That’s what I was banking on.
I thanked her and got up to leave.
“Do you have a girl, Neal?” she asked me at the door.
“A fiancee, actually.”
“Do you make her laugh?”
“Oh, she thinks I’m a stitch.”
I don’t think she bought it, because she said, “Have Natty give you some good jokes.”
If I can find him, Hope. If I can find him.
Chapter 4
I left the jeep with the valet-parking guys and walked into the lobby of the Sands. I hung around the high-roller blackjack tables and made myself conspicuous until I saw a barrel-chested guy who gave me a twice-over.
I walked over to him.
“I’d like to see Mickey the C,” I said.
“And you are?”
“Neal Carey.”
“Does Mickey know you, Neal Carey?”
“No,” I said. “But he knows people who know my boss.”
“Give me names, Neal Carey.”
“Joe Graham, Ed Levine, Ethan Kitteredge.”
“Who do they know?”
“People in Providence,” I said. “People in New York.”
All kinds of people in both places. But in this case, “people” referred specifically to wise guys, mobbed-up guys, connected guys. See, Friends of the Family did all sorts of confidential things for its rich and influential clients, and if you’re going to do confidential things for anybody in New York and Providence, you’re bound to make some connections with the mob.
The same might be said of Las Vegas, which is what brought me to the Sands Hotel to talk with Mickey the C. I’d never met Mickey the C, but I’d heard about him since I was a kid.
The guy thought about it for a second and said, “Why don’t you sit down and have a drink?”
“Thanks.”
I found an empty barstool and ordered a beer. The bartender waved me off when I tried to pay for it.