Charlie Opera

Chapter 4

“I can’t believe I’m sitting here,” Vincent Lano said. He lit a Marlboro cigarette, coughed violently after inhaling, and rubbed his eyes to keep them from tearing.

“You think maybe it’s time you quit?” Joey Francone asked. He was nearly half Lano’s age at twenty-five. He was dressed in skintight black pants, a black T-shirt, and black shoes. His huge arms bulged under his tight shirt.

They were parked at the far end of a minimall lot. Lano had moved the rented Ford Taurus under the shade of a row of trees. It was 110 degrees in the afternoon sun.

“How long they been in there?” Lano asked.

Francone glanced at his gold Rolex. “A long time.”

Lano stretched his neck. “Six fuckin’ hours in a plane and now another six hours in a car,” he said. “And then he’s flyin’ out here. For what?”

“He lost face in front of his crew,” Francone said.

“Because he slapped some broad? Guess what? He should’ve kept his hands in his pockets.”

Francone showed disgust at the comment. “First of all, the guy japped him, okay? Second, the guy broke his jaw. In front of people. He’s gotta make it right.”

Lano turned away from Francone to spit phlegm. “It’s offensive is what it is,” he said. “What it’s become.”

Francone craned his neck to see across the street. He glanced down at his watch. “Almost seven hours now,” he said.

Across the street from the minimall was the motel the two men were watching. They were waiting for a woman to leave the motel. Then they would assault the woman and take one of her front teeth. It was what their boss wanted.

It was also a job that upset Lano. He had never hit a woman in his life. “I guess the joke’s on me,” he said as he took another drag on his cigarette and immediately coughed up more phlegm.

Lano was fifty-two years old and dying from throat cancer. He was diagnosed with the fatal disease shortly before he left New York, but Lano never shared the information. After thirty-four years in the rackets, the aging mobster didn’t want anyone to know.

He was a made member of the Vignieri crime family of New York for more than twenty years. He had made his bones the old-fashioned way, killing his first man on orders by his twenty-first birthday. He had killed three more by his thirtieth birthday.

Now, so many years down the road, confronted by a death he couldn’t avoid, Lano was having second thoughts about the life he had chosen.

Francone, the young wannabe seated next to him in the front of the rented Ford Taurus, waved at the secondhand cigarette smoke. Francone was a close friend of Nicholas Cuccia, another young punk, who had recently become Lano’s new boss. Francone was a neat freak, nonsmoker, bodybuilder, with maybe five assaults, Lano guessed, to his entire mob résumé.

Maybe the kid had a hit under his belt. Lano doubted it.

Too many guys like Francone were next in line to become made men when the mob books opened again. It bothered Lano that punks like the one seated next to him would soon be his equal.

“Least you could do is take a walk with those things,” Francone told Lano. “Gimme a break a few minutes. I’m suffocatin’ over here.”

Francone didn’t like Lano or all of the bitching and moaning he did. He, too, had taken the long red-eye flight from New York to Las Vegas the night before last. He, too, had been sitting in the car all fucking day. To top it off, he was missing back-to-back workouts while the old bastard sitting next to him slowly killed the two of them with his never-ending chain-smoking.

“Fuckin’ kids,” Lano said. He let the driver’s side window all the way down.

Francone shook his head. It was ninety-five degrees in the shade. He had two choices: he could choke to death on cigarette smoke, or he could sweat to death from the heat. He cracked the rear windows to let some more of the smoke escape.

“That guy really put this thing together,” he told Lano.

Lano suppressed another coughing fit. “You make it sound like the Normandy invasion.”

“The what?”

“Forget about it.”

“He could’ve fucked it up,” Francone said. “He got somebody to follow the broad. Who the hell knew she was gonna pull this? Imagine, this guy Pellecchia catches a beating from us and then his wife takes off with another guy?”

It was true. The guy who had arranged everything in Las Vegas, Allen Fein, told them how Charlie Pellecchia’s wife had split on him in the middle of their vacation. One of Fein’s people at Harrah’s had actually seen the note the wife had left her husband.

“Poor bastard,” Lano said.

Francone leered at Lano’s sympathy. “You mean fuckin’ loser.”

Lano tossed one cigarette and lit another. Francone waved his hands wildly in frustration.

“I’m sorry,” Lisa told John Denton. “I can’t again. I feel like shit. I feel terrible.”

She was feeling guilty about how she had left her husband the night before. Now she couldn’t respond to her lover’s touch.

They met at the airport immediately after Lisa had left a note for her husband. They had taken a room at a motel and made love as soon as they were alone. It had been passionate and exhausting. It had been what they both wanted and needed.

They planned to leave for California the next day, but now Lisa couldn’t do it without speaking to her husband first. After leaving him a note, a phone message was out of the question. She wanted to meet Charlie someplace. She needed to talk to him face-to-face.

Denton tried to soothe her tension by rubbing her back. “I understand,” he told her. “It’s okay.”

“When we’re out of Vegas again,” Lisa said as she reached back to hold Denton’s hand.

