Blaze

When George was seventeen, Pisser got him a job running numbers. At this time, Providence was enjoying the sort of half-assed revival that passed for prosperity in the economically exhausted New England states. Numbers were going good. So was George. He bought nice clothes. He also began to jiggle his book. Pisser thought George a fine, enterprising boy; he was bringing in six hundred and fifty dollars every Wednesday. Unknown to his stepfather, George was socking away another two hundred.

Then the Mob came north from Atlantic City. They took over the numbers. Some of the mid-level locals got pink-slipped. Pisser Kelly was pink-slipped to an automobile graveyard, where he was discovered with his throat cut and his balls in the glove compartment of a Chevrolet Biscayne.

With his living taken away, George set off for Boston. He took his twelve-year-old sister with him. Tansy’s father was also unknown, but George had his suspicions; Pisser had had the same weak chin.

During the next seven years, George refined any number of short cons. He also invented a few. His mother listlessly signed a paper making him Tansy Rackley’s legal guardian, and George kept the little whore in school. Came a day when he discovered she was skin-popping heroin. She was also, happy days, knocked up. Hankie Melcher was eager to marry her. George was surprised at first, then wasn’t. The world was full of fools falling all over themselves to show you how smart they were.

George took to Blaze because Blaze was a fool with no pretensions. He wasn’t a sharpie, a dude, or a backroom Clyde. He didn’t shoot pool, let alone H. Blaze was a rube. He was a tool, and in their years together, George used him that way. But never badly. Like a good carpenter, George loved good tools — ones that worked like they were supposed to every time. He could turn his back on Blaze. He could go to sleep in a room where Blaze was awake, and know that when he woke up himself, the swag would still be under the bed.

Blaze also calmed George’s starved and angry insides. That was no small thing. There came a day when George understood that if he said, “Blazer, you have to step off the top of this building, because it’s how we roll,”? well, Blaze would do it. In a way, Blaze was the Cadillac George would never have — he had big springs when the road was rough.

When they entered Hardy’s, Blaze went directly to menswear, as instructed. He wasn’t carrying his own wallet; he was carrying a cheap plastic job which contained fifteen dollars cash and ID tabbing him as David Billings, of Reading.

As he entered the department, he stuck his hand in his back pocket — as if to check his wallet was still there — and pulled it three-quarters of the way out. When he bent over to check out some shirts on a low shelf, the wallet fell on the floor.

This was the most delicate part of the operation. Blaze half-turned, keeping an eye on the wallet without seeming to keep an eye on it. To the casual observer, he would have seemed entirely engrossed in his inspection of the Van Heusen short-sleeves. George had laid it out for him carefully. If an honest man noticed the wallet, then all bets were off and they would move on to Kmart. Sometimes it took as many as half a dozen stops before the gag paid off.

“Gee,” Blaze said. “I didn’t know so many people were honest.”

“They’re not,” George said with a wintry smile. “But plenty are scared. And keep your eye on that fuckin wallet. If someone dips it on you, you’re out fifteen bucks and I’m out ID worth a lot more.”

That day in Hardy’s they had beginner’s luck. A man wearing a shirt with an alligator on the tit strolled up the aisle, spied the wallet, then looked both ways down the aisle to see if anyone was coming. No one was. Blaze exchanged one shirt for another and then held it up in front of him in the mirror. His heart was pumping like a sweetmother.

Wait until he pockets it, George said. Then raise holy hell.

The man in the alligator shirt hooked the wallet against the rack of sweaters he was looking at. Then he reached into his pocket, took out his car-keys, and dropped them on the floor. Oops. He bent down to get them and gleeped the wallet at the same time. He shoved them both into his front pants pocket, then started to stroll off.

Blaze let out a bull bellow. “Thief! Thief! Yeah, YOU!”

Shoppers turned and craned their necks. Clerks looked around. The floorwalker spotted the source of the trouble and began to hurry toward them, pausing at a cash register location to push a button labeled Special.

The man with the alligator on his tit went pale — looked around — bolted. He got four steps before Blaze collared him.

Rough him up but don’t hurt him, George had said. Keep hollering. And whatever you do, don’t let him ditch that wallet. If he looks like he’s tryin to get rid of it, knee him in the jukebox.

Blaze grabbed the man by the shoulders and began shaking him up and down like a man with a bottle of medicine. The man in the alligator shirt, maybe a Walt Whitman fan, voiced his barbaric yawp. Change flew from his pockets. He stuck a hand in the pocket with the wallet in it, just as George had said he might, and Blaze popped him one in the nuts — not too hard. The man in the alligator shirt screamed.

“I’ll teachya to steal my wallet!” Blaze screamed at the guy’s face. He was getting into it now. “I’ll killya!”

“Somebody get him off me!” the guy screamed. “Get him off!”

One of the menswear clerks poked his nose in. “Hey, that’s enough!”

George, who had been examining casual wear, unbuttoned his outer shirt, took it off with absolutely no effort at concealment, and stashed it under a stack of Beefy Tees. No one was looking at him, anyway. They were looking at Blaze, who gave a mighty tug and tore the shirt with the alligator on the tit right down the middle.

“Break it up!” the clerk was shouting. “Cool it!”

“Sonofabitch has got my wallet!” Blaze cried.

A large crowd of rubberneckers began to gather. They wanted to see if Blaze would kill the guy he had hold of before the floorwalker or store detective or some other person in authority arrived.

George punched NO SALE on one of the two Menswear Department cash registers and began scooping out the currency. His pants were too large, and a pouch — sort of like a hidden fanny-pack — was sewn in the front. He stuffed the bills in there, taking his time. Tens and twenties first — there were even some fifties, beginner’s luck indeed — then fives and ones.

“Break it up!” the floorwalker was yelling as he cut through the crowd. Hardy’s did have a store detective, and he followed on the floorwalker’s heels. “That’s enough! Hold it!”

The store detective shoved himself between Blaze and the man in the torn alligator shirt.

Stop fighting when the store dick comes, George had said, but keep making like you want to kill the guy.

“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.”