Charlie Stella - Charlie Opera

“I recognized him,” Lisa said without moving much of her mouth. She was struggling to talk. The stitches inside her mouth were still too fresh to stretch. “He was one of the men in the nightclub.”

John Denton frowned. “What do you want to do?”

“Nothing. If it is the mob, I’m not getting any more involved than I already am.”

“They mugged Charlie, too.”

“Shit. Is he all right?”

“Apparently. The police thought it might have been him who attacked you. That he sent somebody because of how you left him.”

Lisa was shaking her head. “This is all my fault. Everything.”

Denton took one of her hands. “You couldn’t know what was going to happen. And they attacked you, too. Charlie can take care of himself.”

Lisa was feeling her guilt. What else could happen to them? What else could happen to Charlie? It was all because she hadn’t been able to tell him that she wanted out of their marriage.

“The doctors think you should stay here another couple of days,” Denton said. “You may need more surgery.”

Lisa couldn’t think about herself then. She squeezed Denton’s hand and closed her eyes tight.

The girls from Pleasure Times were named Kim and Daria, although Cuccia had no clue as to which one was Kim or which one was Daria. The white girl was a tall, tan natural blonde with a small chest and green eyes. The black girl was short and muscular. Her breasts were too big and round to be real. She had big lips, though. Cuccia loved a woman with big lips.

He had guaranteed their payment on his credit card over the telephone. He advanced them another two hundred dollars each before they changed in the bathroom. When they finally emerged from the bathroom, the white one was wearing a lace lingerie outfit with black garter belts and black high heels. The black girl was dressed in a leopard thong bikini and beige boots. Cuccia liked the look. He took a seat in a chair he positioned in front of the king-sized bed to watch the show.

He guessed the girls had worked together before. They moved through the lesbian routine without him once having to give them directions. There wasn’t a word of discussion between them as they changed positions over and over. Except for his special request for the double-headed dildo routine, Cuccia thought the girls had read his mind.

The special request cost him an extra fifty dollars for each girl, but he was happy to pay it. He was as excited as the cocaine and booze permitted. When the girls finished their routine together, he had them kneel on all fours side by side on the edge of his bed. He went from one to the other, entering them from behind, until he could no longer restrain himself inside of Kim.

Or was it Daria?

The black girl left Cuccia a telephone number for her own personal cocaine connection in Las Vegas. He wrote it down on hotel stationery and slipped her an extra fifty.

When the girls from Pleasure Times were gone, Cuccia poured himself a tall glass of vodka and tonic. He sat back in the same chair he had watched the girls perform from earlier. He used the remote to turn the television set on. He switched channels until he found a local news station.

Earlier, the man hired to kill Charlie Pellecchia had left a message. He wanted to meet. There were complications, he had said. Something had gone wrong, something about a very close call with the police.

Cuccia had no idea what the close call with the police was about, except that it meant two things:news lie Pellecchia was still alive, and it would cost more money to have him killed.

Cuccia was angry that he would have to renegotiate the price of a hit gone wrong. Because he wanted Pellecchia dead, he would be dealing from a very weak hand.

He waved his own thoughts off as he reached for his drink. He didn’t care what it would cost. Charlie Pellecchia had to die.

The first thing Charlie remembered when he woke up was what the guy who hit him with the pipe had said.

“Remember Decades?”

Charlie wondered if he had relived the incident in his sleep. He felt as if he had. He could see the man with the pipe. He could hear his voice.

The vague familiarity of that voice had bothered him since he was first questioned at the hospital. The man Charlie punched at the New York nightclub had been surrounded with friends. Two of them had tried to get at Charlie but were stopped by bouncers. A few dozen threats had followed. Then there was the one guy who had managed to get up close.

A young, cocky guy, he remembered.

The man with the pipe, he wondered?

“You got no idea who the fuck you just hit,” the cocky guy had said back in the nightclub.

It was a voice full of arrogance and contempt. It was the same voice he had heard two nights ago.

“Remember Decades?”

Charlie licked at his swollen lip. The man with the pipe was the same man from the nightclub back in New York. He had been followed out to Las Vegas.

He thought about Lisa and what had happened to her. He wondered if she told the Las Vegas police what had happened back in New York. He was about to call her when he remembered she was with her lover. He looked at the telephone. The message light was off.

“Fuck it,” Charlie said.

He wondered whether his troubles were over. If it was the mob that had followed him to Las Vegas, was the beating they gave him the night before the end of it, or would there be more?

Might they go all the way and try to kill him?

Charlie decided it was over or he would be dead already.

He checked his eyes in the mirror to see if his bruises were starting to fade. There were two dark streaks of purple under each of his eyes. He put his sunglasses back on.

In a few hours he had a date with a woman he was anxious to spend some time with. He wasn’t sure why, but Samantha Cole had intrigued him. He wasn’t sure if it was because she seemed to try to listen to him while she worked a busy bar, or if it was because he was feeling rejected and lonely and Samantha had seemed interested.

Or maybe it was something more simple, like her smile. He definitely liked her smile.

He wondered if Wet ’n’ Wild was the right place to spend some time with Samantha. His facial bruises were an ugly sight. He was also nervous about wearing a bathing suit. He was still ill at ease about the extra weight he had spotted in the mirror two days ago.

He put shorts on over the baggy bathing trunks his wife had packed for him. He picked a navy tank top to stay cool. He brought a loose-fitting shirt to cover the tank top.

The telephone rang, and Charlie sat on the bed to answer it.

“Hello?” he said. No one answered.

“Hello?” he repeated.

Whoever called wasn’t talking.

“Right,” he finally said, and hung up.

“Wear the one-piece!” Carol Curitan yelled to Samantha.

Carol was in the kitchen of Samantha’s apartment. She was aforty-five-year-old, beautiful, full-figured woman with thick blond hair and green eyes.

Samantha was checking herself out in the mirror behind her bedroom door. She turned sideways for a better view of her waist. She looked at herself up and down in the mirror.

“I feel better in this!” she yelled. She gave herself one more look in the mirror and opened the bedroom door.

Carol was in the hallway. She shook her head at Samantha when she saw her in the flower print bikini. “It’s a first date, baby,” she said.

Certain words or phrases highlighted Carol’s Alabama accent. Baby was one such word. Darlin’ was another.

“All he’s seen you in so far is your work uniform,” Carol continued. “Give him a dose, darlin’. Either the white one-piece or the coral bikini.”