The Many Deaths of the Firefly Brothers (26 page)

“So what’s it like?” Weston had asked Jason the last time
he’d seen him, a month earlier. It was almost midnight—Jason and
Whit had sneaked in hours earlier—and they were alone in their
mother’s dining room, Whit and Ma asleep upstairs.
“Like anything else. You do your work and make your money.”
“I didn’t mean the robbing part.”
“Then what did you mean?”
“The killing part.”
Jason had been about to take a sip of his drink when Weston said that. His hand
paused the slightest amount, but still he took the sip. “What makes you
think I’ve done that?”
“Papers say you’ve done quite a bit.”
“I told you not to believe everything you
read.”
“Okay. So the
Sun
said the number’s somewhere around seven.
Let’s say it’s really only two. Or even one.”
Jason tapped at the table with a tensed finger.
“I’ve never shot at anyone unless I had no choice.”
“Meaning …?”
“Meaning it was a situation where it was them or me.”
“In which case, you win.”
“Do you disagree with that?”
Weston bought himself time with a slow sip. “I guess I wouldn’t
know. I haven’t been in that situation.”
“Be thankful for it.”
Weston laughed.
“What?” Jason had been cool and composed, but now he seemed
insulted.
“You act as if you were
put
in that situation. Those situations.
Did someone put a gun to your head and force you to hold up those banks?”
Jason eyed him for a long silence. Then he smiled as if this had all been a
game. As if they were still kids.
“You’re funny, Wes.” Then Jason had stood and walked up to
what had once been, and would certainly always be remembered as, his bedroom.

Weston had been sitting at his desk for less than five minutes when his phone
rang.
“Douglasson Law Offices, Weston speaking.”
“Is this Weston Fireson?” A young man’s voice. The confident
kind of young man’s voice that made Weston realize that he himself was no
longer as young as he thought he was.
“Yes?”
“Mr. Fireson, my name is Cary Delaney. I’m an agent with the
Department of Justice’s Bureau of Investigation. I’ve been trying
to reach you.”
“Oh. Uh, hello.” He looked around furtively, then leaned forward in
his seat. Luckily, the office was still nearly empty.
“You’re a difficult man to reach.”
“I, uh, I don’t own a phone.”
“Yes, I’ve left several messages with different people at your
building. I guess they aren’t inclined to pass on messages.”
“It’s, uh, it’s not such a friendly building.”
“Sorry to bother you at work, but there seemed no other way.”
He felt his hands shaking. How had this Agent Delaney known that Weston showed
up at work early?
“I’m very sorry, but I’m not allowed to take personal calls
here.”
“Well, name the time and place and we’ll talk then. We have a lot
to discuss.”
“Look, sir, I just read the paper myself and I only know what I read. I
have nothing, absolutely nothing, to do with any of that.”
“I’m not saying I don’t believe you, Mr. Fireson. But that
still leaves us with much to discuss.” Weston heard voices in the
lobby—the secretary and one of the attorneys were walking in.
“Mr. Fireson,” Delaney continued, “I believe it’s been
explained to you what could happen if you don’t cooperate. I’d like
to talk to you about that, but also about what could happen
for
you if
you did. I’m sure this is a difficult time for you, but—”
“You have a good day, too, sir,” Weston interrupted as one of the
attorneys walked past. Then he hung up.
Weston was fired the following day.
“I’m sorry, Weston,” Douglasson said as Weston sat across
from him. It had been only a few seconds ago that Douglasson broke the news and
already Weston couldn’t remember exactly how he’d phrased it. The
shock had erased his memory of the act itself, leaving only the ramifications.
“I deeply admire the way you’ve conducted yourself through this
difficult time,” Douglasson went on. “I do feel that you deserve
better, but unfortunately right now a lot of people deserve better, and
there’s only so much I can do.”
Douglasson noted the recent downtick in government business and the moribund
real-estate market, as if Weston’s firing were a normal business
decision.
“Sir, if this is about the, uh, the man from
Chicago, I was hoping to give him a call—”
“As I said, there’s only so much I can do. I do wish your brothers
were as upstanding as you, Weston. But they are not, and though I very much
want to help you and your family, I’m afraid I’ve reached the limit
of what I can reasonably offer. I can’t put my own livelihood at stake. I
have a family, too.”
“Yes, sir, of course. But isn’t—”
“I’m very sorry, but my decision is final. Now, I know you had a
bonus promised to you come December, and due to your hard work so far this year
I’ve arranged to pay you a prorated bonus as a sort of severance.
Didn’t have to do that, of course, but I wanted to be fair.” The
old attorney stood up and walked toward Weston, one arm extended toward the
door.
