Detectives Gold and Iandolli sat in the back of a white surveillance van disguised as a floral delivery service. A third man, dressed in a bright green uniform, drove the van. He wore a microphone transmitter in his left ear.
They were parked across the street from the South of Vegas Motel. Pellecchia had taken a room there. Iandolli was scanning the area for Asian men. So far he hadn’t seen any.
When Joey Francone realized that Anthony Rizzi had skipped out on him, the wannabe mobster threw a fit in the Caesar’s Palace hotel room. He punched at the mattress on the king-size bed over and over. He threw the ice bucket across the room. He forgot about the stitching in his rectum and kicked at the suitcase stand. He flinched from the pain.
He counted his money one more time as he sat on the bed in Rizzi’s hotel room. He had barely enough cash to make an escape and nowhere to go.
Francone was ready to give up.
He stared at the telephone as he tried to compile a list of things he could trade with the FBI about Nicholas Cuccia and the Vignieri crime family. He cried to himself as he realized he didn’t have much to deal for the protection he would need.
Charlie wasn’t sure if it was a short dream or a long one. He had tried to wake himself several times, but the lure of the nightmare was too great. He was sweating when he awoke. He was paralyzed on the bed, straining to remember the dream and concerned about what it had meant.
The villain in Tosca, Baron Scarpia, was caught in a giant spider’s web. Samantha, wearing a hooded shawl, was pacing back and forth across a small room. The spider’s web holding Scarpia hung in one corner of the room. Samantha didn’t see it. Each time she paced, she drew closer to the web, and Scarpia reached out to grab her.
Charlie was somewhere outside the room and couldn’t find a way in. Lisa was suddenly outside the room with him. Charlie did his best to ignore his wife. He heard a chorus from his favorite aria over and over: “ma, nel ritrar costei. Il mio solo pensiero. Ah! Il mio sol pensier sei tu, Tosca, sei tu!”
It meant, “But in portraying this woman my only thought, ah, my only thought is you. Tosca, it’s you!”
He bolted off the bed and splashed cold water on his face. He called Samantha, she hung up on him. He immediately called back, and she hung up again. When he tried a third time, Samantha finally answered.
“I’m sorry,” he said.
Samantha remained silent on her end of the line.
“Sam?”
“I feel like you ran out on me,” she finally said.
“I didn’t run out on you,” Charlie said.
“That’s what it feels like,” Samantha said and hung up.
“Fuck,” Charlie said.
He hung up the receiver and grabbed the Taurus P22 off the night table. He held the gun in his right hand and stared at it. Except for target practice at a range on Long Island in New York, he had never fired a gun. It had made him nervous having one in the house. He gave up the sport a few months after buying his first handgun, a Smith & Wesson.38 revolver, because he’d left it out one night after drinking with friends from the pistol range. A handgun accident was something that haunted him for the next few days until he finally sold the revolver to a friend.
Now he realized that he might need one to stay alive. He pocketed the handgun until he was inside the rental. He pulled the handgun out and shoved it under the front seat. When he spotted an Asian kid standing near a pay phone alongside the motel office, Charlie slid off the front seat without thinking about the gun.