Regardless, there had been plenty of times they had fought and parted ways, though usually the absences were brief. He might go out driving that night and not return until morning. On the more tempestuous occasions, she would take the baby to her parents’ apartment in Milwaukee— the Hazel family had been able to leave the Lincoln City Hooverville, and Veronica’s father had finally found work at a reopened brewery, thanks to some starting-out money that Whit had provided. But Veronica’s anger at Whit would cool in the presence of her parents’ greater dislike of him. Despite Whit’s largesse, they had never been shy about voicing their disapproval of this man who had gotten their daughter in a jam before finding the decency to marry her; that would have been enough to alienate him from her clan even if he hadn’t become a famous outlaw. Every time Veronica ran home to them with her baby, their complaints about Whit only rallied her to his defense, and off she’d go once more to find her misunderstood, heroic man.
And so this lakehouse reunion was not as terribly strange as it should have been. Veronica was probably surprised he hadn’t used death as an excuse for disappearing on her before.
“You didn’t believe what they said, did you?” Whit asked.
“No. But everyone else did, so, after a while—”
“You didn’t get any of my telegrams? I sent one to your folks’.”
“I was only there for a day—can’t stand them anymore. Mostly I was with my aunt’s people, in Iowa.”
“We’ve been looking for you. Driven a thousand miles. Through hell and back.”
“Apparently.”
She stepped back to look at him. He worried he might look different, that his skin might have retained the deathly hue it had seemed to possess that morning. But the light in the cottage was dim, and she didn’t say anything.
As Jason palled around with Owney in the background, Whit turned to face his son. The boy swayed a bit, gazing at Whit in wonder. Could a child’s eyes discern what adults’ could not? Did he know?
“Look at him.” Whit had never seen Patrick stand—his posture seemed no less a miracle than Whit’s own presence here. “Is he walking?”
As if he understood the question, Patrick took two quick steps, then a hesitant third, still looking up at his father with impossibly big eyes. His white shorts were sequined with sand from his day at the beach.
For a moment, Whit was afraid to pick Patrick up. When he did, Patrick felt heavier than before. The toddler’s smile spread to Whit’s stubbly face.
“I’m glad he isn’t old enough to ask questions,” Veronica said. “I don’t know how I would’ve explained.”
A surge of guilt belted Whit in the chest. “You won’t have to explain that to him, ever. I promise.”
She gave him the smile of one who had been promised too many things to believe this one.
Owney had read the news about Darcy, he told Jason an hour later as the two sat in the kitchen. Over leftover chicken and potatoes, Jason explained what little he’d learned from Mr. Windham.
“I was kind of hoping you were behind it,” Jason said.
“No, sir. And I’ll try not to be insulted by that.” With his sandy hair, wide cheeks, and blue eyes, Owney’s face was full of corn-fed cheerfulness.
“So what happened in Detroit?” Jason asked, hiding the fact that he still had no memory of that evening.
“Somebody was on to us. I’m sitting there waiting for you in the restaurant, then I see you two drive by without stopping. Then you do it again, and I worry you’ve seen something I missed. Then I figure, hell, there are a lot of guys on the sidewalk. So now I’m panicking. I head back for the men’s room and somebody up front says my name.”
Jason tried not to show how carefully he was watching Owney.
“I drew on him and fired a few. Ran into the men’s room, someone’s hollering, ‘Police, stop,’ and I jumped out the back window. Lost ’em in an alley, but it was darn close. I hid out north of the city and got word to Bea to leave the lake house for a few days. Then I came up here and poked around, but it didn’t look like anybody’d found the place.”
“So you don’t know how they were on to us.”
“Couldn’t have been on my end, or they would’ve come up here, too.” Owney said he figured they would need to leave the cabin eventually, and he had some acquaintances scouting towns in California where they might relocate and start his church.
It sounded believable. Even if Owney had ratted, he likely wouldn’t be a free man, not with all he’d done. And the fact that he had taken in Veronica and little Patrick argued against his culpability. Still, Jason was haunted by the possibility that Owney had betrayed them. This was what life had been like the past few months, Jason thought: haunted by possibility.
“Surprised to see Veronica here. The plan had been for her and Darcy to wait for us outside Valparaiso.”
“After you and Whit didn’t show, they split up and she hid with family in Iowa. When she heard the news about you, she got scared—said she figured the feds would be after her, too, and that she’d be safer with us than with her family.”
Now it was Owney’s turn to toss questions. He asked Jason to explain Points North and all the headlines. And what happened to the money Jason had been carrying, a third of which was technically his? Jason fed him the same badly cooked hash of half-truths he’d fed Marriner: that they’d been robbed that night but didn’t know who had done it. The expression on Owney’s face showed he didn’t trust the taste.
“So … it’s all gone?”
Jason nodded. “Have you heard anything from Brickbat and Roberts?”
“I haven’t heard anything from anyone up here—that’s the point. But especially them.”
Jason took a last bite of chicken, giving Owney time to linger on the question.
