"The two men, leaning against the billboard in the vacant corner lot, had not spoken for the past fifteen minutes. Victor Hoge was gouging splinters out of a wooden stick with seamed and cracked hands that had not become accustomed to idleness. Jean Boileau, younger, had learned in the last few months, in his cell, in the courtroom and now in his liberty pending appeal, how to remain immobile. Yet it was he who spoke first."