The Many Deaths of the Firefly Brothers (19 page)

XII.

W
hit felt buried alive. His arms were
useless and some immovable weight was pinning him down, making breathing
impossible. He couldn’t see. Jesus, what had happened? Memories rushed at
him. The job at Third National—no, the
second
job, that’s
right, hadn’t they tried two in one day? Did that explain why he was
lying here like … hell, where was he?
The memories were winning the fight, handily, and he felt all the more buried,
each regret another thug and every mistake another goon leaping atop the pile,
pinning him down. The cop with the Thompson. The crowd on the street. Each face
from this long litany of crimes, each body flinging itself upon him. He needed
to breathe.
He screamed as he pushed his arms out, and whatever was on top of him rolled
off. Panting, he sat up and leaned against something. He felt behind him:
metal, and a tire. A car, then. He stood and reached into the open window,
found the steering wheel, heard the keys clink as his clumsy fingers brushed
against them, then turned the switch for the headlights.
He was inside a garage, but not one he recognized. It was exceptionally clean
and free of clutter, except for the body on the ground.
Whit was fairly certain who it was. He took a breath, steadying himself, then
bent down, grabbed it by the shoulder, and rolled it over. Even though
he’d been expecting it, he still gasped. Jason’s eyes were shut,
blood-stained dirt caking his left temple and jaw. Just
above his temple, a shiny tangle of hair was thick with a combination of
pomade, dried sweat, blood, and worse. Whit stepped back, turned around, and
gagged. But nothing came out—he’d probably emptied himself already.
When
he
had died.
There didn’t seem to be any way to deny it this time. Whit turned around
and saw that the ground he had been lying on was nearly black. He inspected
himself. He wasn’t wearing his jacket anymore, and his bulletproof vest
was stiff with blood. When he moved it made crinkling sounds, bits flaking off.
The material was a shredded mess.
Good God. It really happened. We really died before. And now we’ve
died again
.
Whit looked in the car and saw that its backseat was even bloodier than the
ground, so much so that he wondered if a third or fourth person had died back
there, too.
How much of the stuff do we have in us?
he wondered.
And
how many times can we bleed it all out?
He gripped some of the shreds and pulled off his vest and the shirt beneath it,
his clothing disintegrating around him. What in the hell point was there in
wearing a twenty-five-pound bulletproof vest if you could still get gunned to
death? Apparently these things weren’t designed to stop submachine guns,
particularly at such close range. And since when did cops in nowhere towns like
Hudson Heights carry Thompsons? The Firefly Brothers had scouted not only the
bank itself but the local police force, making note of their
automobiles—number, type, condition, estimated maximum speed—and
their weaponry. Apparently they had missed the fact that the tiny Hudson
Heights police force had access to an armory. Whit had heard that the hoopla
over Public Enemies had inspired towns to vote more money for their police
forces, so that even small-town outfits could strap themselves like fascist
militias, but he hadn’t quite believed it until he saw that overweight
cop aiming the Thompson at him.
With his shirt and vest off, the sight of his own chest was repulsive to him.
Everything was deep scarlet. Tattooed across his chest and abdomen were purple
welts; he stopped counting after six. The cop had riddled him good. His pants,
too, were stained with blood, but they were untorn, so at least his wounds were
above the belt.
He noticed that a few feet from Jason’s body was a small burlap sack
labeled LYE. Of course. Marriner was planning to erase
their faces so the bodies, when found, couldn’t be identified. They would
have done the same thing to one of their dead accomplices, if it had come to
that. Thank God he’d woken up before the old man had poured the acid onto
his face.
He sat on the ground and his head lolled into his hands, his fingers tacky with
blood. So were his jaw and neck, and his lips were coated with the stuff. He
couldn’t believe this, yet he could. They hadn’t somehow survived
the still forgotten shootout in Points North—they really had died there.
They had been granted a second chance, and they had chosen to devote that extra
life to the same misguided pursuits as the first. It had happened again.
