Earlier this month, right before their death, Cary himself had received the tip he’d been waiting for: the Firesons had finally laundered their money and were due to pay off their old partner, Owney Davis, at a restaurant in Detroit. Again a building was surrounded, and surely past mistakes would not be repeated. New ones were made instead: somehow the Firesons sniffed out the trap, driving past the restaurant without stopping, speeding onto the highway, and escaping after a short chase.
Still, they would meet their maker that night. Meaning that the mysteries of those impossible escapes no longer mattered. Mythmakers could invent whatever explanations they wished. Had the brothers really sent death threats to President Roosevelt and half his cabinet? Who knows. Did they really operate a pirate radio station based in the southern Midwest, broadcasting secret intelligence to their legions of fellow hoodlums? Who cares. Was Jason really a mystic who could pass through walls and read the thoughts of his pursuers? Cary thought, Let the people think what they want.
He wasn’t surprised the press was now reporting on all the crazy Fireson spottings—they’d done the same after Dillinger was killed. Like the other agents, he laughed at the stories and did his best to focus on facts as they searched for the remaining Public Enemies.
Still, the stories served as a good reminder that he should call the Points North police and check on the recovery of the missing bodies. After a two-minute delay, he was connected to an officer who claimed that several leads were being pursued. The man’s explanations withered under further questioning.
“Honestly, Agent Delaney,” the officer said, yawning, “we don’t feel too good about our chances. They’re probably at some freak sideshow in the Yucatán by now, in which case it’s kinder out of our jurisdiction, y’know? We’d love to have those bodies back, maybe do some more photo shoots if they haven’t gotten too decomposed yet. But I doubt that whoever took ’em stuck around inside county lines. So it’s a state job now, or maybe federal. You boys interested in taking over the search party?”
Cary tried to imagine a more thankless task than tracking corpse thieves. “I think we have other priorities at the moment, but thanks for the offer.”
“Oh, that reminds me. Chief Mackinaw wanted me to ask you when we should expect that reward check.”
Cary tapped his pencil on the desk. “Exactly three days after you find those bodies.”
He hung up before the officer could object. He tried not to walk over to the other agent’s desk and read the Tribune story about the Fireson sightings, tried to focus on real facts. But he couldn’t resist. He grabbed the paper and sped through the article, shaking his head at it all.
People believed the damnedest things.
XI.
Stories of the Firefly Brothers, John Dillinger, and Pretty Boy Floyd had inspired a litany of misguided and maladroit imitators across the land. A handful were successful, their hijinks mistakenly attributed to one of the more famous outlaws, but most tended to be as spectacularly unsuccessful as their earlier efforts to find honest work.
In Chillicothe, Ohio, an evicted farmer drove a stolen tractor through the front entrance of the bank that had foreclosed on his property. He succeeded in ramming the door down, but in doing so he trapped the vehicle between the brick walls. He rustled a few hundred from a teller before climbing over his tractor and sprinting down the street, where he was shot dead by the local sheriff, a Great War veteran and an expert marksman.
In Dalesville, Illinois, an unemployed accountant who had been conned by a huckster into buying a “bulletproof” vest made of tin and iron marched into his local bank, which had been put on alert after the Dillinger Gang robbed a nearby institution. The overconfident robber had taken his time looting the vault and, upon exiting, was shot to pieces. Witnesses claimed the sound of bullets piercing the man’s metallic harness was almost musical, like coins plinking a pond’s surface as they’re transformed into wishes.
In Flint, Michigan, two laid-off assembly liners from the nearby Pontiac plant ignited smoke bombs inside a bank as they made their entrance. It had been a hot but breezy day, and the smoke funneled in circles around the men, a miniature smoke devil. One had coughed until he collapsed, and the other, frantic from blindness and from the sound of his accomplice gagging, ran headlong into a stone wall and fell unconscious.
Countless getaway drivers shut their engines off during the job, only to find that they wouldn’t restart; or they decided to parallel park, and afterward wasted precious seconds freeing their vehicle as the police surrounded them. Other robbers panicked at the sight of oblivious officers strolling the sidewalks outside and announced themselves by firing unnecessary shots through the bank’s windows.
In Liberty, Missouri, four ex-convicts actually would have accomplished their heist were it not for inconvenient timing: they emerged from the bank only to find their escape route being closed off for the town’s annual policemen’s parade. They were enthusiastically apprehended.
A former, excommunicated communist in St. Cloud, Minnesota, was killed by his own dramatic entrance, firing a shotgun into a bank’s ceiling, whereupon a five-foot-wide chunk of ornately inscribed plaster dropped twenty feet and crushed his skull.
And, of course, there were the robbers who succeeded only in locking themselves in bank vaults. This always brought a smile to Jason’s lips. He liked knowing that his skill was so extraordinary.
