Mafia Heir Turns Me Gay novel · Chapter 12 of 32

Chapter 12: The Lobby Bar

"On what grounds?" Mickey said.

The inspector read off his clipboard without looking up.

"A patron was seriously harmed by a beverage served on the premises. Suspended pending investigation."

"For how long?"

"Until the investigation is done."

Nunzio smiled at the staff.

"Terrible thing," he said. "And my trucks can't deliver to a place with no license. Rules are rules."

The server with the nose ring had tears in her eyes.

Half the staff lived tip to tip.

The barback had a mother in Cicero.

"Everybody's getting paid this week," Mickey said.

Nunzio laughed.

"With what? Your fund?"

That one landed.

Mickey let it land.

Then he turned to his staff.

"Don't go anywhere," he said.

He went downstairs.

The hotel lobby was two stories of marble and brass, with a dead fireplace.

Along one wall ran a walnut counter where nobody had poured a drink since the eighties.

The night manager was a tired man with reading glasses on a chain.

"I need your lobby tomorrow night," Mickey said.

"For what?"

"A bar."

The man looked at him.

"You need a one-night permit for that. Those take a week."

Santino came through the revolving door behind Mickey, straight from Northwestern, coat open.

His driver had already told him everything.

"Who do I call?" he said.

The permit was on the walnut counter by noon on Tuesday.

Mickey didn't ask.

They had no deliveries, so he raided the back of his own storage closet and cleared out every bottle he'd been saving for Heffernan's.

The staff brought ice from home in coolers.

The server with the nose ring made a chalkboard sign: THE FORTY-ONE, DOWNSTAIRS, ONE NIGHT ONLY. EVERY DOLLAR TO THE STAFF.

At seven the lobby was empty.

At eight it was half full.

By nine there was a line out the revolving door into the street.

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