It was probably some mystical payback for all the harm they’d done, he
thought to himself. He didn’t normally aim such downcast thoughts at
himself—
I’m fighting back against the crooked bankers, damn it,
I’m doing good
—but he knew that he and Jason had wrought more
than their share of damage. All summer long, Jason’s plan had been to run
out west someplace and start over once they had their Federal Reserve money
washed, and they still could have done that after their awakening in Points
North. But they had woken up penniless, so Jason had altered the plan, and the
seduction of his unassailable confidence had been all Whit needed.
Sure, we
need money if we want to start over and live quietly someplace. And yes, these
two banks have money, and yes, we are particularly skilled at obtaining money
from such banks. Sure, let’s risk our lives again. Yeah, we’ll put
one of the rookies in charge of cleaning the street
—
great idea
.
That’s how it was with Jason—he gave you reason to expect better,
despite the long odds and misery surrounding you. The man truly believed he was
meant for grander things, and anyone in his orbit was equally blessed.
We
are not meant to wallow in poverty. We cannot be stopped by idiot cops and malevolent
bankers. We shall revel in our rightness, in our superiority. Until it kills
us. Twice
.
And of course Whit had been happy to walk into Third National of Lincoln City
and rob the same bastards that had pushed their father into his impossible
position. How different might things have been if the bank had held off on the
foreclosure notices and waited for the factories to back up their scrip?
Pop’s dreams of real-estate prosperity might not have been realized, no,
but neither would this nightmare have come to pass.
There
would have been no late-night confrontation with Garrett Jones, no threats that
could be used against Pop later, at the trial for Jones’s
death—Jones, who so obviously had shot himself in despair over his own
lost fortune. Pop’s confrontation with him the night before had been a
bad idea, certainly, and perhaps the stress of that conflict had been part of
what had led Jones to take his own life, but that didn’t make it
Pop’s fault.
Jason still wasn’t moving. Whit dragged his brother over to the car and
sat him up against it. Hmm, Jason had been the first to wake the last time, and
he’d had his hand on Whit’s arm when Whit awoke. Had Jason muttered
some incantation, blown into Whit’s mouth, donated a rib? What was Whit
supposed to do to bring his brother back?
On the right side of the garage was a narrow door, and Whit opened it. He
needed to escape his brother’s presence for a moment, needed to be spared
the horrible and unknowable responsibility of being a living person in the
company of the dead. Outside it was calm, a faintness of dawn on the right side
of the sky. He was in the ample backyard of a two-floor, white clapboard house
that he didn’t recognize. In keeping with Marriner’s preferred
methods, this appeared to be a well-off neighborhood. Every house was dark
except this one—there were lights on downstairs, though the blinds were
drawn, those tiny slivers of yellow evidence of what was probably frantic
activity: counting the money, or mapping a new escape, or trying to get the two
rookies to relax about the fact that their famous ringleaders had died in the
backseat.
Whit let himself remember. The Lincoln City job had been a success, and
they’d driven two cars along different routes to the predetermined
rendezvous point, where they had two other cars waiting. They had stuffed the
Gladstone bags and assorted sacks into the trunk of the new vehicles and driven
down to Hudson Heights for the second endeavor. They walked in right as the
bank was closing, a time when, they had learned from observing, the place
tended to be nearly as empty as other banks were at their nine o’clock
openings (the usual time for endeavors). Yet, for some reason the place had
been packed.
That didn’t check out—maybe some factory’s payday had been
changed, or perhaps the bank was having problems that afternoon, too few
tellers to handle the crowd. Regardless, the gang should have decided right
then to call off the endeavor, but cockiness had taken hold. Jason
wanted the second job, insisted that the extra money was
what they needed to finally escape, to offer the better lives that Darcy and
Veronica and little Patrick deserved.
Hell, who was Whit kidding? He’d wanted the money, too.
He’d always suspected that he didn’t get the same joy out of doing
endeavors that Jason did, but then again Jason seemed to enjoy
everything
more than most people. And Whit less. He worried about himself sometimes. Why
he carried so much spite, so much vindictiveness. He didn’t
want
to be this way, did he? Wouldn’t it be easier to be like
Jason—laughing, carefree, exuding such freedom? How had Whit been thrust
into the role of the angry one?
Funny how people can live through the same events and turn out so differently.
How family can react to the same disasters in such varied ways. He was who he
was, and if death couldn’t change that, then surely nothing would.
