Chapter 6

The next day at school, Tom and I passed the word around that we would act as intermediary for any kids who had information for the cops but did not want to be noticed as being stool pigeons. It took three days for the word to get back to us that a counter threat had been issued over what would happen to somebody who was found talking to us. The result was a decrease in the number of kids who met at our table for lunch, but my staunchest friends, such as Sue, were still there with Tom and me. Ann Nixon joined our group, and I thought that was a mark in our favor.

Tom and I questioned Ann as thoroughly as we could over the next few days, and she said that we had much more depth in our questions than had come from the cops. For example, she did notice that one of the boys looked like he was the victim of a broken nose. That was something that she had not told the cops because she had just not thought of it when they questioned her. From that point, we started looking for a large boy with signs of a broken nose. As it turned out, only one boy fit that description: a member of the wrestling team.

Bill Wyson was something of a bully, though he had never bothered me. Tom had run across Wyson a couple of times, but there had been no confrontation. That might have been because Tom was 5'-11" tall and weighed 180 pounds. Those dimensions made Tom too big to be pushed around very easily.

Anyway, Tom and I started stalking Bill Wyson. We were not very subtle about our tailing technique, and Bill caught on to us relatively quickly. We wanted to make him nervous in hopes that he would lead us to others in his clique and do something that would be a more definite pointer to him as a guilty party. We didn't really know what we were looking for—we were just looking.

It took over a week for our stalking to have an effect on Wyson. One day after school, as we were walking toward the subway station, Wyson and three other boys of his same size range cut us off. Wyson said, "Why have you two been following me? I'm tired of it, and I want it stopped."

They had ambushed us at the mouth of an alley; I guess that was where they had been hiding waiting for us to go by. Anyway, they were not too gentle as they pushed us into the alley and tried to look very threatening. Well, I'm not one to keep my mouth closed when there is an opportunity to put my foot in it. "What's the matter, Wyson? Have we cut into your rape opportunities?"

I shouldn't have said that because we had no more than a vague suspicion that Bill Wyson was one of the rapists, but it was too late to back down now. Wyson swung his hand to slap my face, and let me tell you: that hand looked as big as a hamhock headed toward me. Fortunately for me, Tom was alert and standing close enough to hit Wyson in the solar plexus before he could bring his arm all of the way around. Wyson was a tough customer, and Tom's strike that would have put down a normal person hardly jarred Wyson. Nevertheless, it was enough of a distraction to allow me to dodge that slab of meat headed for my face.

I jerked out my stingers and went after Wyson. I hit him with a needle shot of capsaicin in his side, and that was hardly enough for him to react. Now I could appreciate how tough he really was! He backhanded me across the alley, but that was his last blow of the fight. Tom kicked Wyson in the side of his knee and hyperextended it to the point that it would no longer support Wyson.

Meanwhile, I had picked myself up and charged the fallen Wyson. I hit him in the forearm on the same side as the injured knee with my bone cracker and broke both of the small radius bones. That must have been the first time that Wyson was seriously injured because he screamed and began to cry like a baby.

All of this had happened so fast that Wyson's three companions were still standing there with amazed looks on their faces. Whether it was from surprise that we would have the temerity to stand up against them or from surprise that Wyson would be taken out so easily, I couldn't say, but they all three turned and ran as soon as they recovered from their shock.

Well, there was nothing for it, but it was up to us to call 911 for help. This time, I called, but I refused to give any information other than to say that there was a high school boy in an alley, I gave the address, who had been beaten. I reported that he had a broken bone in his arm and an injury to his knee that made it impossible for him to walk. I hung up in what I hoped was too little time for the 911 dispatcher to get a fix on my call. Tom and I left Wyson lying in the alley, still crying, not able to do much for himself.

We went home, and we were sure that we eventually would hear from Wyson again, but it was going to take him a while to recover enough to be a serious threat. We also were sure that he would not tell the cops who we were because he would not want his peers to know that he had been taken out by a girl with a minimum of help from her boyfriend. We were gratified to note that there were no more rapes at the school that year, though there were several others off of school grounds. Ann was happy when we told her what had happened to Wyson, and I guess that was what was important. Wyson never did come back to school, why I don't know—embarrassment?

By this time, the weather decided to get nasty, so our trips to Central Park were curtailed. Okay, I confess that Tom and I were going stir-crazy from the inactivity. At least, we were able to jog as long as the snow held off, but jogging in the rain is really not much fun! We both turned 17 over the winter, and Mom finally stopped treating us so much like children. She didn't even complain when we started to spend so much time on the subway. We told her we were just riding the subway to have an excuse to get out of the house, but we really were looking for muggers and other criminals.

Both of us made an effort to look younger than we were; the idea was not to look like a threat to anybody. We must have been successful at that because we were on the scene for several attempted robberies. I say attempted because we stopped every one that we saw.

The first one of these occurred one afternoon on our way home from school. We always chose a car that was not so heavily packed with people. We figured that such a car was more likely to have a robbery. Whether or not that was correct was beside the point when we came to the event. There were 13 people in the car, counting us and the robber.

The robber caught us by surprise, mostly because he just looked like any other working stiff headed for a second-shift job. He was dressed in the standard uniform of heavy boots, jeans and sweatshirt, covered by a pea jacket. Suddenly, he whipped out a knife and held it to the throat of a woman he was sitting next to. "Give me all of your money, bitch, or I will jab this blade into your throat!"

This all happened so fast that there was nothing that we could do before the fact. Tom and I had taken our coats off because we wanted to be ready for trouble, but that was the extent of our preparation. We happened to be between the center car door and the robbery, so the thief had to pass us to leave the car. This was the last car in the train, so he had no place to go out the door at the end of the car.

The woman, an African-American, began to cry, but she dug through her purse for her money. She gave him some folded bills; I don't know how much there was, but a $20 bill was the one that I could see. It looked to me like she had just cashed her paycheck for the week, and she was going to be in trouble for a while.

Anyway, the man took the money and stood up. That was when he pulled his knife away from the woman's throat, and that was the moment when we struck. There was no way that we could know how thick the man's jacket was, so we didn't bother with the needles in our stingers. Instead, we hit the man with the bone cracker side of our stingers. I went after his arms and Tom went after his legs. We hit him as hard as we could in the 12 joints, but it was impossible to tell how many we actually crushed. However, from the cries of pain from the man, we must have done a good job on him.