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 on Columbus Avenue. I got off at the corner of Seventy-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 across Columbus. 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.”