Charlie Stella - Charlie Opera

“I’m Beau Curitan,” he told Samantha. “You know, Carol’s husband.”

Then the man leered as he stepped on Samantha’s left thigh.

His field supervisor had been blunt. “If you even think this case is going down the shitter, then cuff the son of a bitch and bring his ass back here right now,” the supervisor had told Agent Thomas.

That was ten minutes ago. Now Thomas was standing at a house telephone in the lobby of the Bellagio. He had been ringing Nicholas Cuccia’s room for the past fifteen minutes. He had called Joey Francone’s room as well. Then Thomas asked hotel security to check on his good friend in suite 24-B, just to make sure he was all right. They had an important business appointment to make.

Thomas was impatient waiting for security to get back to him. He scanned the constant flowing crowds in front of him for the New York mobster he was there to baby-sit. There were too many people to pick out any one person. At least he couldn’t find Cuccia amid the sea of gamblers and tourists.

When he could spot the head of security finally heading his way, Thomas was still hopeful.

“There’s nobody in suite twenty-four-B, sir,” the head of security said. “But one of my men did say there was blood on the rug.”

Thomas could feel his strength being sapped. “What do you mean, blood?”

“One of my men said that’s what he saw after he went inside the suite. Blood. Some drops leading to the bathroom and to the door.”

Thomas flashed his badge for the third time the same day. “Let me up there,” he said in a defeated monotone.

Donald Gentry looked his wife up and down. The image of her breasts bouncing in the video while her lover took her from behind was suddenly clear to him again.

“You just fuck him again now?” he asked.

“No,” she said.

He was picturing things he hadn’t even seen on the video. His thoughts raced out of control with jealousy and rage. “You just run over to his place for a quickie? You fuck him in his kitchen? In the car? Or did you just get on your knees and suck him off?”

“Please, Donald. Don’t do this.”

“I saw the tape, Jen,” Gentry said. He closed his eyes tight and growled from somewhere deep inside. “I already saw you on your knees!” he cried. “I already saw it!”

She put her hands together as she pleaded with him. “Please don’t.”

Gentry drank from the tequila bottle again. He wiped his mouth on his shoulder and said, “Maybe I should sell the tape to a local porn store. Or make copies and lend them out at bachelor parties. What do you think?”

Her face tightened as she flushed red with anger. “I want that tape!” she yelled. There were no more tears behind her voice.

“Is he still married?” Gentry yelled back. “Does Wilkes have a wife, too? Are you ruining her marriage, too?”

“You don’t know what you’re doing!” she yelled. “I have to have that tape!”

“I know exactly what I’m doing!”

“Give me the fucking tape, you pathetic bastard!”

Gentry suddenly smiled at his wife. All he could hear were the words “you pathetic bastard.”

An emotional weight was suddenly lifted. He no longer saw his wife standing in front of him. There was an image of a blond woman in a white sweatshirt and black leggings. It was as if she were a ghost. It was as if he were watching himself and his wife from another ceiling camera.

He pulled the Glock from his ankle strap and focused on the white sweatshirt. Spots of blood filled the sweatshirt as his wife was hurled backward into the hallway.

He closed his eyes and could see his wife’s breasts being pierced in slow motion by the bullets he had just fired.

Then he saw the barrel of the gun inside his mouth. He felt a burn from the edge of the barrel. He heard himself curse from the burn. He tilted the gun down as he felt himself pull the trigger. He felt a lancing, burning sensation through his throat as he fell off the chair he was sitting on. He gagged and choked as he spit up blood. He felt himself kneeling in the kitchen as he spit up more blood.

He was straining to scream, but there was no sound. He looked down and saw the puddle of blood forming at his knees. The realization that he was still alive filled Donald Gentry with terror. He turned to his left and saw his wife dead in the hallway. He tried to scream again, but there was still no sound.

Freni spotted the flashing lights in the driveway as he drove up to the Bellagio. He saw a pair of ambulances and at least three police cars parked directly in front of the lobby. A group of hotel security guards stood outside and blocked off a set of doors from public access.

He drove through the driveway and pulled into a gas station on the Strip. He parked in front of the air hoses and used a cellular telephone to call the Vive la Body gymnasium. He gave the receptionist at the gym the number for his phone and waited for a return call. Three minutes later, his cell phone rang.

“One down, one to go,” Freni said. “But there’s a lot of activity around number two.”

“I’m busy now, but we can meet for a bite,” Lercasi said.

“No problem,” Freni said.

“How’s Chinese again?”

“Chinese is fine.”

“Okay, I’ll call you back.”

Both men hung up without saying good-bye. Freni lit a cigarette and glanced at his watch. He figured he’d stay close in case things changed. Jerry Lercasi would be a lot more generous if both ends of the contract were serviceod.

Lercasi had traded favor for favor with a few of the ethnic gangs of Las Vegas in the past. Usually for the strong-arm work he could no longer entrust to his own crew. Usually for the work the mob officially considered against the rules.

Now he had a conversation with the head of a Vietnamese gang in Las Vegas, a skinny gook with slicked-back hair and a diamond-studded Rolex wrapped around his skinny right bicep.

Minh Quan was born in Tonkin Province in Vietnam. He had entered the United States illegally when he was fifteen, and before he was twenty he had used relatives who were legalized citizens to open a Chinese-Vietnamese take-out restaurant. It served as a front for the extortion and drug dealing of his Black Dragons street gang. Quan was the eldest of the gang. At twenty-eight, he had already killed three men. Two were rival street gang members. The third was a contract hit on a Russian gambler.

The conversation was expensive, but twenty thousand dollars was well worth Lercasi’s peace of mind. Erasing the links between himself and the disappearance of his accountant and business manager, Allen Fein, was textbook damage control.

The botched job the Vietnamese crew had pulled at Harrah’s with Charlie Pellecchia would work for Lercasi now. He had instructed Minh Quan to make the hit on Pellecchia look as close to a mugging as possible.

Lercasi knew the organized crime units would continue to suspect the New York crew. His own reputation as a deliberate and ruthless killer would protect Lercasi from the series of botched jobs over the past week. Whacking a few key people would further distance him.

Allen Fein’s killer had become a key player in the mix of events.

Lercasi warned the Vietnamese gang leader about the man he would be killing. “He’s a professional,” he told Minh. “He’ll know it’s coming if your people are sloppy. He might pick one or two off, so you better work in teams.”

“No worrey,” the skinny gook told Lercasi. “Everything taken care of.”

“I’m just warning you,” Lercasi said. “For your own good. Don’t bother sending kids again. That was a civilian who put one of your guys in the hospital today. This guy is a pro.”