The Many Deaths of the Firefly Brothers (22 page)

Still Cary found himself dragging the reluctant sergeant down the checklist of
police procedurals. “No known associates were able to ID them, because
the bodies were stolen before that could be arranged, correct?”
“Unfortunately, yes. But—”
“Now, these prints that you haven’t shared yet—how certain
are you that they match the Fireson Brothers’ on file?”
“Ninety-nine percent.”
Cary put down his pencil. “Why not a hundred?”
“Fingerprinting is not an exact science, as you
surely know. Matches are never perfect. We all have these whorls
and—”
“Mr. Hoover makes it my job to look for perfection, Sergeant. I
don’t mean to be rude, but we’d like to get those prints sent to
Washington so—”
“Look, I’ll do that, but in the meantime I say the fingerprints
matched. Plus, for goodness’ sake, the men looked just like their mug
shots, and they had seventy thousand dollars and a dozen weapons on them! Are
you actually worried that we killed two men, one of whom happened to look just
like Jason and the other happened to look just like Whit? The odds of that are
microscopic.”
Unlikely things seem to be happening lately
, Cary thought.
Dillinger’s escape at Little Bohemia, and his wooden-gun jailbreak from
Crown Point before that. Jason’s vanishing act in Toledo, and now the
flawlessly executed copycat crime in Lincoln City. Breadlines, dust storms, men
jumping from skyscrapers.
“I understand, Sergeant. I’m only saying that if it’s my job
to look for certainties, for concrete facts, then the fact is, you’re
saying that there’s at least a chance it wasn’t them.”
Cary could visualize the man shaking his head. “Agent Delaney, I
don’t think I should continue this conversation.”
“Excuse me?”
“I think you should be speaking with Chief Mackinaw.” Cary leaned
back in his chair as the sergeant explained that Chief Mackinaw was away until
the day after tomorrow.
Jesus Christ
, Cary thought as he hung up the receiver.
They
are
hiding
something. What the hell happened at that farmhouse?

XIV.

F
irst Darcy lost track of hours, then
days. She feared weeks would be next, and that eventually her entire life would
slip past her. She would not be able to grasp it because her hands were bound,
would not see it because her eyes were covered. She would only hear it: Crows
berating one another. Wind through heavy boughs. Bottles clinking, glass
breaking. The echoing scrape of a coal shovel in the oven’s bin and
scuttle. Floorboards creaking beneath the pacing of kidnappers losing their
patience. A single, daily airplane, so many miles above, its engine humming and
fading out in such an accursedly linear pattern that it certainly wasn’t
circling in search of her.
She couldn’t remember how many notes they’d had her sign. Her
captors didn’t dictate them anymore, only forced her to sign them to
prove to her father that she was still alive. Which she herself was beginning
to doubt. Was this life? No freedom, no vision, no food, save the same sandwich
for lunch and a crumbling baked potato for dinner, sometimes offered with
scraps of dry meat.
At least she could walk—after the fourth day they had untied her from her
chair and fitted her into handcuffs that were chained to some anchor around
which she was afforded five feet of wandering space. She could reach the
room’s perimeter and had traced her cell with her fingertips. Wood
paneling on the walls, cracked in places. Heavily repainted windowsills.
Nailheads protruding from the old, talkative floor. Surely she
would be able to identify this room if the police ever
found it once she was released.
If
she was released.
For the first few years after the sanatorium, she had been plagued by
nightmares. Those nightly terrors were returning. Even while awake, she feared
she was in some semiconscious state, combining her memory of that long-ago
internment with her sorrow over Jason. Ever since that mysterious voice had
mocked her that night—how long ago had it been?—she had been
terrified that it was right, that Jason was indeed dead. That doubt had been
exacerbated by fear and boredom, but she tried to fight it. She conjured Jason
into life, visiting with him in the dusty rooms of her shuttered mind.

He had tried to protect her from something like this. One night in Chicago,
during their whirlwind courtship, Jason was unusually silent during the drive
back to the apartment. He had pulled to the curb and made no motion to turn off
the engine and get out. Instead, he’d looked at her with a grave face and
told her that they shouldn’t see each other any longer.
