Dead Time

by William W. Johnstone; J. A. Johnstone

  He had been paroled from Joliet after saving some lives during a violent, ugly riot. According to what he had been told, Fallon was supposed to attend church services on Sundays (the minister was to report to the parole board and the Joliet warden that Fallon had attended). He was not to drink intoxicating spirits. He could not gamble in public venues or private ones. He was not supposed to associate with known gamblers or any former convict (which always made Fallon look at Aaron Holderman, whom Fallon had sent to prison). He was supposed to be working at Werner’s Wheelwright in Chicago and staying at Mrs. Ketchum’s Boarding House near Lake Michigan. Those had been the nonnegotiable conditions of this parole.

  Fallon had never met Mr. Werner or spent one night in Mrs. Ketchum’s Boarding House. No one had served him with an arrest warrant yet—probably because Fallon had been doing time in the worst prisons in America.

  And now he was going back to one.

  He had worked with buffalo hunters, buffalo skinners, cowboys, and even deputy United States marshals who had been well acquainted with the state pen, The Walls, in the heavily forested city of Huntsville, Texas. They all said the same thing.

  “That place will put the fear of God into the most ardent atheist.”

  “All right,” Fallon said. “Let’s hear it.”

  Inside the sweatbox, sweat—the box had been aptly named—burned his cuts, blinded his eyes—not that he had anything to see—and soaked his clothes. He reached over blindly for the ladle, dipped it inside the pitcher, and brought out tepid water. He drank, wanted more, but understood that more would likely sicken him, and the sweatbox would just make the odor of his vomit more . . . hell . . . nauseating.

  He returned the ladle and began fingering the slices of bread scattered about his sides.

  When he had first entered Joliet, an old trusty had warned him not to eat the bread if he ever wound up in solitary confinement. “That’ll just make you more and more thirsty. Man don’t need bread. Well, a man in solitary don’t need bread. Lessen they keep you in for an eternity. Then you ain’t got no choice, buts to eats it. So just drinks the water, suh, lessen you just ain’t got no other choice.”

  He counted. One. Two. Three. Four. Five. His hands kept patting. Five. That’s it? He cursed, and found another flintlike thin slice.

  Six.

  Six days. Six days on water.

  Oh, they gave him bread. But it had to be at least a week old, hard as the iron walls in the sweatbox. But moldy, too. Fallon’s teeth had been loosened from surviving innumerable scrapes in Yuma and Jefferson City, let alone Joliet, and his gums were prone to bleeding. Live off the food you got in prison, then in the deserts of Mexico, and Fallon figured he was maybe two jumps ahead of scurvy. His teeth couldn’t handle what passed for bread here.

  He swore, gagged at the stench from the slop bucket, and heard the sounds from above. This time, it wasn’t the screams from a prisoner as he was whipped by one of the brutes that called themselves guards. It wasn’t the pounding of fists as one inmate wailed another. It was laughter.

  A guard was telling a joke to prisoners as they exercised by throwing a ball around. Laughter. That would drive even the hardest man insane, and Fallon knew. That’s why they were doing it.

  Breaking in the fresh fish. Seeing just how tough he was.

  Fallon’s hands worked again, finding the rock-hard slices of stale, repulsive bread. He hoped, prayed, that he had miscounted.

  Five . . . Six . . .

  He hadn’t. Six days.

  Six days, he thought. Two weeks. How many days are in a week? God. I can’t . . . Seven.

  He sighed. He felt like crying. He had eight more days. Eight more days. He couldn’t make it. He’d . . .

  No. He remembered. He steeled himself, clenched both hands into tight fists. Damn right he would make it. He had a reason.

  He remembered again. He had to. Had to get his mind away from where he was, take him back weeks, months, even years later. He had to recall everything. Had to remember that he was Harry Alexander now, not Harry Fallon. He had to remember. No matter how much the memories might hurt.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  “Have you ever heard of Josiah Jonathan Justice?” Dan MacGregor had asked.

  They had left Sean MacGregor in his darkness and crossed the hallway to a smaller, brighter office. That’s where Fallon first met Malcolm Maxwell, attorney general for the state of Texas.

