Yuma Prison Crashout, page 9
You didn’t see many cap-and-balls anywhere these days. Those types of guns had gone the way of tubs of boiling oil and catapults. Guns like that had been great technology when Sam Colt had first patented his revolver. The hammer struck the percussion cap, which ignited the black powder, which sent the lead ball toward its target. A good weapon, as long as you kept your powder dry, and the cap actually fired, and the powder really ignited, and the gun didn’t blow your hand off. Cap-and-balls had been converted so that they could take brass cartridges, which kept the powder—usually—dry, and could be used without the need of percussion caps.
“Just one cap,” Fallon said, meaning that Holderman had put one percussion cap on one nipple, effectively turning the six-shooter into a single-shot weapon.
“That’s all you need to get charged with armed burglary.”
“Robbery,” Fallon corrected. “And you know what you’re doing?”
“Uh-huh.”
Fallon inhaled, held the breath, and slowly let it out. The detective sure had a way of inspiring his colleague.
“Where’s the bank?”
The man’s big head jutted across the street.
Fallon studied the adobe building. “That’s a store.”
“Bank too. Not a real bank, maybe, but he takes money from them boys who ride into town and want to get good and drunk, but don’t want to ride out of town flat broke. Holds it for them until they get out of jail or sober up or finish whatever they come to Tucson to get done. Then he charges them a little bit for the trouble. They ride out with some coins, and he gets a coin or two or a bill for his trouble.”
Fallon wet his lips and put his hands on his hips, suddenly impressed. “That’s brilliant. American ingenuity at its finest.”
“And nobody never thinks to rob him.”
“Till today.” Fallon shook his head.
“You best get to it.” Holderman stepped away from the trash barrel and looked into the window of the store he stood in front of. Fallon wondered if the idiot thought he would look inconspicuous staring at a lacey yellow hat in the display window at Natalie Delisa’s Millinery & Women’s Fashions.
After slipping the small pistol into his back pocket, Fallon stepped off the boardwalk, let a freight wagon go past, and walked in no particular hurry to the dry goods store catty-corner from the millinery.
He held the door open for a young woman carrying a handful of packages wrapped in brown paper, even tipped his hat, and waited until she was well down the boardwalk.
Inside, the man snapped, “You’re letting flies in, buster, and flies don’t buy a damned thing.”
Fallon lost all of his respect for this capitalist. He walked inside and let the door close behind him. The bell chimed.
The man frowned and turned to assist an elderly woman asking about the difference in two cans of peaches.
Fallon studied the rest of the store. It was empty. He walked to the counter, away from the woman and the man with the sleeve garters and bifocals, and studied the various jars of candies. He didn’t like candy, not even peppermint sticks or licorice. Eventually, the man convinced the woman that the brand that cost two cents more was the one she should buy. She paid him, then walked out with the can and her other purchases in a wicker basket. The door opened, quickly closed to keep any more flies from joining the others, and the man put the money in the register and moved down the counter toward Fallon.
“Can I help you?” he asked.
“Cain Warden,” Fallon said, “a guy I worked for, he says that you’ll hold a man’s valuables for him.” He grinned. “Let me explain. I just got into town last night, too late to do much of anything, and I want to make sure I got enough money when I leave Tucson to give to my sister.” He jutted his hand toward the door. “She lives up in Globe.”
He didn’t know where Globe was, but heard the mining town mentioned by a few of the men in the wagon yard.
“I charge one percent of the money you leave with me for safekeeping,” the man said.
“You got a vault in this place?” Fallon looked around.
The man disappeared and brought up a strongbox. A Smith & Wesson lay atop the box, which he laid on the counter. “This,” the man said, as he held up the short-barreled revolver, waving it underneath Fallon’s nose, “is all the vault I need.”
Aaron Holderman had not mentioned the Smith & Wesson.
“I reckon not.” Fallon made himself smile, and watched the man shove the pistol into his waistband. “You accept the terms. One percent. Per night. So if you’ll have an extended stay . . .”
