Charlie Opera Read online

  “Then you approached Jennifer Gentry. Internal Affairs didn’t know what it was about. Neither did my guys. You understand what I’m saying? It looked dirty, Abe. Like maybe you and Wilkes and Fein —”

  “Don’t tell me this,” Gold said. “Please don’t tell me this.”

  Iandolli waited.

  “What, there’s more?” Gold asked. “Of course the fuck there is. What else?”

  Iandolli took an extra moment. “You can’t warn Gentry,” he said. “I’m sorry, Abe.”

  “Bullshit.”

  “You can’t.”

  “Bullshit.”

  “Abe?”

  “Why the fuck not?”

  Iandolli needed a distraction. He reached for his coffee cooling off on the dashboard. “Because Internal Affairs and my guys know that you know about Wilkes.”

  Gold shook his head. “Come again? How the fuck do they know that?”

  “Because I had to tell them,” Iandolli said. “I had no choice. It’s why I mentioned it in the first place, about you being on tape with Wilkes and Jennifer Gentry. Internal Affairs and my guys wanted to know why. I had no choice, Abe. I had to tell them.”

  “About me, yeah. I can understand that. But why tell them about Gentry’s old lady? You told them that?”

  “They already knew about the affair. From surveillance on Wilkes. They knew she was seeing Wilkes. They knew about the safe-deposit box.”

  “Fuck me,” Gold said.

  “I had no choice,” Iandolli continued. “Or they wanted to know what you were doing with Wilkes.”

  “And you,” Gold said. “And what I was doing with you?”

  “Right,” Iandolli said without looking at Gold. “So I covered both our asses.”

  Gold opened his window all the way and tossed his coffee into the street in disgust.

  “You’re here watching for Jennifer Gentry,” Iandolli said. “You’re doing another cop a favor. I’m here watching for Allen Fein. I’m doing my job. It’s how I’m selling this thing right now.”

  Gold closed his eyes.

  “You okay?” Iandolli asked.

  “No,” Gold said. “I’m not. Not at all.”

  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.”

  Chapter 35

  Detective Donald Gentry stared at the green-and-white tiles he had installed in his kitchen the year before. They were expensive tiles. His wife had picked them out shortly after they moved into the house.

  Gentry had thought he was building a future with his wife the day he started work on the kitchen. It had been their first project in the new home. They were planning on many more home improvements before they would have children.

  Sometime during the past year, however, things had started to change. Gentry had put in longer hours since his promotion to detective. Jennifer also had started to work longer hours. When she began working weekends, their time together became sparse. The couple drifted apart.

  Sometime during their unspoken problems, Jennifer fell in love with another man.

  At first, Gentry had thought that if he ignored his wife’s betrayal, she might come to her senses or grow bored with whomever she was seeing. He loved his wife enough to forgive her. At least he was willing to try.

  When her affair didn’t stop, Gentry found he could no longer live with it in his face. When he suspected his wife of using their own home, he decided to end their marriage.

  Except it wasn’t as easy to follow through with what he knew was the right thing to do. He became caught up in the sordid details of his wife’s affair. He wanted to know who her lover was. He wanted to know what they were doing.

  He had bought a minicamera from a spy shop. So far, he was unable to watch what the hidden camera had already recorded. It was a denial he was terrified to confront.

  When she was late returning home, Gentry decided to finally view the tape. Thirty seconds into the recording, he gagged at the sight of his wife kissing another man he immediately recognized. He ran into the bathroom and was sick. His stomach muscles wrenched as he heaved until he was dry. He moaned from crying, but there were no tears.

  When he returned, a few minutes later, his wife was naked on the screen. So was the cop between her knees.

  Allen Fein had made two stops on his way home. After eating a Big Mac, fries, and hot apple pie at McDonald’s, he stopped at Kentucky Fried Chicken and ordered a small bucket of spicy chicken and
French fries. He ate the food in his BMW in the parking lot and later stopped at a Dairy Queen for a chocolate milk shake. He ordered a super-size Coke for the drive home and was sure to stop for a bottle of Pepto-Bismol.

  Now he was sitting in pain on his toilet. The super-size Coke cup rested on the marble edge of the bathroom sink. The cup was half empty.

  Fein rocked back and forth on the toilet seat as he proposed deals with God to alleviate the stomach pains he was suffering.

