He rubbed his fist. `I knocked him cold. You have to make a show of manliness. When I hit them, they go down for the count. You have to give them an image to respect.'
I said to stop him: `What happened after that?'
`I helped him to his room, and then I reported the incident to Sponti. I thought the boy should be put in the padded room. But Sponti countermanded my advice. Hillman would never have broken out if Sponti had let me put him in the padded room. Just between you and me, it's Sponti's fault.'
He brought himself up short and said in a smaller voice: `Don't quote me to him.'
`All right.'
I was beginning to despair of getting anything useful out of Patch. He was a little dilapidated, like the furniture in the common room. The noise coming from that direction was becoming louder. Patch rose wearily to his feet.
`I'd better get back there before they tear the place down.'
`I just wanted to ask you, do you have any thoughts on where Tom Hillman went after he left here?'
Patch considered my question. He seemed to be having difficulty in imagining the outside world into which the boy had vanished. `LA,' he said finally. `They usually head for LA or else they head south for San Diego and the border.'
`Or east?'
`If their parents live east, they sometimes go that way.'
`Or west across the ocean?'
I was baiting him.
`That's true. One boy stole a thirty-foot launch and headed for the islands.'
`You seem to have a lot of runaways.'
`Over the years, we have quite a turnover. Sponti's opposed to strict security measures, like we used to have at juvenile Hall. With all the breakouts we've had, I'm surprised he wants to make such a production out of this one. The boy'll turn up, they nearly always do.'
Patch sounded as if he wasn't looking forward to the prospect.
Somebody tapped at the door behind me. `Mr. Patch?' a woman said through the panels.
`Yes, Mrs. Mallow.'
`The boys are getting out of hand. They won't listen to me. What are you doing in there?'
`Conferring. Dr Sponti sent a man.'
`Good. We need a man.'
`Is that so?'
He brushed past me and opened the door. `Keep your cracks to yourself, please, Mrs. Mallow. I know one or two things that Dr Sponti would dearly love to know.'
`So do I,' the woman said.
She was heavily rouged, with dyed red hair arranged in bangs on her forehead. She had on a dark formal dress, about ten years out of fashion, and several loops of imitation pearls. Her face was pleasant enough, in spite of eyes that had been bleared by horrors inner and outer.
She brightened up when she saw me. `Hello.'
`My name is Archer,' I said. `Dr Sponti brought me in to look into Tom Hillman's disappearance.'
`He's a nice-looking boy,' she said. `At least he was until our local Marquis de Sade gave him a working- over.'
`I acted in self-defense,' Patch cried. `I don't enjoy hurting people. I'm the authority figure in East Hall, and when I'm attacked it's just like killing their father.'
`You better go and make with the authority, Father. But if you hurt anybody this week I'll carve the living heart out of your body.'
Patch looked at her as if he believed she might do it. Then he turned on his heel and strode away toward the roaring room. The roaring subsided abruptly, as if he had closed a soundproof door behind him.
`Poor old Patch,' said Mrs. Mallow. `He's been around too long. Poor old all of us. Too many years of contact with the adolescent mind, if mind is the word, and eventually we all go blah.'
`Why stay?'
`We get so we can't live in the outside world. Like old convicts. That's the real hell of it.'
`People around here are extraordinarily ready to spill their problems-'
`It's the psychiatric atmosphere.'
`But,' I went on, `they don't tell me much I want to know. Can you give me a clear impression of Tom Hillman?'
`I can give you my own impression.'
She had a little difficulty with the word, and it seemed to affect her balance. She walked into Patch's office and leaned on his desk facing me. Her face, half-shadowed in the upward light from the lamp, reminded me of a
