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 stripe of neatly trimmed pubic hair. He frowned at the sight of the tissue he could see through her pubic hair.
“You gotta put that thing in there like that?”
“Unless I want it to leak,” Brenda said, then mocked him. “Yes, I have to put that thing in there like that.”
“What is it, like a plug?”
Brenda stood at the end of the bed. “Exactly. That’s what it does. It stops it from running out.”
Lercasi made a face. “You gotta describe it like that? It’s disgusting.”
Brenda rolled her eyes. “Then use a condom, Jerry.”
Lercasi pointed at her crotch. “Cover yourself,” he said.
Brenda grabbed the pair of navy leggings she wore to work at the gym. She sat on the edge of the bed and pulled the leggings on. When she arched her back to pull them up over her hips, Lercasi “You have such a beautiful fuckin’ body.”
“Except I disgust you.”
He waited for her to roll off the bed. When she reached for a white athletic bra, he shook his head. “Not that,” he said. “There’s no plugs there.”
Brenda half smiled. “Why don’t you use a condom? If it bothers you so much.”
“I hate them things.”
“I hate it when your goo starts running out while I’m working downstairs.”
Lercasi made another face. “You gotta talk like that?” he said.
Brenda put her hands on her hips. “You’re the one with the problem.”
Lercasi thought about it. It was true, he did have a problem with his women appearing anything but perfect. Except he didn’t think it was too much to ask. He put them up, paid all their expenses, gave them phony jobs for play money, and provided them with the best connections in Las Vegas.
Right now, though, he knew he wasn’t going to win this argument with Brenda this morning. He was fifty-six years old. The young women he kept around him had minds of their own, no matter how much he provided for them.
“I don’t know,” he said. “My first wife used to do that. It bothers me.”
Brenda frowned as she put the athletic bra on. “I have to get downstairs. You want me to send that pervert up?”
“My accountant?” he asked. He knew the girls working in his gym hated Allen Fein. He liked to push their buttons about it.
“Why do you call him that, a pervert?” he asked.
“Because he is. He likes little girls. Everybody knows it. He doesn’t even try to keep it secret. We also know he brings in private massage girls. That chink, for one. And we all know what he does with them in the massage rooms.”
“What chink?”
“Chink or Vietnamese or Korean or whatever she is. She’s giving him head in the massage rooms. My girls gag at the sight of him downstairs. He makes our skin crawl.”
Lercasi feigned concern. “He ever make a move on you?”
“I don’t wear a training bra. I’m not his type.”
Lercasi tried to picture Allen Fein humping his girlfriend. The image was worse than the tissue plug she had used. “Send him up,” he said.
“And if Nancy calls again?”
Nancy was Lercasi’s second wife, a woman he saw as little as possible. “Tell her I’m busy.”
“Sure,” Brenda said as she stood up. “What do you care? I have to hear it.”
Lercasi leaned over to crush out his cigarette in an ashtray on the night table. “Hey, Brenda,” he said. “Don’t break my balls this morning, all right?”
Brenda stopped at the door to turn around and give Lercasi the finger. He broke out laughing.
Twenty minutes later, Allen Fein sat on the couch in the private apartment above the gym while Lercasi combed his hair in front of the floor-to-ceiling mirror behind the bar. The accountant was fidgety on the couch. He examined a pair of crystal dice on a glass coffee table. He seemed nervous waiting for Lercasi’s attention.
“How was Laughlin?” Lercasi asked.
“Huh?” Fein said. He dropped one of the crystal dice into his lap. “Oh, all right. I’m thinking of buying a condo there.”
Lercasi stopped to look at his accountant in the mirror. “You pay those kids you fucked last night?”
'Of course.”
Lercasi finished combing his hair. He turned to Fein as he struck a match to light a cigarette.
“I need a party tonight,” he said, with the unlit cigarette dangling from his mouth. He lit the cigarette, took a long drag, and held the smoke inside his lungs a few seconds before letting it escape. “See what the mayor’s doing,” he added. “Or somebody on the City Council. Make it my party. Something public, where it’ll be picked up on the news.”
“Are you bringing your wife?” Fein asked. He set the two crystal dice back on the coffee table.
Lercasi opened his hands. “Am I bringing my wife? What kind of question is that? No, make it public, and I’ll bring Brenda. Of course I’m bringing my wife.”
“Should I know what it’s about?”
“Somebody skimmed thirty-two six last month from one of Gilly’s books. The somebody had a private line installed in one of his places a few months back for dime players. The tap come in last week. Thirty-two six in one month. Who knows how much the first five months before somebody figured it out.”
The accountant swallowed hard. “I see.”
“That’s already taken care of,” Lercasi said. He sat in a black leather recliner across from Fein. “Is it true you’re getting head in my massage rooms downstairs?”
“No,” Fein said defensively. “I don’t need to get my head in the massage rooms.”
“Brenda says you got some private noodle comes in to do you.”
“Not true. Besides, Brenda hates my guts.”
“Because I don’t need that kind of shit blowing up in my face over here. Some broad using my place to give head. You should know better than that.”
“You know what I like, Jerry. I don’t need to get my joint copped in a gymnasium. I like to look, if anything. The worst she does is remove her top. And I don’t know how Brenda would know unless she installed a camera.”
Lercasi smirked. He liked humiliating his accountant. “Just so long as you know what you’re doing,” he said. “After all, you’re my business manager, no?”
“Maybe you should tell Brenda about that,” Fein said, acting offended then.
Lercasi thought about the tuft of tissue between his girlfriend’s legs. “Brenda’s got other things to worry about,” he said. “Go make a party.”
When Fein left Vive la Body, he ignored the contemptuous stare of Lercasi’s girlfriend at the front desk. He was feeling lucky about having a built-in excuse for being in Laughlin the night before. He had avoided a potentially dangerous question-and-answer period with his boss. Had he not made arrangements to screw a couple of teenagers in the whorehouse in Laughlin, his boss might have looked into Fein’s sudden trip to the mountains.
Now his boss had other business for Fein to take care of. One of the bookmakers operating under Lercasi’s gambling business had skimmed money. Fein didn’t know whether the cash amount his boss mentioned was real, nor did he care to know. The bottom line was he was expected to arrange an alibi dinner for his boss tonight.