  Fallon’s head shook, which left him cringing, the pain reminding him of how he had barely gotten out of the state pen in Missouri alive—and now he was going back to another brutal prison.

  “Cotton magnate,” Maxwell, a slim, balding man, said in a Texas accent. “Sugarcane, too. He is based in Natchitoches, Louisiana, though he’s from the city of Houston, Texas, originally, and lives there—if you believe this—part-time to escape the heat of Louisiana.” The Texan had an engaging grin. “But his operations spread from Pensacola, Florida, to Corpus Christi, Texas. And he’s not limited to farming on his plantations. He has some cattle ranches in South Texas. Part interest in a shipping line that’s based in Corpus Christi.”

  Fallon waited. The last time he had checked, there was no law against growing cotton or sugarcane, or diversifying into other businesses.

  “Filthy rich,” Dan MacGregor said.

  Which wasn’t against the law, either.

  “He commanded his own regiment during the War Between the States,” the attorney general continued. “Justice’s Legion. Supplied his own artillery. You might have heard of them.”

  Fallon hadn’t.

  “Unlike a lot of Southerners, the war didn’t hurt him. After the surrender, he went back into business, using sharecroppers instead of slaves, paying them a pittance.”

  Fallon sipped coffee, set the cup on a tray resting on a side table, and looked at the younger MacGregor and the Texas official.

  “So why am I going to Huntsville?”

  “Colonel Justice has found labor that’s even cheaper than former slaves,” the attorney general said. “Have you heard of leasing?”

  “Leasing what?”

  “Inmates,” Malcolm Maxwell answered.

  Fallon cocked his head.

  “It’s similar to what you experienced in Joliet and even Jefferson City,” Dan MacGregor explained.

  Fallon had been put inside the broom factory at Jefferson City, though he didn’t think anything he tried to make would have satisfied his mother when it came to sweeping, and he had done various jobs inside the Illinois state pen.

  “With one exception,” MacGregor continued. “The inmates aren’t working within the prison walls.”

  “According to state law,” the attorney general said, “with consent of the penitentiary board and the superintendent, inmates can be hired out. It’s a winner in theory. The state gets money from the factories or railroads or plantation owners and farmers. The prisoners learn a trade. The person hiring the inmates gets cheap—real cheap—labor.”

  “You want me to get hired by Justice,” Fallon said.

  “Exactly,” the attorney general said. “You fill the bill of what Justice has been hiring. You’re a Southerner, from Arkansas.”

  “Missouri,” Fallon corrected. “Gads Hill. Which leaned more blue than gray.”

  “That’s Harry Fallon,” MacGregor said with a smile. “You’ll be Harry Alexander. Fought with the irregulars between Little Rock and the Missouri border, those that hid out in the Devil’s Den.”

  “And you’ll be entering Huntsville with a life sentence,” Maxwell said.

  “Surely they don’t allow men with life sentences to be leased out to anyone,” Fallon said.

  Both men nodded. The attorney general picked up a small book, flipped through a few pages, and adjusted his spectacles as he read: “‘. . . no convict shall be hired out or sent to an outside camp who was convicted of rape for a greater term than ten years, or who has a particularly bad reputation for lawlessness, or whom the penitentiary phys
ician may pronounce physically unable to perform the labor required of him.’”

  “The life sentence means you’re one bad hombre, and that’s what Justice is looking for. But your sentence shall be reduced to ten years,” MacGregor said. “The files on you in the prison superintendent’s office will say you have been an exemplary inmate.”

  “Like many other prisoners who have had a remarkable turnaround,” Malcolm Maxwell said, removed his spectacles, and began cleaning them with a handkerchief as he rolled his eyes.

  * * *

  Fallon woke, the light blinding him, and felt the slop bucket being removed, the water pitcher being refilled, and the slice of bread being dropped onto his shirt.

  “He’s still breathin’, boss,” the trusty said as he dropped a new, empty slop bucket in the corner.

  “That’s a quarter pound of tobacco you owe me,” the guard said.

  The door slammed shut. Blackness returned. Fallon picked up the bread, placed it at his side, and counted the slices again. Eight.

