Dead Time

by William W. Johnstone; J. A. Johnstone

  The crowd laughed again.

  “It’s admitted, Mr. Alexander. Proceed.”

  “So you’re saying the rapist stole your tobacco. Right?”

  “That’s what I said,” Black Jim answered.

  “That’s how you recognized it,” Fallon said. “I mean, you found your pouch, right?”

  The man stopped, looked at McAllister, then at The Judge.

  “Well, no. I had my pouch with me. Still had plenty.”

  “I see. What did the stolen ration look like?”

  “It’s a Bull Durham bag,” Frenchy Caron said. At least, Fallon assumed the thin man with dark hair was Frenchy Caron. He spoke with a French accent. French. Not Cajun. “Show him, Big Dan.”

  “Hell,” Hardin said, and flicked his cigarette into the dust. “Go ahead and bring up Frenchy’s pouch and Crow’s.”

  Both were Bull Durham pouches, nothing fancy like the first one. Fallon walked over to The Judge and Big Dan McAllister and looked at the pouches.

  “I bet you have a pouch nicer than this, Judge,” Fallon said.

  Hardin smiled and brought out his pouch, a self-closing container of green rubber that felt and looked like velvet.

  Fallon walked to the line of prisoners, but called out to The Judge, the prosecutor, and the witnesses, “No more questions. Go ahead, Big Dan, call your next witness. Don’t mind me. I’m listening.” He moved through the line of prisoners, but he was lying. He didn’t listen to anything the witness had to say.

  He did call out, “No questions,” after Frenchy Caron had finished his testimony, and was walking back toward Gene Gray while McAllister questioned Crow Jeffreys.

  “Your witness, Rape Lover,” McAllister said.

  Fallon picked up the tobacco pouches of Frenchy Caron and Crow Jeffreys, smiled at the judge, and dropped seven Bull Durham pouches on the ground between Jeffreys’s shoes.

  “Which bag’s yours?” he asked.

  “What?”

  “Which bag is yours?”

  “They’s all Bull Durham sacks,” the man protested.

  “But you discovered yours in the defendant’s cell, didn’t you?”

  “Well, yeah, well, it was McAllister . . . but . . .”

  “Which one is yours?”

  “Your Honor!” Big Dan erupted. “This ain’t right.”

  “Four pouches of Bull Durham tobacco were found in the cell,” Fallon said.

  “But mine was stole,” Crow Jeffreys said. “Mine was . . . Well . . .”

  “Can you tell which one is yours here?”

  “No. I mean.” His shoulders sagged. “Ought to have writ my name or initials on it. Just never learnt my letters.”

  “You could’ve made your mark,” The Judge said.

  Crow Jeffreys shook his head. “Never learnt how to do that, neither.”

  “Your Honor,” Dan McAllister was yelling as he charged toward The Judge, Fallon, and the witness. “Four pouches were stolen and found in this rapist’s cell and . . .”

  “Can you identify which of these pouches were found in the defendant’s bunk and which ones I borrowed from our spectators?”

  “Absolutely!” Big Dan McAllister bent to his knees and looked at the pouches.

  “And then can your witnesses pick out the same ones?” Fallon said.

  Big Dan froze. One pouch slipped out of his hand. The hand disappeared behind Big Dan’s back. When it reappeared, it held a small but lethal three-cornered file. Big Dan McAllister swore as he leaped up and slashed at Fallon’s stomach.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  He leaped back, feeling the rush of air as the cell-made blade missed his prison shirt by mere inches, though Fallon doubted if it would have cut any flesh. Fallon knew that luck had smiled down on him for he had not even seen the sharpened file; it looked that small in the man’s meaty right hand.

  Big Dan turned, made a backhanded slice with the small black blade, but the three-cornered file never came close to Fallon’s body. The murderer of three family members on a farm stopped, turned, and bent his knees. Crouching, he grinned, moving the blade back and forth. Fallon moved with him in a semicircle, waiting, trying to read something in the man’s beady eyes that seemed too close to his nose. The nose, Fallon thought, had been busted countless times. That made Fallon’s own nose itch.

  The circle of prison-yard courtroom walls of inmates closed in. Men cheered. Once again, the guards ignored the melee.

  “Stick him deep, Big Dan!”

