“Sure, I’ll give you kids a break—sure!” he was crying like the yellow creature he was. “You think I wanta burn with Devlin when I ain’t done nothin’ yet but help kids for him, hey? I met him in Chi and he brought me here and propositioned me. But I ain’t never tried the trick on any kids and them Greeks if they didn’t get drowned like they did, I couldn’t gone through with it—I know it. I got more feelin’s than Devlin, but I hadda stick and play up—get me? I come along in a car that night I see him first and saw him ship that Tucker kid over that cliff into the lake. I’d made a stick-up a few minutes before and I was makin’ my getaway without lights.”
“An’ you seen what he did?” Skippy asked eagerly.
“Sure. He didn’t hear me and he didn’t see me so I switched off under some trees and it was a lonesome road that hardly anybody traveled between midnight and morning. I see an old car stop and this guy gets out. It’s Devlin. Then you could have knocked me over when I sees him give the little car a shove right over the cliff. So me bein’ in a little racket myself I puts on my lights and chugs up to him and he waves me to stop. So he gives me a story that him and his son was ridin’ along and the car stalls. He gets out to crank it while his son gets behind the wheel to fix the spark. Well, the brake mustn’t been on, he tells me, when all of a sudden he sees the car headed right over the cliff to the lake. He just has time to jump out of the way, he says.”
“Such a warm-hearted guy he is!” Nickie said disgustedly.
“Yeah, he ain’t got no heart,” Frost said, with more composure. “But to make it quick, I tell him I’m wise and what’s his racket. So we get real chummy and he tells me to drive on and when we do he says it’s insurance that he’s working.”
“Insurance!” Skippy repeated as if he must never forget the word.
“Yeah, he tells me it’s a good payin’ racket. He says he can get orphans so they don’t have no real near folks inquirin’ after ’em. He can get ’em insured and wait a month or so, then he can take ’em out in a car, an old closed car he likes to get that don’t cost him more’n a few bucks—you know, the kind that’s ready for the junk yard. If they can swim he can dope ’em a little with some stuff he’s got so by the time they get where he wants, all he has to do is to get out and push the car over to the water.”
“So that’s how he worked it, huh?” Skippy asked, feeling rather sick.
“Sure,” Frost answered readily. “If they can’t swim, he likes it better. Then he uses that stallin’ business to get out, leavin’ off the brake. He thought he had Tucker sure, but the kid comes to and gets out in time so Devlin thinks he don’t give him enough dope.”
Nickie shuddered visibly. “So he reports it an accident?”