“Whisperin’?” Timmy’s voice trembled ever so little. “Aw, I was only tellin’ these guys how you got me outa the pen an’ they was tellin’ me how slick you helped them—that’s all.”
Skippy was certain that Barker sighed. In any event, he said, “Hmph! You better let them go to sleep and do your talking tomorrow!” He shut the door as swiftly as he had opened it—the key turned in the lock and all was silence.
Nickie was alert, tense. He nudged Skippy and Timmy and then he moved his lips. “Us three can cram into bed,” he said so softly that the boys had to strain their ears to hear. “We’ll pull a blanket over our heads so’s we can talk—see? It’ll be hot, but we should worry, hah?”
Skippy was worried, but he didn’t say so for he, too, was anxious to learn from Timmy what lay behind Barker’s grave, almost brooding exterior. He undressed and hopped in on one side of Timmy while Nickie crawled in on the other and if they felt stifled as they whispered under the blanket for three-quarters of an hour or more, they were not aware of it, so intensely interesting was the story to which they were listening.
“Where do I come from?” Timmy repeated in answer to Skippy’s question. “Albany. Barker comes in the jug where I’m doin’ five years—for stealin’. Well, he looks like a minister an’ I think he passes it out that he is one. Anyway, he spies me an’ gets talkin’ kinda religious an’ fatherly while the guard’s around. When the bloke strolls off, Barker quick drops the fatherly act an’ wants to know would I like to crash. Sure, I tells him. He tells me to be set the next night—that he’ll be waitin’. When he leaves he slips me fifty bucks an’ tells me to slip it to the guard I think’ll look the other way for that much jack.”
“You made it, huh?” Skippy asked.
“Easy. Fifty bucks is big money for them guards. The one I stake lets me slip without no trouble at all. Barker was waitin’ outside in a big closed car.”
“Frost with him?” Skippy asked curiously.
“Nope. I never seen that grinnin’ skunk till Barker brings me down to this hole. That’s a month an’ a half ago. Barker took me straight to a house in Albany where he said he rented a room. On the way he tells me that from then on I should say I’m his son. So I do. We only stay in the house three days. I’m willin’ to keep under cover so he tells the landlady an’ everybody I ain’t feelin’ so well, that’s the reason I don’t go out. Barker steps out plenty an’ I hear him talkin’ to the landlady down the hall.”
“What’d they talk about?” Skippy asked.