Blaze. Part 11

Blaze got the Playtex Nurser kit and read the instructions. He read them twice. It took him half an hour. He didn't understand hardly anything the first time and even less the second.

'I can't, George,' he said at last.

'Sure you can. Throw those instructions away and just roll roll.'

So Blaze threw the instructions into the stove and then just fooled with the gadget, the way you did with a carb that wasn't set quite right. Eventually, he figured out that you fitted the plastic liner over the gadget's nozzle and then plunged it into the bottle sh.e.l.l. Bingo. Pretty slick. He prepared four bottles, filled them with canned milk, and put them away in the fridge.

'Can I go to bed now, George?' he asked.

No answer.

Blaze went to bed.

Joe woke him in the first gray light of morning. Blaze stumbled out of bed and went into the kitchen. He had left the baby in the basket, and now the basket was rocking back and forth on the table with the force of Joe's anger.

Blaze picked him up and laid him against his shoulder. He saw part of the problem right away. The kid was soaked through.

Blaze took him into the bedroom and laid him on his bed. He looked amazingly small, lying there in the indentation of Blaze's body. He was wearing blue pj's, and he kicked his feet indignantly.

Blaze took off his pajamas and the rubber pants beneath. He put a hand on Joe's belly to hold him still. Then he bent close to observe the way the diapers were pinned together. He took them off and threw them in the corner.

He observed Joe's p.e.n.i.s and felt instant delight. Not much longer than his thumbnail, but standing straight up. Pretty cute.

'That's quite a rod you got there, skinner,' he said.

Joe left off crying to stare up at Blaze with wide, surprised eyes.

'I said that's quite a rod you got on you.'

Joe smiled.

'Goo-goo,' Blaze said. He felt an unwilling idiot grin tug the corners of his mouth.

Joe gurgled.

'Goo-goo-baby,' Blaze said.

Joe laughed aloud.

'Goo-goo-bayyy-beee,' Blaze said, delighted.

Joe p.i.s.sed in his face.

The Pampers were another struggle. At least they didn't have pins, just tapes, and they seemed to have their own built-in rubber pants - plastic, actually - but he wrecked two before he finally got one on like the picture on the box. When the job was done, Joe was wide awake and chewing on the ends of his fingers. Blaze supposed he wanted something to eat, and thought a bottle might be best.

He was heating it under the hot water faucet in the kitchen, turning it around and around, when George said: 'Did you dilute it the way the broad in the store said to?'

Blaze looked at the bottle. 'Huh?'

'That's straight canned milk, isn't it?'

'Sure, right out of the can. Is it spoiled, George?'

'No, it isn't spoiled. But if you don't take off the cap and put in some water, he'll puke.'

'Oh.'

Blaze used his fingernails to pull the top off the Playtex Nurser and poured about a quarter of the bottle down the sink. He added enough water to fill it back up, stirred it with a spoon, and put the nipple back on.

'Blaze.' George didn't sound mad, but he sounded awful tired.

'What?'

'You gotta get a baby book. Somethin that tells you how to take care of him. Like the manual to a car. Because you keep forgetting things.'

'Okay, George.'

'You better get a newspaper, too. Only don't buy them too close to here. Buy them someplace bigger.'

'George?'

'What?'

'Who's gonna take care of the kid while I'm gone?'

There was a long pause, one so long Blaze thought George had gone away again. Then he said: 'I will.'

Blaze frowned. 'You can't, George. You're -'

'I said I will. Now get your a.s.s in there and feed 'im!'

'Butif the kid gets in troublechokes, or some thin and I'm gone -'

'Feed him, G.o.ddammit!'

'Okay, George, sure.'

He went into the other room. Joe was fussing and kicking on the bed, still chewing his fingers. Blaze burped the bottle the way the lady showed him, pus.h.i.+ng a finger up inside the plastic bag until a drop of milk formed on the nipple. He sat down by the baby and carefully removed Joe's fingers from his mouth. Joe started to cry, but when Blaze put the rubber nipple where his fingers had been, the lips closed over it and he began to suck. The small cheeks went in and out.

