Andy Newman: “It’s not a joke,” said the tall man in the F.D.N.Y. hat as he left the funeral home. “I mean, it’s somebody’s life, that just happened to pass away. Same thing’s going to happen to all of us.”
The somebody was Virgilio Cintron, last seen, and forever to be remembered in the public imagination, being wheeled down Ninth Avenue in an office chair, dressed in a T-shirt and unbuttoned pants, as two of his friends tried to keep his corpse from sliding to the sidewalk.
Monday was Mr. Cintron’s wake. Monday he was wearing a suit. And for the few dozen people in the world to whom Mr. Cintron was not a punch line or a future bar trivia question, it was a chance to say goodbye.
A handwritten sign taped to the door of the R. G. Ortiz Funeral Home on West 72nd Street read, “This is a private viewing for family and close friends only!”
The word “only” was underlined and was strictly enforced. Andrea Peyser of The New York Post got a quick glimpse of Mr. Cintron before she was ushered out. “He’s looking dead,” she reported. A reporter from The Associated Press was shooed away from the door like a dog.
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