Yuma Prison Crashout, page 30
Fallon waited. “Is that it?”
The tall, handsome man glanced at Aaron Holderman before his eyes fell back onto Fallon. “No. There’s another reason we picked you for this job.”
Fallon let out a chuckle that held no humor. “I thought it was because I know how to rot behind bars.”
“Mr. MacGregor’s a man of his word,” Aaron Holderman said. “He said he’d help you find out who killed your family, who framed you, and got you sent to Joliet. You listen to him. He’ll help you out.”
Now Fallon turned to the brute wearing the bowler. The city hat was brown, as was the big man’s ill-fitting suit. He probably wore brown to please the corrupt president of the American Detective Agency. The suit did not fit Holderman well, but even Chicago’s best tailor would find it hard to outfit this mass of muscles.
Fallon studied Holderman, his mustache and beard, too brown it seemed to Fallon. The monster likely dyed his hair with shoe polish. The brass shield on his chest that identified him as a private detective was tarnished. The bulge underneath his left shoulder indicated a revolver. A Chicago billy club protruded from his brown boot. It would be hard for Holderman to run with a nightstick in his left boot. From the size of Holderman, though, it would be hard for him to run anyway.
Dan MacGregor, on the other hand, looked like he could run alongside a thoroughbred for six furlongs.
You’re thinking of trying to escape, Fallon thought. Stop it. You’ve a job to do. Just remember this is all for Renee. For Rachel. For justice.
No, he was fooling himself. Ten years inside Joliet had changed him. He no longer wore a badge. Even the American Detective Agency had not pinned a shield on him. He was just being used. But Fallon kept figuring a way that he could use Sean MacGregor and his minions. But not for justice.
Revenge.
“What’s the reason?” Fallon asked MacGregor.
“I’ll tell you,” the young detective said, “when I’m sure the walls aren’t listening.”
Holderman snorted.
Doors opened down the hallway, and voices became louder. Fallon could hear the footsteps behind him.
“All right,” Fallon said.
MacGregor pointed. “Let’s go.”
They walked to the elevator. Aaron Holderman rang the button, and two awkwardly quiet minutes later the carriage arrived, the door opened, and the elderly black man said, “Headin’ down, folks. Climb in.”
Holderman moved in first, and Fallon started but felt something pull on the back of his vest.
“After you, Christina,” Dan MacGregor said pleasantly, and gave a tall, attractive blonde woman his most handsome smile.
“Thank you, Dan,” she said, and studied Fallon. “Who’s your friend?”
“A lawman from way back,” MacGregor said. “Working on a case with us.”
She was already in the elevator. So were two other men. MacGregor let the last man, a thin man with huge spectacles, step inside, too, before he smiled at the black elevator man.
“You look crowded enough, Carlton,” MacGregor told the black man. “And Holderman weighs more than three men and takes up the space of four. Run these good people down and come back up for us, will you?”
“Yes, suh.”
“Aaron,” MacGregor called out to the big detective. “Go on. Meet us at the depot. Make sure everything’s ready.”
“But . . .”
“Just do it,” MacGregor said as the door closed.
He turned toward Fallon but said nothing until the creaking and clanging of the elevator revealed that it was at least two stories below them.
“There’s one thing my father did not tell me to tell you, Hank,” the handsome man said.
Hank, Fallon thought. It’s Hank now. Only my friends call me Hank.
“Just one?” Fallon shot back.
MacGregor let out a genuine laugh. “One that I’m willing to share.”
Fallon waited.
“Judge Parker sentenced you to fifteen years,” MacGregor said.
Still, Fallon waited. He could hear the elevator begin its ascent to the top floor of the brownstone building.
“Parker was a federal judge.” MacGregor’s face showed no emotion. “So why were you sent to the Illinois State Penitentiary in Joliet and not the Detroit House of Corrections? Ever consider that?”
Fallon did not part his lips to respond.
“How many men did you send to Joliet? Other than Holderman, but if I remember right, you made that arrest in Illinois, after Holderman crossed the Mississippi around Cape Girardeau, and Illinois wanted him worse than Parker did.”
That much was true. Fallon had arrested Holderman twice in the Indian Territory—another deputy had arrested him, too—but none of the charges ever stuck. So when Fallon had gone after Holderman all those years ago, across Arkansas, into Missouri, even into Kentucky briefly before back into Missouri, and finally into Illinois and made the arrest, he had found himself surrounded by some Illinois badge-wearers who wanted Holderman for stealing a horse, beating a blacksmith half to death, and robbing a Mason of three double eagles he had been taking to an orphanage.
