Yuma Prison Crashout, page 6
By then, Aaron Holderman had jerked the pistol from his shoulder holster. A pocket Smith & Wesson, Fallon noticed, which looked like a toy in Holderman’s big hand. The hand didn’t hold the weapon for long.
The nightstick came down, and Fallon heard the sharp crack of the leather-wrapped club on Holderman’s wrist. The big man yelped in pain, and the little .32 dropped onto the floor. Holderman reached for his wrist with his left hand, thought better of it, and used it to grab for the nightstick. When he did, Fallon sent a wide haymaker with his left fist that caught the big man’s ear. He hit the door hard. Fallon tried to open the door, and push Holderman into the street, but Timmons had recovered, and, on his knees, wrapped his arms around Fallon’s torso.
The man squeezed. Fallon sucked in his breath, trying to make himself smaller. He saw Holderman shaking his head, seeing the Smith & Wesson and picking it up.
“Don’t shoot him, you damned fool!” Timmons said in a tight voice. “MacGregor wants him alive.”
Holderman shifted the gun, brought it up to bring the butt down on Fallon’s skull.
Fallon lifted his legs, bending the knees and kicking both his bare feet into Holderman’s big gut. The man grunted and fell back against the door, his bladder releasing. At the same time, Fallon rammed his head back. He felt the smashing of Timmons’s nose and teeth, and the looseness of his grip. Fallon managed to jam an elbow into Timmons’s ribs and broke free.
Holderman was getting up. Fallon belted him in the forehead. Down went Holderman again. Fallon grabbed one of his shoes. He turned sideways and swung the shoe at Timmons. The heel caught the man in his ear, and down he went. Fallon slammed the shoe harder against the back of Timmons’s skull. He spun back to Holderman, who was reaching for the .32. The shoe nailed his fingers underneath the pistol. Fallon’s left fist slammed into the pulp that was Holderman’s nose. The detective hit the door. Fallon hit him again. Again. Again.
He went to hit him again only to realize that Aaron Holderman wasn’t in the coach anymore. He had gone out the door. Fallon grabbed the .32.
He knew something else. The coach wasn’t moving. The driver had stopped.
Another man appeared outside, one hand holding the door, the other a short-barreled .45 Colt that was cocked and pointed at Fallon’s chest.
“Let’s not make the mick’s hack even bloodier,” the man said. “Just drop the popgun in your pocket. That’s right. You can keep it. For now. But we don’t want to keep Mr. MacGregor waiting.”
This new man, in a tan jacket and straw hat, wasn’t like Holderman and Timmons. A tall gent, he was slender, clean-shaven, with gray eyes and an easy voice. The .45 he held did not waver, though, and Fallon guessed that he knew how to use it, and had used it many times before.
“Slap Timmons across the face a few times, if you’d be so kind,” the man said. “See if he comes around.” Once Fallon had slipped the .32 into his coat pocket, he moved to the unconscious detective. He slapped Timmons across the cheeks a couple of times, maybe a little harder than necessary, but the man’s eyes opened, began to focus, and he started up, ready to charge. Fallon shoved him hard against the floor of the coach.
“How many times do you want to get your arse kicked, Timmons?” the newcomer said. “Just lie still for a minute, let Mr. Fallon come outside, and then you can crawl out of the coach and clean yourself up.”
Releasing his hold on Timmons, Fallon turned to see the newcomer moving away from the coach. Fallon grabbed his shoes, socks, and grip, and stepped onto the paved street in his bare feet.
The newcomer was handing Aaron Holderman a handkerchief.
“You know how much Mr. MacGregor frowns upon having someone bleed on his rugs,” the slender man said, and he turned to the Irish driver.
“Here’s money for the fare.” Fallon saw the gold coin spin as it sailed smoothly from the man’s slender hand into the hack’s big palm. Another coin followed. “Something for the trouble.” And yet one more gold piece. “And something for your memory.”
The hack understood. “I don’t remember a bloody thing, mate.”
“You’re a good man. Carry on.”
As the coach pulled away, the man walked to Fallon. He held out his right hand.
