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.
“Suis-le mais ne fais rien,” Quan said. “Moi-même, je tuerai ce Blanc foutant. J’y vais.”
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. He saw the smack, and he reacted.
Going after the gangster now was no longer instinct. Charlie had decided to take the offensive. He knew who and where his enemy was. He would stalk Nicholas Cuccia, but he wouldn’t take his time about it.
Samantha was desperate to find out where Charlie had gone. She watched the story on the local news about a mugging at Harrah’s Hotel. She knew Charlie had gone there to check out. He told her he would call if anything were wrong.
She picked up the phone receiver at least three times before slamming it back down from fear of making things worse than they already were. When she couldn’t stand the suspense any longer, Samantha called his room at Harrah’s and was told that Mr. Pellecchia had already checked out.
She was full of anxiety when the doorbell rang. She ran to the door, expecting to see him. Somehow, as she opened the door, Samantha knew it was careless not looking through the peephole first.
Before she could finish asking who the man standing there was, a fist caved in her solar plexus.
Instead of getting everything Charlie told him to buy, Denton bought whichever items he could find in one store and headed back to the elevators as fast as possible. When he didn’t find Charlie inside the room, Denton had a good idea where he had gone.
He could call Detective Gold one more time, or he could call hotel security and ask for help. He also could get the hell out of there before he regretted it for the rest of his life.
Except then he would have to face Lisa again. He would look and feel as helpless as he had felt back in the hotel room the night she was assaulted.
Denton wondered what the hell prison would be like as he stepped inside another elevator.