Читать книгу The Many Deaths of the Firefly Brothers - Thomas Mullen - Страница 13

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.

Ma’s good mood at her sons’ reappearances would continue after their equally sudden departures, but after a couple of days she would descend again, the landing always worse than the one before it, so much so that Weston began to wish his brothers wouldn’t visit anymore, wouldn’t tease her this way. He hated himself for it, but sometimes he wanted them to dispense with the running and chasing, the long and torturous prologue, and get on with the obvious conclusion, allow their mother to grieve in peace. Grieving over people who weren’t even dead yet—this was cruelty, and he hated his brothers for forcing her into such a position.

He knew that his brothers would die, and badly, and soon. The ending was inevitable, just as it had been for past hoodlums like Jesse James and Billy the Kid. The only question was whether it would be at the hands of the police, jealous associates, or court-ordered executioners.

After unpacking the groceries, Weston walked into the dining room, where his mother was still sitting at the bare table, the gas lamp too dim.

“That should set you for the week.” He told her he needed to head home and kissed her on the forehead.

“Thank you,” she said, but her eyes seemed to be on something else.

If he were Jason, he would have known a joke to brighten her face. But mirth tasted funny on his lips, like bad moonshine that skipped the buzz and went straight to the headache.

The steps creaked as he walked upstairs to say good night to June and the boys. He noticed that the banister was coming loose from some of its posts, another repair for the list. He knocked on the bathroom door, which wasn’t quite shut, and walked into the warm air as June was violently towel-drying Mikey’s hair. The tub was draining, toy boats capsized in the vortex.

June asked if Uncle Weston would like to read the boys bedtime stories and the kids cheered. Weston had been hoping merely to say good night and make his escape, but he saw that June was even more tired than he was, so he played along.

After reading to them about trains and heroes and happy endings, he walked downstairs and saw June sitting at the dining-room table, sipping what looked like bourbon. Her graying hair was in a bun, and patches of her red cardigan were still wet from the bath. It was barely eight, but she told him that Ma had excused herself for the night, saying she wasn’t feeling well. Weston wondered if June knew about the federal visitors.

“Have you heard from them?” she asked.

“Who?”

“Your brothers.”

“No.”

She stared at her glass. “Sometimes I wish…they’d just turn themselves in.”

He had overheard her arguing with Ma about them, not infrequently. She’d even told him she suspected that her late husband’s past applications for state aid had been denied because of Jason’s run-ins with the law, as if the state of Ohio had blacklisted the family. To Weston it was insane to believe a few bureaucrats in the aid office had any clue that Joe’s nephew had been a bootlegger, but now that Weston had Douglasson’s warning ringing in his ears he wondered if June could have been right.

“They’re doing what they can to help the family,” Weston said.

“I get the dirtiest looks from people on the street. What they think of us.”

“I get some, too, but I get just as many people telling me how they’re rooting for them. More, actually.”

She rolled her eyes. “Male fantasies, all of it. Women know better. They’re tearing your mother’s heart out, you know. Bit by bit, day by day.”

He needed to change the subject. “The boys seem to be doing fairly well.”

“Mikey still cries for Joe at night, sometimes.”

He didn’t know what to say. He made a short frown.

“It wakes up the other two.”

She looked at him as if she expected that he, as someone who’d lost his own father, would have some advice for her. But Weston had been twenty-two when Pop died, three years ago. Compared with little Mikey and Pete and Sammy, he’d been an old man. Then why had he felt like such a kid?

They forced themselves to chat about mundane matters and soon they were both yawning, so he bade her good night. With his hand on the doorknob he turned for a last glance. June was still sitting there, staring at her glass like she wished she’d poured herself more.

After his talk with Mr. Douglasson, Weston felt as haunted as ever. Now it wasn’t only his brothers haunting him but this Agent Delaney. Surely Mr. Douglasson wasn’t threatening to fire him. Surely the conversation was just meant as a well-intentioned reminder of the seriousness of the Fireson family’s plight, Douglasson feeling the need to dispense paternal advice to the fatherless. Surely Weston’s fate—and his brothers’—was not resting in his shirt pocket.

He often imagined the many ways in which things would be different, if not for the hard times, if not for the curse of his family. He would have a better job than that of an office assistant, certainly, and would be in a more lucrative field. Still, he knew he was fortunate to have this job; at a time when so many were out of work, most employers would never consider hiring a Fireson. Though Jason’s irregular contributions had temporarily saved the house from foreclosure, that specter was always hovering around the corner. One day, surely, the brothers’ payments would end, leaving Weston as the bachelor breadwinner supporting a sprawling family.

That bachelor part was one of the things that rankled most, when he allowed himself to think selfishly. He had dated a few girls, but getting close to anyone was out of the question; he had too many obligations as it was. And so his romantic life had taken on a distressing pattern. He would meet a pretty girl and ask her out, or, more typically, he’d call a girl he had known in school, someone whose parents knew him and (hopefully) hadn’t warned their daughter to stay away from that no-good Fireson family. But of course the girl would know about his brothers—perhaps she would be attracted to the sense of adventure, or doom, that the Fireson name evoked. He would take her to dinner at a carefully chosen, inexpensive restaurant, and perhaps see a movie. But after a few dates it would be obvious he wasn’t in a position to take things further. Some of the girls had stuck with him for a few months, maybe had even fallen in love with him. But as time passed and they saw that no proposal was forthcoming, that indeed Weston never spoke of the future at all, they would break things off. Which always came as equal parts disappointment and relief.

At least he wasn’t the only one deferring his dreams for some fabled, future moment of prosperity. None of his old school friends—few of whom he saw much of anymore—were married, as everyone seemed to be putting off important decisions. But that didn’t make it any easier. He ached to touch someone, but that was a luxury he couldn’t afford. He didn’t want to get a girl in a jam, both for her sake and his. Somewhere out there, Jason and Whit were carousing with their tawdry fans, women they probably had met in Jason’s speakeasy days, molls enamored of the brothers’ myth and money. Weston’s dates, when he was lucky enough to have any, ended with a chaste kiss at best.

He was lucky enough to have a date on the Friday after Douglasson’s warning. At six o’clock he took the streetcar uptown to the Buckeye Theater, where he was to meet the secretary of a real-estate company whom he’d chatted up while running an errand for Douglasson. He was early and no line had formed, but dusk was settling and the marquee’s lights glowed. Then he noticed the title displayed above.

“Excuse me,” he asked the girl at the booth, “wasn’t The Invisible Man supposed to start showing today?”

“Yes, but we’re holding Scarface over an extra week because it’s doing so well. We’ll open The Invisible Man next Friday.”

Weston’s heart sank. His knuckles tapped the edge of the booth.

“I really do recommend Scarface,” the girl said. “It’s rather risky, I’d say, but very thought-provoking. And exciting, of course.”

He smiled thinly at her. The gangster movie had been playing all month; he hadn’t seen it yet, nor would he. “Let me guess: he dies in the end.”

She didn’t know what to make of him. “Well, er, you’ll have to see it to find out.”

He backed up and stepped aside. Why all this fascination with criminals? His date was running late, which he was thankful for. He needed to come up with some other idea, maybe dinner first, maybe dancing instead of the movie. He needed to devise an escape, some miraculous evasion, something worthy of a true Firefly Brother.

Within minutes, the line was twenty deep. So many people, so happy to watch tales of others’ bloodletting and sorrow.