I sighed. Everyone has a hobby horse in his brain. The instructor spent too many hours trying to teach kids who really only wanted to grow up fast and be big men. The instructor was discouraged by too many years of failure. He was bitter. A teacher who had learned that no one wanted to be taught; they just wanted an easy road to easy money.

‘What about this Rhys-Smith?’ I said. ‘Who is he and where do I find him?’

‘He’s a part-time instructor we use sometimes. You can find him almost any time at The Tugboat Grill. Which is why we only use him sometimes. He knows more about fuel injection than any man in New York, only most of the time the fuel he knows best is alcohol.’

I left the instructor brooding. His real trouble was that he still cared. He cared about Jo-Jo Olsen and all the others. He wanted to teach them, so he hated them. Somewhere deep in the hidden corners of his heart he was a true teacher, and each time one of his boys failed him his heart could not help whispering that perhaps it was, after all, he who had failed.

For Cecil Rhys-Smith the whisper of his own failure had long ago become a shout that could only be lessened by the rush of booze down his always thirsty throat. I found The Tugboat Grill moored at the edge of the river so close beneath the West Side Highway that the shadows of cars flickered the window all day long.

Cecil Rhys-Smith sat on a bar stool with the air of a man who has learned that a bar stool is man’s best friend. His beer glass was not quite empty. If the glass had been empty he would not have been allowed to sit there without refilling it. And if he were not there at the bar, how could some generous stranger buy him a drink? It was clear that Rhys-Smith did not have the price of a refill, only the hope. I braced him with the offer of a free whiskey. The suspicion that had begun the instant I had approached him vanished. On the strength of one whiskey and the perpetual hope of one more, he allowed me to take him to a reasonably private back booth.