Thomas Mullen - The Many Deaths of the Firefly Brothers

The brothers’ share of those unspendable bills only grew when one of their two remaining partners was gunned down by cops in a Peoria alley. Jason read about it in the paper.

Finally, they found a trustworthy guy who knew a guy who knew a guy who could pass the hot bills while on a gambling expedition to Cuba. The laundering fee would be steep; the chiseler had insisted that washing money for the Firefly Brothers was an extreme risk, as was doing business in Cuba. But it was the best Jason and Whit could do. Stomach fluttering, eyes especially vigilant after the Toledo escape, Jason had handed two very heavy suitcases to this stranger he had just met, who was boarding a flight for Havana and would supposedly be coming back to the States for a Detroit rendezvous with the Firesons two weeks later.

Miraculously, the fence did return, with seventy thousand clean bills—less than they had agreed upon, but he claimed he had run into some trouble abroad and had needed to dip into the funds for some healthy bribes. Jason shook the washer’s dirty hand and took the money. Now, at long last, he and Whit could disappear and start a restaurant in California, or raise bulls in Spain, or whatever it was they had promised themselves and their girls they would do.

But they didn’t make it to Spain or California. They sent coded messages to Darcy and Veronica telling them to meet at a motel outside Valparaiso, noting that they would pick them up as soon as they paid a share to Owney Davis, Jason’s longtime collaborator and the lone survivor of their gang. They were supposed to meet Owney at a restaurant in Detroit, the night after getting the money washed. Neither could remember what had happened. Had they been shot while driving to the restaurant? That meant they somehow would have driven, badly injured, all the way from Detroit to Points North, which defied credulity, but no more so than their current existence. And if they had been shot in Detroit, did that mean Owney had betrayed them? Or maybe the drop-off with Owney had gone as planned but then something had happened during their long drive through Michigan and into Indiana to meet the girls. But what, exactly? And why Points North, which was a good twenty miles from Valparaiso? What on earth had happened that night?

So now, home. Normally they called their mother before visiting, using their code phrase (“I was just checking to see if the furnace needs oil”) in case the phones were tapped. But if the cops were still listening to her line, and if they were wise to the code, then calling would raise new suspicions. There was no way to tell what the Points North cop from the night before had told his colleagues, but Jason was betting on the fact that the cop would keep the bizarre encounter to himself, even after the alarm was raised about the missing bodies. For who would believe such a story? The cops had gone to the extent of announcing that the Firesons were dead, so police nationwide at least believed it to be true. That meant they would find some way to fit the fact of the brothers’ escape into their predetermined reality, and it was up to the brothers to hide in the shadows of logic that such lies cast.

“What if Ma’s already heard about our…‘apprehension’ by now?” Whit asked.

“If the gas station kid had, then she has, too. Reporters were probably calling her all night to ask for a comment.”

They were off the highway now, driving through occasional farm towns that had prospered during the war but had sickened and withered years before their malaise was shared with the rest of the country. Ten miles west of Lincoln City, they were winding through a particularly desolate hamlet when Jason pointed to a general store that sat between a vacant building and a farm equipment rental-and-supply company.

Whit parked in front. The sidewalks were empty and the light felt golden, dozens of suns reflecting from store windows.

Jason reached into his pocket and handed Whit one of the cop’s dollars. “Here, you’re the one wearing shoes.”

Whit walked into the store. Jason rolled down his window and let his arm dangle, feeling the light breeze of night’s retreat. His fingertips were no longer black, as he and Whit had stopped by a closed filling station late at night to rinse their hands with a hose.

When Whit walked back out of the store, his facial expression was grim. Jason did notice that Whit looked less gray than he had the night before, and he glanced down at his own arms and saw that the same was true of him, as if their bodies were recovering from…recovering from what?

But they still didn’t look quite right.

“We made the front page,” Whit said, closing the door behind him and opening the Lincoln City Sun between their seats.

Before Jason could read the enormous, Armistice-sized headline, his eyes were drawn to the photograph below it. Five policemen were smiling proudly. In front of them two bodies lay prone atop cooling boards, white sheets pulled to their armpits. Jason recognized the room. The bodies’ profiles were small enough in the picture for it to be possible to doubt who exactly they were.

FIREFLY BROTHERS GUNNED DOWN IN FARMHOUSE BATTLE

POINTS NORTH, Ind.—Jason and Whit Fireson, the Lincoln City natives and bank-robbing duo known as the Firefly Brothers, will terrorize no more financial institutions, murder no more officers of the law, and, one hopes, inspire no more misguided fealty among our more disaffected countrymen.

The Firefly Brothers were shot to death in a gunfight early Thursday morning that also claimed the life of Points North police officer Hugh Fenton, 42. Officers had been alerted by an anonymous tip that the brigands, who have at least seventeen bank robberies and five murders to their credit, were using an abandoned farmhouse outside the town of Points North as a temporary refuge during an attempt to flee the law and hide out in the western United States. More than a dozen Points North officers and deputies, led by County Chief Yale Mackinaw, surrounded the building under cover of darkness past midnight. After obtaining visual confirmation that the villains were in the building, Chief Mackinaw used a bullhorn to demand that they surrender. The brothers did not respond to that or to subsequent entreaties, and the intrepid officers stormed the building at approximately 1 A.M.

The Firefly Brothers, armed with Thompson submachine guns and automatic pistols, fired countless rounds from several weapons before they were vanquished. Chief Mackinaw would not divulge which of his officers fired the fatal shots, instead praising his entire force for its bravery and dedication.

Nearly $70,000 was discovered on the felons, the police reported.

“Those who choose to live outside the law will be brought to justice,” Chief Mackinaw said. “We gave the brothers ample opportunity to surrender, but they chose to try shooting their way out instead.”

The Department of Justice’s Bureau of Investigation had declared the Firefly Brothers the nation’s top Public Enemies three weeks ago, after its fatal ambush of John Dillinger eliminated him from those notorious ranks.

Jason Liam Fireson, 27, was unmarried and believed to be childless, though several young women have made claims to the contrary. Whitman Earnest Fireson, 23, was married and the father of an infant son, though the whereabouts of widow and child are unknown. The Firesons’ mother continues to reside in Lincoln City, where the desperadoes were born and raised, as does a third brother.

Calls to the Fireson residence requesting comment were sternly refused.

The story continued in that vein for many paragraphs, recounting bits of the brothers’ pasts, noting that they were “sons of a convicted murderer,” melding fact with legend and assuming readers were unaware of such alchemy. It offered no more details about the circumstances of their apprehension.