«Uh, look … Sizzle. This’s been fun an’ it was great meetin’ you an’ all, but it’s gettin’ late and I gotta go now, and besides—»
«But aren’t you forgetting why you came here?»
Truth to tell, Vince had forgotten. But now he recalled, «I’m supposed t’ torch this warehouse.»
«That’s right. And from what I can see bubbling inside your cute little head, if you don’t burn this place down tonight, Louie’s going to be very upset with you.»
«Yeah, well, that’s my problem, right? I mean, you wanna stay here an’ get back t’ sleep, right? I don’t wanna bother you like them other guys did, ya know? I mean, like, I can come back when you go off to th’ Indian Ocean or something.»
«Don’t be silly, Vince,» Sizzle said, lifting herself ponderously to her four paws. «I can sleep anywhere. And I’m not due for another mating for several decades, thank the gods. As for those other fellows … well, they annoyed me. But you’re cute!»
Vince slowly got to his feet, surprised that his quaking knees held him upright. But Sizzle coiled her long, glittering body around him, and with a grin that looked like a forest made of sharp butcher knives, she said:
«I’m getting kind of tired of this old place, anyway. What do you say we belt it out?»
«Huh?»
«I can do a much better job of torching this firetrap than you can, Vince, cutie,» said Sizzle. «And I won’t leave any telltale gasoline fumes behind me.»
«But …»
«You’ll be completely in the clear. Anytime the police come near, I can always make myself invisible.»
«Invisible?»
«Sure. See?» And Sizzle disappeared.
«Hey, where are ya?»
«Right here, Vince.» The dragon reappeared in all its glittering hugeness.
Vince stared, his mind churning underneath his curly dark hair.
Sizzle smiled at him. «What do you say, cutie? A life of crime together? You and I could do wonderful things together, Vince. I could get you to the top of the Family in no time.»
A terrible thought oozed up to the surface of Vince’s slowly-simmering mind. «Uh, wait a minute. This is like I seen on TV, ain’t it? You help me, but you want me to sell my soul to you, right?»
«Your soul? What would I do with your soul?»
«You’re workin’ for th’ devil, an’ you gimme three wishes or somethin’ but in return I gotta let you take my soul down t’ hell when I die.»
Sizzle shook her ponderous head and managed to look slightly affronted. «Vince—I admit that dragons and humans haven’t been the best of friends over the millennia, but we do not work for the devil. I’m not even sure that he exists. I’ve never seen a devil, have you?»
«No, but—»
«And I’m not after your soul, silly boy.»
«You don’ want me ta sign nuthin?»
«Of course not.»
«An’ you’ll help me torch this dump for free?»
«More than that, Vince. I’ll help you climb right up to the top of the Family. We’ll be partners in crime! It’ll be the most fun I’ve had since Aunt Hsspss started the Chicago Fire.»
«Hey, I just wanna torch this one warehouse!»
«Yes, of course.»
«No Chicago Fires or nuthin like that.»
«I promise.»
It took several minutes for Vince to finally make up his mind and say, «Okay, let’s do it.»
Sizzle cocked her head slightly to one side. «Shouldn’t you get out of the warehouse first, Vince?»
«Huh? Oh yeah, sure.»
«And maybe drive back to your house, or—better yet—over to that restaurant where your friends are.»
«Whaddaya mean? We gotta torch this place first.»
«I’ll take care of that, Vince deary. But wouldn’t it look better if you had plenty of witnesses around to tell the police they were with you when the warehouse went up?»
«Yeah …» he said, feeling a little suspicious.
«All right, then,» said Sizzle. «You just get your cute little body over to the restaurant and once you’re safely there I’ll light this place up like an Inquisition pyre.»
«How’ll you know … ?»
«When you get to the restaurant? I’m telepathic, Vince.»
«But how’ll I know … ?»
«When this claptrap gets belted out? Don’t worry, you’ll see the flames in the sky!» Sizzle sounded genuinely excited by the prospect.
Vince couldn’t think of any other objections. Slowly, reluctantly, he headed for the warehouse door. He had to step over one of Sizzle’s saber-long talons on the way.
At the doorway, he turned and asked plaintively, «You sure you ain’t after my soul?»
Sizzle smiled at him. «I’m not after your soul, Vince, you can depend on that.»
The warehouse fire was the most spectacular anyone had seen in a long time, and the police were totally stymied about its cause. They questioned Vince at length, especially since he had forgotten to get rid of the gasoline and paint thinner in the back of the stolen station wagon. But they couldn’t pin a thing on him, not even car theft, once Louie had Big Balls Falcone explain the situation to the unhappy wagon’s owner.
Vince’s position in the Family started to rise. Spectacularly.
Arson became his specialty. Louie gave him tougher and tougher assignments and Vince would wander off a night later and the job would be done. Perfectly.
He met Sizzle regularly, sometimes in abandoned buildings, sometimes in empty lots. The dragon remained invisible then, of course, and the occasional passerby got the impression that a young, sharply-dressed man was standing in the middle of a weed-choked, bottle-strewn empty lot, talking to thin air.
More than once they could have heard him asking, «You really ain’t interested in my soul?»
But only Vince could hear Sizzle’s amused reply, «No, Vince. I have no use for souls, yours or anyone else’s.»
As the months went by, Vince’s rapid rise to Family stardom naturally attracted some antagonism from other young men attempting to get ahead in the organization. Antagonism sometimes led to animosity, threats, even attempts at violence.
But strangely, wondrously, anyone who got angry at Vince disappeared. Without a trace, except once when a single charred shoe of Fats Lombardi’s was found in the middle of Tasker Street, between Twelfth and Thirteenth.
Louie and the other elders of the Family nodded knowingly. Vince was not only ambitious and talented. He was smart. No bodies could be laid at his doorstep.
From arson, Vince branched into loan-sharking, which was still the heart of the Family’s operation. But he didn’t need Big Balls Falcone to terrify his customers into paying on time. Customers who didn’t pay found their cars turned into smoking wrecks. Right before their eyes, an automobile parked at the curb would burst into flame.
«Gee, too bad,» Vince would say. «Next time it might be your house,» he’d hint darkly, seeming to wink at somebody who wasn’t there. At least, somebody no one else could see. Somebody very tall, from the angle of his head when he winked.
The day came when Big Balls Falcone himself, understandably put out by the decline in his business, let it be known that he was coming after Vince. Big Balls disappeared in a cloud of smoke, literally.
The years rolled by. Vince became quite prosperous. He was no longer the skinny, scared kid he had been when he had first met Sizzle. Now he dressed conservatively, with a carefully-tailored vest buttoned neatly over his growing paunch, and lunched on steak and lobster tails with bankers and brokers.
Although he moved out of the old neighborhood row house into a palatial ranch-style single near Cherry Hill, over in Jersey, Vince still came back to the Epiphany Church every Sunday morning for Mass. He sponsored the church’s Little League baseball team and donated a free Toyota every year for the church’s annual raffle.