Chapter 4

Rose Murphy was now the hero of the day. The newspaper, the radio, and the TV all reported that Mrs. Smith would have died from a heart attack if Rose had not reacted the way that she did. Mr. Smith happened to be the mayor of Worcester, so the fact that Rose saved her was truly noteworthy. This was a help to Pitzer Security, too, because we got a tremendous amount of favorable publicity. Over the next two weeks, I got a lot of inquiries about whether we offered bodyguard service and just about everything else that a security service could do. I rejected immediately requests for night watchmen and that sort of thing, because all of my employees were still in high school and needed the nights for study and for personal social activities.

The potential for bodyguard services was certainly interesting, and I talked to Nancy about offering the service. We discussed it and came to the conclusion that a high school student was too borderline on maturity to stick one into the kind of situations that could come up. We often read in the newspaper, etc. about the times when a bodyguard had to make a judgment decision on whether or not to shoot to kill, and we felt that such a thing was just too much for a relatively inexperienced teen to do.

Anyway, even though the bodyguard service could produce a significant company profit, we decided to forgo that business until we could start hiring experienced adults. Neither Nancy nor I were ready to be plunged into such a life-or-death decision, and we sure didn’t want to force our friends to that forbidden place.

We discussed the question with our parents, and they agreed that we should stick to jobs where a group was involved. The members of the group could lean on each other for emotional support, and that could be needed at any time when we were acting as guards. We just were not ready for the stress of individual decisions at this stage of our lives. The situation would be different in a few short years, and we could reconsider the situation.

We developed a boilerplate letter to decline politely the requests for us to take on jobs that we were just not ready for. The letter explained our reasons for turning down the job, and it asked that we be reconsidered if the question came up again in the future. We got many nice letters from people who thanked us for the explanatory letter and said that we would be contacted in a few years after we had more experience.

Meanwhile, these inquiries prompted us to try to come up with jobs that we could do during the summer months when school was not in session. While we were mulling this over, a rash of raids by teen or early 20s gangs had started to hit neighborhoods such as ours. Usually, this was 10-15 boys, with a few girls thrown in on occasion, who were raiding backyard parties and get-togethers. They seemed to be looking for loot and dominating sex, as in gang raping the females and sodomizing the males. Nobody had been murdered, yet, but it seemed to me that this eventuality was just a matter of time.

Worcester and its suburbs were large enough to offer an almost endless variety of pool-parties and cook-outs to provide a nearly inconceivable number of possible targets. Pitzer Security could not hope to put a stop to this sort of criminal activity, but we could protect a select number of groups who were a good fit to the target profile.

We looked into servicing this growing business and came to the conclusion that we could provide five or six guards for $1,250 a pop. Considering the dangers that the public was exposed to, this seemed to be a reasonable price for some guards of high school age. Our idea was that our guards would attend the gathering dressed in casual clothes and pretend to be one of the guests. We would have to work on the details, but we all thought that the idea could work. If anybody wanted more guards than that, we could negotiate a price, but we were adamant that we would not do the job with fewer people.

We had a backyard in-ground swimming pool, so we approached Mom and Dad about running a practice session for us. They thought that was a great idea, and set up a pool-party for the following Wednesday after school was out. That gave us four weeks to get ready for our dress rehearsal.

We invited all of the employees of Pitzer Security to the party. We divided the invitees into two groups, six to act the part of guards and the rest to act as guests. We thought our biggest problem was going to be how to conceal our weapons if we wore nothing but skimpy bathing suits. With the current fashion of the women going topless, there was not much of a place to hide weapons in the suit. The men wore the equivalent of Spedos, so that the problem was the same for the men.

Nancy, our fathers, and I were going to act as attackers as we did a walk-through to test the idea. Initially, we four joined the party, since we didn’t want to miss a chance to party any more than anyone else did. The dads fixed burgers and dogs on the grills. The mothers had fixed potato salad. That was enough to test the idea, which was the primary reason for the party, yet we could have a great time with just those things for food. We had lemonade and similar beverages to go along with the food, because we didn’t want to confuse anybody by having them consume alcohol. After all, this was really a training exercise.

We came up with some containers for weapons made from drink coolers. We weren’t certain how well this would work, but that was one of the purposes of the exercise. The biggest problem was what would the guards who happened to be in the pool at the time do for a weapon? For the moment, we had no answer to that. Maybe something would suggest itself once we started the attack exercise.

At first, it was ridiculously easy to spot the guards because they never wandered far from the weapon containers. That was the first thing that we had to correct, and it took at least half an hour to get everybody to relax and act more natural. The solution was ridiculously simple: the guards stood around with a beverage can or bottle always in hand, and that was their excuse for remaining near the fake coolers.

We had two solutions for the people in the pool. They weren’t going to be able to have immediate access to guns, but they could quickly reach batons. We tossed some of the wooden batons into the pool, and, of course, they floated. If the batons were painted in fanciful colors and designs, they could easily be mistaken for pool toys.

There were also some batons scattered among the fake coolers, so the appropriate weapon would be handy, whatever was the nature of the invaders. So far, no party invasion had been attempted with blazing guns from the very first. In fact, in most cases, the invaders had not even had guns—they had relied on knives, chains, and pipes. If this held, we would have an advantage with our batons, and the guns would only be used as a last ditch emergency backup. The word was that none of the attackers, so far, had any significant skill with empty-handed fighting, so we might not even need the batons.

The party was a success, both as a party and as a training exercise. We decided that the only way we could mount a full test would be to fight off a real invasion. That would require a gig, so we mounted an advertising program and waited to see what would happen. We didn’t have long to wait!

Mrs. Grace Smith was very grateful for our actions that night at the country club. Therefore, when she decided to hold a garden party for a number of her “society” friends, she called on us for security. I met with her, and we went over the requirements to protect her guests. She had a guest list that contained 68 names, all of whom were society matrons, and all of whom were at least 50 years old. In this particular situation, we were going back to tuxedos and serving maid uniforms. This way, everybody could carry a gun and a baton. She wanted to hire our entire company, so she was supplied with seven women and 13 men, counting Nancy and me. This was going to be a big deal with more than the usual expenses for Pitzer Security.

I took a list of her requirements to Mom, and we came up with a cost for the operation. I figured that Mrs. Smith was one of those people who equated price with value, so I presented her with an estimate of $13,500 for the operation. The moment I handed her the quotation, I knew that I had goofed! My mistake was in not charging her $25,000! She asked a few questions and made a few requests for additional protection, so she gave me an excuse to raise the price. The second quotation I submitted was for $27,378. Mom had to sweat to justify some of that cost, but Mrs. Smith now felt that she was getting her money’s worth.