Charlie Stella - Charlie Opera

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 already!” 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.

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.

“You look good in those tight pants like that,” he said. “He run his hands up there, or just slide those pants off nice and slow?”

“Don’t do this,” Jennifer said. Her voice was trembling.

Gentry saw another man undress his wife in the video running in his head. He couldn’t stop his mind from replaying the haunting images. “Nice and slow, right? And while he was down there, he buried his face, right?”

Jennifer tried to remain calm. “Please don’t do this,” she said.

“Do what? I’m not doing anything. You’re the one doing, babe.”

“Please, Donald.”

“What’s his name? The guy you’re doing. Tell me. I wanna hear you say it.”

Jennifer folded her arms across her chest as she tried for strength. “What’s the point, Donald?”“I want to know,” he said, maintaining a calm voice. “I have a right to know. Since he’s been in my house, fucking my wife on my bed. I think I have a right to know.”

Jennifer’s arms immediately uncrossed as she shook her head. “We never,” she said. “Not here.”

“Bullshit!” Donald yelled. His wife jumped from the volume of his voice. “Yesterday. I just missed you. I came home but you must’ve just left. Your gunk, the sperm gel, was out of the cap. Unless you put it on before you go see him. I know you don’t use it for me. You haven’t for a couple months now.”

Jennifer avoided her husband’s eyes again. “And the bed was messed up,” he added. “And something else.”

She waited in silence with her eyes closed. “What?” she finally asked.

Gentry smirked at his wife.

“What?” she repeated.

“I got it on film.”

When she woke up, Samantha was on her back, and her hands were restrained. A gag had been stuffed in her mouth.

A flabby, pale-skinned man stood over her in the living room. He had a short buzz haircut and a thick Confederate flag belt buckle. One hand held on to the buckle. He held a can of Budweiser in his other hand.