Gorilla Beach (17 page)

“Where're you going?” asked Gia, shimmying over to him. She'd grabbed his belt loop and yanked him onto the dance floor. “Dance with us, Fredo. I swear, this time, you won't get pounded by a wasted teenager.”

She put her wrists on his shoulders and started shaking in front of him. No Full Frontal Guido Hug action. She kept a safety space between them. “Tree branchin', baby!” said Gia.

Next to them, Bella and Will moved to the beat of the music. While Fredo and Gia danced without excessive touching, he saw Will and Bella bend into each other and take their first kiss. It only lasted a few seconds. When Will and Bella pulled apart, they grinned sweetly at each other with heat and warmth.

Gia yelled, “Fredo! Fist pump!”

Responding to the call, he started beating up the beat. His three friends joined him. They danced in a circle, pounding the air in sync, laughing. Fredo realized he'd been wrong before when he thought he'd never been happier.

This
was the happiest moment of his life. Right
now
.

Ponzi navigated Gia through
the Nero's lobby and up in the elevator while wildly making out. He hadn't appreciated the extracurricular benefits of being in a perpetual lip-lock with a girl. His face was obscured to witnesses and cameras.

“Where's my friggin' key card?” whined Gia, rummaging in her purse.

It was in the inside pocket of his jacket. While Gia and her crew were dancing at Providence, he'd been left in charge of their purses. It was like throwing meat at a lion. What was he supposed to do? Ignore it?

A housekeeper came by with her cart, and Gia said, “Lucy! Thank Gawd. Can you let me in? I lost my key card.”

“Of course, Gia.” The housekeeper unlocked the door and held it open.

Ponzi whispered, “You know the maid's name?”

“Duh! She cleans our toilet, for Christ's sake. I know her
kids'
names.” To Lucy, Gia said, “Come in for a sec. I have something for you.”

She ushered the maid and Ponzi inside. Gia went to the room's closet safe. “We won so much money, I'd feel bad if I didn't spread it around. Won and done,” she said while typing in the secret code. The safe door opened. Gia took out a twenty and gave it to the maid.

“No, Gia.”

“Yes, Lucy. I'm gonna make you take it.” Gia folded the bill and put in inside the maid's uniform top. “Keep it in your bra. Surprise your husband later.”

The woman laughed. “Thank you,” she said, and left.

Once they were alone in Gia's suite, she threw her arms around Ponzi's neck, jumped up to encircle his waist with her legs, and shouted, “Happy Smush Day!”

Before he could figure out what she was talking about, she started kissing him again. His mind turned to soggy mush. Was that what she meant by
smush
?

She climbed down to kick off her heels. Arms outstretched, she came at him for another kiss. He was happy to supply it. He wrapped his arms around her and lifted her off her feet. “There. I've given you back the four inches you just lost.” Then he planted a smooch on her pink-frosted lips.

This had to be the sweetest gig he'd ever played. Gia was definitely the sexiest mark in history—and endearingly clueless. Like swiping candy from a babe. More like the babe was giving her candy to him—and it wasn't even Halloween. He was too, too lucky.

But he had work to do. Stealing her money wouldn't be achieved by smushing alone. He'd have to win her loyalty and trust. That meant buying her clothes and meals, aka the tried-and-true method of “softening the mark.” He'd been softening her all day long and had already dropped nearly a grand. He squeezed her ass. Yup, just the right kind of soft.

Which made him rock hard.

Easy tiger,
he thought, reining himself in. After he built trust, he had to separate her from her other allegiances, so she thought he was the only person in the world who cared about her. He had to drive a wedge between Gia and her friends, aka the people who'd raise warning flags to her about him.

“Let's sit,” he said. Ponzi and Gia sank into the plush sectional couch. Their kiss intensified. In fact, calling it a
kiss
was liked describing a porterhouse as
beef
. This was the Cadillac of kisses. The Marilyn Monroe of makeouts. The heat rocketed from her lips to his hips. He had to touch her nakedness or he might burst into flames.

Gia broke their kiss to gasp for breath. “How old are you?” she asked, and plunged in for another taste.

