His left arm was folded down beside him with the palm turned up; his right arm was flung out at an angle, still gripping a short-barreled revolver. Street light shone on the soles of his shoes, showing runover rubber heels and recent toecaps. The top part of his face was shaded by his hat brim, but orange light from the neon bar sign lit the lower part, showing the tip of a hooked nose and a long, pointed chin and leaving the thin, compressed lips invisible, so that the face seemed to lack a mouth.

One glance was enough to tell that he was dead.

The Paris Bar had a stainless-steel front framing the two big plate-glass windows that tanked the doorway. The left-side steel baseboard directly behind the stiff was punctured with bullet holes.

With the second stiff, it was different. He lay piled up like a wet towel directly in front of the door. His smooth, handsome black face peered from folds of gay-colored clothes with a look of infinite surprise. He didn’t look so much dead from gunshot as from shock; but the small, round, purple-lipped hole above his right temple told the story.

The third figure was encircled by cops.

Grave Digger and Coffin Ed alighted and converged on the first stiff.

“Two hits through the top of the hat,” Grave Digger observed, his gaze roving. “He was lying on his belly and they nailed the hat on tighter.”

“Two in the right shoulder and one in the left neck,” said Coffin Ed. “Somebody sure wanted this son dead.”

“No one man scored five hits on this guy and him with a gun in his hand,” Grave Digger stated.

“The way I see it, two or more guns were shooting from down there where Casper is lying, and a third gun cross-fired from a car parked at the curb.”

“Yeah,” Grave Digger agreed, counting the bullet holes in the stainless-steel baseboard. “Somebody was using an automatic in the car and missed all ten times.”