That would be Kilcourse.
“They talk for a while and then Joplin joins ’em. They sit around the table laughin’ and talkin’ for maybe a quarter of a hour. Then Pangburn gets up and goes indoors. I got a table that I can watch ’em from, and the place is crowded, and I’m afraid I’ll lose my table if I leave it, so I don’t follow the kid. He ain’t got no hat; I figure he ain’t goin’ nowhere. But he must of gone through the house and out front, because pretty soon there’s a noise that I thought was a auto backfire, and then the sound of a car gettin’ away quick. And then some guy squawks that there’s a dead man outside. Ever’body runs out here, and it’s Pangburn.”
“You dead sure that Joplin, Kilcourse and the girl were all at the table when Pangburn was killed?”
“Absolutely,” Porky said, “if this dark guy’s name is Kilcourse.”
“Where are they now?”
“Back in Joplin’s hangout. They went up there as soon as they seen Pangburn had been croaked.”
I had no illusions about Porky. I knew he was capable of selling me out and furnishing the poet’s murderer with an alibi. But there was this about it: if Joplin, Kilcourse or the girl had fixed him, and had fixed my informant, then it was hopeless for me to try to prove that they weren’t on the rear porch when the shot was fired. Joplin had a crowd of hangers-on who would swear to anything he told them without batting an eye. There would be a dozen supposed witnesses to their presence on the rear porch.
Thus the only thing for me to do was to take it for granted that Porky was coming clean with me.
“Have you seen Dick Foley?” I asked, since Dick had been shadowing Kilcourse.