Halt!

When I was about 13 I was seeing this girl named Mary. On this particular night we were in the vestibule of her apartment house doing some light kissing, all of a sudden her Dad appeared at the inner door, so I said a hastily bid good night and made my way out onto Wycoff Avenue. I decided that I’ll go to the poolroom about 15 blocks north of where I was. There were two ways to get there, one was by bus and the other by subway. I preferred the bus. I was wearing a rather distinct sports coat, one with beige patches on the elbows and one on the shoulder, it was supposed to look like a “hunters’ jacket”.

As I made my way along Wycoff Avenue I looked about 5 blocks south where the bus would turn onto Wycoff, before that the bus wasn’t visible. I was getting close to the subway station and could hear a train approaching through the gratings on the street. I really wanted to take the bus, but I started running towards the train station. I kept turning around to see if the bus had made its turn onto Wycoff, in a way it looked like I was running away from something or someone. No bus, so I danced down the subway stairs, just before I got to the turnstile, I heard a loud HALT! At first, I didn’t pay much attention to it until I heard an even louder HALT! I turned around and I saw a New York City Police officer with his gun out pointing at me, the next thing I knew I was being dragged up the subway stairs while the officer held me by the neck of the jacket. My shins hit some of the stairs making me wince in pain. Before I knew it I was in the back of the police car, on the floor laying on the axle hump. Things were moving so fast I didn’t really have much time to question anything. After about 5 minutes we stopped and I was led into a liquor store by a cop who was forcefully holding my right arm, it hurt. When we went inside a woman with a blooded face was standing there crying. The officer said to the women “Is this the guy?” She looked at me through tears and blood and said “Yes!”. A moment later the owner came from behind a beaded curtain, looked at me and said to the officers “That’s not the guy, he’s only a kid, sure he has the same jacket on as the robber, but that’s definitely not him!” The cop looked at me a little dumbfounded and asked me if he could drop me off anywhere, I said, “No thanks!” and made a hasty retreat out onto the street. A few days later I thought to myself “What if the store owner was shot dead?” Would they still believe the women who positively identified me? It’s said that witnesses very rarely change their stories, luckily the store owner wasn’t dead.