`In what way?'
`Personally.'
He turned his hands palms upward on his knees. `I heard him doodling on the piano at the beach club. That was one day last spring. I did a little doodling of my own. Piano isn't my instrument, but he got interested in some chords I showed him. That made me a bad influence.'
`Were you?'
`Mr. Hillman thought so. He got me fired from the beach club. He didn't want his precious boy messing with the likes of me.'
His upturned hands lay like helpless pink-bellied animals on their backs. `If Mr. Hillman didn't send you, who did?'
`A man named Dr Sponti.'
I thought the name would mean nothing to him, but he gave me another of his quick fearful looks. `Sponti? You mean-?'
He fell silent.
`Go on, Mr. Jackman. Tell me what I mean.'
He huddled down into himself, like a man slumping into sudden old age. He let his speech deteriorate: `I wouldn't know nothin' about nothin', mister.'
He opened his mouth in an idiotic smile that showed no teeth.
`I think you know a good deal. I think I'll sit here until you tell me some of it.'
`That's your privilege,' he said, although it wasn't.
He took the butt out of his shirt pocket and lit it with a kitchen match. He dropped the distorted black match-end into the coffee lid. We looked at each other through smoke that drifted like ectoplasm from his mouth.
`You know Dr Sponti, do you?'
`I've heard the name,' Jackman said.
`Have you seen Tom Hillman in the last two days?'
He shook his head, but his eyes stayed on my face in a certain way, as if he was expecting to be challenged.
`Where have you heard Sponti's name?'
`A relative of mine. She used to work in the kitchen at LPS. He said with irony: `That makes me an accessory, I guess.'
`Accessory to what?'
`Any crime in the book. I wouldn't even have to know what happened, would I?'
He doused his butt in a carefully restricted show of anger.
`That sort of talk gets us nowhere.'
`Where does your sort of talk get us? Anything I tell you is evidence against me, isn't it?'
`You talk like a man with a record.'
`I've had my troubles.' He added after a long silence: `I'm sorry Tommy Hillman is having his.'
`You seem to be fond of him.'
`We took to each other.' He threw the line away.
`I wish you'd tell me more about him. That's really what I came here for.'
My words sounded slightly false. I was suspicious of Jackman, and he knew it. He was a watcher and a subtle listener.
`Now I got a different idea,' he said. `I got the idea you're after Tommy to put him back in the LP School. Correct me if I'm wrong.'
`You're wrong.'
`I don't believe you.'
He was watching my hands to see if I might hit him. There were marks on his face where he had been hit before. `No offense, but I don't believe you, mister-'
I repeated my name. `Do you know where Tommy is?'
`No. I do know this. If Mr. Hillman put him in the L P School, he's better off on the loose than going home. His father had no right to do it to him.'
`So I've been told.'
`Who told you?'
`One of the women on the staff there. She said Tom wasn't disturbed in her opinion, and didn't belong in the school. Tom seemed to agree with her. He broke out Saturday night.'
`Good.'
