“Mahoney doubted it like a leg-breaker for a loan shark being fed a tale about suddenly having to rent a separate apartment because a conductor’s jacket was left on a chair. But time was ticking like those people with involuntary facial twitches . . .”
“Let’s fast-forward,” said Serge. “Any word on my friend from the Costa Gorda days?”
“Forty lengths out of the money at Aqueduct.”
“That bad?” said Serge.
“Chicago fire.”
“Thanks for trying . . .”
“Java juice on the tube-steak fader?”
“No, I haven’t found out anything yet about the dating bandit.”
Mahoney smiled. “Straight flush to the paint cards.”
Serge raised an eyebrow. “You have a new client and a lead on another scam artist?”
Mahoney slipped Serge a matchbook with scribbling inside.
“Okay.” Serge nodded. “I’ll call you as soon as I know something.”
Mahoney tipped his hat—“Bizzo”—and walked away.
Chapter Seven
MIAMI BEACH
Unlike Serge, and almost everyone else, there was one particular man in Florida who had the kind of looks that were the first thing women noticed upon entering a room.
All women. Every time. Every room.
Smoldering Latin sexuality and charisma. And a regular clotheshorse. He consistently had them lining up in the clubs and social events and produce departments. Just one last blank to fill in. What did he do for a living? The women crossed their fingers: doctor, lawyer, banker? . . . Why, none of the above. He had a trust fund.
But there was this hitch. And nobody would ever believe it without witnessing it in person. And even then, they’d blame it on a trick of lighting.
It was this: Despite all outward appearances to the contrary, he was, well, to look at it from the opposite end, the luckiest man in the world at cards.
When it came to women, he could effortlessly surround himself with a harem. Closing the deal was another matter entirely. It was always something. Something Florida: category-five hurricanes, red tide blooms, Cuban unrest, election unrest, alligators, mosquitoes, Burmese pythons, brush-fire evacuations, all-purpose outbreaks of criminal weirdness and peripheral aberrant behavior.
The bottom line, the guy had never, ever scored.
He was: Johnny Vegas, the Accidental Virgin.
Johnny himself didn’t understand it, but it came down to numbers. As any theoretical mathematician will tell you, it is the statistical anomaly that bears out the equation. Somehow, somewhere, in any quantified hierarchy, there is dead-last place. To put it more precisely—again in academically provable terms—if this was all mapped out on a blackboard, and in the exact center of the board was sigma designated by the hump of a bell curve, and halfway to the left side of the blackboard along the negative
But to Johnny’s credit, his misfortune was in proportion to his persistence. The guy never gave up. And this particular night he put on his batting helmet again and got back in the game at an ultra-hot new Washington Avenue dance club called Liquid Plasma.
Deafening rhythms throbbed out the door to those behind the velvet rope who couldn’t get in because they weren’t attractive, yet not ugly or self-disfigured enough to be trendy. Inside, it was dark, steamy and crammed tight with perspiring bodies hopping to the music in perfect synchronization like a North Korean military parade. The ceiling rose a full four stories over the dance floor, where crisscrossing lasers sliced the vapor of dry ice. Swooping down on the crowd were holograms of dragons, unicorns and Kardashians. The club usually reached max capacity around four A.M., but tonight even earlier because it had booked the most popular DJ on the beach, Count Dreckula. Flexible fiber-optic tubes glowed through his translucent jumpsuit as he stood in a window washer’s scaffold just below the ceiling. The Count had richly earned his rabid following through years of rigorous music study, learning how to play a record on a record player.
Down in the middle of the pulsating mass was Johnny Vegas. Pressed against him was 360 degrees of willing breasts. But all that was Plan B. Because Johnny was awaiting the return of the vixen who had introduced him to the club.
Sasha.