“But you’re thinking they could be behind it.” Owney thought for a moment. “I wouldn’t have thought Brickbat capable of yaffling anyone— too long a job for him. He’s more the shoot-and-grab type. I can see him wanting to do it, sure. Maybe Roberts is masterminding it, with Brickbat the muscle to keep the other guys in line?”
“It’s a theory. Best one I have at the moment. And since you’re the one who did the honor of introducing me to that sorry son of a bitch—”
“You’re going to take that grudge to the grave, aren’t you?”
“And beyond. The grudge isn’t the point, though. You know him better than I do, so I want to hear about his family, old friends, where they live, everything.”
They tried to recall every comment Brickbat or Roberts had made about their pasts, Jason scribbling a long list of possible locations spread throughout the Midwest. Many of the sites he rejected immediately—if they’d kidnapped Darcy, they were unlikely to be hiding out in Chicago or Detroit. They’d need a big place to fit their gang, plus a room or two where Darcy could be hidden without any neighbors spying her. Or even overhearing—that ruled out apartments. It would be a house, probably a farmhouse, of the type the Firefly Brothers and their gang had often hidden in during their early days.
Jason looked at the list and tried not to panic. It could take a week to visit all the possibilities, and there was no guarantee Darcy was being held at any of them.
Owney’s mind had already drifted. “You know, Jason, I got a thought. Could be some money in it. A lot of money. Assuming you stay underground and people still think you’re dead and all, once I’ve started my church I could resurrect you. I’d give a sermon on the healing power of penitence and forgiveness, and you’d walk in from the back door, a no-good criminal risen from the dead, come to apologize to the Lord and be rebaptized by my hand.”
Jason tried not to look horror-struck.
“I mean, golly, what a scene! I could time it with one of the retreats I’m planning, a big powwow under tents and all, when attendance is at its peak. This would be the big showstopper. Telling you, the money would pour in. You’d get a cut, of course.”
“I’ll have to
think about it.”
Jason could never tell whether the church idea was a con or Owney felt that the profit motive was just one facet of a legitimate religious experience. The man did read from the Bible quite often, and prayed before every endeavor, and there had been many an afternoon when Jason was subjected to that damned Father Coughlin on the radio, excoriating the evils of gamblers and international bankers and Orientals. But the recited passages and the nods toward piousness never got in the way of Owney’s pulling the trigger or swinging a club when needed. Jason had met him in prison, where Owney had beaten men beyond recognition at least twice.
Jason stood. “Thank Bea for the food, Owney.”
“You’re leaving now?”
“Guess that means I’m leaving Whit with you. Sorry about that.”
“Jason, it’s ten o’clock. Spend the night. You’ll only fall asleep and drive into a ditch if you leave now—you aren’t doing Darcy any favors that way.”
He waited a moment, then grudgingly sat back down.
“I don’t think I’ve ever seen you so worried before.”
“I usually hide it better.”
Owney clapped Jason’s shoulder. “C’mon, buck up, there. She might not be enjoying herself, but she’ll be all right. Folks always come out of these snatch jobs okay. They want the old man’s money, so they won’t touch her.”
Jason nodded, although he didn’t agree.
“You know Darcy,” Owney said. “She’s probably ordering the sons of guns around, telling ’em what to cook her….” Finally, he changed the subject. “Hey, I forgot to mention: congratulations. Some town near Urbana voted you constable. Read about it a few days ago. You were a write-in candidate. Beat a real cop by fifty votes.”
“Well, I guess if you can be a minister I can be a constable. Was the election before or after I supposedly died?”
“After. A posthumous honor, the paper called it. They gave the job to the cop on a technicality.”
“He can have it.” Jason pondered the word posthumous.
“How’s your mother?”
“Thinner. Grayer. I think she’s wasting away worrying about us. Thought we were dead for a day.” Jason shook his head, hating himself. “If you run fast enough, you can avoid thinking about things. I’ve always been good at running.”
“From where I’m standing, you’ve always been pretty good at thinking, too.”
“Sure. From where you’re standing, because you’re about the only fellow I know who I haven’t gotten killed or arrested.”
“That ain’t on you, Jason. Guys make their own decisions—you haven’t put anyone anyplace he wouldn’t already be. You aren’t as all-powerful as you like to think.”
Jason stared at his hands, remembering the ink that had been on his fingertips the night he’d woken up. “Maybe that’s been my problem all along.”
Whit sat on the bed silently while Veronica rocked the baby to sleep. The process was quick; Patrick’s short lifetime of apartments crowded with men had taught him to be a hard sleeper indeed. Then she sat on the bed beside Whit, the two of them leaning shoulders against the wall and staring at the other’s silhouette.
“I waited at the motel for over a day. Me and Darcy. Was ready to wring her neck by the time we gave up.”
“I’m sorry we had to leave you like that. Things got … complicated. We ran back to Lincoln City for a couple days, tried to telegram you.”
“I’m not gonna lie and say I haven’t thought about what it’d be like if you died. I’m not gonna lie and say I’m not prepared for it.”
