MacGregor focused on the Mexican. Fallon didn’t even know the man’s name.
“Amigo,” he said, placating, with not a trace of a Spanish accent. MacGregor grinned. “What was going on outside?”
The Mexican’s face remained expressionless.
“Tell me,” MacGregor pleaded. “The truth. Why were you fighting with whips? Why did the guards do nothing?”
“No sabe,” the Mexican said.
“What?” MacGregor took a step back, as though he had not expected such an answer. “Please. Help me. Help yourself. Help your other inmates. The purpose of a prison is to rehabilitate, not to condemn. But I need your help. What were you two doing out there, armed with whips?”
The Mexican had barely moved. “No sabe,” he said again.
MacGregor’s jaw hung open. He watched the Mexican drip blood onto the visiting room floor.
Finally, MacGregor took a step back, pointed at the big man, and then jerked his thumb toward the door. “Get out of here, you horse’s ass. Now. I try to help you and this is what I get!” He backed to the door, slammed his boot heel against it, and yelled, “Guard!”
Holderman jerked open the door.
“Get this damned fool out of there. Get him to the infirmary. Have the physician patch him up. Then put him in his cell.”
“All right, Capt’n,” Holderman said. “Come along, fella.” The nightstick popped against Holderman’s palm. “Don’t try nothing, though. What about the other one, Capt’n?”
“We’ll see if he’s a bit more cooperative.”
The bleeding Mexican ducked underneath the doorway, and Holderman slammed the door shut.
“Sit down,” MacGregor said to Fallon, and motioned at the table and chairs.
When both men were sitting, the detective pulled out the makings and laid them on the table’s top. He nodded, and Fallon helped himself to cigarette paper and tobacco.
“What can you tell me about what was going on outside?”
Fallon rolled the cigarette, licked it, and stuck it in his mouth, waiting expectantly.
“I’ll give you a light when you answer some questions,” MacGregor said. “What was going on out there?”
“No sabe,” Fallon answered.
MacGregor’s fist pounded against the table. He stamped one foot on the floor. He cursed long, loud, and vilely. Fallon had a hard time keeping his face blank. Never would he be able to match the thespian talents of Christina Whitney or Dan MacGregor. Hell, even Aaron Holderman was better at this than Fallon.
Fallon started to rise as if to leave, but MacGregor sharply told him to sit down. Fallon obeyed, sighed, and listened as MacGregor—or rather Byron Roberts, inspector of prisons—pleaded with him again to answer a few questions.
“No sabe,” was Fallon’s answer.
MacGregor’s head shook.
A brief silence passed between the two men. They heard nothing, but neither man had any doubts that somewhere in an adjoining room, Barney Drexel or one of his men, either guard or convict, was hearing everything said inside the visiting room. It would not have surprised either to learn that somewhere a spy was watching them through a peephole. Visiting rooms in prisons had never been known as something sacred like a Catholic’s confessional or a bachelor’s privy. Visiting rooms at prisons were no place to tell someone a secret.
“Are you all right?” MacGregor asked.
“No sabe.” His hands rested on the table. His left thumb moved once.
“Can I get you anything?”
“No sabe.” The right thumb moved twice.
“Mr. Alexander, let’s be reasonable about this. You’re in this prison for life, but that life can be very short. Because I have friends who are preparing a case against you in the state of Arkansas. The War of the Rebellion is long over, and while our government executed only one Confederate official—that butcher at Andersonville—men can still be tried for treason. Or the butchering of an army patrol on the road to Lucas Town, Arkansas. Murdering them merely because they wore the blue—when in fact most of them were too young to have done any fighting during that late war. There shall not be another Civil War, sir. Remember that.”
Fallon stared at him blankly.
“You have skills, sir.” He had been given a folder containing Fallon’s and the Mexican’s records. “Experienced in agriculture, sugarcane. There are work programs for inmates. I see that your lawyer is working on getting that sentence drastically reduced.” He closed the folder. “That might not happen if the parole board learned of what is being investigated in Lucas Town, Arkansas.”