His mind heard a question. But he was too turned on to think of the truth, let alone a lie. What did she want to know? If it was anything other than “Do you have condoms?” he didn't care. “I'm twenty-seven.” Shit! It was his real age.

“You have a North Jersey accent.”

“Hoboken.” Another fact! Five minutes of groping fully dressed, and he'd told Gia more about himself than he'd shared with another human being since his last arrest. And then, he'd only told the cops the truth because they knew it already. At this rate, she'd have his real name before night's end. That would be bad. Attempting to keep his lips shut, he bit down on them, cutting Gia off.

“What's wrong?”

“Nothing. Just a dry throat.”

“Let me get you a drink,” she said, standing, ambling cutely in her bare feet to the suite's fridge. “Oh, that feels good,” she said, leaning her chest into the fridge for the cold air. “I can't believe I'm saying this, but I think I got too much sun today. My skin's burning.” He watched, agog, as she propped her rack on the refrigerator shelf, just like a pair of melons. After grabbing a bottle of beer, she closed the door and walked back toward him. Her slightly chilled nipples popped like turkey thermometers and were pointed right for him.

Her boobs at eye level, she handed him the beer. The view was overwhelming his senses. He couldn't think straight.

“I have something important to say,” she announced. “I have STD.”

A chink in the armor. “Which one?”

“Huh?”

“Which sexually transmitted disease?”

She looked shocked. “That's not what I meant! I'm totally clean down there. I have EST.”

Eastern standard time? “Do you mean ESP, extrasensory perception?”

“Exactly. A song pops into my head, and then I'd hear it playing somewhere. Or I'd think of a scene from a movie, and the next night, I'd be flipping through channels and hit on the same scene on cable. An old friend's face pops into my head, and then she'd give me a shout-out on Twitter. Like that.”

“You're special, Gia. It's obvious.

“That's what I think!” she said excitedly. “It's a gift, like, being good at sports. I was born with it. My whole life I've been waiting to find out what made me special. And now I know, thanks to Fredo. The point is, I'm getting a psychic feeling about you.”

Uh-oh. Did she know he was a grifter? “What are you picking up?”

“I'm getting a confused feeling from you. Like you want to get it in, but you're not sure you should. If you're worried about my reputation, don't be. Hello? I'm a slut already. I have standards, though. I don't get with just anyone. And I want you.”

She peeled off her dress and threw it across the room. Standing naked, but for a matching zebra-print thong and bra set, Gia looked scrumptious. A sugarplum of juicy ripeness. Moving on their own, his hands wrapped around her trim waist. He could almost span it with his fingers. “You're so small here.”

Gia smiled. “I killed myself with a trainer this winter. But the pain was worth it for the look on your face right now.”

“I'm the first guy to see you in your drawers?”

“First in a while, yeah.”

“So nothing going on with Fredo?”

“He's a sweet kid, but nothing romantic,” she said.

“So he's just using you for your ability.”

Gia frowned. “I wouldn't say
using
. It was his idea.”

“And he's pimping out your psychic power for money. And Bella is taking a share of the money for doing nothing? You're a good friend to them, Gia. A lot better friend to them than they are to you.”

“You don't know what you're talking about,” said Gia coldly. “I've known Bella my whole life. She's not like that. And Fredo has plenty of his own money and doesn't need to use me.”

She stiffened under his hands. He might've taken a misstep, trying to rattle her about her friendships too soon. Did he underestimate her loyalty to her friends? “Forget I said anything. I'm sorry, but I see what I see, and I care about you. I don't want anyone to take advantage of you. It helps to have a friend with an outside perspective. You might not be able to see the situation clearly yourself. Money has a way of distorting reality.”

“That's true, but not Bella. She doesn't care about that. Fredo is as gentle as a lamb. I get that you're looking out for me. But you've got to be more trusting, Ponzi! I wonder why you're so suspicious. It makes me sad for you, what you must have gone through in your life to think the worst of good people.”