Meaning, If you wind up in jail . . .
“Should get everything I need done in one night. I’ll be back tomorrow sometime.”
The man glanced at the clock. “Twenty-four hours. It’s nearly eleven thirty in the a.m. At eleven thirty tomorrow morning, you will be charged two percent.”
Fallon nodded.
The man pulled out a receipt pad and fished the pencil off the top of his ear. “Name.” It was not a question.
“Hank Fulton.”
The man scribbled.
“And how much will you be leaving with me?”
“Oh, I got about a hundred, hundred fifty.”
The man smiled with greed. He pulled a key out of his pants pocket and fitted it into the padlock. The lock opened, and the box opened. Fallon was reaching into his front pockets but stopped to stare.
“Man. You must be real busy.”
“Payday was last week.” He grinned. “Some of the boys are still in jail.”
“Lucky you.”
“You’re damned straight.”
He waited. The eyes narrowed behind the bifocals. “Your cash, sir.”
“Oh.” Fallon tried to look embarrassed. He put his hand into his pocket and came out. He began dropping pennies on the counter.
“One . . . two . . . three . . . four . . . five . . .”
The lid to the box slammed shut. “Is this some kind of joke, buster?”
Fallon stepped back. “Why, no, sir. I got about a hundred and twenty, maybe forty, could be fifty pennies in my pocket.” He had, actually, maybe four more.
The man put his hands on the strongbox.
“Get out of here, you jackass. I’m not weighing down this box with a dollar and fifty cents in pennies for a three-cent payoff.”
“Penny and a half,” Fallon said, and shoved the Manhattan into the greedy man’s face.
The man’s eyes closed beneath the bifocals, his face turned ashen, and his hands reached for the ceiling made of punched tin.
Fallon shut the lid to the strongbox and reached across the counter and jerked the Smith & Wesson from the man’s pants. The greedy man’s eyelids squeezed tighter.
“You have a storeroom in this place?”
The man’s head bobbed, but then Fallon saw something better. A cherrywood armoire stood in the corner, its long doors open, key in the lock and price tag as greedy as this fellow was; he never would try to bust the lock and have to pay for repairs. Besides, Aaron Holderman should be walking in at any minute to stop this act of crime.
“Never mind. Come around the counter.”
What, he thought with bitterness, is taking Holderman so long?
He slid the Smith & Wesson down the counter, and it went off the edge and skidded across the floor.
“Move!” Fallon yelled, and prodded the barrel of the rusty relic between the man’s shoulder blades. They made it to the corner. “Open your eyes and climb in.”
The man timidly obeyed, and turned around. With one hand holding the Manhattan and the strongbox tucked underneath his left arm, Fallon kicked one of the doors shut. “I’m locking you in here,” Fallon told him. “You make one peep before I’m gone and I’ll fill this box full of holes.”
If, he thought, the .36 doesn’t blow up in my hand.
The bell above the door sang out its obnoxious chime, and Fallon let out a breath of relief. He turned, and felt the color leaving his own face. It wasn’t the fat private detective coming into the store, but three men who looked like railroaders just coming off a six-night run followed by a two-night bender.
“Hey!” one of them yelled. “What the hell’s going on here?”
Fallon couldn’t tell if the men were armed or not. It didn’t look like it, but he didn’t want to risk getting shot, so he did what he wished so many outlaws back in Arkansas and the Indian Nations would have done all those years ago. He dropped the .36-caliber cap-and-ball revolver on the floor, raised his right toward the gaudy ceiling, and sang out as loud as he could:
“I surrender!”
His left hand kept the strongbox secured against his side.
Until the weasel in the armoire kicked him in the back.
The strongbox fell heavily, crashing on the wood, spilling out gold and silver coins, receipts, and paper money. Fallon fell on his knees, and then toppled like a drunken thespian on the opera house boards and lay on his back.
