Yuma Prison Crashout Page 5

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  He understood then. He was walking out. Not free. Just paroled. But that meant something. He just couldn’t quite believe it was happening. This fast.

  “Fffallonnn,” the warden said. He grinned. “You’llll be bacckkk heeere. Rreeall sssoooonnn.”

  Fallon took the pen and signed the bottom of the paper. He slid the paper toward Captain Daggett, who looked up at him, nodded, and the guard’s lips mouthed a silent Thank you. But the captain’s eyes showed no kindness. Instead, Fallon figured that Daggett meant to warn him: I got you paroled; I can put you back in the sweatbox too.

  Still, this was Captain Daggett’s doing. The captain had lived up to his word. He had done something for Harry Fallon. Well, more than likely, he had wanted Fallon out of Joliet before he might start talking about what had really happened in the laundry during the riot.

  Fallon didn’t care.

  “There’s a suit of clothes in the warden’s secretary’s office,” Daggett said. “You’ll also be given the money due you, less the rent we sent to the boardinghouse in Chicago. Transportation is on you, Fallon. You have to be in Chicago by eight o’clock Monday.”

  * * *

  The suit felt worse than his prison garb. The wool was bristly and itchy, almost as bad as the socks. The straw porkpie hat didn’t fit. The shirt he could tolerate, as long as no one asked him to button on a paper collar. He’d choke.

  They gave him a small suitcase, not that Fallon had anything to carry in it. But he might, so he accepted it, and the money they handed him in a tan envelope, tied together with a string.

  Once he stepped outside, he waited, eager to hear the gates close behind him. It sounded different than it had when he had first arrived at Joliet, when the door slammed shut, telling him loudly that he wouldn’t be going anywhere for a long, long time. That noise had chilled and sickened him. “Nothin’ like that sound,” an inmate told him later, “to put the fear of God in a body.”

  This time, Fallon smiled. He stared at the sun, and he filled his lungs with fresh air. Free air. Some convicts had said they’d dance around the prison the day they got out. A few said they’d do something else on Joliet’s walls. All Harry Fallon wanted to do was get away from this hellhole and purge it from his memory.

  Even as he started to cross Collins Street, Fallon saw the dust.

  “They must really want me gone,” Fallon heard himself saying. Even his voice sounded different.

  The hack arrived, and Fallon stepped inside.

  “To the depot,” he told the driver, and leaned back to enjoy the view from a buggy.

  * * *

  Having missed the last train to Chicago, Fallon slept on the bench at the station. The bench was hard, but Fallon could sleep where and when he felt like it. Other railroad workers and a few gamblers waited in the station, some bound for Chicago, others bound for wherever. None spoke to Fallon, and even the city policeman who walked through to check the station ignored the man on the bench.

  * * *

  The next morning, he crossed the street to the café and ordered a breakfast of ham, eggs, and coffee. The burly man behind the counter, his teeth clamped on a soggy, well-chewed cigar, glowered.

  Fallon made himself look up at the big cuss. He wasn’t used to looking men in the eyes. The man crossed his arms. The arms were huge.

  Suddenly, Fallon laughed, and he reached inside his wooly coat’s pocket and found the envelope.

  “How much?” he asked.

  “Dime,” the man with the cigar said.

  Fallon paid him. In prison, he never had to pay for his meals. This would take some getting used to.

  So he finished his food, had a second and third cup of coffee, visited the privy, and returned to the depot. He thought about buying the morning newspaper—the ones he had read in the prison library were usually at least a couple of weeks old, and often, read and held so many times, most of the ink had smudged until the copy was undecipherable. He had grimaced at paying the driver for the cab ride from the prison. Now his envelope felt ten more cents lighter, so reading a newspaper would have to wait until he got his first pay. Unless Chicago had a good public library.

  At 7:42 a.m., he stepped aboard the coach, found a seat by the window, and settled in. When the train pulled away from the station, he looked at his wrists, and then at the seat empty next to him. That hadn’t been the case when he had left Fort Smith for Joliet ten years back. A federal deputy had been right beside him, hardly saying a word during the entire trip even though he had ridden often with Fallon into the Nations. And iron manacles had rubbed Fallon’s wrists raw.