  “I swear it,” Fein said between gasps of breath. “I’ll never eat this crap again. Please, God. Please. I swear it.”

  He broke into a cold sweat. The pains in his stomach were relentless. He wiped at his forehead with the back of a hand as he groaned on the toilet seat.

  He thought he heard a noise outside the bathroom. He had been in a rush to use the toilet and had left the door open. He leaned forward on the toilet seat, but a stomach pain set him to rocking again.

  “Oh, God,” Feinchanted, “please let me go. Please.”

  He heard a second noise outside the bathroom. He guessed it was his cat jumping from the landing above the stairway down the hall.

  As his bowels finally started to move, Fein heard yet another noise outside the bathroom. He called to his cat as he wiped sweat from his forehead with the back of his right wrist. He let out a long sigh of relief and started to smile when he looked in the direction of a shadow crossing the doorway. Fein was startled when he saw a stocky man standing there holding a gun.

  “Jesus Christ,” Renato Freni said after shooting Allen Fein off the toilet seat.

  He held his breath as he stepped closer and fired another round into the accountant’s head.

  When he was sure Fein was dead, Freni stepped around the body and made his way back out of the condo. He had completed half of a new contract with Jerry Lercasi. Freni wasn’t thrilled about killing Fein for free, but it was the price he had to pay for taking on the Pellecchia contract without going through Lercasi first.

  The thing about doing a hit for a guy like Lercasi was you didn’t get a chance to make mistakes. It was more like the old days. You had one chance. You didn’t fuck it up.

  This was a serious consideration for Freni as he headed back toward the Strip. Killing an accountant was one thing. Killing a wiseguy was an entire other matter.

  Chapter 36

  The flash from the camera caused Francone to blink. He felt a searing pain in his lower back as his eyes refocused. When he could see clearly again, Lano was standing there.

  Francone realized the pain was from his rectum. He tugged against the restraints on his arms and legs, but it hurt to move. He looked down at himself as Lano started to laugh. Francone’s mouth was cotton dry. He couldn’t speak.

  “There’s about eight inches of a twelve-inch dildo up your ass,” Lano said. “You better be careful you don’t turn over and jam it into your stomach.”

  Francone was trying to wet his lips. “The fuck are you doing?” he asked.

  “Ruining your life,” Lano said.

  “We’ll kill you for this. You know that, right?”

  Lano winked at Francone as he spoke though a coughing fit. “In case you don’t get it yet, pally, I’m not too concerned.”

  Francone tried to move his right leg, but the pain in his rectum sent a spasm up his back. “Fuck!” he yelled.

  A knock at the door stopped Lano from laughing again. He did his best to suppress another coughing fit as he stepped back to block the door. A second, louder knock followed.

  “Who is it?” Lano asked through a cough.

  “The guy from the hospital,” a voice said.

  Lano checked the peephole in the door for police. If they were out there, they had moved out of his view.

  “Who else is there?”

  “The husband,” the voice said.

  “Shit,” Lano whispered to himself. He knew there was a chance the husband would get involved. He wasn’t sure about the boyfriend, but the husband was the one who had broken Cuccia’s jaw in the first place.

  He opened the door a crack and stepped away fast. He held his gun up for whoever else might be there. “Go easy,” he said. “I’ve got something in my hand.”

  Charlie touched his gun and immediately thought better of it. His life wasn’t in imminent danger yet. He could turn around and leave right now.

  He had nded on using the same move he used upstairs with Cuccia. As soon as the door opened a crack, he would force his way into the room, shoulder first. But now the guy on the other side of the door was telling Charlie he had a gun, too.

  Charlie pushed the door open instead of rushing through it. An older man dressed in black stood with a gun at the foot of one of two beds. The man’s shape looked somewhat familiar.

  Charlie definitely recognized the other man. A flesh-colored tube was jammed inside his rectum.

  “You must be Charlie Pellecchia,” the man with the gun said. “I’m Vincent Lano.”

  Charlie waited for Denton to close the door behind them. He nodded at the man holding the gun. “You’re also one of the scumbags who did this to me,” he said as he pointed at his facial bruises.

  Lano didn’t flinch. “I’m sorry about that,” he said. “Really. I followed orders. I was wrong.”

  “And what about my wife?”

