“Thank you, sir.”
He seemed to come slowly back to a full awareness of his surroundings. As the girl was sending the drawer back out to him with his twenty chips inside, he said, “Uh, miss.”
“Yes, sir?”
“Is there a manager around?”
“Is something wrong, sir?”
“I want to establish a line of credit.” He seemed on the verge of dropping his wallet into the drawer, and hadn’t yet taken his chips out. “I have identification, I’m fully, uh—” He hesitated, then scooped the chips out and stuffed them distractedly into his jacket pocket.
“Yes, sir,” the girl said. “You’ll want to talk to Mr. Flynn.”
“Thank you,” Mackey said, and a second later did a double-take, when he remembered that Flynn was the name he was using. Thomas Flynn; he and Parker and a couple of other people all had ID in that name. “Flynn, you said?”
“Yes, sir.” Leaning forward so her hair was touching the glass, she looked and pointed down to Mackey’s left, saying, “You’ll find his door along this wall, sir.”
“My name’s Flynn,” Mackey said.
The girl gave him a blank smile. “Well, isn’t that a coincidence,” she said.
“It’s an omen,” Mackey told her. “I have a feeling I’m going to make some money tonight.”
“Well, I hope you do, sir. Should I tell Mr. Flynn you’re coming to see him?”
He seemed to think about it, then to make a solid decision. “Yes,” he said. “I might as well be prepared.”
“Thank you, sir.” She reached for a phone beside her, and Mackey moved away from her window.
Dalesia, winning most of the time on Don’t Pass and losing all of the time on nine, was slowly turning his hundred dollars over to the house. When the dice came around to him, he elected not to shoot but to pass them on to the next player, and while doing so, noticed Mackey walking along the wall toward a brown wooden door.
There was a man in a black suit, black tie, and white shirt standing near the door, watching the action the way a cop on a beat watches cars go by. When Mackey approached he turned and gave him a flat look and said, “Can I help you, sir?”
“I’m supposed to see Mr. Flynn,” Mackey said.
“Yes, sir. And your name was?”
Mackey gave a half-apologetic smile. “Flynn,” he said.
The man’s face wasn’t meant for smiling, but he tried. “Well, that’s a coincidence,” he said.
“I guess it is.”
The man reached for a black wall phone next to the door. “Related, by any chance?”
“You never know, do you? I’ll have to ask.”
“Yes, sir.” Into the phone, he said. “There’s a Mr. Flynn out here to see you. Fine.” Hanging up, he said, “Go right on in.”
“Thanks.” Mackey said as the door began to buzz. He pushed it open, the buzzing stopped, and he entered an ordinary receptionist’s office, ordinary in every way except that it was windowless. Several framed photographs of Tony Florio in his boxing days were on the walls. At a green-metal desk sat an ordinary receptionist, who smiled brightly and said, “Mr. Flynn?”
“That’s right. I guess it’s some coincidence, huh?”
“I guess so,” she said. “Mr. Flynn’s on the phone long-distance just now, but he’ll be with you in a very few minutes.”
“Thank you.”
She extended a large document toward him. “While you’re waiting, would you mind terribly filling this out? It could save you some time.”
The document was a four-page credit questionnaire. “Of course,” he said. “Of course.”
She pointed to a library table on the side wall. “I think you’d be comfortable there, Mr. Flynn.”
“I’m sure I would.”
The questionnaire wanted to know everything but his attitude about fucking sheep. He filled it out in a tiny crabbed hand, keeping the lies generally realistic, avoiding old gags like having a checking account in the Left Bank of the Mississippi, and when he was finished he gave the questionnaire back to the receptionist, who smiled her gracious thanks and carried it at once inside to her long-distance-telephoning boss.
The magazines available to read were Forbes and Business Week. Mackey read about businessmen for five minutes or so, until a buzzer sounded on the receptionist’s desk. “Mr. Flynn will see you now, Mr. Flynn,” the receptionist said, and got to her feet to open the door for him to the inner office.
Mr. Flynn was a short balding man who had put on some weight but who moved as though he were short and skinny. He wore a tan jacket and a blue-and-red bow tie, and he had come around his desk to give Mackey a firm but friendly handshake. The questionnaire was open on the desk, and Mackey could tell by Flynn’s outgoing manner that he had called the local phone number Mackey had given—as being his company’s “local leased personal premises,” as he had put it on the form—and had been told the story by Parker at the other end. Parker, playing butler-caretaker, would have said that yes, this was General Texachron’s local leased apartment, where company executives could stay when business brought them to Tyler, and that yes, Mr. Thomas Flynn was currently in residence although not at the moment present in the apartment.
But before they got to General Texachron or the other invented particulars of the questionnaire, they had to get past the coincidence of the last name. Mackey was getting heartily sick of the coincidence by now, and was wishing he’d chosen one of his other available identities instead, but eventually the casino’s Mr. Flynn had satisfied himself that the two of them weren’t blood relatives in any directly traceable way, and they could get themselves around to the matter at hand.
* * *
Downstairs, Mike Carlow and Dan Wycza and Stan Devers had all skipped dessert and were having a cup of coffee. Carlow, glancing at his watch, said, “Time for us to make our move.”
Wycza put down his cup. “Right,” he said, touched his napkin to his lips, and got to his feet. While Devers and Carlow stayed at the table, Carlow with his hands out of sight on his lap, Wycza crossed the room to where Tony Florio was standing in his usual spot near the headwaiter. “Mr. Florio?”
Florio turned around, his greeter’s smile on his face, his hand ready to come out for a brisk shake. “Yes, pal? What can I do for you?”
Wycza moved in close to him, turning his shoulder so as to exclude the nearby headwaiter from the conversation. Pointing into the dining room, he said, “You see those two gents there at my table?”
Florio was expecting to be asked for an autograph, which he would give, or to join these out-of-towners in a drink, which he wouldn’t do. “Yes,” he said. “I see them.”
Wycza said, “Well, the fella with his hands under the table is holding a target pistol down there, aimed at your balls.”
Florio stiffened. Wycza’s hand was on his elbow in a confidential way, and quietly Wycza said, “Now, don’t make a fuss, Mr. Florio, because I’ve got to tell you something. That guy is with me, and I know about him, and I know he gets very nervous in moments of stress. You follow me?”
Florio said nothing. It never even occurred to him this might be a gag; he believed it was the truth from the instant he heard it.
Wycza said, “For instance, if you were to make any sudden motions, or if you were to shout, anything like that, that nervous son of a bitch over there is just likely to shoot. I hate to use him, he makes me a nervous wreck myself, but the thing is he’s a marksman. He can shoot a pimple off a fly’s ass at sixty feet, he’s just amazing. If only he was calm like you and me, but he doesn’t have our size, you know? A big man like us can be calm, but a little guy like him gets nervous.”
Florio, in looking now at this soft-spoken baldheaded giant, was invited to notice that although Wycza had spoken of them both as being big men, Wycza was clearly much the bigger and much the stronger of the two of them. Florio, who was used to being the biggest and toughest-looking man in any gathering, wilted a bit more. Half whispering as drops of perspiration appeared on his upper lip, he said, “What do you want?”