A neighborhood bar in midtown Manhattan that is known worldwide.  It was a favorite watering hole for the Madison Avenue crowd, back when they constituted a crowd. Lawyers and their clients discussed strategy over oysters. Agents and their artists bickered over percentages.  P.J.’s opened in 1884 and is a time capsule of a bygone New York.  I moved out of the city two decades ago, but just walking through the saloon’s doors on the corner of 55th and 3rd makes this “Old Yorker” feel like a New Yorker.  Today I am here to meet with a former U.S. ambassador. A diplomat, who has dined all over the world and I are about to convene over two BBQ BLUE burgers – with crispy onions! 

My soft spot for this enduring NYC iconic saloon is why I made it a location in my new thriller, Ask Not! 

It was the perfect setting for a 1993 meeting between a free-lance magazine writer and his agent to discuss the biggest break of his career.  Uncharacteristically, the 10 percenter turns down the opportunity to represent him in this “bombshell” article that the writer wants to auction off to the highest bidder.  The writer protests, “But this is history-changing stuff!” Adamant, the agent wants no part of it. In fact, the agent, obviously terrified, tells him to drop it.  

Of the two men seated at actor Peter Falk’s regular table, across from what Nat King Cole dubbed, ‘the Cadillac of burgers,’ one man’s wise decision to opt out is why he lived to enjoy his grandkids. The other not so much…