Iandolli returned to Charlie. “Go and visit your girlfriend,” he said. “We’ll talk again later.”
Charlie nodded.
“Go ahead,” Iandolli said.
Charlie watched as the detective took the stairs. As he waited for n elevator, Charlie felt uneasy about the pictures Vincent Lano had taken at the Bellagio. If the police already had pictures, the film he was holding on to would no longer serve as a deterrent to mobsters trying to cover their embarrassment.
He knew he couldn’t beat the mob much longer. Once the men in the picture were on the street again, he knew they would come looking for him. The thought of the mob going after Samantha was even more terrifying.
He headed for the elevator but stopped a few feet from an open car. He felt himself sweating. He couldn’t move.
Chapter 47
The Chinese restaurant was empty when Renato Freni walked inside. Except for the young woman working the counter and the two cooks in the kitchen, Freni was alone. He dropped his right hand inside his right pants pocket to touch the end of the Firestorm 10 Shot.22 Semi Automatic he was carrying.
The woman behind the counter had large oval eyes and thick lips. She smiled at Freni. “May I herp you, prease?” she asked in a heavy Asian accent.
Freni gave a quick glance over his shoulder. “I’m supposed to meet a friend,” he said.
“Mr. Recasi?” she asked.
“Close enough,” Freni said.
The woman pointed over her shoulder. “He in back,” she said. “Waiting for dumpring.”
Freni watched as the woman packaged a container of steamed dumplings and hot mustard. She handed it to Freni and pointed down the hall toward a door at the far end of the restaurant.
“Take prease,” she said. “Mr. Recasi waiting for dumpring.”
Freni did a double take at the woman before shrugging and taking the small package from her. He saw two doors in the rear, one leading outside. He was unsure of where to go.
“In back,” she said, still pointing. “Through door outside. On patio.”
“Oh,” Freni said. “Sure, no problem.”
Phuc Hanh was twenty-four years old, a part-time prostitute and killer, and Minh Quan’s wife. Her name in Vietnamese meant blessing from above, as in good family. It also meant happiness.
Today she was executing a new contract the Italians had paid her husband thirty-five thousand dollars for. She had backup gang members in the basement and bathroom because she had never used a gun to kill before. A Walther P22 had been hidden under loose menus under the front counter. She had briefly hefted the gun before it was hidden.
After the man she was to kill took the package and headed down the hallway toward the back of the restaurant, Phuc Hanh reached under the counter for the Walther. The man was about five feet from the counter when Phuc Hanh shot him in the back of the head. His body went into spasm on the floor, and she leaned over to fire a bullet into his right temple. She yelled something in French, and both cooks quickly dragged the body into the basement.
Phuc Hanh returned to the front counter, wiped sweat from her forehead, and used the telephone. When she hung up, she opened a can of Coke. She was perfectly calm a few minutes later when an Asian couple came in to order take-out.
After stalling his meeting with Renato Freni, Jerry Lercasi relaxed as he watched the highlights of a Dodgers- Giants game on satellite television. The next few days were going to be busy. He expected several more visits from the local authorities. He expected harassments from federal agents as well.
Then there would be the request for a meeting by the New York crew he would have to deal with. Without Allen Fein to run nterference, Lercasi was thinking he might have to handle New York by himself.
He was waiting for a call. He stretched his arms out wide as he yawned. He heard his bones crack as he tightened his arm muscles.
When the telephone rang, Lercasi picked up the receiver but didn’t speak.
“Your order is ready,” a woman with an accent said.
“I think you have a wrong number,” Lercasi said.
After taking care of all the business he could think of for one day, Lercasi thought about finishing the day off with some more Chinese. He dialed the reception desk and asked if Brenda was still around. When the girl working the desk told Lercasi that his girlfriend was gone for the day, he asked about the Asian woman who was giving Mr. Fein his massages the past few days.
Was she free? Lercasi wanted to know. And did she want a permanent job working at Vive la Body?
Joey Francone received five stitches in his rectum at the emergency room. He was given codeine for his pain and gauze bandaging for the bleeding. He was told the stitches would dissolve but that it would be a good idea to come back to the hospital in a few days to have the wound checked.
Francone was too embarrassed to care what the doctors in the emergency room had told him. He wanted out of there. He needed to find Nicholas Cuccia.
When he searched for his boss, Francone spotted two men he knew were federal agents outside the recovery room. He didn’t bother to ask why they were there. Cuccia had either made a deal or was about to. Francone wasn’t sticking around to find out.
Suddenly he saw himself for what he was in the bigger picture of the Vignieri crime family. He was a “nobody” in the mob world. Cuccia was a made man, a “somebody.” Cuccia also was a skipper running his own crew, somebody directly linked to an underboss. Cuccia had clout. Francone had nothing.
This was one reason why he retraced his steps to the emergency room. He saw a pocketbook hanging from the back of a chair in the waiting area and snatched it. He found an exit and left the hospital. He knew he couldn’t head back to the Bellagio yet, so he limped two blocks in pain to a taxi stand in front of a shopping mall instead. He waited ten minutes before a taxi could take him to a cheap motel off the Strip.
Francone was grateful for what was inside the small purse: $253. He paid for the taxi with a $10 bill and stashed the rest of the cash inside his pants pocket.
He took a room at a short-stay dump for one night. He left a $20 bill for local telephone calls at the front desk. Francone called Anthony Rizzi at Caesar’s Palace to make sure the wannabe still was in Las Vegas. Rizzi was supposed to meet them with cash reinforcements. Rizzi was one way out of Las Vegas. Francone wasn’t sure if there was another.
Chapter 48
Once he was checked out of his motel in Las Vegas, Beau Curitan drove south on Highway 95. Beau had never meant for things to get so carried away. He never intended to shoot the woman hiding his wife. He never intended to touch or to undress her.
Except Samantha Cole had seemed to respond to his teasing as she awoke from her chloroform sleep. It was just like the abducted women in the paperback books Beau had read. Samantha seemed to enjoy what he was doing to her. He swore she had responded verbally to his advances. He was positive he had heard her say “Yes.”
Now Beau was fleeing the scene of what he guessed would be breaking and entering, assault, attempted rape, and attempted murder charges. He pulled off the highway when he spotted a cheap motel. He took a room for a short stay while he tried to retrace what had gone so wrongor him. Beau realized he had stolen money and credit cards from the wallet in Samantha’s purse. Taking the money and credit cards would add robbery to the list of charges he was fleeing.
Then he realized he had left his gun behind, a Beretta.380 his father had given him on his eighteenth
