Blaze (14 page)

Blaze thought it did.

And then he started wondering about the woodstove. What if the house burned down?

This morbid picture entered his head and wouldn't leave. A chimney fire from the stove he'd stoked special so Joe wouldn't be cold if he kicked off his blanket. Sparks sputtering from the chimney onto the roof. Most dying, but one spark finding a dry shingle and catching hot, reaching out to the explosively dry clapboards beneath. The flames then racing across the beams. The baby beginning to cry as the first tendrils of smoke grew thicker and thicker…

He suddenly realized he had pushed the stolen Ford up to seventy. He eased off the accelerator. That was worse and more of it.

He parked in the Casco Street lot, gave the attendant a couple of bucks, and went around to Walgreens. He picked up an
Evening Express,
then went to the rack of paperbacks by the soda fountain. A lot of Westerns. Gothics. Mysteries. Science fiction. And then, on the bottom shelf, a thick book with a smiling, hairless baby on the cover. He worked out the title quickly; there were no hard words in it.
Child and Baby Care
. There was a picture of an old dude surrounded by kids on the back cover. Probably the guy who wrote it.

He paid for his stuff and shook open the newspaper going out the door. He stopped suddenly on the sidewalk, mouth open.

There was a picture of him on the front page.

Not a photo, he saw with relief, but a police drawing, one of those they made with Identi-Kits. It wasn't even that good. They didn't have the bashed-in place in his forehead. His eyes were the wrong shape. His lips were nowhere near that thick. But somehow it was still recognizably him.

The old lady must have woken up, then. Only the subheading did away with that idea, and in a hurry.

Blaze turned to page two, but there wasn't much there. If the cops had other stuff, they were holding it back. There was a picture of “The Kidnap House,” and another of “Where the Babynappers Entered.” There was a small box that said
Appeal to Kidnappers from Father, Page 6.
Blaze didn't turn to page 6. The time always got away from him when he was reading, and he couldn't afford that now. He'd been away too long already, it would take him at least another forty-five minutes to get home, and also—

Also, the car was hot.

Walsh, that miserable bastard. Blaze almost hoped the organization whacked the miserable bastard for blowing their apartment. Meantime, though—

Meantime, he would just have to take his chances. Maybe he could get back okay. Things would be a lot worse if he just left the car. It had his fingerprints all over it—what George called “dabs.” Maybe they had the license plate number, though; maybe Walsh had written it down. He turned this over slowly and carefully and decided Walsh wouldn't have written it down. Probably. Still, they knew it was a Ford, and blue…but of course it had been green originally. Before he painted it. Maybe that would make a difference. Maybe it would still be okay. Maybe not. It was hard to know.

He approached the parking lot carefully, lurking his way up to it, but he saw no cops and the attendant was reading a magazine. That was good. Blaze got in, started the Ford up, and waited for cops to descend from a hundred hiding places. None did. When he drove out, the attendant took the yellow ticket from under his windshield wiper with hardly a glance.

Getting clear of Portland, and then Westbrook, seemed to take forever. It was a little bit like driving with an open jug of wine between your legs, only worse. He was sure that every car that pulled up close behind him was an unmarked police car. He actually saw only one copmobile on his trip out of the city, crossing the intersection of Routes 1 and 25, breaking trail for an ambulance with its siren howling and its lights flashing. Seeing that actually comforted him. A police car like that, you knew what it was.

After Westbrook dropped behind, he swung off onto a secondary road, then onto two-lane blacktop that turned to frozen dirt and wound cross-country through the woods to Apex. He did not feel entirely safe even there, and when he turned into the long driveway leading to the shack, he felt as if great weights were dropping off his body.

He drove the Ford into the shed and told himself it could stay there until hell was a skating rink. He had known that kidnapping was big, and that things would be hot, but this was scorching. The picture, the blood he'd left behind, the quick and painless way that glorified doorman had given up the organization's private playpen…

But all those thoughts faded as soon as he got out of the car. Joe was screaming. Blaze could hear him even outside. He ran across the dooryard and burst into the house. George had done something, George had—

But George hadn't done anything. George wasn't anywhere around. George was dead and he, Blaze, had left the baby all alone.

The cradle was rocking with the force of the baby's anger, and when Blaze got to Joe, he saw why. The kid had thrown up most of his ten o'clock bottle, and rancid, reeking milk, half-dry, was lathered on his face and soaking into his pajama top. His face was an awful plum color. Sweat stood out on it in beads.

In a kind of shutter-frame, Blaze saw his own father, a hulking giant with red eyes and big hurting hands. The picture left him agonized with guilt and horror; he had not thought of his father in years.

He snatched the baby out of the cradle with such suddenness that Joe's head rolled on his neck. He stopped crying out of surprise as much as anything.

“There,” Blaze crooned, beginning to walk around the room with the baby on his shoulder. “There, there. I'm back. Yes I am. There, there. Don't cry no more. I'm right here. Right here.”