The air outside was warm, the humidity not letting up even in night’s
hidden moments. Whit’s head ached. He’d been plagued by
intermittent migraines ever since the beating he took at the Hooverville, and
he felt the familiar throb as the blood flowed through his brain once again. It
was dark out, but the birds were doing their part to get the day started. They
seemed unusually frantic, as if trying to warn the neighborhood of its unlawful,
unnatural inhabitants.
Whit screamed. It wasn’t premeditated but had simply risen in him like a
primal urge. His head tipped back and he hollered at the vanishing night, at
his past, at whatever forces were keeping him bound to a life he had long tired
of. He fell to his knees and for a moment wondered if he could possibly make
himself stop inhaling, finally undo whatever it was that his body kept redoing.
But no—after kneeling there for a long moment his lungs expanded again,
and he slumped forward.
He was huddled up in a ball, his blood-encrusted fingers wrapped around the
back of his head, when he heard the familiar voice.
“You screaming to wake the dead?”
Whit turned and stood in one motion. Jason was standing outside the open garage
door and scrutinizing Whit’s raw chest. Even in the dark they were close
enough to see each other’s wounds.
“Guess I was,” Whit said.
They stared at each other.
“So …” Jason’s voice trailed off. “This is really
happening.”
“Yeah.”
That was all they could muster for a good while. Jason began to finger the hole
in the side of his head, but he stopped when he saw the expression on
Whit’s face.
“Sorry,” Jason said. “I was hoping all this blood was just
from a nasty cut, but—”
“I took a good look at it,” Whit said. “It’s not a cut,
it’s a bullet hole. Plus, I saw it when it happened.”
“What did happen? I remember robbing the second bank and being about to
walk out, but nothing after that.”
“Sniper from across the street. Got you soon as you stepped
outside.”
Jason shook his head. “At least it was quick.”
Whit had not been so lucky. He remembered the force of the cop’s
Thompson, like someone punching through him, so many times in too quick an
instant. He remembered seeing his own gun in midair as his arms spasmed. He
remembered the claustrophobia of his face in someone’s armpit as he was
stuffed into the backseat; remembered the choking and coughing, like he was
drowning, his senses at war with one another; and finally he remembered
painting the upholstery red whenever he tried to speak, or tried to ask someone
where Jason was, or tried to ask God for a favor. Apparently he had been
granted one.
“Jason, what the hell is happening?” Whit whispered this, as if it
was all he could do to admit it out loud.
“I don’t know.”
“This can’t be a dream. It’s too … too long, for one
thing. I don’t know, all it could be is … a miracle. A goddamn
miracle.”
“
Or a curse.”
“We can’t die,” Whit said in disbelief. “We … we
just can’t die.”
“No, we seem to be pretty good at dying. But something’s not
letting us stay dead.”
“Jesus, you’d think the second time would be easier to deal with,
but—”
“At least this time we got to keep our pants on,” Jason said,
looking at himself. “So I guess two jobs in one day was a bad
idea.”
“Yes. You could say that.”
“Did I get anyone else killed?”
“I don’t know. I was kind of focused on myself, tell you the truth.
And on you.”
Lying faceup on the Hudson Heights sidewalk after being blasted, he had seen
Jason step outside. Suddenly there was a shot and Jason’s head had lunged
impossibly to the side, his right ear touching his shoulder. After wobbling
awkwardly, Jason’s head had returned to a normal position, which was when
the blood began to cascade, in rhythmic, pumping bursts, as if his heart were
in his skull. Then Whit shut his eyes, and Jason fell on top of him.
“Let’s get inside before they start dividing the money and leave us
out,” Jason said.
“But … what do we say? How do we do this?”
“I don’t know, but people are starting to turn on their lights. We
don’t have a choice—c’mon.”
The plan, assuming the survivors were still following it, had been to hide out
at a place in Gary, Indiana, before splitting up. Jason had chosen Gary because
it was a healthy distance away—and on the other side of a state
line—from the banks in Lincoln City and Hudson Heights, and because they
knew it from a past cooling-off period. Two days ago, Marriner had rented the
new place from an elderly landlady.