Blaze

“Yeah? Well, I know. Whole idea is crazy. Kidnappin in this day and age? The FBI’ll mark the bills or copy the serial numbers or put invisible marks on em, the kind you can only see with an ultraviolet light.”

“I guess so,” Blaze said, feeling troubled. He hadn’t thought about those sorts of things. Still, if he was going to sell the money in Boston, to that guy George knew, what did it matter? He started to feel better again. “You think those Gerards will really fork over a million bucks?”

The driver whistled. “Is that how much they’re askin?”

Blaze felt in that moment as if he could gladly have bitten off his own tongue and swallowed it. “Yeah,” he said. And thought Oh, George.

“That’s somethin new,” the driver said. “Wasn’t in the morning paper. Did you hear about it on the radio?”

George said, quite clearly: “Kill him, Blaze.”

The driver cupped his hand to his ear. “What? Didn’t quite get that.”

“I said yeah, on the radio.” He looked down at his hands, folded in his lap. They were big hands, powerful. One of them had broken a Collie’s neck with a single blow, and back then he hadn’t even had his growth.

“They might get that ransom,” the driver said, flipping out his second cigarette butt and lighting a third, “but they’ll never get to spend it. Nossir. Not never.”

They were headed up Route 1 now, past frozen marshes and clam-shacks shuttered for the winter. The trucker was avoiding the turnpike and the weighing stations there. Blaze didn’t blame him.

If I hit ‘im right in the throat, where his adam’s apple is, he’d wake up in heaven before he even knew he was dead, Blaze thought. Then I could grab the wheel and pull ‘im over. Prop ‘im up on the passenger side. Anyone who sees him’ll think he’s just catching him a little catnap. Poor fella, they’ll think, he was probably drivin all n —

“…goin?”

“Huh?” Blaze asked.

“I said, where you goin? I forgot.”

“Oh. Westbrook.”

“Well, I gotta swing off on Marah Road a mile up. Meetin a buddy, you know.”

“Oh,” Blaze said. “Yeah.”

And George said: “You got to do it now, Blazer. Right time, right place. It’s how we roll.”

So Blaze turned toward the driver.

“How about another cigarette?” the driver asked. “You in’trested?” He cocked his head a little as he spoke. Offering a perfect target.

Blaze stiffened a little. His hands twitched in his lap. Then he said, “No. Tryin to quit.”

“Yeah? Good for you. Cold as a witch’s tit in here, ain’t it?” The driver downshifted in anticipation of his turn, and from below them came a series of barking explosions as the engine backfired down its rotting tailpipe. “Heater’s broke. Radio, too.”

“Too bad,” Blaze said. His throat felt as if as if someone had just fed him a spoonful of dust.

“Yeah, yeah, life sucks and then y’die.” He applied the brakes. They screamed like souls in pain. “You have to hit the ground runnin; sorry, but she stalls out in first.”

“Sure,” Blaze said. Now that the moment had come and gone, he felt sick to his stomach. And afraid. He wished he had never seen the driver.

“Say hi to your buddy when you see ‘im,” the driver said, and downshifted another gear as the overloaded truck swerved onto what Blaze assumed was Marah Road.

Blaze opened the door and jumped out onto the frozen shoulder, slamming the door behind him. The driver honked his horn once, and then the truck roared over the hill in a cloud of stinking exhaust. Soon it was just a sound, dwindling away.

Blaze started up Route 1 with his hands jammed in his pockets. He was in the exurban sprawl south of Portland, and in a mile or two he came to a big shopping center with stores and a cinema complex. There was a laundrymat there called The Giant Kleen Kloze U-Wash-It. There was a mailbox in front of the laundrymat, and there he mailed his ransom note.

There was a newspaper dispenser inside. He went in to get one.

“Look, Ma,” a little kid said to his mother, who was unloading kleen kloze from a coin-op dryer. “That guy’s got a hole in his head.”

“Hush,” the kid’s mother said.

Blaze smiled at the boy, who immediately hid behind his mother’s leg. From this place of safety he peered out and up.

Blaze got his paper and went out with it. A hotel fire had pushed the kidnap story to the bottom of page one, but the sketch of him was still there. SEARCH FOR KIDNAPPERS GOES ON, the headline said. He stuffed the newspaper in his back pocket. It was a bummer. While cutting across the parking lot to the road, he spotted an old Mustang with the keys in it. Without giving it much thought, Blaze got in and drove it away.

Chapter 16

CLAYTON BLAISDELL, JR., became