Jason dropped the sheet by the door and laid a long, thick rifle on Weston’s table. Weston noticed from the way Jason’s shirt hung over his hips that he was also wearing a sidearm. He didn’t seem to be carrying a briefcase of money, but maybe a bag was strapped to his back.
“Sorry to scare you, Wes. How’ve you been?”
“Fine.” Weston knew he himself looked bad, but he was reeling from this twisted incarnation of his brother. “Fine.”
Jason checked the space behind Weston’s small wardrobe, then the closet.
“Are you all right?” Weston asked.
“Haven’t been sleeping much. But I’m alive.”
“Where’s Whit?”
“We split up for a bit. I needed to swing by town real quick. He’s okay, though.”
Weston wondered how much worse Whit, who had never taken as much care with his appearance as Jason did, could possibly look.
“It’s good to see you, Jason. But it’s pretty risky you dropping by.”
“You aren’t being watched,” Jason said. That was news to Weston; though he hadn’t seen Agent Delaney since their confrontation, he had assumed the agent was still keeping tabs on him. They’d finally decided Weston wouldn’t bend to them. Or maybe he’d simply bored them. “Only person watching you the last two days has been me.”
Weston stiffened. He tried to remember what he’d done for the past two days.
“Had to do it. Just to be sure. Ma’s place is being watched, I figured, but wasn’t sure about you. Sure now, which works out. Works out great.”
Who was this person? He was speaking more quickly than Jason Fireson ever had, with a quieter voice, spitting out the words half formed, the sentences incomplete. Where was Jason’s grandness, his calmness and confidence?
Weston told him to sit down, but Jason shook his head and said he’d done plenty of sitting. Weston offered to get him a glass of water, but Jason told him to stay there.
“How’s the job?”
“They’re still paying me.” If he had been following Weston for the past two days, he should have known that Weston wasn’t working. Then again, Jason had never worked a straight job apart from his brief time at Pop’s store, so he probably didn’t know what a working man’s routine was. For all Jason knew, Weston had been given a couple of days off. “Why are you here?”
“Need a favor. It’s a simple one, won’t be any trouble. And there’s money in it for you, after the fact.”
Something in Weston’s gut dropped a few inches. “Do you have any now?”
“No.” Jason looked insulted for a moment, then he explained that he and Whit had knocked over a bank in Wisconsin—the Federal Reserve, Weston knew from the papers—and had quite a lot to show for it, but the money was marked. He rambled a moment about money laundering, whatever that was, and said that in five days he was to meet with a man who would exchange the money for spendable bills. Jesus, Weston thought, I would settle for marked money right now. I would settle for crinkled, torn bills, dripping with blood. He barely followed Jason’s story and could think only of how hungry he felt after his walk—a stupid waste of time and precious calories. His daily trip to the breadline was keeping him alive, but the past few mornings he had spat up blood. Even after washing his mouth out, it was all he could taste.
“Look, Jason, I’m in a bad spot—me and the whole family. You don’t know how hard it’s been. If you could just get us s—”
“Were you listening to me? I passed it all to the washer. I meet him in five days, and then I’ll have it. Until then, I have nothing. This is where you come in.”
He explained that one of his confederates, Owney Davis, was due a cut of the money, but that he didn’t know where Owney was. He did know a guy who could get in touch with Owney, but he didn’t dare go to him because that guy, too, was probably being watched.
Weston shook his head, overwhelmed and confused.
“There’s a place up in Karpis called Last Best Chance. Guy that runs it is Chance McGill. I trust him, but it’s too risky for me to show myself there. Chance will know how to get a message to Owney for me. I need you to go there and pass the message.”
“Why me?”
“Because you aren’t being watched. Because everybody I used to trust is either in jail or dead or talking out the other side of their mouths to the brass buttons.”
“Just because I wasn’t watched today doesn’t mean—”
“It’s a gamble, but a good one. I’m not going to lam off without paying Owney his share. I’ve done you plenty of favors, so it shouldn’t be too much to ask for one in return.”
