Free Hellhound on His Trail: The Stalking of Martin Luther King, Jr. and the International Hunt for His Assassin by Hampton Sides

affixed to King's room--306--but the door was closed and the orange window drapes were drawn. Just outside his door, a fire extinguisher, slightly askew, was lodged on the wall.

    AT THAT MOMENT, King was inside the room with Abernathy, 340 getting ready for dinner at the Reverend Billy Kyles's house. The room was cluttered with newspapers and coffee cups and other detritus of the day. The bony ruins of King's catfish lunch clung to a plate. King's heavy black briefcase squatted like an anvil on the table, the gold initials "MLK" embossed near the latch. The orange bedspreads lay rumpled and twisted. The Huntley-Brinkley Report flickered on the TV.
    King was half-listening as he shaved in the bathroom--a process that, for him, was both laborious and smelly. King, who had a thick beard but sensitive skin, had found years earlier that shaving with a conventional razor and cream caused him to break out in a bumpy rash. So he had taken to using a potent depilatory called Magic Shaving Powder, 341 a product widely used by Orthodox Jews whose strictures forbade them to touch a razor to the face. King's elaborate shaving ritual was said to be one of the reasons he so often ran late.
    Now King, standing before the mirror in his suit slacks and an undershirt, was mixing the fine white powder in a cup of warm water and stirring it into a thick paste. The concoction gave off the sulfurous stench of rancid eggs. King, who'd become inured to the smell, spread the goop over his face and let the hair-removing chemicals (bearing ghastly names like calcium thioglycolate, guanidine carbonate, and nonoxynol-10) do their work.
    Abernathy shrank from the smell as he always did--he grabbed a chair across the room by the window and teased King about it. From the bathroom, King asked Abernathy to call the Kyles home and see what was on the menu for tonight. Abernathy balked at the assignment but then picked up the phone and soon had Gwen Kyles on the line. He hung up and reported to King: "Roast beef, candied yams, pig's feet, neck bones, chitlins, turnip greens, corn pone."
    It would be a down-home dinner, King's favorite. The news seemed to put him in an even better frame of mind. After a few minutes, he meticulously scraped off the Magic Shaving Powder paste with a spatula-like tool. The gunk swirled down the drain, taking a thousand little hairs with it. He patted his face dry with a towel, only to be interrupted by a crisp knock at the door. The Reverend Billy Kyles, a tall, gangling extrovert wearing dark-rimmed glasses, stood at the threshold and said they'd better hurry--the hour was getting late, and Gwen was expecting everyone.
    Pastor of the Monumental Baptist Church in Memphis, Kyles had known King and Abernathy for ten years. The two men began to gang up on their old friend. "Billy," Kyles later recalled King saying, "we're not going to get real soul food 342 at your house. Gwen's just too good-looking to make soul food--she can't cook it."
    Kyles feigned hurt and displeasure: "Who can't cook soul food?"
    Abernathy chimed in: "All right now, Billy. If she's serving up feel-ay meen-yuns or something, then you're gonna flunk."
    King was in the bathroom slapping Aramis aftershave lotion on his face--masking the harsh sulfur smell with fine notes of sandalwood, leather, and clove.
    Kyles said, "Man, we're gonna be late. You just get ready, Doc, and don't worry about what we gonna have."
    Moderately chastened, King got into gear. He put on a dress shirt and tried to fasten the collar button, but it was too tight--he'd gained weight since he last wore it, or perhaps the shirt had shrunk at the cleaners.
    One thing was certain, Kyles said in riposte as he walked out the door, they'd be having more food than King's waistline needed. Doc , he said, you getting fat .
    "That I am," King agreed, and, his vanity pricked, he cut a glance at Kyles, who fidgeted out on the balcony. Then King changed the subject: "Do I have another shirt here?" He pulled