Gorilla Beach (36 page)

Giuseppe Troublino was sitting on a bench outside. When he saw Gia, he said, “You're ten minutes late. It's not nice to keep an
old man waiting. Here.” He handed her an envelope. “I got you a deal, so you've got some walkaway cash.”

“How much?”

“Fifteen grand.”

Gia handed the envelope to Fredo. “This belongs to you.”

Bella said, “Can someone tell me what's happening?”

Giuseppe smiled and handed Bella a set of car keys. “These are for you.”

Gia Guido-Hugged the old man. “You rock, Giuseppe.”

Bella said, “I still don't get it.”

“Remember how you said the gap between three and sixty grand was wide enough to drive a truck through? Well, here it is.” She walked over to the shiny black Cadillac Escalade, brand-new, parked at the curb. “It's for you, Bella, to make up for my trashing the Honda.”

“How … what … I'm in shock,” said Bella, her eyes big as manhole covers.

“As soon as we started winning,” said Gia, “I called Tony's grandpa and asked him to scout around for a good deal. When we'd saved up enough, Tony drove down to AC and picked up the cash. Giuseppe and Tony installed the zebra-print leather seats themselves. So? You like?”

Bella sputtered. “But this is a brand-new Cadillac! The Honda was a piece of shit!”

“And????”

“You could have bought yourself something,” said Bella, jumping inside the Escalade, running her hands all over the leather seats. “I'm mean, I'm
loving
this truck. Don't get me wrong. My panties are soaked! But Jesus frickin' Christ, Gia. This is huge. It's too much.”

“First of all, too much? Huh? Does not compute,” said Gia, excited by Bella's intense reaction. “Second, a gift is only worth having if you can give it away. Fourth, you've been slipping me loans
and helping me out for years—and you never once asked me to pay you back. This is my payback. I still don't think it's enough.”

“You skipped the third reason for buying it,” said Will. He'd opened the back door of the truck, lifted the dogs inside, and climbed in.

“Third? Yeah, third, I need a ride back to Brooklyn, and I want to do it in style.”

The cousins waded into
the Atlantic Ocean all the way up to their thongs. On the beach, the puppies, in their leopard-print vests, dug up buried cigarette butts and bottle caps in the sand.

“Do we have to do this? I don't want to get the leather seats wet,” said Bella.

“We have to,” insisted Gia. “It's tradition.”

Last summer, right before they left Seaside Heights on July 31, they ran into the waves and got soaked pedicure to pouf. Gia conceded it wasn't the brightest idea to get salty water on the Escalade's new leather seats.

“Whale sperm,” said Gia.

“Why the ocean's salty?” asked Bella.

“Yeah.”

“I've heard that.”

“If I had one complaint about this summer,” said Gia, “it's that I didn't fall madly in love with a hot guido. But I feel falafel about it.”

“Philosophical?”

“Whatever. I'm only twenty-two. I need to have experiences, not commitments. So I haven't met the father of my four or five tan babies yet. I can wait. The point is, I came to the beach to find a gorilla juicehead, and I wound up finding myself.”

“Where were you?” asked Bella.

“At the bar,
duh
.”

After a few more minutes, they had enough of tradition and falafelizing. The cousins tipped their trucker hats to the horizon, scooped up the dogs, and returned to the Escalade. Bella loved her new ride, as deeply as she had ever loved anything in her life. “Have I thanked you enough for sneaking around behind my back, lying, and stealing to get me this truck?”

“Anytime.”

They didn't get four blocks before a SHPD cruiser pulled up behind them, lights flashing.

“Not again,” said Bella.

Captain Morgan appeared at the driver's-side window and leaned down. “Ladies, I heard you were heading back to the city today.”

“So you had to pull us over?” asked Gia.

“The man I arrested at church the other night, one Arthur Sanders? Turns out he's swindled women from Fort Lee to Cape May. You girls wouldn't know anything about that, would you?”

“Nope,” they said in unison.

“The Hoboken police are offering a two-thousand-dollar reward for Sanders's apprehension.”

“Wow! Are you getting it?” asked Gia.

Captain Morgan's mustache curved slightly. “I'm not refusing to take it. I wonder if I deserve it, though. I got an anonymous phone tip about an hour before Mrs. Lupo reported the church robbery.”

“Really,” said Gia.

“The caller said it'd be worth my while to park the cruiser outside Our Lady of the Perpetual Sorrow that night.”

“Maybe the caller owed you a hundred bucks from a loan you made earlier this summer,” said Gia.

“Then she should pay me back a hundred and take the two thousand for herself.”

“She wants you to have it. Her way of saying, ‘Thanks.'”

“Then I will keep it. My way of saying, ‘You're welcome.'” Captain Morgan thudded the roof of the Escalade. “Have a safe trip back to Brooklyn. Keep those dogs on their leashes. I'd hate to scrape them off the highway.”

“Got it,” said Gia.

He climbed back into his cruiser, gave them one siren blast, and drove away.

Bella put the car in motion and quickly reached the
HURRY BACK
! sign that marked the town border. “So long, Seaside! See ya next year!” they yelled. Kookah and Pretzel yapped. Minutes later, they were on thunder road.

“Floor it, bitch,” said Gia.