A Knife in the Heart Read online

  He was close enough, so he moved even faster, and kicked the one with the makeshift knife hard in the groin, doubling him over, and bringing up his knee to smash the con’s nose and mouth. Fallon whirled then, as the one with the hard fist stepped toward him, swinging. Fallon ducked, and in the close confines of the alley, he heard the man’s fist connect against the stone wall. He screamed at the pain from his broken fingers. Fallon grabbed the assassin’s ears,jerked, and slammed the man’s forehead against stone.

  Footsteps pounded on the gravel, and Fallon whirled, dropped to his knees as the running man swung wildly with the chain. It clipped Fallon’s head, but just enough to hurt and to make him mad. Fallon had a handful of pebbles in his right hand and he flung them into the man’s face. Staggering back, the man tried to raise his arm to slash again with the chain, but Fallon was rolling, over and over, and caught the guy just above the ankles. Down he went, over Fallon’s body, landing with a thud and groan.

  Fallon came to his knees. So did the convict, only he had let go of his hold of the chain. Fallon drove a fist hard, and heard the jawbone break. The man went down, and now Fallon heard the shrill whistles and more pounding feet. But the one with the knife had recovered after vomiting down the front of his striped shirt. He had the knife and he slashed with it.

  Fallon jumped back, feeling the tearing of his woolen vest, and he tripped over the legs of the man who had swung the chain. Down went Fallon, and the man with the knife tried to laugh, but the pain from Fallon’s kick just left him wheezing. The knife shifted to his other hand, and he said, “You’re dead before they’ll kill me.”

  The guards were running. The convict laughed, but his eyes widened when he saw the chain Fallon had gathered in his right hand. He swung, low, letting go of the chain and watching it wrap around the man’s ankles, ripping cloth and skin, and sending him to the gravel. He tried to push his head up, but that was a bigger mistake, because Hank Fallon’s boot caught him in the jaw. That one cracked, too.

  * * *

  “You all right, Hank?” Big Tim O’Connor asked.

  “Yeah.” Fallon looked at his vest, the tear that was likely too deep for Christina to make fashionable again.

  “These guys were supposed to be going to get another load of bricks,” O’Connor said.

  “I think they had something else in mind,” Fallon told him. He considered the three men. “But the only one who’ll be doing any talking is that one.” He pointed to the unconscious man with the swollen knuckles and bloody forehead. “And he looks to be out for a while.”

  One of the guards laughed. “Guess they won’t try to escape when you’re blocking their way.”

  Fallon picked up the knife, tossed it down by the chain still wrapped around the ugly one’s legs. “I don’t think escape was what they had in mind.”

  A third guard withdrew a wad of greenbacks from the knuckle-dusting killer’s pants pocket. “That’s a hell of a lot of cash for Wakefield to be carrying.”

  O’Connor snatched the money from the guard’s fingers and stared. “Bloody hell, that’s more money than I make in a month.”

  Fallon stepped closer. “Check the other prisoners,” he ordered, and took a fifty-dollar note from O’Connor’s hand.

  “Somebody outside these walls wants you dead,” O’Connor said.

  Fallon nodded at the three assailants. “Those are from inside the walls.”

  “Yeah.” The other guards produced handfuls of green currency. “But,” O’Connor went on, “nobody—not a guard and certainly not a scum bucket of a prisoner in Leavenworth—can lay his hands on this kind of money.”

  Bringing the fifty-dollar bill closer to his face, Fallon studied it. “Let me see another one of those bills, Tim,” he said, and took the twenty the big captain held out for him.

  “Must be a banker,” said the guard named Wilkerson. “Only a banker would have this kind of money.”

  The other guard said, “I ain’t never even seen no fifty-dollar bill before. Didn’t know they made them.”

  Fallon handed both bills back to O’Connor. Then he looked at his fingertips.

  Suddenly, Hank Fallon laughed. It all made sense. Hard to believe, but certainly, it all made sense.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  Fallon laid the bills out on his desk, those taken off the men who had tried to assassinate him and those taken from the gamblers. He let Big Tim O’Connor and Montgomery Berrien look at them closely.