She'd hung with him for how long? A day? And she'd hit the nail on the head. He
was
distrustful, and he had good reason. This girl understood him. He felt himself soften—not in the dick, but around his heart. He lifted her by the waist and deposited her on his lap. Between kisses on her bare shoulders, along her slender, bronzed arm, he said, “You're sensational. Let me treat you like a queen, like you deserve to be treated.” He lingered on the inside of her elbow and wrist and felt her shiver. When Gia sighed, his heart bounced into his throat. He felt a sudden, bizarre urge to please her. To actually do the things he was promising.

If he didn't slow down, he'd lose control. If he got emotionally involved, could he steal her money? This issue had never come up before. Real emotions? He didn't have any. Or he thought he didn't. Gia triggered something real in him. Ponzi forced himself to squash his emotions and operate on a practical level only. Gia was a mark with a safe full of cash, and he had a mouth to feed—his own.

Inside his head, sirens blazed, lights blared. Or was it sirens
blared
and lights
blazed
? Jesus, he
was
confused! She was right about his feelings. Maybe she was psychic.

“I'm … I'm gonna take off now,” he said.

“What? You can't! It's Happy Smush Day.”

“My … my high-stakes poker game starts in a few minutes. I left half a million dollars on the table. If any woman alive could keep me from it, it'd be you, Gia.”

“It's four in the morning.”

“Really? Then I'm late.” He stood up, leaving her in her undies on the couch. Stepping away from her hotness, he gained a measure of self-control. The greater distance from her gravitational pull, the clearer his mind worked.

“Can I see you tomorrow?”

Gia shrugged. “Sure.”

She stood in the doorway watching him leave, frowning. He'd made her unhappy—the opposite of how a mark should feel when he left her.

The next day, Gia
and Bella sat side by side in throne chairs at Cleopatra's Retreat, the hotel salon. They'd already had their patriotic streaks dyed over. Bella went for her natural shade of chocolate brown. Gia got a new weave, platinum with leopard spots. Took for freakin' ever, but worth it! She'd had a Brazilian wax, a mustache wax, an Egyptian milk bath, and a sea-salt body scrub. A Russian manicurist was, at that moment, gluing acrylic nails to her fingers. Gia picked square-shaped tips with a leopard-face design, green-rhinestone eyes and a red-rhinestone tongue. Each tip was airbrushed by a local miniatures artist and sold exclusively to the salon. Meanwhile, a pedicurist was rubbing chocolate pudding on her feet.

“And then he left,” said Gia to Bella. “I don't get it. He was definitely into me. He said he'd find me today.”

“I would have told him off,” said Bella from the chair next to her. She was getting a honey-and-cornmeal facial.

“I'm letting it slip. Honestly? I think I scared him. I came on too strong.”

“You? Impossible.”

Gia closed her eyes and fell into a coma of being pampered, jerking awake when the manicurist filed the nail tips. It was loud! Like sandblasting graffiti off blacktop.

“So what next?” asked Bella.

“A
dieci mani
massage. Ten hands on my body at the same time. I might have a flashback to college. Then I'm soaking in that huge hot tub in the Roman Baths spa. Clothing optional.”

“I mean, what's next for you and Ponzi?” said Bella from under the amber mask. “The gunk on my face is starting to get hard.”

“That's what she said.”

The manicurist, facialist, and pedicurist laughed.

“I like Ponzi,” said Gia. “He's hot, and except for running out last night, he treats me like a queen. It bothers me that Fredo doesn't like him.”

“I'm not sure if I like him, either. I have to say, he's kind of right to say Fredo's using you—in a harmless wolf-cub way. But still.”

Gia shrugged. “But Fredo does all the betting. If it weren't for him, we'd be on a bus back to Brooklyn, instead of sitting on a throne with chocolate pudding between my toes. It's a mutual use, and totally on the table. Nothing sneaky going on at all. I don't blame him for seeing talent and using it. If I could use me for my gift, I would, too.”

“You'd use yourself?” asked Bella. “Would you regret you in the morning?”

The salon girls laughed again. Gia smiled contentedly, feeling that she was fulfilling her life's purpose of spreading her unique brand of joy to the people of the world.