“Ra-toons?” The Weasel said.
“Cycles. Growing seasons. Cane can grow in six months in a sweatbox like Louisiana. It’d take maybe two years for it to grow eight, ten feet tall where I come from.”
“Where’s that, Harry?”
“None of your damned business.”
“Ain’t prying, Harry, no sir. I just like to learn things. What else can you tell me about sugarcane? Or cotton?”
“Not a damned thing. I’m through with that line of work. Hell, I’m through with every line of work I’ve known—gunning, killing, robbing, stealing, loving—it’s all over now, Weasel. In case you didn’t know, I’m here till I’m dead.”
He smiled at his performance. He hadn’t forgotten Christina Whitney’s coaching. Don’t give away too much too soon. Peel the onion in layers.
“Harry, tell me . . .”
“Shut the hell up, Weasel,” Fallon said. “Finish your smoke and go to sleep.”
Fallon settled into his bunk, then he reached toward the wooden post, found the hollowed-out spot next to the damp, cold wall, and used his fingers to pry out what had once been a spoon. Carefully, he brought it up and folded his arm across his chest, gripping the weapon in his right hand.
It had been a spoon at the dining hall. But if a fellow had enough time and a cell by himself, he could scrape the spoon down on the floor and bars in his cell, then wrap the end with some rags he had found in a trash bin. It wasn’t an Arkansas toothpick or one of Jim Bowie’s blades, but in a place like The Walls, it would serve its purpose. The hiding place he had found. Credit for that belonged to a former resident of this cell.
Fallon closed his eyes. He could rest easier now, just in case The Weasel—he came by his nickname naturally—had been planted in here to do more than just learn a few things about Harry Alexander. In a place like Huntsville, any inmate who didn’t have a shank or some other kind of weapon might not be a man for very long.
* * *
He caught a glimpse of Dan MacGregor—or should that be Inspector of Prisons Byron Roberts?—when he came back to The Walls, but there had been no communication that time. At least, not between MacGregor and Fallon. Probably MacGregor had managed a short exchange with Aaron Holderman, although they could have talked in secret beyond those redbrick walls. More than likely, MacGregor was trying to make his face known, so that no one would suspect him when he came in needing to find out, or pass on, some pertinent information.
Again, Fallon fell into the groove. Eat. Work. Eat. Work. Work. Work. Work.
He pictured Christina Whitney again and remembered something else she had told him.
“Ninety percent of detective work is boring as hell, Hank. Is it all right if I call you Hank? Thanks. Harry just doesn’t fit you, but we don’t have a say in our names, do we? I never liked Christina. Maybe that’s why I like being a private detective. I can be someone else. So . . . I haven’t talked so much in ages . . . where were we? Yes. It’s boring. Sleep-inducing dullness. You sit on your heinie for ages, get little sleep, and just watch someone or someplace so that mundane gets a monopoly on your life.”
Damn. He couldn’t get her off his mind. He thought of her, pictured her face, in the mill, in the cell when The Weasel was babbling away. Even when John Wesley Hardin was talking to him.
He and Christina had spent much of the winter together, and now that he was in prison, he . . . well . . . missed her company, her smile, and her . . . damn it all to hell . . . beauty.
She looked nothing like Renee. He tried to remember his late wife. He tried to picture the face of The Mole, the psychopathic killer who had murdered her and Fallon’s daughter.
He stood in line, waiting to be called in to breakfast with seven other inmates, including The Weasel, when a lanky guard with a potbelly came up to him and tapped him with his stick.
“Come along, Alexander. The warden wants you.”
Fallon stared.
“Don’t take all day, boy. You ain’t the only one here who hasn’t had his breakfast.”
* * *
Fallon removed his hat, lowered his head, and waited for the warden’s secretary to open the door. The squeamish little man announced that the prisoner was here as requested, a grunt served as the response, and the secretary pushed the door all the way open and nodded at Fallon and the guard to enter. Fallon stepped onto the Eastern-style rug and kept his head down, waiting.
The door closed. The warden clipped off the end of a cigar and fired it up.
“How long have you been in The Walls, Alexander?” the warden asked after his cigar was fired up to his liking.
Head still down, Fallon shrugged. “Six weeks. Don’t rightly know, sir.”
“That’s a pretty good guess.” The warden removed the cigar. “Six weeks. For a life sentence. And now this.”
Fallon lifted his head. Walter Wilkinson, superintendent at The Walls unit, wasn’t alone in the office. A tall man in a plaid suit, with a curled mustache, eyeglasses, stood next to the bookcase. He held a notepad and pencil in his hands. Reporter? Maybe. If he was, he did not identify himself as one, just nodded at Fallon and made a few scribbles on the pad with his pencil.
