Read The Many Deaths of the Firefly Brothers Online
Authors: Thomas Mullen
The Many Deaths of the Firefly Brothers (10 page)
After his talk with Mr. Douglasson, Weston felt as haunted as ever. Now it
wasn’t only his brothers haunting him but this Agent Delaney. Surely Mr.
Douglasson wasn’t threatening to fire him. Surely the conversation was
just meant as a well-intentioned reminder of the seriousness of the Fireson
family’s plight, Douglasson feeling the need to dispense paternal advice
to the fatherless. Surely Weston’s fate—and his
brothers’—was not resting in his shirt pocket.
He often imagined the many ways in which things would be different, if not for
the hard times, if not for the curse of his family. He would have a better job
than that of an office assistant, certainly, and would be in a more lucrative
field. Still, he knew he was fortunate to have this job; at a time when so many
were out of work, most employers would never consider hiring a Fireson. Though
Jason’s irregular contributions had temporarily saved the house from
foreclosure, that specter was always
hovering around
the corner. One day, surely, the brothers’ payments would end, leaving
Weston as the bachelor breadwinner supporting a sprawling family.
That bachelor part was one of the things that rankled most, when he allowed
himself to think selfishly. He had dated a few girls, but getting close to anyone
was out of the question; he had too many obligations as it was. And so his
romantic life had taken on a distressing pattern. He would meet a pretty girl
and ask her out, or, more typically, he’d call a girl he had known in
school, someone whose parents knew him and (hopefully) hadn’t warned
their daughter to stay away from that no-good Fireson family. But of course the
girl would know about his brothers—perhaps she would be attracted to the
sense of adventure, or doom, that the Fireson name evoked. He would take her to
dinner at a carefully chosen, inexpensive restaurant, and perhaps see a movie.
But after a few dates it would be obvious he wasn’t in a position to take
things further. Some of the girls had stuck with him for a few months, maybe had
even fallen in love with him. But as time passed and they saw that no proposal
was forthcoming, that indeed Weston never spoke of the future at all, they
would break things off. Which always came as equal parts disappointment and
relief.
At least he wasn’t the only one deferring his dreams for some fabled,
future moment of prosperity. None of his old school friends—few of whom
he saw much of anymore—were married, as everyone seemed to be putting off
important decisions. But that didn’t make it any easier. He ached to
touch someone, but that was a luxury he couldn’t afford. He didn’t
want to get a girl in a jam, both for her sake and his. Somewhere out there,
Jason and Whit were carousing with their tawdry fans, women they probably had
met in Jason’s speakeasy days, molls enamored of the brothers’ myth
and money. Weston’s dates, when he was lucky enough to have any, ended
with a chaste kiss at best.
He was lucky enough to have a date on the Friday after Douglasson’s
warning. At six o’clock he took the streetcar uptown to the Buckeye
Theater, where he was to meet the secretary of a real-estate company whom
he’d chatted up while running an errand for Douglasson. He was early and
no line had formed, but dusk was settling and the marquee’s lights
glowed. Then he noticed the title displayed above.
“Excuse me,” he asked the girl at the
booth, “wasn’t
The Invisible Man
supposed to start showing
today?”
“Yes, but we’re holding
Scarface
over an extra week because
it’s doing so well. We’ll open
The Invisible Man
next
Friday.”
Weston’s heart sank. His knuckles tapped the edge of the booth.
“I really do recommend
Scarface,”
the girl said.
“It’s rather risky, I’d say, but very thought-provoking. And
exciting, of course.”
He smiled thinly at her. The gangster movie had been playing all month; he
hadn’t seen it yet, nor would he. “Let me guess: he dies in the
end.”
She didn’t know what to make of him. “Well, er, you’ll have
to see it to find out.”
He backed up and stepped aside. Why all this fascination with criminals? His
date was running late, which he was thankful for. He needed to come up with
some other idea, maybe dinner first, maybe dancing instead of the movie. He
needed to devise an escape, some miraculous evasion, something worthy of a true
Firefly Brother.
