Sucker Bet

9

Candy Hart had never known love.

It was true. There had been a football player in high school who’d broken her heart, but they’d spent most of their time in the backseat of his car, humping like bunnies. Only fifteen, and already a member of what her Bible-thumping mother called the Itchy Ovary Club. Brad, or was it Burt? She’d known quite a few after him. There was no doubt about it. Candy liked boys.

But none that she’d ever loved with her heart. She’d gone looking plenty of times—in bars, gyms, even in church—and always come back with the bucket half full. It was another of her mother’s cockamamie expressions.

At twenty, she had married a carpet salesman named Claude, then run off to Las Vegas when he started beating her. Needing a place to stay, she’d let a slick casino boss talk her into sleeping with a high roller for five hundred bucks. It hadn’t seemed like work, and when the casino boss had called a few days later, she’d agreed to do it again.

She knew it was whoring, but she also set rules for herself. No more than one trick a night. No drugs. And she kept a day job, teaching aerobics at a gym. Her hooker friends thought she was crazy, but Candy knew better.

She’d gone to work for an escort service, then quit after two girls got their throats slit. Scared, she’d called the casino boss who’d gotten her started, and started working exclusively for his hotel.

The casino boss had a cool system. Before he’d send Candy to a room, he did a background check on his computer, making sure her dates were upright citizens when they weren’t in Vegas. It made the work easier, and she probably would have hung around if she hadn’t let a high roller sweet-talk her into staying longer than the usual one hour. Champagne had followed, and room service. It had been heaven.

The next day, the casino boss had called Candy to his office. His name was Marvin, and he had a face like a bedpan. Candy stood in front of his desk flanked by a pair of security guards.

“Six hours?” he said angrily.

“He fell in love.”

“You’re not supposed to let that happen.”

Candy shrugged. “Tell him that.”

“That guy took me for two hundred and fifty grand yesterday. I want him on the tables, giving me my money back, not upstairs doing the horizontal bop until he passes out.”

“You want me punching a time clock?”

“I pay you by the hour, right?”

“Yeah.”

“So that’s what I want. An hour. Get it?”

Candy had stiffened. Last night’s Romeo had given her his card and asked her to dinner. Guys had offered this before. Although she’d never accepted, she’d always looked at it as another out. And now Marvin was telling her to forget it. No more dreams.

She was a whore, good for an hour, nothing more.

She hated how it rhymed.

And how it made her feel.

Then she’d done something really stupid. Picking up an ashtray, she’d flipped it across the room like a Frisbee. It had crashed into the floor-to-ceiling window behind Marvin’s desk, the glass coming down in a thousand pieces, the desert sand blowing through the open space.

“Fuck you,” she’d added for good measure.

And for that, she’d gotten run out of Las Vegas.

South Beach had seemed a natural place to relocate. Great weather, funky people, and lots of tourists with money. Renting a condo two blocks from the ocean, she worked the hotels at night. The concierges were easy to deal with and took a flat 20 percent. During the day, she taught aerobics to plump Cuban women in Coral Gables, and every other weekend went snorkeling in the Keys. It was as normal as life got, and she’d been happy.

Then she’d met Rico.

A concierge had set them up. She’d gone to his room at the Eden Roc and found him sitting on the balcony, wearing black silk pants and a cream-colored sports jacket. A handsome guy, for a hood. He’d pointed to the empty chair across from his. As she’d sat down, he’d handed her an envelope.

“That’s for talking with me,” he’d said.

She counted ten hundred-dollar bills.

“So talk,” she said.

Rico had a mouth that never quit. He explained how he was a professional con man and needed her to help butter up a sucker. It would require Candy seeing the guy for a week or more. Rico was willing to pay her daily rate, plus expenses. There was only one hitch.

“What’s that?” she’d said.

“You can’t fall for him.”

“You got it backwards,” she’d said. “They fall for me.”

“He’s famous,” Rico explained.

“Right.”

“Nigel Moon.”

Candy had nearly laughed. Fall for one of the world’s biggest assholes? She’d seen pictures in People magazine of Moon dropping his shorts. All the money in the world couldn’t erase that kind of ugly.

“Give me a break,” she said.

“He’s got a lot of dough.”

Nigel Moon was no richer than plenty of guys she’d done in Las Vegas, and she hadn’t fallen for any of them. Her body might be for rent, but her soul wasn’t.

“I don’t care.”

Rico had smiled. “That’s my girl.”

So that was the deal. Candy had been okay with it, until something strange had happened.

After the Davie carnival, they’d gone to Nigel’s bungalow at the Delano on South Beach and burned up the sheets. Candy had clutched a stuffed panda the whole time Nigel had screwed her. Then Nigel had ordered room service.

The hotel had a killer restaurant, and they drank champagne and ate lobsters in their bathrobes, the stereo playing a Joshua Redman CD, the music on loud because Nigel’s eardrums were shot from his drumming days. Normally, Candy hated loud music, but tonight she hadn’t minded, the notes flowing over their overheated bodies like a siren’s song.

Still in their robes, they’d ventured outside. The moon hung a few fingers above the horizon, looking ten times its normal size. A hundred yards away, guests ate on the patio. They walked to the edge of the property, away from the noise. Not many stars were visible, and Candy had to search until she found a constellation whose name she knew.

“There,” she’d said, pointing.

“Where?” Moon said, straining to see.

“Over there.”

“Okay,” he’d said after a few moments. “I see it.”

“Know which one it is?”

“No.”

“The Little Dipper,” she said.

“Let’s not get personal.”

“Huh?” she said.

Turning, he parted his bathrobe and exposed his round English belly and the fleshy little ornament that hung beneath it. Candy had shrieked with laughter.

And that was when the strange thing had happened. Nigel’s dick was small, but so were most guys’ dicks. Only, most guys lied about their dicks. Yet here was Nigel, telling her he didn’t care if she didn’t care. Making a joke out of his little dick.

Only, it wasn’t a joke to Candy. Her whole life, she’d been looking for a guy who would come clean with her. It didn’t matter if he was fat or bald or had a little dick, just so long as he was honest about it. All she was asking for was an honest, down-to-earth guy. What her mother had called the full bucket.

And she’d found the full bucket in Nigel Moon.