the trade-device of the Square crews
For the first couple blocks the Creature had shouted for Help and to Stop The Bitch, and Poor Tony, then with a decent lead, had countered by also yelling Help! and For God’s Sake Stop Her, flummoxing any would-be citizens. An ancient trade-device among Harvard Square crews.
Context
The street economy's inherited craft, deployed reflexively at a dead run: counter the victim's cry for help with your own identical cry, so the citizens who might intervene can't tell thief from robbed. It is tradecraft the way the secret user's kit is tradecraft — a whole skill-set the addiction organizes a life around, here reduced to the raw business of getting away with the day's funding.