The next car was a gleaming dove-gray sedan. Again a window rolled down, and I leaned over to look in. A middle-aged man sat behind the wheel, slender, balding, a little Mediterranean-looking, wearing a well-tailored suit.

“May I offer you a ride?” he asked.

“Why don’t you pull around the corner,” I said, “and we can talk for a minute, okay?”

Unlike Gary, this man had no interest in learning my name, although he told me I could call him Paul. The car’s interior smelled new, and a sticker identified it as part of a rental fleet. Paul was from out of town.

“What’s on your mind tonight, Paul?” I asked.

“I thought you might want to make a little deal,” he said. “Do you like coke?”

I looked at him sidewise. Better and better, a soliciting bust with a side of narcotics possession. “Who doesn’t?” I said.

“I thought maybe with a few lines you could go down to fifty dollars for a half-and-half.”

Just what the world needs, a frugal john. “Seventy-five.”

“That’s fine.” Paul’s heart wasn’t in the negotiation.

“And I need to see the blow first.”

“It’s right back there, in my briefcase,” he said, indicating the backseat with a slight wave of his hand. “Do you have, ah, someplace we can go?”

Ignoring him, I rose to my knees and turned, pulling his slender briefcase onto the front seat with us. “Is this thing locked?” I asked, but didn’t wait before I pressed the release with my thumb. It snapped noisily, and I opened the case. There it was, such a world of trouble for this guy in such a little plastic bag.

Paul was unfazed by my coarse behavior. Paul was a man of the world. He knew that an expensive suit pays for itself in the long run, that business class is a rip-off, and that $75 hookers give their johns a hard time. As I snapped the briefcase shut, Paul restated his earlier question.