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