  “I didn’t touch her,” Lano said. He pointed the gun at the ridiculous sight on the bed. “That was this clown. On orders from the guy upstairs.” Lano motioned at Denton with his gun. “I gave him the names. Suite 24-B, in case you haven’t made it up there yet.”

  “We just came from there,” Charlie said.

  Lano motioned at Denton again. “I went to this guy to give him the information,” he said. “It don’t make me innocent, but I didn’t lay a finger on her. I had no intention of doing that. That isn’t me.”

  Charlie looked to Denton. Denton was staring down at the man on the bed.

  “Can he get hurt like that?” Denton asked.

  Before Lano could answer, Charlie grabbed the base of the flesh-colored tube and pushed it from side to side and down. The man on the bed gasped loudly. His eyes and mouth remained wide open from pain. Blood trickled outside his rectum around the tube.

  Denton moved between Charlie and the bed. “Enough,” he said.

  “What are you gonna do?” Charlie asked Lano. “Shoot me now?”

  “Not if I don’t have to.”

  “What if I want to break your nose?”

  “I’d think this would stop you.”

  Denton was terrified that Charlie would take his personal vendetta to another level. He had already assaulted one mobster. Now there was another one holding a gun. Denton tried to stay between them. He knew he was the voice of reason in the room. He also knew his vote counted the least. Charlie was running on rage. Denton wasn’t quite sure what was motivating the man with the gun.

  “Look,” Denton said to Charlie. “We’re in deep enough shit already. And I know I don’t wanna get shot.”

  Charlie pointed behind Denton at the bed. “That piece of shit broke your girlfriend’s teeth.”

  Denton looked to Lano. Lano said, “He’s right, he did.”

  Denton clenched his teeth at the man on the bed. He looked to the dildo but couldn’t bring himself to touch it.

  “Not that,” he said.

  “Then what?” Lano asked.

  Denton walked around Charlie to the dresser. He opened a few drawers and found a white T-shirt. He wrapped his right hand with it and walked back to the bed. He aimed a straight right lead down at the man’s mouth as hard as he could throw it. The man on the bed took the punch flush on the right side of his face. Blood splattered from a split lip.

  “There,” Denton said.ldquo;Now can we go?”

  Charlie shook his head. “I’ll give you one more try before I take out a few of his teeth with my foot. Or you can break his nose. They fractured mine, and I intend to break his.”

  “This is crazy alrea
dy!” Denton yelled.

  “If you guys’ll hear me out, I think I have a better idea,” Lano said.

  “Really?” Denton asked.

  “What’s that?” Charlie asked.

  Lano smiled.

  Chapter 37

  Gold couldn’t handle sitting around thinking about what might happen to Donald Gentry when the Las Vegas police finally arrested the young detective’s wife.

  “Let’s go do something,” he told Iandolli. “You don’t want me to go to Gentry with this, give me something to occupy my mind.”

  “You wanna go talk with the guys from New York? Cuccia, Francone, and Lano.”

  Gold started the car. “About the Pellecchia assaults?” he asked. “I don’t really give a fuck about this Pellecchia couple. I have a hard time giving a shit about people who don’t cooperate. I’m not so sure they’re so innocent in all this anyway.”

  “So we don’t ask about the Pellecchia couple. We talk about something else.”

  Gold pulled away from the curb. “Can we break their balls?”

  “Why not?” Iandolli said. “It’s one of the few perks goes with this job. We break their balls and then watch them turn colors.”

  “Remind me of our motivation here.”

  “My wife’ll tell you I’m just evil sometimes,” Iandolli said. “You, I think, have other motives.”

  “Gentry.”

  “You have to let the steam out somewhere.”

  Gold was approaching an intersection. “Where they staying?”

  “Bellagio.”

  Gold spotted the lights of the Strip off to his right. He turned right at the intersection. “Fine,” he said. “Let’s go break balls.”

  Jennifer Gentry was startled at the sight of her husband with the tequila bottle. She avoided direct eye contact.

  “Your boyfriend protect himself, or you just give him a blow job?” Donald Gentry asked his wife.

  He was sitting at the kitchen table. Half the bottle of tequila was gone. Jennifer was wearing black leggings and a white sweatshirt. She had just come home from wherever she had spent the past few hours after work. Her look, or maybe it was where she might have been, somehow turned him on.