“We all die, yes? We suffer, correct? The score keeps changing, is it not so? And Mommy holds us on the teeter-totter before we can sit upright on chairs.”

On Sunday Bertie walked into an apartment building in St. Louis, a city where, in the past, he had changed trains, waited for buses, or thought about Klaff, and where, more recently, truckers dropped him, or traveling salesmen stopped their Pontiacs downtown just long enough for him to reach into the back seat for his trumpetcase and get out.

“The Great Sandusky” was a hard man to get to know. Indeed, getting to meet him was my first campaign. We were both strong men of the world. He would help me. That he was in the city was common knowledge to all the regulars in the gym. I had seen a feature article on him in the paper.