He was left to reflect on this as he sat with Marriner in the stolen Pontiac, reading a story in the morning edition of the Sun about an Estonian immigrant who had tried to rob a bank the previous day in Lexington, Kentucky, armed with an antique musket he had stolen from a Civil War museum. The bank manager had calmly explained that the weapon would not fire, but the thief’s grasp of English had proved less adept than his grip on the musket, which he butted into the manager’s forehead after its trigger indeed refused to budge. The immigrant had been overtaken by heroic bank customers and was being held on charges of assault, attempted robbery, and desecration of a historic site.
Jason put down his paper and checked the pocket watch he’d borrowed from Marriner. It was not yet nine o’clock and they were parked across the street and a few storefronts down from Third National of Lincoln City. It was the third morning Jason had studied the bank’s opening procedures, the habits of its staff and the security guard. The previous day, wearing fake eyeglasses and a thin beard, Jason had taken a closer look at the interior by opening an account with a ten-dollar bill and false identification, both of which Marriner had provided—the old man was an expert forger. Jason had been in Third National before, of course, as had Whit, to make deposits for Pop when they were kids, but that had been years ago. The tellers were new and Jason didn’t recognize anyone.
“Guard’s older than you,” Jason commented as they watched the codger enter the bank.
“Imagine that,” Marriner replied. “Miracle he’s still alive.”
“Morning, Mr. President,” Jason narrated as the staff entered the building. “And those are the two assistant managers. A maximum of three tellers.”
The nearest police station was twelve blocks away. Third National sat in the middle of Taft Street, a wide avenue that cut through the north end of downtown. Whit and the two rookies Marriner had recruited had spent the past two days timing various paths out of town.
“So tell me about this bank,” Marriner said.
“Restaurants from Taft and the busier side streets make their deposits every morning around ten and again in the afternoon before closing. Bank is flush every other Thursday to cash paychecks for the tire plant on Fourth; other factories in town do Fridays, so they’re unusual. Big baseball series this week means the local places are doing decent business. It’s a sweet pea: there’s only one guard, the cops don’t—”
“That’s not what I meant. Tell me about this bank.”
A pause. “They backed a bunch of loans to my old man when he started buying up property in ’28. After he opened a s
econd and third grocery, he was starting to buy up lots in the factory district to build new apartment buildings, on account of the workers seemed to be making more bread.” He shook his head. “My old man’s delusions of grandeur were based on the idea that other people wouldn’t be failures.”
A car started idling behind Jason’s, waiting for him to leave the spot. Jason waved it on.
“Crash hits, factory cuts its hours, its wages, its men. New supermarkets open nearby and undercut the family stores. Then the cash-poor factories start paying in scrip, meaning the stores have to accept scrip and cross their fingers that the factory gets its money soon so it can pay ’em back. Weeks roll by, my old man’s pulling his hair out. Thought I’d told you all this.”
“I’m remembering.”
“My old man can’t meet the mortgages for all this worthless property, can’t meet the mortgage for his own home, can’t even buy new inventory for his stores. Asks his suppliers to stretch him. Begs the banks to let the mortgages float for a bit, or take the scrip, but they won’t budge on either score. Knocks on the factory owners’ doors, raises hell. Goes to one of his real-estate partners, Garrett Jones, begs him for a loan. Jones was a retired bank man, lived well and liked to dabble, and somehow he and Pop had met a few years back. They’d—”
“This Jones have a relation to Third National by any chance?”
Jason nodded. “Used to run it, yes. Anyway, Jones was retired by then, but he and my old man had gone in on most of the real-estate moves together, Pop borrowing like crazy, Jones throwing in, too, but it wasn’t such a hard shake for him since he was loaded anyway. When things got tough, Pop thought Jones would come through for him, help him with some payments, or maybe twist some arms at the bank. But Jones wasn’t inclined to throw good money after bad, and he said so. One night Pop stops by Jones’s place, and maybe Pop had had a few drinks, and after he’d begged and pleaded again, maybe he made some threats that Mrs. Jones overheard. The next night, while Mrs. Jones is out playing bridge, her husband either shoots himself in the head or gets murdered in his den, depending on your view of human nature.”
“And this is all the bank’s fault?”
Jason breathed. “I didn’t say that.”
“But you aren’t not saying it.”
“True. I’m not not saying it.”
“And Whit believes it.”
“With every fiber of his being. Whit was the baby of the family, so for some reason Pop didn’t ride him like he did me and Wes. Whit idolized him, so he took things the hardest. We’ll have to keep an eye on him tomorrow. He’ll be tempted to blow up the building on the way out.”
“You remember I wanted to put blanks in his gun the first time?”
“I remember.”
“You remember I was right?”
“Did I ever fail to listen to you again?”
The old-timer smiled. “I’ll say this for you, Jason Fireson: you never make the same mistake twice.”
“That’s because there are so many others to get around to.”
Customers started entering the bank at nine o’clock.
With the little money Marriner had left to his name, he had rented two rooms in a motel across the river, a base of operations for these few days of planning. The Firefly Brothers would hit Third National tomorrow morning, escape, regroup, then hit a smaller but equally attractive bank in Hudson Heights, a short drive south, near the Kentucky and Indiana borders. It was the best way to make a big score before the cops caught on that the Firefly Brothers were still out there. With the combined take and just a small crew to split it with, Jason had told his brother, they could find the girls and cash out of this increasingly dangerous career, head west and figure out a way to reinvent themselves one last time.
