Charlie Opera Page 12

  “The other one?” Freni asked.

  “This mameluke from New York,” Lercasi said as he removed his thumb. “The one causing all these problems bringing his personal shit out here.”

  “I met with him already,” Freni said. “He’s got a wired jaw, what it’s all about.”

  Lercasi scratched his head. “He’s a real jerk-off, I know. But he’s also your friend’s nephew.”

  Freni shook his head. “Not a problem. I live out here now.”

  “Good,” Lercasi said. “Because home-field advantage can make all the difference in the world.”

  Freni used a match to burn the napkin in an ashtray. He waited until the ashes were black before he emptied them onto the floor and scattered them with his right foot.

  “Okay,” Lercasi said. “It was good talking.”

  Chapter 25

  When Carol felt the knots in her stomach again, she was sure her husband was close. She studied the faces of every patron who walked through the door. She scanned the parking lot and as much of the street as she could see from the front door. When the manager yelled at her for leaving her station, Carol told him she was sick and needed to leave early.

  “Excuse me?” the manager said. “What the hell do you think this is, lady? Leave early and don’t bother coming back.”

  “Okay,” Carol said as she headed for the small locker room.

  “Okay what?” the manager asked.

  “I won’t come back,” Carol said.

  Abe Gold glanced at the organized crime report Albert Iandolli had prepared for him. Iandolli was on his knees, patting down fresh soil for a flowerbed alongside his driveway. His wife and two kids were in the backyard, having lunch

  He motioned toward his yard. “If you’re hungry, Angie just cooked some franks,” he said.

  Gold looked away from the report. “No, thanks. I grabbed something on the way over.”

  Gold admired the house from the driveway. Iandolli had just finished painting a few weeks earlier. It was a light blue ranch on a quarter acre of neatly groomed land. The driveway was paved. A white wood fence surrounded the lot. It was a house Gold had always pictured himself living in.

  “The place looks good,” Gold said.

  Iandolli stood up from his knees. “Thanks,” he said. He slapped dirt off his pants. “I’m too old for this.”

  Gold scanned a fax copy of a New York organized crime attachment. It provided details and comments about Nicholas Cuccia’s criminal record. A list of bookmaking charges starting from when Cuccia was twenty-two years old made up the bulk of the sheet. There was a separate notation about a two-year jail sentence for loan-sharking when Cuccia was in his late twenties.

  He was arrested, but not convicted, a total of fourteen more times. The arrests included assaults and bookmaking exclusively. A special notation suggested the year it was believed Cuccia became a made member of the Vignieri crime family, 1992.

  The report also provided the following personal notation:

  Cuccia is married with no children. He has two known steady girlfriends. He frequents known prostitutes and uses escort services. Kinky sex? His hangouts include Scores and Pure Plantinum, two expensive strip clubs in New York. Confirmed cocaine and alcohol use.

  Gold wondered why the kinky sex notation was followed with a question mark.

  The rest of the report was commentary concerning Cuccia’s illegal businesses. He was alleged to operate a large bookmaking office in New York run by lower-level associates. His latest business ventures included Internet pornography and offshore gambling.

  “Lano and Francone are the two guys came in ahead of Cuccia,” Iandolli said. He washed his hands with a garden hose. “Two days ahead out of Newark. We can thank the DEA for their names. Otherwise we’d have fifteen names to pick from.”

  On the last page of the report, Gold saw a name circled. The notation read: Anthony Rizzi coming to Vegas.

  “This Anthony Rizzi is coming in when?” Gold asked.

  “This morning, later tonight, early tomorrow morning. America West out of Kennedy. An overnight. He changed the flight twice already.”

  “What’s that about?”

  “Anthony Rizzi. A guy with so much money he got bored and bought his way into the mob as an associate. It doesn’t say it on there, but I spoke to an O.C. guy in New York. They think Rizzi’s coming here to make his bones. Maybe to whack Lano or to be a part of whacking Lano.” Iandolli chuckled. “The thing is, this Lano, the guy they think is getting whacked, was diagnosed with terminal throat cancer. His partners in crime don’t know it, but O.C. does. His doctor gave him a few months.”

