The Many Deaths of the Firefly Brothers. Thomas Mullen

       II.

      The sun rose grudgingly, as if it would have preferred to stay in hiding. Jason intermittently checked its progress over the familiar, softly sloping landscape of southern Ohio before finally admitting he was awake.

      “Good morning,” Whit said when he noticed his brother rustling.

      Jason grunted in return. He sat up straighter. The feeling of his stolen shirt tugging slightly against the bandages on his chest told him it hadn’t been a dream.

      Though for the first few hours the brothers had felt charged with adrenaline and bewilderment, they had grown tired as their drive unfolded into the night. They chose to sleep in shifts, aiming to make it home as quickly as possible.

      “Home” referred to the Lincoln City house they had grown up in. They hadn’t lived there in years, but nothing had taken its place in terms of either permanence or significance—even though their other brother, who still lived in Lincoln City, made them feel less welcome every time they visited.

      They desperately wanted to find Darcy and Veronica and let them know they were all right, or alive, or whatever they were, but that seemed too risky. If the girls thought the brothers had been caught, it would be hard to predict how they would react. Go into hiding? Surrender to the police? There was also a chance the cops had been watching the girls all along, and had somehow gleaned information from their movements that had led to the brothers’ “apprehension.”

      With their wounds bandaged up and the scene of their ghastly awakening many miles behind them now, it was easier to tell themselves that there was some other explanation for this. The morning’s clarity only heightened the previous night’s dreamlike quality, and Jason and Whit both sat there in the car, hoping that this soon would make sense, hoping that God had granted them some startling favor. Or maybe the Devil had held up his end of an already forgotten bargain—that was more believable. And so they were merely trying to act the way they normally would when pursued by forces beyond their control—something with which they had considerable experience.

      Over the past few months—ever since the federal government had made the elimination of “Public Enemies” a priority, like reducing unemployment and stabilizing the dollar—the brothers had been transformed from local criminals of modest repute to world-famous outlaws, as newspapers across the country printed exaggerated versions of their life stories. Jason was flattered until the drawbacks became clear: safe houses started turning the brothers away, and wary associates showed declining interest in future heists. Worse, the type of regular folk who used to put up Jason and Whit whenever breakdowns or blown tires left them stranded in the middle of farm country—the people who were grateful for the hideout money the brothers paid them and who praised their efforts against the banks—were now too tempted by the government’s bounty on the Firefly Brothers’ heads. Back in May, when the gang had pulled a job at the Federal Reserve in Milwaukee, Jason and Whit had barely survived when random civilians started taking potshots at them; one of their associates wasn’t so lucky.

      At least the bloody Federal Reserve job had been their most lucrative yet: a hundred and fifty grand, to be divided among the four surviving members of the Firefly Gang. The money, however, was easily traceable and therefore needed to be washed. Which was a problem: launderers were even more skittish around the brothers than safe houses were. Sorry, they all begged off, you’re too hot. The gang split ways as Jason and Whit tried to find a reliable, less cowardly fence. There followed weeks of hiding out, of exhausting the goodwill and bad judgment of old pals, of waking to late-night police raids and sneaking through early-morning stakeouts. One fence who claimed he could help them had turned rat, setting them up for a meeting at a Toledo restaurant that was surrounded by feds. Jason had pulled off a brilliant escape that time, but barely. Finally, he and Whit had fallen so low as to live in a car, sleeping in their clothes and bathing in creeks. Jason Fireson, the silk-suit bandit, had become unwashed and unshaven. Carrying six figures of unspendable bills on his rather foul person.

      The brothers’ share of those unspendable bills only grew when one of their two remaining partners was gunned down by cops in a Peoria alley. Jason read about it in the paper.

      Finally, they found a trustworthy guy who knew a guy who knew a guy who could pass the hot bills while on a gambling expedition to Cuba. The laundering fee would be steep; the chiseler had insisted that washing money for the Firefly Brothers was an extreme risk, as was doing business in Cuba. But it was the best Jason and Whit could do. Stomach fluttering, eyes especially vigilant after the Toledo escape, Jason had handed two very heavy suitcases to this stranger he had just met, who was boarding a flight for Havana and would supposedly be coming back to the States for a Detroit rendezvous with the Firesons two weeks later.

      Miraculously, the fence did return, with seventy thousand clean bills—less than they had agreed upon, but he claimed he had run into some trouble abroad and had needed to dip into the funds for some healthy bribes. Jason shook the washer’s dirty hand and took the money. Now, at long last, he and Whit could disappear and start a restaurant in California, or raise bulls in Spain, or whatever it was they had promised themselves and their girls they would do.

      But they didn’t make it to Spain or California. They sent coded messages to Darcy and Veronica telling them to meet at a motel outside Valparaiso, noting that they would pick them up as soon as they paid a share to Owney Davis, Jason’s longtime collaborator and the lone survivor of their gang. They were supposed to meet Owney at a restaurant in Detroit, the night after getting the money washed. Neither could remember what had happened. Had they been shot while driving to the restaurant? That meant they somehow would have driven, badly injured, all the way from Detroit to Points North, which defied credulity, but no more so than their current existence. And if they had been shot in Detroit, did that mean Owney had betrayed them? Or maybe the drop-off with Owney had gone as planned but then something had happened during their long drive through Michigan and into Indiana to meet the girls. But what, exactly? And why Points North, which was a good twenty miles from Valparaiso? What on earth had happened that night?

      So now, home. Normally they called their mother before visiting, using their code phrase (“I was just checking to see if the furnace needs oil”) in case the phones were tapped. But if the cops were still listening to her line, and if they were wise to the code, then calling would raise new suspicions. There was no way to