“That’s one way of looking at it.”
“The hell’s that mean?”
“Nothing. Never mind.”
“Christ, Wes. I’m sorry I don’t have anything for you now, but if this works out me and Whit’ll be flush. We’ll get some to you and Ma. I’m asking you a simple favor, and it isn’t even illegal.”
Just talking to Jason Fireson was illegal now. A cop or Agent Delaney could break down the door and Weston would be locked up for aiding and abetting; he’d read about the mother or aunt of one of Dillinger’s associates being jailed for no more than this.
“Okay. Let me get a pen and—”
“You don’t write any of this down, Wes—for Christ’s sake.”
“Then tell me again.”
Jason did, in a slower tone of voice this time, not out of consideration for his brother but because he seemed to be tiring with each syllable.
“I’ll need to borrow Ma’s car to get there.”
“No. They’ll see you at her place and might get suspicious enough to follow. There’s a train that’ll get you there.”
Trains cost money, but Weston didn’t say anything.
After Jason was satisfied that Weston understood the message—for Owney to meet Jason six days later, at a certain restaurant in Detroit, at five in the afternoon—Jason seemed to relax, but only slightly.
“Do you want to spend the night?” Weston asked.
Jason seemed to ponder this, or maybe he was falling asleep with his eyes open, standing up. After a moment, he stirred and said yes.
“Can I get you that water now? I’d like some myself.”
Jason finally sat in one of the wooden chairs. Weston fetched two glasses of water from the bathroom, and the brothers sat at the table in such an arrangement that the rifle wasn’t pointed at either of them.
“Are you sure you’re all right?”
“We’ve been sleeping in cars and empty houses for weeks. Sometimes barns.” The shadows cast by Jason’s nose and brows, combined with his bedraggled hair, made him look like something out of a haunted house. “You don’t sleep too well when there are people looking for you.”
“I guess I assumed it had always been like that, but it never seemed to bother you before.”
Jason explained that it had all changed a few months ago, that he never would have set this complicated chain of events into motion if he’d realized that the feds would be cracking down like this. Weston wasn’t sure he believed him.
“Where’s Darcy?”
“Darcy’s fine. She’s waiting for us to get that money. I can’t be with her now because she might be watched, too. They’d probably have arrested her by now just to lean on me if her daddy wasn’t a big shot. That’s how the law works. He doesn’t care a damn for her, but he still wouldn’t be happy if the cops locked her up. Bad for business.”
“Doesn’t she have money?”
“No, she doesn’t. And her old man’s not inclined to leave her any in his will, either. I’m not with her for the money, Wes.”
“I didn’t say that.”
Weston asked Jason if he wanted to shower—almost for his own sake, as his brother was stinking up the room—but he shook his head. “I just want to sleep.”
They both stood and Weston took one of the pillows from his bed, then searched the closet for a blanket. “You can have the bed
; I’ll sleep on the floor.”
“Nah, I’m used to floors,” Jason said. “How’s Ma?”
“She’s worried about you two. Real worried.”
“But how is she otherwise?”
“There is no otherwise, Jason. She’s afraid her sons are going to be killed.”
“Do you think she’s still torn up over Pop?”
It was as if he’d asked if she still breathed oxygen. “We all are.”
“I’d like to think I’m getting past it.”
Jason had removed a pistol from his pocket and was crouching down to place it under his borrowed pillow as Weston stood there, stunned. He couldn’t believe what Jason had said. Or how he’d said it—just an offhand line, tossed to the side as he lay down on Weston’s floor, folding his arms on his chest. As if Pop had never mattered to him at all.
Weston’s feet felt mortared to the floor as he watched his brother close his eyes and seem to fall asleep in seconds. Who was this man? Did he even care about his family, or were the other Firesons just a bunch of suckers to pay off now and then so they’d leave him alone?
