awesome weapon. At the foot of the stairs we peered cautiously around the corner of the door. One of
Nance‟s cars was parked twenty feet away. They saw the Kid‟s black face and every gun in the car
opened up.
We jumped back as the doorjamb was blown to pieces.
“There‟s one of „em outside the car on the other side,” the Kid said. “I‟m gonna squirrel the son of a
bitch and get us a little breathin‟ room.”
Squirreling is a useful trick. Fire a shotgun or any projectile weapon at less than a forty-five-degree
angle into anything solid, and the bullet or pellets will ricochet exactly eight inches off that surface
and stay at that height. That‟s just low enough to go under a car. The Kid got the shotgun ready,
leaned around the corner, and cut loose twice.
Kow-boom! Kow-boom!
Forty-eight pellets sang off the sidewalk and showered under the car, tearing through the ankle and
shin of the man on the other side. He went down screaming. The Kid took advantage of the hiatus to
put another blast through the rear window. The car took off, with the wounded thug hanging on to the
front door.
Outside, all hell had broken loose.
At least two of Nance‟s shooters and one of Craves‟ men were down in the street.
Pedestrians were cowering behind parked cars and in alleyways.
The Church was in the middle of a block with Gordon Street in front of it and Marsh Street behind.
Empty lots on both sides. It was under siege. The front of the place was aflame, as was a police car
sitting sideways in the middle of Gordon Street on blown-out tires.
Both ends of the street were clogged with blue and whites.
The mob car slammed on its brakes as it neared Gordon, and the human cargo hanging on to the door
was vaulted end over end into the street. He lay there clutching his ankles until a volley of gunfire
from the Church stilled him. The Nance car spun around and started back our way. As it did, Dutch
Morehead pulled his Olds out of Marsh Street, into the lot, jumped out, and dashed for cover. The Kid
shot off a rear tire and most of the rim as the sedan roared past. The Nance car lost control, tried to
swerve out of the path of the Olds, slammed into the front end of the Dutchman‟s car, vaulted over it,
and slid to a grinding halt on its side.
Nance‟s men started crawling out of doors and windows. Cops swarmed up from Marsh Street and
were all over them.
The other car was nowhere to be seen. Then it suddenly burst backward out of an alley beside the
drugstore and into Gordon Street, spun around on screaming brakes, and careened into the lot as the
Stick‟s black Pontiac roared out of the alley in pursuit. Longnose Graves dashed from the door of the
Church and emptied his pistol into the fleeing car.
As Nance‟s car passed our doorway, showering dirt and debris toward us, the Mufalatta Kid sent one
burst into its rear window. He could handle a shotgun, all right, but it didn‟t slow down the escaping
car. It cut left into Marsh, glanced off a police car, sideswiped a brick wall, and was gone, with Stick
growling off after it.
Fire trucks and ambulances arrived. More confusion.
The Church was burning out of control. Graves‟ people tumbled out into the street, coughing and
rubbing their eyes. A fast body count showed three of Nance‟s men dead to two of Graves‟ gunmen.
Graves was not in the roundup.
Dutch said, “He must‟ve slipped us in the confusion.”
I didn‟t believe that. I went back to the side door and ran upstairs. Smoke swirled through the Church.
Flames were snapping at the far end of the room.
Graves was sitting on his wooden throne, tie askew, suit and face smoke-smeared, a bullet hole high
in his left chest, his .38 aimed at the floor. He looked up with surprise as I stumbled through the
smoke to the booth.
He raised the pistol and pointed it at my head. His rasping voice said, “Shit, dog lover, you don‟t
know when you‟re well off.”
“Why don‟t you get out of here while you can,” I said.
“I ought to kill you on general principles,” he said.
“What‟s stopping you?”
His finger squeezed and an electric shock sizzled through me. The hammer clicked harmlessly.
“Out of bullets, poet,” he said, laughed, and threw the gun at my feet.
67
BODY COUNT
Dutch and I piled into the Kid‟s car and followed the ambulance to the hospital. It was like a frontline medcorps unit. Doctors, nurses, and attendants raced in and out of doors in bloodstained robes,
while several of the wounded lay on stretchers in the hallway, waiting their turn in the emergency
room.
“How bad is this one?” a hawk-faced nurse asked as they wheeled Graves in, a blood bottle stuck in
his arm.
“Bullet in the chest and bleeding,” the attendant said.
“Room three,” she snapped officiously, and then to Graves, “Do you have hospitalization?”
Graves looked up at her and managed a smile.
“I‟m on welfare, lady,” he whispered. And they wheeled him away.
Kite Lange and Dutch filled us in on the particulars. Dutch had hardly finished his phone call to me
when Nance and his sidekicks had whipped into the street. One car had gone in from Morgan Street,
across the empty lot to the side door. Nance had driven straight to the front of the church, gunned
down one of Graves‟ men, and thrown a stick of dynamite through the front door. Then all hell
exploded. Lange, coming in close behind, rammed Nance‟s car and ruined his own in the process.
Nance had headed up the alley beside the drugstore, only to run into Stick coming toward him,
slammed into reverse, and backed out. We knew the rest of the story.
“My car‟s a wreck,” Lange moaned.
“Your car was already a wreck,” said the Kid. “We‟ll go to the city dump tomorrow and get you
another one.”
Dutch was as busy as a centipede with athlete‟s foot, assigning cops to the wounded and trying to get
a final count on dead and injured. Miraculously, only one cop had been hurt in the melee. He had
broken a toe jumping out of his burning patrol car. A quick count showed two of Graves‟ men dead,
three shot or burned, and the boss himself fighting for his life. Five more had been arrested at the
scene.
“We may be missing one or two more,” volunteered the Kid. “I think there was thirteen of them,
countin‟ Graves.”
Nance had not fared well either. Three were dead, two more hanging on for dear life, two had minor
wounds, and three were in custody.
“One of „em looks like he got struck by lightning,” Dutch said. “The whole top of his head‟s stove
in.”
“That was me,” the Kid muttered.
“What‟d you hit him with, a meat cleaver?” asked Dutch.
“Table leg.”
“That‟s gonna look great on the report,” Dutch said.
“Anybody see how many there were in the getaway car with Nance?”
“Three or four,” said the Kid.
“Not bad,” I said. “This may have been Waterloo for both gangs. They‟ve got to be running out of
hoodlums about now.”
“Let‟s hope Stick nailed Nance and the rest of his bunch,” Dutch said.
“If anybody can, he can,” I said.
I was right—and wrong.
A few minutes later an ambulance wheeled into emergency, followed by the Stick. The ambulance
held three more of Turk Nance‟s gunmen, one of whom had literally lost his head in the shooting.
“That was me, too,” Mufalatta murmured again.
“You had some day,” Lange said.