  He stared out the window, watched the city pass, then the fields of grain and corn, then more towns. This wasn’t the West, not the Indian Territory or Arkansas where towns could be few and far between. This was civilization. The outskirts of Chicago roared past him, then he found himself in a jungle of tall buildings, more people than he had seen in one place at one time than he could remember. It had been a quick trip. Fallon grabbed his grip, tried to get his hat on a little tighter, and left the train, then the depot, and found another hack.

  “Where to?” the driver asked in a thick Irish brogue.

  Fallon found the paper with the address and name of the boardinghouse. His mouth opened, and he grinned. “Lake Michigan.”

  He might as well see the lake. He had heard so much about it, he figured he wanted to see it.

  “It’s a big lake, mate,” the hack said. “Any particular point?”

  “It’s your city,” Fallon said. “You choose.”

  The boardinghouse was supposed to be near the lake, and Harry Fallon was in no hurry.

  Once he paid that driver, Fallon read the address to the boardinghouse.

  “You want to go there now, mate?” the Irishman asked. “You haven’t even seen the lake.”

  “I want to know if I can walk there from here,” Fallon said.

  The driver shrugged and sighed. He reached under the seat and pulled out a map.

  “It’s a big city, mate,” he said. “Never heard of the street. Ye say it’s a boardinghouse?”

  “That’s right.”

  “Ye just get into town?”

  “Yes.”

  “And ye want to see Lake Michigan before ye see anything else?”

  “That’s why I’m here.”

  “Well, I would have opted for Flannery’s Saloon, or Molly’s House of Purity.”

  “Maybe later,” Fallon said.

  “Here it is.” The driver’s stubby finger stopped at a point. “It’s a fine stretch of the legs from here.” He snorted. “A bloody long stretch of the legs from just about anywhere. Ye want me to wait?”

  “Wait?”

  “Sure. No charge for me waiting, mate. Come to think on it, I’ve never really looked at Lake Michigan me ownself. But ye strikes me as a lad who wants to be alone. So I’ll go that way, ye go the other. Unless ye prefer the other way around.”

  Fallon stepped away from the wagon. “Meet you here in fifteen minutes.”

  “That’s not a bloody long time, mate.”

  “But it’s free time,” Fallon said.

  The driver just stared. Fallon nodded, and walked to the shore.

  * * *

  He had heard about the wind coming off Lake Michigan. Now he felt it. It blew his straw hat off. Fallon made a grab for it, but the hat was already rolling across the shoreline. He took a couple of steps, figuring to chase it down, but stopped. He laughed, leaned back, and watched it roll a few more yards before the breeze picked it up and lofted it high in the air. It rose like a balloon, started to fall, found another draft, and sailed out over the massive lake.

  Fallon turned to face the wind, to feel all of this air—this free air—massaging his face, cooling his hair. He was a kid again. Mostly, he was free. Well, paroled. He was miles from the Illinois State Penitentiary.

  The wind didn’t die down, but it relaxed, and Fallon turned to look at the boats, boats of all sizes and shapes, at the docks and in the water. He turned to look at the towering buildings. He glanced this way and that, wanting to see if anybody else came here simply to admire and appreciate the view.

  He was alone, except for the driver of the hack, who hadn’t walked too far away from his cab.

  Fallon started to sit down, to take off his shoes, but, heck, he was on parole. And stepping into Lake Michigan with his lousy shoes on would not violate the conditions of his parole resulting in his return to Joliet or a similar facility for the completion of his original sentence.

  The water was cold. He wiggled his toes in his terrible socks and uncomfortable shoes. He moved a little deeper, but not even halfway to his knees. A gull flew overhead. Fallon watched it fly until it disappeared in the skyline of the city. He turned, trying to find any ducks, or geese, but saw only empty bottles and assorted trash. For some reason, that saddened him.

  At length, he waded out of the lake and stepped onto the grass. Another urge struck him, so he sat on the grass, unlaced the shoes, and pulled them off. The water-soaked socks came off with them. Then Fallon stepped away from the shoes and let his feet settle in the grass. He wiggled his toes. He laughed.

