XXIII.
Jason opened his eyes and stared into the lidless gaze of an animal almost too ugly to be real. Its bald head lurched to the side, stunned by the sight of moving carrion.
“Beat it.” Jason waved at the vulture. He slowly rolled onto his back, then touched his neck and face, glancing at his chest to make sure the vulture hadn’t torn off any chunks. The bird paced the room, staying a few feet from Jason but not yet admitting defeat. It squawked in outrage.
It had happened again. He wasn’t dead—at least, not anymore.
Jason looked at his left hand and saw that Darcy’s earring was impaled in his palm. He pulled the metal hook from his flesh. “Ouch.” A prick of fresh blood welled.
He had smelled her when he crawled into this room. Her perfume had been faint, and now he couldn’t smell anything but the foulness of death.
He was disgusting. His skin felt like a rubber suit, old sweat congealed and cooled and reheated again. A window was open, and desperate avian hunger had gnawed through the screen, but still the room was hot. It looked midday, the sun too high to be seen, the surroundings bleached and dry. He stood. He had indeed soiled his pants.
Unholstering the automatic he’d been unable to use the night before—at least, it felt like it had been only one night—he explored the upstairs. In the other two bedrooms he found some clothes, as well as a Thompson inexplicably left behind. Some of the clothes were short and squat, undoubtedly belonging to the bastard who’d killed him. But others would fit him well enough.
He heard movement from below. Slowly he walked downstairs, his pistol leading the way. Flies everywhere. The naked dead man at the foot of the stairs was still naked and still dead. Jason stepped around him, carefully avoiding the many puddles and trails of blood, some his own. Through a doorway he peered into the kitchen, where another body lay beneath the table. The house smelled very bad indeed.
The movement had come from dogs. There were three of them, surrounding the man on the couch whom Jason had gunned down first. Jason couldn’t see their snouts, but he knew what they were doing. He yelled at them to git. They didn’t listen. Looking to his left, he saw Whit’s slumped body—head still down, for which Jason was thankful. At least the dogs hadn’t gotten to Whit yet. Jason fired into the ceiling and the dogs craned their heads at him, startled but still unmoved. Yelling and stomping like a madman, he chased them from the building. Two of them leaped through the windows Brickbat had shattered, and the third escaped out the kitchen door. Jason took the quickest of glances at the body on the couch, enough to see that the dogs had already done quite a job.
He turned back to his brother and said his name. No reply. He decided he didn’t want to look at the face. He crouched before Whit and lifted his body over his shoulder. It didn’t feel as stiff as it probably should have, but Jason was no expert. Carefully he carried Whit to a powder room, knocking the toilet seat down with his foot, then leaning forward and lowering Whit onto it. Whit’s head flipped back and smacked against the wall. Jason didn’t look away fast enough. His brother had been shot in the forehead. The hole was small and round and black, burned by the mouth of Brickbat’s gun, and no blood seemed to have escaped from it. It had all come out the back. Jason looked down, then stepped out and carefully closed the door so no hounds or vultures or jackals would be able to nose in and disfigure his brother.
There was a bathroom upstairs. Taking a shower might not have been the wisest use of his time, but he felt too foul not to. And Jason Fireson always did his best thinking when he looked good.
His chest was unmarked, so the vest must have stopped the bullets from exiting his body. But they’d certainly done their damage. He looked over his shoulder to the small mirror and saw the wounds in his back, at least seven of them. They were gaping and strangely black, not just holes but omissions, erasures of his self. He twisted an arm behind his back and touched one, fingering the hardened roll of skin puckering around it.
He dressed in borrowed clothes, keeping only his shoes, the keys to the Terraplane, and his shoulder holster and automatic. Downstairs, the scavengers had not returned, and Whit was still inanimate.
“Hurry the hell up, Whit. I don’t want to deal with this by myself.”
There appeared to be no logic to their plight: at the Hudson Heights fiasco, Jason had died first, yet Whit had woken first. Now, the opposite. And still he couldn’t remember what had killed them the first time. He tried not to think of the possibility that Whit might not awaken, that he might be left to wander these nonsensical badlands alone.
