Eight Million Ways to Die

"How well do you have to know somebody to sit next to them at a funeral?"

"Well?"

"Well what?"

"Would you go with me? Never mind, I don't want to put you on the spot."

"I'll go."

"Really?"

"Why not? Of course I might look pretty dowdy. Next to all those flashy hookers."

"Oh, I don't think so."

"No?"

"No, I don't think so at all."

I tipped up her chin and tasted her mouth with mine. I touched her hair. Dark hair, lightly salted with gray. Gray to match her eyes.

She said, "I was afraid this would happen. And then I was afraid it wouldn't."

"And now?"

"Now I'm just afraid."

"Do you want me to leave?"

"Do I want you to leave? No, I don't want you to leave. I want you to kiss me again."

I kissed her. She put her arms around me and drew me close and I felt the warmth of her body through our clothing.

"Ah, darling," she said.

Afterward, lying in her bed and listening to my own heartbeat, I had a moment of utter loneliness and desolation. I felt as though I had taken the cover off a bottomless well. I reached over and laid a hand on her flank, and the physical contact cut the thread of my mood.

"Hello," I said.

"Hello."

"What are you thinking?"

She laughed. "Nothing very romantic. I was trying to guess what my sponsor's going to say."

"Do you have to tell her?"

"I don't have to do anything, but I will tell her. 'Oh, by the way, I hopped into bed with a guy who's eight days sober.' "

"That's a mortal sin, huh?"

"Let's just say it's a no-no."

"What'll she give you? Six Our Fathers?"

She laughed again. She had a good laugh, full and hearty. I'd always liked it.

"She'll say, 'Well, at least you didn't drink. That's the important thing.' And she'll say, 'I hope you enjoyed it.' "

"Did you?"

"Enjoy it?"

"Yeah."

"Hell, no. I was faking orgasm."

"Both times, huh?"

"You betcha." She drew close to me, put her hand on my chest. "You'll stay over, won't you?"

"What would your sponsor say?"

"Probably that I might as well hang for a sheep as a lamb. Oh, shit, I almost forgot."

"Where are you going?"

"Gotta make a phone call."

"You're actually calling your sponsor?"

She shook her head. She'd put a robe on and now she was paging through a small address book. She dialed a number and said, "Hi, this is Jan. You weren't sleeping, were you? Look, this is out of left field, but does the word Ricone mean anything to you?" She spelled it. "I thought it might be a dirty word or something. Uh-huh." Then she listened for a moment and said, "No, nothing like that. I'm doing crossword puzzles in Sicilian, that's all. On nights when I can't sleep. Listen, you can only spend so much time reading the Big Book."

She finished the conversation, hung up and said, "Well, it was a thought. I figured if it was a dialect or an obscenity it might not be in the dictionary."

"What obscenity did you think it might be? And when did the thought happen to cross your mind?"

"None of your business, wiseass."

"You're blushing."

"I know, I can feel it. That'll teach me to try to help a friend solve a murder."

"No good deed goes unpunished."

"That's what they say. Martin Albert Ricone and Charles Otis Jones? Are those the names he used?"

"Owen. Charles Owen Jones."

"And you think it means something."

"It has to mean something. Even if he's a lunatic, anything that elaborate would have to mean something."

"Like Fort Wayne and Fort Smith?"

"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. Maricуn."

"That's Spanish."

"Right."

"Cojones means 'balls,' doesn't it?"

"And maricуn 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

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.

He turned at our entrance, got to his feet. Jan and I walked over there and I managed the introductions. We stood awkwardly for a moment, and then Chance said, "You'll want to view the body," and gave a nod toward the casket.

Did anyone ever want to view a body? I walked over there and Jan walked beside me. Sunny was laid out in a brightly colored dress on a casket lining of cream-colored satin. Her hands, clasped upon her breast, held a single red rose. Her face might have been carved from a block of wax, and yet she certainly looked no worse than when I'd seen her last.

Chance was standing beside me. He said, "Talk to you a moment?"

"Sure."

Jan gave my hand a quick squeeze and slipped away. Chance and I stood side by side, looking down at Sunny.

I said, "I thought the body was still at the morgue."

"They called yesterday, said they were ready to release it. The people here worked late getting her ready. Did a pretty good job."

"Uh-huh."

"Doesn't look much like her. Didn't look like her when we found her, either, did it?"

"No."

"They'll cremate the body after. Simpler that way. The girls look right, don't they? The way they're dressed and all?"

"They look fine."

"Dignified," he said. After a pause he said, "Ruby didn't come."

"I noticed."

"She doesn't believe in funerals. Different cultures, different customs, you know? And she always kept to herself, hardly knew Sunny."

I didn't say anything.

"After this is over," he said, "I be taking the girls to their homes, you know. Then we ought to talk."

"All right."

"You know Parke Bernet? The auction gallery, the main place on Madison Avenue. There's a sale tomorrow and I wanted to look at a couple of lots I might bid on. You want to meet me there?"

"What time?"

"I don't know. This here won't be long. Be out of here by three. Say four-fifteen, four-thirty?"

"Fine."

"Say, Matt?" I turned. " 'Preciate your coming."

There were perhaps ten more mourners in attendance by the time the service got underway. A party of four blacks sat in the middle on the left-hand side, and among them I thought I recognized Kid Bascomb, the fighter I'd watched the one time I met Sunny. Two elderly women sat together in the rear, and another elderly man sat by himself near the front. There are lonely people who drop in on the funerals of strangers as a way of passing the time, and I suspected these three were of their number.

Just as the service started, Joe Durkin and another plain-clothes detective slipped into a pair of seats in the last row.

The minister looked like a kid. I don't know how thoroughly he'd been briefed, but he talked about the special tragedy of a life cut short in its prime, and about God's mysterious ways, and about the survivors being the true victims of such apparently senseless tragedy. He read passages from Emerson, Teilhard de Chardin, Martin Buber, and the Book of Ecclesiastes. Then he suggested that any of Sunny's friends who wished to might come forward and say a few words.

Donna Campion read two short poems which I assumed she'd written herself. I learned later that they were by Sylvia Plath and Anne Sexton, two poets who had themselves committed suicide. Fran Schecter followed her and said, "Sunny, I don't know if you can hear me but I want to tell you this anyway," and went on to say how she'd valued the dead girl's friendship and cheerfulness and zest for living. She started off light and bubbly herself and wound up breaking down in tears, and the minister had to help her off stage. Mary Lou Barcker spoke just two or three sentences, and those in a low monotone, saying that she wished she'd known Sunny better and hoped she was at peace now.

Nobody else came forward. I had a brief fantasy of Joe Durkin mounting the platform and telling the crowd how the NYPD was going to get it together and win this one for the Gipper, but he stayed right where he was. The minister said a few more words- I wasn't paying attention- and then one of the attendants played a recording, Judy Collins singing "Amazing Grace."

Outside, Jan and I walked for a couple of blocks without saying anything. Then I said, "Thanks for coming."

"Thanks for asking me. God, that sounds foolish. Like a conversation after the Junior Prom. 'Thanks for asking me. I had a lovely time.' " She took a handkerchief from her purse, dabbed at her eyes, blew her nose. "I'm glad you didn't go to that alone," she said.

"So am I."

"And I'm glad I went. It was so sad and so beautiful. Who was that man who spoke to you on the way out?"

"That was Durkin."