The paused lengthened.
Fallon said, “No sabe.”
Then he leaned back in his chair, rocking on the hind legs, as MacGregor cursed and slammed his fists on the table and screamed until another guard opened the door.
“Get this unreconstructed piece of rebel trash out of my sight!” MacGregor bellowed. “Tell your sergeant, this Drexel ape, that he has trained his wards quite well. They become mute. Damned fools. But tell Drexel and Superintendent Wilkinson that if it takes me half a lifetime, I shall get to the bottom of this. I will be back in two weeks. Maybe by then this . . .” He paused to glance down at the papers . . . “Mr. Alexander will have found his tongue.”
“No sabe,” Fallon said, and walked through the door.
“Guess you ought to get to the infirmary, too,” the guard said, and called for a trusty. Then he reached inside his pocket. “You need a light?”
“Nah.” Fallon removed the cigarette. “I’ll save it for after supper. My tobacco rations all went to paying off the guards and trusties.”
The guard grinned.
A white-haired convict named Todd arrived, and the guard instructed him to take the prisoner to the infirmary.
Fallon kept a good hold on the cigarette as he walked alongside the old man. “Half a lifetime,” MacGregor said. “In two weeks.” Meaning MacGregor would return in one week, not two. Fallon would wait until he was in his cell—so far, he had the room to himself, but at The Walls, that would not last much longer—so he would read MacGregor’s instructions written on the inside of the cigarette paper then. Before destroying it . . . since Fallon did not smoke.
CHAPTER TEN
What troubled Fallon the most was something else Dan MacGregor had said in the visiting room. “There shall not be another Civil War, sir. Remember that.”
Another Civil War? Could the investigators outside The Walls have more information that proved that was Josiah Jonathan Justice’s motive?
It sounded extreme and Fallon did not want to believe anything like that could be possible. Besides, he needed to focus on something more important to him. If the warden, Drexel, and others were using prisoners leased to Justice to commit crimes, similar to the long-running operation he had cracked in Jefferson City, then chances were Fallon would find the man who ordered the murder of his wife and daughter.
The following Sunday after church, he went to the library, found a copy of Dumas—The Count of Monte Cristo had been the most-read novel among inmates at every prison Fallon had been in—and sat at a table. After opening the novel, he slipped a pamphlet-sized book inside the thick volume of Dumas and turned to the pages that began explaining Texas penitentiary regulations: Article XX: Labor of Convicts. That didn’t have what he wanted, so he thumbed back to Article XV: Outside Labor and Hirers of the Same.
He had gone over the regulations with Dan MacGregor and Christina Whitney over several nights in Mobile, Alabama, and New Orleans, Louisiana, but mostly what they had discussed was what to expect in the camps once Fallon had been assigned to one. And how Fallon had to make sure he got assigned to the right camp.
Now Fallon found what he wanted:
There shall be appointed, as required by these rules, for each outside force of convicts, one Sergeant, two Camp Guards, and Day Guards, as follows: For every six convicts in force, one Day Guard, and for any fraction of six, over three, one Guard . . .
/> He considered this. The warden—superintendent or whatever hifalutin title he went by—might be involved in the conspiracy, or at least his assistant was. Most likely the sergeant would have to know about the robberies and other crimes being committed, and some of the guards would as well.
Frowning, Fallon swore underneath his breath. He was missing something, something vital, something so damned obvious but a fact that he just could not put his finger on. Somebody else had to be part of this plan. It was different in Jefferson City. Prisoners were put into a punishment cell where they left the state penitentiary through a tunnel, killed their target, returned to the prison—the perfect crime. How could an inmate murder some stranger when he was already behind the iron bars of a state penitentiary?
That was Missouri. In Texas, though, the prisoners were leased to a farm, factory, or railroad. That meant someone on the outside had to be part of this . . . Justice, the sugarcane and cotton magnate? Maybe. A strong possibility. But there had to be someone else. Only . . . who?
