A Knife in the Heart Read online

  You do your job. Mostly. Survive the hellhole that is Yuma. Break out of the joint. Travel to Mexico with a hard lot of hardened criminals. And wind up back in Chicago, only somehow—because you have a sense of poetic justice—you let the Pinkertons reap the glory of returning Quinn’s fortune to its rightful owners.

  MacGregor gives you another assignment, and this one is tougher than Yuma. You wind up at the Missouri state pen, more than forty acres covered in blood, and discover the perfect murder-for-hire scheme. The warden and some associates have prisoners who they’ll let slip out to kill someone. Hey, who would ever suspect a man behind bars of killing people outside of the prison? And one of the men, now deranged, you realize is the hired killer who murdered your wife and daughter. But when that assignment is over, another riot has helped in the justice department, and all of the principles are dead. Including the Mole, the man who killed Rachel and Renee, but the man who also saved your life.

  But there’s one more job you need to do. One more payoff Sean MacGregor owes you. The Mole did the murder. But someone hired the Jefferson City swine to see that murder done. And that takes you to Huntsville, the “Walls,” as nasty as a prison as you’d dream in your worst nightmare.

  Inside the Walls, you learn another system, you deal with the leader of the inmates, the notorious John Wesley Hardin, and then you learn about another prison scheme. They send you to one of the farms that lease prisoners from the state to do labor. Cheap labor. And in this case, under the direction of a Confederate sympathizer, who, decades after the Rebellion, wants to start a new war, form a new Confederacy, and is using convicts to help him create an arsenal and an army.

  This time, though, the American Detective Agency has given you some help. MacGregor’s son, Dan, is part of the operation. So is a female operative named Christina Whitney. She’ll be posing as your wife. And Aaron Holderman has been hired as a Huntsville guard, not that you can trust Holderman.

  But you survive this one, too. And you see the fiend who betrayed you, who let you read law with him, who loved your wife and wanted her for his own—and when he couldn’t have her, he had your beautiful family killed.

  You get more revenge, too. You see Sean MacGregor and Aaron Holderman sent to prison. You find yourself pardoned. Free. And appointed marshal of Wyoming. And when you’re sitting at the train depot in Chicago, waiting to start a new life for yourself, lovely Christina Whitney sits down beside you. She has a ticket to Cheyenne, too.

  But happily ever after?

  Not with those nightmares. But, well, you do have a job. And that, son, is how at least one man becomes a United States marshal.

  Hell of a way to get there, boy, don’t you think?

  CHAPTER FIVE

  “In my case,” Fallon answered with a smile, “I owe my appointment to Adlai Stevenson. I’ve never met the former vice president, but he, as a former representative from Illinois, where I spent some time . . .” Fallon grinned, wondering if the students might ask him how and where he might have spent time in the great state of Illinois. “. . . he had heard and read a lot about me. Thus, he made the recommendation to then-President Grover Cleveland, who appointed me to the position here, and the United States Senate unanimously confirmed my appointment.”

  He paused, smiled his politician smile, and added, “I have, by the way, briefly met our current vice president, Mr. Theodore Roosevelt, and although the appointment of a federal marshal is political, I would like to think that, as a Western man and a brave man—as seen from his actions on San Juan Hill with his Rough Riders—Mr. Roosevelt might have recommended me to President McKinley, even though they are Republicans and Mr. Stevenson and President Cleveland were and are Democrats. We are all Americans, and we all seek justice.”

  Damn, Hank, he thought, these kids can’t even vote. Tone it down. This isn’t a campaign speech.

  Another hand shot toward the ceiling.

  “Yes?”

  A pimply-faced redhead, shaped like an oversized string bean, stood as though at attention in front of his desk. “Sir, how dangerous is it being a United States marshal?”

  And before Fallon could thank him for that question, the boy had moved back into his desk.

