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react, shotgun pellets tore through his umbrella and overcoat, searing his chest, wrist, and legs. Knocked sideways into the wall of the building, he instinctively reached for his pearl-handled Colt revolver and managed to get off a few wild rounds. But his bullets apparently missed their mark. Pistols began firing from another location on the street. Then, according to several witnesses roused by the initial burst of gunfire, two or three men with sawed-off shotguns emerged from the alley, firing again as they stepped into the street. The chief was hit repeatedly as he fell to the sidewalk, blood soaking his vest and white-checked trousers. Finally, with a shout, the gunmen were gone, scattering in several directions through the puddle-streaked streets.
    William O’Connor, after parting from the chief, had not even reached the next intersection when he heard the initial gunfire. He turned in time to see the flash of more shots coming from a small, two-story frame house a block and a half away, then heard the four shots from Hennessy’s revolver. He immediately started running back up Girod Street. On the way, he encountered Officer M. Kotter, one of the Boylan men assigned to patrol the neighborhood.
    “Which way did they run?” O’Connor asked.
    “I believe it was uptown.”
    O’Connor sent the man in pursuit of the gunmen. Then he continued running up Girod in search of Hennessy. The chief seemed to have disappeared, but when O’Connor had nearly reached Basin Street, he heard a call coming from around the corner: “Oh, Billy … Billy …” O’Connor turned the corner and saw his friend slumped in a doorway down the street.
    “They have given it to me,” the chief said as O’Connor rushed up to him. “I gave them back the best I could.”
    Hennessy was bleeding profusely from his face, arms, and legs; his bloodied overcoat was shredded up and down the left side; the spent revolver hung from his right hand.
    “Who gave it to you, Dave?” O’Connor asked.
    Hennessy told him to come closer. And then, as O’Connor bent over him, the chief allegedly uttered a single word: “Dagos.”
    By now, numerous neighbors and uniformed police were on the street, gathering around the chief’s hunched form in the doorway.Several men helped carry the wounded Hennessy into the house—the Gillis residence at 189 Basin—while O’Connor ran to a grocery across the street to telephone for an ambulance and notify the Central Police Station. When he returned, he found Hennessy propped up on pillows on the floor of the Gillises’ parlor, being tended by Auguste Gillis and her mother. They untied the chief’s cravat and loosened his bloody collar and cuffs. Hennessy was obviously in great pain, but said very little. When one of the women offered to go and get his mother, however, he roused himself to speak. “No! For God’s sake, don’t do that,” he said, “… my poor mother …”
    Soon the horse-drawn ambulance arrived on Basin Street. The chief was wrapped in a heavy blanket and carried out to the waiting vehicle. The ambulance then rushed him to nearby Charity Hospital, with O’Connor following in a police patrol wagon.

    A HALF mile downriver on Basin Street, the Central Police Station was in an uproar. Mayor Shakspeare, summoned from his home by news of the shooting, was meeting with police department officials to orchestrate the investigation. No one seemed to doubt who was responsible for the ambush. Scores of police were out in the streets, gathering evidence and searching for Italian suspects. Already one weapon—a double-barreled, muzzle-loading shotgun with a collapsible stock, allegedly a “Mafia weapon”—had been found in a gutter on Franklin Street, dropped by one of the fleeing gunmen. But now day officers, roused from sleep, were at the station waiting to be deployed. George Vandervoort, Chief Hennessy’s secretary, asked Mayor Shakspeare for instructions.
    The mayor was in no mood for