The baby fell asleep before Blaze had made three full turns around the room. Blaze changed him, doing the diapers faster than before, buttoned him up, and popped him back in the cradle.

Then he sat down to think. To really think, this time. What came next? A ransom note, right?

“Right,” he said.

Make it out of letters from magazines; that was how they did it in the movies. He got a stack of newspapers, girly magazines, and comic-books. Then he began to cut out letters.

I HAVE THE BABY.

There. That was a good start. He went over to the window and turned on the radio and got Ferlin Husky singing “Wings of a Dove.” That was a good one. An oldie but a goodie. He rummaged around until he found a tablet of Hytone paper George had bought in Renny's and then mixed up some flour-and-water paste. He hummed along with the music as he worked. It was a rusted, grating sound like an old gate swinging on bad hinges.

He went back to the table and pasted on the letters he had so far. A thought struck him: did paper take fingerprints? He didn't know, but it didn't seem very possible. Better not to take chances, though. He crumpled up the paper with the letters pasted on it and found George's leather gloves. They were too small for him, but he stretched them on. Then he hunted out the same letters all over again and pasted them up:

I HAVE THE BABY.

The news came on. He listened carefully and heard that somebody had called the Gerard home demanding two thousand dollars in ransom. This made Blaze frown. Then the newscaster said a teenage boy had made the call from a phone booth in Wyndham. The police had traced the call. When they caught him, he said he had been playing a prank.

Tell em it's a prank all night, they'll still put you away, kiddo, Blaze thought. Kidnapping is hot.

He frowned, thought, cut out more letters. The weather forecast came on. Fair and a little colder. Snow on the way soon.

I HAVE THE BABY. IF YOU WANT TO SEE HIM ALIVE AGAIN

If you want to see him alive again, what?
What?
Confusion rose in Blaze's mind. Call collect, operators are standing by? Stand on your head and whistle Dixie? Send two boxtops and fifty cents in coin? How did you go about getting the dough without getting caught?

“George? I can't remember this part.”

No answer.

He put his chin in one hand and really put on his thinking cap. He had to be very cool. Cool like George. Cool like John Cheltzman had been that day in the bus station when they had been running away to Boston. You had to use your nut. You had to use your old bean, old bean.

He would have to pretend he was part of a gang, that was for sure. Then they couldn't grab him when he picked up the swag. If they did, he'd tell them they had to let him go or his partners would kill the kid. Run a bluff. Hell, run a
con
.

“That's how we roll,” he whispered. “Right, George?”

He crumpled up his second try and searched out more letters, scissoring them into neat blocks.

OUR GANG HAS THE BABY. IF YOU WANT TO SEE HIM ALIVE AGAIN

That was good. That was right on the jack. Blaze admired it for awhile, then went to check the baby. The baby was asleep. His head was turned, and one small fist was tucked under his cheek. His lashes were very long, and darker than his hair. Blaze liked him. He never would have said a rug-monkey could be good-looking, but this one was.

“You're a stud, Joey,” he said, and then ruffled the baby's hair. His hand was bigger than the baby's whole head.

Blaze went back to the scattered magazines and newspapers and scraps on the table. He deliberated awhile, nibbling a little of his flour-water paste as he did. Then he got back to work.

OUR GANG HAS THE BABY. IF YOU WANT TO SEE HIM ALIVE AGAIN GET $$ 1 MILLION $$ IN UNMARKED BILLS. PUT MONEY IN BRIFCASE. BE READY TO GO ON A MOMENTS NOTISE. SINCIRELY YOURS,

THE KIDNAPERS OF JOE GERARD 4.

There. It told them some stuff, but not too much. And it would give him some time to think out a plan.

He found a dirty old envelope and put his letter in it, then cut out letters on the front to say:

THE GERARDS
OCOMA
IMPORTANT!

He didn't know exactly how he was going to mail it. He didn't want to leave the baby with George again, and he didn't dare use the hot Ford, but he didn't want to mail it in Apex, either. Everything would have been so much easier with George. He could have just stayed home and babysat while George took care of the brain stuff. He wouldn't mind feeding Joe and changing him and all that stuff. He wouldn't mind a bit. He sort of liked it.

Well, it didn't matter. The mail wouldn't go until tomorrow morning anyway, so he had time to make a plan. Or remember George's.

He got up and checked the baby again, wishing the TV wasn't bust. You got good ideas from the TV sometimes. Joe was still sleeping. Blaze wished he would wake up so that he could play with him. Make him grin. The kid looked like a real boy when he grinned. And he was dressed now, so Blaze could goof with him and not worry about getting pissed on.

Still, he was asleep and there was no help for that. Blaze turned off the radio and went into the bedroom to make plans, but fell asleep himself.

Before drifting off, it occurred to him that he felt sort of good. For the first time since George died, he felt sort of good.