Thomas Mullen - The Many Deaths of the Firefly Brothers

“I just can’t see Owney rolling on us,” Jason said.

“If we assume there even was a rat and that there isn’t some other explanation, then if it wasn’t Owney, that leaves Brickbat and Roberts.”

“I wasn’t interested in getting mixed up with them anyway. All I wanted to know was whether it was safe to try to find Owney and get him in on the next endeavor. My take is maybe, but maybe not. So let’s avoid the risk and lure Marriner out of retirement instead.”

“You act like all you’re interested in is doing another endeavor. Like you couldn’t care less about finding out what happened to us.”

“It’s what I told Chance: I’m not interested in revenge. I just want to know who to avoid so we can make a score and cash out of this once and for all.”

Whit looked at Jason incredulously. “You’re saying you don’t want to figure out what the hell happened to us ?”

Jason sighed. As usual, it would be his job to keep them focused. “We can look into it once we get back on our feet, okay?”

Whit held his hands in front of his face for a moment, staring at them. He’d been doing that a lot lately, Jason had noticed. “We can still bleed, you know, if we cut ourselves.”

“That’s fascinating.”

“It hurts, too.”

The stars were still out but they faded as Jason drove back into Lincoln City. He hadn’t driven with so little fear in weeks—but he did check the rearview every few minutes, out of habit.

“No one’s following us,” he told his brother. “Being dead has its advantages.”

Darcy woke amid newspapers, smudges on her cheek. Her head was a desert scoured by a sandstorm, and she had no memory of the event or whatever had preceded it, no memory of anything since that policeman had helped her back to her building. She was in bed, the sun rudely shouting through the windows, and the first thing she saw when she opened her eyes was a headline about some FDR speech, and another about the Nazis’ latest grab for power, and another about…Yes, of course. That.

Darcy rose, and was reminded that she should move more slowly. Oh, my. She had forgotten about hangovers. If she drank in the face of death, what should she do after she’d stopped drinking? Death didn’t stop, so neither should the drinking. Sad how easily she slipped into past routines; this was how she had responded to her mother’s death, and now death was again chasing her to the bottle. Jason had always been so controlled, never overdoing anything, and she thought it had rubbed off on her. How sudden and irrevocable death was.

She rose from the bed and poured herself a gin. Then the bathroom, her penance, and next a long shower, holding the walls. Everything was vibrating, pulsating. She scrubbed the ink from her face and hands; she opened her mouth and drank hot mouthfuls from the shower. She wanted to clean her tongue, clean the insides of her skull. The worst part was knowing she would feel this way for so, so long.

Leaving the bathroom, she gathered up the newspapers, crushing the awful reality into a great crackling mass, and stuffed them into a wastebasket. The basket wasn’t big enough. She gathered the remainder and carried it into the kitchen, threw it into the bin. Her hands were filthy again. She walked back to the bathroom, willing herself not to cry, scrubbing at her fingers with soap, watching the dark remains of spiteful text swirl down the drain.

Minutes later, she was sipping ice water when the buzzer sounded. Western Union, the tired voice said. She buzzed him in before thinking that no one was supposed to know she lived here.

A knock on the door, a man in uniform sweating from the summer heat.

“Came by yesterday, ma’am, but there was no answer.”

She signed for the telegram without making eye contact. When he was gone, she tore it open. She read it once without understanding. She read it again. Images revealed themselves, sounds. Again. Voices now, textures. His laugh, the silk sleeve reaching out to touch her face.

PERFECT WEATHER FOR BIRD WATCHING / MIGRATING EARLIER THAN PREDICTED / DON’T BELIEVE EVERYTHING YOU READ / HAVE BINOS READY.

She crumpled to her knees. What?

“Don’t believe everything you read.” That’s what he always said, or some variation: don’t believe everything you hear, or everything they say, or everything you see, or everything you feel. His mantra—that life was a big trick, that the gullible were secretly guillotined while only those who doubted everything had a chance to escape. She had believed, for a day, and it had nearly killed her.

She was down the stairs and out the door in seconds. It was midday and the sidewalk was scalding on her bare feet. The Western Union truck’s engine had just started but she banged on the door before he could pull away. Who sent this?! When?! How?! The poor man didn’t know anything, shaking his head at her. There were no other messages, no other clues. Only this. A whisper in a graveyard. He drove off, left her standing there in her bathrobe, receiving looks.

Back inside, she tried Veronica again. Woman would not answer her phone. Did she know? Was she with them even now? Darcy hated her; she burned, envy lighting her aflame. She emptied the wastebasket, tore through the newspapers, and found the photographs. Well, they were grainy. She had thought that he looked so… different in them, but had assumed that was how it was in death. And now? She was crazy. Surely.

Could this be happening? She would kill him. If he were really alive, she would kill him when he came for her, for doing this to her. But, Lord, please let it be so.

She sat on the bed. She was crying again.

And, despite it all, there was pride. She knew it couldn’t possibly have ended this way, knew he wouldn’t have let that happen.

She remembered the time he first came for her, waiting on the sidewalk in front of his shiny new Ford. Here in Chicago, where an unconnected hoodlum like him was not welcome. Just standing there, as if absolutely certain that this was where he was meant to be.

She was off balance, amazed. The world was tipped from its axis, compasses swirling. But she did regain her composure enough to speak first, thank you.

“I’m afraid there’s no bank in my building, and my purse only holds so much,” she said.

It had been two weeks since her day on the running boards. After the brothers had left her at that farm, she had called the police, but mainly because she needed a ride home. She had found, when the cops questioned her, that she wasn’t all that interested in feeding them information; she had been vague in her answers, playing the role of flustered young lass until the cops pocketed their notebooks. Once back in Chicago, she’d read everything she could find about Jason at the library. He and his gang already had robbed another bank, or three, or seven, depending on which rumors were to be believed. Reporters couldn’t keep up: the Firefly Brothers were allegedly responsible for a train robbery in Utah, had orchestrated prison breaks in Missouri and Minnesota, robbed National Guard armories across the Midwest, and even made off with three fighter planes from a factory in western Pennsylvania, all in the past two weeks. They were suspected of being communist insurgents, or Nazi agents, or Confederate loyalists in the mold of Jesse James. They were committing crimes in Republican counties to help local Democrats in the upcoming election, or maybe the opposite. Mostly lies and conjecture, Darcy figured. But what fun it would be to try to find the truth hiding beneath it all.

She had seen an approximation of Jason’s face on a wanted poster outside the post office and had let her nails linger over the badly drawn cheek. Surely the police artist had never seen Jason Fireson with his own eyes, felt his presence.