`A little. He wasn't here long. Five days. Six. He came in Sunday night and took off Saturday night.'
He squirmed uneasily on the creaking leather. `Are you a cop?'
`No.'
'I just wondered. You ask questions like a cop.'
`Did Tom do something that would interest the cops?'
`We all do, don't we?'
His hot and cold running glance went around the room, pausing on the forlorn antics of the dancing boys. `You don't qualify for East Hall unless you're a juvie. I was a criminal mastermind myself. I forged the big shot's name on a fifty-dollar check and went to San Francisco for the weekend.'
`What did Tom do?'
`Stole a car, I guess. It was a first offense, he said, and he would of got probation easy. But his father didn't want the publicity, so he put him in here. Also, I guess Tom had a fight with his father.'
`I see.'
`Why are you so fascinated in Tom?'
`I'm supposed to find him, Fred.'
`And bring him back here?'
`I doubt that they'll readmit him.'
`He's lucky.'
More or less unconsciously, he moved against me again. I could smell the untended odor of his hair and body, and sense his desolation. `I'd break out of here myself if I had a place to go. But the big shot would turn me over to the Youth Authority. It would save him money, besides.'
`Did Tom have a place to go?'
He jerked upright and looked at my eyes from the corners of his. `I didn't say that.'
`I'm asking you.'
`He wouldn't tell me if he had.'
`Who was closest to him in the school?'
`He wasn't close to anybody. He was so upset when he came in, they put him in a room by himself. I went in and talked to him one night, but he didn't say much to me.'
`Nothing about where he planned to go?'
`He didn't plan anything. He tried to start a riot Saturday night but the rest of us were chicken. So he took off. He seemed to be very excited.'
`Was he emotionally disturbed?'
`Aren't we all?'
He tapped his own temple and made an insane face. `You ought to see my Rorschach.'
`Some other time.'
`Be my guest.'
`This is important, Fred. Tom is very young, and excited, as you said. He's been missing for two nights now, and he could get into very serious trouble.'
`Worse than this?'
`You know it, or you'd be over the fence yourself. Did Tom say anything about where he was going?'
The boy didn't answer.
`Then I assume he did tell you something?'
`No.'
But he wouldn't meet my eyes.
Mr. Patch came into the room and changed its carefree atmosphere. The dancing boys pretended to be wrestling. Comic books disappeared like bundles of hot money. The Ping-Pong players put away their ball.
Patch was a middle-aged man with thinning hair and thickening jowls. His double-breasted tan gabardine suit was creased across his rather corpulent front. His face was creased, too, into a sneer of power, which didn't go with his sensitive small mouth. As he looked around the room, I could see that the whites of his eyes were tinted with red.
He strode to the record player and turned it off, insinuating his voice into the silence: `Lunchtime isn't music time, boys. Music time is after dinner, from seven to seven-thirty.'
He addressed one of the Ping-Pong players: `Bear that in mind, Deering. No music in the daytime. I'll hold you responsible.'
'Yessir.'
`And weren't you playing ping-pone'
