Blaze

administrators, the bright young bank executives. George said they had a smell. And he was kind to them. He helped them along when they were shy and couldn’t find the right words. Then he’d say he was staying at a good hotel. Not a great hotel, but a good one. A safe one.

It was the Imperial, not far from Chinatown. George and Blaze had a deal going with the second shift desk- man and the bell-captain. The room they used might change, but it was always at the end of the hall, and never too close to another occupied room.

Blaze sat in the lobby from three to eleven, wearing clothes he wouldn’t be caught dead in on the street. His hair always gleamed with oil. He read comic-books while waiting for George. He was never aware of passing time.

The true indicator of George’s genius was that when he and the mark came in, the mark hardly ever looked nervous. Eager, but not nervous. Blaze gave them fifteen minutes, then went up.

“Never think about it as coming in the room,” George said. “Think of it as going onstage. The only one who don’t know it’s showtime is the mark.”

Blaze always used his key and walked onstage saying his first line: “Hank, darling, I’m so glad to be back.” Then he got mad, which he did passably well, although probably not up to Hollywood standards: “Jesus, no! I’ll kill him! Kill him!”

At that he would heave his three hundred-pound bulk at the bed, where the mark quivered in horror, by that time usually wearing only his socks. George would throw himself between the mark and his raging “boyfriend” at the last moment. A flimsy barrier at best, the mark would think. If he was capable of thinking. And the soap opera was on.

George: “Dana, listen to me — this isn’t what it seems.”

Blaze: “I’m gonna kill him! Get out of my way and let me kill him! I’m gonna throw him out the window!”

(Terrified squeals from the marks — there had been eight or ten in all.)

George: “Please, let me tell you.”

Blaze: “I’m gonna rip his balls off!”

(The mark begins to plead for his life and his sexual equipment, not necessarily in that order.)

George: “No, you’re not. You’re going to go quietly down to the lobby and wait for me.”

At this point, Blaze would make another lunge for the mark. George would restrain him — barely. Blaze would then tear the wallet from the mark’s pants.

Blaze: “I got your name and address, bitch! I’m gonna call your wife!”

At this point, most marks forgot about their lives and their sexual equipment and began to concentrate on their sacred honor and neighborhood standing instead. Blaze found this strange, but it seemed always to be true. More truth was to be found in a mark’s wallet. The mark would tell George he was Bill Smith, from New Rochelle. He was, of course, Dan Donahue, from Brookline.

The play, meanwhile, resumed; the show had to go on.

George: “Go downstairs, Dana — be a dear and go downstairs.”

Blaze: “No!”

George: “Go downstairs or I will never speak to you again. I am sick of your tantrums and your possessiveness. I mean it!”

At this point Blaze would go, clutching the wallet to his breast, muttering threats, and making baleful eye- contact with the mark.

As soon as the door closed, the mark was all over George. He had to have his wallet back. He would do anything to get his wallet back. The money didn’t matter, but the identification did. If Sally found out — and Junior! Oh God, think of little Junior

George soothed the mark. He was good at this part. Perhaps, he would say, Dana could be reasoned with. In fact, Dana could almost certainly be reasoned with. He just needed a few minutes to cool down, and then for George to talk to him alone. To reason with him. And pet him a little, the big lunk.

Blaze, of course, was not in the lobby. Blaze was in a room on the second floor. When George went down there, they would count the take. Their worst score was forty-three dollars. Their best, taken from the executive of a large food-chain, was five hundred and fifty.

They gave the mark enough time to sweat and make bleak promises to himself. George gave the mark time enough. George always knew the right amount. It was amazing. It was like he had a clock in his head, and it was set different for each mark. At last he would return to the first room with the wallet and say that Dana finally listened to reason, but he won’t give back the money. George had all he could do to make him give back the credit cards. Sorry.

The mark doesn’t gave a tinker’s damn about the money. He is thumbing through his wallet feverishly, making sure he still has his driver’s license, Blue Cross card, Social Security, pictures. It’s all there. Thank God, it’s all there. Poorer but wiser, he dresses and creeps away, probably wishing his balls had never dropped in the first place.

During the four years before Blaze took his second fall, this con was the one they fell back on, and it never failed. They never had a bit of trouble from the heat, either. Although not bright, Blaze was a fine actor. George was only the second real friend he had ever had, and it was only necessary to pretend that the mark was trying to persuade George that Blaze was no good. That Blaze was a waste of George’s time and talents. That Blaze, in addition to being a dummy, was a busher and a fuck-up. Once Blaze had convinced himself of these things, his rage became genuine. If George had stood aside, Blaze would have broken both of the mark’s arms. Maybe killed him.

Now, turning the Polaroid snap over and over in his fingers, Blaze felt empty. He felt like when he looked up in the sky and saw the stars, or a bird on a telephone wire or chimbly with its feathers blowing. George was gone and he was still stupid. He was in a fix and there was no way out.

Unless maybe he could show George he was at least smart enough to get this thing rolling. Unless he could show George he didn’t mean to get caught. Which meant what?

Which meant diapers. Diapers and what else? Jesus, what else?

He fell into a doze of thought. He thought all that morning, which passed with snow whooping in its throat.

Chapter 7

HE WAS AS OUT OF PLACE in the Baby Shoppe of Hager’s Mammoth Department Store as a boulder in a living room. He was wearing his jeans and his workboots with the rawhide laces, a flannel shirt, and a black leather belt with the buckle cinched on the left side — the good-luck side. He had remembered his hat this time, the one with the earflaps, and he carried it in one hand. He was standing in the middle of a mostly pink room that was filled with light. He looked left and there were changing-tables. He looked right and there were carriages. He felt like he’d landed on Planet Baby.

There were many women here. Some had big bellies and some had small babies. Many of the babies were crying and all of the women looked at Blaze cautiously, as if he might go berserk at any moment and begin laying waste to Planet Baby, sending torn cushions and ripped teddy bears flying. A saleslady approached. Blaze was thankful. He had been afraid to speak to anyone. He knew when people were afraid, and he knew where he didn’t belong. He was dumb, but not that dumb.

The saleslady asked if he needed help. Blaze said he did. He had been unable to think of everything he needed no matter how hard he tried, and so resorted to the only form of subterfuge with which he was familiar: the con.

“I been out of state,” he said, and bared his teeth at the saleslady in a grin that would have frightened a cougar. The saleslady smiled back bravely. The top of her head almost reached the midpoint of his ribcage. “I just found out my sister-in-law had a kid — a baby — while I was gone, see, and I want to outfit him. The whole works.”