Jason’s breaths were heavy by the time Weston managed to crawl into bed.
Jason had vanished like a ghost by the time Weston woke up. When Weston hesitantly looked under Jason’s pillow, the gun was gone, too. He walked into the kitchenette and saw a note scribbled on the back of a used envelope: DON’T FORGET. GO TODAY OR TOMORROW. THANKS.
Beside the envelope was a single match in a matchbook. Weston shook his head. But he obeyed, lighting the match and setting fire to the message, which caught surprisingly quickly and singed his fingertips before he could blow it out.
The sad truth was, he had nothing better to do that day.
After killing time in his apartment, then waiting in the long breadline for lunch, he walked another twenty minutes to the train station. He winced at the cost of the local to Karpis; he had planned to ask Jason for a dollar that morning but had never had the chance.
He couldn’t stop thinking of what Jason had said about Pop. The two had always fought, Pop scolding Jason for his laziness, Jason wise-mouthing back. Pop the moralist, Jason the contrarian. Pop the avatar of hard work, persistence, and decency—all the things that the Firefly Brothers seemed to be against. Maybe Pop’s death just hadn’t hurt Jason the way it had hurt Weston. Maybe those two prison stints had done something to the eldest brother, leeched out his compassion and left only survival instincts. Surely Whit missed Pop as Weston did—Whit had seemed especially close to the old man—but then again maybe a year of running with Jason had hardened Whit’s personality as well. Maybe Weston didn’t know his brothers anymore. Maybe his brothers—the good part of them, at least—had already died, as Delaney had said. All that was left was their petty anger and vengefulness, like poltergeists stripped of everything that had made them human.
The longer he sat on the train, the angrier he became. Why was he doing this? What did he owe his brothers anymore? What had they ever done for him, other than cost him his job?
Last stop, Last Best Chance. He tried not to ponder the symbolism. Instead, when he arrived he took in the odd sight, an enormous and amorphous gray building, ugly as a boil and clearly not intended to be viewed by daylight. It was as if a twister had hit a red-light district and deposited the pieces in this otherwise unassuming neighborhood.
Weston had checked, but no one was following him. He just wasn’t that interesting to anyone.
He expected some sort of guard or henchman at the door, but it was unattended and unlocked. He took a breath and entered his brothers’ world.
Photographs of boxers, soldiers, and pilots stood sentry in a long hallway of dark-oak walls, which led into a vast ballroom fronted by a serpentine bar encrusted with hammered tin. Off this central area snaked rooms that receded so far into the dim light that he couldn’t see the end in most directions. Hatted men were scattered at the bar and at the tables in the farther reaches. It was quiet at this hour; Weston could hear a phonograph playing jazz coming from one direction and a radio broadcast of the Reds game from another. Outside of nickelodeons and theaters, it was the biggest windowless indoor space he’d ever seen.
He smelled steak, and his stomach lurched inside him; he’d still been hungry the moment he finished his watery stew, ninety minutes ago. But that animalistic response was nothing compared with what he felt when the woman in the black strapless dress approached.
She had curly red hair that was almost brown in the darkness, and her shoulders were so white they looked as if they’d bruise if a man touched them. Jesus, to be that man. Weston felt overpoweringly self-conscious as she walked up to him, heels tapping, dark lips smiling but not too much. Maybe she was just the hostess; he knew that prostitutes weren’t supposed to be good-looking, that this woman couldn’t possibly be what he’d first assumed. He told himself not to glance at her chest, but she caught him doing it anyway.
“And what can I help you with?” She looked a few years older than him and was all the more intimidating for it.
“I’m, I’m looking for Chance McGill.”
“Mr. McGill is a busy man. I don’t even know if he’s here. What can I help you with?”
It felt as if everyone in the place was watching, but maybe they were just catatonic with drink.
“He’ll want to talk to me.” He spoke quietly. “I have a message for him.”
She still had that look, as if she was entertaining and assessing him all at once. “What kind of message?”
