Richie is not one of those Hollywood blacks with skin like coffee regular and Billy Dee Williams eyes. He’s black, black as an oil slick, and he’s not what one would call handsome. He’s overweight, always has a five o’clock shadow, and his wife buys his clothes. A lot of times, his ensemble looks like she’s experimenting again. Tonight he was wearing beige cotton trousers, a light blue shirt, and a pastel tie that looked like a poppy field had exploded on it and someone had doused the flame with rum punch. I said, “Sherilynn went shopping again?”

He looked at the tie and sighed. “Sherilynn went shopping again.”

I said. “Where? Miami?”

He lifted the tie for closer inspection. “You’d think so, wouldn’t you?” He sipped his scotch. “Where’s your partner?” “With her husband.”

He nodded, and simultaneously, we said, “The Asshole.” “When’s she going to pump a round into that boy?” he asked.

“I’ve got my fingers crossed.”

“Well, you call me when she does. I got a bottle of Moët sitting at home for the occasion.”

“To that day.” I held up my glass. He met it. “Cheers.” I said, “Tell me about Curtis Moore.”

“Gimpy?” he said. “That’s what we’re calling ol’ Curtis these days. Brings a tear to your eye, doesn’t it?” He stretched back in the chair.

“Tragic,” I said.

“It’s too bad,” he said. “Don’t take it too lightly, though. Curtis’s friends might come looking for you and they are particularly heinous motherfuckers.”

“How big are the Raven Saints?”

“Not big by L.A. standards,” he said, “but this ain’t L.A. I’d say they got seventy-five hardcore and another sixty or so peripheral.”

“So what you’re saying is I got a hundred thirty-five black guys to be wary of.”

He put his glass down on the desk. “Don’t turn this into a ‘black thing,’ Kenzie.”

“My friends call me Patrick.”

“I’m not your friend when I hear shit like that come out of your mouth.”

I was angry and damned tired, and I wanted someone to blame. My emotions were running hard along open nerve endings that stopped just short of breaking my skin, and I was feeling stubborn. I said, “Tell me about a white gang that runs around with Uzis and I’ll be afraid of white people too, Richie. But until then ”

Richie banged his fist down on the desk. “The fuck you call the Mafia? Huh?” He stood up and the veins in his neck were thick, poking out as hard as I figured mine were. “The Westies in New York,” he said, “those nice boys, Irish like yourself, who specialized in murder and torture and cowboy bullshit. What color were they? You going to sit there and tell me the brothers invented murder too? You going to try and pass that shit off on me, Kenzie?”

Our voices were loud in the tiny room, hoarse, slipping under the cheap walls and reverberating. I tried to talk calmly, but my voice didn’t come out that way; it sounded harsh and slightly alien. I said, “Richie, one kid gets hit by a car because a bunch of retard Hitler Youth chase him into the road in Howard Beach ”