  “That’s a lot of money,” the captain of the guards said. “We might find some change, maybe a dollar coin, among the prisoners, but usually it’s just a penny or two. They don’t use money. Trade is done with mostly tobacco, maybe a pencil and paper, things like that. And I don’t know how those dirty sons of strumpets came up with this much money. It has to be coming from the outside.”

  Montgomery Berrien brought the fifty-dollar note closer to his face, lowered it, turned it over, rubbed his fingers against it, then found another bill of the same denomination. His eyes rose above his spectacles and he let the paper currency fall softly atop the other bills.

  “This is counterfeit,” Berrien said.

  Fallon held up his fingers, revealing the ink stains on the tips. “Certainly. Real American cash doesn’t leave your fingers needing some hot water and lye soap.”

  “Counterfeit.” O’Connor came closer, picked up a five-dollar bill, looked it over on both sides, let it fall, and looked at his fingers. “Mine are clean.”

  “Yeah. Those who attacked me in the alley should have let their cash dry longer. Maybe the man who gave them this fake money told them to let it sit, and they didn’t listen. Or their sweat caused the money to lose its color.”

  “Well,” O’Connor said, “Jemez, the Jokester, and Lynde aren’t the smartest we have behind the iron here. If they were told, they didn’t listen. Which isn’t a surprise.”

  “Lucky break,” Fallon said.

  “Indeed.” The bookkeeper had picked up another bill and was comparing it to one from his wallet. “This is some of the best I’ve ever seen. Except for the ink stains.”

  “So,” O’Connor said. “There’s a damned counterfeiter in Leavenworth.” He snapped his fingers. “Well, we can see who came in to visit Jemez, Lynde, or Richards—that’s the one we call the Jokester. That’ll give us an idea. I doubt if the man making the phony money came himself, but once we know who it was, he can lead the law to the dirty dogs who are making this bad cash.”

  Fallon smiled. “I don’t think a visitor passed the bad money to those three.”

  O’Connor squinted his eyes. “Then where did it come from?”

  “Here,” Fallon said.

  The timid, embezzling bookkeeper said, “Of course. Of course.”

  Which caused O’Connor to wet his lips and think. He looked back at Fallon, “You mean to tell me . . . ?”

  “Exactly,” Fallon said. “Think about it, Tim. Where do you find counterfeiters? In Kansas? Best place, would be right here in the Leavenworth pen, wouldn’t you say?” He stepped out of the office and into the hallway, and called for Preston, the clerk. A moment later, the proper man stepped inside and asked how he could be of assistance.

  “I want the names of every man here who has been convicted of counterfeiting,” Fallon told him. “We’ll go through the names and pay a visit to everyone doing time for trying to copy our good old American cash.”

  Big Tim O’Connor had been working on a new chaw of tobacco. Now the rim of Fallon’s cuspidor pinged, and the big man wiped his lip. “Preston,” he said, “there’s no need for all that. Just bring us the record of Samuel Lippert. You know, Uncle Sam?”

  “Certainly.” Preston vanished, and Fallon waited for O’Connor’s reasoning.

  “He’s your man,” O’Connor said. “If the bad money’s coming from here, he’s the only one who could pull it off.”

  “A counterfeiter, I take it,” Fallon said.

  “No,” the little bookkeeper said, and
his tone sounded like admiration. “An artist.”

  * * *

  Uncle Sam Lippert wasn’t lying on the cot in his cell when Big Tim O’Connor unlocked the door and pulled it open. Cot would not describe the bed in the cell. The cherry headboard rose four feet high, and the pillows were plush. Fallon would not call such a bed regulation for a convicted felon. But most inmates in Leavenworth didn’t have a matching dresser with built-in mirror and washstand. The desk set in the far cover, and atop it a Regina disc music box of exquisite mahogany box played a polka. The fat man puffed on a Cuban cigar and slowly let his eyelids open.

  “Ah, did you bring my steak and potatoes?” he asked.

  “Just your change,” Fallon said, and closed the gap, turned up the lantern on the marble-topped bedside table, and dropped a few counterfeit bills on the blanket covering Uncle Sam’s fat stomach. Then Fallon showed the convict his fingertips.

  “Ah,” Uncle Sam said.

  “Ah,” Fallon said, and looked back at O’Connor.