“I’m Dan MacGregor, Mr. Fallon. A pleasure to meet you. Come on inside. My father is eager to meet you.”
CHAPTER NINE
A little man in an extremely large office.
Such was Harry Fallon’s first impression of Sean MacGregor. He sat in a green leather chair behind a desk the size of a small ship. He wore a brown suit with a tan vest and red tie, smoking a potent cigar. Sean MacGregor, president of this American Detective Agency, had eyes of green, a dull green, nowhere near the color of the leather seat. His hair, thinning and streaked with silver, remained an ugly orange. He looked nothing like his thin, handsome son, but he did look like a man who enjoyed power and demanded respect that Fallon figured he did not deserve.
The office was on the top floor of the building. You had to take an elevator to make it all the way up. The paneling was dark brown. The rugs were dark brown. The ceiling was dark brown. It was a dark room. With no paintings, maps, or photographs hanging on the wall, and very few books on the shelves. But you could find newspapers scattered across the tables—also brown—that lined the walls on one side of the office, and wanted posters and yellow telegraphs atop brown filing cabinets that lined two others. Nothing except a window was on the wall behind MacGregor’s office. The curtain, brown, was closed. The only light came from the green-domed lamps on the sprawling desk and in the center of the three walls.
The cigar came out of MacGregor’s mouth and found a place in a gaudy silver ashtray.
“Harry Fallon,” MacGregor said. “Six-feet-one-inch tall, one hundred ninety pounds, brown hair, brown eyes, bullet scars on left arm, right thigh, other scars on back, right forearm, left side, right calf. Age thirty-three.”
MacGregor spoke with a thick Scottish brogue, another difference he had with his son, who spoke without any accent at all. He wasn’t reading this from papers. No papers covered his desk. It came from memory.
The detective kept on.
“Born Gads Hill, Missouri. One sister, still in Gads Hill. Mother dead, six years ago. Father employed at railroad station there. Previous employment as itinerant cowhand, temporary jobs, hunted buffalo. Five years as a deputy federal marshal for the Western District of Arkansas with jurisdiction in the Indian Nations. Past ten years at the Illinois State Penitentiary on a charge of bank robbery, resisting arrest, attempted murder of federal and tribal peace officers. Joliet appears to be taking federal prisoners as well as state cons. Out on parole. Wife, Renee, and daughter, Rachel—”
“I’m who you want,” Fallon said sharply.
Sean MacGregor tried to stare down Fallon, but quickly relented, glanced at his cigar, didn’t pick it up, and studied the other men in the room, including his son.
“You have secured employment with a wheelwright named Werner.” MacGregor did not try to hide his contempt as he pronounced the wheelwright’s name. “Lodging at a boardinghouse run by a woman named Ketchum. Have you ever been to Chicago, Fallon?”
He shook his head.
“I am a former attorney at law. Vocal responses if you don’t mind. Or even if you do.”
“No.”
“Your record shows little sign of your having any experience as a wheelwright. Is this a hobby or did our checking of your background miss one of the odd jobs you had during your, shall we say, wilder days?”
“A man does what he has to do,” Fallon said.
“Indeed. Especially when he has been convicted of a number of felonies.”
MacGregor found his cigar. It was a good cigar, Fallon knew, because he had to nod as his son, who, looking thoroughly insulted, crossed the dark room, found the matches, and relit the cigar in his father’s mouth. After Dan MacGregor returned to his place in the line of men standing beside Fallon, the elder MacGregor puffed his cigar for a few moments and said, “What would you say if I could find employment for a man of your, say, talents?”
“I have a job.”
Removing the cigar, Sean MacGregor grinned. “That pays a dollar a day. You got that cowboying, I suppose, and a whole lot more marshaling. And you lived in Fort Smith and—”
“Van Buren,” Fallon corrected.
Those green eyes burned with a fury that made Fallon smile. MacGregor was not a man who liked to be corrected.
“You are a detective,” Fallon said. “Figured you want to get all your facts straight.”
The punch caught him in the solar plexus.
Fallon saw Dan MacGregor stepping quickly to his left. Ready, he turned, and Aaron Holderman rushed to Fallon’s right. By then, Timmons had grabbed both of his arms, and MacGregor landed the blow.
