Charlie Stella - Charlie Opera

“What happened?”

“That’s what I came here to find out. Why the fuck a pair of detectives are talking with a guy I’m supposed to whack out.”

Cuccia shook his head.

“I saw the guy was banged up,” Freni continued. “I saw his head was bandaged, but that’s none of my fuckin’ business. What is my business is I don’t get jerked around. Why didn’t your uncle mention the guy was hot?”

“It’s not like that. The guy isn’t hot. He’s a nobody. It’s got nothing to do with business.”

Freni noticed Cuccia looking toward the blond woman. “Hey, I didn’t come here to look at broads.”

“Sorry.”

“Let’s walk around the pool once or twice and see whether or not we can still do business. First, I think I need an orange juice. This heat is giving me a headache.”

Cuccia bought an orange juice for Freni and a Coke for himself. Freni immediately drank his juice. Cuccia sipped at his Coke through a straw as they continued to walk around the pool.

“You were that close, huh?” Cuccia asked.

“Two minutes. Maybe less. I come off the elevator and there he is with two detectives. They went down the hall into his room. I took off.”

“Shit, I have no idea what that was about,” Cuccia lied. “Maybe the guy got into it with somebody. Or he got mugged or something. Maybe his wife did it.”

“That’s the other thing,” Freni said. “His wife took off. Then she was mugged.”

“Huh?” Cuccia said. He acted surprised. “How do you know that?”

“That’s my business. Except nobody bothered to mention the guy would have a wife with him when he came to Vegas. I was given a name and a hotel. I found out about the wife after my near-miss with the law. Which is the second fuck-up with this job. I don’t intend to walk into a third.”

“What are you saying? You think my uncle is fucking with you?”

Freni tossed the empty juice bottle into a trash pail. “I’m saying somebody is jerking off the wrong guy, my friend.”

“I think maybe it’s miscommunication,” Cuccia said. “Trust me, nobody is out to jerk you off.”

“Good. Then nobody will mind showing some good faith with this mess.”

Cuccia let out a deep breath. “What is this, a fuckin’ shakedown now?”

“Call it a miscommunication,” Freni said. “You still want this guy dead, for whatever the fuck reason, give me a new number. Something I can live with.”

Cuccia stopped walking again. He looked around the pool until he spotted the blonde. She was with a tall black man. He watched with disgust as the blonde applied sun tan oil to the black man’s legs and arms.

“Thirty,” he said.

“Forty,” Freni said.

The blonde was bending over to kiss the black man. Cuccia nearly choked on his Coke when he saw the black man slip the blonde some tongue.

“Thirty-five,” he managed to say.

Freni stepped in front of Cuccia. “Forty.”

Cuccia frowned through his wired jaw. “All right.”

“Say it. The number.”

Cuccia hesitated a moment, then said, “Forty.”

“Just so there’s no more miscommunications,” Freni said.

“Can you do it today? Now that I’ve been robbed, I should have some satisfaction here.”

Freni made Cuccia wait for a reply. “Maybe,” he finally said.

Cuccia wiped drool he could feel on his chin. He looked for the blonde, but she was gone. He searched the pool until he saw her head come up from under the water. Her wet hair hung straight down. It glistened in the sun. He wanted her.

“You don’t have to say,” Freni said. “I’m just curious.”

Cuccia touched the corners of his mouth with his fingers. “What?”

“What it’s about. Why you wanna kill this guy so bad.”

Cuccia was caught off guard by the direct question. He pointed at his own chin. “Because he did this. He broke my fuckin’ jaw.”

Freni turned his head from side to side as he examined Cuccia’s jaw. He squinted as he said, “You want me to whack a guy for that?”

Cuccia shook his head. “No,” he said. “I want you to whack a guy for forty grand.”

Charlie was too self-conscious for a day at the water park. The lines at the entrance gates were long and crawling with families and young children. He slipped the taxi driver a twenty-dollar bill to go ask the pretty lady with the picnic basket and cut-off jeans to come back to the taxi for a minute.

When Samantha leaned into the window of the taxi, Charlie said, “Would you hate me if I told you I was too uncomfortable to be around all these kids looking like this?” He pulled his sunglasses off for emphasis.

She smiled for him. “Can you take me to my car in the parking lot?” she asked. “We’ll figure something out there.”

She decided to take him back to her apartment instead of guessing where to have lunch together. She set a round white table on the small patio behind her apartment. She opened the table umbrella for shade while they ate.

They exchanged stories about themselves while they ked at a pasta salad. Samantha learned some more about his marital problems. She, in turn, confessed her own marital failure. When Samantha learned how Charlie’s wife had left him, she was much more sympathetic to his situation.

“How could she do that?” she asked, then quickly apologized. “I’m sorry. Please, forgive me. I shouldn’t have asked that.”

Charlie seemed to take it in stride. “It’s a legitimate question. How could she do that in the middle of a vacation? I don’t know. To be fair, though, her note said it wasn’t planned.”

Samantha couldn’t stop herself from rolling her eyes. “I’m sorry,” she said again.

“I think Lisa wanted out for a long time,” Charlie said. “This vacation must have been her breaking point.”

Samantha steered the conversation away from his marriage. She told him about her roommate, Carol. She explained how they had met on the Internet and how Carol was a victim of abuse until she ran away from her husband six months earlier.

“So you took her in?”

“She’s run from two places since she left Alabama. The first was New Orleans. Her husband found her there after a few months. Then she ran to Chicago. He almost got her there after another few months. Carol thinks he’s determined to kill her.”

“How long has she been with you?”

“A little less than a month. But she keeps one suitcase packed, she carries her laptop computer everywhere she goes, and she hides extra money for the day she says she knows she’ll have to run off all over again.”

“I assume the law can’t do a thing.”

“Not until she’s dead. O.J. proved that.”

“O.J. proved you could get away with it, too,” Charlie said.

They had coffee in the kitchen. He liked the way she looked in the cut-off jeans and white T-shirt. When she let her hair down, he liked the way it curled in around her face.

“How far are you from your degree?” he asked.

“Thirty-four credits. But it may as well be ninety-four. Either I can’t afford to take the classes I need, or they don’t offer them, or I can’t take the time off when they are offered.”

“I was a two-year wonder before I dropped out to become a window cleaner and get married.”

“High-up window cleaner?”

“Very high.”

“And your kids were from your first wife?”

“Both.”

“So, where does the opera come from?”

Charlie smiled. “My grandfather,” he said. “He lived with us when I was young. Listened to opera all day. You hear something enough, you start to like it.”

“Or you think you do,” Samantha said.

“Touché,” Charlie said.