He should have tied Whit to Veronica’s bed to prevent his brother from following him this far. Even when Jason tried to do the right thing, to protect those he loved, things only came out wrong. The right thing was confusing, and difficult, and sometimes Jason wondered if it was in fact a nonexistent ideal, like heaven or the American dream. There was no right thing. You did what you did for whatever reasons occurred to you at the time, depending on whichever emotion was running thickest in your blood. Your desire and fear and adrenaline and longing. You made your choice and came up with the reasons later.
Not that Jason had much experience trying to do the right thing. He had worked at the family store after his first jail stint, but that hadn’t lasted. By the time he left again, he and Pop had achieved an awkward truce; Pop seemed resigned to the fact that Jason was fraternizing with the old troublemakers and returning to past behavior, walking a path that would lead inexorably back to jail.
Still, Jason had been confident he wouldn’t get caught again. He was bootlegging, yes, but he was spending more time in the speakeasies and restaurants and less time behind the wheel, all with an eye to learning the restaurant business. Repeal would happen eventually, he figured, and then with the money he’d saved he could open his own, legitimate place.
One night, more than a year later, Jason was between rum runs and had stopped at home for dinner, as he tried to do about once a month. He was struck by how preoccupied Pop had become with the hard times and their impact on his business. The old man had always been consumed by his work, of course, but what before had seemed a healthy, if annoying obsession now looked more like demonic possession or mental illness, the old man frequently muttering to himself during dinner or scribbling notes that he stuffed into his pocket. That night Jason asked if he was all right, and Pop said, Sure, fine.
After dinner Jason and Pop listened to more terrible news on the radio, sipping scotch in the parlor. Pop poured a second, which Jason had never seen him do before, when he turned off the radio. His eyes had turned glassy, and Jason asked again if he was okay.
“Things have gotten … a bit out of hand,” Pop admitted. “I’m still trying to figure it all out myself, to be honest with you.” He shook his head.
Finally, he explained how the troubles in Lincoln City were affecting the store. He’d gone in on some real-estate deals just before the crash, but now the construction teams that were supposed to build new housing were pulling out. He was paying steep mortgages for empty land that no one would build on anytime soon, because who could afford to buy or even rent new homes? The new supermarkets were eating into his business, and, worst of all, the tire factories were so cash-poor they’d started paying their workers in scrip—Pop’s registers at the stores were filled with the useless paper, each slip a tiny wish. It was as if his entire life, a series of carefully configured financial transactions, were in fact a set of dominoes ready to tip.
Jason wasn’t sure what he was supposed to say. Pop had never been one to unburden himself like this.
“If you need some money, Pop, I’ve saved a good amount and—”
Pop shook his head, slashed at the air. “Oh, no, Jason, I’m not asking you for money.” An awkward laugh.
“I just meant, um, I’d like to help somehow if I can.”
“It would be great to have you back at the store.”
Jason shifted in his seat. “Ah, Pop, you know I’m no good at tha
t. I’d only make things worse somehow. Better to have Weston and Whit there.”
He talked in circles, telling Pop he was sure things would work out.
Ma and his brothers came into the room and they talked about other things. The fear that Pop briefly had revealed now seemed tucked away, and Jason relaxed a bit. Only later would he realize he’d said all the wrong things. Then it was late and Jason was off once more, off to his own life.
Jason would often think about that night, about how things might have turned out if he’d played it differently. Had he really believed that Pop would just figure out a way? Hell, it only made sense that Jason pursue his living the best way he knew how; booze was a far better source of income than helping at the store. Or was Jason so full of pride in his own success that he refused to let himself be tainted by someone else’s struggles, even if it was his own family?
Weeks passed, and Jason was too busy to make it back home. He spoke to Ma on the telephone a few times and could hear how concerned she sounded over the family’s finances. Pop wasn’t telling her everything, he gathered, but she had picked up on enough.