The shoes of the railroaders sounded like stampeding elephants as they raced toward him. The bell above the door did not chime, so Fallon thought that the weasel that owned this joint would soon curse them for letting the flies in.
The weasel had something else on his mind. He had picked up the .36, and started to cock it.
“What are you doing, Mr. Primm?” one of the railroaders yelled.
“Killing this thief,” the man said, and aimed the pistol at Fallon’s head.
Fallon brought his right leg up, the toe of his boot slamming into the miser’s groin. Mr. Primm lost what little color had returned to his face, turned, collapsed into the armoire, and touched the trigger.
The little gun exploded, and the man cried out in pain. He was on his knees now, shaking his hand, which gunpowder had blackened. Fallon counted the fingers. They were still all intact. It wasn’t much of a gun, and hadn’t been much of an explosion, but the sound must have trebled inside the confines of the cherrywood piece of furniture.
A boot thudded into Fallon’s side, just between his ribs and the hipbone. He groaned, and rolled over.
“You all right, Mr. Primm?” another voice called out.
“My hand,” the man wailed, “my hand, my hand. Where’s my Smith and Wesson?”
Fallon felt himself jerked to his feet. Two men held his arms tightly. The third man found some silk scarves and wrapped the man’s hand. The old man blinked, then pulled away from the man trying to help him, fell to his knees, and began gathering the items that had spilled out of the strongbox. At least, Fallon decided, the fool’s greed would prevent him from searching for that Smith & Wesson.
His ears stopped ringing, but Fallon heard something different. So did the men, and even the skinflint of an owner turned to the sound. An amber liquid was spewing from a hole in the bottom out onto the floor. Fallon realized that the Manhattan had fired after all, sending its one bullet into the keg.
“My bourbon!” the man cried. “Pennsylvania bourbon!”
“That ain’t right,” one of the railroaders said, but no one made a move to save what bourbon they could.
“Was he tryin’ to rob you?” the one not holding Fallon asked.
“Not me,” the man said. “Not my one percent. He was robbing you!” He watched the bourbon spew from the puncture, still too stunned to put bowls and pots and glasses under the hole to salvage what he could.
The big railroad man turned and put a fist against Fallon’s jaw.
“I say,” the man said to his partners, “that we lynch this thief.”
Fallon was bent over as far as his captors would allow. He couldn’t see their faces to make a guess as to what they were thinking.
The bourbon kept splattering on the floor, vanishing into the cracks.
“Or find my pistol,” the greedy man said as he slammed shut the lid to the strongbox. “I’ll put a bullet between his eyes and we can say he died trying to rob me.” He looked at his scarf-wrapped hand. “If I can hold the .32 in my hand, that is.”
“Hold it!” Fallon shook his head at the voice from the doorway. The bell chimed, and heavy boots sounded. “Let him go, boys. I’ll take this outlaw off your hands.”
“And who in blazes might you be?” the owner demanded.
Fallon relaxed, though he couldn’t say he was happy.
“Holderman,” the fat brute said. “Aaron Holderman. Special operative for the American Detective Agency out of Chicago.”
The man walked to the keg of bourbon, emptied a small candy jar he had picked off a shelf, and set it underneath the hole.
“Well, Hank Fulton, I reckon I’ve caught you at last.”
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Harry Fallon, alias Hank Fulton, could say one thing about the legal process in the Territory of Arizona: it was swift.
He sat for just two days in the crowded Tucson cell. On the morning of the third day, a deputy called his name, opened the cell, shackled the manacles on his wrists, and prodded him into the town marshal’s office. The marshal, a man of Mexican heritage, twisted his mustache, propped his boots on his desk, and said:
“You are Hank Fulton, sí?”
“I’m called that,” Fallon answered.
“Do you have a lawyer?”
“Never needed one before.”
“My brother-in-law is a fine attorney. He will help you.”
“How much?”
“You had twelve dollars and thirty cents when you arrived. That will be sufficient.”
