After mopping their blood out of the car—which they would soon need to exchange for another one, assuming it had been spotted by the cops after the second job—they had checked into a motel across town to clear their heads. Then Whit had gone out to buy the paper.
“I’m sorry, Jason,” Whit said as his brother scanned the article again.
Jason stood with arms folded tight as he pondered various angles and arranged the events into the best timeline he could figure.
“Think it’s a real job?” Whit asked.
“I don’t know.” Thinking, I was off planning a goddamn endeavor while this was happening to her.
“She might not have gotten the telegram,” Whit said. “She still thinks we’re dead, so she figures this is her only chance to make a score off the old man. That makes sense….”
“Which is what I don’t like about it. Nothing else has been making sense lately.”
After letting his brother think for a bit, Whit asked Jason what he wanted to do.
“I want to know what her father knows.”
“But he’s probably surrounded by police right now.”
“And he never much liked me anyway.” Jason shook his head. “Let’s make a call.”
At an earlier point in his career, it had occurred to Jason that bands of criminals rarely stick together for long periods of time for the same reasons that bands of musicians don’t. Robbing banks was similar to the musician’s craft, in that it involved taking the wild ideas flying through your mind and transmuting them into reality. A jazz or ragtime band was formed because the seven or so guys were possessed by similar spirits, but as time passed they would come to realize that their inner visions were no longer concentric. Either the band would dissolve or, worse, they’d take the stage while their minds were set to different rhythms and tempos. The result would be unsyncopated disaster at best, drunken fistfights at worst. Gangs of bank robbers were much the same, Jason realized, only they carried firearms.
In his months of pulling endeavors, Jason had taken on and jettisoned nearly a dozen associates. If Darcy had been kidnapped by any of their former allies, then Jason and Whit had a long list of suspects.
It would have been even longer if not for the fact that, as Jason had told Marriner, so many of their cohorts were now in jail or dead. The Firesons’ associates liked to joke that the brothers had become folk heroes, but the end result of such notoriety was not good. Hiding in obscurity was far more difficult when your cartoon-colored face was all over National Detective magazine and your mug shot ran in dozens of midwestern rags. Running across state lines made little difference now that the feds were knitting the nation’s various municipalities, cities, and states into a cohesive whole. Officers in towns Jason had never heard of had studied his MO, memorized his height and weight. Despite the fact that many people embraced their Robin Hood aura, others were tempted by the reward money.
And thus the Firefly Gang was picked off, piece by piece. During the Federal Reserve job in Milwaukee, a brawny high schooler had tackled the street torpedo, and an old tax lawyer had shot at them from his second-story window, killing Jake Dimes, a former racecar driver and the best wheelman Jason had ever known. Dimes had steered nearly every Firefly heist, but that damned lawyer had taken some ancient revolver from a wall display and lodged one behind Jake’s left ear, from across the street. When Jason emerged from the bank, Jake’s body was slumped on the dash, blood and gray matter strewn across the inside of the windshield. Jason’s only option had been to pull Jake’s body onto the road, wipe at the windshield with his handkerchief, and steer the Buick himself.
There had been a time when you could show up at a fellow’s funeral; funeral-home directors never wanted to disrupt a service by calling the cops, and usually the families in whichever small town were happy to have a famous outlaw pay his respects. But, with the wanted posters and the steep rewards, observing such rituals was unthinkable. Jake facedown on the Milwaukee pavement was the last image Jason had of his trusty wheelman.
Only days later, Gordy McGeorge, an old school chum Jason had known since his first bootlegging rap, had been ambushed by two plain-clothes in Peoria, where his twist had an apartment. Gordy had been pining after his girl and had swung by for a visit despite Jason’s advice to hold off. Feds had been staking out her apartment and spotted Gordy his second day in town; they followed him as he walked her to the local bowling lanes. Gordy had felt their presence and run off, but they gave chase and cornered him in an alley. He got off four shots, hitting brick walls and the windshield of a parked car, but the cops’ rounds were more numerous and better placed. He’d been gone three days when Jason saw the story in the paper.
Which was why the twice-resurrected Firefly Brothers needed to figure whether this was a real kidnapping or something Darcy herself was orchestrating. Darcy had once floated that idea, but Jason had vetoed it. For days Owney and the others had needled him to reconsider, arguing that it would be safer than an endeavor. Maybe Owney had gone forward with it as a strange favor to Darcy—with Jason and Whit dead and their money vanished, Darcy and Veronica had been left with nothing. Owney would help her stage a kidnapping as a way of assuring the dead men’s girls of a comfortable widowhood, a criminal variation on laborers at a wake slipping twenties to the lady in black.
