Names

I’m still slogging through Public Enemies: America’s Greatest Crime Wave and the Birth of the FBI, 1933-34. Not to slag on the book, it’s very good, I’m just moving through molasses these days. And one of the enjoyable parts, sort of a tangent, is the names. The names of these people. For example, here is just one paragraph:

All three of Griffin’s partners, a St. Louis racketeer named Al O’Brien, a Kansas City nightclub owner named Nugent LaPlumma, and a skinny drug addict named Michael LaCapra, known as “Jimmy Needles,” had disappeared.

Nugent LaPlumma? Jimmy Needles?

Poetry.