Then one night Jason’s own career came close to disaster when a partner drove into a stray cow on a country road outside Dayton. Jason helped the driver load his crates onto his own truck, and they removed the tags from the disabled vehicle, but the farmer who’d emerged from a nearby farmhouse was irate over the loss of his property and further incensed by the smell of booze coming from a busted crate. He’d been running to fetch his shotgun when the bootleggers finally got back on the road.
The thought of returning to jail haunted Jason. He knew the farmer hadn’t owned a telephone—he had chosen that road partly because it lacked telephone lines—but he found himself wondering what if this had happened somewhere else. Jason would have been tempted to shoot the man, and that realization haunted him as much as the prospect of jail itself.
Maybe working for Pop again wouldn’t be so terrible. He could do it temporarily, share some of his savings with Pop, and put the rest under a mattress. Work just long enough to help Pop get his house in order. Maybe this had been Jason’s destiny all along, his blood, and he’d been stubborn to run from it. Maybe he could come home one last time, stay awhile, take Whit and Weston to a few ball games, try to take their minds off their troubles without allowing himself to be dragged into them permanently.
But is that exactly what wound up happening? Had he allowed himself to be dragged back in? The night of his return turned out so very differently from what he’d imagined. Jesus, all that blood—at the time, he’d never seen so much. Jason closed his eyes, but the images lingered.
He opened his eyes. No sense pondering past problems when new ones surrounded him.
And so Jason stepped forward and dared to inspect the bodies of the kidnappers. The one who had tried to hide behind the corner wall was Elton Roberts. Jason didn’t know the naked guy at the foot of the stairs, but he recognized him from somewhere. The face was white and waxy, the lips curling into his mouth. The sleeping man on the sofa had lost too much of his face to be identified. The guy in the kitchen was a stranger. Jason rifled through pockets and drawers but found no identification or receipts or letters, nothing with a name.
The two men who’d been leaving the farmhouse in the Chrysler—one of them had claimed they’d freed Darcy. Had he actually been telling the truth? That would explain why they had driven off the property so quietly, with their headlights off.
He walked into the kitchen and found the phone; it even had a dial tone. He dialed Jasper Windham at his office.
The secretary was as excited as ever to be answering the old man’s calls. She put him through to her boss without argument.
“Have you heard from her? Is she okay?” Jason hadn’t meant to sound so panicked.
“Ah, Gabriel. I was beginning to think I’d only imagined your first call.”
Jason exhaled, the hope draining from him. “I lied about my name. I’m not the archangel Gabriel. I’m Lucifer, and I’m having a very bad day.”
“Forgive me if I don’t sound sympathetic.”
“Has anyone contacted you in the last twenty-four hours?”
“I don’t understand who you really are or what games you’re trying to play here, sir. I am doing all that has been asked of me. Funds are being procured, and unfortunately that takes a bit longer than the mere snapping of my fingers. I would—”
“Shut up a minute. I know the cops have your line wired, so, Hello, boys. Do yourselves a favor and trace this call. You’ll find a hell of a scene when you get here. But at least one of them got away, and he must have taken Darcy with him. The guy you want is Brickbat Sanders. It might take him a while to regroup, and he’s likely to be very, very angry. I wouldn’t be surprised if he winds up asking for more dough, Windham, so brace yourself.”
“Ah. So this is just another ploy to get more out of me, is that it? I’ve told you, sir, that no matter—”
“Damn it, I’m not in on this! You know who I am. And I’m surprised a guy like you would have so much trouble with a few low-life kidnappers—Nitti and his Syndicate pals should be happy to bail you out.”
“I’m afraid I don’t know what you’re trying to hint at, sir, but—”
“I know you haven’t had any troubles with the union lately—Mr. Nitti’s done a swell job keeping the stiffs in line for you. But I wonder why he isn’t helping you track down your daughter?”
“I have nothing to do with Frank Nitti, and I resent the accusation.”
“Oh, that’s right, this is a party line. I forgot. Wink, wink. Gotta go, you crooked bastard.”