  “Well, son . . .” Fallon shook his head. As a U.S. marshal, you might eat bad chicken, get sick from that, or have to pretend you like some representatives, even the governor. He got asked that question a lot. Maybe one day, he’d answer it honestly. But today: “I’m glad you asked that question, son, because it gives me the chance to sing out praises for the real lawmen in Wyoming, those who risk their lives to keep you children, as well as Headmaster Hendricks and your outstanding teachers, Mr. Williams and Mr. Dietrich, safe. As the U.S. marshal, I have to hire deputies, and these deputies are bringing peace across our state. From our national park in Yellowstone to Rock Springs. Laramie. Buffalo. Rawlings. Casper. You might not know how big Wyoming is …”

  “Ninety-seven thousand square miles,” one boy shouted.

  “More than ninety-seven thousand and eight hundred square miles,” said another.

  The blond in the desk just in front of Fallon said, “Ninety-seven thousand, eight hundred and eighteen.” Turned and stuck out his tongue at his classmates.

  “Well.” Fallon looked at the headmaster. “You certainly have an erudite group of young men here.” Clearing his throat, he hoped he wouldn’t have many more questions. “That’s a lot of country. My deputies are patrolling it, but they are not alone. We are responsible for only federal crimes. For local crimes, there are brave lawmen working as town constables, town marshals, and deputies, keeping the peace in our towns and cities. As well as our county sheriffs and their deputies, who have jurisdiction outside of the town or city limits. As a United States marshal, or a deputy U.S. marshal, we pursue bank and train robbers, mail thieves, kidnappers, and counterfeiters. But you boys could do me a favor, and the next time you see anyone wearing a badge, thank them for what they are doing for you. You should also thank the men working out of our fire stations. Me? I’m usually just behind a desk or in a meeting or talking to fine young people like yourselves.”

  Another hand, another nod, another question.

  “How many men have you killed?”

  “Silas,” Mr. Dietrich scolded, but Fallon shook his head and said, “That’s all right, sir. I get asked that question all the time.” Even at church socials and women’s auxiliary league meetings.

  “As a U.S. marshal,” Fallon told the dark-haired kid in the middle of the room, “none. And most of my deputies have wounded or killed few felons. The West is changing. Lawlessness is on the decline. Maybe by the time you boys have been graduated from the Abraham Lincoln Academy, you won’t have need of as many marshals, sheriffs, and constables as we have today.”

  “Or prisons,” a boy sang out without raising his hand.

  Fallon straightened. “Or prisons,” he said. “Absolutely. Especially prisons.”

  He waited. “Any more questions for Marshal Fallon?” the headmaster asked.

  Fallon was about to thank the boys for their attention and praise their questions when a small, dark-skinned boy in the left rear corner raised a timid hand. The headmaster appeared not to notice, because he started to tell the class to thank the marshal and show their appreciation by . . .

  Fallon cut him off, “Excuse me, sir, but I think we have one more inquiry.” He pointed at the small boy. “Go ahead, son.”

  The boy lowered his hand, swallowed, slowly rose, but kept his head down. Fallon noticed Dietrich tensing. The boy’s suit didn’t fit as well as the others’, and his shoes weren’t shined to a shining buff. He looked to be part, maybe all, Mexican, maybe half-Indian or something like that.

  “Yes?” Fallon prompted.

  “Could you . . . help . . . my Papa?” Fallon barely heard the lad.

  He did hear Dietrich. “Carlos!”

  Fallon raised his hand. “It’s all right, Mr. Dietrich.” Some of the students began snig
gering, but Fallon cleared his throat, and that silenced the entire room.

  “He is in prison,” young Carlos said. Tears began rolling down his cheeks. The headmaster started for the boy, and so did the other teacher with a ruler that Fallon knew had smacked many a knuckle. But Fallon cut them off, and moved fast—spend enough time behind prison walls, and you knew how to beat a guard to a spot—and knelt on the floor. “Go on, son,” he said, and looked back to make sure the adults came no closer.

  “Which prison?” Fallon asked. “Laramie?”

  “Yes,” the boy whispered.

  Fallon waited.

  The boy wiped his nose and whispered. “His name is Carlos. Like me. Carlos Pablo Diego the Fourth. I am Carlos Pablo Diego the Fifth.”

  “All right,” Fallon said. “Tell me about your papa.”

  The boy sniffed again. “He has been in the prison for tres years. Three. They said he stole a horse, but, señor marshal, he did not steal a horse. He is a good man. Can you help him, por favor?”

