The Many Deaths of the Firefly Brothers (24 page)

Jason hadn’t told Darcy about that conversation, but of course he was
thinking of it as Windham consulted with whichever underlings were
gathered at his office. Finally, Windham read the ransom
note, a badly written mash of threats and instructions about when and how to
pay up.
Jason had hoped for some obvious tip-off—an accidental use of a
catchphrase or a lapse into familiar slang—but nothing registered.
“So you’re getting the money for them?”
Silence for a beat. “I don’t see how that’s any of your
business.”
“Listen to me: I don’t have anything to do with this, Windham.
Whoever’s doing this is someone I can’t control. If you hedge on
them and they lay a finger on her because of it—”
“Whoever you are, Gabriel”—Windham laid on the aggrieved
father act—“you should know that I am following orders and
anxiously awaiting their instructions so that I can get my beloved daughter
back home as soon as poss—”
Hanging up on him wasn’t as satisfying as Jason had hoped.
“He’s not going to pay them,” he told Whit after taking a
moment to exhale. “He’s a stubborn old son of a bitch who
doesn’t understand he isn’t holding the cards here, and he
doesn’t care enough about her to be nervous about calling their bluff. If
it’s a real job, they’re going to get impatient. They’re
going to get angry.”
He walked back to their motel room, Whit following, and started to load the
car.
“Where to?” Whit asked.
“Up north. To Owney’s.”
“Even though he might have tipped off the cops in Detroit?”
“Yeah, but I don’t think he did—we’d have heard he was
arrested by now.”
“Then who did?”
Jason stopped. “Look, I didn’t say I had everything figured out.
I’m still working on a few things. Anyway, where should I drop you
off?”
“What are you talking about? I’m coming, too.”
“You should take your share and find Ronny and Patrick. This isn’t
your problem.”
“I’ll make it my problem. They can wait—at least no
one’s kidnapped them.”
Jason was surprised that Whit would take the chance—he and Darcy had
never been close.
Once they were on the road, Jason headed for the highway. He drove
exactly the speed limit. “Since when did you become
such a saint?” he asked.
“Maybe I’m not so saintly. Maybe I have a weird feeling that
whatever’s been happening to us won’t keep happening if we were to
split up. Maybe I don’t want you to walk into something you can’t
walk out of unless I’m there, too.”
That’s exactly the reason I took you into this gang
, Jason
thought,
and look where it’s gotten us
.

XVI.

I
t was a long, dull drive to
Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, the sun growing bored and slipping off to
sleep somewhere in Wisconsin. The headlights cut a narrow path through the
thickening woods and finally illuminated the small sign for Cedar Grove. Jason
remembered the name of the town where Owney and his wife had a hideaway, but
that was the extent of what he knew. He drove down a winding road and found a
small general store, which likely doubled as the post office. Whit waited in
their newly stolen Chevy as Jason walked in and smiled at the portly
shopkeeper, asking her assistance in locating his “cousin.” Jason
used Owney’s alias and offered descriptions of the couple, noting that
they had a place nearby. It was a risk, he knew, to show himself like this, and
to bring such attention to Owney. As the woman mentioned that the couple did
sound familiar and were probably renting from the Marshalls at 32 Tamarack
Lane, Jason knew this busybody would remember him, and that if one day the
police did drag their rake of suspicions through the U.P. beaches her memory
would be the precious gold watch lying in the dunes. He thanked her and left.
Tamarack Lane was nothing but a pair of narrow ruts worn into the
impressionable earth, winding a trail between a marsh to the left and the
lakefront homes to the right. Beyond the marsh was a forest of cedar and black
ash and maple, filling the air with a spicy richness unlike anything
Jason had smelled in his recent weeks in the dry, lower
Midwest. The cottages were modest one-story structures, and although cars were
parked in every drive there was no activity. All the brothers could hear was
the thrumming of frogs, low and ominously loud.
Jason killed his lights as he approached No. 32. The half-moon and its
reflection in the lake provided a surprising amount of light. Neither he nor
Whit recognized either of the two cars in the sandy driveway, but of course
they shouldn’t have, if Owney was smart. The front lot was not large and
through the partially drawn curtains they had a view of the parlor. They could
see only the blond back of a head. Jason drove on. The road soon dead-ended,
and Jason turned around. There was no sign of cops or any other kind of
stakeout.
“Let’s wait a bit,” Jason said. He parked on the side of the
trail, the Chevy half obscured by two dogwoods and spiny explosions of sea
grass. Already mosquitoes were gleefully entering the Chevy’s cabin,
overjoyed at the scent of new blood.
Jason thought he recognized a face through one of the windows. Before he could
say anything, Whit had thrown open his door. So much for caution.
By the time Jason had walked into the house, Whit was standing in the middle of
a sparsely decorated room surrounded by silence and by Owney, his plump wife,
Beatrice, Veronica, and, wobbling a bit but undeniably standing on his tiny,
one-year-old feet, little Patrick.
Jason’s entry into the room seemed to unfreeze the moment, the presence
of a second living dead man somehow making the first less stunning.
