The Many Deaths of the Firefly Brothers

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.

“Could have sworn First National used to be here.” Jason’s suit might have been dark blue, but in the night it was black. “City’s changing so fast these days.”

“Or are you here because you’ve reconsidered kidnapping?”

It was cold and she could see her breath. They both could: he watched her breath hanging there and the moment felt even more intimate than when his eyes were on hers.

“I’m still not a fan of it, I have to admit. I had a feeling you might come willingly.”

“With a known desperado? What do you take me for?”

“A fascinating woman who hasn’t been fascinated enough.”

She stepped closer. She thought of that wanted poster, and she wanted her fingers on that cheek. “You’re offering me fascination?”

“I’m offering you an evening. For starters.”

She smiled. Except she’d been smiling the whole time. He made her put smiles on top of her smiles.

That had been barely ten months ago. Despite what she’d told that officer, they were not married. But a ring seemed trivial to her, as it must to him. She had no need for rings or necklaces, brooches or earrings, rocks or stones. Just him. Whether Jason had understood it or not, the money had never mattered to her.

He had wooed her for the better part of three weeks, like the carefree man of means he was. Each day, after she returned from her achingly dull job as a typist—her father had objected to her even having an occupation, as such servitude did not reflect well on the family name, but she refused to take another cent from him—Jason’s car would sidle up to the sidewalk. He took her to the sorts of nightclubs proper suitors would have been scandalized to set foot in, dancing her through the steps he knew and allowing her to show off the latest crazes; he escorted her to the World’s Fair, winning marksman contests and surveying his domain from the top of the Ferris wheel; he drove her through the countryside, gunning the V8 engine of his new coupe, testing the truthfulness of the salesman’s boasts; he bought tickets to air shows, the two of them lying beside each other on picnic blankets, their lazy fingers reaching up to trace the daredevils’ paths through the heavens.

Darcy had avoided alcohol ever since her initial troubles with it, but with Jason she found she was able to partake of a drink here and there. He always ordered but never had a second. She commented on this, and he said something about the need for control. Such calmness, so different from her. She wanted to sample all of life, and although she sensed this craving in him as well, it didn’t gnaw at him as it did her. He seemed to know he would get around to everything eventually, that there was no need to rush. It had to be an act, didn’t it? But my, such a good one.

On the tenth night of her whirlwind courtship, her father called her, asking who was this man she had been seen with. Seen by whom? Outraged, she had switched apartments the next day, moving to a different neighborhood, changing her telephone number, not leaving a forwarding address. It exhausted her meager funds, but Jason happily paid for the next three months’ rent; he had been spending the past few nights with her anyway.

What a strange new life, and so sudden. Darcy had returned to Chicago from boarding school a year earlier, having turned down her father’s invitations to be sent away to some girls’ college. She was sick of being sent away, imprisoned by others’ expectations. Wasn’t that what had finally driven her mother to despair? Marilyn Windham had been trapped by expectations that she couldn’t fulfill: being a kindly mother, the petite and smiling trophy for her tycoon husband, producing a male heir for his legacy. So she had broken free the only way she knew how. Darcy refused to let such onerous and limiting expectations be placed upon her. She had no interest in playing the society princess, the debutante, the prize for the next generation of financial barons.

In truth, she hadn’t known what did interest her, until the day Jason Fireson winked at her. It was tiresome, she had realized that day, to define yourself against things. So refreshing to find something you didn’t want to rebel against, something you wanted to wrap yourself inside.

After reading the telegram, Darcy hurriedly put on a white-flowered dress and light sweater and ran down the stairs. Her heart was frantic, and her stomach was reminding her that she hadn’t eaten in twenty-four hours. Life had returned, and she needed sustenance. She clasped the telegram in her right hand, folded in half.

“Excuse me, Miss Windham?”

A voice she did not recognize. You never knew how Jason would contact you, and she turned to face the man. But he wasn’t there.

She was about to turn again when she felt a hand clamping on her right forearm. A car had pulled up on her left, by a hydrant. There was another man, and a hand pushed her head down before she could see his face.

