“One of the boys, Kelly, was walking his beat early Tuesday morning, coming down the Jones Street hill from California Street to Pine. It was about three o’clock—no fog or nothing—a clear night. Kelly’s within maybe twenty feet of Pine Street when he hears a shot. He whisks around the corner, and there’s a man dying on the north sidewalk of Pine Street, halfway between Jones and Leavenworth. Nobody else is in sight. Kelly runs up to the man and finds it’s Gilmore. Gilmore dies before he can say a word. The doctors say he was knocked down and then shot; because there’s a bruise on his forehead, and the bullet slanted upward in his chest. See what I mean? He was lying on his back when the bullet hit him, with his feet pointing toward the gun it came from. It was a .38.”
“Any money on him?”
O’Gar fed himself two spoons of chowder and nodded.
“Six hundred smacks, a coupla diamonds and a watch. Nothing touched.”
“What was he doing on Pine Street at that time in the morning?”
“Damned if I know, brother. Chances are he was going home, but we can’t find out where he’d been. Don’t even know what direction he was walking in when he was knocked over. He was lying across the sidewalk with his feet to the curb; but that don’t mean nothing—he could of turned around three or four times after he was hit.”
“All apartment buildings in that block, aren’t there?”
“Uh-huh. There’s an alley or two running off from the south side; but Kelly says he could see the mouths of both alleys when the shot was fired—before he turned the corner—and nobody got away through them.”
“Reckon somebody who lives in that block did the shooting?” I asked.