Within minutes, the line was twenty deep. So many people, so happy to watch
tales of others’ bloodletting and sorrow.
VII.
T
he depression was making people
disappear.
They vanished from factories and warehouses and workshops, the number of
toilers halving, then halving again, until finally all were gone, the doors
closed and padlocked, the buildings like tombs. They vanished from the lunchtime
spots where they used to congregate, the diners and deli counters where they
would grab coffee on the way in or a slice of pie on the way out. They
disappeared from the streets. They were whisked from the apartments whose rents
they couldn’t meet and carted out of the homes whose mortgages they
couldn’t keep pace with, lending once thriving neighborhoods a desolate
air, broken windows on porches and trash strewn across overgrown yards. They
disappeared from the buses and streetcars, choosing to wear out their shoe
leather rather than drop another dime down the driver’s metal bucket.
They disappeared from shops and markets, because if you yourself could spend a
few hours to build it, sew it, repair it, reline it, reshod it, reclod it, or
reinvent it for some other purpose, you sure as hell weren’t going to buy
a new one. They disappeared from bedrooms, seeking solace where they could: a
speakeasy, or, once the mistake of Prohibition had been corrected, a reopened
tavern, or another woman’s arms—someone who might not have known
their name and certainly didn’t know their faults well enough to judge
them, someone who needed a laugh as badly as they did. They disappeared,
but never before your eyes; they never had that magic. It
was like a shadow when the sun has set; you don’t notice the
shadow’s absence because you expect it. But the next morning the sun
rises, and the shadow’s still gone.
Jason Fireson himself disappeared whenever he needed to, which was quite often.
Indeed, for all the glorified stories of his prowess at shooting his way out of
dragnets, his fabled ability to slide his wrists out of handcuffs or simply
vanish after a job, Jason knew that much of his success was due, quite simply,
to his tolerance for long drives. When you robbed a bank in southern Illinois,
cops wouldn’t expect you to be hiding in St. Paul the next day. When you
knocked over a bank in Akron, the heat wouldn’t even be simmering in the
Ozarks. All it usually took was a good ten to twenty hours of driving and he’d
not only be safely beyond the authorities’ reach but beyond their
comprehension. The bulls assumed that hoods were lazy, and maybe most were;
good, old-fashioned work ethic was what separated Jason from the others. Maybe
Pop would have been proud after all.
The sun had barely risen when Jason and Whit set out for Cleveland, the morning
after their visit with Chance. Jason had borrowed money from Ma—money
that he had paid her after an endeavor, but money he now needed back; he
couldn’t travel north to gather a gang without cash for food and
gasoline. But he was deeply ashamed to take the cash and was worried about what
it might mean for her. He vowed to get her more within the week.
What bothered him the most wasn’t the bullet wounds in his chest, which
seemed to be fading rather rapidly, but his empty pockets.
Their telegrams to Darcy and Veronica had gone unanswered. In desperation Jason
had risked being overheard and called Darcy from a downtown pay phone the
previous night. But she never picked up. He’d tried again that morning
after leaving Ma’s, with the same result. Whit’s luck hadn’t
been much better. He’d called Veronica’s mother’s place in
Milwaukee—for which he had occasionally paid the rent, not that they
treated him any better for it—but the suspicious old lady wouldn’t
put Veronica on or even confirm whether she was there.
Jason’s mind had trailed every conceivable path for Darcy, and none of
them were a pleasant ride. Had she been arrested for
aiding and abetting but the press hadn’t reported it yet? Had she received
his message but was under heavy surveillance and couldn’t respond? Was
she convinced he was dead and had descended into hysterics, or something worse?
She was an impulsive girl, prone to brazen acts and startling shifts in temper.
He regretted that he and Whit were driving to Cleveland and not straight to
Chicago, but the brothers had agreed that they needed to get a gang together
before making any other moves.
