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Michael Corleone in
The Godfather:
black silk suit, blindingly white shirt, black cashmere coat, black hat, and highly polished shoes. It was a uniform that conferred the authority of a mythical movie gangster who was a role model even to small-time thugs whose crimes were no more organized than anything else they did.
    The place was already full when Blue walked in. The West End News was a popular coffee shop and well-stocked newsstand, and Blue’s base of operations, maintained from a suite of rooms in the back where no one ventured without an invitation and an escort. Behind the counter, Henry Graham, his right-hand man, and Phoebe Sanderson, who’d been working there part-time since high school, were making cups of perfect cappuccino and teasing theregulars who stopped in for their daily fix of caffeine and gossip. When he looked up and saw Blue, Henry nodded imperceptibly and Phoebe followed his eyes to the door.
    “Good morning, Mr. Hamilton,” she said cheerfully, as Henry took off his big white apron and reached for his suit jacket hanging nearby. He wore lots of hats at the West End News. With his shaved head and unlined face, it was hard to gauge his actual age, but he seemed to be a pleasant, muscular man of about forty. When he was behind the counter, he always wore a white apron over a crisp white shirt and dark tie. When Blue arrived, all he had to do was take off the apron, slip on his coat, and be suddenly transformed into a successful businessman or a particularly well-dressed bodyguard, depending on which part of Henry’s story you heard from somebody who acted like he knew.
    “Good morning to you, Ms. Sanderson,” Blue said, removing his hat with a small formal nod in her direction and a general smile for the starstruck patrons who knew that a sho’ nuff Blue Hamilton sighting was the best watercooler story anybody would have that day, no matter who had won the celebrity dance-off the night before. It wasn’t that he didn’t make himself visible around the West End News frequently. It was simply that the way he moved through with such mysterious cool, once he was gone, folks could never be sure they’d seen him at all.
    “How’s business this morning?”
    Phoebe grinned. “Couldn’t be better.”
    “Good.” Blue nodded approvingly while Henry moved to stand at his side. “Don’t know what we’re going to do without you when you head back up to school.”
    “Maybe I won’t go back,” she said, teasing him because she could. “Maybe I’ll open another coffee shop down the street and give you and Henry some competition.”
    “I’ll look forward to it,” Blue said, moving toward the rear of the store. “Morning, everybody.”
    “Good morning, Mr. Hamilton,” his customers said in unison likea well-trained group of fifth graders greeting their homeroom teacher, their eyes following him and Henry until they disappeared down the short hallway. Outside the smoked-glass doorway to the private suite, Henry paused and laid a hand on Blue’s arm.
    “What’s wrong?” Blue’s voice was a low, melodic rumble that had earned him a place in R & B history as a young hit maker when he was only seventeen and later as a fabled live performer who had such an electrifying effect on women that they had been known to faint at his feet.
    “There’s already someone waiting to see you, Mr. Hamilton. I thought it was better to let her wait back here.”
    Blue frowned and slipped out of his overcoat, handing it to Henry along with the Homburg. He wasn’t expecting visitors this morning, and certainly no strange females. “Alone?”
    “Jake’s with her.”
    “What does she want?”
    “I don’t know,” Henry said, shrugging his massive shoulders. “But she looks … different.”
    “Different how?”
    Henry didn’t blink. “Just different.”
    “Okay,” Blue said. “Well, let’s see what’s on her mind.”
    The woman’s back was to the door when Blue opened it and stepped inside,