A suit appeared on the other end of the heavy gate flanked by four cops. The suit didn’t even have a bullhorn, so what he said went unheard by the vast majority. What he said was: Lincoln City Tire needed two men for its line. The men in the front few rows immediately descended upon one another, everyone trying to fit himself through the gate that the cops had barely opened. There were more cops higher up, standing with rifles on the walls in case the crowd threatened the factory’s property, but Whit wouldn’t notice them until later. For at that moment he was consumed by the scrum. There were no discernible blows, just the weight of so much desperation and so many men. Whit couldn’t see; his face was pressed into someone’s back or chest or neck. Suddenly his knees gave way—too much pressure, something added to it, maybe an unconscious body slipping down and hitting the soft spot of his legs, and now he, too, was on his way down. If he hit bottom, he knew, he’d be trampled. They’d find him hours later imprinted in the earth like a symbol, like the mere outline of a man. He wrapped his arms around something and squeezed. Somehow he found himself rising. He would never know whom he was holding or why this person was rising higher, whether from supernatural strength or some strange entropic force, the proximity and number of these bodies creating new physical laws. He felt almost airborne, and he let go of what he’d been holding and fell forward, bouncing atop bodies and riding shoulders until he fell forward, in front of the gate. It was nearly within reach.
One man had already slipped inside and a second was just behind him. Whit stood up and reached so far forward he nearly lost his balance, his left hand clamping upon the second man’s shoulder. The man turned—not much but enough—and Whit slugged him in the face. Never even saw the man’s eyes, just put his fist where the nose would have been. The man bounced against the wrought iron and hadn’t hit the ground yet when Whit slipped through the gate. The sound of it closing and latching behind him was one of the greatest things he’d ever heard— the finality of it, the heaviness.
He cradled his right fist in his left, the pain so sharp it was as if he’d broken not just the knuckles but his forearm, too. It would hurt more later, after ten hours on a new and uncomfortable job. But when the suit asked him why he was holding himself that way he said he was only cracking his knuckles. The job required two good hands, the suit said, so Whit banished any look of pain from his face, then reached out and shook the suit’s hand. The suit had looked at Whit’s filthy fingers and palm for a distasteful instant before daring to touch them, as if he and not Whit were the one who felt sparks and explosions and even a surge of nausea when their hands clasped.
The suit led Whit and the other lucky winner toward the factory, the martial percussion of gunshots echoing behind them. Whit never dreamed about that day, though doubtless many other men did.
Most dreamlike of all, though, was when Whit had killed people.
The first time Jason took him along on an endeavor there had been seven men, Jason and Marriner, two wheelmen, and Whit and two other torpedoes. Only later would Whit look back on that job and reflect that it had been executed with perfection—up to a point. He and another man had been the first to enter the bank, at five minutes after nine o’clock. Despite the morning sun, they had been wearing long raincoats to conceal the Thompsons nestled in their specially tailored inner pockets. Whit had carried two Red Cross posters rolled tight like batons. Without making eye contact with any of the tellers, he had affixed the two posters to the bank’s front-facing windows, concealing the tellers from the outside. Before any bank employee could think to ask who had given him permission to post here, Jason and Marriner walked in. All the men were clad in dark suits, fedoras, and grim faces; witnesses later described them as looking like pallbearers. Except Jason carried a black trombone case. He laid it on the counter before one of the teller cages and calmly, deliberately, opened it like any salesman displaying his wares. Then he removed his submachine gun and explained to the teller how this would work, by which time the others had unholstered their weapons.
Jason and Marriner escorted the bank president into the vault and emerged with several bags, the old yegg having some trouble carrying his share of the loot. While one torpedo stood outside the entrance to keep the streets clean and another corralled the hostages in the center of the lobby, Whit stood in the back, watching in case anyone—
“Hey!” he yelled at one of the bank managers, a thin man with a toupee. The manager had leaned forward onto his desk, his hands hidden behind stacks of receipts.
