David Groover first saw Joey Cusumano at a distance back in the early 1980s. It was his job. Groover had him under surveillance.

As a Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department  Intelligence Bureau detective assigned to the Chicago squad, Groover and partner Gene Smith kept an eye on Cusumano and a mug book of others as part of the department's bruising investigation of Anthony Spilotro's criminal crew. In those dangerous days, Spilotro was mentioned in the newspapers more than the mayor.

"He was a New York guy who hung with the Chicago crew," Groover recalls. "I guess if you were a politician, you'd say he caucused with the Chicago crew. Maybe he was an independent. I don't know, but it was always strange that you had this New York guy who notably holds a position with that group."

It was strange, but then New York City native Joseph Vincent Cusumano was a Las Vegas enigma. He once owned a restaurant on the Strip, Joey's New Yorker. He bounced in and out of the casino business in the 1970s, and he worked in Hollywood as a line producer on Francis Ford Coppola's The Cotton Club.

But all that, of course, is not what he was known for. Cusumano survived a murder attempt, a stint in prison for federal insurance fund fraud, and inclusion in Nevada's casino black book. He's remembered by those who knew him as a gentleman charmer who played tennis daily and never betrayed a confidence.

To the possible surprise of some, he died Oct. 20 of natural causes at age 90.

Cusumano did a lot in his tumultuous life, much of it probably illegal and definitely shadowed by his reputation as a connected guy, but by 2015 what he really wanted to do was something millions of Americans take for granted. He wanted to be able to cast his ballot in an election.

His status as a felon presented a challenge, but after some searching, he was directed to see a local private investigator who might know how to get such things done. And there, more than three decades after that first surveillance, Cusumano walked into former Metro Detective David Groover's downtown p.i. office seeking his assistance.

After laughing a little and shaking hands, Groover asked, "What are you doing?"

"I wanna vote," Cusumano said. "And I got this problem.

"And it's a big problem. It's a federal conviction.

"Somebody said you might be able to figure it out," Cusumano told Groover. After researching the issue, calling the Clark County registrar of voters, and gathering the necessary legal paperwork, Groover escorted Cusumano to the registrar's office. An audible buzz ensued.

"We go in, and everybody's peeking around the corner to see the guy because they know the history," Groover recalls. "And he got registered to vote."

What motivated him after so much notoriety and so many years spent living a quiet life in Las Vegas?

He told Groover, "It's one of the last things in life that I want to do. I want to vote. And I would like to be able to go into the Plaza downtown to Oscar's restaurant."

That would have been a violation of Cusumano's black book status and generated the kind of publicity he'd been trying to avoid. The black book issue is something that still angers his friend and former attorney Oscar Goodman after 36 years. Goodman told me recently he would have gladly come out of retirement to take on the state Gaming Control Board one more time to get Cusumano removed from its List of Excluded Persons.

Instead of meeting at his restaurant, former attorney and client got together monthly at the country club for what might be described as memory lane lunches, and Goodman devotes a chapter to Cusumano in his upcoming memoir. "We just talked about the old days," Goodman says.

Groover last saw Cusumano two weeks before his death. The long-retired police detective couldn't resist asking him if he had anything to share, any murder mysteries to clear up, before he moved on. Maybe he should have known better.

The reply was pure Joey Cusumano.

"You know, Dave, I'm 90 years old," he said. "I made it this long without being a snitch, and I don't want to start now."

Well, you can't blame a guy for trying.

John L. Smith is an author and longtime columnist. He was born in Henderson and his family's Nevada roots go back to 1881. His stories have appeared in New Lines, Time, Reader's Digest, Rolling Stone, The Daily Beast, Reuters and Desert Companion, among others.