Charlie Opera

Chapter 67

“I feel like a wife-beater,” Denton whispered.

Lisa leaned against his shoulder as the jet taxied slowly on the runway. She held a paper napkin up to cover her facial bruises as a stewardess passed in the aisle.

“I feel like a bandit,” she said.

“You look like one.”

The federal agents had let them go a few hours after news of Nicholas Cuccia’s death was public. They planned to spend a week relaxing in California. Then Lisa would have to call Charlie and start the process of getting a divorce. Denton was anxious to start their lives together. When the jet left the ground, he turned to kiss Lisa on the forehead.

“Finally,” he said.

“Don’t jinx it.”

Denton took her right hand and set it on his lap. “Jinx this,” he said.

Lisa turned to him with a surprised smile on her face. “Why, counselor,” she said.

“Shut up and give me a kiss.”

“Shut up and give you a kiss?”

He winked at her. “I’ve been hanging around gangsters the past few days.”

“Me, too,” she said. She kissed Denton from one side of her mouth.

“That was weird,” he said.

“Tell me about it,” she said.

They held each other’s hand as the jet climbed. They closed their eyes from exhaustion. They were both asleep when the jet finally leveled.

The first person Agent Marshall Thomas saw when he awoke from his coma was his wife. Her image was blurred. He heard her say that she loved him. He heard her crying.

He was out of the coma just under forty minutes. He tried but couldn’t move his arms. He wanted to sit up. He wanted to see without the blurring.

Thomas wasn’t sure what had happened to him. He couldn’t remember.

He watched as a nurse adjusted one of the intravenous tubes hanging from a stand. He felt sleepy again as the blur of a white uniform passed in front of him. He looked for his wife again. He saw that she was holding his hand. He closed his eyes as the touch of her hand registered somewhere in his brain.

When Beau Curitan’s body was found, it was by a pair of coyotes on the Arizona side of the Black Mountains. The coyotes had sniffed the flesh through the hastily made grave covered with dried sticks and branches. The blood from Beau’s fresh bullet wounds filled the air with his smell for the predators.

Beau had been shot twice in the back of the head. The coyotes licked at the blood from the bullet wounds first, but Beau’s skull impeded their feast. They pulled at his arms and legs until his body turned to one side. The coyotes found the softer flesh of Beau’s stomach and ate through it until they tasted his intestines. Then the coyotes growled at one another over pecking order.