“Fine with me.”
“Your trial is tomorrow.”
Fallon nodded. “So when do I meet with your brother-in-law?”
The deputy was already leading Fallon back to the cells.
“He will be here after he has his breakfast. My sister is a very good cook. Miguel will speak to you then.”
* * *
Miguel was a walking advertisement for how good his wife cooked. He was fatter than Aaron Holderman. He asked Fallon three questions between the jail and the courthouse.
“Do you like honey on your tortillas?” “How would you like to plead?” “Have you ever been in trouble with the law before the misunderstanding at Señor Primm’s establishment four days ago?”
The circuit judge did not look like he had eaten in weeks. He was thin, definitely American, with eyes set close together behind a Roman nose. His beard was thick and well past his chin, more white now than black, and his hair was slicked back and neatly parted in the middle. He looked to be in his fifties, and he wore a black suit that still wore the dust he had not had time to brush off. He kept checking the silver watch that was in one of his vest pockets as if he had a pressing engagement soon or a train to catch. His black ribbon tie hung askew.
“How does your client plead, Señor Perez?”
“Not guilty, Your Honor, and for the record Mr. Fulton has never had any trouble with the law . . .”
“I know, Perez, ‘before the misunderstanding at such-and-such’s place on such-and-such date.’” He slammed the gavel and pushed his chair back from the bench. “Let’s get on with it. The charge is robbery at gunpoint and assault and battery and kidnapping. Mr. Solicitor, call your first witness.”
Primm was the first witness. He testified pretty much truthfully, although his right hand now was in a sling, and bandaged so much that he must have had to order several new bolts of muslin from his supplier. He even had a bandage over his head, which had not been injured during the holdup. This had to be Primm’s first time in a courthouse, or what served as a courthouse in Tucson, and if that wasn’t quite the case, Fallon knew the man had never been on a witness stand before. He testified like a terrible actor in a stupid melodrama.
But he got the judge’s attention.
“How much money was in that strongbox, Mr. Primm?” the judge asked.
The prosecutor and Señor Perez stared at each other. Having a judge ask questions was new to them. Fallon had to smile. They had never been in a court with Isaac Parker.
“Well, sir, ummm, well, it would be . . .”
One of the miners called out from the back seats, “Three hundred and thirty-three of it was ours, Your Honor. That’s how much me and my pards give him.”
The judge did not bang his gavel, but nodded. “How much, Primm?”
The miser sighed. “Four hundred and fifteen dollars and six bits.”
“More than half of that came from these railroaders?” the judge asked.
“They just got paid, and just got to town, sir.”
The judge took a peppermint candy and popped it in his mouth.
The examination continued. Primm had been shoved into the armoire. That was the kidnapping charge. He had been brutalized, threatened with death. He was just a poor, honest businessman.
“At one percent interest daily, not per annum, I don’t think you’re poor, sir,” the judge said, “and I might even question, if not your honesty, at least your ethics.”
“I am also out of a lot of valuable merchandise,” Primm said.
Fallon leaned forward and whispered into Perez’s ear. “Yeah, all the cloth he had to use to bandage himself.”
Perez grinned and whispered for Fallon to please be quiet, that he was listening so he would know how to handle his cross-examination.
“A gun detonated itself in my hand.” Primm nodded at his bandaged hand in the sling. “A gun like that would cost fifteen dollars anywhere on the frontier.”
“Wasn’t that the defendant’s gun?” the judge asked.
“I cannot remember,” Primm said. “My hand. My poor, poor, mangled, ruined, crippled hand.”
“What else?” the prosecutor asked. He, too, was growing tired of the thespian performance, or at least he could see how angry the judge was getting.
“A keg of bourbon.”
The judge leaned forward. “Bourbon?”
“Yes. The fiend shot a hole in the bottom of the keg. Just for spite. Shipped all the way from Pennsylvania, Mr. Judge, all that way, to get ants and beetles drunk.”
