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murdered. It was unlikely he'd get that far. No one appeared interested, least of all Captain Picot, who seemed to harbor the belief that any death in the red-light district was well deserved.
    The senior of the two attendants, a callow-faced mulatto named Royce, told their visitor that one of the doctors from the medical examiners' office would be around later and that maybe he should come back then. The detective requested instead that they fetch the body from the cooler and wheel it on a gurney into the examination room so he could have a look. The two attendants exchanged an annoyed glance. They were used to having a nap after lunch and weren't much in the mood to work. McKinney got his way, though, and within a few minutes stood viewing the denuded corpse from head to toe and taking notes on a little pad. The younger attendant wandered out of the room, and the mulatto perched atop the desk, with his back against the wall, his arms crossed and head drooping.
    McKinney found Defoor's wound to be precise: a hole the size of a Liberty dime, over the heart but doing enough damage to put an end to the victim in a matter of seconds. While there were no powder burns in evidence, the precision of the shot meant that it had come from at most a few feet away.
    The detective searched the body further.
    "What's this?" he inquired presently, interrupting a rattling snore.
    Royce raised his chin, blinking. "What's what?"
    McKinney pointed. "Right here."
    Huffing, the mulatto pushed himself off the desk and stepped close to the gurney. "What?"
    McKinney directed his attention to Mr. Defoor's forehead.
    Royce squinted. "What?"
    "He's been cut," McKinney said.
    The cop pointed to the faint pinpoint line that started over the victim's right eyebrow, crossed the bridge of his nose, and ended on his left cheek. Officer McKinney treated the dull-faced mulatto to an absent glance.
    "Now why would someone do that?" he said.

FOUR
     
    The fellow had been lying dead for a day and a half and had grown so putrid that the smell was noticed even among the cribs that lined Robertson from Conti to Bienville streets. The call went out around midmorning. It took another two hours for the police to arrive, first a pair of beat coppers, then a detective from the precinct attached to Parish Prison.
    The sergeant and the rookie patrolman in their blues and round-topped helmets ambled along the litter-strewn banquette in opposite directions, canvassing for witnesses. They came back to report to the detective that the whores on both sides said the crib had been vacant for at least a week, and none had a recollection of the woman who had rented it last.
    So the officers had the body of a white man in a plain suit and that was all. The victim had been shot in the back of the skull, from the look of the entry wound a single bullet from a .22, and then dumped on a filthy, lice-riddled mattress in a foul Robertson Street crib. A few more of the harlots were paraded by the door for a look at the poor fellow. Not one of them could identify him. This was no surprise; the men who visited that part of Storyville rarely lingered for long. And even sober, the sluts who served them saw so many faces that they all blurred into one.
    The detective sent the women away, and he and the sergeant strolled off to Marais Street to find a saloon with a telephone so they could call the precinct for missing persons reports and enjoy a draught beer or two while they waited to hear back.
    The patrolman, whose name was Casey, was left to stand by until the wagon came for the pungent corpse. It wasn't his first visit to the raw edge of the red-light district, though like most New Orleans policemen, he hoped it would be his last.
    Even now he could feel hard eyes glaring from other doors. Business was already bad; having a copper standing around made things worse. A corpse in a crib was a regular occurrence, and the whores were used to quicker service. They wanted the body and the