The thin man knew where to punch and how to hit hard.
Doubled over, one arm wrapped around the bottom of his ribs, the other keeping him from falling onto that ugly brown rug, Fallon struggled to catch his breath. So, he learned something about the younger MacGregor: he’d be the one to watch closely in a fight.
“Sit down on the rug, Fallon. I like pluck. I dislike insolence.”
The stench from MacGregor’s cigar made Fallon fear he might vomit. He managed to lift his head, found Sean MacGregor smiling, standing over him . . . the only way the dwarf could tower over Fallon, and then two hands grabbed him and jerked him back. He landed on his buttocks, still clutching his ribs, still trying to breathe, and spread out his legs. He stared at the president of the detective agency.
“You feel like listening to me now, Fallon?” MacGregor said.
Fallon nodded, but MacGregor wagged his cigar. “Unh-unh-unh. Vocal responses.” He grinned. The Scot’s teeth were as brown as his office. “Remember.”
“I hear you.” He could breathe a little better now.
“All right. Do you want to be a wheelwright’s apprentice, or do you want a better-paying job that you’re damned good at?”
Fallon’s head shook. The man was going to offer him a job, but if this man hired men like Aaron Holderman, Fallon figured he’d be better off learning a new trade at a dollar a day.
“I like to pick my own bosses,” Fallon said.
The little head on the little man bobbed a few times. “Noble. Commendable. But since you want to keep the facts straight, you had no say in who was appointed federal marshal for your district. That was up to the whims of the people, who they put in the White House, and who paid enough money to get the nomination with the confirmation from the United States Senate. You didn’t pick your boss.”
“I could’ve always quit,” Fallon pointed out.
“Touché. Point taken. But we don’t always get to work for bosses we like and respect.” Grinning, he found his son. “Isn’t that right, Danny boy?” He laughed, shook his head, and said to Fallon, “Come to work for me, Fallon.”
There. It was out now.
Fallon nodded at Holderman. “According to my parole, I’m not to associate with convicted felons and ignorant sons of bitches.”
He expected the fist to slam the top of his head, so that didn’t hurt as much as Dan MacGregor’s savage punch.
“You’ve already associated with him. My son even found you armed with a revolver. That’s against Chicago’s city ordinance. It’s also another violation of your parole. Which could land you back in Joliet . . .”
Fallon picked it up as if by rote. “. . . or another facility for completion of my original sentence. All right. You’ve had your fun. Send me back.”
“For five more years?” MacGregor puffed his cigar.
“After ten, what’s five more?”
MacGregor removed the cigar, tilted his head back, and laughed. “By God, I’ve known men hardened by the walls and bars, but you take first place, Fallon. Yes, you are indeed the man I need.”
“Go to hell,” Fallon said. No one hit him. And Sean MacGregor didn’t look annoyed, angry, or insulted.
“Joliet’s worse than hell, Fallon. And I plan to send you to a place worse than Joliet. But you will be well paid. Very well paid.”
Fallon could breathe now. He looked up, waiting.
“Before your arrest, trial, and incarceration your reputation in Arkansas and the Indian Nations was exemplary.” MacGregor was walking back to his desk, putting his cigar back in the ashtray, and opening a drawer. He pulled out a wad of greenbacks, counted out several, and returned to the center of the room. This time he knelt and counted off twenty bills, letting them land between Fallon’s legs.
“In a few years, I plan to be America’s and the world’s foremost detective agency.” His face seemed to flush, matching the redness of his hair. “And put that idiot Pinkerton back where he belongs, in New York’s Fifth Ward, fighting gangs to stay alive.”
He sighed, regained his composure, and said, “I read that two officers of the United States cavalry, one solicitor, and two deputy marshals served as character witnesses at your trial. Yet Judge Parker gave you the maximum sentence. You must hate him.”
Fallon’s head shook. “He did what he thought was right. He’s an honorable man. Unlike some I’ve met.”
“Careful. Dan would love to practice the pugilistic skills he learned at Purdue.”