“Excuse me?” She had known he was between jobs, so to speak, and he
had made allusions to future engagements, but she had not expected a brush-off.
“I’m not some precious vase, Jason. I know what I’m getting
myself involved in.”
“No. You don’t.”
“Oh, you have girls in other cities? Is that what you’re
saying?” Darcy Windham was not vindictive, except where rivals were
concerned—those she would mash beneath her bare feet.
“No, I don’t have anyone else. I don’t have anyone.
That’s what I’m telling you.” Quickly he looked her up and
down as if he were committing her to memory. She felt crumpled, stuffed in a
pocket. “It was a mistake to come looking for you—”
“You’ve made your share of mistakes, Jason Fireson, but I am not
one of them.”
“—and I need to correct it. For your sake. If you steer yourself
right, you’ll have a nice and prosperous life.”
“Oh, don’t give me any paternalistic—”
“Then for
my
sake. Darcy, please get out.
Please go back to your life.”
“My life is sitting right here, looking at me,” she said, trying
not to let her voice break. “Being a tad impetuous, perhaps, and not
thinking very clearly beneath his persecution complex, but
he’s—”
“Sweetheart, please. Before I have to do something regrettable. Get out
of my sight.”
Her eyes had burned and finally it was her determination that he not see her
crying that propelled her out the car door. She didn’t even close it,
just clasped at her shawl with both hands as she walked into her building. She
heard him close the door, then pull away, engine revving as if he were afraid
of being pursued.
But how afraid? It took her only three days to find him, after all. He had
dropped enough hints that she had deduced where he was headed: Springfield, the
home of one of his confederates, a so-called jug marker blessed with the gift
of determining which banks would make the easiest victims. Refusing to pout,
she drove to Springfield the next day, rented a room downtown, and methodically
visited every tavern, nightclub, and bar that seemed even remotely like a venue
Jason and his mates might frequent. At every one she asked the bartender if he
knew Jason Fireson, receiving responses varying from nonplussed to paralytic.
She was blowing his cover to the extent that his gang would have to cancel the
Springfield job, surely, but she didn’t care. He could find another bank,
but he would not find another girl.
And what fun it was, slinking about, quizzing the sorts of men that a
respectable girl was supposed to steer clear of. If the choice was between this
and resuming her life as a typist at a downtown law firm, between this and
becoming the smiling bride of some Miracle Mile financier, then there
was
no choice.
The third afternoon a bartender told her where she could find Jason at six
o’clock. And there he was, sitting with his brother at a booth in a dimly
lit Italian restaurant. Only blocks from the State Capitol, where powerful men
stared at their hands and wondered if they were indeed powerful anymore or if
the times had swung the balance elsewhere. Whit shook his head at this woman
who had already foiled a perfectly good plan, then stood and walked away. Jason
was wearing a black double-breasted silk suit with a red-and-white striped tie
and a red spillover handkerchief. She matched him, in a red velvet dress he had
paid for two weeks earlier. It was
too fine a dress
for a place like this, but she didn’t mind. People would look at her
regardless.
“I hope the cops aren’t as smart as you,” he said. He tried
to appear emotionless, but his eyes betrayed him.
“Surely they aren’t as single-minded.” She slid beside him.
“You’re taking a chance.”
“Less of one than you seem to think.”
He kissed her and neither seemed to care if people watched. He told her he was
glad she had come. And that he was sorry.
“Yes, you are rather sorry, sometimes.” She grinned. “But the
rest of the time you’re
exceptional.”
She didn’t have any moral qualms about his chosen
profession—stealing from the sorts of privileged bankers she’d met
through her father hardly seemed a sin—but she did warn him once that
money wouldn’t solve all his problems, whatever they were.
“Spoken like someone who’s never suffered from want,” he
said.
She half-smiled. “I want plenty of things.”
“I meant need.”
“Yes, we confuse the two, wanting and needing. But my point is that money
can be surprisingly insufficient at delivering contentment.” She knew how
men treated money, how they judged one another by it, valued and devalued their
foes and friends alike.