MacGregor went on. “You were arrested for robbery in the Creek Nation. They couldn’t make the murder charge of that federal deputy against you, though the solicitor tried his hardest. That’s a federal charge. Federal prisoners in that part of the country get shipped up to Detroit, Michigan. But you wound up in Joliet.”
“So did Joey Kurth,” Fallon said. Fallon had run into Kurth in Joliet.
“Yeah, but that was different,” MacGregor said. “Kurth was arrested for running spirits and resisting arrest. But he was also wanted for a string of robberies in Beardstown, so Parker sent him to Illinois to be tried there, sentenced, and upon completion, returned to Fort Smith to get sentenced again. Just didn’t happen.”
Thanks to Kurth’s untimely demise during the riots at Joliet.
“All right,” Fallon said. “The way it was explained to me was that because I was a onetime lawman, with many, many men I had sent to prison serving their time—some of those sentences were for life—in Detroit, I was being sent to Joliet for my own safety.” He shook his head, felt the gall rising again, and said again, his voice acid now: “Safety.”
“Parker threw the book at you. You think he cared about your safety? He figured you betrayed him. From what I’ve read, Parker got you that job as a deputy marshal. He even talked you into reading for the bar. When you were accused of robbing that stagecoach, he felt like he’d been stabbed in the back.”
The elevator arrived. The mechanical sounds echoed across the hallway.
“Did it matter where I wound up?” Fallon said. “Detroit. Joliet. Neither one is quite the Drovers Cottage.”
The doors began opening. “Chris Ehrlander was your lawyer, wasn’t he?”
Fallon nodded.
The black man in the red jacket reappeared. “You ready, suh?” he asked MacGregor.
“Interesting,” MacGregor said, keeping his eyes on Fallon, before he turned around. “Yes, Carlton. My friend here has a train to catch.”
* * *
On the loud, grease-smelling elevator ride to the ground floor, visions of Judge Isaac Parker . . . of Renee DeSmet Fallon . . . of attorney Chris Ehrlander . . . of faces of men he had known as a lawman and as an inmate . . . all flashed through Fallon’s mind.
MacGregor stared at the black elevator man in the red jacket. Fallon studied the back of Dan MacGregor’s head. He remembered the man from some university in Illinois who had stopped in at the marshal’s office in Fort Smith. The man talked to the marshal, the federal prosecutor, and the deputies who happened to be in town about how the shape of a man’s skull could determine if that man were a criminal or a decent person. Fallon and everyone else in that room had figured the man was no better than the confidence men with their shell games, marked decks, and rigged faro layouts, but now as he stared at Dan MacGregor’s head, he tried to remember exactly what shapes the Illinois professor had said meant a man was a criminal.
The elevator came to an abrupt stop, and the jolt seemed to return Fallon’s faculties.
He thanked the black man as he followed Dan MacGregor to the front door of the brownstone building. They stepped onto the sidewalk.
Chicago was crowded at this time of day. Fallon walked alongside Dan MacGregor. Neither man spoke, they simply bent into the wind and moved along with the herd of people.
This city wasn’t for him. Too many people. No sense of order. No guard telling him where he needed to go or when he could hit the privy to relieve his bladder. No rolling hills and clear water of the Indian Nations. No wife. No daughter. And after spending what seemed like an eternity in that Hellhole called Yuma Territorial Penitentiary, after enduring the Snake Den, and some of the most ruthless cutthroats Fallon had ever seen—after escaping to Mexico and witnessing more carnage and destruction—Fallon just did not fit in with women in their bloomers and fine hats, men in their Prince Albert coats and shiny black leather shoes carrying grips and cases or umbrellas—even though the skies seemed clear.
“Here,” MacGregor said, and he turned down another street, not as crowded, but far from deserted.
Why doesn’t he hail a hack? Fallon thought. It is a damned long walk from here to the depot.
Another turn. Another. And then one more that led them down a narrow alley. A cat screamed, leaped out of a stinking can of trash, and bolted between Fallon and MacGregor.
MacGregor smiled, but the smile faded instantly.
The cat wasn’t alone in the alley.
Four men came from behind a mountain of trash. Two carried baseball bats. Brass knuckles reflected off the tallest man. The fourth wielded a knife.
Fallon glanced behind him. Two other men, armed with revolvers, approached from the side street.
William W. Johnstone, Yuma Prison Crashout
