“Like that, maybe, but I think the names he used are more significant than that. Ricone’s such an unusual name.”

“Maybe he started by writing Rico.”

“I thought of that. There are plenty of Ricos in the phone book. Or maybe he’s from Puerto Rico.”

“Why not? Everybody else is. Maybe he’s a Cagney fan.”

“Cagney?”

“In the death scene. ‘Mother of mercy, is this the end of Rico?’ Remember?”

“I thought that was Edward G. Robinson.”

“Maybe it was. I was always drunk when I watched the ‘Late Show’ and all those Warner Brothers gangsters tend to merge in my mind. It was one of those ballsy guys. ‘Mother of mercy, is this the—’ ”

“Some pair of balls,” I said.

“Huh?”

“Jesus Christ.”

“What’s the matter?”

“He’s a comedian. A fucking comedian.”

“What are you talking about?”

“The killer. C. O. Jones and M. A. Ricone. I thought they were names.”

“They’re not?”

“Cojones. Maricón.”

“That’s Spanish.”

“Right.”

“Cojones means ‘balls,’ doesn’t it?”

“And maricón means ‘faggot.’ I don’t think there’s an E on the end of it, though.”

“Maybe it’s especially nasty with an E on the end.”

“Or maybe he’s just a lousy speller.”

“Well, hell,” she said. “Nobody’s perfect.”

Chapter 30

Chapter 30

Around mid-morning I went home to shower and shave and put on my best suit. I caught a noon meeting, ate a Sabrett hot dog on the street, and met Jan as arranged at the papaya stand at Seventy-second and Broadway. She was wearing a knit dress, dove gray with touches of black. I’d never seen her in anything that dressy.

We went around the corner to Cooke’s, where a professionally sympathetic young man in black determined which set of bereaved we belonged to and ushered us through a hallway to Suite Three, where a card in a slot on the open door said hendryx. Inside, there were perhaps six rows of four chairs each on either side of a center aisle. In the front, to the left of the lectern on a raised platform, an open casket stood amid a glut of floral sprays. I’d sent flowers that morning but I needn’t have bothered. Sunny had enough of them to see a Prohibition-era mobster on his way to the Promised Land.

Chance had the aisle seat in the front row on the right. Donna Campion was seated beside him, with Fran Schecter and Mary Lou Barcker filling out the row. Chance was wearing a black suit, a white shirt, and a narrow black silk tie. The women were all wearing black, and I wondered if he’d taken them shopping the previous afternoon.