Charlie Stella - Charlie Opera

The tall detective stopped looking at the stuff on the table. “And not robbed?” he added.

Charlie shook his head. “No clue.”

“Do you know who your wife is with?” the tall detective asked.

“She left me. You already know who she’s with.”

“She left you here?”

Charlie was getting annoyed. They were going through a routine. He wasn’t in the mood. He had his own questions about his wife they hadn’t really answered yet. “I’m here,” he said. “She’s gone. Yes, she left me here.”

The fat detective became abrupt with his questions. “When was the last time you saw her?”

“One more time. Last night.”

“What time?”

“About seven-thirty, eight o’clock.”

“Did she leave you then or later?”

Charlie’s eyebrows furrowed. “I don’t know,” he said, his voice angry. “Later, I guess. I went down to the bar.”

“Did you argue?”

“We had a fight. I was drunk. I didn’t hit my -”

The fat detective interrupted him. “Were you anywhere in the casino you could verify from the time you argued until the time you were mugged?”

Charlie took a deep breath. “Yes,” he said. “Same place as tonight, in case you were watching. One of the bars downstairs. I played a poker machine there. I hit it. I’m sure I’m on the cameras they use.”

“Your wife was mugged at a motel on the edge of the strip. She was there with a Mr. Denton. Mr. Denton said one of the men held a gun on him.”

Charlie knew they had mentioned John Denton to get a reaction. He was too concerned about Lisa to give a shit.

“Is she all right?” he asked.

“They knocked out some of her teeth,” the fat detective said. “Worse than what you got.”

“The fuck could somebody hit a woman like that?” Charlie asked.

“That’s what we’d like to know,” the tall detective said. “Got any ideas?”

Charlie had had enough already. “No,” he said. “Or I wouldn’t be standing here wasting my time with you two clowns.”

The detectives almost brought him in for calling them clowns. Charlie was eventually able to talk himself out of the situation. It wasn’t that he didn’t respect the police investigating Lisa’s mugging, but they had asked him questions in an attempt to trap him. They seemed to have made up their minds about his role in his wife’s mugging.

After he finished giving them a story without the details of what had happened in New York, Charlie called the hospital where his wife was admitted. He was told she was in surgery and wouldn’t be able to speak without pain for a few days.

He felt a conflicting rage when he hung up with the hospital. He was furious at the thought of someone assaulting his wife. He was furious at himself for giving a shit. She had dumped him the day before. She had left him for a lover she was cheating with, a lover she had cheated with in the past. Why the fuck should he care what happened to her anymore?

He sat at the window in his hotel room and looked toward the construction site where he himself was mugged. He wondered what had actually happened to Lisa and whether her lover had tried to defend her. He wondered if both muggings had anything to do with what happened in the nightclub back in New York the week before.

Charlie wondered about a lot of things before he could finally fall asleep.

Jerry Lercasi sat up in bed to smoke. He checked his watch for the time as he took a long drag on a fresh Marlboro. He scratched at the hairs on his muscular chest with his free hand.

He had just finished having sex with his girlfriend, a twenty-nine-year-old woman he’d been having an affair with the past two years. They had spent the night together in a private apartment above his twenty-four-hour gymnasium, Vive la Body. His girlfriend, Brenda, was a manager at the gym. When the big fights came to Las Vegas, she was one of the ring girls at the MGM Grand. It wasn’t the really big time he had promised her two years earlier, but it was better than washing hair in the beauty parlor where he had first met her.

Now his girlfriend was coming out of the bathroom naked. She was a tall woman with a sleek body and long black hair. She had perfect breast implants and a naturally curvy figure.

Lercasi was smiling at her body as she walked across the huge bedroom. He focused on the stripe of neatly trimmed pubic hair. He frowned at the sight of the tissue he could see through her pubic hair.

“You gotta put that thing in there like that?”

“Unless I want it to leak,” Brenda said, then mocked him. “Yes, I have to put that thing in there like that.”

“What is it, like a plug?”

Brenda stood at the end of the bed. “Exactly. That’s what it does. It stops it from running out.”

Lercasi made a face. “You gotta describe it like that? It’s disgusting.”

Brenda rolled her eyes. “Then use a condom, Jerry.”

Lercasi pointed at her crotch. “Cover yourself,” he said.

Brenda grabbed the pair of navy leggings she wore to work at the gym. She sat on the edge of the bed and pulled the leggings on. When she arched her back to pull them up over her hips, Lercasi “You have such a beautiful fuckin’ body.”

“Except I disgust you.”

He waited for her to roll off the bed. When she reached for a white athletic bra, he shook his head. “Not that,” he said. “There’s no plugs there.”

Brenda half smiled. “Why don’t you use a condom? If it bothers you so much.”

“I hate them things.”

“I hate it when your goo starts running out while I’m working downstairs.”

Lercasi made another face. “You gotta talk like that?” he said.

Brenda put her hands on her hips. “You’re the one with the problem.”

Lercasi thought about it. It was true, he did have a problem with his women appearing anything but perfect. Except he didn’t think it was too much to ask. He put them up, paid all their expenses, gave them phony jobs for play money, and provided them with the best connections in Las Vegas.

Right now, though, he knew he wasn’t going to win this argument with Brenda this morning. He was fifty-six years old. The young women he kept around him had minds of their own, no matter how much he provided for them.

“I don’t know,” he said. “My first wife used to do that. It bothers me.”

Brenda frowned as she put the athletic bra on. “I have to get downstairs. You want me to send that pervert up?”

“My accountant?” he asked. He knew the girls working in his gym hated Allen Fein. He liked to push their buttons about it.

“Why do you call him that, a pervert?” he asked.

“Because he is. He likes little girls. Everybody knows it. He doesn’t even try to keep it secret. We also know he brings in private massage girls. That chink, for one. And we all know what he does with them in the massage rooms.”

“What chink?”

“Chink or Vietnamese or Korean or whatever she is. She’s giving him head in the massage rooms. My girls gag at the sight of him downstairs. He makes our skin crawl.”

Lercasi feigned concern. “He ever make a move on you?”

“I don’t wear a training bra. I’m not his type.”

Lercasi tried to picture Allen Fein humping his girlfriend. The image was worse than the tissue plug she had used. “Send him up,” he said.

“And if Nancy calls again?”

Nancy was Lercasi’s second wife, a woman he saw as little as possible. “Tell her I’m busy.”

“Sure,” Brenda said as she stood up. “What do you care? I have to hear it.”

Lercasi leaned over to crush out his cigarette in an ashtray on the night table. “Hey, Brenda,” he said. “Don’t break my balls this morning, all right?”