He placed the receiver on the table rather than hanging up, assuming this would help the cops run the trace. He wandered onto the porch to escape the old man’s voice.
Windham hadn’t admitted anything, but his hemming and hawing was enough. With Capone in jail, Frank Nitti controlled the unions and had also involved himself in some of Windham’s shadier financial dealings. Brickbat Sanders had once worked for Nitti’s chief rival, Tommy O’Neill, before supposedly running afoul of the big man and bolting from Chicago. Some of Nitti’s boys had visited Jason in Chicago the previous winter, requesting assurances that Jason wasn’t involved with O’Neill’s mob and warning him to stay away from Brickbat, whom the Syndicate had targeted for a painful demise. It was that warning, more than Brickbat’s penchant for turning endeavors into shootouts, that had been the true impetus for Jason’s decision to part ways with him and his pal Roberts. Jason hadn’t told anyone about his meeting with Nitti’s boys, as he didn’t like admitting how terrified he’d been. He scrupulously avoided Chicago bank jobs from then on.
But maybe they had come down on him anyway. A couple of months ago, Chance McGill had warned Jason of rumors that the high price on his head was beginning to entice gangland assassins.
So either Brickbat and Roberts had masterminded Darcy’s kidnapping themselves—getting a few lackeys to help snatch Darcy from the very controlled streets of Chicago, at an exact location that few people knew of—or they had received aid from the Mob, likely O’Neill’s mob. Was O’Neill using them and Windham as proxies in his war against Nitti? Thinking about all this made Jason’s head hurt.
Okay, he told himself, forget the Mob angle for now. Just find Darcy, which meant: find Brickbat. Who had been shot in the shoulder.
Jason walked back inside, hung up the phone, then picked it up again to make another call. It rang and rang. Either the good doctor wasn’t in or he was rather busy.
He hung up and checked on Whit again, finding him unchanged. A slab of flesh awaiting a spirit, Frankenstein’s monster sans lightning.
Walking through the house, he collected every firearm he could fit into a large canvas case he’d found on the living-room floor. There was little extra ammunition, though—he found only two clips for an automatic and no extra Thompson drums.
Jason stepped outside into another searing day. He’
d left his fedora in the Terraplane and he squinted in the sun. He was wearing a white shirt and tan slacks, both of which fit too loosely, but in this weather that wasn’t so bad. His black shoes really didn’t look right with the slacks.
The empty space behind the farmhouse had nothing in the way of a hiding place except for the barn, so he trudged toward it and opened the side door. Enough light fell through the ceiling cracks and wall slats for him to see a busted old tractor, but little else. He called Darcy’s name. Even in desperate times, it was hard to imagine her choosing to hide in a hayloft. It didn’t even smell of hay, the contents having been used up long ago.
He left the barn and called her name a few more times.
Jason might not see her again. Brickbat might conclude that the ransom was a lost cause and that killing her was the only way to tie the loose ends. Jason tried not to think about this.
He retrieved the heavy case of guns from the porch and carried it carefully into the grove of trees he and Whit had skulked through. Eventually he came upon the Terraplane. The kidnappers’ Chrysler was gone. Brickbat must have untied the men and driven off, unless they’d somehow freed themselves. Either way, they were gone.
And then, the latest miracle: the briefcase was still under the driver’s seat, still full of cash. However the men had escaped, they’d been in too much of a hurry or were too plain stupid to search the brothers’ car.
Jason put the case of guns in the back, picked his fedora off the seat and put it on, then sat behind the wheel. The first death was still a black void in his mind, and the second had happened too suddenly to remember or even be aware of. But this latest had left plenty to ponder.
Brickbat had just sat there, smiling. He’d even laughed a few times. But he hadn’t said anything after his initial taunting, as if he hadn’t wanted to interfere with the purity of the act. Jason had been a spectacle. The passing of life, the turning of the earth, the changing of the seasons. It had hurt more than he could possibly describe.
The Many Deaths of the Firefly Brothers: A Novel Page 31