  “You know prisons,” O’Connor began.

  “All too well,” Fallon said.

  “Well, Uncle Sam here was a favorite of the previous warden, and the warden before him. It was this way when I started. I guess I figured you knew.”

  “Guessing can be a bad habit, my friend. Sometimes you guess wrong.”

  “I’ll remember that.”

  “Ah,” the fat counterfeiter said. The music box began to slow down to a crawl. When it finally stopped altogether, the man said, “And thus the curtain closes on me.”

  “I’m pretty sure the other prisoners in this cell block will be thankful when they no longer have to listen to that polka.”

  “It relaxes me,” the counterfeiter said.

  “You won’t be relaxing for a while, Number Two-Three-Four-Nine. We’re building a brand-new penitentiary, and you’d like to be a part of history, I’m sure.”

  “I already am, Mr. Fallon. I am the most successful counterfeiter in the history of our nation.”

  “And look where it got you.”

  “Well, as wise men before me once said, ‘All good things must come to an end.’” He winked. “For a while.”

  “Maybe not,” Fallon said.

  The man’s eyes opened wider. He even managed to sit up in the bed, after doing considerable rearranging of his pillows.

  “You mean I might stay here . . . with my polka . . . and my . . . comforts?”

  Fallon dropped some money on his blanket. “Who wanted this particular order of script?”

  The man had a throaty laugh. “You know I can’t tell you that. That’s why I got such a long term to begin with. I am . . . in my own way . . . honest.”

  “Well, I figured as much, but it was worth a shot. I imagine the three men who were paid to kill me won’t have such loyalty.”

  “Perhaps. But that is not of my concern.”

  “I’m sure I’ll find the plates under your mattress.”

  The man shrugged.

  “You understand these will have to be destroyed.”

  “They won’t be the first. Sacrifices have to be made. They were good, but all good things must come to an end.”

  “Yes.” He picked up one of the bills. “Captain O’Connor,” he said, without taking his eyes off Samuel Lippert. “How much fake money did we count in my office?”

  The commander of the prison guards answered.

  Fallon reached inside the pocket of his torn vest, and withdrew the piece of paper from Halleck’s mercantile. He stuck that underneath Lippert’s nose.

  “How good is your math?” Fallon asked.

  “My fine young prison commandant, I should let you know that I studied under the best possible tutors at Yale, and attended art school in Paris and Switzerland.”

  “How much money do I need?”

  The big crook’s eyes went back to the order form from the mercantile, and his eyes brightened with excitement. “If Captain O’Connor’s memory is to be trusted, you need one thousand, six hundred, seventy-nine dollars and fourteen cents more.”

  “That’s what I came up with.”

  Lippert looked up at Fallon. “Were you educated at Yale?”

  “Gads Hill,” Fallon said. “And Mr. Berrien has an abacus in his office.”

  The man laughed a deep, wonderful throaty laugh.

  “So . . . would I be correct in assuming that . . .”

  “Oh, no, Uncle Sam.” Fallon shook his head. “I know a few things about law, and prisons, and what constitutes a crime. You see, I’ve been in prison myself. So let’s just not say one other word. Let’s just say that I am going to give you until Wednesday at say five o’clock in the afternoon. Then I’ll be coming back here, and I will collect the plates you have been using to print your bad money.”

  “Bad money?” The fat man grinned. “Tsk, tsk, tsk. You would not insult Rembrandt, would you? I have often seen myself as Rembrandt. Have you ever seen his Saint Paul in Prison?”

  “I always liked the Mona Lisa,” Fallon told him.

  The fat man yawned. “Leonardo da Vinci did Mona Lisa,” he said. “Da Vinci is fine, but Rembrandt van Rijn is the greatest artist.” He grinned. “He, too, like me, was a master draftsman and etcher. As you will see for yourself.”

  “I’ll be picking up the plates, Mr. Master Draftsman and Etcher. And we’ll see how your math is come Wednesday. If the plates are ready, and whatever else you might wish for me to dispose of as I see fit, then perhaps you can finish out your sentence the way my predecessors have seen fit and proper.”

  “You are a gentleman, scholar, and a true lover of art.”