MacGregor stared at the ceiling, pondering whatever went through his sick brain, and, satisfied, found Fallon’s eyes again. “Two hundred dollars a month, not including expenses, to be deposited in a bank of your choice. Plus a bonus.”
Fallon shook his head again. “The warden . . .”
This time, MacGregor interrupted him. “The warden has his hands full, especially since he has a riot that left several dead and will cost taxpayers a small fortune. And he relies on my agency to keep track of the parolees who are in this entire state. Joliet’s a short distance from Chicago, but to Warden Cain Chicago might as well be in Canada’s Yukon. Joliet is one of our accounts.”
So, at least Fallon now knew how Holderman had found him at Lake Michigan.
“This German named Werner. He doesn’t need an apprentice. He’s hiring one because his boy is doing five years at Southern Illinois Penitentiary down in Chester. Three to go. Mrs. Ketchum’s boardinghouse, you’ll be happy to know, is also where Mr. Holderman resides. Don’t worry. His room is in the attic. Yours is by the front door. And in Joliet, Warden Cain will be receiving wonderful reports as to your work ethic, following the conditions of your parole. That is, as long as you’re working, and doing a job well done, for the American Detective Agency. What do you say?”
“Send a telegraph to Joliet. Tell Cain I’m coming back.”
To Fallon’s surprise, the little Scot grinned.
“Yes. You’re tough. Just what I need.” He drew in a deep breath, exhaled slowly, and said, “I need to know one thing from you, Fallon. Were you guilty of any of the charges that got you sent to Joliet for the hardest time imaginable?”
Fallon shrugged. “What does it matter?”
He felt the hand chop onto his left shoulder. That hurt not as bad as the punch that took his breath away, but it still hurt. “Answer the question!” Dan MacGregor snapped.
Through tight-set lips, Fallon said, “I can’t deny that I resisted arrest,” he said.
The little MacGregor laughed again. “Yes. Wouldn’t we all? I know you were innocent, Fallon. What’s more, I know who set you up.”
Fallon looked up. MacGregor stepped back, and Fallon heard the cocking of revolvers all across the room.
“One thing I’m good at, Fallon,” MacGregor said after a retreat of fifteen feet. “I can read men. And I just read something in you that I don’t like. You were thinking that you could get to me and beat out the information you want to hear. And you’d do it no matter how many bullets they put into you. As I said before, spirit is one thing. Insolence is another. And insanity only leaves you dead.”
He started making his way back.
“Now, maybe we can have a conversation and leave distrust and animosity in our back pockets for the time being.”
CHAPTER TEN
He found himself alone in the big office with the little man with a massive ego and too much ambition. Even Dan MacGregor had been asked to leave. Fallon came to the impression that neither father nor son trusted one another. He wanted to keep that in mind.
“Whiskey?” Sean MacGregor had settled into the green-leather chair.
Fallon shook his head. He hadn’t tasted any spirits in ten years. He hadn’t even tried the home-brewed beer or rotgut in all that time.
“It’s Scotch.” MacGregor poured himself a tall one. “Single malt. The best you can get in Chicago.”
“No. Thank you.”
MacGregor smiled. “Quid pro quo. You are familiar with the Latin phrase?”
“More or less.”
“I give. You give.” He laughed. “No, I mean the other way around. You give. I give. In short, if you do a few jobs for me, I’ll give you something that you want.”
“A few jobs?”
“Let’s say three.” The Scot drank some more whiskey. “For starters, the man who made it so you spent ten years in one of the worst prisons in America for something you didn’t do.” He grinned again. “Except for that resisting arrest part.” More whiskey. He refilled his glass and sipped some more. The little man could hold a lot of Scotch. Another thing to remember. He didn’t appear to get drunk.
“So I’m supposed to trust you?” Fallon said.
Now, Sean MacGregor did not smile. He set his glass of Scotch on the table and stared hard. “Fallon, you’re out of Joliet. Remember that. I got you out.”
“The governor . . .”
“Listens to what I tell him. Remember that too.”
“I’ll remember.”
“Good. Then here are the terms. You do the jobs for me. I give you information, indeed the name, of the man you want. I give you proof. After you’ve done those jobs.”
