4:00 a.m. The rest of the time you couldn't count on finding him anywhere.
His other place is a jazz club called Mother Goose on Amsterdam.
Poogan's was closer, so I tried it first. Danny Boy was at his usual table in back, deep in conversation with a dark-skinned black man with a pointed chin and a button nose. He was wearing wraparound sunglasses with mirrored lenses and a powder-blue suit with more in the shoulders than God or Gold's Gym could have put there. A little cocoa-brown straw hat perched on top of his head, adorned with a flamingo-pink hatband.
I had a Coke at the bar and waited while he finished his business with Danny Boy. After five minutes or so he uncoiled himself from his chair, clapped Danny Boy on the shoulder, laughed heartily, and headed for the street. I turned around to get my change from the bar, and when I turned back again his place had been taken by a balding white man with a brushy mustache and a belly straining at his shirtfront. I hadn't recognized the first fellow, other then generically, but I knew this man.
His name was Selig Wolf and he owned a couple of parking lots and took bets on sporting events. I had arrested him once ages ago on an assault charge, but the complainant had decided not to press it.
When Wolf left I took my second Coke with me and sat down.
'Busy evening,' I said.
'I know,' Danny Boy said. 'Pick a number and wait, it's getting as bad as Zabar's. It's good to see you, Matthew. I saw you before but I had to suffer through the hour of the Wolf. You must know Selig.'
'Sure, but I didn't know the other fellow. He's head of fundraising for the United Negro College Fund, right?'
'A mind is a terrible thing to waste,' he said solemnly. 'To think you would waste yours judging by appearances. The gentleman was wearing a sartorial classic, Matthew, known as the zoot suit. That's a zoot suit, you know, with a drape shape and a reet pleat. My father had one in his closet, a souvenir of his flaming youth. Every now and then he would take it out and threaten to wear it, and my mother would roll her eyes.'
'Good for her.'
'His name is Nicholson James,' Danny Boy said. 'It should have been James Nicholson, but the names were reversed on some official document early on and he decided it had more style that way. You might say it goes with his retro fashion statement. Mr. James is a pimp.'
'Go figure. I never would have guessed.'
Danny Boy poured himself some vodka. His own fashion statement was one of quiet elegance, a tailored dark suit and tie, a boldly patterned red-and-black vest. He is a very short, slightly built albino African-American— it would be way off the mark to call him black, since he's anything but. He spends his nights in saloons, and he's partial to dim lighting and low noise levels. He's as rigid as Dracula about not venturing out in daylight, and rarely answers the phone or the door during those hours. Every night, though, he's in Poogan's or Mother Goose, listening to people and telling them things.
'Elaine's not with you,' he said.
'Not tonight.'
'Give her my love.'
'I will,' I said. 'I brought you something, Danny Boy.'
'Oh?'
I palmed him a pair of hundreds. He looked at the money without flashing it, then glanced at me with his eyebrows elevated.
'I have a prosperous client,' I said. 'He wants me to take cabs.'
'Did you want me to call you one?'
'No, but I thought I ought to spread a little of his dough around.
All you have to spread is the word.'
'What word is that?'
I ran through the official story without mentioning Kenan Khoury's name. Danny Boy listened, frowning occasionally in concentration.
When I finished he took out a cigarette, looked at it for a moment, then put it back in the pack.
'A question arises,' he said.
'Go.'
'Your client's wife is out of the country, and presumably safe from those who would harm her. So he assumes they'll direct their attention at someone else.'
'Right.'
'Well, why should he care? I love the idea of a public-spirited dope dealer, like all those marijuana growers in Oregon who make huge anonymous cash donations to Earth First and the eco-saboteurs.
Well, when I was growing up I liked Robin Hood, as far as that goes. But what difference does it make to your man if the bad guys snatch somebody else's sweetie? They get the ransom and that just leaves
one of his competitors in a negative cash-flow situation, that's all.
Or they screw up and that's the end of them. As long as his own wife's out of the picture—'
'Jesus, it was a perfectly good story until I told it to you, Danny Boy.'
'Sorry.'