  Fallon put both hands on the kid’s shoulder, squeezed them, and said, “I’ll see what I can do, Carlos.” He guided the boy back into the desk, stared at the adults until they moved back to their respective guard towers, and began patting his pockets for a pencil and paper, but all he could find was the envelope with Helen’s check. He sighed.

  “Anybody got a pencil?” he asked.

  The blond know-it-all at the front quickly jutted a finely sharpened pencil toward Fallon, who took it with a thank-you and wrote the prisoner’s name on the envelope and the words: LARAMIE PRISON. HORSE THIEF. The pencil was returned, and Fallon found his hat.

  “Any more questions?” The headmaster’s tone let the boys know that if they asked anything, heads would roll.

  After the unison Thank you, Marshal Fallon, and clapping hands, the teachers escorted the boys out of the room to another classroom, and the headmaster came to Fallon.

  “I’m sorry about Carlos Diego, Marshal. He’s one of our charity cases.”

  “Is he an orphan?”

  “No,” Hendricks said. “His mother has four other kids. She washes clothes at the laundry behind the Inter-Ocean Hotel. Cooks breakfast at the café on Thirteenth. Still couldn’t afford to send her son to our school, but we like to do good deeds, and we’ve never had a Mexican in the Academy before. Wanted to give it a try. See if we couldn’t straighten him out before he follows in his papa’s boots. Kid couldn’t speak more than three words of English till we got him here a year ago.”

  “I see.” Fallon slipped the envelope into his coat pocket and stared hard at Hendricks, the Methodist with the hard-shell nature of a Baptist, and a headmaster with an iron rule. “He speaks pretty good English now.”

  “Yes, well, I happen to head our English department. But believe me, he was a challenge.” Hendricks tried to smile. “Anyway, Marshal, I’m sorry the little boy asked such an improper question for your visit. Besides, well, I’m sure every prisoner in Laramie says he is innocent.”

  Fallon placed his hat on his head and waited until Hendricks looked him squarely in the eye. Which did not last as soon as Fallon told him: “Well, Mr. Hendricks, sometimes an innocent man gets put in prison, you know.”

  He spit the gall out of his mouth and into the trashcan by the door before seeing himself out of the Abraham Lincoln Academy.

  CHAPTER SIX

  “Stop here, driver.” Sitting in the back of the surrey, Fallon happened to see the Stockgrowers’ bank as the hack clopped down the stone-paved street, another sign of Cheyenne’s prosperity. There was a time when Fallon prided himself on his memory—a key attribute when you’re a lawman in the Indian Territory, or a prisoner anywhere—but those instincts had faded during his years making speeches and signing his name on countless documents stuck behind a desk.

  The driver pulled on the reins to stop the mule.

  “I remembered I need to drop something off at the bank,” he explained to the old black man and fished out some coins. “Here you go, sir.”

  “Wouldye like me ta wait fer ye, Marshal?”

  “No need, my friend. I can walk to the courthouse from here. Thank you, and have a good day.”

  The driver looked at the coins, and beamed, “Thank ye kindly, Marshal.”

  Fallon stepped down, pulled his hat tight, and saw a man wearing a rain slicker leaning against the column of a saloon, one arm tucked inside the orange-colored material, smoking a cigarette. Fallon looked up. Not a cloud in the sky, but it had sprinkled some last night, and the cowboy did stand in front of a saloon that had not closed its doors, legend had it, for twelve and three-quarter years. Turning to cross the street, he looked back at the cowboy once more, and then waited for a buggy and a farm wagon to pass.

  The hitching rail in front of the Stockgrowers was full, and another cowhand worked on the cinch of his Appaloosa gelding at the far right. He wore a linen duster, more common this time of year than a rain slicker. As Fallon started across the street, he saw another man, this one working a pocketknife on his fingernails as he leaned against the wall in the alcove of the bank. He wore a long frock coat, trail-worn from too many years either during the winter or rolled up behind a saddle.

  Maybe he was a Texan, because anyone who had spent time in Wyoming wouldn’t consider this cold. Fallon glanced back at the dude in the slicker as his boots clipped on the stones. He studied the rest of the street. It was a slow time of year and a slow time of day. But the bank was doing booming business.

