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."
"Oh, was it? What was he doing there?"
"Hoping to get lucky, I suppose. You never know who'll show up at a funeral."
"Not many people showed up at this one."
"Just a handful."
"I'm glad we were there."
"Uh-huh."
I bought her a cup of coffee, then put her in a cab. She insisted she could take the subway but I got her into a cab and made her take ten bucks for the fare.
A lobby attendant at Parke Bernet directed me to the second-floor gallery where Friday's African and Oceanic art was on display. I found Chance in front of a set of glassed-in shelves housing a collection of eighteen or twenty small gold figurines. Some represented animals while others depicted human beings and various household articles. One I recall showed a man sitting on his haunches and milking a goat. The largest would fit easily in a child's hand, and many of them had a droll quality about them.
"Ashanti gold weights," Chance explained. "From the land the British called the Gold Coast. It's Ghana now. You see plated reproductions in the shops. Fakes. These are the real thing."
"Are you planning to buy them?"
He shook his head. "They don't speak to me. I try to buy things that do. I'll show you something."
We crossed the room. A bronze head of a woman stood mounted on a four-foot pedestal. Her nose was broad and flattened, her cheekbones pronounced. Her throat was so thickly ringed by bronze necklaces that the overall appearance of the head was conical.
"A bronze sculpture of the lost Kingdom of Benin," he announced. "The head of a queen. You can tell her rank by the number of necklaces she's wearing. Does she speak to you, Matt? She does to me."
I read strength in the bronze features, cold strength and a merciless will.
"Know what she says? She says, 'Nigger, why you be lookin' at me dat way? You know you ain't got de money to take me home.' " He laughed. "The presale estimate is forty to sixty thousand dollars."
"You won't be bidding?"
"I don't know what I'll be doing. There are a few pieces I wouldn't mind owning. But sometimes I come to auctions the way some people go to the track even when they don't feel like betting. Just to sit in the sun and watch the horses run. I like the way an auction room feels. I like to hear the hammer drop. You seen enough? Let's go."
His car was parked at a garage on Seventy-eighth Street. We rode over the Fifty-ninth Street Bridge and through Long Island City. Here and there street prostitutes stood along the curb singly or in pairs.
"Not many out last night," he said. "I guess they feel safer in daylight."
"You were here last night?"
"Just driving around. He picked up Cookie around here, then drove out Queens Boulevard. Or did he take the expressway? I don't guess it matters."
"No."
We took Queens Boulevard. "Want to thank you for coming to the funeral," he said.
"I wanted to come."
"Fine-looking woman with you."
"Thank you."
"Jan, you say her name was?"
"That's right."
"You go with her or-"
"We're friends."
"Uh-huh." He braked for a light. "Ruby didn't come."
"I know."
"What I told you was a bunch of shit. I didn't want to contradict what I told the others. Ruby split, she packed up and went."
"When did this happen?"
"Sometime yesterday, I guess. Last night I had a message on my service. I was running around all yesterday, trying to get this funeral organized. I thought it went okay, didn't you?"
"It was a nice service."
"That's what I thought. Anyway, there's a message to call Ruby and a 415 area code. That's San Francisco. I thought, huh? And I called, and she said she had decided to move on. I thought it was some kind of a joke, you know? Then I went over there and checked her apartment, and all her things were gone. Her clothes. She left the furniture. That makes three empty apartments I got, man. Big housing shortage, nobody can find a place to live, and I'm sitting on three empty apartments. Something, huh?"
"You sure it was her you spoke to?"
"Positive."
"And she was in San Francisco?"
"Had to be. Or Berkeley or Oakland or some such place. I dialed the number, area code and all. She had to be out there to have that kind of number, didn't she?"
"Did she say why she left?"
"Said it was time to move on. Doing her inscrutable oriental number."
"You think she was afraid of getting killed?"
"Powhattan Motel," he said, pointing. "That's the place, isn't it?"
"That's the place."
"And you were out here to find the body."
"It had already been found. But I was out here before they moved it."
"Must have been some sight."
"It wasn't pretty."
"That Cookie worked alone. No pimp."
"That's what the police said."
"Well, she coulda had a pimp that they didn't know about. But I talked to some people. She worked alone, and if she ever knew Duffy Green, nobody ever heard tell of it." He turned right at the corner. "We'll head back to my house, okay?"
"All right."
"I'll make us some coffee. You liked that coffee I fixed last time, didn't you?"
"It was good."
"Well, I'll fix us some more."
His block in Greenpoint was almost as quiet by day as it had been by night. The garage door ascended at the touch of a button. He lowered it with a second touch of the button and we got out of the car and walked on into the house. "I want to work out some," he said. "Do a little lifting. You like to work out with weights?"
"I haven't in years."
"Want to go through the motions?"
"I think I'll pass."
My name is Matt and I pass.
"Be a minute," he said.
He went into a room, came out wearing a pair of scarlet gym shorts and carrying a hooded terry-cloth robe. We went to the room he'd fitted out as a gym, and for fifteen or twenty minutes he worked out with loose weights and on the Universal machine. His skin became glossy with perspiration as he worked and his heavy muscles rippled beneath it.
"Now I want ten minutes in the sauna," he said. "You didn't earn the sauna by pumping the iron, but we could grant a special dispensation in your case."
"No thanks."
"Want to wait downstairs then? Be more comfortable."
I waited while he took a sauna and shower. I studied some of his African sculpture, thumbed through a couple of magazines. He emerged in due course wearing light blue jeans and a navy pullover and rope sandals. He asked if I was ready for coffee. I told him I'd been ready for half an hour.