A Knife in the Heart Read online

Fallon realized that the restaurant was empty of paying customers. The cook stepped out of the kitchen. Fallon could see him through the reflection in one of the windows with the shades partially drawn to keep out the sun. His eyes turned briefly, but this side of the street wasn’t crowded. No one passed by, and Fallon realized how late they were getting out of the house. The dinner rush was long over. Not a peace officer to be found anywhere.

  “Would you three like to take this matter outside?” Fallon asked, trying to sound respectful, or at least, courteous.

  “Nah,” the weasel said. “A copper would likely interrupt our getting-reacquainted party.”

  “I see.” Fallon’s mind began racing. “So . . . Buster Jenkins. Remind me of how we met.”

  “Choctaw Nation. I was runnin’ whiskey.”

  Fallon’s head bobbed. “A popular diversion.”

  “Yeah. So was eighteen months in Detroit.”

  “Well, you’ve been out for some time. I haven’t been a deputy marshal in Fort Smith for years and years.”

  “We know,” the weasel said. “You was a big-time law dog in Wyoming. Now you’s gonna be runnin’ a prison. The big one here in town.”

  Fallon nodded. It struck him that Buster Jenkins was not aware of what had happened to Fallon some time after Jenkins had been sent to the Detroit House of Corrections. That Fallon had spent ten years in Joliet. That Fallon had then worked as an operative in three other prisons. He figured Buster Jenkins did not even know about the gunfight Fallon had been in the middle of during the bank robbery a few weeks back.

  “Been readin’ ’bout you,” Jenkins said.

  “I didn’t know you could read,” Fallon said. “Did they teach you that in Detroit?”

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  The expression on Buster Jenkins’s face was exactly what Fallon was hoping for. So was the laughter from the big brute. That’s why Fallon threw the first punch into the jaw of the thin man with the iron bar.

  That was the most dangerous man, Fallon estimated, and the one that needed to be dispatched first.

  The blow sent the man turning, dropping the piece of iron on the floor, and bending over while spitting out teeth and blood. Fallon kicked him hard in the buttocks, catapulting him through the plate-glass window. Shards of glass showered the floor inside and the boardwalk outside as the man disappeared from view.

  “What the hell—” was all the weasel could say before Fallon whirled, swinging a haymaker with his left that caught the side of the weasel’s face and powered him over an empty table and crashing into two chairs. Body and furniture rolled over the floor.

  Fallon backed up quickly, avoiding the rushed swing from the burly man, who glanced at Buster Jenkins as he tried to push himself off the floor, only to bump his head against another table. He roared in pain, in frustration, and kept rising, overturning the second table—and that one had not been cleared of its plates and glasses, which crashed into hundreds of pieces on the floor.

  By then Fallon had picked up the iron bar the skinny one had dropped on his way through the broken window. Fallon shot a quick glance. That man had not emerged, but Fallon knew he would need to keep an eye out for him, for that one carried a holstered revolver—and Fallon figured he knew how to use it. Buster Jenkins also had a gun, but he was so mad, so shamed, so shocked by Fallon’s initial attack, he appeared to have forgotten that he had a pistol stuck in his pants.

  People across the street stared at the café.

  Fallon brought the bar up, like a bat, and swung. He could have aimed for the big man’s head or neck, but Fallon had no interest in killing anyone today. This was not a prison riot, a brawl. This was not—at least for the time being—a fight with hardened men with a kill-or-be-killed attitude. This was just, well, a little welcoming party from three thugs who thought they could have a little fun, get some revenge, by whipping the arse of a former lawman. They didn’t know Harry Fallon.

  To men like the weasel and his pards, a deputy U.S. marshal never threw the first punch, never initiated a fight. They were paid to keep the peace, maintain law and order. They didn’t start brawls, especially in respectable businesses in a thriving, law-abiding community like Leavenworth, Kansas.

  They did not know Harry Fallon. Not at all. They did not know what Fallon had been doing for much of his life. Being a federal lawman in the Indian Nations had taught Fallon a lot about staying alive—but being in Joliet, in Yuma, in Jefferson City, and in Huntsville had taught him much, much more.

