That made him laugh.

I was glad he hadn’t lost his sense of humor.

* * *

The Tube was one of those well-known nightspots that I’d never had a desire to frequent. That was based on what I’d read and heard. Fact was, I’d never been there at all.

On Twelfth Avenue in Chelsea, the notorious club was housed in a warehouse that was part of a onetime railroad freight terminal. The place was massive, something like eighty-thousand square feet. Train tracks from the turn of the century still ran through a sunken section of what was now a long, narrow dance floor. Railroad sidings from the Eleventh Avenue freight line of the New York Central Railroad once ran directly into the warehouses around here, transferring goods to and from freight cars ferried on barges across the Hudson from Hoboken.

Where workmen had once toiled mightily, young New Yorkers now partied with abandon. Flashing lights bounced off metal tubing along the ceiling and off iron pillars rising from old wood floors within sandblasted brick walls. New Wave and other contemporary music, courtesy of a DJ, blasted at decibel levels unknown to man from massive speakers mounted everywhere.

I moved through alone, a figure out of another era in a hat and trenchcoat, surrounded by an under-forty crowd whose clothing above the waist was loud and expensive and angularly cut, with jeans below, sometimes fashionably torn, other times crisply designer.

I had thought about bringing Velda along, and she might have got a kick out of the place. She had more interest in changing times and new fashions than me, to say the least. But she might have wanted to hang around and take it all in, whereas my intention was to get in and out. Kind of like the couple screwing in a booth near the door to a unisex bathroom. What was becoming of this generation? Didn’t they have enough dignity to go into that john and have at it?

I had been led here by Vance Colby, having called my client to say I needed to talk with his son, who I understood still lived with him. Like the late Casey Shannon, the elder Colby had a coop, but his was on Fifth Avenue with a mere twenty rooms or so, none of which held his son, at the moment—Vincent was out for the evening with a lady friend, and the likeliest place to find him was the Tube. So I’d given it a try.

But with the strobing lights in this dark industrial tunnel-like space with its packed dance floor—with three stories of open wrought-iron walkways looming on either side, other patrons hanging over the railings with drinks and joints in hand—I was having no luck spotting my client’s son.

The bar was a squared-off sheet-metal oasis in the middle that I managed to reach and was able to order a rye and ginger from a girl with spiky green hair, a face powdered white and very red lipstick. Her breasts spilled out of the top of her black-and-red bustier like cantaloupes from the back of a produce truck. These kids today.