“Please, I’m …” Could he just say it out loud at a place like this? He lowered his voice even more. “I’m Jason and Whit Fireson’s brother.”
He had expected the name to change something in her expression, but it didn’t. “You have Jason’s eyes.” She raised her right hand to his face, her fingertips gliding against his cheekbone. “I’ve always liked Jason’s eyes.”
He wondered what else of Jason’s she had liked.
“Sit at the bar.” She turned and walked away, and he watched her walk. Then he sat at the bar, self-conscious as ever. He stared at the many bottles arrayed before him, the browns and ochers and clears. The bartender, a young man who looked fifty pounds fitter than Weston, soon came his way, but Weston waved him off.
He took another look at the place. Even in its near-emptiness the joint was impressive. The depression didn’t seem to exist here. People who walked through that door had money, ill-gotten or otherwise. As Weston sat there studying the mahogany molding and the glittering chandeliers, and imagining the clientele who would traipse in once the sun had set, the waves of envy nearly knocked him from his stool.
He turned back around and saw that an impeccably groomed, silver-haired man had appeared behind the bar. He was thin and short but didn’t seem to know it, moving as if he owned the place, which Weston figured he did. His white oxford shirt was pressed, his cuffs linked with gold, the buttons of his tan vest tiny pieces of ivory. The man motioned for Weston to move to the far end of the bar.
“You wanted to see me?” McGill’s calm voice betrayed nothing.
“My brother Jason wanted me to give you a message. For Owney Davis?”
McGill watched him for a moment. “Didn’t know there was a third brother.”
“Yeah, well, I’m not really, um, involved in what they do.”
“No kidding.” McGill smirked, giving Weston the up-and-down. Weston just sat there and let himself be eyeballed.
“What makes you think I know anything about an Owney Davis?” McGill asked.
“Nothing. I don’t … Jason just asked me if I could—”
“What makes you think I know anything about Jason Fireson?”
Weston was sick of smelling food he couldn’t eat and staring at booze he couldn’t drink. And the redhead had returned, standing just far enough away for her to see but not quite hear the conversation.
“Look,” Weston said, “I don’t know what the rules are here, okay? I don’t know you
r secret passwords or etiquette or … whatever it is you judge people by, all right? My brother asked me to do him a favor, so I’m spending half my day—”
“All right, all right.” A cigar was between McGill’s teeth, though Weston had somehow missed its introduction. McGill lit it and was at least decent enough to exhale to the side.
“No one followed me here, if that’s what you’re worried about.”
“I know you weren’t followed. What’s the message?”
Weston passed on Jason’s instructions. He still barely understood them, and McGill neither nodded nor shook his head.
“How’d he look?” McGill asked.
“Like he’d turned into someone else.”
McGill was so stonily calm and motionless that he reminded Weston of the lady at the unemployment office. It was as if everyone, when confronted by Weston’s palpable misery, could only hold still and wait patiently for him to drag his sorrows elsewhere.
“What are you drinking?”
“I don’t, um, I don’t really have enough on me for anything.”
McGill smirked again. “What are you drinking?”
Weston asked for a whiskey and McGill turned, selected a bottle of something Weston had never heard of, and gracefully poured a few fingers, more like a fist, into an octagonal glass.
“You need this pretty badly, I’d say.”
It felt like charity and condescension but tasted much better. McGill poured himself a smaller version and offered a toast: “To your brothers’ health. And to yours.”
Weston was so sick of pity. But it was one of the few things he had left.
He took another sip. Even on a full stomach it would have been a lot of booze for Weston, and he felt a formerly tight space inside his brain opening up. Emboldened, he dared to ask, “I don’t suppose you need any help around here? Even busing tables or something like that?”
The skin around McGill’s eyes seemed to soften, but not his lips. “I can’t have any more Firesons crawling around my place, kid. Sorry. Nothing personal.”
The Many Deaths of the Firefly Brothers: A Novel Page 39