  The gunfight outside the Stockgrowers’ in Cheyenne had revived those almost dormant instincts after all those years pushing papers and pens across his desk as a U.S. marshal. Fallon wasn’t quite as rusty as he might have been.

  The bone in the big man’s thick arm snapped loudly. In fact, for one brief instant, Fallon thought the thin man had found his revolver and had fired a shot. But the blond-bearded giant screamed loudly and reached out with his left hand. That’s when Fallon lowered the rod, tapping the floor with one end, then quickly jerked it up, catching the brute between the legs, right in that sweet spot.

  His mouth widened like his eyes, and he sucked in a silent breath as what little Fallon could see of his face began to whiten. Fallon let go of the bar, stepped in close, and threw four quick punches, driving the man into the first booth on the far wall. The man fell against the bench, slipped onto the floor, and began muttering nonsensical words, basically blubbering like a baby.

  “You dirty dog.” Buster Jenkins was standing now. And he remembered the gun in his waistband.

  The weasel had the gun out, but the hammer was not cocked, when Fallon slipped between overturned furniture and buried a left in Jenkins’s stomach. Jenkins’s mouth opened, the pistol dropped onto the broken dishes, and Fallon stomped on the man’s left foot with the heel of his own boot. His knee then came up, again connected with the groin, and at the same time Fallon pushed the weasel’s head down while his knee went up again. Jenkins’s forehead connected with the knee, and Fallon shoved him, unconscious, onto the floor.

  Now Fallon whirled around, glanced at the big lug underneath the booth, mumbling like some blithering idiot. Fallon moved through the door, turned to his left, and saw the thin man on his hands and knees, still spitting out blood, shaking his head, likely wondering how this day had turned out so bloody wrong. A quick glance across the streets detected no police officers in sight, so Fallon stepped off the boardwalk and came up to the thin man’s side. He jerked the still-holstered revolver from the holster, spun the gun around, and brought the walnut grips down on the thin man’s head. The man let out a moan and fell onto the bloody planks of the boardwalk.

  A whistle shrieked, but it seemed pretty far away, so Fallon returned inside the café, laid the revolver by the cash register, picked up the weasel’s gun, and set it by the thin man’s revolver.

  The giant kept blubbering on the floor.

  Fallon stared at the cook and the waitress with the gray hair. Massaging his knuckles, he spotted a booth on the other side of the café. His boots crunched glass and shards of crockery before he slipped into the wooden bench. Again, he looked at the small man with the dirty apron and the old waitress.

  “Coffee would be nice,” he told them. “I’m sure the peace officers will want some, as well.”

  Fallon was sipping coffee when the first constable arrived.

  “What’s going on here?” the mustached man asked the cook in a thick Irish brogue.

  The cook tilted his head toward Fallon.

  “My name’s Fallon,” he said. “Harry Fallon. I’m the new warden here. But these three men are for you. At least, for the time being.”

  * * *

  Christina was reading a storybook to Rachel Renee when Fallon came through the front door. He rubbed his knuckles, but they were just scraped.

  “Papa!” his daughter screamed with delight.

  The book closed, and Christina said, “Well?”

  “I don’t think we should go back
to that restaurant anytime soon,” Fallon said, and knelt as Rachel Renee charged toward him, leaped into his arms, and he swept her up as he rose.

  “It wasn’t that good anyhow, Papa,” Rachel Renee said. “The waitress didn’t even bring me a lemon drop.”

  “Did you ask for one?” Fallon asked.

  “No. But I never asked for one at Kate’s place in Cheyenne, and I always got one. Can we go see the town now, Papa?” Rachel Renee pleaded. “You promised.”

  “I don’t see why not,” Fallon said. “It’s what we planned to do all day. Although”—he smiled at Christina—“we might stay clear of the street closest to the river.”

  “That’s fine with me, Papa,” Rachel Renee said. “I want to find a place with toys.”

