Charlie Opera by Charlie Stella, Peter Skutches

wasn’t in the mood. He had his own questions about his wife they hadn’t really answered yet. “I’m here,” he said. “She’s gone. Yes, she left me here.”
    The fat detective became abrupt with his questions. “When was the last time you saw her?”
    “One more time. Last night.”
    “What time?”
    “About seven-thirty, eight o’clock.”
    “Did she leave you then or later?”
    Charlie’s eyebrows furrowed. “I don’t know,” he said, his voice angry. “Later, I guess. I went down to the bar.”
    “Did you argue?”
    “We had a fight. I was drunk. I didn’t hit my —”
    The fat detective interrupted him. “Were you anywhere in the casino you could verify from the time you argued until the time you were mugged?”
    Charlie took a deep breath. “Yes,” he said. “Same place as tonight, in case you were watching. One of the bars downstairs. I played a poker machine there. I hit it. I’m sure I’m on the cameras they use.”
    “Your wife was mugged at a motel on the edge of the strip. She was there with a Mr. Denton. Mr. Denton said one of the men held a gun on him.”
    Charlie knew they had mentioned John Denton to get a reaction. He was too concerned about Lisa to give a shit.
    “Is she all right?” he asked.
    “They knocked out some of her teeth,” the fat detective said. “Worse than what you got.”
    “The fuck could somebody hit a woman like that?” Charlie asked.
    “That’s what we’d like to know,” the tall detective said. “Got any ideas?”
    Charlie had had enough already. “No,” he said. “Or I wouldn’t be standing here wasting my time with you two clowns.”
    The detectives almost brought him in for calling them clowns. Charlie was eventually able to talk himself out of the situation. It wasn’t that he didn’t respect the police investigating Lisa’s mugging, but they had asked him questions in an attempt to trap him. They seemed to have made up their minds about his role in his wife’s mugging.
    After he finished giving them a story without the details of what had happened in New York, Charlie called the hospital where his wife was admitted. He was told she was in surgery and wouldn’t be able to speak without pain for a few days.
    He felt a conflicting rage when he hung up with the hospital. He was furious at the thought of someone assaulting his wife. He was furious at himself for giving a shit. She had dumped him the day before. She had left him for a lover she was cheating with, a lover she had cheated with in the past. Why the fuck should he care what happened to her anymore?
    He sat at the window in his hotel room and looked toward the construction site where he himself was mugged. He wondered what had actually happened to Lisa and whether her lover had tried to defend her. He wondered if both muggings had anything to do with what happened in the nightclub back in New York the week before.
    Charlie wondered about a lot of things before he could finally fall asleep.

Chapter 9
    Jerry Lercasi sat up in bed to smoke. He checked his watch for the time as he took a long drag on a fresh Marlboro. He scratched at the hairs on his muscular chest with his free hand.
    He had just finished having sex with his girlfriend, a twenty-nine-year-old woman he’d been having an affair with the past two years. They had spent the night together in a private apartment above his twenty-four-hour gymnasium, Vive la Body. His girlfriend, Brenda, was a manager at the gym. When the big fights came to Las Vegas, she was one of the ring girls at the MGM Grand. It wasn’t the really big time he had promised her two years earlier, but it was better than washing hair in the beauty parlor where he had first met her.
    Now his girlfriend was coming out of the bathroom naked. She was a tall woman with a sleek body and long black hair. She had perfect breast implants and a naturally curvy figure.
    Lercasi was smiling at her body as she walked across the huge bedroom. He focused on the