  Gold looked confused. “Maybe they wanna put him out of his misery.”

  Iandolli shook his head. “Lano’s a mustache to these kids,” he said. “They’re purging the old mobsters for morons like this Rizzi character, clowns who have nothing better to do with million-dollar businesses besides trying to act like tough guys.”

  “So this Rizzi guy isn’t a real mobster then.”

  “New York calls him ‘The Crier,’” Iandolli said. “They fucked with him one night, sent one of teir guys to test his balls, man to man. An undercover cop cut him off on a street outside one of his warehouses or some shit. Rizzi cried, he was so scared. Their guy pinned him against his Mercedes, and Rizzi sprouted tears like a fountain. They nicknamed him ‘The Crier.’ Imagine having a mob name like that?”

  Gold was still confused. “So what makes them think they’re sending this Rizzi here to whack this other guy?”

  “They’re bleeding Rizzi for his business. They get a sucker like this on the line and they make him feel like a gangster until he’s dry. They let him play with the big boys until they don’t need him anymore. Then they cut him loose or whack him. It happens here, too. Happens anywhere there’s a mob and suckers with money and no life. They find these guys like Rizzi and clean them out. New York thinks Cuccia is setting Rizzi up. He comes out to Vegas to supposedly make his bones and they wind up killing two birds with one stone.”

  “Lano and Rizzi,” Gold said.

  “Sooner or later.”

  “This guy Rizzi is worth that much?”

  “Ten million or so, what his business is worth,” Iandolli said. “His wife dumped him for another woman. New York thinks he’s trying to be a tough guy ever since. He’s buying his button into the mob, and these guys are more than happy to sell it to him. Ten million to these guys is like owning Microsoft.”

  “That’s an expensive button, ten million,” Gold said.

  “The money should be the least of his problems,” Iandolli said. “Once they have that, they won’t need him.”

  Anthony Rizzi checked in at the registration desk at Caesar’s Palace a few minutes after noon. Now he was exhausted. He was having conflicting feelings the past few nights about his adopted lifestyle. Rizzi needed a drink.

  He rubbed the sleep from his eyes as his bags were wheeled on a cart being pulled by a valet. He followed the valet through the casino to a long marble hallway with high-priced stores on either side. He noticed the number of Asian women in the walkways and wondered if he might lure one into his bed before he left Las Vegas.

  He left several messages with the front desk at the Bellagio for both Nicholas Cuccia and Joey Francone. He spent the next ten minutes dressing. He spent the following twenty minutes combing his hair. It lay in a perfect left-to-right swirl, covering the large bald spot on the top of his head.

  He was a short, fat man with very light skin, puffy cheeks, and dark blue eyes. His mother was German-Irish. His father was Dutch-Italian. He had concocted a long, involved story about his last name. Mostly, he denied his mother’s side of the family and his father’s Dutch mother.

  After painstakingly grooming himself, Rizzi spent the next hour on the Cleopatra Barge with a tall Asian prostitute who called herself Niko. He had spotted her and another prostitute, a tall blonde in a red-sequin dress, earlier. Both women had propositioned h
im as a team, but Rizzi told the blonde he could only handle one at a time today and that he was kind of looking forward to an Asian broad because it had always been a fantasy of his to “eat a noodle.”

  The prostitutes had both giggled while they huddled a few seconds before breaking up. The blonde left Rizzi to negotiate with his fantasy date.

  “Let’s just say I’m a businessman,” he told the prostitute when she asked what he did for a living.

  “What kind of business?” Niko asked. She had a slight Asian accent. She was swirling a plastic straw in her white wine spritzer. She licked at the straw just before Rizzi answered h question.

  “Little of this and a little of that,” he told her.

  “You sound very mysterious to me,” she said. She sipped her spritzer carefully. She set the glass back down on the napkin as she sat back in her chair.

  The cleavage showing from her low-cut blouse caught Rizzi’s eye. “You’re a very beautiful woman,” he told her.

  “Sank you. Also very espensive.”