“That may be true,” he said, “but it does dispel fear. Fear
that you’re going to lose your house, that you’re going to go
hungry, that your loved ones will be cold and sick. Folks with money
don’t have to think about that, and they don’t realize how light
their shoulders are because of it.”
She looked away for a moment, then back at him. “I suppose I’ve
never really worried about my loved ones. I don’t think I’ve ever
had one before.” She traced his jaw with a fingernail.
“Sorry to add complication to your life,” he said.
“I suppose I’ll manage.” She kissed him, then asked how many
banks he had robbed. He answered. It was a decidedly lower number than the
newspapers claimed, but impressive all the same.
“And how many do you want to rob?”
“Exactly as many as I need to.”
“Need, or want?”
“Need.”
“Need, for what?”
“To never need again.”
“That sounds like an awful lot of banks.”
“I have an awful lot of needs.”
She didn’t remember doing any more talking that night.
Of course, the lifestyle she had chosen was not without its downside. Jason was
away quite a bit, always scouting his next location, running dress rehearsals
with his fellow actors in crime. And the constant relocations quickly grew
monotonous. Their excursions to Florida and New Orleans had been fun; the work
trips to Peoria and Toledo and Cedar Rapids, decidedly less so. Darcy did play
a few roles; her accursed finishing school had included seamstress lessons,
which she put to good use by sewing secret pockets into the men’s jackets
and pants, and the admittedly limited information she had picked up from her
father on the automotive arts helped Jason devise new places to stash extra
license plates or pistols. She was frequently employed as errand runner, since
someone as attractive and doe-eyed as she was beyond suspicion. And her
voracious appetite for information—she bought as many newspapers as she
could—kept the brothers well informed about current events in their
various haunts.
She often wrote in her journals when alone, describing the gang’s
activities and even her private moments with Jason. It was fun to record the
various escapes and close calls, to remember the warts of this money launderer
or the cabbage ear of that bouncer. One day she would publish them, under a
pseudonym, of course, and changing the brothers’ names and key
characteristics. The country was so interested in crime these days. Prohibition
had forced nearly everyone to become a criminal, and so the moralizing of
previous ages had faded as people realized how tenuous the lines between crooks
and commoners were.
Jason had never read her journals, but she knew that he would not have approved
of the vast amount of evidence those books contained. Still, they had never
gotten the gang into trouble. Her scrapbooks, however, nearly had.
She saved every article she could find about the
brothers—a task that became more and more time-consuming, and required
her to expand her reading habits, as you never knew what trashy pulp or
high-minded political leaflet might include a few words about the notorious
Firefly Brothers. Whit loved to flip through the scrapbooks—it was the
only time he had complimented Darcy for anything—but Jason seemed
disinterested.
In late April, the gang had spread out in a few small houses in a quiet
Davenport neighborhood, from which they scouted banks in town and across the
river in Moline. Veronica and her baby were with family then, so Darcy was
often alone or with Bea, the wife of Owney Davis, Jason’s oddly religious
compatriot. When she wasn’t running errands or writing, she and Bea would
spend the days shopping, having lunch, walking along the Mississippi, or
indulging in the occasional steamboat ride when the weather was good. One
afternoon she took the bus back to the house— Jason and the men were
using the cars to time escape routes, and Bea was seeing a matinee—and
she saw two sedans parked on the street. As she approached them, she noticed a
pair of hatted heads in each car.
She thought about walking away, but where would she go? Quickly she took a
mental inventory of the house. She wasn’t the neatest of ladies, but she
was certain no contraband had been lying about when she left that morning.
Darcy turned up the walkway and began reaching into her purse for the keys. She
heard the car doors opening behind her. She concentrated on keeping her hand
from shaking as she slid the key in.
“Mrs. Tenley?”
She turned to offer them a polite if surprised smile. “Yes?”
They were Davenport police. The one in front showed a badge, introduced himself
as Detective Collins, and asked if they could come in.
“Of course, of c—” Then she stopped, theatrically, but hoping
she wasn’t overdoing it. “Has something happened to my
husband?”
“We’d like to talk to you about him, actually,” Collins said.
Behind him, one of the others smiled. She noticed from the corner of her eye
that a squad car was slowly driving down the street.