The manager’s head snapped up, his toupee migrating south an inch, while Whit leveled the heavy Thompson at his chest. Whit had practiced with the monster all week, marveling at how powerfully it kicked back. He pressed the handle between his right elbow and hip, determined not to be knocked off balance if he needed to pull the trigger.
“Get away from that desk.”
The man slowly lifted his hands and took a step back.
“What’s going on?” the other torpedo asked. Jason and Marriner were in the vault.
“He was hiding his hands there.”
Whit walked to the desk, glancing at the disheveled mounds of paperwork. How many lives were being destroyed in those pages? he wondered.
“I wasn’t—”
“Shut up,” Whit said. “There an alarm button here?”
“He hit the alarm?” the other torpedo asked.
“No, no, I didn’t! I was just feeling dizzy and I—”
Whit hit him in the face with the barrel of the gun. But he’d never wielded one like a club before and the motion was awkward, more of a slap across the man’s nose. It merely made Whit look like a fool, as he’d nearly lost his grip on the handle.
“Please,” the manager said, pointing. “The button’s underneath the desk, right there. If I’d touched it, it would be depressed, but it’s still sticking out. See?”
Jason and Marriner emerged from the vault, Jason shooting Whit a look that said, Whatever you’re doing, stop it, for God’s sake, because it’s probably a bad idea. Whit backed away from the manager. He had seen the button, and it did seem to be sticking out, but did that mean anything? What if a message had been sent to the police station five blocks away?
The two cars were weighted down with the spoils of victory, and four hostages had been enlisted for each. Jason and Whit were the last two in the building. Whit walked backward, scanning the room for movement. A woman lay on the floor, her legs twitching as she cried. A ticker printed bad news from Wall Street. Whit smelled burned coffee, and someone was wearing too much aftershave.
He was nearly out the door when the same bank manager leaned forward again, his fingers disappearing from view. Whit took a step forward and Jason uttered a syllable that escaped into the vacuum that preceded Whit’s pulling the trigger. That sensation again, as if someone were drumming on his rib cage. Feeling the vibrations even in his toes. Then Jason’s hand on his shoulder as his voice returned from the vacuum, yelling at Whit to stop.
Whit didn’t see the manager anymore. He had been so concerned about blowback that he apparently had shut his eyes while firing. The manager had vanished, not with a poof of smoke but with a long, thin trail of it, spiraling from the tommy’s barrel. The wall behind the desk was newly ventilated, thick masses of red clinging there.
Outside, Jason and Marriner yelled at Whit, but he barely heard them, his ears ringing. Gunsmoke in his nose as they sped off with the windows down. For what seemed like hours, he sat in the backseat, behind Jason and Marriner and beside all those Gladstone bags and canvas sacks and typewriter covers whose contents he could only imagine. Jason drove them past farms and fields and streams and clouds and dust, the world passing as Whit sat in a daze.
This wasn’t his first killing—there was that cop outside the dance marathon, true, but that had been lost in a blur of exhaustion. It was as if someone else had pulled the trigger that time, and Whit had only been watching from very deep inside his jellied mind. This experience was altog
ether different.
By nightfall the roads were even emptier than before and the bright stars seemed to mock them, shining with neither clouds to conceal them nor moonglow to overpower them.
“I’m hungry,” Whit finally said.
“We don’t eat,” Jason said. When Whit protested, Jason snapped, “I told you the plan. I didn’t say anything about eating supper.”
“I figured it was included in there somewhere. You didn’t say anything about taking a piss, either, but I assume it won’t wreck your careful planning if I were to do that at some point?”
“We don’t stop to eat. We lay low. Low means not showing up somewhere to buy food.”
“How about breathing? You never mentioned that. Can I breathe tonight?”
Marriner spoke first. “I’d rather you didn’t, son.”
They parked at a secluded house in the woods, property that belonged to one of the men’s girls. Southern Minnesota, and the black flies careened through the air. Whit pulled his collar more tightly around his neck. He stood by the garage in which Jason had parked the car, and within minutes the second car arrived, everyone exchanging triumphant handshakes. They began filing into the house, but Jason grabbed Whit by the arm and held him there until they were alone.