  “Slit his throat!”

  “C’mon, Alexander. Make that big cuss eat dirt.”

  Fallon had come far in the weeks he had been inside The Walls. Not everyone cheered against him these days.

  “You going to dance?” Hardin’s voice called out. “Or fight?”

  Some of the prisoners laughed. A few kept shouting encouragement or obscenities.

  Big Dan McAllister straightened, raised his right hand over his head, and charged, muttering a Confederate war cry that led to other prisoners mimicking the rebel yell.

  The killer’s left hand swung out, away from his body.

  Instinctively, Fallon guessed Big Dan’s intentions. Use that left arm to wrap around Fallon’s body, bring him into a death grip, then stab, stab, stab. McAllister wasn’t that big, except for his head and fists, but Fallon wasn’t going to risk getting too close to the killer. So Fallon dropped to his back, arched over, brought up his legs, and caught McAllister at the waist. Fallon kept moving backward, pushed his legs hard, and sent McAllister sailing.

  Fallon rolled over, to his knees, watched McAllister land with a thud, sending dust rising, causing the nearest spectators to stumble back. Seizing his moment, Fallon came up to his feet and charged. He didn’t have far to run. Big Dan McAllister came up, his lungs heaving, but still held on to the file. Someone shouted a warning, and McAllister turned his head, just enough so that Fallon’s foot only grazed the cauliflower ear instead of flattening the nose and knocking some teeth down his windpipe.

  The file came hard. Fallon cursed, spun, felt the blade slice his side, a burning wound, but more of an irritant than deadly. Still, Fallon lost his footing and stumbled into the wall of prisoners. Immediately he was flung back toward McAllister.

  Seeing the deadly blade coming down, Fallon raised his left arm and somehow managed to stop McAllister from stabbing him. The monstrous left hand came up, though, and clamped on Fallon’s throat. The palm pressed against his throat. Fallon brought his knee up, slammed into Big Dan’s groin. The man grunted, released his hold, allowing Fallon to pull away. The hand came back. Fallon turned his head, saw the three-cornered file coming at him again. He stepped hard on McAllister’s left foot, heard the bones breaking, because McAllister’s feet were more in line with the rest of his body and not his oversized head and hands.

  That gave Fallon just enough time to pull free, and he let himself fall to the dirt as fast as he could. The file kept coming, and drilled its small blade into the center of Big Dan McAllister’s thigh.

  “Awwweeeeeee!” Big Dan cried out in a voice like a young girl’s.

  He tried to pull out the knife, the wooden handle was already slippery from the blood, and his big fingers just couldn’t find a grip on the small handle. McAllister limped around, grunting, panting, and pawing at the small weapon.

  Fallon rose, moved in, sent an uppercut that cracked Big Dan’s jaw. The man staggered back. Big head, Fallon thought, big hands, no brain, glass jaw.

  His left connected, another right, then he drilled a quick succession of three short but powerful punches into the man’s ribs. One cracked. Fallon came up with his left. Blood sprayed from McAllister’s lips into Fallon’s face, causing him to blink away the coppery-smelling wetness. He hit again. Again. Once more, and was going in for as hard of a blow as he had ever punched, but missed.

  That carried Fallon again into the crowd, who turned him around. One of them managed a glancing blow off his kidneys, and then he felt himself pushed b
ack into the center of the ever-shrinking ring.

  Fallon stumbled and felt his knees being ripped by the pebbles and sand in the yard. He expected to feel McAllister’s retaliation, but just heard the buzzing and humming in his head, his heavy breathing, and curses, laughter, and cheers from the prisoners.

  Then came the screeching of the whistle.

  “Move! Move! Move!”

  “Out of the way, you cur dawgs, or it’s into the sweatbox for a week!”

  The guards, Fallon knew. They must have decided that enough was enough.

  Fallon brushed away sweat, blood, and sand from his forehead. His vision cleared long enough to find Big Dan McAllister, still trying to push himself up, still collapsing, and groaning, but determined to make himself get back up. Fallon respected that. There was no quit in the man, even though one of his legs just wouldn’t cooperate. Eventually, McAllister might have managed to stand, but one of the prison guards planted a foot against the center of the killer’s back and pushed hard. Another guard swung his nightstick and Fallon grimaced at the crack it made against McAllister’s head.

