inside the shower or the tub. Unless they had already cut Pellecchia up and were taking him out of the Bellagio a plastic bag at a time.

When he didn’t find a body, Thomas scanned the floor from the doorway. The bloodstains were trailing exactly the way hotel security had described them. One trail headed toward the bathroom. The other trail led back to the door. Thomas stepped back out into the hallway and kneeled to check the rug for more blood.

“Fuck,” he said when he spotted the stains. He stood up and started for the elevators.

“Where to now?” the hotel security supervisor asked.

“He has two friends on another floor,” Thomas said. “Francone and Lano.”

As he drove north on the Strip toward the desert, Vincent Lano thought about what might have been.

His remorse was palpable. Las Vegas had become Lano’s final act of contrition. He had lived his entire life in the service of other men whose self-interest had always preceded his own. He had robbed, assaulted, killed, and spent seven years of his life in prison for those men.

He had been a good soldier in an army he was no longer proud to be associated with. He hadcome to Las Vegas on orders to do something he knew was wrong.

When he was far enough out in the desert, Lano pulled the car off the highway.

He lit a cigarette and set the grenade on the dashboard as he watched the traffic pass behind him in the rearview mirror. He wasn’t sure whether the pictures he had left at the Bellagio would ever find their way back to his New York crew. He liked to believe they would. He liked to believe that Cuccia and Francone would be executed for the embarrassment they had brought on their crime family. He liked to believe something good would come from what had happened in Las Vegas.

Lano was nearly finished with his cigarette when he pulled the pin on the grenade. He dropped the explosive over his right shoulder into the back of the car and took his time inhaling a last drag on the cigarette. He coughed, and the grenade exploded.

When Anthony Rizzi finally awoke, he was cold and groggy. He shivered as he pushed himself off the bed and searched for signs of the woman he had brought up to his room. She was an Oriental woman, he remembered, a real looker.

He half-dressed in the bathroom as he tried to remember what had happened. He could see her face. He could still smell her. He checked his watch for the time and suddenly realized what had happened.

His Rolex was missing from his wrist. Rizzi slapped at his pants pockets for his wallet, but it was gone, too. He started going through drawers when he noticed his room had been tossed.

“Fuck!” he yelled.

He went through the room trying to take an inventory of what was stolen. He opened the closet door and found that his suitcase was already opened. He checked to see if the gold chains and gold Movado watch were in the zippered pocket inside the flap of the suitcase. He cursed again when he saw they also were missing.

He started to phone the front desk but stopped as he realized his predicament. How was he supposed to tell anyone about this? He had brought a hooker up to his room and was rolled for all his cash, credit cards, and jewelry. A quick estimate brought the figure to more than twenty thousand dollars.

Rizzi remembered why he was there, and it gave him an uneasy feeling. His relationship with Nicholas Cuccia had once offered the respect he had always assumed most men craved. The power over life and death was an ultimate power. Becoming a made man in a New York crime family would have reasserted his manhood in a way no one could ever deny or defy.

Except now his stomach was nervous from the thought of Nicholas Cuccia. Rizzi had been told that Las Vegas was where he would be tested as a man. He had been told that if he did what was expected of him, he would go home a made man.

Now the thought terrified him. Rizzi wanted out.