“We can catch a flight to L.A. anytime,” he said. “I can book one a few hours before we’re ready to leave.”

“I’m sorry,” Lisa said.

Denton leaned Lisa back against his chest as he kissed her hair. “Don’t think about it,” he whispered. “Just relax.”

She lay back slowly against her lover’s chest. She closed her eyes as he kissed her hair again. She felt his hands gliding over her shoulders and down her arms. She felt his fingertips on her stomach. She felt his kiss on her neck as his hands reached for her breasts.

Lano was leaning against the door of the Ford Taurus as he smoked a cigarette outside the car. It was easier than listening to the piss-ant pretty boy complaining about it inside the car. He heard the passenger door open and slam shut, but he didn’t turn around to acknowledge Francone.

“Maybe I should just knock on the door and get it over with,” Francone said.

Lano took a drag on his cigarette, coughed a few times, and dropped the butt on the parking lot pavement. “You really gonna hit that broad?”

Francone scratched at his chin. ar. It wae of many annoying mannerisms the pretty boy had that turned Lano’s stomach. Francone scratched his chin as if he were about to perform brain surgery whenever he had to give something any thought. As if this situation required thought. The punk was about to assault a woman.

“Forget the tooth,” Lano said. He pointed to an ice cream truck at the other end of the parking lot. “I say you get yourself an ice cream cone and we call it a day.”

Francone finally stopped scratching his chin. He looked around himself and shrugged. “That’s what he said to do. He was very specific. He said knock out a tooth. The boss wants to see a tooth.”

Lano rubbed his temples. “You think maybe we should move the car first?” he asked sarcastically. “You know, just in case somebody notices you hit a broad, knock out her teeth, then stroll back to this car, get in, and drive away. You know, just so they can’t write down the license number.”

Francone responded with his own version of sarcasm. “Why don’t you handle the security on this, okay? I’ll take care of the broad. You go get yourself an ice cream. You make it back in time, maybe you can hold off the boyfriend. If it doesn’t offend you, I mean.”

Lano shook his head. “You ever think maybe you’re saving your boss a big headache coming up with a better solution?”

Francone was stumped. “Better solution like what?” he asked.

“Like we find a fuckin’ dentist give us a tooth and bring that to your boss,” Lano said. He refused to acknowledge that Nicholas Cuccia was his boss, too.

Francone used both hands to wave the suggestion off. “Are you kidding me? Nicky said come back with a tooth from her mouth. Now he’s flyin’ out here to meet us and you wanna try and fugazy a tooth? What happens he wants to see the broad himself?”

Lano was rubbing his temples again. Where the fuck did they find assholes like this? He was almost glad he was dying so he wouldn’t have to deal with them anymore.

“We’re already under the radar on this,” Lano said.

“Under the radar how?”

“You really think the old man, Tony Cuccia, you think he’s behind this bullshit? He’s been around too long to know better. Bustin’ up a guy is one thing. Even though the guy didn’t deserve it, he caught a beatin’, big fuckin’ deal. But a broad? You wanna crack some broad in the mouth for a tooth because she slapped you one in the face because you grabbed her ass in front of a hundred people?” Lano stopped to cough. “Bullshit,” he added. “It’s wrong. It’s worse than wrong. It’s stupid. This is the kind of thing makes us all look like shit.”

Francone wanted to strangle the old bastard. Where the fuck did he come off talking about a skipper like that? This was what was ruining the mob, he thought, old-timers who were passed up for promotions and couldn’t adjust. The old prick was talking subversive. If Lano had talked like that back in New York, they wouldn’t have to wait for the cigarettes to kill him.

“So what are you tellin’ me, Vinny? You’re not gonna go through with this thing? Or you’re gonna rat me out if we get caught?”

“Fuck you, sonny,” Lano said. “I’m not hittin’ no broad, and I won’t even dignify your other remark. And, tell you the truth, you ever make another remark like that to me again, about ratting anybody, I’ll shove one a my fists down your throat and pull out your clean fuckin’ lungs for myself. You got that?”

Francone had tony train himself. He thought better of the situation. They had a job to do. He could tell Nicholas Cuccia about Lano’s subversive remarks the next day. Maybe the boss would give Francone the contract to whack Lano. After all the secondary smoke he had ingested today, Francone would whack Lano for the pleasure.

“Oh, you hear me or not?” Lano asked.

Francone forced a smile. “Yeah,” he said. “I heard you.”

She let Denton relax her into having sex with him. It was easy once she was calm again. It was as good as it had always been between them.

Denton rested peacefully beside Lisa as some of the guilt she was feeling seemed to fade. She lit a cigarette as she moved from the bed to a chair near the window. She pushed back the curtain and looked across the small parking lot. Except for a few cars, the lot was empty. She looked across the street into the minimall parking lot and saw an ice cream truck. She thought about having a milk shake.

There was a sudden knock on the motel door as she reached for her purse. She pushed back the curtain again and saw two men standing at the door. The younger one, although he stood in the shade, looked vaguely familiar. Lisa answered the second knock before it woke Denton.