“You mind explaining your line of thought back there?” Jason asked.
Whit shook off his brother’s hand. “What, the bank manager? He was going for an alarm, you saw him.”
“I saw him fainting is what I saw. Too bad you didn’t faint, too. Though I would have had a hard time deciding whether to carry you out or leave you there.”
“What’s the problem? Some banker gets shot up and you’re in mourning?”
“Robbery is one thing, and murder is another. Look, we didn’t have any choice with those cops in Columbus—we did what we had to do that night. But more bodies will only make them come after us harder. Which I explained to you, not that you were listening.” He shook his head. “Marriner wanted to fill your gun with blanks, but I thought I could trust you.”
“Jesus Christ, Jason, we’re robbing a bank. Don’t tell me you didn’t think it was possible somebody might get shot.”
“Possible, sure. That doesn’t mean we go out of our way to make it happen. Whit, if whatever crazy agenda you have in that head of yours threatens to ruin everything I’ve built, then you can go back to Lincoln City.”
“I don’t have an ‘agenda.’”
“The hell you don’t. I do these jobs so I can get by—because they’re there to be done, and the cops are too inept to stop me, and because I’m good at it. I’m not doing this to fight back against bankers or the law or capitalism or whoever it is you like to blame for things, understand? Don’t fool yourself about what we’re doing, or why.”
“You have your reasons, and I have mine.”
Jason stared at him. Whit had left his jacket and gun in the car, and he felt weirdly uncomfortable about the fact that Jason still had an automatic in his armpit.
“Whit, if you want to be some rebel, do it without me. You can go rally up an army of the hungry and pathetic and storm the Capitol, but I’ll have no part in it.”
“Because it’s only about you, right? You’re the star of the show. The center of the universe. Whatever’s happening to everyone else doesn’t interest you. Let ’em starve. Jason Fireson can handle himself, and to hell with the rest.”
Jason shook his head.
Whit continued, “The hell with your own family.”
“What? I paid off Pop’s debts and saved the goddamn house, while you were fighting cops and messing around with your red pals. And I’ll be getting more to Ma soon as I can.”
“Yeah, Jason to the rescue. Just in time, too.”
Jason stepped closer. Whit had grown to Jason’s height years ago, but Jason still seemed to think he was taller. “What are you trying to say?”
Nearly a year later, Whit still wasn’t sure whether it had been the gun in Jason’s holster or something less tangible that dissuaded him from taking a swing. Why he had kept silent despite all the things he wanted to say.
Although, he realized now, sitting in this kitchen in Indiana and staring at his hideous wounds, if he had said anything, then maybe he and Jason would only have skipped over the past few months and proceeded to where they were now. Dead, and haunting each other eternally.
Jason reappeared in the kitchen, glistening with such cleanliness he seemed of a different species than Whit. A white towel gone pinkish in places was bunched around his muscular waist, and his hair was combed well enough to conceal the bullet’s entry and exit points.
“Damn,” Jason said, reassessing his unwashed brother. “You do look terrible.”
“Do you think …” Whit asked, “this is going to keep happening … forever?”
“I thought you didn’t believe in forever.”
“I’m wondering if someone is trying to tell me I’ve been wrong about that.”
“Whit Fireson admitting he’s wrong.” Jason searched the cabinet, his hands emerging with two cups. “Death is an illuminating experience indeed.”
“This isn’t funny,” Whit said. “We need to figure this out.”
Jason poured coffee, handed a cup to Whit, and sat down. “I’m focusing my energy on solvable problems,” he said, voicing another of Pop’s old maxims. It was like hearing a ghost, one dead man speaking in place of another. “Like getting a new car and finding the girls.”
“But why is this happening to us?” Whit held out his hands. His brother offered no explanation. “Maybe we should talk to a priest.”
Jason nearly spilled his coffee. “What about your whole God-is-an-invention-of-the-ruling-class bull?”
