On a Friday night in Chicago, mobster Johnny Ross is fleeing town, running from the Outfit. The next morning, in San Francisco, SFPD detective Lieutenant Frank Bullitt and his team, Delgetti and Stanton, are tasked by the wealthy and politically-ambitious Walter Chalmers with guarding Ross over the weekend, until he can be presented as a witness to a Senate subcommittee hearing on organized crime on Monday morning. The detectives are told he is in a cheap hotel on Embarcadero. Delgetti takes the first shift, to be followed by Stanton and then Bullitt. At 1am Sunday, while Stanton is phoning Bullitt to say Chalmers and a friend want to come up, Ross unchains the room door. Two hitmen burst in, shooting Stanton in the leg and Ross in the head and chest.