One of the ways is that in any given neighbourhood, like Chelsea or Yorkville, there are two kinds of people. There are the people who were born in, say, Chelsea, who have always lived there and most of whom always will unless they are in jail or on the run, who are part of Chelsea the way a Greek villager is part of his isolated village. And there are the people born somewhere else — maybe Queens and maybe Omaha — and who think of themselves as living in New York, not in Chelsea, people who happened to find an apartment in a section most of them don’t even know is called Chelsea. Like a summer resort — the natives and the visitors. When you’re a native you hear the news. I was born in Chelsea, so I rate as a native. I also rate as something else.

‘No,’ Joe said at last, ‘there’s easier ways to get a gun, Dan. Even a private snooper oughta know that much.’

Daniel Fortune, Confidential Investigator: Reliable… Low Rates. The Fortune was once Fortunowski, and there used to be a T in the middle for Tadeusz. That was the name my grandfather carried off the boat: Tadeusz Jan Fortunowski. When I was a boy the old men told me that my grandfather carried that name with pride, even with arrogance. Like most middle and eastern Europeans, his pedigree was a chaos of history. He was born in Lithuania, under a Russian government, of Polish parents who spoke German. But he was proud that he was a Pole, and the name was all he had to prove what he was. My father was born here. Chelsea was a world of Americans and Irish then, and a man needs to belong. My father became Fortune. The old men told me that my grandfather had refused to speak to anyone named Fortune, son or no son. The old man died before I was born. I never knew him. Not that I knew my father. He gave me the name — changed — and not much else. Dan Fortune, who dropped even the T, and who doesn’t really belong anywhere. And, at the moment, a confidential investigator.