'That's right,' Blaze said. 'That's right, you little bagger.'

Joe drank all of it. When Blaze picked him up to burp him, he spit a little back, getting some on the s.h.i.+rt of Blaze's thermal underwear. Blaze didn't mind. He wanted to change the baby into one of his new outfits, anyway. He told himself he only wanted to see if it fit.

It did. When Blaze was done with that, he took off his own top and smelled the baby's burp-up. It smelled vaguely cheesy. Maybe, he thought, the milk was still a little too thick. Or maybe he should have stopped and burped the kid halfway through the bottle. George was right. He needed a book.

He looked down at Joe. The baby had bunched a small piece of blanket in his hands and was examining it. He was a cute little s.h.i.+t. They were going to be worried about him, Joe Gerard III and his wife. Probably thinking the kid had been tucked away in a bureau drawer, screaming and hungry, with c.r.a.ppy diapers. Or worse still, lying in a shallow hole chipped out of frozen earth, a tiny sc.r.a.p of manchild gasping away its last few breaths in frozen vapor. Then into a green plastic Hefty Bag Where had he gotten that idea?

George. George had said that. He had been talking about the Lindbergh s.n.a.t.c.h. The kidnapper's name had been Hope-man, Hoppman, something like that.

'George? George, don't you hurt 'im while I'm gone.'

No answer.

He heard the first item on the news, while he was making his breakfast. Joe was on the floor, on a blanket Blaze had spread for him. He was playing with one of George's newspapers. He had pulled a tent of it over his head and was kicking with excitement.

The announcer had just finished telling about a Republican Senator who had taken a bribe. Blaze was hoping George heard it. George liked stuff like that.

'Topping area news is an apparent kidnapping in Ocoma Heights,' the announcer said. Blaze stopped stirring his potatoes around in the frying pan and listened carefully. 'Joseph Gerard IV, infant heir to the Gerard s.h.i.+pping fortune, was taken from the Gerards' Ocoma Heights estate either late last night or early this morning. A sister of Joseph Gerard, the boy's great-grandfather - once known as the boy wonder of American s.h.i.+pping' - was found unconscious on the kitchen floor by the family cook early this morning. Norma Gerard, said to be in her mid-seventies, was taken to the Maine Medical Center, where her condition is listed as critical. When asked if he had called for FBI a.s.sistance, Castle County Sheriff John D. Kellahar said he could not comment at this time. He would also not comment on the possibility of a ransom note -'

Oh yeah, Blaze thought. I got to send one of those.

'- but he did say police have a number of leads which are being actively investigated.'

Like what? Blaze wondered, and smiled a little. They always said stuff like that. What leads could they have, if the old lady was el zonko el zonko? He had even taken the ladder with him. They said stuff like that, that was all.

He ate his breakfast on the floor and played with the baby.

When he got ready to go out that afternoon, the kid had been fed and freshly changed and lay sleeping in the cradle. Blaze had tinkered with the formula a little more, and this time had burped him halfway through. It worked real good. It worked like a charm. He'd also changed the kid's diapers. At first all that green s.h.i.+t had scared him, but then he remembered. Peas.

'George? I'm going now.'

'Okay,' George said from the bedroom.

'You better come out here and watch him. In case he wakes up.'

'I will, don't worry.'

'Yeah,' Blaze said, without conviction. George was dead. He was talking to a dead man. He was asking a dead man to babysit. 'Hey, George. Maybe I oughta -'

'Oughtta-shmotta, coulda-woulda. Go on, get out of here.'

'George -'

'Go on, I said! Roll!'

Blaze went.