The men were moving toward the car and her feet did their part to keep up. Then she was in the backseat and someone pushed her head down again, and another set of hands was riffling through her hair. A tightness was pulled over her head, stopping at the eyes. Goggles? She felt them sucking at her skull. In front they were stuffed with dark cloth. Like the blindfold from that other time, but far less gentlemanly.

“Go!” someone hissed.

The car was moving when she asked if they were with Jason.

“Keep quiet and everything’ll be fine,” said a voice beside her.

“She say Jason?” someone asked from the front. “Doesn’t she know?”

“Know what?” Darcy asked.

Something jabbed her ribs. “You know what this is, doll? Keep talking and you’ll be as dead as your boyfriend.”

Darcy was very still even as the car took a sharp right. Jason had not sent these people.

She pressed her palms into each other, the fingers pulling on their opposites’ knuckles. The world around her was mad but she tried to be its calm center.

She felt very alone, and she had dropped the telegram.

VI.

Weston Fireson’s brothers haunted him long before they were dead. As their adventures had filled newspapers the previous spring, twice Weston was arrested by police officers exuberant at their luck—I nabbed Whit Fireson buying a coffee at the Doughnut Stop! I caught Jason Fireson myself, walking down Garfield Drive, alone and unarmed! Twice Weston had guns pointed at him, their barrels lean and sinister. Twice he had been frisked, shackled, hauled in, and fingerprinted, his pleas ignored. At least he’d been alone, with no friends or pretty date to see his face go white and his raised hands shake with fear.

Those two disasters had occurred during errands to Cincinnati and Dayton—at least the Lincoln City police seemed to know who Weston was—so he soon concluded that travel outside of town was no longer advisable, at least not until his brothers were arrested. Or killed.

The haunting had intensified four months before his brothers’ deadly shootout in Points North.

When Weston showed up at the office that Monday, minutes before his usual eight o’clock, he was unexpectedly called into his boss’s inner sanctum.

Henrik Douglasson, Esq., occupied a tastefully decorated, not too large office on a prime corner of the downtown building’s fourth floor. At that hour in April, the air was cool, yet the wide, east-facing window baked a generous swath of ovenlike warmth across half the room. Douglasson motioned for Weston to take one of the leather chairs, both of which were glowing in the sunlight.

“How was your weekend?”

“Fine, sir. Helped my mother around her house, mostly. Getting the yard in shape and fixing the porch.”

“Good, good.” Douglasson was in his late forties, gray-haired, heavy enough to appear sufficiently well-off but not so slovenly as to scare away a prospective client. Much of the politically connected real-estate attorney’s current work involved foreclosures and searching the titles of vacant or disputed property. Even bad times resulted in windfalls if you were standing on the right hilltop.

Douglasson’s decades-long assistant had passed away in ‘30, a few months after the conviction of Patrick Fireson and the foreclosure of the last family store, which Weston and Whit had been desperately trying to keep afloat. Douglasson had been tangentially involved in Pop’s horribly timed real-estate gambit, and had met Weston at a few meetings, where he was impressed by the young man’s quiet perseverance and seriousness. After Pop’s trial, Douglasson offered Weston a job as a legal assistant, which Weston happily accepted, as he’d been without work for weeks. Weston saw the offer as a sign of the man’s decency, whereas Whit took it as a sign that Douglasson had something to feel guilty about. How can you work for him? Whit had accused his brother. He’s just another rich man who helped Pop get into trouble and then didn’t lift a finger once it all blew up. But what choice did Weston have? At the time, Jason was still in jail on his second rum-running conviction, Uncle Joe was drinking himself into oblivion, and Weston and Whit had barely earned a cent since the store closed.

“How is your mother doing?”

“Fine, sir. Looking forward to spring, like the rest of us.”

Douglasson quickly listed new assignments for Weston, who carefully took notes, wondering why his boss had felt the need to do this in his private office; usually he boomed such orders over the intercom.

“There’s one more thing I wanted to mention, Weston.”

“Yes?” His stomach tensed. To save money, he was forgoing breakfast, apart from a cup of coffee. This worked well enough on days that produced little stress, but any time his quiet routine was disrupted his insides would feel stabbing pains like the ones he’d endured during Pop’s ordeal.

“I’m afraid I need to talk to you about your brothers.”