  McAllister groaned and fell limp into the dirt.

  Prisoners cursed. Guards bellowed.

  Someone helped Fallon to his feet.

  “Get that mutant to the doctor,” Sergeant Barney Drexel said. “What was the meaning of this?”

  “Boxing match,” John Wesley Hardin answered.

  “There’s a weapon in this turd’s thigh, Sarge,” a guard said.

  “Explain that, Hardin,” Drexel demanded.

  “Some fool must have hid it in the dirt, Sergeant,” Hardin said. “Good thing we had boxing for our exercise and entertainment. Else one of us might have found that little sticker and done one of you some harm.”

  Fallon was shoved toward Drexel. Again, the sand, sweat, blood, and bruises on his face helped disguise Fallon’s appearance.

  “Here’s the other one, Sarge.”

  Barney Drexel glowered, shook his head, and spat in the sand.

  “You seem to be in the center of things again, boy.”

  “Keeping in condition, sir,” Fallon managed to say.

  “Get out of my sight.”

  “Should I take him to the infirmary, Sarge?”

  “No. Maybe he’ll die from bleeding from his insides.”

  “Clear out!” another guard began yelling. “Clear out. File in your groups and be prepared to return to your cells. Exercise is suspended for all you scum for the next three days.”

  The inmates answered with hisses. Fallon just found a handkerchief and started wiping his face.

  * * *

  “What made you so sure the inmates would have nothing but Bull Durham sacks of tobacco?” Hardin asked that evening.

  They sat at Hardin’s private dining table again, but eating the same fare the rest of the prisoners were being fed: bacon, stale bread, bad coffee.

  They had finished their supper. Fallon sipped coffee. Hardin rolled a cigarette.

  “You want to know how many personal tobacco pouches I’ve ever seen in a prison?” Fallon asked.

  Hardin licked the papers and stuck the smoke in his mouth. “How many?”

  Fallon nodded at the rubber velvet pouch near Hardin’s empty tin plate. “Yours,” Fallon said.

  That got a chuckle and nod of approval from The Judge.

  “Johnson,” Hardin said.

  The guard stepped forward, struck a match against his trouser leg, and lighted Hardin’s smoke.

  “You’re a tough con, Alexander,” Hardin said after blowing a smoke ring toward the ceiling. “You whup up on Ryker. You live through an unfathomable time in the sweatbox. Get past Juanito. And now Big Dan McAllister. Plus, you showed you’re not just one more stupid fool to get himself incarcerated in The Walls. You know things. You’re pretty smart.”

  “So are you,” Fallon said.

  “Why? Because I’m learning myself to be a lawyer? You’ve had lawyers. You know how smart most of those varmints are.”

  Fallon’s head shook. “That’s not what I meant.”

  Hardin removed the cigarette, blew smoke out of his nostrils, and waited.

  “How long have you been here?”

  “Since ’ 78,” Hardin answered.

  “And you’re still alive. You don’t live that long in a place like this if you don’t have brains.”

  The killer laughed again. Fallon waited, wondering if Hardin might say something. Hardin was The Judge inside The Walls. So whatever was going on outside The Walls, involving killers and guards, Hardin had to know about it. Get in good with The Judge, Fallon told himself, and you might get closer to the man or men who killed your family.

  “Good night, Harry,” Hardin said.

  Johnson, the guard, stepped forward and gave a stern tip of his head at Fallon. “Let’s go, Alexander,” the man said.

  “Sleep tight, Harry,” Hardin called out as the guard escorted Fallon to his cell.

  When Fallon stepped inside, he saw a man sitting on the top bunk. Fallon had been sleeping solo since he had gotten out of solitary. He had also been sleeping on the top bunk, because that made it harder for the roaches and spiders to get to you. But the newcomer had thrown Fallon’s bedding onto the floor.

  The door slammed shut behind Fallon, and locked.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  He didn’t know the convict’s real name, though he had seen him at the mill and wandering around the exercise yard. And Fallon had heard other inmates talk about him. The called him The Weasel.

  “I didn’t ask to be here, Hank,” he said from the bunk, smoking his cigarette, blowing smoke toward the dark ceiling. “They put some greaser in the cell with me and tossed me out.” He spoke with a nasal whine. “Wasn’t my idea. Just so you know.”