  The driver was walking back to the cab. Fallon figured close to fifteen minutes had passed, and he wanted to be a man of his word. He bent down, wrung out the socks, and stuck them in the wet shoes, which he picked up in his left hand. His right took the grip he had carried with him—just in case the Irish cab driver decided not to wait for the passenger—and moved back to the cab.

  “Ye be an odd man,” the driver said as he held open the door. “That’s fer sure.”

  “I’m alive,” Fallon said. For the first time in ten years, he thought, I actually feel alive.

  “That be grand, me boy. Grand indeed. Shall I take ye to yer boardinghouse?”

  “Remember the address?” Fallon asked.

  “Indeed.”

  “Thank you, kind sir.” Fallon stepped into the coach, heard the door shut, and set his wet socks–stuffed shoes on the floor alongside his grip. The wagon dipped as the heavy coachman climbed into the box. The brake was released, the quirt snapped, the driver cursed, and the wagon wheels rolled across the street of cobblestone. He saw the watchtower, or whatever it was, that had gone up after the big fire in the early seventies. He saw people of all sizes and shapes. He leaned back, enjoying the rhythm of the wheels. He wondered if he would make a halfway decent wheelwright, and he thought about seeing wheels that he had made on the axles of wagons. Maybe even this coach.

  The scents of the lakeside faded. Other aromas assaulted his nostrils. Baked bread. Roasting peppers. Potatoes frying. Foods he could not place but made his mouth water.

  He listened to languages he had never heard, vastly different from the guttural voices of the Cherokee, Choctaw, Creek, and Chickasaw, or the sing-song voice of the Kiowa or the fierce vocals of the Comanche. He heard laughter of children. A stick connected against a baseball. Pots clanged together. Hammers pounded. Hooves clopped.

  No sound escaped his ears. Including that of the Irishman in the driver’s box. The cab began to slow and came to a quick stop.

  “What be the bloody meaning of this?” the Irishman asked.

  Boots sounded on the cobblestone.

  “Oh.” The driver’s voice lost its threatening tone. “Is there a problem, Officer?”

  “Just drive on, you lousy little mick, once we get in.” He gave an address that might have been in Chicago and might have been in San Francisco for all Fallon knew.

  The doors opened on both sides of the cab, and big men climbed into the coach, closing the door behind them. One held a Remington .44 in his right hand. The other had a nightstick, which he tapped against the door.

  They sat across from Fallon. They did not smile.

  The coach pulled forward.

  Both men had badges pinned to the lapels of their checkered vests.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  “Remember me, Fallon?” the one on Fallon’s right asked with a grin that held no mirth. He flipped the nightstick, caught it, and started tapping the seat with one end.

  He was a big man, solid, nothing to him except muscles, scars, and a thick brown mustache and beard. The hair underneath his bowler was short cropped. His knuckles were crooked, and the tip of the pointer finger on his right hand was missing. The nightstick kept right on tapping, but Fallon saw the bulge under his left armpit. There was a shoulder holster underneath the Prince Albert coat. And from the way the big man sat on the bench, Fallon figured he had another hideaway weapon stuck near the small of his back.

  The shield front badge was thin, brass, tarnished. Fallon studied it briefly, and saw that it was the same kind as the one the other man had on his ugly checkered vest. Engraved on the thickest part of the badge were the words

  AMERICAN

  DETECTIVE

  AGENCY

  Harry Fallon had never heard of it. As a federal lawman, he had worked with agents from Wells Fargo and Pinkerton’s men, and some small-time operations out of Texas and St. Louis. But American Detective Agency? Well, he didn’t care much for it. That much was sure.

  “Holderman,” Fallon said. He shot the one on his left a quick look. Not as big as Aaron Holderman, not as ugly, and no beard, just a twisted mustache of black, with streaks of gray in the twisted corners and on his sideburns. Fallon didn’t know him. At least, he didn’t recognize him.

  But Holderman?

  You don’t forget a brute like Aaron Holderman.