  “I’ll bet,” he said as he took a sip of Absolut.

  He figured Niko was worth five hundred for the night, but he’d go as high as seven-fifty.

  “You ever stay here before?” he asked.

  “Overnight? Yes, of course.”

  “Do you have a change of clothes?”

  “No, silly. That would be your present to me.”

  “That depends on where you buy them.”

  “Gift store,” she said. “Sweatshirt, T-shirt. I have underwear in my purse.”

  Rizzi gave a quick glance at the purse on her lap. “In your purse, huh?” he asked. “What else you got in there?”

  “Condoms,” Niko said. “Lipstick. Advil. K-Y Jelly. Tums. I have sensitive tummy.”

  “Ah, so you swallow.”

  The prostitute suppressed a giggle. “If you are generous,” she said. “Yes, I do that.”

  Chapter 26

  The guy at the hospital told John Denton he could go to the police or to the woman’s husband or he could forget the whole thing. The guy had given him the information. It was up to Denton to decide what to do next. The guy had said his name was Vincent Lano. He was the same man who had held the gun on Denton at the motel. He had told Denton that he was ashamed of what he had participated in. He apologized for what had happened to Lisa.

  Denton had frowned at the man. His apology wouldn’t change anything.

  Now he was struggling with the information he possessed. Lisa deserved to know what was going on. So did her husband. So did the Las Vegas police.

  Denton couldn’t talk to Lisa in the condition she was in. He didn’t want to talk to her husband, and he was afraid to talk to the police. The fact that he was an attorney and was legally bound to report a crime made the problem all the more daunting.

  Because the mob was involved, Denton avoided calling the police. He decided to talk with Charlie first.

  He called Harrah’s and was disappointed when nobody picked up. He left a message on voice mail:

  Charlie, this is John. I’m at Valley Hospital with Lisa. A man came here today with information about what happened to you and Lisa. He gave me the names of the people responsible. I’ll wait for your call. I’m not sure if I should call the police. I don’t know if calling the police will make it more dangerous for Lisa. Please get back to me as soon as possible.

  He added the bit about it possibly being more dangerous for Lisa if he called the police to protect himself.

  Then he felt guilty for worrying about his own problems while Lisa lay in a hospital bed on painkillers with a mouth full of stitches.

  Then John Denton thought better of everything and called the police anyway. He asked to speak to a Detective Abe Gold.

  Gina Iandolli suddenly appeared at the far end of the driveway. She stood at the gate of the fence blocking off the yard. She was a short, thin woman with long, dark hair. She wore a light blue housedress and white sneakers.

  “You gu want something to eat?” she yelled. “I’m about to turn the grill off.”

  Gold waved to Gina from the driveway. “I have to run. Thanks anyway.”

  Gina waved back and disappeared behind the house.

  Gold pointed toward the yard. “You’re a lucky man,” he told Iandolli.

  “I know,” Iandolli said.

  Gold folded the report and started to stuff it inside his jacket pocket. “It’s all right I hold on to these?”

  “I don’t know how much it’ll help. In the meantime, I stopped by to rouse Jerry Lercasi.”

  “You think there’s a chance Lercasi okayed this thing at the Palermo?”

  “No way. That was an end run, if it had anything to do with his crew at all.”

  “Think you’ll ever know for sure?”

  Iandolli nodded. “Sure,” he said. “If another Benny Bensognio turns up the next few weeks, we’ll know. Lercasi has a nasty habit of killing people who fuck with him.”

  “You ask around about Gentry? The kid I told you about with the marital problems?”

  “Yeah. And it ain’t good.”

  Gold’s face tightened. “This gonna hurt?”

  “I’ll know more in about half an hour, you want to stick around. Otherwise, I suggest you find your way to this apartment they gave me.” He pulled his wallet from his front pocket and sifted through the papers stuffed inside for an address. He showed Gold. “Park down the street from this address and wait for me.”

  “What’s it about?”

  “Her boyfriend,” Iandolli said. “The one Mrs. Gentry is playing around with, Officer Wilkes. The kid is dirty.”

