`Not so good. At least he was safe there.'
`He's safe,' Jackman said, and quickly regretted saying it. He opened his mouth in its senseless toothless smile, a tragic mask pretending to be comic.
`Where is he then?'
Jackman shrugged his thin shoulders. `I told you before and I'll tell you again, I don't know.'
`How did you know that he was on the loose?'
`Sponti wouldn't send you to me otherwise.'
`You're quick on the uptake.'
`I have to pick up what I can,' he said. `You talk a lot without saying much.'
`You say even less. But you'll talk, Sam.'
He rose in a quick jerky movement and went to the door. I thought he was going to tell me to leave, but he didn't. He stood against the closed door in the attitude of a man facing a rifle squad.
`What do you expect me to do?' he cried. `Put my neck in the noose so Hillman can hang me?'
I walked toward him.
`Stay away from me!' The fear in his eyes was burning brightly, feeding on a long fuse of experience. He lifted one crooked arm to shield his head. `Don't touch me!'
`Calm down. That's hysterical talk, about a noose.'
`It's a hysterical world. I lost my job for teaching his kid some music. Now Hillman is raising the ante. What's the rap this time?'
`There is no rap if the boy is safe. You said he was. Didn't you?'
No answer, but he looked at me under his arm. He had tears in his eyes.
`For God's sake, Sam, we ought to be able to get together on this. You like the boy, you don't want anything bad to happen to him. That's all I have in mind.'
`There's bad and bad.'
But he lowered his defensive arm and kept on studying my face.
`I know there's bad and bad,' I said. `The line between them isn't straight and narrow. The difference between them isn't black and white. I know you favor Tom against his father. You don't want him cut off from you or your kind of music. And you think I want to drag him back to a school where he doesn't belong.'
`Aren't you?'
`I'm trying to save his life. I think you can help me.'
`How?'
`Let's sit down again and talk quietly the way we were. Come on. And stop seeing Hillman when you look at me.'
Jackman returned to the bed and I sat near him.
`Well, Sam, have you seen him in the last two days?'
`See who? Mr. Hillman?'
`Don't go into the idiot act again. You're an intelligent man. Just answer my question.'
`Before I do, will you answer one of mine?'
`If I possibly can.'
`When you say you're trying to save his life, you mean save him from bad influences, don't you, put him back in Squares-ville with all the other squares?'
`Worse things can happen to a boy.'
`You didn't answer my question.'
`You could have asked a better one. I mean save him from death. He's in the hands of people who may or may not decide to kill him, depending on how the impulse takes them. Am I telling you anything you don't know?'
`You sure are, man.'
His voice was sincere, and his eyes filled up with compunction. But he and I could talk for a year, and he would still be holding something back. Among the things he was holding back was the fact that he didn't believe me.
`Why don't you believe me, Sam?'
`I didn't say that.'
`You don't have to. You're acting it out, by sitting on the information you have.'
`I ain't sitting' on nothin', 'ceptin' this here old raunchy bed,' he said in broad angry parody.
`Now I know you are. I've got an ear for certain things, the way you've got an ear for music. You play the trombone, don't you?'