Jason had never pulled two endeavors in one day, but hell, he could use a challenge.
They sat there watching the bank, counting foot traffic.
“We were just a working family trying to move up, whatever that means. And then trying to get higher still. Like I said, delusions of grandeur.”
“American dream.”
“Same thing.”
Across the street, a portly beat cop walked past the bank at 9:25, exactly when he had the past two days. Ten more minutes and they’d seen all they needed to.
“One thing I always wanted to ask you. About your old man.”
“Go ahead.” He knew what was coming.
“Do you think he did it?”
“No.” He dead-eyed Marriner. “You ask Whit that question, he’s likely to shoot you.”
The next morning they woke at sunrise. The blinds on the motel windows were just beginning to glow as they dressed and donned their bulletproof vests. They methodically rechecked their weapons, half listening to Marriner’s radio for news of a downtown accident or anything that might affect their plans. One last time, they had the rookies recite their instructions. By the time the Firefly Brothers stepped outside, the sun was above the trees and so hot it seemed to be aimed directly at them.
THE SECOND DEATH
OF THE
FIREFLY BROTHERS
Already the stories were coming to life.
When news got around that the Fireson family had not yet held a funeral or a memorial service, that set ablaze the public’s appetite for fantastic stories. More people claimed to have spotted the brothers, despite their alleged demise. They were seen robbing banks, holding up gas stations, saving the elderly from burning buildings. They were impregnating ex-lovers, coaxing kittens from flimsy branches, delivering impromptu sermons at Congregationalist services. They’d sent death threats to Republican governors and donated food to Hoovervilles. They were beating communist insurgents, wooing widows, helping crippled war veterans carry their groceries.
It was Dillinger all over again. He’d been sighted in all forty-eight states, Canada, Mexico, Cuba, England, and even Sicily, all since the day he was shot dead by federal agents while leaving a Chicago movie house. Dillinger’s sister, after viewing the somewhat unfamiliar body in a police morgue (her brother had recently undergone plastic surgery, bad dye jobs, and other degradations), insisted that it wasn’t the Johnnie she knew and loved, sparking a fury of conspiracy theories and tall tales. The authorities had quickly arranged for a second viewing, and only after she had been shown certain scars and birthmarks did she recant. By then it was too late; the stories were out.
People were equally suspicious about the reports of the Firefly Brothers’ deaths. Everywhere I went, people were questioning reality. You really think some country cops could just stumble upon the great Firefly Brothers that way? the elevator operator in my building said with a laugh. If the Firesons had escaped from so many stakeouts and ambushes before, why would this one be any different? the shoeshine boy asked. Soon people were saying that the Points North cops had lost the bodies; it was never in the papers, but the rumor was everywhere, whispered and then shouted. There was speculation that those dead guys in the photograph weren’t really Jason and Whit but some bums that J. Edgar Hoover had rounded up, nothing but a government ploy to convince us that Washington was still in control. “What should you believe anymore?” people would say to me with a shrug.
The stories only grew stronger after the dead Firefly Brothers were spotted robbing a bank in their hometown.
XII.
Whit felt buried alive. His arms were useless and some immovable weight was pinning him down, making breathing impossible. He couldn’t see. Jesus, what had happened? Memories rushed at him. The job at Third National—no, the second job, that’s right, hadn’t they tried two in one day? Did that explain why he was lying here like … hell, where was he?
The memories were winning the fight, handily, and he felt all the more buried, each regret another thug and every mistake another goon leaping atop the pile, pinning him down. The cop with the Thompson. The crowd on the street. Each face from this long litany of crimes, each body flinging itself upon him. He needed to breathe.
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He screamed as he pushed his arms out, and whatever was on top of him rolled off. Panting, he sat up and leaned against something. He felt behind him: metal, and a tire. A car, then. He stood and reached into the open window, found the steering wheel, heard the keys clink as his clumsy fingers brushed against them, then turned the switch for the headlights.
He was inside a garage, but not one he recognized. It was exceptionally clean and free of clutter, except for the body on the ground.
Whit was fairly certain who it was. He took a breath, steadying himself, then bent down, grabbed it by the shoulder, and rolled it over. Even though he’d been expecting it, he still gasped. Jason’s eyes were shut, blood-stained dirt caking his left temple and jaw. Just above his temple, a shiny tangle of hair was thick with a combination of pomade, dried sweat, blood, and worse. Whit stepped back, turned around, and gagged. But nothing came out—he’d probably emptied himself already. When he had died.
There didn’t seem to be any way to deny it this time. Whit turned around and saw that the ground he had been lying on was nearly black. He inspected himself. He wasn’t wearing his jacket anymore, and his bulletproof vest was stiff with blood. When he moved it made crinkling sounds, bits flaking off. The material was a shredded mess.
Good God. It really happened. We really died before. And now we’ve died again.
The Many Deaths of the Firefly Brothers: A Novel Page 18