The best way to conceal her nerves, she decided, was to keep acting. But she
had barely taken a step into the living room before she realized that all was
not as she had left it. She could see into the kitchen and noticed that many of
the cabinet doors were still open, and two half-empty
glasses
of water were sitting on the coffee table, beside her scrapbooks, which she had
not left there.
“Oh my,” she said. “Someone’s been
in
here. Is
that why you’ve come? Have I been robbed?”
“We took the liberty of looking around the place, Mrs. Tenley. Your
landlord, Mr. Gleeson, did us the honor of letting us in this morning.”
“But whatever for?”
“Take a seat, please, Mrs. Tenley.” Detective Collins was calm and
seemed quite proud of himself. She sat on the sofa, in front of the scrapbooks,
and the other two detectives sat in chairs opposite her.
She tried to think what could have gone wrong. If Jason or any of the other men
had been detained while doing their reconnaissance work, they would have
arrested her by now. These local cops haven’t been hunting for the
Firefly Brothers, she told herself. They just think they’ve stumbled onto
world-class criminals, and thousands of dollars in reward money.
“Why don’t you tell us where your husband is, Mrs.
‘Tenley’?”
She ignored his emphasis on her alias. “He’s up in St. Paul today,
then Rochester for a few days, but he should be back at the end of the week.
His sales job takes him away from home rather longer than I would like, but one
can’t complain about one’s employment these days. Now, could you
explain why—”
“Your landlord’s received a few calls from one of your neighbors
complaining about men coming and going at strange hours, ma’am. He did
some poking around this morning and called us after he found what he
did.”
“And what did he find?”
He smiled at her innocence. “It’s right in front of you.”
“My Firefly Brothers scrapbooks?” Her journal, thank goodness, was
in her purse, which she’d been carrying with her that day.
“I’m rather confused, Detective Collins.”
The cops exchanged glances. Apart from Collins, they remained mute.
“Are you saying you don’t know where we can find Jason and Whit
Fireson?”
She was beginning to worry that her uncomprehending expression would wear thin.
“Your husband’s name is Charles
Tenley?”
“Yes, of course. And I’m Darcy Windham Tenley, of Chicago.”
Jason had signed for the place using the names Mr. and Mrs. Charles
Tenley— Marriner had doctored an ID for him a few weeks ago—but
Darcy decided on the spot to include her real name as a maiden name. She
amplified the patrician accent in which she’d been trained as a young
lady. “We moved here just a few weeks ago after our wedding. Charlie was
put in charge of this region for Daddy’s company, and it’s true
that some of the other salesmen do stay with us when they’re passing
through, as the company is trying to save money on hotel costs these days, and
sometimes they do get in quite late, though I’m rather annoyed the
neighbors chose to bother you with it instead of doing me the courtesy. But I
still don’t quite understand ….”
She watched the gears turn behind Collins’s eyes. “You’re
related to Jasper Windham?”
“Of course, he’s my father.” Darcy’s name had not yet
been linked with the Firesons (her father knew about her dalliance with Jason,
but he certainly wasn’t going to publicize it, as it didn’t quite
go with the aura of hardworking know-how he’d put forth in his recent,
briskly selling autobiography). Jason had always figured word would get out
eventually, but Darcy was betting these Iowa cops weren’t wise to it.
They had been expecting to find some low-class hussy in the Firesons’
lair, a foul-mouthed working girl or prostitute.
“It’s true, I did marry a bit beneath my station,” she
continued. “But what can I say—we find love in mysterious places.
Daddy gave Charlie a bottom-rung sales job rather than placing him up high
right away, you know—force him to learn the business, that sort of thing,
which I quite agree with. I wouldn’t want anything just
handed
to
us. I believe in hard work as much as the next person.”
Their morning search would have turned up some of Jason’s clothes but no
photographs, as he owned none, and no incriminating papers, as he always kept
his escape routes and other important notes on his person. Most of his cash he
also kept on him, or hidden at some other location; he had learned his lesson
from past experiences with unexpected police raids, when he’d had to
abandon hideouts and many thousands of dollars.