Jesus, she was a tough egg. He wondered for a moment if she had even been sad to hear the news, but it wouldn’t be her style to admit it.
“We’ve got some money,” he told her. “Jason and I lost our share of the Reserve job, but we just got a bit more. Once we track down Darcy, we can head out somewhere.”
Even in the dark he could see her frowning. “You’re going to leave your girl again so you can help Jason find his?”
“I know you don’t like her, but … I have to help him.”
“You have your own family now, remember? Over there, with a teddy bear.”
She was right that he didn’t think about the kid as much as he should. He wasn’t entirely sure what his role was supposed to be, not merely as a father but as one in a uniquely dangerous profession. He’d always told her that eventually he’d have enough money for them to run off someplace and start over, but he found it impossible to imagine such a scenario. A life of comfort and bliss—could he really have that? With no one to lash out at? Even if he could carve out his own place in this world, that wouldn’t change the fact that everything was so crooked and broken and wrong. He feared he would only be left to lash out at her and Patrick. Better to live this way, to surround himself with the enemies he was accustomed to hating. He knew she had tired of this lifestyle, but what she didn’t realize was that it insulated her from so much of him.
“Did you have Patrick with you at the motel?”
“I’d left him with my aunt. I had a bad feeling about things and didn’t want him there till I knew things were right. Figured we’d pick him up on the way out west.”
“That was smart. And it’s good that you’re here. It’s safe, for a time at least. I’ll be back soon as I can, no more than a few days.” His eyes had adjusted to the dark, and he saw that hers were angry. “I know it’s strange, but I … have this feeling that if Jason and I were to split up, something bad would happen. Something that we couldn’t walk away from.”
“He doesn’t make you as invincible as you think he does.”
“I never said that.”
Eventually they lay down beside each other, and she told him of their son’s latest accomplishments. Then silence, and he kissed her. She slid a finger between two of his buttons, the nail scraping the undershirt. “So I only get the one night with you?”
He explained that he’d like to keep his undershirt on if it was all the same to her—he had a nasty scar there.
“Not like you to be so vain. Your brother’s rubbing off on you.”
You have no idea, he thought, then tried to submerge that thought in the amnesia of a long kiss.
The living-room floor was no more or less comfortable than any of the other floors Jason had slept on. He woke early the next morning to a rustling sound, and when he opened his eyes he saw Patrick, clad only in a diaper, playing with the zipper of one of the brothers’ suitcases.
“Jesus! Get away from that, son.” A thin layer of canvas was all that separated half a dozen firearms from the baby’s fingers. Jason stood and hoisted his gleeful nephew into his arms, then walked into the kitchen.
“I don’t approve of your son’s sleep schedule,” he told Veronica, who was heating milk on the stove. The sun hadn’t yet risen over the lake, but a faint glow suggested that it planned on making an appearance. No one else seemed to be awake, in this house or in the entire time zone.
“You aren’t the only one,” she said.
Patrick started to clap his hands and babble at the sight of the bottle she’d prepared.
“How do you understand what he’s saying?” Jason asked as he handed her his nephew.
“It’s not too hard to figure out—either he wants food or milk or a change. No different from any other male.”
“We are a predictable lot, aren’t we?”
She sat on a chair as she fed Patrick the bottle, his tiny feet kicking the bottom of the table. “I’m sorry to hear about Darcy. Didn’t get a chance to say that last night.”
“Thank you.”
“You be careful looking for her.”
“You know I’m a careful man.”
“What I’m asking, of course, is you make sure Whit is careful. Because he isn’t.” She continued, “After you find her, you’re done, right? No more ‘endeavors’?”
“That’s the idea. We don’t have as much as we’d hoped, but it’s enough to disappear and start ov
er someplace. Once we find her.”
“You and Whit talk about disappearing more’n a magician does. Like you believe those stories about you. But you two aren’t the disappearing type. You especially.”
“Well, maybe we’ll split up and Whit’ll be better off without my untoward influence.” Then Jason thought of something. “When you two were waiting in the motel, she didn’t say anything …?”
“About what?”
“Planning a fake snatch if something happened to me? Or maybe mentioning she was scared something might happen to her?”
“Of course she was scared something might happen to her.” She gave him a look he didn’t appreciate. “But you know she’s never been one to admit it.”
“You two get along all right while you waited for us?”
“She and I are different, is all.”
“Like me and Whit.”
She laughed. “No, not like that. C’mon, Jason. You’re lucky she and I didn’t kill each other, cooped up there. And, for the record, you and Whit aren’t so different. You like to think you are—you both do—but you’re fooling yourselves.”
He let her comment dangle as they watched the sun rise.
At a more forgiving hour, they ate breakfast on the beach, twin dogwoods providing long slivers of shade. They balanced plates of eggs on their laps and watched Patrick crawl in the sand, throw sand, eat sand, and stare very intently at the sand sticking between his fingers. The lake was so calm Jason figured he could walk across it.
The Many Deaths of the Firefly Brothers: A Novel Page 24