  Fallon kissed his daughter’s cheek. “Well, Rachel Renee, we can look. But I don’t think you need any new toys right now. But you might see if you like anything because your birthday will be coming up in a few months. And you have plenty of toys right now.” His eyes found his wife. “And we might want to skip roast beef and steaks for a while for supper. Eat rather frugally. At least till I collect my first paycheck.”

  “They fined you?” Christina asked.

  “Just damages,” Fallon said. “I mean, I couldn’t argue. I threw the first punch.”

  “And the last one, too,” Christina said.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  Since Harry Fallon had worked as a deputy United States marshal, he understood how slowly the federal government liked to work. Back in 1895, the U.S. Congress approved the construction of three federal penitentiaries, one in Atlanta, Georgia; one at McNeil Island in Washington State, although that prison had been around for decades now; and here at Leavenworth. Since state prisons were beginning to fill up, Congress and the president figured that the time had come to send enemies of the country—whether they were counterfeiters or smugglers or whatever—to serve time in a U.S. prison. They had been sent to state prisons, usually, to serve their time. Those who committed federal crimes in the Indian Territory usually got sent to the Detroit House of Corrections, although Fallon had been sentenced to his hard labor at Joliet, Illinois.

  Leavenworth, Kansas, of course, had long been holding prisoners. It got its start back in 1827, when Henry Leavenworth, colonel of the Third U.S. Infantry, decided a new military post needed to be established right here, on the banks of the Missouri River, more than twenty miles from the Kansas River, a prime location to protect travelers on the newly opened Santa Fe Trail. For decades, though, the fort had served as a supply depot to frontier posts from Kansas to the Rocky Mountains.

  Soldiers often weren’t the most law-abiding men on the earth, and a lot of men in uniform got into trouble with higher-ranking men in uniform. Guard houses, like post hospitals, were usually full up. And for more serious offenses, a military prison was needed. So back in 1875, the United States Military Prison, also established by Congress—back in 1874—began, starting out in an old supply building that had been fitted with cell blocks and iron bars. Three hundred inmates were incarcerated there a year later.

  So when the Secretary of War decided in 1894 that the Army no longer needed a prison just for offenders of military matters, Congress transferred the overseeing of the military prison at Fort Leavenworth from the War Department to the Department of Justice.

  Which could have been the end of things, but, no, then the House Judiciary Committee started meeting, and the committee said that the old structure at the fort just no longer was suitable, and that’s when Congress said that a new federal penitentiary had to be built in Leavenworth. Land was allocated roughly two-and-a-half miles away.

  There was a lot more going on during these meetings and votes with representative and senators and lawyers talking and dining and drinking. The Three Prisons Act did a lot to get the ball, and construction, started, but the act did not come up with any money to build those pens.

  Fallon couldn’t blame the citizens for that way of thinking. Imagine if the military got tired of keeping its post in Leavenworth. Army institutions, especially on the frontier, were shut down, and now that some scholar had declared the frontier of the United States officially closed back around 1893, the good folks in Leavenworth worried that if the post—the very same institution that had made many a businessman, particularly the saloon and brothel owners, wealthy since about 1827—departed, what would become of the city on the banks of the river? Would it turn into a penal colony like Australia? Would travelers across Kansas avoid it like they would a leper colony or Alcatraz?

  Anyway, in 1895, the military prison became the United States Penitentiary, and embezzlers, murderers, whiskey runners on the Indian reservations, counterfeiters, perjurers (in federal cases), and men who used the mail to send naughty drawings or photographs found a hard cot and three meals a day.

  Since March 1897, prisoners from the facility at the fort had been marched those two-plus miles to help with construction. It was still going after the warden got sick of it all and tendered his resignation. That opened up the job, which the warden at the state prison in Laramie, Wyoming, had his eyes on, until Harry Fallon had to open his big mouth and start the ball rolling, and found himself taking the job.

  The plan was to put twelve hundred cells in the federal pen here. Five and a half feet wide, nine feet deep, ceilings about eight feet high, with a barred door and window at the front. Since the twentieth century would be dawning shortly, each cell would have water and even some of Thomas Edison’s newfangled electric lights.