Weston sat up straighter and folded his hands on his lap, letting the pen lie still atop his pad. He tended to remember, with perfect clarity, whatever people said about his brothers.

“Yes, sir?”

“I’m sure this is difficult for you…I’ve been very satisfied with the work you’ve done for me these last—what is it, now, three years?”

“Yes, sir, three and a half years now.” Jesus, was he being fired? He was completely, completely still, as if Douglasson were one of those nervous cops aiming a revolver at him. What was the difference between being fired and being fired upon?

“Well, then, I knew it was a bit of a risk hiring you, given your lack of experience, but it turns out it was the right decision all along. I don’t regret it. And I knew, of course, about Jason’s brushes with the law, the bootlegging and whatnot. It’s a shame so many people were sent the wrong way by that foolish Prohibition business, so I was willing to give him the benefit of the doubt on that. Bank robbing, however, is another matter. As is murder.”

“Sir, I—” Weston stammered for a moment. “You know I have nothing, absolutely nothing, to do with any of—”

“Yes, yes, of course. I realize you’re an innocent man caught in an awkward position. But what I need you to understand, Weston, is that this awkward position is beginning to ensnare others.”

Weston practiced breathing.

“As I’m sure you know, police in numerous states are trying to find your brothers, as is the federal Department of Justice. They are leaving no stone unturned, and that means they’re investigating everything they can not only about your brothers but also about their associates, past and present. Including their relatives. And those who employ their relatives.”

From the fourth floor, the sound of street traffic was eerily nonexistent. Weston reached up to prevent his glasses from sliding down his sweaty nose.

“The police have…contacted you?”

“Now, Weston, a good deal of my business comes from state and local government, or from banks that are pointed my way by various officials. It has been brought to my attention that employing the brother of two famous outlaws is not the wisest thing for one in my position. That my past—albeit brief and entirely legal—association with your father is a black mark made worse by your presence here.”

The walls of Weston’s throat were two pieces of sandpaper.

“Now, I’m not such a helpless codger, Weston, and I can hold my own against a little friendly pressure. I’ve been here a long time, as has my family, and my business is strong. But I am hoping, quite fervently, that this matter will pass soon. Perhaps your brothers will…turn themselves in, and justice will be done as, er, as painlessly as possible. Otherwise, the pressures on my firm may mount.”

“I’m very, very sorry if I’ve caused you any trouble at all, sir. And I want—”

“Now, now, it’s no trouble at all.” He waved his hand. “But, Weston, I want you to think very carefully about what I’ve asked you this morning. And perhaps we can do what we can to make things right.”

“I’m, I’m sorry, sir—um, what exactly have you asked me?”

Douglasson placed his hands on the large ash table, which that morning was immaculate, as it was cleaned to a shine each Friday evening by Weston himself. Then he took a business card from the top drawer of his desk and handed it to Weston.

“It would be in everyone’s best interests for you to get in touch with this gentleman.”

The card belonged to one Cary Delaney. Below the name was a phone number and a Chicago address, and above it was the crest for the Justice Department’s Bureau of Investigation.

Weston placed the card in his shirt pocket. “Of course, sir.”

The shirt was old and thin—it had been his father’s—and he could feel the card’s corners poking at his chest the rest of the day.

He wondered if this Agent Delaney had been one of the men he had seen leaving his mother’s house two weeks earlier. Weston had stopped by after work to have supper with Ma and Aunt June, and when he saw how bare the pantry was he had run out to buy groceries. That task still seemed odd, after growing up in a shop-owning family. One of the new supermarkets had opened up a few blocks away, but whenever he went there he felt ill. Weston remembered the first time his father had allowed him to run the register, remembered the bad days when they’d had to accept scrip from tire workers whose factory had run out of cash for their pay. He loathed buying groceries—maybe this was why he’d grown so thin—and the only reason he did it for Ma was to spare her the same pain.

He had been walking back to her house that night, a cold one, late March, when he heard his mother yelling.

“Do you have sons, Detective?! Do you know what it’s like to worry about your children?!”

Twenty yards away, two men in dark suits and snap-brim hats were standing at the edge of the Firesons’ front lawn, shoulders turned as if they had been leaving but were now reconsidering. Weston’s mother was on the porch, the door open. She wasn’t wearing a coat, but that’s not why her fists were clenched.

