He suspected it had something to do with the recent injury Cuccia suffered to his jaw. The mobster’s jaw was broken a full ten days earlier. It was the only night Thomas had taken off in three weeks of surveillance. Cuccia had told Thomas that he fell riding a motorcycle. The agent knew the story was bullshit.
The New York City organized crime unit was the only law enforcement agency that knew what had happened the night Cuccia’s jaw was broken. So far, they weren’t sharing the information.
This was why Thomas was in Las Vegas this weekend instead of home with his wife. He hadn’t spent back-to- back days with his wife in more than a month. Now he was making excuses for following a wiseguy across the country.
“But why?” his wife wanted to know.
“To keep an eye on him. Until this thing comes off, I’m his baby-sitter.”
It was the truth. When he thought about it, Thomas was nothing more than a baby-sitter for a wiseguy.
“And what am I supposed to do in the meantime?” his wife asked. “I never see you anymore. When are you coming home?”
He had managed to get a room directly across the hall from Cuccia at the Bellagio Hotel. He had rigged a minicamera to the bottom of the door and connected it to the television. He was watching the television while his wife interrogated him.
“Hello?” his wife said. “Are you there? Marshall?”
“Yeah, yeah,” Thomas told his wife. “I’m busy now. I gotta run.”
He hung up the receiver without saying good-bye. He watched as a man he recognized as Joey Francone accompanied another man inside Cuccia’s room. Thomas sat up in the bed to give the situation his undivided attention.
Chapter 15
Detective Gold found Detective Iandolli going through folders in a file cabinet along the back wall of a tiny office. Both men knew each other from working vice together eight years earlier. Both men were originally from New York.
Gold thought organized crime might know something about the assault at the Palermo construction site a few days earlier. Gold waited for Iandolli to shut the drawer of the file cabinet he was looking in before he spoke.
“A couple from New York,” Gold said. “They come here on vacation, but they don’t last three days. She splits with a former boyfriend. Leaves the husband a note while he’s down playing the tables, getting drunk at one of the bars. He goes out later and gets drawn into the construction site at the Palermo, behind the model. He catches a beating from two guys.”
Iandolli nodded.
“Then, the wife is with her boyfriend at some motel off the Strip. Two guys show up there the next day and assault her. Knock one of her teeth out.” He held a finger up for emphasis. “They take a tooth with them. One tooth. One of them leans over and pulls it from her mouth after punching her.”
“And the boyfriend?”
“One of the guys held a gun on him. They left after the other one took the tooth.”
Iandolli squinted.
“Exactly,” Gold said. “I got the call at the motel. I went there and listened to the boyfriend. I figured it was the husband followed them or something. Then I ran the name at the station and found out about the husband. Same last name pops up on a hospital report, how he got jumped the night before but didn’t want to report it. I sent two of my guys to talk to the husband, but he didn’t have anything to say. They tried to poke him a little, but the guy didn’t bite.”
“And the Palermo is Jerry Lercasi’s turf.”
“Public knowledge,” Gold said through a yawn. “And there’s a twenty-four-hour guard posted there. So how did this guy, the husband, wind up behind the model?”
“You look like shit,” Iandolli said. “When’s the last time you slept?”
“Two, three days ago. What do you think?”
“It’s a good question. You don’t get onto the Palermo construction site without a pass.”
Gold popped Chiclets gum into his mouth. “I figure maybe they’re running from somebody in New York. Which is why I came here to see you.”
“The plot thickens.”
“What do you mean?”
Iandolli held out an open hand. “Can I have one of thosee asked.
Gold handed Iandolli the small red box of Chiclets.
“I had a federali here,” Iandolli said after he popped two squares of the gum into his mouth. He chewed as he spoke. “He was dancing around a couple of guys in town from New York. Two guys flew up ahead of their boss.”
“FBI?”
“DEA. Which is the same shit when it comes to the interference they run for each other. Anyway, he came asking about two guys with a New York crew. I called New York. There are two guys here. Three, you count their skipper. They’re with the Vignieris. I don’t know what the DEA wants with them, nor do I care. But I’ll lay eight to one somebody caught a beating at the Palermo, our man in Vegas don’t know about it.”
“Jerry Lercasi.”
“Which means somebody pulled an end run.”
“This bookmaker they found, Benny Bensognio? The one in the news?”
“That was strictly skimming,” Iandolli said. “These assaults were out-of-town shit, somebody working through one of Lercasi’s diplomats. Allen Fein, for one, although I don’t see that little pervert getting into the muscle end of the business.”
“Maybe he wants to feel powerful.”
“Maybe.”
Gold leaned back in his chair. He didn’t like it that a simple assault was quickly blossoming into an organized crime case. “And it could just be coincidence or some other crazy shit,” he said. “Maybe the boyfriend had some friends take care of the husband, and the guy retaliated. A general cluster fuck or something.”
“That’s a stretch. Especially if the one guy is a lawyer.”
“You’re right, so’s the wife a lawyer. What about somebody back East going it on their own?”
“If they’re gonna do something like this, they’d send some of their own guys ahead of them, but they’d also ask permission. They’d need the help with logistics, like the Palermo, for one thing. They’d need somebody knows the turf. Then there’s the protocol bullshit.” Iandolli made a fist and pumped it a few times. “The respect for each other’s turf.”
“They don’t trust our wiseguys to handle things?”
“Would you?”
Gold remembered the other reason he was there. “You know Jack Gentry’s kid? He’s working vice. Just promoted up to detective a few months back.”
“I knew Jack Gentry,” Iandolli said. “Died last year, didn’t he?”
Gold nodded.
“What’s up with his kid?”
“If you know anybody over at vice can keep an eye on him, I’d appreciate it. He just found out his wife’s sleeping around.”
“Oh, boy. How old is he?”
“Thirty-two. And he just picked up his shield. He’s working vice, the latest ring of hookers rolling johns in the casinos.”
Iandolli shook his head. “Talk about a cluster fuck,” he said.
“Gentry knows she’s out there,” Gold continued. “He asked me to find out with whom.”
“What do you do with something like that?”
