Chapter 9

I had told Billy what I had in mind for tonight before we left home. As far as I was concerned, this was his night. I was going to act as backup for him, but he was responsible for what action was taken. I did warn him not to be too vengeful, and to save the death penalty for when it was deserved. Yeah, I know, I had pushed that rule pretty hard on several occasions, but I tried to stick to the principle.

We had been patrolling for about 45 minutes when we spotted a mugging in progress. Three muggers were threatening a street prostitute and her john as she was about to give him a blowjob in an alley. I think that the muggers were having a little fun with their victims because they were standing around with knives being brandished while the whore was finishing up on the john.

Billy had seen enough sex on the internet so that he was not ignorant of what was going on, so we did not have that distraction to worry about. We had been watching the action from a roof, and we used the fire escape to descend to the very alley that was being used for the little drama. We weren't noticed as we approached, so the muggers were startled when Billy waded in on the attack.

He attacked the largest mugger with a kick at the knee which broke it with that first blow. That mugger was down and out of the fight before he knew what hit him. Billy moved on to the next man with a blow with his fist to the elbow with the knife. The joint cracked, and the knife was dropped. A sharp thump over the right ear knocked out the mugger, and that left only one to deal with.

The third man was now fully alerted to Billy's presence. He saw that Billy did not have an obvious weapon, so he jumped to the attack with his knife extended to stab Billy in the gut. Billy simply waited the second or two required for the man with the knife to get close enough. When he was within reach, Billy swept his hand around and shattered the attacker's wrist. Almost before the attacker could scream in pain, Billy hit him in the solar plexus, but not hard enough to kill him.

All of this happened over a span of less than 30 seconds, and the two original victims were stunned with disbelief. Billy told the john to put his cock back in his pants and to pay the hooker. The man gave the woman $20, and Billy sent her on her way before the cops arrived. Like me, Billy considered prostitution to be a victimless crime, and he didn't want to make trouble for the whore.

Billy asked the john to call 911. He suggested that the man not mention his meeting with the whore, but to treat this as a straight mugging attempt. Billy gave the man one of our Stalker business cards, and we left as soon as he finished the call to 911.

I congratulated Billy on the way he had handled the situation, and Billy answered that he was doing his best to do what I had described when I reported my meetings to the family. Well! The kid had paid attention to me after all! I had wondered about that for years, and it was nice to know that what I had done had been appreciated by someone I respected.

We didn't find any more action that night, so we recovered our SMs and went home. Mary was waiting up for us to hear of our adventure. She was a great admirer of her brother, so she wanted to hear how he made out on his first adventure as a Night Stalker.

The next week was spent much like that first night until I was fully confident that Billy was going to act responsibly and not let his teenaged hormones lead him into excessive destructiveness. By the end of the week, I was convinced that Billy was going to be the kind of vigilante that I was looking for, and I was ready to take him on more stressful missions.

I had wanted to go after the drug pushers, but I wanted more than just the guy selling on the street corner. The problem was that I had no idea where to start, except with the street pushers who were easy to find. Of course, I could handle this level myself, but I felt that I would need backup when I moved up the hierarchy. That's where Billy would come in.

We started out by having Billy approach a street drug vendor. He looked younger than me, so Billy was the obvious contact man. I don't know what they said to each other, but the vendor suddenly turned to run. Billy grabbed the vendor's left elbow and pinched the nerve commonly known as the "funny bone." Well, there was nothing funny about Billy's pinch. The vendor almost fainted from the pain and was persuaded to step into an alley where I was waiting.

All we really wanted to know was the next step up in the hierarchy, and the vendor was able to tell us that. Naturally, it did take a few minutes of persuasion before we got the information we needed, but we left the vendor with a broken elbow and the need to visit the nearest ER. I called 911 for the medical aid before we left the vendor sitting in the alley and crying from the pain. He had also promised to quit the drug trade, but neither Billy or I really expected that to happen.

We got a name and a location to visit, so we moved on to a certain local pub to look up "Harry the Horse." Harry had that name because of an unusually long nose. He was not proud of the nickname, but he was able to live with it. The real problem with the name as far as he was concerned was that it made him very easy to recognize.

Harry was sitting alone in a booth when we joined him. His greeting was, "What do you two creeps want?"

This time, I was the spokesman. "My friend and I are here looking for a little information. One of your customers told us where to find you, so here we are."

"Okay, so what do you want to know?" I think Harry was looking at us as a couple of new customers, so he was surprised when I told him why we were really there to talk to him. Of course, he refused to talk, but this time, I was the muscle while Billy strove to keep us from attracting too much attention.

Harry was as reluctant to talk as had been the street vendor, but a little persuasion which featured me squeezing my fingers under his kneecap brought him around. Harry didn't know much more than the street vendor, but he did give us the name of the local syndicate distributor. Unfortunately, he was unable to give us an address where the man could be found. The problem was that Harry never went to his supplier; instead, they met at some innocuous place after Harry telephoned him with an order.

The one thing that kept this from being a dead end was that Harry had set up a meeting for tonight, and he was able to give us that address. Before we left to keep Harry's appointment, I squeezed Harry's kneecap hard enough to break it. That made him too distracted to try to contact his supplier before we could get to the meeting. Again, I called 911 to get Harry some medical attention before we left him. I used Harry's cellphone to make the call and dropped it in my pocket to keep him from using it to make some annoying calls.

The meeting with the distributor was to be in a warehouse district in a vacant parking lot. That did make it a little tough for us to keep the appointment because neither one of us looked like Harry, and we were afraid that the contact might be frightened off if he saw one of us instead of Harry. Fortunately, Harry was fond of wearing a Diamondback's team baseball cap.

I put on the cap and pulled it around so that the bill of the cap shaded my face from the lamp I was standing under. I hoped that was enough to make me look sufficiently like Harry to fool the contact. About five minutes later than the specified time, a car pulled into the parking lot and drove up to me. I had been leaning against the lamp post, and I walked up to the driver's side of the car when it stopped.

To my surprise, there were two men in the car, and that would have made things very difficult if Billy had not been able to run up to the car on the passenger side. As soon as Billy showed up, the driver tried to take off. However, I ripped the door open and dragged him out of the car before he could shift from park to drive. Billy did the same to the door on the other side. Dammit, the passenger was literally riding shotgun!