  The United States government moved slowly. From Fallon’s viewpoint, so did the prisoners building their new home. He thought about the inmates who had built most of what became the Missouri state prison in Jefferson City. There weren’t nearly as many prisoners building in that hell box as there were here, but they got it done. Fallon’s pa would have called that “a problem with your generation. You young whippersnappers don’t know how to work anymore. If I was as lazy as your pals back when I was your age, my pa would’ve tanned my hide. And I’d tan yours, except you’re bigger than me.” He’d wink, but Fallon figured, deep down, his father was speaking exactly what he thought.

  And Fallon, to be honest with himself, would likely agree with his pa. And the more he looked at the kids around him, in ten or twelve years, Fallon would be telling them exactly what his father had told him.

  But not Rachel Renee, of course. Fallon’s daughter was perfect.

  Just like her mother.

  Fallon moved over to the table where men looked down at the plans designed by a couple of architects from St. Louis. That firm had gotten the lush job of designing the federal pens at both Leavenworth and Atlanta. Fallon was already sweating, and he had to remind himself that summer had not begun. He wondered if he should have asked for the job on that island in Puget Sound. On a morning like today, waves and water sounded peaceful and cool. The Missouri River was mighty fine, but also ugly, smelly, and radiating heat and humidity.

  “Is this the plan?” Fallon pointed at a blueprint spread across a table, snuff cans, scrap wood, rocks from the quarry, two hammers, and one saw placed at the proper points to keep the paper from being blown halfway to San Angelo, Texas.

  A man in bifocals and bowler looked up. “Yes,” he said in a nasal voice.

  Fallon moved closer. He had done just a little preliminary investigating about what he was getting himself into. Now he saw the design for the prison here—if he lived to see it completed. Not that he thought he’d get killed in some riot or jailbreak. He had already helped bring back three escapees. But he might die of old age before this compound was halfway finished.

  Frowning, Fallon said, “So . . . we’re looking at something under a thousand acres all total.”

  The man pushed the spectacles up the brim of his nose.

  “Seven hundred.”

  Fallon’s head bobbed. Most of that was just land. Give the escapees plenty of land to run themselves out before they ever reached the h
igh walls.

  “This is the compound.” Fallon tapped his finger on the blue print.

  “Yes, sir.”

  “How many acres?”

  “Sixteen. Give or take.”

  He slid closer, and looked at the design. “This is similar to Auburn,” Fallon said.

  The man cocked his head. “You have been to the New York state prison, sir?”

  Fallon grinned. “Not that one. I put Sean MacGregor in prison before he could send me there. Or Alcatraz. Or Cañon City. Or Deer Lodge. Or . . .” He laughed in spite of himself. “But I’ve studied prisons, sir. From The Count of Monte Cristo to here.”

  The Auburn prison had been built even before Leavenworth became a fort. The prisons were cavernous rectangular structures. Two barracks to serve as the wall on one side, the south side, with smaller cell blocks stretching out from the rotunda like three spokes in a wagon wheel. Corridors shaped like horseshoes to connect the rear and central buildings. The theory was that would make it harder for any inmate to escape at night. Fallon looked at the walls, nodded.

  The administration building would face the south, in the middle between the two long cell houses. The three radial cell blocks jutted out, coming close to the next monstrosity of buildings. Fallon tapped one.

  “What’s this?”

  “Office and school,” the man in the bowler said, and went on to show Fallon the dining hall, auditorium, commissary, kitchen, even an ice plant.

  Fallon smiled. “The didn’t have one of those in Joliet. Sure could have used them during the riots.”

  The man made himself smile and showed Fallon the storehouses and the laundry. Fallon tapped another structure.

  “That’s the dormitory,” the man said as he moved his eyeglasses down his nose.

  “Dormitory?” Fallon studied the young man. Where was he? A university like Yale or someplace?

  “Solitary. You know, an isolation unit.”

  “Ah.” Fallon shook his head. “Yes.” He made himself nod. “Yes, Mister . . . ?”