a taste.' The bartender filled his glass with a jigger of Hennessy and four or five ounces of cold milk.
They used to call that combination a White Cadillac. Maybe they still do.
Maybe I should have tried Potamkin's.
Or maybe I should have stayed home. My presence was creating tension and I could feel it thickening the air in the little room. Sooner or later someone would come over and ask me what the fuck I thought I was doing there and it was going to be hard to come up with an answer.
I left before it could happen. A gypsy cab was waiting for the light to change. The door on my side was dented and one fender was crumpled, and I wasn't sure what that said about the driver's ability. I got in anyway.
* * *
Royal had mentioned another place on West Ninety-sixth and I let the cab drop me there. It was after two by this time and I was starting to tire. I went into yet another bar where yet another black man was playing piano. This particular piano sounded out of tune, but it might have been me. The crowd was a fairly even mix of black and white. There were a lot of interracial couples, but the white women who were paired with black men looked more like girlfriends than hookers. A few of the men were dressed flashily, but nobody sported the full pimp regalia I'd seen a mile and a half to the north. If the room carried an air of fast living and cash transactions, it was nevertheless subtler and more muted than the Harlem clubs, or the ones aroundTimes Square .
I put a dime in the phone and called my hotel. No messages. The desk clerk that night was a mulatto with a cough-syrup habit that never seemed to keep him from functioning. He could still do the Times crossword puzzle with a fountain pen. I said, 'Jacob, do me a favor. Call this number and ask to speak to Chance.'
I gave him the number. He read it back and asked if that was Mr.
Chance. I said just Chance.
'And if he comes to the phone?'
'Just hang up.'
I went to the bar and almost ordered a beer but made it a Coke instead. A minute later the phone rang and a kid answered it. He looked like a college student. He called out, asking if there was anyone there named Chance. Nobody responded. I kept an eye on the bartender. If he recognized the name he didn't show it. I'm not even certain he was paying attention.
I could have played that little game at every bar I'd been to, and maybe it would have been worth the effort. But it had taken me three hours to think of it.
I was some detective. I was drinking all the Coca-Cola inManhattan and I couldn't find a goddamned pimp. My teeth would rot before I got hold of the son of a bitch.
There was a jukebox, and one record ended and another began, something by Sinatra, and it triggered something, made some mental connection for me. I left my Coke on the bar and caught a cab going downtown onColumbus Avenue . I got off at the corner ofSeventy-second Street and walked half a block west to Poogan's Pub.
The clientele was a little less Superspade and a little more Young Godfather but I wasn't really looking for Chance anyway. I was looking for Danny Boy Bell.
He wasn't there. The bartender said, 'Danny Boy? He was in earlier. Try the Top Knot, that's just acrossColumbus . He's there when he's not here.'
And he was there, all right, on a bar stool all the way at the back. I hadn't seen him in years but he was no mean trick to recognize. He hadn't grown and he wasn't any darker.
Danny Boy's parents were both dark-skinned blacks. He had their features but not their color. He was an albino, as unpigmented as a white mouse. He was quite slender and very short. He claimed to be five two but I've always figured he was lying by an inch and a half or so.
He was wearing a three-piece banker's-stripe suit and the first white shirt I'd seen in a long time. His tie showed muted red and black stripes. His black shoes were highly polished. I don't think I've ever seen him without a suit and tie, or with scuffed shoes.
He said, 'Matt Scudder. By God, if you wait long enough everybody turns up.'
'How are you, Danny?'
'Older. It's been years. You're less than a mile away and when's the last time we saw each other? It has been, if you'll excuse the expression, a coon's age.'
'You haven't changed much.'
He studied me for a moment. 'Neither have you,' he said, but his voice lacked conviction. It was a surprisingly normal voice to issue from such an unusual person, of medium depth, unaccented. You expected him to sound like Johnny in the old Philip Morris commercials.
He said, 'You were just in the neighborhood? Or you came looking for me?'
'I tried Poogan's first. They told me you might be here.'
'I'm flattered. Purely a social visit, of course.'
'Not exactly.'
'Why don't we take a table? We can talk of old times and dead friends. And whatever mission brought you here.'
The bars Danny Boy favored kept a bottle of Russian vodka in the freezer. That was what he drank and he liked it ice-cold but without any ice cubes rattling around in his glass and diluting his drink. We settled in at a booth in the back and a speedy little waitress brought his drink of choice and Coke for me. Danny Boy lowered his eyes to my glass, then raised them to my face.
'I've been cutting back some,' I said.
