Jack didn’t answer or say anything because he was staring at the face of the man on the prep table, recognizing familiar features beneath the lacerations, realizing he knew him, even without the dark hair that used to curl down on his forehead. Jack said, “That’s Buddy Jeannette, isn’t it?” Surprised, but quiet about it, a little stunned. “Jesus Christ, it is, it’s Buddy Jeannette.”

Leo turned to look at the death certificate, on the counter next to the Porti-Boy embalming machine. “Denis Alexander Jeannette,” Leo said. “Born in the parish of Orleans, April twenty-third, 1937.”

“It’s Buddy. Jesus.” Jack shook his head and said, “I don’t believe it.”

Leo had Buddy hooked up to the Porti-Boy now, the machine pumping a pink fluid called Permaglo through clear plastic tubing that snaked over Buddy’s naked body and into his carotid artery, in the right side of his neck. Leo looked up, took time to study Jack.

“Why don’t you believe it?”

“He was so careful.”

Leo picked up the hose, began to play its gentle stream over Buddy Jeannette’s shoulders and chest. “Where’d you know him, in prison?”

“Before,” Jack said. There was a silence, Leo waiting, running the hose over Buddy, soaping him. “I’d see him downtown. Like a Saturday afternoon I might see him in the bar at the Roosevelt, we’d have a drink.”

“Sounds like you were pretty good friends.” Leo was massaging Buddy with the soap, kneading his flesh to help the Permaglo work through and give him a tint of natural color.

“We were friends when we saw each other,” Jack said. “But if we didn’t see each other it didn’t matter.”

“I don’t recall you ever mentioned him.”

“Well, it was a long time ago.”

“What was?”

“When I’d run into him.” He was getting used to looking at Buddy’s wounds. The poor guy’s head, skinned raw, looked sunburned. “He was in an accident, huh?”