“Yippee.”

“Uhh, can I bring you anything?”

“Sperm.”

Sperm, I thought as I reached Vegas’s northern burbs. I’ve become sperm. Sperm leads to babies. Which leads to diapers and rashes and colic and to a person, which was the scariest thing of all because a little person expects things from you. Daddy-type things.

The problem is, I have no experience with this stuff. No role model, as it were, my own father having been your classic anonymous sperm donor who knocked up my prostitute mother. No role model unless you count Joe Graham, the one-armed dwarf of a private eye who raised me, taught me a trade, and set me up with Friends of the Family.

A father.

I don’t know.

I was still thinking this over-and developing a wicked headache-when I gave the Jeep to the valets at the Mirage and found my way to the security desk in the basement.

“Hi,” I said to the thickly muscled, blue-blazered man behind the counter. I slid my wallet-open to show my driver’s license-over the counter. “I’m Neal Carey. I’m here to escort Mr. Silverstein home.”

“Natty Silver,” the guard said, chuckling.

“You know him?”

“You don’t?”

“Sorry.”

“Natty Silver!” the guard prompted. “One of the great burlesque top bananas. When that died he went stand-up. Worked this town when it was just the Flamingo. You probably saw him on Ed Sullivan.”

“That Natty Silver?!” I vaguely remembered the comic’s baggy checked pants and deadpan delivery. “‘Wherever you go, there you are,’ Natty Silver?”

“The one and only.”

“Whatever happened to him?”

“Ah, he did some more stand-up, a few shitty beach movies where the kids made fun of him. He faded. Christ, he must be, what, eighty-six, eight-seven?”

“Natty Silver,” I repeated.

“I’ll call up, let him know you’re coming,” the guard said.