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"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 htfor a guy"

"Maybe you found him You off the force these days?"

"For so? What do you want and what can you spend?"

"What are you selling?"

"Most anything"

"Business still good with all these Colombians?"

"Shit," he said, and one hand brushed the front of his pants I suppose he had a gun in the waistband of the liuns as people in Kelvin Sht," he said "You just don't ever want to cheat them is all You didn't come up here to buy stuff"

"No"

"What you want,for a pimp"

"Shit, you just walked past twenty of 'e for a pimp named Chance"

"Chance"

"You know hiht knoho he is"

I waited Aat each storefront Hein the s except that you couldn't; every shop had steel shutters that descended like garage doors at the close of business The man stopped in front of each closed store and studied the shutters as if they held ," Royal said

A blue-and-white police car cruised by, slowed The two uniforood evening I didn't say anything and neither did they When the car drove off he said, "Chance don't come here much"

"Where would I find him?"

"Hard to say He'll turn up anyplace but itout"

"So they tell me"

"Where you been lookin'?"

I'd been to a coffee shop on Sixth Avenue and Forty-fifth Street, a piano bar in the Village, a pair of bars in the West Forties Royal took all this in and nodded thoughtfully

"He wouldn't be at Muffin-Burger," he said, "on account he don't run no girls on the street That I know of All the sa? Just to be there What I say, he'll turn up anywhere, but he don't hang out"

"Where should I look for him, Royal?"

He named a couple of places I'd been to one of theotten to mention it I made a note of the others I said, "What's he like, Royal?"

"Well, shit," he said, "He a pimp, man"

"You don't like him"

"He ain't to like or not like My friends is business friends, Matthew, and Chance and I got no business with each other We don't neither of us buy what the other be sellin' He don't want to buy no stuff and I don't want to buy no pussy" His teeth showed in a nasty little smile "When you the man with all the candy, you don't never have to pay for no pussy"

One of the places Royal mentioned was in Harlem, on St Nicholas Avenue I walked over to 125th Street It ide and busy and well lit, but I was starting to feel the not entirely irrational paranoia of a white man on a black street

I turned north at St Nicholas and walked a couple of blocks to the Club Cameroon It was a low-rent version of Kelvin Small's with a jukebox instead of live music The men's roo briskly Snorting cocaine, I suppose

I didn't recognize anyone at the bar I stood there and drank a glass of club soda and looked at fifteen or twenty black faces reflected in the mirrored back bar It struck , that I could be looking at Chance and not knowing it The description I had for him would fit a third of theI hadn't been able to see a picture of hinize the name, and if it was his last name he didn't have a yellow sheet in the files