It always seemed to come back to this. The need for money, and the only means
for obtaining it.
Jason Fireson had started bank robbing a few months after his release from
Indiana State Prison for his second bootlegging rap. During that second
stretch, the visits from his mother and brothers had been far less frequent
than the first time; they were busy trying to keep the family business afloat
while Pop was in Lincoln City jail awaiting trial, and then, after Pop was convicted
and sent to prison in Columbus, the remaining Firesons had only so much time to
divide between their two imprisoned family members.
Pop
in jail? None of this seemed real. It was impossible.
Pop
arrested for murder? For killing a business partner and bank man who reneged on
an agreement? Patrick Fireson, mild-mannered, hardworking, church-going,
tithe-paying, Hoover-supporting, flag-waving civic Booster extraordinaire? It
was a sick joke, a horrible mistake, a vicious frame, one more symptom of a
world gone not only mad but cruel.
All the bad news had hit while Jason was waiting for his release: he learned by
telegram that Pop had been convicted of second-degree murder, and then, less
than six months later, Weston had visited Jason alone, his face still white
even after that long drive, to tell him that Pop’s heart had given out
the night before.
Jason had petitioned his warden to be allowed to attend his father’s
funeral under guard, but he’d been refused. The last time he ever laid
eyes on Pop was when he took the stand months earlier, offering futile
corroboration of Pop’s alibi.
After Jason’s release, the brothers went their
separate ways. Weston disappeared to his law office and his newly rented
room—even the good son needed distance from the remnants of their broken
family—Whit to his factory gig and the tiny flat he shared with three
other working stiffs, and Jason to his itinerant band of ex-cons and
ne’er-do-wells. He had always liked guys like these, men who didn’t
want to fit into society’s staid categories. But the rising tide against
Prohibition—it would be repealed by summer, people were saying—and
Jason’s bitterness over his two stints in jail had made him think
differently. These men seemed so much less than he remembered. With bootlegging
jobs on the verge of extinction, their new ideas seemed either juvenile (petty
thefts) or hopelessly grandiose (train robbery). Their skills were nominal,
their views of the world badly blurred. Would he continue to link his fate with
men like these? Maybe this was growing up: realizing that you’re better
than the situation you’ve landed in.
He told himself the straight life wasn’t all bad and he tried to find a
job, but he barely understood this world, let alone the vast changes that had
befallen it during the past few years. Hat in hand, Jason walked into countless
offices, his self-esteem shrinking each day. With Pop and his business gone, he
didn’t even have that to fall back on anymore. Whit’s factory was
laying men off; Weston’s lawyer boss wouldn’t even meet with Jason.
And, Jesus, the looks he received, full of either pity or outright scorn. He
was used to being greeted with smiles, fresh drinks, pretty ladies, and all the
other signs of respect. Now the tone of his voice was unrecognizable to himself.
The closest he came to finding honest work in that cold and constricting winter
of ’32–’33 was with a small shipping outfit. The owner needed
another driver, so Jason explained his qualifications, lying about the exact
kind of freight he had experience shipping, and even provided references. Two
days after that meeting he walked back into the man’s office, and the
references had been checked. The job was about to be his.
The office was a single long room at the front of a warehouse, with drivers and
other lackeys hustling in and out, grabbing keys, checking clipboards, telling
jokes. He could do this. It was so busy that he hadn’t noticed another
man walk in behind him.
“You ain’t doing business with this guy, are you, Larry?”
Jason turned around. It was a cop. Jason was fairly
sure he’d never exchanged words with this cop, but he looked familiar.
Hell, they were all alike—same clown suit, big feet, sunburned noses.
“Was thinking about hiring him,” the manager said.
“Why?”
“You don’t know who this is?” The cop had a good fifteen
years on Jason but even without his gun and his club and the weight of society
behind him he would be a tough one in a brawl. “You’re looking at a
two-time convict here.”
Jason tried to sound polite. “We’re conducting some private business
here, Officer, and I think—”
“What’s the idea?” Larry said. “You didn’t say
nothing about doing time.”