Veronica, who had nursed Whit as he recovered from his near-fatal beating, was
perhaps accustomed to the miraculous. She looked less stunned than surprised,
as though she hadn’t been expecting Whit to rise from the dead until next
Tuesday or so.
She walked toward Whit and he met her halfway in a silent embrace. Jason
watched them for a moment, then took two steps toward Owney. His longtime
accomplice wore an undershirt and tan summer slacks and a look that, in
Jason’s opinion, could not have been hiding guilt or fear because it was
so perfectly transparent.
Jason smiled and extended his hand.
It took Owney a moment to reciprocate. “Howdy,
Lazarus. Nice to see you again.”
Absences, both planned and impulsive, were a typical part of Whit and
Veronica’s relationship, and so, therefore, were reunions. In addition to
those required by bank jobs, Whit and Veronica always devised other reasons for
separating. He never outright abandoned her and the baby again after the
dance-marathon incident, but still, their love was marked by accusations, both
petty and severe; fights, both tame and explosive; and threats, both offhand
and deeply, deeply serious. Whit wasn’t always sure how they started or
why they escalated; sometimes he said the wrong thing by mistake, sometimes on
purpose. Sometimes it was the stress of a recently completed endeavor, or maybe
he’d been thinking too much about that bank manager he shot or one of the
cops he’d gunned down, and maybe she wasn’t showing enough sympathy
for his sacrifices. Sometimes he was tired of the baby waking him in the middle
of the night, tired of the responsibilities placed on his shoulders. Sometimes
he thought he never should have gotten involved with someone as strong-willed
as himself.
Regardless, there had been plenty of times they had fought and parted ways,
though usually the absences were brief. He might go out driving that night and
not return until morning. On the more tempestuous occasions, she would take the
baby to her parents’ apartment in Milwaukee— the Hazel family had
been able to leave the Lincoln City Hooverville, and Veronica’s father
had finally found work at a reopened brewery, thanks to some starting-out money
that Whit had provided. But Veronica’s anger at Whit would cool in the
presence of her parents’ greater dislike of him. Despite Whit’s
largesse, they had never been shy about voicing their disapproval of this man
who had gotten their daughter in a jam before finding the decency to marry her;
that would have been enough to alienate him from her clan even if he
hadn’t become a famous outlaw. Every time Veronica ran home to them with
her baby, their complaints about Whit only rallied her to his defense, and off
she’d go once more to find her misunderstood, heroic man.
And so this lakehouse reunion was not as terribly strange as it should
have been. Veronica was probably surprised he
hadn’t used death as an excuse for disappearing on her before.
“You didn’t believe what they said, did you?” Whit asked.
“No. But everyone else did, so, after a while—”
“You didn’t get any of my telegrams? I sent one to your
folks’.”
“I was only there for a day—can’t stand them anymore. Mostly
I was with my aunt’s people, in Iowa.”
“We’ve been looking for you. Driven a thousand miles. Through hell
and back.”
“Apparently.”
She stepped back to look at him. He worried he might look different, that his
skin might have retained the deathly hue it had seemed to possess that morning.
But the light in the cottage was dim, and she didn’t say anything.
As Jason palled around with Owney in the background, Whit turned to face his
son. The boy swayed a bit, gazing at Whit in wonder. Could a child’s eyes
discern what adults’ could not? Did he know?
“Look at him.” Whit had never seen Patrick stand—his posture
seemed no less a miracle than Whit’s own presence here. “Is he
walking?”
As if he understood the question, Patrick took two quick steps, then a hesitant
third, still looking up at his father with impossibly big eyes. His white
shorts were sequined with sand from his day at the beach.
For a moment, Whit was afraid to pick Patrick up. When he did, Patrick felt
heavier than before. The toddler’s smile spread to Whit’s stubbly
face.
“I’m glad he isn’t old enough to ask questions,”
Veronica said. “I don’t know how I would’ve explained.”
A surge of guilt belted Whit in the chest. “You won’t have to
explain that to him, ever. I promise.”
She gave him the smile of one who had been promised too many things to believe
this one.
Owney had read the news about Darcy, he told Jason an hour later as the two sat
in the kitchen. Over leftover chicken and potatoes, Jason explained what little
he’d learned from Mr. Windham.
“I was kind of hoping you were behind it,”
Jason said.
“No, sir. And I’ll try not to be insulted by that.” With his
sandy hair, wide cheeks, and blue eyes, Owney’s face was full of corn-fed
cheerfulness.
“So what happened in Detroit?” Jason asked, hiding the fact that he
still had no memory of that evening.
“Somebody was on to us. I’m sitting there waiting for you in the
restaurant, then I see you two drive by without stopping. Then you do it again,
and I worry you’ve seen something I missed. Then I figure, hell, there
are
a lot of guys on the sidewalk. So now I’m panicking. I head back for the
men’s room and somebody up front says my name.”
Jason tried not to show how carefully he was watching Owney.
