Jackie had not have a family home since his parents died of cancer, leaving him behind alone as a boy aged five. Kalvin Melroy, at that time owner of a little candy shop, had found him wandering about the dirty streets and taken him to his flat above the salesroom.
Ten years older now, Wolverton junior still lived there but the goods which were sold in his foster-father's rooms were mainly drugs now - drugs and alcohol. It payed better. Still, Melroy himself had always cared greatly that his protégé did not get too much involved in these things.
One evening, leaning out of a tiny window at the flat, glowing cigarette in one hand, he had used the other to wave out along the narrow street they lived in, saying to Jackie: "Oh yeah. See that, boy? The world is spread out before our eyes, out there, waitin' to be explored. And where have I been? Never anywhere but in this rotten lot of a neighborhood. Ah well, my own life may be as it is and I'll be happy with it at my age."
"C'mon, you're not so terribly old after all!" Jackie had thrown in mockingly.
"You flatter me, boy, but you don't know what you're talkin' of. I'm just sayin'... you've earned more than smuggling and backroom trading. Your curiosity and interest in everything might drive me crazy at times" - Jackie rolled his eyes and grinned - "but they're very important. So mind my sayin' - I wouldn't want you to waste them!"
The boy had gone to school then and got pretty good marks as well. When he was eleven, Jackie started to do little jobs like carrying letters from one office to another.