The bullet had smashed King’s neck and jaw and ripped off his necktie. The wound was terrible, and Jasper knew immediately that King had been struck by an expanding slug known as a dumdum. Blood was pooling around King’s shoulders.

Abernathy was yelling: “Martin! Martin! Martin!” He patted King’s cheek. Jasper thought he saw a faint sign of awareness on King’s face. Abernathy said: “Martin, this is Ralph, don’t worry, it’s going to be all right.” King’s lips moved but there was no sound.

Kyles was first to the phone in the room. He picked it up, but apparently there was no one at the switchboard. Kyles started banging on the wall with his fist, shouting: “Answer the phone! Answer the phone! Answer the phone!”

Then he gave up and ran back out to the balcony. He shouted to the people in the parking lot: “Call an ambulance, Dr. King has been shot!”

Someone wrapped King’s shattered head in a towel from the bathroom.

Kyles took an orange-colored spread from the bed and put it over King, covering his body up to his destroyed neck.

Jasper knew wounds. He knew how much blood a man could lose, and what a man could and could not recover from.

He had no hope for Martin Luther King.

Kyles lifted King’s hand, prized open his fingers, and took away a pack of cigarettes. Jasper had never seen King smoking: obviously he did it only in private. Even now Kyles was protecting his friend. The gesture touched Jasper’s heart.

Abernathy was still talking to King. “Can you hear me?” he said. “Can you hear me?”

Jasper saw the color of King’s face alter dramatically. The brown skin paled and turned a grayish tan. The handsome features became unnaturally still.

Jasper knew death, too, and this was it.

Verena saw the same thing. She turned away and stepped inside the room, sobbing.

Jasper put his arms around her.

She slumped against him, weeping, and her hot tears soaked into his white shirt.

“I’m so sorry,” Jasper whispered. “So sorry.” Sorry for Verena, he thought. Sorry for Martin Luther King.

Sorry for America.

• • •

That night, the inner cities of the United States exploded.

Dave Williams, in the bungalow at the Beverly Hills Hotel where he was living, watched the television coverage with horror. There were riots in one hundred ten cities. In Washington, twenty thousand people overwhelmed the police and set fire to buildings. In Baltimore, six people died and seven hundred were injured. In Chicago, two miles of West Madison Street were reduced to rubble.

All the next day Dave stayed in his room, sitting on the couch in front of the TV, smoking cigarettes. Who was to blame? It was not just the gunman. It was all the white racists who stirred up hatred. And it was all the people who did nothing about cruel injustice.

People such as Dave.

In his life he had been given one chance to stand up against racism. It had happened a few days ago in a television studio in Burbank. He had been told that a white woman could not kiss a black man on American television. His sister had demanded that he challenge that racist rule. But he had caved in to prejudice.