  All right, Fallon told himself. The federal and state employees had been paid. Probably some ranchers had paid their cowboys, too. But how many cowboys do you know that save any money? And how many would have an account at the Stockgrowers? A linen duster . . . that made sense? A frock coat or a rain slicker? Those could be used to hide a shotgun. Or a rifle. And even the greenest cowboy didn’t take that long to cinch up a saddle. The man cursed, tried the latigo again.

  Drunk. Fallon decided that would explain it. Left his horse at the bank because the rail was full in front of the saloon last night when he rode in. No. No, not if he’s a cowboy. A cowboy wouldn’t walk across a street. He would have found a rail at the apothecary . . . or the hotel . . . or most likely left the Appaloosa in the livery at the corner. And that horse was too well-blooded for a thirty-a-month waddie to own.

  Fallon reached the boardwalk, looked down the street from the bank. Empty. His mind raced. One man with the horses. Another near the bank door. A third across the street with a rifle. Five horses tethered to the rail. Three men outside. Three in the bank. The fellow across the street would have his horse closer, and Fallon spied a brown Thoroughbred at the end of the hitching rail in front of the saloon.

  His eyes raced up and down both boardwalks. Naturally, there wasn’t one Cheyenne policeman to be seen.

  You’re getting too damned suspicious in your old age, he told himself. Jesse James was dead. The two surviving Younger brothers were behind the iron in Minnesota. One Dalton was in Lansing, and his brothers and the other gang members were all buried in Coffeyville. And that Hole in the Wall Bunch would never even try to rob a bank in Cheyenne. It was too damned big.

  He waited for a gray-haired woman to stop and enter the bakery. The boardwalk on this side now empty for two blocks, Fallon turned back and headed past the hitching rail. The fellow stopped fidgeting with the saddle and let his right hand disappear inside his duster. Fallon just noticed the buckle to a belt that undoubtedly held a holster, or likely more than one. He noticed the scabbards of three of the saddles to the mounts tethered to the rail were empty.

  Then Fallon stepped into the alcove and reached for the handle to the door.

  “Hey, pops,” the man in the frock coat said with a smile and holding out the cigar he held in his left hand. “Can I bother you for a light?”

  The man at the hitching rail stepped away from the horse, one hand still underneath the duster.

  “I don’t smoke,” Fallon said.


  “I do.” The man clamped the cigar with his teeth, and held out a box of matches in the fingers of his left hand. His right hand remained underneath the heavy coat. “Light my cigar, old man.”

  Old man? Fallon didn’t care for that. He might have been old enough to be this punk’s daddy, but that didn’t make Harry Fallon old.

  “Light it, bub, or dance,” the man said. And he let his coattail slip back just enough to reveal the sawed-off shotgun in his right hand.

  Fallon stepped close, took the tiny box, and pushed it open. The first match he dropped, feigning nervousness, and stuttered an apology.

  “There’s plenty of matches, pops,” the kid said. “Take your time. And smile. Our business will be finished directly.”

  “I wish,” said the man by the horses, “they’d hurry up and get her done.”

  The match flared in Fallon’s hands. Cupping the match against the wind, he brought it toward the cheap cigar.

  “That’s right,” the man with the shotgun said. Then he blew out the match as Fallon inched it to the stogie’s tip. “Oops. Try again.”

  Fallon’s eyes hardened, but so did the kid’s.

  “You ever seen what a body looks like after it’s took two loads of buckshot in the belly at point-blank range?” the punk asked with a malevolent grin.

  More times than you have, pup, Fallon thought, but found another match.

  His mind raced. Break the punk’s neck, take the shotgun, and cut loose on the man pretending he didn’t know one end of a cinch from another. The horses would be rearing, probably pulling loose. He’d have one barrel left if one of the three inside the bank came out, and the horses rearing would protect him from the lookout across the street. Pick up the pistols from one of the two men he had killed, maybe a rifle if the man with the duster hid one of those, too. He’d have a chance at least, and the ruckus would bring the policemen and everyone with a gun outside their businesses. Cheyenne, Wyoming, was a major city, but most of the entrepreneurs here were westerners to their bones, and they didn’t take kindly to men robbing them or their neighbors.