It was easy for me to hear them because the rest of the room went silent when I cleared the threshold. I was the only white man in the room and everybody stopped for a long look at me. There were a couple of white women, seated with black men at the banquette tables, and there were two black women sharing a table, and there must have been two dozen men in every shade but mine.

I walked the length of the room and went into the men’s room. A man almost tall enough for pro basketball was combing his straightened hair. The scent of his pomade vied with the sharp reek of marijuana. I washed my hands and rubbed them together under one of those hot-air dryers. The tall man was still working on his hair when I left.

Conversation died again when I emerged from the men’s room. I walked toward the front again, walked slowly and let my shoulders roll. I couldn’t be sure about the musicians, but aside from them I figured there wasn’t a man in the room who hadn’t taken at least one felony bust. Pimps, drug dealers, gamblers, policy men. Nature’s noblemen.

A man on the fifth stool from the front caught my eye. It took a second to place him because when I knew him years ago he had straight hair, but now he was wearing it in a modified Afro. His suit was lime green and his shoes were the skin of some reptile, probably an endangered species.

I moved my head toward the door and walked on past him and out. I walked two doors south on Lenox and stood next to a streetlamp. Two or three minutes went by and he came on out, walking loose-limbed and easy. “Hey, Matthew,” he said, and extended his hand for a slap. “How’s my man?”

I didn’t slap his hand. He looked down at it, up at me, rolled his eyes, gave his head an exaggerated shake, clapped his hands together, dusted them against his trouser legs, then placed them on his slim hips. “Been some time,” he said. “They run out of your brand downtown? Or do you just come to Harlem to use the little boy’s room?”

“You’re looking prosperous, Royal.”

He preened a little. His name was Royal Waldron and I once knew a black cop with a bullet head who rang changes through Royal Flush to Flush Toilet and called him The Crapper. He said, “Well, I buy and sell. You know.”

“I know.”

“Give the folks an honest deal and you will never miss a meal. That’s a rhyme my mama taught me. How come you uptown, Matthew?”

“I’m looking for a guy.”

“Maybe you found him. You off the force these days?”

“For some years now.”

“And you lookin’ to buy something? What do you want and what can you spend?”