If it wasn’t Owney, then it wasn’t a fake kidnapping at all. In which case the top candidates would be Brickbat Sanders and his shady sidekick Elton Roberts, who also had been present when Darcy proposed her idea. Brickbat and Roberts could have turned rat, somehow causing the brothers’ initial apprehension. Or they might have been lying in wait all this time for the moment they could grab Darcy. Or maybe both: first they point the feds in the right direction so the Firefly Brothers can be vanquished, and then, with Darcy’s protective shield removed, they move to score a ransom.
Still debating the angles, Jason and Whit walked to the outdoor pay phone that hid in the far corner of the motel lot. Jason shouldered the booth open, dropped a nickel, and gave the operator a number he had committed to memory but hoped never to use.
Two rings later, a young secretary informed him with a tone bordering on joy that he had reached the office of Windham Automotive Manufacturing. He asked for the boss, and in turn was asked what this was regarding.
“His daughter.”
“Sir, Mr. Windham thanks everyone for their concern and good wishes, but he must—”
“Sweetheart, I’m not a well-wisher, and I’m not some bounty hunter or clairvoyant wasting his time. He’ll want to take this call, and he’ll blame you if he doesn’t get it, so go get him, please.”
A pause, and then Jason was asked to hold. He looked at Whit, who was carefully eyeing the drivers of the few cars that passed.
A new voice, gruff and already annoyed. “Who is this?”
“Someone who wants to find your daughter a lot more than you probably do, you crooked bastard.”
“Excuse me?”
“We’ve never had the pleasure of meeting face-to-face, though we’ve shared words a couple times. But never mind past history. Usually someone in your position doesn’t get the cops involved, but because you never really cared about Darcy I’m betting you’re letting them monitor this. Since you’re willing to share information with them, share it with me: what have the kidnappers told you so far?”
“This … this can’t be who I think it is.”
“Of course not. That would be ludicrous.”
“Then … to whom am I speaking?”
“The archangel Gabriel. I want to find Darcy before the kidnappers get impatient with your hedging on them. Which I’ll bet you’ve been doing. I’ll bet you even tried to bargain them down, you crooked bastard.”
“This is … most unusual.”
“You don’t know the half of it. But here’s all you need to be concerning yourself with: I’m a guy that can help you out. And it won’t cost you a cent, because I don’t want your crooked money. I just wa
nt to find Darcy. So tell me whatever they’ve told you so far.”
Jason heard voices whispering on the line. He visualized half a dozen cops and maybe even reporters scribbling away in their notebooks. Windows open, fans blaring, pages fluttering in the wind.
“They want two hundred thousand, in tens and fives. They don’t—”
“I don’t care what they want from you. Of course, you’d start with the money. Tell me what they’ve said, what they’ve hinted, how they’ve communicated—pen or type, postmarks, carrier mail or people showing up at your door, that sort of thing.”
Windham stuttered for a moment. He was the kind of person who dictated the dimensions of his universe, not the type who gazed heavenward to interpret some greater power. He was having difficulty adjusting to his new position in the spinning infinity.
“I, er, I received a phone call when they first took her. I didn’t even know it had … occurred until they informed me, so I sent a man to her apartment to look for her.” So he’d already known about her Chicago apartment. “The police confirmed that—well, that there had been a scene at—”
“What’d the caller sound like?”
“He was whispering, raspy. It was a short conversation. I didn’t—I didn’t quite understand at first. He might have been an Italian.”
Wealthy victims of extortion always thought the kidnappers were Italian or German. Any hick kidnapper knew enough to fake an accent to throw them off.
“Any other calls?”
“None. They instructed me to choose an intermediary, and I picked my business partner, Septimus Grant. He’s been receiving the notes: once by post, with a Chicago postmark, and the other two were left on his doorstep.”
“Which is why you’ve been going about business as usual while waiting for word, you crooked bastard.”
“I am not accustomed to being spoken to this way, Gabriel.”
“Yeah, I’m sure the kidnappers have been real polite.”
The titillated operator interrupted to request more coins from Jason, who fed the machine.
“Who are the cops looking for?” Jason asked.
“I, er, I have not involved myself in all of the detecting details. I don’t feel I sh—”
“Of course not; you don’t care.” Already he was looking forward to the satisfaction of hanging up on the old man, but not until he learned more from him. “Read me the first ransom note. Have whichever dumb cop is standing next to you go fetch it.”
Jasper Windham had once telephoned Jason, months ago, to warn him against using Darcy for any moneymaking gambits. The old man had startled and impressed the bank robber with his ability to procure the number of one of Jason’s hideouts; Darcy had mentioned that her father had Mob connections. Windham wasn’t calling out of love but self-interest. “She’s been cut out of the will already,” the auto baron had informed him then, “so marrying her will yield nothing. And if you or anyone you know is considering kidnapping or some other con, don’t bother, because I won’t pay a dime for that hussy. I’m telling you now only because I’d rather not have my good name dragged into the papers by such foolishness. Do with her as you please, but don’t expect to involve me in any of it.”
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.
It 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.
&
nbsp; “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.
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