No. He didn’t mind.
Later, at the end, the others came back in. When they did, Blaze noticed that Holloway’s eyes had lost their friendly glint. He slipped off the table, dusted his ass with two brisk whacks, and said, “Type it up and have the dummy sign it.” He left without looking back.
He left prison not quite two years after entering it — he got four months off for good behavior. They gave him two pairs of prison jeans, a prison denim jacket, and a holdall to carry them in. He also had his prison savings: a check for $43.84.
It was October. The air was flushed sweet with wind. The gate-guard waved one hand back and forth like a windshield wiper and told him to stay clean. Blaze walked past without looking or speaking, and when he heard the heavy green gate thud shut behind him, he shivered.
He walked until the sidewalks ended and the town disappeared. He looked at everything. Cars whipped past, looking strangely updated. One slowed, and he thought maybe he would be offered a ride. Then someone shouted, “
At last he sat down on the rock wall surrounding a little country graveyard and just looked down the road. It came to him that he was free. He had no one to boss him, but he was bad at bossing himself and had no friends. He was out of solitary, but had no job. He didn’t even know how to turn the piece of stiff paper they’d given him into money.
Still, a wonderful soothing gratitude stole over him. He closed his eyes and turned his face up to the sun, filling his head with red light. He smelled the grass and fresh asphalt where some road-crew had recently fixed a pothole. He smelled exhaust from cars that went wherever their drivers wanted to go. He clutched himself with relief.
He slept in a barn that night and the next day got a job picking taters for a dime a basket. That winter he worked in a New Hampshire woolen mill, strictly non-union. In the spring he took a bus to Boston and got a job in the laundry of the Brigham and Women’s Hospital. He had been working there six months when a familiar face from South Portland turned up — Billy St. Pierre. They went out and bought each other many beers. Billy confided to Blaze that he and a friend were going to hold up a liquor store in Southie. The place was a tit. He said there was room for one more.
Blaze was up for it. His cut was seventeen dollars. He went on working at the laundry. Four months later, he and Billy and Billy’s brother-in-law Dom knocked over a combination gas station and grocery store in Danvers. A month after that, Blaze and Billy, plus another South Portland alum named Calvin Surks, knocked over a loan agency with a betting room in the back. They took over a thousand dollars.
“We’re hitting the big time now,” Billy said as the three of them split the swag in a Duxbury motel room. “This is just the start.”
Blaze nodded, but went on working in the hospital laundry.
For awhile life rolled like that. Blaze had no real friends in Boston. His only acquaintances were Billy St. Pierre and the loosely orbiting crew of small-timers of which Billy was a member. Blaze took to hanging out with them during his off-hours in a Lynn candy-store called Moochie’s. They played pinball and horsed around. Blaze had no girl, steady or otherwise. He was painfully shy and self-conscious about what Billy called his busted head. After they did a successful job, he sometimes bought a whore.
About a year after Blaze fell in with Billy, a fast-talking part-time musician introduced him to heroin — a skin-pop. It made Blaze violently sick, either from some additive or a natural allergy. He never tried it again. He would sometimes take a few tokes on a reef or fry-daddy just to be sociable, but he had no use for harder drugs.
Not long after the heroin experiment, Billy and Calvin (whose proudest possession was a tattoo reading LIFE SURKS, THEN YA DIE) were busted trying to heist a supermarket. There were others willing to take Blaze on their current gags, however. Eager, even. Someone nicknamed him The Boogeyman, and it stuck. Even with a mask to hide his disfigured forehead, his immense size made any clerk or storekeeper think twice about grabbing the piece he might have under the counter.
In the two years after Billy fell, Blaze just missed going down himself half a dozen times, some of those by the narrowest of margins. On one occasion, two brothers with whom he had heisted a clothing store in Saugus were grabbed just around the corner from where Blaze said thanks and got out of their car. The brothers would have been glad to give Blaze up in order to earn a break, but they only knew him as The Big Boogie, thus giving the police the idea that the third member of the gang had been African-American.
In June, Blaze was laid off at the laundry. He didn’t even bother looking for another straight job. He simply drifted through the days until he met George Rackley, and when he met George, his future was set.
Chapter 21
ALBERT STERLING was dozing in one of the overstuffed chairs in the Gerard study when the first hints of dawn crept into the sky. It was February first.
There was a knock on the side of the door. Sterling’s eyes opened. Granger was standing there. “We might have something,” Granger said.
“Tell me.”
“Blaisdell grew up in an orphanage — well, state home, same difference — called Hetton House. It’s in the area his call came from.”
Sterling got up. “Is it still operating?”
“Nope. Closed fifteen years ago.”
“Who lives there now?”
“Nobody. The town sold it to some people who tried to run a day-school out of it. Place went broke and the town took it back. It’s been vacant ever since.”
“I bet that’s where he is,” Sterling said. It was just intuition, but it felt true. They were going to nail the bastard this morning, and anyone who was running with him. “Call the State Police. I want twenty Troopers, twenty at least, plus you and me.” He thought. “And Frankland. Get Frankland out of the office.”
“He’ll be in bed, actually—”
“Get him out. And tell Norman to get his ass over here. He can mind the phone.”
“You’re sure that’s how you want to—”
“Yes. Blaisdell’s a crook, he’s an idiot, and he’s lazy.” That crooks were lazy was an article of faith in Albert Sterling’s private church of beliefs. “Where else would he go?” He looked at his watch. It was 5:45. “I just hope the kid’s still alive. But I’m not betting on it.”
Blaze woke up at 6:15. He turned on his side to look at Joe, who had slept the night with him. The extra body-warmth seemed to have done the little guy some good. His skin was cool, and the bronchial sound of his breathing had diminished. Those hectic red spots were still on his cheeks, though. Blaze put a finger in the baby’s mouth (Joe began to suck at once), and felt a new swelling in the left gum. When he pressed down, Joe moaned in his sleep and pulled his face away.
“Damn teeth,” Blaze whispered. He looked at Joe’s forehead. The wound had clotted, and he didn’t think it would leave a scar. That was good. Your forehead led the charge through life. It was a lousy place to have a scar.
His inspection was finished, but still he looked into the baby’s sleeping face, fascinated. Except for the jagged, healing scratch, Joe’s skin was perfect. White, but with glowing olive undertones. Blaze thought he would never burn in the sun but tan to the color of nice old wood. He’ll get so dark some people will take him for a black guy, maybe, Blaze thought. He won’t get all lobster red like me. Joe’s lids were a faint but discernible blue. That same blue made a pair of tiny arcs beneath his closed eyes. The lips were rosy and slightly pursed.
Blaze picked up one of the hands and held it. The fingers curled instantly over his pinky. Blaze thought they were going to be big hands. They might someday hold a carpenter’s hammer or a mechanic’s wrench. Even an artist’s brush.
