An insistent knock—and a taste like sand—brought me round. The room was bright with morning. It was a piercing brightness: the optical equivalent of a dentist’s drill. I groaned when it hit me. I tried to go to sleep again. The knock kept on. My head ached with it. I blinked. I ran my tongue through the sand in my mouth. I sat up. I groaned.

The knocking kept on. I figured it out. Someone was knocking on the door. The door, I noticed now, was not where it usually was. The window was not where it usually was. I, as it turned out, was not where I usually was. The knocking continued to hammer at my head from the outside. A dull throbbing began to answer it from within. I called up the memory of the night before. I remembered Timothy Colt. His hotel room. I looked down at the coat on my lap.

The knocking kept on.

“All right!” I shouted. The sound of my own voice ricocheted off my internal organs like a pinball. “All right,” I said more quietly.

I tried to push myself off the sofa. It seemed a long way. I tried again, my stomach heaving.

I stood. The room rocked this way and that. The knocking—which had paused when I shouted—started up again. I cursed. I turned slowly to find the door.

“I’ll get it!”

The voice startled me. It was Colt. He had come, not from the bedroom to my left, but from the bathroom to my right. He came striding out vigorously. He was dressed and pressed and ready to meet the day. His wiry frame was wrapped in a natty tan suit with a western cut. There was a string tie in a neat bow around his neck. His chin was clean-shaven. His hair was wet and slapped back on his skull as if he’d just come out of the shower.

I groaned at the sight of him. He grinned at me as he passed to the door.

“You look awful there, friend,” he said. “Go on back to sleep for a while.”

I made the only response I could think of without the use of a pistol. Colt laughed. He grabbed hold of the doorknob and pulled the door in. I stumbled into the bathroom.

I heard Colt say: “Well, hey!” He sounded surprised and pleased.

I heard a low, breathy voice answer, “Compliments of the house, Mr. Colt.”

Colt laughed. “Fine by me.”

I relieved myself, then stumbled to the sink. I splashed water on my aching face. I looked up in the mirror. It was not a pleasant sight. The usual crags and lines of a thin, fierce face had sagged in the light until I looked like a basset hound. Above the high hairline, my gray hair lay damp and tangled.

Behind this travesty, I saw the reflection of the sitting room. A bellboy had entered carrying a tray. He took it to the coffee table in the center of the room.

As he bent forward to put the tray on the table, I saw Colt come up beside him. The reporter reached into his pocket, brought out his money clip. He thumbed through it for a tip. I turned away from the mirror. Walked to the bathroom doorway.

I was looking out the door when the bellboy straightened, turned around. He and Colt faced each other in profile before me, Colt to my right, the bellboy to my left. The bellboy, I saw through bleary eyes, was dressed all in black, like the doormen. His face was dark brown with deep-set, intense eyes. He wore his hair cut close, almost in a crew cut. He couldn’t have been more than twenty, if that, but dark lines creased his brow and pinched the corners of his mouth.

Colt fumbled with his money clip. He found a couple of bills and held them out to the kid. The bellboy killed him.

I saw it this way. Suddenly the kid had a knife in his left hand. He must have slid it out of his shirtsleeve. It was a wicked-looking dagger. Its blade was short and curved like a scimitar’s. It flashed once as he brought it up under Colt’s ribs. It went into the reporter with no more noise than a whisper of tearing cloth and flesh. Colt gave a soft little “oof.” He bent forward with the blow. As he did, his killer twisted the knife expertly. Colt’s face went blank. He hadn’t even had time to be surprised.

With a smooth flick of the wrist, the bellboy pulled the dagger free. As he did, Colt keeled over. He hit the coffee table. The tray rattled with the blow. Colt rolled onto the floor, landing on his back. At last he lay still, his eyes staring up at the ceiling, his arms splayed inelegantly. Blood was bubbling up through the hole in him.

That’s when I realized he was dead. That’s when I cried out: “Colt!”

That’s when the bellboy turned and saw me.

That’s when he knew he had a witness.