  How long can a man survive without food? A month would be on the top end, maybe longer, depending on his condition physically and mentally. A week on the low end. As long as he had water. Fallon reached for the pitcher and drank.

  A voice from outside, in the daylight, glorious daylight, reached him.

  “Conners. Superintendent Wilkinson wants to see you.”

  Conners? The name meant nothing to Fallon. Inmate? Maybe. Guard. Perhaps. Wilkinson. Oh, yes, he knew Wilkinson.

  Warden—superintendent was too classy a title for a man like Warren Wilkinson—at The Walls. A former executive with the National Pinkerton Detective Agency. That’s why Sean MacGregor had taken the case. That little man would do anything to discredit his major rival in the private investigation business.

  He thought back.

  Pensacola, Florida, was sweltering, and this was what most people called spring. Fallon had gotten used to the Midwest climate of Joliet, even though the past months had found him in Arizona Territory, Mexico, and hot and humid Missouri.

  “Remember, Master Hank,” the old black man had said. “I know that machete is big and you probably be used to swinging it, but you don’t swing nothin’ on no sugarcane, suh. You gots to saw it. Real gentle. Close to the ground.”

  The shoot fell, and Fallon picked it up and laid it into the wheelbarrow, then mopped his brow with the sleeve of his shirt.

  “That’s right, suh. You gettin’ it now real fine, Master Hank. Iffen they put you somewheres else, you remembers what to do?”

  “Strip the cane,” Fallon said. He was dying for a drink of water. “No leaves. Just the green shoot. Use my hands. Maybe a knife.”

  “Like that?” The big man grinned as he pointed at the machete.

  “No. Something smaller.”

  “Right. Now, this ain’t the best time to be doin’ no harvestin’.”

  “Fall,” Fallon said. “But in Louisiana and other places, you can get a couple of growing seasons.”

  “Right. Then you can cuts the shoots into smaller sizes. It’s right good eatin’, Master Hank. Right good. So we wouldn’t be harvestin’ this here cane except that’s what the boss man says.”

  Fallon rose, leaving the machete on the ground, and rubbed his aching back. Why couldn’t Mr. Justice have gone into some other kind of business? Something less painful. Like breaking wild mustangs. Or wrestling wild boars or even grizzly bears.

  “So how you knows when da cane be ready to get harvested, Master Hank?”

  Fallon again wiped away sweat. “The leaves will be . . .” The heat and the sun baked his brain, and he had to think, but the old Negro was patient. “Dry. Maybe yellow.”

  “That’s good, Master Hank. You gonna be a top hand come next harvest time. Iffen this job they’s teachin’ you for don’t pan out, you come on back down here to Pensacola. I’ll let my boss man know how good you is. Then maybe we go fishin’. You like grouper? Nothin’ better, Master Hank, than fried grouper on my missus’s bread.”

  Fallon hoped that meant his lesson was over, but the black man was one thorough teacher.

  “What else can you tell me ’bout how to say when it’s time to start sawin’ down cane, Master Hank?”

  Groaning, Fallon lowered himself into the muddy ground, picked up the machete, and tapped the side of the blade softly against a growing cane. “The sound,” he answered. “If it’s ready, it’ll sound different.”

  “That’s right good. Sound like metal agin metal. Ain’t makin’ that sound now, on account that it ain’t time to do no harvestin’. And there’s one other way, ain’t there?”

  Fallon nodded. He made the motion of cutting sideways into a shoot. “It’ll shine . . . glisten . . .”

  “That’s right. You’s real smart, Master Hank. That shine comes from the sugar. Sweet it is. Now you come on back to my shack. I bets my missus has some cane syrup that we can pour over your flapjacks.”

  Eleven. Fallon sucked in a deep breath and slowly exhaled. Eleven days. He had been sentenced to a dozen . . . He groaned, remembering again. Barney Drexel had originally given Fallon twelve days, but extended it to a full two weeks. This was day twelve, though. Fallon thought he might just live through it.

  But he had lived through the sugarcane plantation in Florida. He had marched across the cotton fields in Mobile, Alabama.

  And he had met with Malcolm Maxwell one more time in New Orleans.

