Blaze (26 page)

“Check his pocket!” Blaze yelled. “Sonofabitch dipped me!”

“I picked a wallet up off the floor,” the alligator-man admitted, “and was just glancing around for the possible owner when this…this
thug
—”

Blaze lunged at him. The alligator-man cringed away. The store dick pushed Blaze back. Blaze didn't mind. He was having fun.

“Easy, big fella. Down, boy.”

The floorwalker, meanwhile, asked the alligator-man for his name.

“Peter Hogan.”

“Dump out your pockets, Mr. Hogan.”

“I certainly will not!”

The store dick said, “Dump em out or I'll call the cops.”

George strolled toward the escalator, looking as alert and lively as the best Hardy's employee who ever punched a time-clock.

Peter Hogan considered whether or not to stand on his rights, then dumped out his pockets. When the crowd saw the cheap brown wallet, it went ahhhh.

“That's it,” Blaze said. “That's mine. He must've took it out of my back pocket while I was lookin at shirts.”

“ID in it?” the store dick asked, flipping open the wallet.

For a horrible moment Blaze went blank. Then it seemed like George was standing right there beside him.
David Billings, Blaze.

“Sure, Dave Billings,” Blaze said. “Me.”

“How much cash in it?”

“Not much. Fifteen bucks or so.”

The store dick looked at the floorwalker and nodded. The crowd ahhh-ed again. The store dick handed the wallet to Blaze, who pocketed it.

“You come with me,” the store dick said. He grabbed Hogan's arm.

The floorwalker said, “Break it up, folks, this is all over. Hardy's is full of bargains this week, and I urge you to shop them.” Blaze thought he sounded as good as a radio announcer; it was no wonder he had such a responsible job.

To Blaze, the floorwalker said: “Will you come with me, sir?”

“Yeah.” Blaze glared at Hogan. “Just let me get the shirt I wanted.”

“I think you'll find that your shirt is a gift from Hardy's today. But we
would
like to see you briefly on the third floor, ask for Mr. Flaherty. Room 7.”

Blaze nodded and turned to the shirts again. The floorwalker left. Not far away, one of the clerks was getting ready to punch NO SALE on the register George had robbed.

“Hey, you!” Blaze said to him, then beckoned.

The clerk came over…but not too close. “May I help you, sir?”

“This joint got a lunch counter?”

The clerk looked relieved. “First floor.”

“You the man,” Blaze said. He made a gun of his right thumb and forefinger, tipped the clerk a wink, and strolled off toward the escalator. The clerk watched him go. By the time he got back to his register, where all the bill compartments in the tray were now empty, Blaze was out on the street. George was waiting in a rusty old Ford. And off they drove.

They scored three hundred and forty dollars. George split it right down the middle. Blaze was ecstatic. It was the easiest job he had ever done. George was a mastermind. They would pull the gag all over town.

George took all this with the modesty of a third-rate magician who has just run the jacks at a children's birthday party. He didn't tell Blaze the gimmick went back to his grammar school days, when two buckies would start a fight by the meat-counter and a third would scoop the till while the owner was breaking it up. Nor did he tell Blaze they would be collared the third time they tried it, if not the second. He simply nodded and shrugged and enjoyed the big guy's amazement. Amazement? Blaze was fucking awestruck.

They drove into Boston, stopped at a liquor store, and picked up two fifths of Old Granddad. Then they went to a double feature at the Constitution on Washington Street and watched car-chases and men with automatic weapons. When they left at ten o'clock that evening, they were both blotto. All four hubcaps had been stolen off the Ford. George was mad, even though the hubcaps had been as shitty as the rest of the car. Then he saw someone had also keyed off his VOTE DEMOCRAT bumper-sticker and started to laugh. He sat down on the curb, laughing until tears rolled down his sallow cheeks.

“Taken off by a Reagan-lover,” he said. “My fuckin word.”

“Maybe the guy who spoiled your fumper-licker wasn't the same guy was took your wheelcaps,” Blaze said, sitting down beside George. His head was whirling, but it was a good whirl. A nice whirl.

“Fumper-licker!”
George cried. He bent over as if he had a stomach cramp, but he was screaming with laughter. He tromped his feet up and down.
“I always knew there was a word for Barry Goldwater! Fuckin fumper-licker!”
Then he stopped laughing. He looked at Blaze with swimming, solemn eyes and said, “Blazer, I just pissed myself.”

Blaze began to laugh. He laughed until he fell back on the sidewalk. He had never laughed so hard, not even with John Cheltzman.

Two years later, George was busted for passing bad checks. Blaze's luck was in again. He was getting over the flu, and George was alone when the cops grabbed him outside of a Danvers bar. He got three years—a stiff sentence for first-time forgery—but George was a known bunco and the judge was a known hardass. Perhaps even a fumper-licker. It was twenty months, with time served and time off for good behavior.

Before the sentencing, George took Blaze aside. “I'm going to Walpole, big boy. A year at least. Probably longer.”

“But your lawyer—”

“The fuckhead couldn't defend the Pope on a rape charge. Listen: you stay away from Moochie's.”

“But Hank said if I came around, he could—”

“And stay away from Hankie, too. Get a straight job until I come out, that's how you roll. Don't go trying to pull any cons on your own. You're too goddam dumb. You know that, don't you?”

