I've seen it all and I've done half of it. Frankly, I was ready to cash it in. So the word from the doctor didn't hit me too hard. I was halfway through the Times when Evangeline, his nurse, poked her gorgeous head into the waiting room and glanced toward me. Her fawn eyes misted as though she had just said good-bye to a beloved teddy bear.

"Mr. Ammo? Dr. La Vecque will see you now."

I switched off the newspaper plaque and slipped it into my breast pocket. Passing by her, I reached to pat the small of her back just about where her avalanche of platinum hair ended in a cloud of curls. She didn't smile this time the way she used to. That clinched it.

"Learn to take it colder, Evvie. See?" I grinned at her.

She looked me in the eye, her tension unwinding. I gave her another pat and made my way to the examination room.

Dr. La Vecque treated most of the aging bums that hung around Fiqueroa and Fourth. I included myself in the clientele mostly because his office was just a few floors below mine.

The office reflected the social status of his patients-all the needles and drugs were kept under lock and key, same for even the most inexpensive equipment. His office and mine were located in the worst section of Old Downtown-the Arco Tower. The one that's still standing, so to speak.

After about twenty minutes of moist palms, I heard La Vecque rummaging for my file in the little tray outside the door. He entered with less of a greeting than a mortician gives a stiff.

"Sit down." He eased his birdlike frame into a ripped swivel chair next to the examination table.

I sat on the butcher paper that covered the table and stared at him.

He was bald, beak-nosed, and looked as if he didn't take much of his own medical advice, or maybe he took too much of it. He gave the impression of being a practiced, controlled drug user. He tossed the folder he carried onto the counter, rubbed the bridge of his raw nose, and sighed.

After a moment he said, "Do you want me to ease into this, Dell?"

"No."

"You've got about three to six months. It's a form of cancer called osteogenic sarcoma and it's metastatic. All through your bones."

"Sounds painful."

"It will be. More and more as time goes by. I can give you something to help ease it-"

"Forget it, Doc. I won't end my life as a junkie."

He looked hurt for a moment, then let it slide. Shaking his head, he leaned back to stare at me with a technician's impartial gaze. "The State Institute for Cancer Research has a center for osteogenic sarcoma. They could treat you for free. You probably wouldn't get treatment with something as expensive as monoclonal antibodies, but I'm sure-"

"Yeah," I said. "I'd wind up wearing a plastic skeleton impregnated with cobalt sixty. No thanks. I'll go when I go."

He raised what eyebrows he had. "You're a religious man, are you?"

"I'm a man. I believe in staying that way till I die." I scooted off the table.

He looked up at me as though I'd robbed him of some petty cash. That expression reminded me of why he chose to conduct his practice in the middle of Skid Row.

"It's this building, Dell. They never did get rid of all the radiation."

"Yeah," I said, "but the rent is sure reasonable." I headed out. "Thanks for the prognosis anyway, Doc. Now I can plan my retirement."

I waved to Evangeline on my way out. She blinked as she waved back. I could tell she wasn't cut out to be a nurse. I figured I knew why La Vecque kept her around.

I climbed up eight floors to my office, wondering how long it would be before the pain and effort became unbearable. How long until I'd be forced to depend upon the jury-rigged elevator. How long it would ride me up and down before I died or it dropped and killed me. Falling twenty stories in a stainless steel box seemed cleaner than lying awake at night feeling my bones rot.

I was getting depressed. In my opinion, drunk was better than depressed any day. I opened the door to the stately office of Solutions, Inc.-Dell Ammo, sole proprietor. My shoes scuffed at the holes in the rug. The place smelled of the years it had served as both an office and a dwelling.

I flopped down in the cracked remains of a black vinyl executive chair and pulled a bag of whiskey from my desk drawer. I proceeded to get drunk as per request.

It was always then-during that buzzing, whirling spin of intoxication-that I wondered why I bothered. With ten million Panamerican dollars in cash waiting for me, I was living like a maggot. I squirmed around in a dying corpse with all the other maggots, trying not to be as maggotlike as they.

Ten million saved up under dozens of names as false as my current one. And I couldn't touch it until A.D. 2000.

A.D. 2000 was roughly two months away.

I felt like a marathon runner who drops dead right before hitting the ribbon.

I'm in a business that pays very well if you're unobtrusive and keep your mouth shut. Excessive spending is generally a bad idea. Sudden, unexplained increases in wealth will sometimes get noticed. Sometimes a nosey fed or a rival with a contract will start poking around. If he's on the wrong side of the fence from you and finds out enough…

People in my profession usually don't go to trial. They wind up with blades in their backs in a crummy dive-their fingerprints etched away, their retinas seared, their faces practiced upon by amateur plastic surgeons.

Don't ever believe that an assassin's life is exciting and glamorous. It's a marginal risk at best.

Memories flowed with a couple more swigs of Professor Daniel's. I'd been an assassin for thirty-seven years, earning my living exclusively in the field. At fifteen, I had been setting off firecrackers behind the grassy knoll in Dallas. It was a glorious job, and my first. Sure, the Secret Service boys gave me the firecrackers and told me that it was all part of a salute to the President.

I learned right there to keep my mouth shut and disappear after the job-they had their own ideas on how to repay me for my efforts. From then on, it was strictly cash-up front.

The sixties were a fabulous time to be young and building a career in political murder. The one nuisance in my business is that all the publicity hounds stole my thunder. I didn't dare go public, but that suited me just fine.

The closest I ever came to fame was when they had cameras in the Ambassador Hotel in `68. You can almost see me duck behind that football player to slap one of the guns into Sirhan's hand right after I'd finished with it. I was also the one who gave Bobby the rosary. He would have wanted it that way.

A lot of people thought that one was political. I know different. It was a whole big flap over that actress and what he'd done to her.

That job got me a clientele, and I moved on to bigger and more lucrative jobs. Johnson, Mao, Moscone, Sadat, Brezhnev, Andropov, Chernenko, Yeltsin (it was like a revolving door there), that Gandhi dame, Duarte, Gore, Doc Rock-I can't even list them all.

Sometimes an assassination doesn't even require any killing on my part. Putting the right person in the right bed with the right blabbermouth is all that's needed. A well-placed scandal can usually result in an assassin from the other side of the fence receiving a contract to clear up the embarrassment with bullets or poison or a nasty case of cancer.

La Vecque had implied that my cancer was caused by the radiation in Old Downtown. Cancer is also the preferred weapon of some of the more patient people in my trade. It's usually employed by those who can lure their victims into a medical room or prison. Government assassins use it a lot. I think it's unsporting. And it takes too long.