Blaze

They had spent most of their time running two-man short cons, and mostly George seemed satisfied with that no matter what he said when he was drunk or getting his smoke on. Maybe the Ocoma Heights score was just a game for George, or what he sometimes called mental masturbation when he saw guys in suits talking about politics on TV. Blaze knew George was smart. It was his guts he had never been sure of.

But now that he was dead, what choice? Blaze was no good by himself. The one time he’d tried running the menswear con after George’s death, he’d had to book like a bastard to keep from being picked up. He got the lady’s name out of the obituary column just the way George did, had started in on George’s spiel, had shown the credit slips (there was a whole bag of them at the shack, and from the best stores). He told her about how sad he was to have to come by at such a sad time, but business was business and he was sure she would understand that. She said she did. She invited him to stand in the foyer while she got her pockabook. He never suspected that she had called the police. If she hadn’t come back and pointed a gun at him, he probably would have still been standing there waiting when the police ho’d up. His time sense had never been good.

But she came back with a gun and pointed it at him. It was a silver lady’s gun with little swoops on the sides and pearl handles. “The police are on their way,” she said, “but before they get here, I want you to explain yourself. I want you to tell me what kind of a lowlife preys on a woman whose husband isn’t even cold in his grave yet.”

Blaze didn’t care what she wanted him to tell her. He turned and ran out the door and across the porch and down the steps to the walk. He could run pretty good once he got going, but he was slow getting going, and panic made him slower that day. If she had pulled the trigger, she might have put a bullet in the back of his big head or shot off an ear or missed him entirely. With a little short-barrel shooter like that, you couldn’t tell. But she never fired.

When he got back to the shack, he was half-moaning with fear and his stomach was tied in knots. He wasn’t afraid of jail or the penitentiary, not even of the police — although he knew they would confuse him with their questions, they always did — but he was afraid of how easy she saw through him. Like it wasn’t nothing to her. They had hardly ever seen through George, and when they did, he always knew it was happening and got them out.

And now this. He wasn’t going to get away with it, knew it, kept on anyway. Maybe he wanted to go back inside. Maybe that wouldn’t be so bad, now that George was wasted. Let someone else do the thinking and provide the meals.

Maybe he was trying to get caught right now, driving this hot car through the middle of Ocoma Heights. Right past the Gerard house.

In the icebox of New England winter, it looked like a frozen palace. Ocoma Heights was old money (that’s what George said), and the houses were really estates. They were surrounded by big lawns in the summertime, but now the lawns were glazed snowfields. It had been a hard winter.

The Gerard house was the best one of all. George called it Early American Hot Shit, but Blaze thought it was beautiful. George said the Gerards had made their money in shipping, that World War I made them rich and World War II made them holy. Snow and sun struck cold fire from the many windows. George said there were over thirty rooms. He had done the preliminary work as a meter-reader from Central Valley Power. That had been in September. Blaze had driven the truck, which was borrowed rather than stolen, although he supposed the police would have called it stolen if they’d been caught. People were playing croquet on the side lawn. Some were girls, high school girls or maybe college girls, good-looking. Blaze watched them and started feeling horny. When George got back in and told him to wheel it, Blaze told him about the good-looking girls, who had gone around to the back by then.

“I saw em,” George said. “Think they’re better than anybody. Think their shit don’t stink.”

“Pretty, though.”

“Who gives a rat’s ass?” George asked moodily, and crossed his arms over his chest.

“Don’t you ever get horny, George?”

“Over babies like that? You jest. Now shut up and drive.”

Now, remembering that, Blaze smiled. George was like the fox who couldn’t reach the grapes and told everyone they were sour. Miss Jolison read them that story in the second grade.

It was a big family. There was the old Mr. and Mrs. Gerard — he was eighty and still able to put away a pint of Jack a day, that’s what George said. There was the middle Mr. and Mrs. Gerard. And then there was the young Mr. and Mrs. Gerard. The young Mr. Gerard was Joseph Gerard III, and he really was young, just twenty-five. His wife was a Narmenian. George said that made her a spic. Blaze had thought only Italians could be spics.