“Yeah,” Blaze said, and grinned. But he felt like crying.

George saw it and punched Blaze on the arm. “You'll be fine,” he said.

Then, as Blaze left, George called to him. Blaze turned. George made an impatient gesture at his forehead. Blaze nodded and swerved the bill of his cap around to the good-luck side. He grinned. But inside he still felt like crying.

He tried his old job, but it was too square after life with George. He quit and looked for something better. For awhile he was a bouncer at a place in the Combat Zone, but he was no good at it. His heart was too soft.

He went back to Maine, got a job cutting pulp, and waited for George to get out. He liked pulping, and he liked driving Christmas trees south. He liked the fresh air and horizons that were unbroken by tall buildings. The city was okay sometimes, but the woods were quiet. There were birds, and sometimes you saw deer wading in ponds and your heart went out to them. He sure didn't miss the subways, or the pushing crowds. But when George dropped him a short note—
Getting out on Friday, hope to see you
—Blaze put in his time and went south to Boston again.

George had picked up an assortment of new cons in Walpole. They tried them out like old ladies test-driving new cars. The most successful was the queer-con. That bastard ran like a railroad for three years, until Blaze was busted on what George called “the Jesus-gag.”

George picked something else up in prison: the idea of one big score and out. Because, he told Blaze, he couldn't see spending the best years of his life hustling homos in bars where everybody was dressed up like
The Rocky Horror Picture Show
. Or peddling fake encyclopedias. Or running a Murphy. No, one big score and out. It became his mantra.

A high school teacher named John Burgess, in for manslaughter, had suggested kidnapping.

“You're trippin!” George said, horrified. They were in the yard on ten o'clock exercise, eating bananas and watching some mokes with big muscles throw a football around.

“It's got a bad name because it's the crime of choice for idiots,” Burgess said. He was a slight balding man. “Kidnap a baby, that's the ticket.”

“Yeah, like Hauptmann,” George said, and jittered back and forth like he was getting electrocuted.

“Hauptmann was an idiot. Hell, Rasp, a well-handled baby snatch could hardly miss. What's the kid going to say when they ask him who did it? Goo-goo ga-ga?” He laughed.

“Yeah, but the heat,” George said.

“Sure, sure, the heat.” Burgess smiled and tugged his ear. He was a great old ear-tugger. “There
would
be heat. Baby snatches and cop-killings, always a lot of heat. You know what Harry Truman said about that?”

“No.”

“He said if you can't stand the heat, get out of the kitchen.”

“You can't collect the ransom,” George said. “Even if you did, the money would be marked. Goes without saying.”

Burgess raised one finger like a professor. Then he did that dopey ear-tugging thing, which kind of spoiled it. “You're assuming the cops would be called in. If you scared the family bad enough, they'd deal privately.” He paused. “And even if the money was hot…you saying you don't know some guys?”

“Maybe. Maybe not.”

“There are guys who buy hot money. It's just another investment to them, like gold or government bonds.”

“But collecting the swag—what about that?”

Burgess shrugged. He pulled on his ear. “Easy. Have the marks drop it from a plane.” Then he got up and walked away.

Blaze was sentenced to four years on the Jesus-gag. George told him it would be a tit if he kept his nose clean. Two at most, he said, and two was what it turned out to be. Those years inside weren't much different than the jail-time he'd put in after beating up The Law; only the inmates had grown older. He didn't spend any time in solitary. When he got the heebie-jeebies on long evenings, or during one interminable lockdown when there were no exercise privileges, he wrote George. His spelling was awful, the letters long. George didn't answer very often, but in time the very act of composition, laborious as it was, became soothing. He imagined that when he wrote, George was standing behind him, reading over his shoulder.

“Prisin laundre,” George would say. “My fuckin word.”

“That wrong, George?”

“
P-r-i-s-o-n,
prison.
L-a-u-n-d-r-y,
laundry. Prison laundry.”

“Oh yeah. Right.”

His spelling and even his punctuation improved, even though he never used a dictionary. Another time:

“Blaze, you're not using your cigarette ration.” This was during the golden time when some of the tobacco companies gave out little trial packs.

“I don't hardly smoke, George. You know that. They'd just pile up.”

“Listen to me, Blazer. You pick em up on Friday, then sell em the next Thursday, when everybody's hurtin for a smoke. That's how you roll.”

Blaze began to do this. He was surprised how much people would pay for smoke that didn't even get you stoned.

Another time:

“You don't sound good, George,” Blaze said.

“Course not. I just had four fuckin teeth out. Hurts like hell.”

Blaze called him the next time he had phone privileges, not reversing the charges but feeding the phone with dough he'd made selling ciggies on the black market. He asked George how his teeth were.

“What teeth?” George said grumpily. “Fuckin dentist is probably wearin em around his neck like a Ubangi.” He paused. “How'd you know I had em out? Someone tell you?”

Blaze suddenly felt he was on the verge of being caught in something shameful, like beating off in chapel. “Yeah,” he said. “Someone told me.”

They drifted south to New York City when Blaze got out, but neither of them liked it. George had his pocket picked, which he took as a personal affront. They took a trip to Florida and spent a miserable month in Tampa, broke and unable to score. They went north again, not to Boston but to Portland. George said he wanted to summer in Maine and pretend he was a rich Republican fuckstick.