“Well, you didn’t ask about—”
“Don’t you come into my place of business pulling some con!”
“It’s not a con. I just want a—”
“The son of a murderer, too,” the cop added. “Probably be a
murderer himself soon, if he ain’t already. Be a real addition to your
workforce, Larry.”
Jason glared at the cop.
“No thanks, son.” Larry shook his head.
The cop chuckled. “Hit the road, Fireson.”
Crushing the brim of his hat, Jason turned and walked out. He paced the
sidewalk, too enraged to give up and head home. He’d been there less than
a minute when the cop joined him.
“You have no right to run me like this,” Jason said. “I was a
kid and I made some mistakes—and they’re about to change those laws
anyway! I have a right to try and make good.”
“You did make some mistakes, I’ll give you that. That cop you beat
on in Indiana? That was my cousin—and
those
laws ain’t about
to change.”
Jason had resisted arrest the second time he’d been taken in, had gotten
a few licks in before they paid him back tenfold. “I did my time for it!
I paid my debt!”
“Everybody’s got debts right now, and I couldn’t give a damn
about yours.”
“I’m trying to do the right thing here!”
“You wouldn’t know the right thing if it hit you on the
head.” The
cop’s right hand dangled onto
his billy club. “Now shut your mouth and go make your living someplace
else. Someplace very far from here.”
It took a second to register. “You can’t run me out of my own town.
I got family here, I got—”
“I can’t? You’re lucky I’m being so polite about it. I
ain’t always in this good a mood.”
They stared each other down. Jason could feel some of the truckers from inside
the office and others out on the sidewalk watching them. He searched for some
angle to play, but there was none. He turned and walked away.
The next day he inquired about a few more jobs, but halfheartedly. The straight
life was revealing itself to be nothing more than a mirage, and Jason cursed
himself for being so gullible. Pop had always believed in playing by the rules,
working hard and following the law, the American dream, and look where it had
gotten
him
. Jason burned with shame at the way he had lost face in front
of that cop. He was better than this. If the cop was so sure that Jason’s
Fireson blood doomed him to being a murderous outlaw, then Jason would do him
one better: he would be the best goddamn outlaw anyone had seen.
His thoughts returned to Marriner Skelty, an old yegg he had befriended during
his second stint in jail. Marriner wasn’t like the Lincoln City
small-timers Jason had walked out on; he was smart and professional. Marriner
had other friends, particularly skilled friends, some of whom Jason also had
met behind bars. Marriner’s jail term was nearing its end, as were some
of the others’. Jason started visiting Marriner at the same visiting room
where his brothers had very infrequently visited him. The view’s nicer
over here, he told Marriner the first time, smiling.
“I imagine it is,” the old yegg said. “Can’t wait to
see it.”
“What else can’t you wait to do?”
“The only thing I was ever good at, if I ain’t too old.”
“You can always borrow youth. I myself am looking to borrow expertise.
Perhaps we can arrange a trade.”
“A trade,” Marriner mused. “I always have likened myself to a
tradesman.”
Plans were laid, releases were won, and the first Firefly Gang was assembled.
Marriner picked the spots, showing Jason what to look
for. Outside Indianapolis, they used an old barn that belonged to one of Marriner’s
dead relatives as their staging ground, laid out like the interior of their
targeted bank. They went through the routine countless times; they knew how
many steps to take and how quickly to move, what to say and what not to do. It
was like a movie set, with Marriner the director, his once and future
accomplices the stars. But Jason knew
he
was the leading man, and the
others picked up on this eventually. He wasn’t nervous, he wasn’t a
fumbler—bootlegging had been all about timing and numbers, knowing the
route and following it, and being able to improvise when the situation
warranted. This was much the same, only he wasn’t stuck behind a wheel.
All that begging and groveling for admission into the straight life,
that
had been the movie set—
that
had been the acting. This was who he
really was.