The day was bright and sparkling and a little warmer. After a week of single-number temperatures, twenty degrees felt like a heatwave. But there was no pleasure in the suns.h.i.+ne, no pleasure to be had in driving the back roads to Portland. He didn't trust George with the baby. He didn't know why, but he sure didn't. Because, see, now George was a part of himself, and he most likely took all the parts with him when he went somewhere, even the George part. Didn't that make sense?

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 s.h.i.+ngle 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, 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 t.i.tle quickly; there were no hard words in it. 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 t.i.tle quickly; there were no hard words in it. Child and Baby Care 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.

FBI ENTERS SEARCH FOR BABYNAPPERS Norma Gerard Succ.u.mbs to Head Injury Special to the Evening Express Evening Express By James T. Mears THE MAN WHO DROVE the getaway car in the Gerard baby kidnapping - and possibly the only kidnapper - is pictured on this page, in an By James T. Mears THE MAN WHO DROVE the getaway car in the Gerard baby kidnapping - and possibly the only kidnapper - is pictured on this page, in an Evening Express Evening Express exclusive. The drawing was made by Portland P.D. sketch artist John Black from a description given by Morton Walsh, a night attendant at Oakwood, a new high-rise condominium tower a quarter of a mile from the Gerard family compound. Walsh told Portland police and Castle County Sheriff's deputies earlier today that the suspect said he was visiting Joseph Carlton, a name that is apparently fict.i.tious. The suspected babynapper was driving a blue Ford sedan, and Walsh said there was a ladder in the back. Walsh is being held as a material witness, and there is speculation about his failure to question the driver more closely on his intentions, given the lateness of the hour (approximately 2 AM). A source close to the investigation has suggested that the Joseph Carlton 'mystery apartment' may have ties to organized crime, raising the possibility that the infant kidnapping could have been a well-organized criminal 'caper.' Neither FBI agents (now on scene) nor local police would comment on this possibility. There are other leads at the present time, although no ransom letter or call has been announced. One of the kidnappers may have left blood at the crime scene, possibly from a cut received in his scramble over the Oakwood parking lot fence, which is of the chain-link type. Sheriff John D. Kellahar called it 'one more strand in the rope that will eventually hang this man or gang of men.' In other developments, Norma Gerard, the kidnapped boy's great-great-aunt, succ.u.mbed during an operation at Maine Medical Center to relieve pressure on her (go to Page 2, Col 5) exclusive. The drawing was made by Portland P.D. sketch artist John Black from a description given by Morton Walsh, a night attendant at Oakwood, a new high-rise condominium tower a quarter of a mile from the Gerard family compound. Walsh told Portland police and Castle County Sheriff's deputies earlier today that the suspect said he was visiting Joseph Carlton, a name that is apparently fict.i.tious. The suspected babynapper was driving a blue Ford sedan, and Walsh said there was a ladder in the back. Walsh is being held as a material witness, and there is speculation about his failure to question the driver more closely on his intentions, given the lateness of the hour (approximately 2 AM). A source close to the investigation has suggested that the Joseph Carlton 'mystery apartment' may have ties to organized crime, raising the possibility that the infant kidnapping could have been a well-organized criminal 'caper.' Neither FBI agents (now on scene) nor local police would comment on this possibility. There are other leads at the present time, although no ransom letter or call has been announced. One of the kidnappers may have left blood at the crime scene, possibly from a cut received in his scramble over the Oakwood parking lot fence, which is of the chain-link type. Sheriff John D. Kellahar called it 'one more strand in the rope that will eventually hang this man or gang of men.' In other developments, Norma Gerard, the kidnapped boy's great-great-aunt, succ.u.mbed during an operation at Maine Medical Center to relieve pressure on her (go to Page 2, Col 5) 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. 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 - 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 b.a.s.t.a.r.d. Blaze almost hoped the organization whacked the miserable b.a.s.t.a.r.d 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 bluebut 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 winds.h.i.+eld 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 flas.h.i.+ng. 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 h.e.l.l 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 s.n.a.t.c.hed 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, b.u.t.toned 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.