In the lobby, the office secretary offered him a white envelope without making
eye contact.
Weston waited a second, as if he was being offered poison. Then he took the
envelope.
“Thank you, sir.” Was his voice always this quiet? “And thank
you again for hiring me.”
Douglasson nodded without speaking and did not offer to shake Weston’s
hand. Weston looked at him a final time before walking out.
Inside an empty elevator, he opened the envelope, which contained a check for
just under a week’s pay. Also nestled inside was a business card. It was
another of Agent Delaney’s.
Outside, because apparently nothing of interest had transpired in the past
twenty-four hours, the news seller was still hollering about Weston’s
brothers.

XVIII.

D
arcy had noticed clinking glasses and
the smell of booze over the past few days. The men were arguing, worse than
before. So many voices down there. Perhaps that meant …
She reached for her goggles, but Rufus scolded her. “Don’t,
miss.”
She was still under surveillance. His voice echoed oddly—he must have
been watching her room from the hallway. She wondered if they even bothered to
turn her light out at night.
An exterior door slammed, a car stuttered into alertness.
“Rufus, what’s happening?”
“Nothing’s wrong, miss. Go back to sleep.”
“Don’t lie, Rufus, it doesn’t become you. I haven’t
been asleep—I heard all that.”
The floor informed her of Rufus’s entrance into the room.
“What’s happening? Why hasn’t this ended yet?”
“Just go to sleep.”
“Your voice is dry and you sound like you’ve seen a ghost. Tell me
why you sound even more worried than me.”
He was so close now that she could practically feel him, his presence a
palpable thing, the air around her growing thick.
“I’m gonna ask you a question now, miss, and you gotta tell me the
truth.”
“I haven’t lied to you yet, Rufus, and I
don’t see any reason to start now.”
The whispering of a shirt collar, as if he was looking behind him to ensure
that they were alone. He was crouching before her. “Are the Firefly
Brothers still alive?”
Her lips quivered in anticipation of her answer, but her throat grew too thick.
“Guys are concerned,” he continued, “because, uh,
there’s some rumors that the Firefly Brothers aren’t dead after
all.”
She was breathing more loudly than she meant to, her throat tighter and tighter
still.
“We didn’t believe it at first, figured it was just stories and
all, but now there’s word they might be … looking for us. I mean,
for you.”
Tears were seeping through her clamped eyelids.
“So I need to know,” Rufus said. “Is it true? Are they really
alive?”
Her windpipe was a champagne bottle. Pure joy, combined with the compressed
tension of too many days and too many bad dreams, finally opened it so her
voice could escape.
“Yes, they’re alive.”
She wanted to say something more but couldn’t, not yet. She gave a half
laugh of euphoria and relief, her voice and her face seeming to crumple upon
themselves.
“How?” he asked. “I saw the pictures in the paper. For Chrissake,
there’s no way that could’ve been bogus. What’d they do, pay
off the reporters?”
“I can’t explain it all to you, Rufus.” Her throat still
hurt, her voice hoarse. “Even I don’t understand everything.”
“Goddamnit!”
His voice grew softer as he paced into the
corner of the room, then boomeranged as he returned. “Goddamnit. Knew
this was a bad idea. Never shoulda played the snatch game.”
“Talk to
me
, Rufus, not to yourself. Why does this matter to
you?”
“Well, miss, I don’t mind a bunch of cops looking for me. I can
handle cops—been handling ’em all my life. But Jason and Whit
Fireson—well, that’s something else.”
Darcy was familiar with the brothers’ aura. The fact that someone as
gentle and kind as Jason could elicit such fear in others was a source of wonder
for her, though she was never shy about using it to her advantage. And she
sensed an advantage.
“How did they fake their death?” Rufus
whined.
“It seems you don’t know as much about the Firesons as I thought
you did, Rufus.”
“What do you mean?”
“All right.” She sighed dramatically, her emotions cooling as she
played her new hand. “You’ve been good enough to open up to me, so
I’ll tell you a secret of my own. I’d be lying if I said I
understood it, but … the Firesons aren’t regular men. They have
these …
abilities.”
She could almost hear him swallow. “I heard about this.”
“Yes, you know the time they were surrounded at some restaurant in
Toledo? What was it, a dozen federal agents, watching the building for two
days? They see Jason walk in, they storm the place … and he’s gone.
How do you explain that?”
“I don’t know, I don’t know.”
“He knows what’s coming before anyone else does. He’s driving
with a target in mind, then he sees a message in the clouds and he realizes his
destination is being watched, so he turns around, hits a different bank
instead.”
“How? How can he do all that?”