“I just figured a priest might be able to, I don’t know, offer some guidance on this.”
“He’ll throw holy water on you and call you a heretic.”
“Then I’ll show him my bullet wounds.”
“Why would this have anything to do with God?”
“That’s blasphemy.”
Jason loudly lowered his cup onto the table. “Whitman Fireson, you are going crazy.”
“That much is obvious, thanks.”
“Look, if God did feel like saving somebody, it would not be us.”
“Well, why anyone other than us? Has to start with someone.”
“Look, after we find the girls you can join a monastery if you like. But until then, please, save your conversion story for someone else. I might be able to handle … whatever the hell this is, but I don’t think I can handle you being saved.”
They sat in silence while they finished their coffee. Dawn was sliding its delicate fingers through the blinds, the planet still circling, the birds singing their clockwork ditties. There were still a few things in this world, Whit figured, that worked the way they were supposed to.
XIII.
Cary wore his usual no-comment expression with the hallway reporters that morning.
“The Firefly Brothers robbed two banks in Ohio yesterday—what’s the Bureau’s take?”
“With Jesse James and the Headless Horseman as accomplices, right?” he said. “C’mon, guys, have facts really gotten so boring for you to write about?”
The reporters responded with more questions—what about the numerous eyewitnesses, the grainy photograph?—but Cary just shook his head as he escaped through the office door.
One of the agents near Cary’s desk was flipping through telexed copies of stories from the Lincoln City Sun and the Dayton Daily News.
“So I hear the Firesons have risen from the dead to rob more banks?” Cary said.
“Apparently so.” The agent laughed. “Two of the robbers were shot by police at the second bank—one in the head, supposedly—but they still managed to escape.”
Cary yawned. “I suppose we should start telling banks to stock up on silver bullets and garlic?”
He spent his morning returning calls from small-town Minnesota officers and citize
ns who claimed to know the whereabouts of Homer Van Meter, one of Dillinger’s cronies. After two hours of debunking their false sightings, he was interrupted by the office secretary.
“Mr. Hoover is on line two.”
Although he was one of the youngest agents, Cary had grown accustomed to receiving orders from the Director, who had lost confidence in the local SAC and was taking charge of the Chicago office from afar. Usually it was requests for follow-up calls or criticisms for incomplete paperwork. Still, Cary’s stomach was already fluttering as he picked up the receiver.
“Good morning, Mr. Hoover, this is Cary Delaney.”
“Delaney, I trust you’ve heard the latest Fireson stories.” Dispensing with greetings, the Director always made Cary feel as though he himself had joined the conversation one minute late.
“Yes, sir. Unfortunately, people love stories like that.”
“I want you to look into the Lincoln City job immediately.”
“Sir, the Lincoln City police said there was no reason to think anyone linked to—”
“Of course I don’t believe the Fireson Brothers were involved.” Never Firefly with Mr. Hoover. “But I want these stories silenced immediately. We need to keep public perception in mind.”
“I agree completely, sir. I just, ah, didn’t realize it would be the best use of resources for me to—”
“I’m told one of the Lincoln City bank managers is being particularly vehement about having seen the actual brothers at the bank. I want him informed in no uncertain terms that his insisting on such nonsense will only bring damage to the good name of law enforcement and the U.S. government. Furthermore, I want him to know that solving the robbery of his bank will hardly be a priority for the Bureau if he can’t manage to bring himself into line.”
“Yes, sir.”
After hanging up, Cary scurried through the office in search of the reports. There had been two bank jobs yesterday, the first in Lincoln City and the second in the rural town of Hudson Heights. The Firesons had never robbed a bank in their hometown, and neither had anyone else. The first job was described as professional, neat, and quick; the second job had begun that way but was nearly thwarted by the speedy arrival of local police after a clerk tripped a silent alarm. Usually cops assumed those were false alarms and sent only their oldest, fattest officers to check on the bank and receive a free basket of pastries as an apology, but news of the first job that morning had put the authorities on edge.
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