He went into a room, came out wearing a pair of scarlet gym shorts and carrying a hooded terry-cloth robe. We went to the room he’d fitted out as a gym, and for fifteen or twenty minutes he worked out with loose weights and on the Universal machine. His skin became glossy with perspiration as he worked and his heavy muscles rippled beneath it.

“Now I want ten minutes in the sauna,” he said. “You didn’t earn the sauna by pumping the iron, but we could grant a special dispensation in your case.”

“No thanks.”

“Want to wait downstairs then? Be more comfortable.”

I waited while he took a sauna and shower. I studied some of his African sculpture, thumbed through a couple of magazines. He emerged in due course wearing light blue jeans and a navy pullover and rope sandals. He asked if I was ready for coffee. I told him I’d been ready for half an hour.

“Won’t be long,” he said. He started it brewing, then came back and perched on a leather hassock. He said, “You want to know something? I make a lousy pimp.”

“I thought you were a class act. Restraint, dignity, all of that.”

“I had six girls and I got three. And Mary Lou’ll be leaving soon.”

“You think so?”

“I know it. She’s a tourist, man. You ever hear how I turned her out?”

“She told me.”

“First tricks she did, she got to tell herself she was a reporter, a journalist, this was all research. Then she decided she was really into it. Now she’s finding out a couple of things.”

“Like what?”

“Like you can get killed, or kill yourself. Like when you die there’s twelve people at your funeral. Not much of a turnout for Sunny, was there?”

“It was on the small side.”

“You could say that. You know something? I could have filled that fucking room three times over.”

“Probably.”

“Not just probably. Definitely.” He stood up, clasped his hands behind his back, paced the floor. “I thought about that. I could have taken their biggest suite and filled it. Uptown people, pimps and whores, and the ringside crowd. Could have mentioned it to people in her building. Might be she had some neighbors who would have wanted to come. But see, I didn’t want too many people.”

“I see.”

“It was really for the girls. The four of them. I didn’t know they’d be down to three when I organized the thing. Then I thought, shit, it might be pretty grim, just me and the four girls. So I told a couple of other people. It was nice of Kid Bascomb to come, wasn’t it?”

“Yes.”

“I’ll get that coffee.”

He came back with two cups. I took a sip, nodded my approval.

“You’ll take a couple pounds home with you.”