“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.