  “I know this undercover, spy business isn’t your cup of tea,” the Texas attorney general had said.

  They were in the politician’s berth on a stern-wheeler, the Texan, Fallon, Dan MacGregor, and Aaron Holderman.

  “You haven’t told me what you think Justice is doing,” Fallon said.

  “We wanted to see if you could pass muster in the sugarcane fields first,” Dan MacGregor said.

  “From what Dan says,” Malcolm Maxwell said, “you’ll have no trouble getting a job.”

  Fallon did not laugh.

  The silence caused the Texan to clear his throat. “We don’t know exactly what Justice is doing. But we fear it could be devastating to Texas and our country.”

  “I’m really not interested in Texas or my country,” Fallon said, and stared hard at Dan MacGregor. “All I want is the man or men who killed my wife and daughter. And put me in Joliet for something I didn’t do.”

  “You killed him already, Fallon,” Holderman said. “In Jeff City.”

  Fallon knew that. A few officials at the Missouri pen had come up with a brilliant plan. Murder for hire. And the murderers were inmates at Jefferson City. They’d go out through an old escape tunnel, kill some politician, or . . . Fallon frowned with bitterness and clenched his fists . . . a young wife and a little girl. That killer had been a man known at the Missouri state pen as The Mole. But Fallon couldn’t hate him because the murderer had become a shell of a man, and when he died, he probably did not even remember killing any mother and child. And The Mole had saved Fallon’s life.

  “The man who sent The Mole to do it,” Fallon snapped. “That’s who I want.”

  “We think it’s probably someone working at The Walls,” Dan MacGregor said.

  “You think?”

  “It’s complicated, Fallon,” the attorney general told Fallon. “We don’t know what Justice has planned, but he’s using inmates at The Walls to help him.”

  “Cutting sugarcane. Picking cotton.” Fallon rolled his eyes.

  “No,” the attorney general said. “Robbery. Murder. Treason.”

  Fallon sank back into the settee. He sipped the potent chicory folks called coffee in this part of Louisiana.

  “Six months ago, an army caravan was robbed on the way to Fort Clark,” Dan MacGregor explained. Springfield rifles, Colt revolvers, and ammunition were stolen and taken into Mexico. Where they disappeared. The bandits were dressed as Mexicans. That close to the border, it made sense, and Mexico is always in turmoil. So is the north side of the Rio Grande. But an off
icer said he recognized one of the bandits and that he was not Mexican. His name was Cole Hansen.”

  Maxwell paused.

  “I’ve heard the name,” Fallon said. “Texas hard case.”

  “Who was serving a ten-year sentence at the time of the robbery. Six more years to go. At The Walls.”

  Fallon waited.

  Dan MacGregor answered. “The commanding general for the Department of Texas laughed down the captain’s report. Superintendent Wilkinson then announced that Cole Hansen had died of pneumonia at the prison hospital four days before the robbery.”

  “So your captain was mistaken,” Fallon said, though he didn’t believe it.

  “I believe,” the attorney general said, “that if we dug up that pine box in the prison cemetery, we’d find an empty pine box.”

  “Dig it up,” Fallon said.

  “That would tip our hand,” MacGregor said.

  “You don’t have a hand,” Fallon told him. “At least, not a winning hand.”

  “That’s why we’ve thrown you into the deck.” Dan MacGregor grinned.

  “Wilkinson has ties with the Missouri State Penitentiary,” the Texas attorney general said.

  Fallon stiffened.

  “That doesn’t mean he had your wife and daughter killed, Hank,” MacGregor pointed out.

  “But he’s a mighty big suspect,” Aaron Holderman said, and spit tobacco juice into a fancy cuspidor.

  “Shut up,” MacGregor said.

  “Wilkinson also has ties with the Pinkertons,” Malcolm Maxwell said. “That’s why the Pinkertons would not take this case.”

  “And it’s why Sean MacGregor did,” Fallon said. He had wondered why the Texan hadn’t gone to the Pinkertons. Now he knew. He drank more strong coffee, found a pastry on a silver dish, took the pastry, and bit into it. Once he had swallowed, he crossed his legs.