continue to appreciate for as long as they drew breath, or if it would eventually crash like the stock market if people lost interest. Or if they simply disappeared.
“Well,” Jason said now, “we’re hoping to narrow the list of suspects.”
“You should have too many other things on your mind to be interested in revenge, boys.”
“We didn’t say anything about revenge. We’d just like to know if someone did rat on us, so we can avoid that someone in the future.”
“Well, if anyone did they didn’t tell me.”
“I never asked if they did. I just asked if you knew where our boys are.”
“People haven’t been using the Chance McGill line the way they used to, but—”
“Because you wouldn’t let us,” Whit said.
“Damn right I wouldn’t let you!” He held the cigar away from his face and extended a reproachful finger. “I’ve worked my way up inch by inch, son, and I’m not gonna let it get torn down by a couple brothers who’ve managed to get ten state police forces, Pinkertons, postal cops, the National Guard, and the fucking federal government after them, no matter how goddamn charming one of them happens to be.”
Jason put a hand on Whit’s shoulder. “We’re not blaming you for anything, Chance. We’re just—”
“Your brother sure as hell is.”
“Whit didn’t mean anything by it. Anyway, back to square one. You’re saying you don’t know hell’s first whispers about where our boys are?”
Chance managed to move his eyes from Whit to Jason. “Marriner’s still living the good life, far as I know.” Marriner Skelty, Jason’s bank-robbing mentor with decades of endeavors to his name, had possessed the good sense to retire after the Calumet City job in November. “As for Brickbat and Roberts, nix.”
“Brickbat was never my biggest fan,” Jason said, to draw him out.
“I always did notice an added degree of tension in the room when he was in it. Crazy bastard. Never shoulda gotten involved with him, Jason.”
“I got wise eventually.”
The brothers had kicked Brickbat and Roberts out of the gang after the bloody Baton Rouge job. Brickbat was as his nickname implied, all stubborn force and no thought. He was only five-six, but his thick frame contained the coiled rage of three generations of doomed Iowa home-steaders. Still, if you were at least a few feet away from him you stood a reasonably good chance of outsmarting him before he got close enough to break your face. Unless he was packing, which he always was. Starting out as the muscle guarding cigarette shipments in St. Paul, he’d worked a few bank jobs with the Barker Gang in Minnesota. According to the police, he’d rubbed three cops in the process; according to Brickbat, the body count was seven. He’d been in the opening months of a permanent holiday courtesy the state of Illinois when he was liberated during the same jailbreak that freed such now-infamous hoods as Henry Pierpont and John Makley, of the Dillinger Gang. Brickbat knew Owney through some work they’d done on a Minnesota bootlegging line, and at the time Jason needed an extra torpedo and figured the man’s brand of pugilistic cockiness would make him a natural for the job. Thus was a regrettable relationship born. Jason quickly tired of the way Brickbat’s palsied trigger finger made bank jobs more violent affairs than they needed to be. Jason had handed Brickbat an extra cut when he booted him from the gang, in the hope that it would constitute ending on good terms, but something in the man’s demeanor had left Jason with the uncomfortable feeling that this was not yet a farewell.
Elton Roberts, Brickbat’s only friend, was a heavy drinker, a trait the Firesons distrusted. A little here and there was fine, but a man who couldn’t be counted on to drive straight or think straight was an unnecessary risk. Fortyish and debonair, Roberts was a grifter who’d spent the past few years ripping off the hopeless jobless across the Midwest. Decked out in a dapper suit and possessing a smooth voice, he looked every bit the trustworthy businessman, or at least what a poor egg thought a trustworthy businessman would look like, if there were any. He would troll the breadlines and find a few suckers, preferably immigrants or farmers who had lost their property and were overwhelmed by their urban environs. He’d tell them he was the manager of a new building in town that needed four elevator operators; the job paid thirty a week—not bad at all—and all the fellows needed to do was front him fifty each for their uniforms. The fellows usually didn’t have that much cash, but they’d ask for a day or two to rustle the funds from their cousins or in-laws or dying grandparents. Once Roberts had their money, he’d tell them the building’s address and ask them to show at eight the next morning. When they did, they would find that Roberts wasn’t there and that the building had no elevator. Roberts bounced from city to city working that grift and a few others before the cops got wise. Then, while doing time, he met a jug marker with a list of banks to hit once he got out. Like a skittering asteroid, Elton Roberts eventually came into Jason’s orbit. Because Roberts looked straight and could talk his way out of trouble, Jason had taken him on as a faceman. He learned about Roberts’s jobshark scams only after a few weeks of working together, when Elton got drunk and boastful. That’s when Jason realized he’d never liked the man.
“Look,” Chance said, “I know Brickbat’s crazy, but I don’t see him for a finger-louse. Last I heard he was gearing for some big job. Was trying to get the Barkers involved, but they wouldn’t bite.”
“What was the job?”
“He wasn’t that talkative.”
Jason eyed him. “You’re not telling us everything.”
“It’d take a week to tell you everything, and you never seem to have enough time. But I’m telling you the important parts.”
Jason turned around and started the engine. “You’re right—I’d love to chin with you all night, but, yeah, we’ve got to go.”
“Where you headed?”
That was at the top of the list of questions Jason wouldn’t answer, so he lied. “Very far from here.”
“Any messages for me to pass on?”
“Dead men don’t pass messages. This never happened.”
“Got it. Except, dead men pass lots of messages. You can take just about any message you want off a dead man.”
Jason declined the philosophical argument and drove back to Last Best Chance in silence.
“Well, if it means anything to you boys, guys are awful broken up over your alleged demise. Lotta depressed folks in my club these days. Buying plenty of drinks, though.”
“That’s nice. Hopefully our funerals will be well attended.” Jason pulled up to the curb in front of the funhouse. Out in the parking lot, an elastic-legged drunk was supported by two prostitutes.
“Thanks for the smokes, Chance,” Jason told him. “And goodbye forever.”
Chance nodded at the two of them, stepping out of the Pontiac. “I’ve heard that one before.” Then he tapped the roof and walked toward his ramshackle empire. No one was watching them as Jason hit the gas and pulled away.
“So,” Jason said to his brother, “if the cops had broken up our meeting with Owney