“I drew on him and fired a few. Ran into the men’s room,
someone’s hollering, ‘Police, stop,’ and I jumped out the
back window. Lost ’em in an alley, but it was darn close. I hid out north
of the city and got word to Bea to leave the lake house for a few days. Then I
came up here and poked around, but it didn’t look like anybody’d
found the place.”
“So you don’t know how they were on to us.”
“Couldn’t have been on my end, or they would’ve come up here,
too.” Owney said he figured they would need to leave the cabin
eventually, and he had some acquaintances scouting towns in California where
they might relocate and start his church.
It sounded believable. Even if Owney had ratted, he likely wouldn’t be a
free man, not with all he’d done. And the fact that he had taken in
Veronica and little Patrick argued against his culpability. Still, Jason was
haunted by the possibility that Owney had betrayed them. This was what life had
been like the past few months, Jason thought: haunted by possibility.
“Surprised to see Veronica here. The plan had been for her and Darcy to
wait for us outside Valparaiso.”
“After you and Whit didn’t show, they split up and she hid with
family in Iowa. When she heard the news about you, she got scared—said
she figured the feds would be after her, too, and that she’d be safer
with us than with her family.”
Now it was Owney’s turn to toss questions. He asked Jason to explain
Points North and all the headlines. And what happened to the money
Jason had been carrying, a third of which was technically
his? Jason fed him the same badly cooked hash of half-truths he’d fed
Marriner: that they’d been robbed that night but didn’t know who
had done it. The expression on Owney’s face showed he didn’t trust
the taste.
“So … it’s all gone?”
Jason nodded. “Have you heard anything from Brickbat and Roberts?”
“I haven’t heard anything from
anyone
up
here—that’s the point. But especially them.”
Jason took a last bite of chicken, giving Owney time to linger on the question.
“But you’re thinking they could be behind it.” Owney thought
for a moment. “I wouldn’t have thought Brickbat capable of yaffling
anyone— too long a job for him. He’s more the shoot-and-grab type.
I can see him
wanting
to do it, sure. Maybe Roberts is masterminding it,
with Brickbat the muscle to keep the other guys in line?”
“It’s a theory. Best one I have at the moment. And since
you’re the one who did the honor of introducing me to that sorry son of a
bitch—”
“You’re going to take that grudge to the grave, aren’t
you?”
“And beyond. The grudge isn’t the point, though. You know him
better than I do, so I want to hear about his family, old friends, where they
live, everything.”
They tried to recall every comment Brickbat or Roberts had made about their
pasts, Jason scribbling a long list of possible locations spread throughout the
Midwest. Many of the sites he rejected immediately—if they’d
kidnapped Darcy, they were unlikely to be hiding out in Chicago or Detroit.
They’d need a big place to fit their gang, plus a room or two where Darcy
could be hidden without any neighbors spying her. Or even
overhearing—that ruled out apartments. It would be a house, probably a
farmhouse, of the type the Firefly Brothers and their gang had often hidden in
during their early days.
Jason looked at the list and tried not to panic. It could take a week to visit
all the possibilities, and there was no guarantee Darcy was being held at any
of them.
Owney’s mind had already drifted. “You know, Jason, I got a
thought. Could be some money in it. A
lot
of money. Assuming you stay
underground and people still think you’re dead and all, once I’ve
started my
church I could resurrect you. I’d
give a sermon on the healing power of penitence and forgiveness, and
you’d walk in from the back door, a no-good criminal risen from the dead,
come to apologize to the Lord and be rebaptized by my hand.”
Jason tried not to look horror-struck.
“I mean, golly, what a scene! I could time it with one of the retreats
I’m planning, a big powwow under tents and all, when attendance is at its
peak. This would be the big showstopper. Telling you, the money would
pour
in. You’d get a cut, of course.”
“I’ll have to think about it.”
Jason could never tell whether the church idea was a con or Owney felt that the
profit motive was just one facet of a legitimate religious experience. The man
did read from the Bible quite often, and prayed before every endeavor, and
there had been many an afternoon when Jason was subjected to that damned Father
Coughlin on the radio, excoriating the evils of gamblers and international
bankers and Orientals. But the recited passages and the nods toward piousness
never got in the way of Owney’s pulling the trigger or swinging a club
when needed. Jason had met him in prison, where Owney had beaten men beyond
recognition at least twice.
Jason stood. “Thank Bea for the food, Owney.”
“You’re leaving
now?”
“Guess that means I’m leaving Whit with you. Sorry about
that.”
“Jason, it’s ten o’clock. Spend the night. You’ll only
fall asleep and drive into a ditch if you leave now—you aren’t
doing Darcy any favors that way.”
He waited a moment, then grudgingly sat back down.
“I don’t think I’ve ever seen you so worried before.”
“I usually hide it better.”
Owney clapped Jason’s shoulder. “C’mon, buck up, there. She
might not be enjoying herself, but she’ll be all right. Folks always come
out of these snatch jobs okay. They want the old man’s money, so they
won’t touch her.”
Jason nodded, although he didn’t agree.