Johnny would spend the next eight months at the Bluemount Learning Center, a juvenile correctional facility where he learned little more than how to pick a lock with two safety pins and which stolen cars have the best resale value for the hot-wiring time invested. The Turk, however, didn't fare quite as badly. Thus, within hours, The Turk picked up an envelope from the desk sergeant filled with his personal belongings and left the police station with his father, looking forward to spending the night in his own comfortable bed. As he put his wallet, seventy-two cents in change, a lucky rabbit's foot, and a nail clipper in his pants pocket, he finally looked at the yellow card he'd picked up at the tent meeting. He saw a drawing of the mustachioed man, who had sprouted angel wings, clutching his cane as he flew out of an open bird cage.
Some needs are just naturally more immediate than others.
Bobby Biggs was staring at him. Not like someone who thought he recognized him but couldn't quite put his finger on where he knew him from, nor like someone who wondered why the mailman was so smartly dressed for an afternoon tent meeting. It made Tripoli very uncomfortable to know that he could titillate a teenage boy, though had he not blocked out so much of his own youth he would have recalled that virtually anything can get a rise from a hormone-drenched teen. Tripoli stood up and straightened his white cotton blouse with the Peter Pan collar. He picked up his small navy purse, having ditched the ugly brown mail satchel in the jeep.