  “Been a long time, Hank.” Holderman stopped tapping the nightstick, which he shifted to his left hand. His right thumb hooked into the pocket on his vest. Closer to the pistol in that shoulder holster, Fallon figured.

  Fallon kept his mouth shut.

  “Ain’t you gonna say it’s good to see me, Hank? Ask how I’ve been?”

  Fallon had plenty of questions to ask, but he wasn’t about to give Aaron Holderman the pleasure. He kept his eyes on the man he had put in prison for resisting arrest and running whiskey in the Cherokee Nation. So what kind of detective agency would hire a convicted felon? And what would the American Detective Agency want with Harry Fallon?

  That’s not what really bothered Fallon though. The coach turned around in the middle of the street and started going back—away from Fallon’s new landlord’s boardinghouse. What would two detectives want with Fallon? Detectives. He had trouble accepting that. Aaron Holderman was a lot of things, but he wasn’t a detective. Or any kind of peace officer.

  Fallon was out of Joliet on parole. Maybe a private operative would be assigned to check on him. Yet the obvious place for that to have happened would have been at the boardinghouse. Or the wheelwright’s shop. Yet Holderman and the other mass of muscle had found Fallon near Lake Michigan. Which meant they had followed Fallon as soon as he got off the train in Chicago. Which meant someone had to have been at the Joliet depot to let Holderman and his associate know when he would be arriving in Chicago.

  No. Fallon wanted to dismiss that theory. Probably this was just happenstance. Fate. Holderman was passing by, recognized Fallon, and decided to have some fun.

  Fallon quickly dismissed that theory. Holderman hadn’t seen Fallon since Fallon had sent him to prison thirteen years ago. For a two-year sentence. Fallon remembered Holderman, but Fallon remembered most faces. That was a talent that helped you stay alive as a federal marshal. Holderman was a two-bit crook, a small-time whiskey runner and drunk whose only talent was in his fists.

  Which would be the only reason anyone would hire Aaron Holderman.

  So now his question was: What does the American Detective Agency want with me?

  He refused to ask Holderman. Fallon would find out soon enough.

  But Aaron Holderman would not shut up.

  “You like this badge, Hank?” He rubbed his tie across the shield. “I think it’s funny. Don’t you? You once wore a badge too. Now I got one. You know what’s even funnier? To me. Maybe to you too.” He glanced at the other brute. “Timmons, me and Hank go back a long time. Here’s the funny thing though. He has . . . had . . . this reputation for being honest. Honest as the day’s long. Honest as ol’ Abe Lincoln. But he’s spent more time in prison than I did. Two years for me here in Illinois. Eight months in Cañon City, Colorado. Three years in Louisiana. At Angola. That’s less than six years, all told. Fallon? He done ten years. In Joliet too. Ten hard years.”

  The coach turned again.

  Holderman kept talking. Fallon kept thinking.

  They followed me. You need to learn not to relax. Think just like you had to think in Joliet. In the Nations. Watch your back. Look for sign. Keep your senses sharp. Do that . . . to stay alive.

  Holderman was still talking. Fallon again looked out the window, trying to figure out where he was, but this Chicago was new territory for him. He’d have to learn it.

  “Man, Hank. I haven’t heard nothin’ from you. You gotta forgive me, pal. I’ve been talking this whole time. Hogging the conversation. So let’s hear what you’ve been up to.” He nodded, grinned, and poked the nightstick under Fallon’s chin.

  “Here’s something you can answer for me. How’s the wife and the kid?”

  It happened before Fallon realized what he was doing. Reflexes took over. Reflexes . . . memories . . . pure hatred.

  His right hand shot up, ripped the stick from the surprised Holderman’s hand. The other brute, the one called Timmons, lunged across the coach, bringing his fist up. Fallon saw the flash and realized that the man wore a pair of brass knuckles.

  Timmons didn’t get a chance to use them. Fallon kept the stick moving, and heard it slam against the side of the man’s face. The fist with the knuckles barely scraped Fallon’s ear. Timmons dropped onto his knees, tried to shake his head clear, but Fallon brought his left fist up. He didn’t have much room to land a solid blow, but it was enough to send Timmons back onto his buttocks, his back against the seat.