Maj Singleton must have been the reason behind Danny Montoya's transferring from Crane Tech, in the middle of the city, to Senn High School on the far northside in his junior year. The Montoyas lived a few blocks south of Madison near Western Avenue, a tough neighbourhood even then, and it may have been that Danny's parents were worried about their son's going to a school where gangs had begun to form and violence was more and more part of daily life for adolescents. Crane had no tennis team, but was noted for black basketball players, one of whom, Leon Hilliard, had recently replaced Marquis Haynes as the dribbling wizard of the Harlem Globetrotters. 

"Jerome," the Maj said to Mandel one day in his office, "Danny Montoya is transferring to Senn. When he arrives, I want you to keep an eye out for him."

"I'll do everything I can, sir," Mandel said. He played tennis for three years for Maj Singleton, and this may have been his longest speech to him, though once, in a doubles match against two kids from
Roosevelt wearing brown gym shoes, he gave Mandel and his partner, a boy named Mickey Hoffner, some advice having to do with the wind, which neither of them heard and both were too daunted by him to ask him to repeat. 

Senn High School was roughly 60 per cent Jewish, 40 per cent working-class Irish, Germans and Swedes, with six or seven black kids and no Hispanics at all. Mandel didn't think of Danny Montoya as particularly ethnic — the word was not then in use — but chiefly as an amazing athlete. But that morning, even as Maj Singleton introduced them — "Jerome Mandel, Danny Montoya. Jerome here's going to show you around" — Mandel sensed that Danny wasn't going to be happy at Senn. 

Danny was wearing rust-coloured trousers, with outer stitching and severely pegged at the cuffs, a shocking-pink shirt with a Mr B collar (Mr B being the singer Billy Eckstine, That Old Black Magic man), and square-toed, blue-suede loafers. His hair was heavily pomaded and swooped into a duck's ass at the back. The clothes had been bought at Smokey Joe's, a zoot-suitery on Halsted off Maxwell Street. If Maj Singleton bothered to notice Danny's clothes, he gave no sign. This get-up may have worked among the black kids at Crane Tech, but for Senn every item was wrong. 

Mandel used to eat lunch outside, at Harry's, where the more with-it Jewish kids hung out. He didn't fancy taking Danny out there with him, at least not in these duds. He walked him to his first class, and told him that he'd meet him for lunch at the entrance to the school's cafeteria. In the cafeteria, Mandel asked Danny how things were going. 

"OK," he said. "Not bad."

"Anything I can do to smooth the way, let me know. I'm glad you're here."