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was sunken and hairless, his ribs showed. The whole front of his jeans were wet through, and Doc noticed a second stink, fully as organic, under the first. The hole in the man’s head, bluish and puckered, was a little forward of his right temple, the singed hairs curled back from the edge. His right arm hung off the side of the mattress. A black, short-barreled revolver with plastic side grips like the handle of a Boy Scout knife lay on the carpet almost under the bed.
    “Had to fuck somebody even at the end, didn’t you, cocksucker?” Ance said. “Don’t look like he’d come to better than four hundred bucks a pound, does he? Fifty large, that’s what I’m out.”
    “That’s stiff bail for simple assault.” Doc felt his own stomach crowding the back of his tongue.
    “He’s got a history of not being in when the law comes to call. He was on the FBI’s Ten Most Wanted list for fifteen years.”
    “Who was he?”
    “Most recently, Ambrose X. Dryce. Before that he was Wilson McCoy.”
    The name thudded in Doc’s memory like a wooden gong. “Black Panther?”
    “Not for twenty-five years. You’re looking at what’s left of the grand exalted poobah of the loyal and malevolent Marshals of Mahomet.”
    That meant nothing to Doc.
    “I wouldn’t’ve taken him on at all except I thought he was too pooped to run any more. I sure as hell hit that one square on the head. No offense, Wilson.” Ance turned toward the dresser, where a wallet and a straight razor lay in what looked like a scattering of plaster dust from the ceiling.
    “How long do you think he’s been dead?”
    “Somebody saw him check in this morning. I’ll let the cops take his temperature.” He drew a silver pencil from his breast pocket and poked through the wallet. “Asshole spent his last nickel on the room. My luck.” He licked a knuckle, touched it to the white dust, licked it again. “Well, we know where he found the balls to jerk the trigger. None of that cheap Michigan Avenue crack for the leader of the M-and-M’s. Too bad he couldn’t afford enough to just glide on out.”
    That name—M-and-M’s—struck a chord. “Somebody should call the police, I guess.”
    “I’ll do it. No sense you hanging around.” Ance handed him a business card. “Call me and I’ll get your money to you. Not two hundred, though. It’d be different if you had to earn it.”
    “The clerk saw me.”
    “Shit, I forgot. You better stick.” He misread Doc’s expression. “Sorry about this, Spence. I’ll put in a word with your parole cop.”
    “My name’s Miller,” Doc said.

Chapter 5
    S ECOND SUICIDE THIS YEAR ,” muttered the clerk while Ance used his telephone. “They going to stop their clock anyway, why don’t they check into the Westin, order room service?”
    “If they could afford the Westin, they wouldn’t be committing suicide, schmuck.” Ance waited for someone at the police department to pick up.
    Doc was watching the game on the clerk’s set. “What’s the score?”
    The police started arriving in pairs, some in uniform, others in sport coats and slacks that didn’t quite match, like high school basketball coaches. Some were white, most were black. One of the first two officers on the scene was a black woman with her hair pinned up under her uniform cap. She asked most of the questions, scratching the answers in a pocket notebook. Doc noticed she used shorthand. While he and Ance were answering the same questions for the plainclothesmen, the medical examiner arrived with his black metal case and went into the room. He was a small neat Vietnamese wearing a Hawaiian shirt and khaki pants under an overcoat with the sleeves turned back, who looked as if he had come there directly from the boat. Doc overheard jokes told in low voices and chuckling. There was an air of lightness about the proceedings, like relatives getting together for the first time in years at the funeral of a despised aunt.
    After an hour or so a man