It was fully dark by the time I got to the North End. The street market around Faneuil Hall, on the other side of the expressway overhead, was closing down. So were the store owners in Little Italy, taking in their sidewalk wares. Still, there was an aroma of spices and olives, and the sound of old men playing morre under the shadow of Paul Revere’s Old North Church spire. It made me incredibly homesick.

Johnny Harrison was halfway through a water tumbler of red wine when I stepped into Rita’s. The place hadn’t changed at all. It was tiny, actually just the front room of a private house. Only six little booths. Linoleum floor covering. Steam radiators hissing and making the place almost uncomfortably warm. Paintings of Naples and Venice by one of the neighborhood kids fading on the walls. Conchetta, the waitress, still bleaching her hair in the hope that it would make her glamorous. Kitchen in the next room.

You had to know Rita’s existed in order to find the place. The entrance was on an alley that used to be blocked all the time by a Mafiosi Cadillac. Now it was an electric Mercedes. Word of mouth was the only advertising that Rita went in for, and most of it was in Italian.

There’s a vague air of Groucho Marx about Johnny Harrison. Maybe it’s because he’s an old movie buff. He always looks as if he knows more than you do, and he’s always got a quip ready. He’d put on some weight in the year or so since I’d last seen him, but I knew that if I mentioned it, he’d spill out a string of skinny jokes about me. Besides, sitting next to him was a stranger, a compact young soccer-player type who had the eager puppy dog look of a new reporter all over him.

I slid into the booth. “Hiya, Johnny.”

He made a grin. “I was starting to wonder if you’d show up.”

Three minutes late. I didn’t bother answering that one.

“This here’s Len Ryan,” Johnny said. “He’ll be covering the President’s speech tonight from the local angle. Y’know… historic Faneuil Hall, where Sam Adams’s patriots put on their Indian disguises for the Boston Tea Party, was the scene tonight of another great moment in American democracy…”