Footsteps echoed in the spartan library, and Fallon looked up, slowly closing the copy of The Count of Monte Cristo over the pamphlet of prison regulations. He smiled as the Mexican with the whip walked over, stopping beside the table.
“Hello No Sabe,” Fallon said. He was ready, though, to turn the table over, rise, pick up the chair, and smash it over the big man’s head.
“What are you reading, Lash?” The accent was there, but he spoke perfect English.
Fallon nodded at the book. “The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas.”
The Mexican nodded. “What is it about?”
“A Frenchman gets sent to prison. Unjustly. He breaks out. Gets revenge.”
“You trying to learn how he broke out? Use it for yourself?”
Fallon’s head shook. “Hell, no. It took the guy in this book way too long—we’re talking years—to escape.”
The Mexican laughed.
“You want to read it?” Fallon asked.
“No. I don’t read.”
“You speak good English for a Mexican who doesn’t read.”
“I read Spanish,” he said. “And I speak Spanish much better than your ugly language.”
Fallon had no response to that, but the Mexican did not believe in silence.
“The Judge wants to see you,” he said. “Now. Let’s go.”
“Let me put the books away,” Fallon said, and quickly picked up the novel, turned, and discreetly dropped both books into a box marked TO BE RESHELVED. He nudged two dime novels to cover the prison pamphlet and left Dumas beside Uncle Tom’s Cabin, which he doubted if anyone in Texas had read.
“You didn’t want to keep the book till you finished it?” the Mexican said.
“I’ve read it before.”
“Hmmm.” The Mexican considered that. “I have never read anything twice. It would be like killing the same man twice.”
“Never thought of it that way,” Fallon said as he followed the big man out of the library.
* * *
John Wesley Hardin sat in the shade, another prisoner fanning him, while The Walls’ most famous resident drummed his fingers on the well-worn leather cover of Blackstone. The Judge was holding court again.
“Here’s Alexander, Judge, sir,” the Mexican said.
“Gracias, Juanito,” Hardin said.
Well, now Fallon knew the big Mexican’s name.
The Mexican nodded at Fallon, who started toward the Judge’s bench, which was a rocking chair likely fetched from the prison’s infirmary.
“Good luck, Lash.”
“Gracias, no sabe.”
The Mexican named Juanito chuckled as he moved to his right and took his place in the front row of a line of prisoners three rows deep.
“Harry Alexander,” Hardin said before tilting his head at a shaking, pale, pockmarked kid still in his teens, who sat in the dirt, legs crossed, his face covered with bruises and dirt, tears carving paths through the dirt. “Meet Eugene Gray. Your client.”
“My client?” Fallon stopped and faced Hardin again.
“By order of this court.”
Fallon nodded. “All right.”
“You got ten minutes to confer with your client. My docket’s full and the asses will be shipping us off to evening worship in eighty-three minutes.”
Fallon squatted in the dust beside the sobbing boy.
“You . . .” The kid had trouble speaking, and Fallon had trouble staring at the snot that poured out of the frightened inmate’s nostrils. “You . . . you . . . my . . . a-a-a-tor-ney?”
“Yeah.” The word hung on Fallon’s tongue like a brick.
The boy went off into a stuttering and dizzying account of what had happened. Fallon understood only half of it, but that was enough for him to hold out his hand and slowly, politely ask the boy to stop for a few minutes.
“Son . . .” He smiled, or tried to smile. “First off, what’s your name?”
“Gene. I mean Eugene. Eugene Gray. Folks call me Gene, though. I mean, folks that know me.”
“I see.” Well, that was the name The Judge had said.
“So . . . here’s the deal, Gene. My name’s Alexander. Harry Alexander. This isn’t a legal court of law. This one is for the prisoners. I’m a prisoner. The Judge is a prisoner. Just like you. So there’s no need to tell me what got you behind these redbrick walls, Gene. I can’t represent you in that regard. That’s for your attorney who’s on the outside. What I need to know is just why you’re being tried before your peers. Can you tell me that?”
