Charlie Stella - Charlie Opera

Lano shook his head. “You ever think maybe you’re saving your boss a big headache coming up with a better solution?”

Francone was stumped. “Better solution like what?” he asked.

“Like we find a fuckin’ dentist give us a tooth and bring that to your boss,” Lano said. He refused to acknowledge that Nicholas Cuccia was his boss, too.

Francone used both hands to wave the suggestion off. “Are you kidding me? Nicky said come back with a tooth from her mouth. Now he’s flyin’ out here to meet us and you wanna try and fugazy a tooth? What happens he wants to see the broad himself?”

Lano was rubbing his temples again. Where the fuck did they find assholes like this? He was almost glad he was dying so he wouldn’t have to deal with them anymore.

“We’re already under the radar on this,” Lano said.

“Under the radar how?”

“You really think the old man, Tony Cuccia, you think he’s behind this bullshit? He’s been around too long to know better. Bustin’ up a guy is one thing. Even though the guy didn’t deserve it, he caught a beatin’, big fuckin’ deal. But a broad? You wanna crack some broad in the mouth for a tooth because she slapped you one in the face because you grabbed her ass in front of a hundred people?” Lano stopped to cough. “Bullshit,” he added. “It’s wrong. It’s worse than wrong. It’s stupid. This is the kind of thing makes us all look like shit.”

Francone wanted to strangle the old bastard. Where the fuck did he come off talking about a skipper like that? This was what was ruining the mob, he thought, old-timers who were passed up for promotions and couldn’t adjust. The old prick was talking subversive. If Lano had talked like that back in New York, they wouldn’t have to wait for the cigarettes to kill him.

“So what are you tellin’ me, Vinny? You’re not gonna go through with this thing? Or you’re gonna rat me out if we get caught?”

“Fuck you, sonny,” Lano said. “I’m not hittin’ no broad, and I won’t even dignify your other remark. And, tell you the truth, you ever make another remark like that to me again, about ratting anybody, I’ll shove one a my fists down your throat and pull out your clean fuckin’ lungs for myself. You got that?”

Francone had tony train himself. He thought better of the situation. They had a job to do. He could tell Nicholas Cuccia about Lano’s subversive remarks the next day. Maybe the boss would give Francone the contract to whack Lano. After all the secondary smoke he had ingested today, Francone would whack Lano for the pleasure.

“Oh, you hear me or not?” Lano asked.

Francone forced a smile. “Yeah,” he said. “I heard you.”

She let Denton relax her into having sex with him. It was easy once she was calm again. It was as good as it had always been between them.

Denton rested peacefully beside Lisa as some of the guilt she was feeling seemed to fade. She lit a cigarette as she moved from the bed to a chair near the window. She pushed back the curtain and looked across the small parking lot. Except for a few cars, the lot was empty. She looked across the street into the minimall parking lot and saw an ice cream truck. She thought about having a milk shake.

There was a sudden knock on the motel door as she reached for her purse. She pushed back the curtain again and saw two men standing at the door. The younger one, although he stood in the shade, looked vaguely familiar. Lisa answered the second knock before it woke Denton.

The note his wife left him was simple and to the point:

Charlie, I’m so sorry to do this to you. But I have to do this. I have to do it now. John is with me. I will call you tomorrow. None of this was planned. Please believe me.

And try to forgive me. I’ll call you tomorrow to work something out.

Take care of yourself.

The note was signed: Lisa.

“It wasn’t planned my ass,” Charlie said aloud. “I should smack him in the back with that god-damned hairbrush.”

He removed his wedding ring and picked up the telephone. He pressed the room service button, ordered a large pot of coffee, and made his way to the bathroom, where he found the Advil bottle. He dropped four capsules into his right hand, examined them a second, and tossed them into his mouth. He sipped water from a plastic cup to swallow the pills. He turned the shower on to let the steam build. He examined himself in the mirror before stepping under the hot water.

He had black eyes from his fractured nose. He frowned at the sight of himself. It would be another couple of days before the skin around his eyes turned green and yellow. It would be a full week at least before his skin bruises healed completely.

The bandage behind his right ear wasn’t too bad. The contusions on both his hands had turned blue-black. The tape job on his bruised fingers annoyed Charlie. He removed the tape that restrained his fingers from bending. He had broken a finger in the past. He would live with the pain.

He examined his shape in the mirror for the second time in as many days. He knew he needed to work out more aerobically. His big upper body and skinny legs distorted his symmetry. The extra weight around his hips and waist didn’t help either.

He wondered if that’s what had finally triggered his wife’s leaving him. Lisa was five years younger than Charlie. Her lover was a year younger than she was. Charlie couldn’t help but wonder if it had always been just a matter of time for him and Lisa once she was intimate with John Denton two years earlier. The man his wife referred to in her good-bye note was an athletic attorney in near-perfect shape.

Was it his shape or his age?

As he walked the length of Las Vegas Boulevard to avoid the phone call Lisa had mentioned in her note, Charlie contnued to wonder about his wife and her lover. If there were signs of his wife having an affair again, he had missed them a second time. Except for a few telephone hang-ups at the house, Charlie hadn’t noticed anything peculiar.

They had grown distant the past few months. There were long periods of inactivity between their sexual relations. There were frequent gaps in their communication. They had stopped being friends to each other and had started doing things alone instead of together.

Charlie thought back to the night of the fight at the New York nightclub. It was a week before they had left for vacation. He had tried to buy tickets for an opera the same night Lisa was supposed to go dancing with a friend. When the opera was sold out, Charlie decided to join his wife instead. She became furious with him. It was as if she suddenly hated him.

The tension was thick between them at the club, and they decided to leave early. As Lisa wove her way through a group of men around the bar, one of them grabbed her ass. She slapped the man in the face and was immediately slapped back. She landed on the floor at Charlie’s feet, and he reacted without thinking. He ran behind the punch and knocked the man unconscious.

Now Charlie wondered if Lisa had made plans with her lover that night. He wondered if John Denton was there at the nightclub during the fight.

It seemed obvious to him now. Charlie had ruined his wife’s plans by going dancing with her. It was why she was so angry with him.

Of course John Denton was there. He was the “friend” Lisa was supposed to have met.

When he finished his walk, Charlie realized there was something else bothering him about his fight at the New York nightclub, something about one of the men who had threatened him after the altercation. One of them had made his way up close to Charlie before the bouncers were able to pull him away. He had said something. Maybe it was a name. Charlie couldn’t recall.