  Fallon had not moved. “Whose idea was it to take my bunk?”

  The bony right hand removed the cigarette and flicked ash to the floor.

  “It’s seniority, Hank. I’ve been in The Walls for fourteen years. Eleven more to go and I get out of this dung heap.?”

  “I’ve got seniority in this cell, Weasel. By, what, a month?”

  The Weasel sat up. He started to take another drag on his cigarette, but stopped. Instead, still holding the smoke, he pointed at Fallon. “Listen here, Hank . . .”

  “My friends call me Hank,” Fallon said.

  The Weasel’s head tilted, uncertain, and then he looked through the iron bars at the darkened walkway. Fallon did not have to look. He knew every inmate in every cell in this wing stared at his cell. He also knew, as he had not heard the outer door open and shut, that the guard who had escorted Fallon to the cell was listening, if not watching, himself.

  “All right.” The Weasel tossed the cigarette to the floor, leaped down, and crushed it out with the heel of his shoe. “No need in getting mad, Alexander. I’ll give you some slack, seeing as how you’re still a fresh fish, don’t know all the rules about how things work in The Walls. You take the top bunk. I just thought, as big as you are, it’d make more sense if I take the top one, you see.”

  “With my bedding and blanket,” Fallon said.

  “Well . . . it’s . . . you know, part of that seniority I was talking about.”

  “Put my stuff back.”

  The Weasel drew in a deep breath, held it, and let it go, but turned around and carefully began returning Fallon’s meager possessions to the top bunk. Then he sat down on the bottom bunk and said, “You satisfied?”

  Fallon wondered how long The Weasel had spent rifling through Fallon’s belongings. Not that he was worried. There was nothing here to give away Fallon’s true identity. As far as anyone in The Walls knew, now that Josh Ryker was finishing his sentence in the prison in Rusk, Fallon was Harry Alexander, convicted of armed robbery, three counts; assault and battery, twelve counts; assault with intent to kill, five counts; and grand larceny (horse theft), two counts—which had netted him a life sentence.

  All of the crimes had
happened in the Panhandle northwest of Amarillo and the once-thriving cattle town of Tascosa. Which might as well have been part of New Mexico Territory for all anyone in Austin, or Huntsville, was concerned. That’s why the American Detective Agency and Texas attorney general had made up the crimes and set them in that remote location. The chances of anyone following up on those crimes were as remote as any settlement in the Panhandle.

  Fallon moved past The Weasel and climbed into his bunk.

  “I scored two peppermint sticks from a guard,” The Weasel said. “Want one?”

  Fallon didn’t answer.

  “Well, my teeth ain’t so good, so like as not, I’ll just have one. So if you get a craving, you just let me know, Hank . . . I mean . . . Mr. Alexander.”

  He heard the little man settle into his bunk.

  “They say you done some farm work,” The Weasel said after a lengthy silence. “Cotton?”

  In the growing darkness, Fallon smiled. So that’s why The Weasel had become Fallon’s cellmate. The interrogation. See how much this man knew.

  Fallon didn’t answer.

  “My pappy raised cotton up in eastern Arkansas, sort of northwest of Memphis. Good black-land dirt. Good soil. Got some good harvests when we wasn’t flooded.”

  “I wouldn’t know about that,” Fallon said.

  “But ain’t you from Arkansas?”

  “Not where anyone could grow cotton.”

  “Oh. So that cotton-picking story I heard about you is just a cotton-picking lie?” He cackled at his own joke.

  “I wouldn’t say that,” Fallon told him after the laughter faded.

  “Oh.” He heard another match strike and soon smelled smoke from The Weasel’s cigarette. “Cotton’s getting ten dollars a pound.”

  “Like hell,” Fallon said. “I don’t know what it’s selling for, but if it’s ten bucks I’ll eat my shoe.”

  “Well, it was selling for . . .”

  “I wouldn’t know what it’s selling for, Weasel. I picked the damn thing. I wasn’t a speculator.”

  “Oh.”

  “Besides, I was better at cane.”

  “Cain? As in Abel?”

  Fallon laughed. “As in sugar. Miserable work. Just like picking cotton. Maybe worse than picking cotton. Cotton you had to replant. The roots of a good cane could last many ratoons.”