Page 5 of Conning the Billionaire
Rita twisted herself harder to look directly behind the driver’s seat. “And you?”
Priyanka shrugged. “Drunk lottery winner doesn’t know how to play blackjack, and my debit card got demagnetized and wouldn’t work in the ATM. Five hundred.”
“Good, good,” Rita said. “Kylie and I did the lesbians breakup routine. The guy who followed the spicy bi Latina domme out of the restaurant thought he was in for the time of his life, so he bought me diamond earrings.”
Alma gasped. “You didn’t sleep with him, did you?”
Rita’s slim nose wrinkled in disgust. “Ew. No. We never sleep with marks, Alma. Never. We don’t even kiss ‘em. They pay us for the pleasure of our company. That’s our code. If we sleep with them, we’d be prostitutes, and there are plenty of those around here without us muddying up the pool. Kylie, how did you make out?”
“Twelve hundred.” Kylie laughed and unfurled a sparkling string dangling from her fingertips. “And a diamond tennis bracelet. He paid twelve grand for it.”
“Twenty-five hundred plus jewelry. I’ll call Vito and see what we can get for the rocks. Priyanka, do the math, please.”
Priyanka Mehtani stared at the ceiling of the car. “Five hundred for Salvatore Grande’s cut, and then four hundred sixty-five dollars for us three, and six hundred and five for Alma.”
Alma had a toddler at home, so she got an extra thirty percent. They’d split the money for the jewelry when it came in.
Rita doled out the cash and gave Kylie the extra five hundred for Salvatore Grande.
Kylie had known Salvatore “The Gecko” Grande ever since she could remember, so she was always the one to pass him the envelope at church over at St. Augustine’s in Philly on Sunday mornings and make sure they were credited for their contribution.
Rita drove them all home, dropping Kylie off at her place first. She lived on the second floor of a fifty-year-old row house on Drexel Avenue. The ground floor was boarded up, and Kylie could still smell the smoke from the grease fire that had gutted the bottom of the house seven years before.
Kylie hurried up the exterior stairs and let herself inside, locking the door and turning on the lights before waving to Rita from the front window.
Inside, Kylie took off the dress and sprayed it with Febreze, hanging it in the bathroom to air out, the poverty version of dry cleaning. She had a few pieces of furniture in her studio apartment, a chair and table over by the corner with countertops and dilapidated kitchen appliances, a desk with a secondhand computer where she worked on her GED homework, and a twin bed with printouts of photos taped to the wall above it.
After showering, because the steam would also help the wrinkled dress, Kylie went to bed because it was almost two o’clock in the morning.
Before she turned out the light, the pictures of happier times on the wall above her pillow seemed to mock her.
Her father, when he was still alive.
Her mother, before alcohol had wasted her body and bloated her face.
Her little sister, Rachele, when she was eight years old.
Kylie snapped off the light and tried to sleep because she had a half-shift as a cocktail waitress at the Tropicana after church the next day.
3
SURVEILLANCE
MICAH SHINE
Micah Shine was eating an appetizer of tuna tartare in the B Prime Steakhouse at the Borgata casino when two women in the middle of the restaurant began arguing over a breakup.
Both were absolutely beautiful and wearing expensive designer gowns just a few years out of fashion, but the white-girl brunette who insisted just a little too hard that she was merely an innocent ingenue caught Micah’s attention.
At that point, everyone in the restaurant was watching them, either surreptitiously or flat-out staring, so Micah felt free to observe.
The brunette’s technique was good. Not flawless, but good. She sent off subtle body language clues of being in distress and did seem to be realistically crying with tears. She had a sweet face, Micah thought, plump, youthful cheeks and warm brown eyes as she sobbed in heartbreak.
The other woman whom she’d called Teresa, which was doubtlessly not her name any more than Gloria was the brunette’s, was playing the fiery Latina for all it was worth, practically spraying some words and rolling her R’s. The woman appeared Hispanic, but she was hamming up the part a tad too much. Her over-the-top performance might have diminished the effect, almost, but she pulled back her gesticulations at the very last moment. She was good, too.
No, the brunette was definitely the one Micah was interested in. He’d been watching for her when she’d walked through the casino, so Micah had bribed the maître d’ for a table near the wall.
At the end of their performance, one of the stockbrokers at the next table chased after the Latina, while another man was thoroughly in the brunette’s clutches. If she took him for less than five thousand dollars that night, Micah would be disappointed in her. Her mark paid the bill, and after a bit more conversation, the man and the brunette left the restaurant together.