At the risk of dropping the groceries, Weston jogged past the last two houses and onto his mother’s lawn.

“Some of the people that they’ve killed had sons, ma’am,” one of the men was saying, his voice accented like a cowboy from the Westerns. “Have you considered that? I don’t think they have.”

“What’s going on?” Weston asked.

The hats turned to face him. One of the men shared Weston’s lanky build and probably his age, give or take, but the other was of more powerful stuff, forged to a certain hardness, perhaps by the war. He was the one who had spoken, and his eyes seemed to glint with pleasure.

“Well, well,” the big one said. “It’s a Firefly Brother. In the dark it’s kinda hard to make out which one he is. Maybe we should take him in, just in case?”

“You leave him alone,” Ma said before Weston could react.

He felt himself shrinking in the men’s eyes. “What do you want?”

They told him their names, but he instantly forgot them when they added that they were Justice agents; this bit of information burned into his memory and obliterated whatever had come before.

“My brothers aren’t here. We haven’t seen them in months. You should know that.”

“We do know a lot. And we’re learnin’ more every day.” He touched his brim mockingly. “You have a good night now.”

Weston watched as they opened the doors of a dark Chevy, the silent young one taking the wheel. He felt like a fool standing there clutching groceries, one of the bags almost slipping from his grasp. He only hoped they would drive away before eggs and bread spilled all over the walkway.

The older agent, riding shotgun, kept his eyes trained on Weston as they drove past. Weston looked at the younger one, whose expression seemed to convey something akin to pity for the shattered family standing in the cold. But maybe that was only in contrast to his partner. Even indifference can feel like empathy when you’ve grown used to so much hostility.

“What was that about?” Weston asked.

“Just asking after them.”

“I figured they would have stopped that by now.”

Ever since the previous fall, when the Firesons realized that an undercover state cop had been boarding in Ma’s house, they knew they were being watched. Ever since, Ma had noticed an unusual number of cars driving past each day and early evening, always driven by two men, their eyes slowly scanning the modest property with a mix of boredom and predation. As far as Weston knew, though, no one in the family had been questioned in weeks.

“Are you all right?” he asked.

“They told me they’d put me in jail if I ever did anything to ‘abet’ your brothers. If I ever helped them. Fed or ‘sheltered’ them.” She was still staring at the street, either in shock or in a calm rage. “My sons.”

The other son put a hand on her shoulder. “C’mon in, Ma. It’s cold.”

Sammy, June’s eldest, was in the parlor reading one of his pulp magazines, Black Mask or Dime Detective, beside a dim light. The marine warfare of June giving her other sons a bath echoed down the steps. On the cover of Sammy’s magazine a buxom brunette was tied to a chair, luscious mouth frozen in a silent scream as a fedora-topped shadow crawled the wall behind her. Weston had flipped through one of Sammy’s pulps the other day and had found a wanted ad for Jason and Whit printed between two stories, fact nestled where one fiction ended and the next began.

Weston wondered how much Sammy had heard of the conversation outside, whether he had been the one to answer the door. He remembered the time he himself had opened the door to the police late one night, three years ago.

Ma sat in the dining room and was silent as Weston unpacked the groceries.

He had lied to the Justice agents, and he wondered if that, too, was something that would haunt him. It had not been “months” since he’d seen his outlaw brothers; Jason and Whit had stopped by just over a week ago. They had called ahead to alert Ma and then sneaked in through the back, late at night. They stayed one night and gave Ma some cash; she rarely discussed this, but Weston always knew from her sudden silence about money. Each visit from Jason was a financial relief, for a while at least.

Weston couldn’t deny that it was more than that. Ma’s mood would brighten, rendering her almost unrecognizable. Her prodigal sons, returned! Safe and healthy, and making jokes, and laughing at hers, and playing with the kids! Weston knew she didn’t approve of their lifestyle, but those battles had been fought between Jason and Pop years ago, and Ma’s lifelong role as peacemaker continued despite the fact that one warring party was now gone. In truth, Pop’s absence seemed to make her less disapproving of Jason than she might otherwise have been; robbery was wrong, sure, but so was what had happened to her falsely accused husband.