  “And you are a good mathematician,” Fallon told him. “One thousand, six hundred and seventy-nine. The fourteen cents will be on me.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

  The prisoner serving as crew foreman of the cell block construction loved his job and was happy to show Fallon all the progress being made that morning.

  “We’re gonna have twelve hundred cells here, Warden Fallon, suh,” he said in a Texas twang. “And maybe I can get to build ’em all.”

  Fallon stared at Inmate Number Four-Four-Nine-One. “How long are you in here, Hermann?”

  “Six years, seven months to go,” he said, smiled, and added. “For the first conviction. Then another fourteen. The judge, he said, there was no way he could justify concurrent sentences. Lucky me, I guess.”

  Fallon said, “I guess.” He looked at the door, and a though struck him. “What about the locks?”

  “Oh, I’m glad you asked that,” Hermann said. “That ol’ miser over at the hardware store, why, the price he said we’d have to pay was . . . well . . . downright criminal, I mean to tell ya, Warden, suh. But we outfoxed that sly ol’ fox. Wesley Westinghouse, he agreed to do all the locks for us. He’s a locksmith.”

  “I see.”

  “A darned good one, by all reports,” Hermann added.

  “Very good. We’d want good locks.”

  “Well, you won’t find none better.”

  Fallon waited for Hermann to look him into the eye. It never happened. Wouldn’t have happened had Fallon waited ten more years. That’s the kind of convict Hermann Schultz was. His eyes locked on Fallon’s feet.

  “Who’s making Wesley Westinghouse’s lock?” Fallon asked.

  The convict closed his eyes, raised his head toward the clear blue sky as if seeking an answer from the heavens, and finally busted out laughing. “Oh, I get it, Warden, suh. You wuz bein’ funny.” He slapped his hands together. “By golly, suh, that’s a real good one. Yes, suh. Who’s makin’ the lock for the locksmith? He could just open his own lock real easy and walk all the way back to his wife or his hussy in Iowa City, Iowa.” The man howled like a rabid coyote. “Yes, suh. A real good one. Make his own lock.” He sniggered.

  After shaking his head, Fallon thanked Hermann and left the compound for his office.

  * * *

  Fallon counted the counterfeit money tw
ice, looked up across the desk in his office, and began putting the fake money in an envelope. Without looking up, he said, “What’s on your mind, Tim?”

  Big Tim O’Connor sighed, shuffled his feet, and began wetting his bottom lip with his tongue.

  Fallon sealed the envelope, which he then slipped into his inside coat pocket. “Go on.”

  “Well,” the big Irishman said. “I guess I just never met a warden like you.”

  Fallon laughed.

  “You sure this is what you want to do?”

  “You think I’m wrong?”

  “I think you might wind up in one of these new cells that are being built.”

  “It wouldn’t be the first time.” Standing up, Fallon grabbed his hat off the rack and corrected his statement. “My first time in prison. It would be my first time in the U.S. Penitentiary, of course. But I don’t think it’ll come to that.” He stopped next to the big guard and held out his right hand.

  Sighing, Captain Big Tim O’Connor shook the firm hand. Then Fallon reached into his pocket and pulled out a two-bit piece. “Would you happen to have change, Tim? I need fourteen cents.”

  Luck remained with Harry Fallon. The quarter went into O’Connor’s pocket, and Fallon had two nickels, five pennies, and a ten-cent piece.

  Afterward, Fallon tilted his head toward his own desk. “Uncle Sam Lippert’s printing plates are over on the right-hand side of my desk, with The Leavenworth Bi-Weekly Record and Messenger over them. A gentleman named George Goodwin will be meeting you outside the office in fifteen minutes. Give the plates to him. He knows what to do with the plates. And then give Uncle Sam my compliments.”

  The big Irishman didn’t look pleased with either of those assignments.

  * * *

  The scarlet-haired, green-eyed chirpy hurried out of John Halleck’s office at Halleck’s Mercantile, Hardware, and Sundries, throwing an overcoat over her unmentionables with the rest of her clothes tucked up underneath the big coat.

  “Is she one of your sundries?” Fallon asked.

  The man’s face turned about as scarlet as the woman’s hair, but Fallon figured Halleck’s face was natural. The woman probably spent a good deal on dye.