  Gold slumped where he stood. “I already spoke to him.”

  Iandolli put a hand on Gold’s shoulder. “Internal Affairs knows all about the affair,” he said. “Gentry’s wife was picking up envelopes.”

  Gold cursed through his clenched teeth.

  Joey Francone managed to find a hooker who was cruising the casino. She was a tall blonde he guessed was in her late twenties. She wore a tight-fitting, red-sequin dress.

  She was playing the dollar slots, a dollar at a time, when he first met her. She smiled at him when he stopped to look her over. She said hello to Francone, then smirked as soon as he asked her if she was a “whoah.”

  Francone negotiated with her outside the hotel entrance. They both faced the giant pond with the high-tech fountains. Beyond the fountains and the pond, the traffic on Las Vegas Boulevard was heavy.

  “You know what a strap is?” Francone asked.

  The hooker held her cigarette out for him to light. He frowned as he fished his front pants pocket for a book of matches. Francone hated smoking. Carrying matches was a prerequisite to hanging around wiseguys. Wannabes waiting to move up had to light their cigarettes.

  He held the match to the end of the hooker’s cigarette and waited again for an answer as she took her time inhaling.

  “Do you know what a strap is?” he repeated.

  “A strap-on. Sure. For a dildo, right?”

  “I have no fucking idea. You think this shit is for me?”

  The hooker’s eyebrows rose. “Who’s it for, then?”

  “A friend.”

  “A friend?”

  “A friend, yeah. A friend.”

  The hooker wet her lips before taking a long dra on her cigarette. “Well, tell your friend it’ll cost him five hundred an hour without the strap-on act. The dildo-up-the-ass routine will cost him more.”

  Francone laughed as he held both hands up. “Oh, oh, oh,” he said. “I just need you to buy the fucking thing, not jam it up his ass. Besides, I think he’s the type would wanna do the jammin’, honey, not the other way around.”

  The hooker smirked at Francone before looking him off. “You really think that, huh?”

  “Forget about it,” Francone said, somewhat less sure of himself then. “What do you want to buy the thing? Just to buy it.”

  The hooker sucked hard on her cigarette. “
Two hundred,” she said. “Plus the cost, about another fifty. At least another fifty. Maybe more. You don’t want something that might break. Not on your friend.”

  Francone waved his hands. “Are you fuckin’ nuts? You want two hundred bucks to walk into a store and buy something with my fuckin’ money?”

  “Two hundred,” she said. “Or your friend can try sitting on his own dick.”

  “It ain’t for him to sit on!” Francone nearly yelled.

  The hooker took another drag on her cigarette. “Then what’s it for, hon?”

  Francone scratched at his chin. “Just give me a price,” he said after a while.

  “Two hundred,” she repeated. “The time it will take me to go get it, I could make a lot more than two hundred bucks, honey. We’re talking about at least an hour of my time, and I already told you what that’ll cost. I’m not cheap.”

  Francone counted ten twenty-dollar bills from his money clip. “Fuckin’ robbery,” he said. “You’re a thief is what you are.”

  The hooker took the money and pointed to the cab stand line. “We’ll need one of those, sport. Unless you trust me to meet you back here.”

  “Let’s go,” Francone said as he placed a hand on her back to guide her. “I trust you about as far as I can throw you.”

  The hooker winked at him. “You’re a smart one, all right.”

  Chapter 27

  Cuccia spotted the blonde with the perfect ass and the nasty attitude through his binoculars. She was lying on her stomach on a lounge near the Jacuzzis. The tall black man sat up beside her. Cuccia could see the black man pouring lotion into one of his hands.

  Cuccia had just taken a long, hot shower. He was wearing a complimentary terry-cloth hotel robe. He leaned against the windows and focused on the crack of the blonde’s ass through the binoculars. The thin white strap of her thong disappeared in the crevice. It excited Cuccia. He reached inside his robe to masturbate.

  When he finished, Cuccia washed himself off again in the shower. He had some time before Francone would return with a hooker. Cuccia was anxious to see what Francone would bring him. He was hoping for a blonde.