“You’re right,” Charlie said. “You are a lawyer.”
“That’s a cheap shot.”
Charlie glared at Denton.
“Suppose this guy today is setting you up?” Denton asked.
“What guy?”
“The guy who came to the hospital. The one I called you about. Suppose he just wanted to find you. Maybe he already has. Maybe they’re following us right now.”
“Somebody already followed me. That’s what that ambulance was about back there. I was lucky. I’m not giving them a third chance.”
“Which is why you should go to the police with this.”
“I don’t have time to explain it now,” Charlie said. “Nicholas Cuccia, right? That’s one of the names.”
“And a Joey Francone.”
“And a Joey Francone. Fine. Nicky and Joey, welcome to my world.”
“What about Lisa?” Denton asked.
Charlie glared at his wife’s lover one more time.
“I feel like a nap,” Francone said. He was down to his royal blue bikini underwear and muscle T-shirt. He sat back against the pillows propped up against the headboard.
The hooker handed him a refill of his drink, a Stolichnaya screwdriver. “Have another sip,” she said. “It’ll help you relax. Then I can finish relaxing you.”
“I’ll bet you can,” Francone said before sippin the drink.
The hooker stroked his thigh near his crotch. He was stuck in a semierect stage but was too drugged to notice. The hooker sipped at her Sprite through a straw. Her lips formed a smile around the straw.
He had told her as much about his work as he could fit in a twenty-minute conversation. He was waiting to become a made man, he had told her. He was waiting for the mob books to open again back in New York. He was so close he could taste it.
The hooker wasn’t sure what mob books were. She had heard about made men and wiseguys and other gangsters, but she had also heard or read about how gangsters testified against each other once they were arrested. She had watched that special on
“So, are you really a gangster?” she asked as she watched him slide slowly toward unconsciousness.
“Yesssss,” he said as he started to slur his words. “But you shouldn’t be thcared. I ike you. I rearry rike yourrr.”
“I like you, too,” she said.
“You erra been to Rew Rork?”
“Sure,” the hooker said. “Lots of times.”
Francone’s eyes closed before he could register her answer.
Chapter 31
Charlie walked straight to the registration desk in the Bellagio Hotel-Casino to reserve a room. He handed a clerk there his credit card and driver’s license. He asked for a smoking room high up, if one was available.
“You really think this is a good idea?” Denton asked as they waited for the room keys.
“Yes,” Charlie said. “This gets us upstairs.”
The desk clerk handed Charlie a small folder with keys and a minimap of the Bellagio. Charlie signed a card authorizing payment by room number and waited for his credit card to be returned.
“This is crazy,” Denton said.
“I know,” Charlie said. “And sometimes crazy is a good thing.”
Minh Quan took the call while he was playing a pinball machine in the basement of the restaurant. He listened intently as one of the men he had sent with his brother to kill Charlie Pellecchia explained how Nguyen was beaten unconscious and was on his way to the hospital.
Quan turned away from the pinball machine as he wiped sweat from his forehead. He checked his watch and spoke in French, the language he sometimes used to confuse surveillance.
“
He told the caller to follow Pellecchia but to leave him alone. Quan would kill the fucking white man himself. He was on his way.
First he had a sit-down with Jerry Lercasi. A meeting with the Italian big shot meant there was money to be made. Quan would stay in touch with his men and avenge his brother’s injury after doing business.
She had been drinking Sprite, but the comedian in the silk bikini underwear never noticed.
The hooker managed to find just less than seven hundred dollars in the room, not nearly as much as she had hoped for. She did have a Rolex, a money clip with diamond-studded initials, a couple of designer leather belts, the strap, and the dildo. She kept the handwritten receipt with the inflted price. She figured she might get fifty bucks for the unused items.
Francone lay on his back snoring on one of the twin-size beds. The hooker tied his hands with his belt. Then she tied his feet back to his hands with one leg of his pants.
She left him in the silk royal blue bikini underwear. She had laughed out loud at the sight of the underwear earlier and covered up by saying drinking made her giggly.
She was just finishing making herself up in the bathroom when she thought she heard him move on the bed. She frowned at the thought. She had given him enough codeine to knock out a horse. She put her lipstick in her bag and hurried out of the bathroom. She stopped with a gasp when she saw an older man across the room pointing a gun at her.
Lano’s eyebrows rose about as far up into his forehead as was possible once he was inside his room at the Bellagio. There was the young punk snoring in his sissy silk underwear, hands tied to his feet with a belt and a pair of pants. Lano smiled at the sight until he heard somebody in the bathroom across the suite. He stepped to the side and pulled the.380 from his ankle holster. He pointed the gun at the bathroom until a woman dressed like a hooker stepped through the doorway.
“Huhhhh!” the woman gasped.
Lano took the scene in again, looking from the punk to the hooker, and then back at Francone again.
“You rolled him?” he asked as he lowered the gun.
The hooker put both her hands up for emphasis. “I don’t know what happened to him, mister. He got all funny on me and then he passed out.”
“But he tied himself up before he passed out, right?”
Charlie’s room at the Bellagio was two floors above Nicholas Cuccia’s suite. Before he stepped inside the elevator, Charlie sent Denton to a hotel store for some changes of clothes. He gave him two hundred-dollar bills and a list of items to buy: T-shirts, sweat pants, and two hats. Denton wanted an explanation, but Charlie waved him off as he stepped inside the elevator.
He was feeling rage he hadn’t felt in a long time. He needed to control his anger before it got the best of him.
He had boxed in the New York City Golden Gloves when he was seventeen. After six easy victories in the heavyweight novice division, Charlie made it to the semifinals, where a much faster Hispanic kid defeated him on points. Charlie knocked the Hispanic kid down in the third round, but it was the only solid punch he had landed, a vicious left hook. Three one-minute rounds had just not been enough time for Charlie to stalk his prey.
Knocking the Asian kid unconscious had been instinct. Charlie saw the knife. He saw the kid swing. He reacted.
Breaking the wiseguy’s jaw in the nightclub was a similar reflexive action. He saw the gangster grab his wife.