The kid sobbed, shook his head, and blurted out, “That’s the awfullest part of it all, Mr. Harry. I don’t know what they say I done. But I know I didn’t do nothing.”
Fallon looked up at Hardin.
“His mate found four rations of tobacco underneath his bunk,” Hardin said. “He hasn’t been in The Walls long enough to have that many.”
“Stolen?” Fallon asked.
“That’s the charge,” The Judge said.
“Who made it?”
“His cellmate, Big Dan McAllister.”
Fallon looked back at Gene Gray, then faced Hardin again. “What kind of tobacco?”
“Smoking. All of it was smoking.”
Another nod, and Fallon slid closer to the kid. “You heard that, Gene?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Did you steal any rations?”
“No, sir. I give mine away. I don’t smoke. Don’t even chew.”
“Who’d you give yours to?”
“Big Dan.”
“Very good.”
Behind him the inmate who had been fanning Hardin jumped to his feet and said, “Hear ye, hear ye, this court is now in session. The Right Honorable John Wesley Hardin presiding. All rise.”
“Hear ye, hear ye,” the convict who had been fanning The Judge said. “All those with business before this court, step forward and ye shall be heard.”
Rising to his feet, Fallon motioned for the kid to stand and whispered, “One more question, kid. What are you in for?”
“Rape,” Gene Gray said.
Fallon swore underneath his breath.
“We’ll skip the formalities,” Hardin said after striking a match and lighting a cigarette. “No opening statements. The defendant is Eugene Gray. He is charged with stealing tobacco rations from Zeke Montgomery, Black Jim, Crow Jeffreys, and Frenchy Caron. McAllister, call your first witness.”
Big Dan McAllister wasn’t that big in height, but his head was enormous and his hands looked like anvils. He told Zeke Montgomery to take the stand.
Hardin said, “No need to swear him in, Bailiff. Zeke’s an anarchist and an atheist.”
Once the laughter died down, McAllister asked, “Tell us what happened last ration day.”
Zeke Montgomery said he had gotten his tobacco allotment and placed it on his bunk, but then had to run to the privy. When he returned, the tobacco was gone, but was later found in the cell manned by Big Dan
McAllister and Gene the Rapist.
“Objection,” Fallon said.
“Overruled. The defendant is in here for raping. Two women. One of them fourteen years old.”
“Which has no bearing on this case.”
The Judge glared. “I said overruled.”
“Exception.”
Hardin leaned back and fanned himself. “Noted,” he said, but did not look away as McAllister finished his examination.
“Your witness, Counselor.”
Fallon did not bother standing. He asked, “Where’s the stolen tobacco?”
“What?” Zeke Montgomery countered.
“The tobacco. The evidence. Where is it? It hasn’t been admitted as evidence by the prosecutor. Do you have it?”
Montgomery looked blankly. “No,” he eventually answered.
“Then where is it?”
Montgomery scratched his head.
“Answer the question,” Hardin ordered.
“Well, Judge, sir . . .” The convict wet his lips. “I smoked it.”
The spectators laughed.
“All of it?” Fallon asked.
“Well, it’s been three weeks. I got a . . . habit.”
Fallon leaned back. “No more questions.”
Before McAllister called Black Jim to take the stand, the big-headed man with giant hands rushed to the first line and retrieved pouches from three men. The second of those was Black Jim.
“Is this your pouch of tobacco?” McAllister asked Black Jim after he had been sworn in.
“That’s right. The rapist took it.”
Fallon did not bother objecting this time. He listened to the idiotic questions and stupid answers before McAllister passed the witness.
Fallon stood this time, walked to Hardin, and took the black man’s tobacco pouch, a well-used pouch of grimy cotton, once yellow, now faded and dirtied into a brownish tan.
“Since Counselor didn’t bother doing this, Judge, I’ll offer it into evidence.”
“Objections?” Hardin asked.
“Huh?” Big Dan McAllister said.
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