Ellen noted a change in the way Billy had been acting, as the gang chief leaned toward the unidentified man sitting at the head of the table. He was no longer the snarling pack leader who asserted himself through violence and animal cunning, but he seemed as though he had consciously decided to keep his more aggressive stance in reserve until he had the new situation under his control. Yes, he definitely had changed, and there was a disturbing quality to the transformation, Ellen thought, as she watched Billy light a cigarette and lean back somewhat nervously in his chair. She sensed a slight strain between the two men that was quite different from the animal conflict between Billy and the three other escaped convicts over the possession of her body.

The adjustment that Billy, as well as the other convicts, had to make when confronted with the well-educated demeanor of the man sitting before them was obviously difficult, Ellen thought. She remembered how she and her sister Jennifer had discussed the condition of the penitentiary system, and how they had come to the conclusion that, for the most part, prison confinement only warped the minds of those it intended to reform and made them into more hardened criminals. A sociology course she had taken in college had also brought up the point that even those prisoners who were released after serving their sentences often mistrusted authority and instinctively rebelled against it. It was apparent that Billy was struggling with this problem right now, even though the man to whom he was talking was, in his own right, as much or more of a criminal than Billy himself.

Perhaps, she reasoned, it was this new breed of criminals who had grown through organized crime or through subversive political and business organizations that spelled out the end of the old era of the Al Capone type gangster.