He had a supper club over on East 59th Street called, oddly enough, Johnny’s Pub. I took a cab, leaving the Mercedes in its garage, since finding a parking space within a dozen blocks of Johnny’s Pub at nine o’clock at night was something only a tourist would try for. Johnny’s Pub was divided in half. The front half was the bar, and the back half was the restaurant and also the place where the entertainment—folk singers and comics who imitate queers and other comics who imitate Mort Sahl or Orson Bean—was put on twice nightly. I went on past the bar and into the restaurant-club part. I stood in the entranceway for a minute, in the semidark, looking at the people crowded around the tiny tables, and the maroon drapes hanging all over the place, and the desktop-size stage, empty at the moment, and then a waiter, black and white and funereal, sidled up and offered to show me where the tables were. “I don’t want to eat,” I told him. “I want to talk to Johnny Ricardo.” His expression changed without seeming to, and he said, “I’m not sure he’s in.