“He walks through walls. He can change faces, slip through
stakeouts.” She knew she was pushing it now, but she couldn’t
resist. “Bullets pass through him, Rufus. I wash the man’s clothes,
and there have been times, after he’s robbed a bank, when I’ve
noticed
bullet holes in his jacket
, in his shirt. Bullet holes, but no
blood. How do you explain that?”
“Jesus …”
“I may share a bed with the man, but I can’t say I fully understand
him. I don’t think anyone
can.”
She was speaking quietly
now, as if frightened herself. “Rufus, there are times when he’s
read my mind. Where he tracked me down without my knowing how. The Chicago
police took me in for questioning once”—a lie, but she was rolling
now—“and they were grilling me in some dark room;
I
didn’t even know where I was. It wasn’t even a police station, just
some warehouse where crooked cops drag witnesses they need to break.
They’d been interrogating me,
threatening
me, when suddenly Jason
and Whit showed up, spraying the room with bullets.”
“Jesus.”
“Jason hadn’t tailed anyone, hadn’t
any clues to go on. He just
knew
where I was. And that gunfight—my
God, I was terrified. It’s a miracle I wasn’t shot in the middle of
it. But it
wasn’t
a miracle, Rufus, it was
him.”
“How come I never heard about that?”
“The Chicago police do have their pride. They didn’t tell a soul.
Why do you think I’ve lived in Chicago all this time without being
bothered again? The police may have their hands full with the likes of Frank
Nitti, but Jason Fireson they
fear
. And Jason only causes trouble for
bankers and the law, crooked folks. But now, Rufus, you and your associates
have made the mistake of crossing him. And I’m sure he’s watching
over me now just as he was then. I’m sure he’s driving here, with
all his men, and planning the most ruthless way to—”
“I don’t want to hear about this.”
She waited a moment for his fear to steep. “I like you, Rufus.
You’ve shown yourself to be several steps above these Neanderthals you
surround yourself with. But you need to understand that once the Firesons get
here, once the shooting starts, there’s no way I’ll be able to stop
it. Jason can become quite bloodthirsty, particularly when my safety is
involved. He’s rather chivalrous that way,” and she smiled,
enjoying the feel of these fictions on her lips. Then she pursed the smile
away. “But also rather frightening. The only way to save yourself is
to—”
“Stop, stop. I just gotta think. Lie back down, miss. I gotta
think.”
“Rufus—”
Her entreaties for him to return went unanswered as his footsteps whispered
themselves silent. How could she be expected to sleep after this revelation
about Jason’s being alive? Or re-revelation, perhaps. What do you call it
when a truth is covered in lies but then shines through them?
She made a move to reach for her goggles, as Rufus didn’t seem to be
watching her anymore.
Don’t
. It was back.
Darcy waited a beat, refusing to wither again. “My, this gang is rather
efficient at relieving one another. One of you wanders off and the next one
immediately—”
Do we have to keep going over this? Rufus may wander off, but I don’t.
Never can. I may lie low from time to time, but I’m always here
.
She still didn’t want to admit that there was a voice in her head.
She’d
had them before, but she was so much
better now, wasn’t she? She hoped again that it was one of the
kidnappers, that she could jibe him into confessing his ruse.
“Whatever makes you happy, sir. So, isn’t it interesting that these
kidnappers seem so terrified of the allegedly deceased Firefly Brothers? They
certainly don’t seem the bravest of criminals, do they?”
Criminals aren’t necessarily brave. You’ve noticed that
yourself. Half the men Jason and Whit surrounded themselves with were cowards.
They only went through with their deeds out of pressure from their friends, and
isn’t that the greatest of cowardice?
“Oh, how I’ve missed your philosophical musings. So what do you
think will happen next? Will the foolish kidnappers negotiate with the old
duffer a bit more quickly now that they know my beloved is hot on their
trail?”
I wouldn’t be so sure. They aren’t
all
as frightened as
your Rufus. Some of them may actually be looking forward to Jason and Whit
showing up
.
“Ah, I insulted you. I’m so sorry.”
Why would I be insulted?
“Because you’re one of them, for heaven’s sake, and you know,
quite well, as Rufus said, that having
them
on your trail is quite a bit
different from some incompetent police dusting ransom notes for prints.”
But I’m inside you. Not something you see. Like indigestion, or a
stuttering problem, or alcoholism. Or the death of a loved one. Something you
have to live with. The sooner you accept that, the easier it will be when the
end comes
.
“‘The end.’ How cinematic. Am I supposed to be shivering
now?”
Footsteps returning to the room. “Who are you talking to?” Rufus
asked.
She had no idea how to respond.