“I’ve had prisoners come inside The Walls and be taken out to the cemetery in six weeks, Alexander,” the warden said, and the tall man began taking notes. Reporter, Fallon decided. “But never in all my years have I had one sentenced to a life sentence get that sentence reduced. Substantially.”
The warden sighed, produced a thick yellow paper, and walked toward Fallon.
“The Lord looks over you, Alexander. Instead of dying inside The Walls, you can be out in ten years.”
The reporter wrote. The warden handed the paper to Fallon, who took it and stared at the large, fancy cursive heading:
Commutation of Sentence
He saw the signature of the governor.
Governor? Fallon suddenly felt sick. Maybe this case was bigger than the attorney general, Christina Whitney, and Sean MacGregor ever imagined. Could this ring of killers go all the way up to the Texas governor’s mansion?
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
“Congratulations, Mr. Alexander,” the warden said. “Don’t ruin this by doing something stupid and having additional years to those ten.”
“I can do ten years easy,” Fallon said, and he smiled. Hell, he had. And those last few months, with him damned near getting killed on multiple occasions in Yuma and Jefferson City, had felt like ten years, too. “Sir,” he added.
The governor made a slight gesture toward the newspaper reporter, who moved easily toward Fallon.
“Might I have a few words with you, Mr. Alexander?” He handed Fallon a card.
MAJOR RUFUS K. CONLEY
EDITOR / PUBLISHER
The Texas Times
Indianola, Texas
Fallon shrugged, but handed the card to the tall man. “I didn’t think there was anything left of Indianola after those hurricanes.” He had read about those in newspapers . . . the first one, from around 1875, he couldn’t remember where; the second, in 1886, had been in the prison library at Joliet.
“There’s a newspaper,” Conley said with a smile. “For I refuse to believe that Indianola will not rise like the phoenix from the ashes, or, dare I say, mud and saltwater. A few businesses. Fishermen. Patriots. Men of the soil and sea with determination and spirit.”
Fallon debated talking to a reporter, but decided he had to. Never had he met any prisoner who would decline an interview, a chance to state his case, declare his innocence, to a newspaper or magazine journalist. Most would give their eyeteeth for such a chance. Indianola was a long way from the Texas Panhandle. You could hardly find a place more far away, so the chances were remote that someone in the Texas Panhandle would see that newspaper and start saying that this crime this fellow committed . . . how come we’ve never heard of it? And it wasn’t like a newspaper in a place like that coastal town would be sharing its news with papers farther north. What could the c
irculation be? Twenty? Fifty? A hundred at the most.
“How does it feel?” Conley asked.
“It hasn’t set in yet,” Fallon said.
“You are married?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Children?”
His eyes teared unexpectedly. He blinked, coughed, and shook his head. That reaction had not been expected, but the reporter didn’t seem to notice.
The rest of the answers were bland, noncommittal, but it wasn’t like Mr. Rufus Conley was taking a whole lot of notes. Perhaps he was the kind of journalist who would make up his own facts to fit his own story.
When he was finished, Fallon thanked the newspaperman and accepted his handshake. For a man who pushed a pencil and maybe set type, he had a firm grip, and the hand was well callused. That’s another thing that Fallon had not expected.
But as the man turned back toward the governor, now sitting at his desk, Fallon asked, “Mr. Editor, could I ask you a question or two?”
Turning, Conley studied Fallon and cautiously nodded.
Fallon held up the commutation paper. “Just who all has to say this here thing gets done?”
The journalist laughed, shoved his notebook into his jacket pocket, and said, “Well, the governor has the final say.”
“Yeah. That I figured. But how did he find out about me? It wasn’t like everything I did got writ up in all the papers. I mean, I wasn’t Billy the Kid or the Daltons.”
“Indeed.” Conley’s eyes brightened. “The men of the court where your trial was held have to agree that you deserve a reduction of sentence or outright pardon. Someone—in this case I take it, it was your wife, maybe your mother, father, your priest, your grandparents, a good friend with political clout . . .” He kept going, likely hoping for some kind of reaction that would lead to more questions, but Fallon gave away nothing—like there was anything to give away. “Anyway, someone writes a request, the proverbial story that leaves teenage girls and mothers sobbing. Anyway, once a majority of members from your trial have recommended commutation, in writing, it goes to the board in charge of pardons and paroles. Once they recommend it, it goes to the governor. Simple.”
Fallon grinned. “How do I get a pardon?”
The newspaperman laughed. “Don’t be greedy, my friend. I’m writing about this because it’s rare that a life sentence gets reduced.”
“Someone had the governor’s ear,” Fallon said with a grin. “I’d like to thank him.”
“And plant a seed that a pardon is also in order?” Conley chuckled. “I admire your spirit. But I must be going.” He walked back toward the warden’s desk, and Fallon saw the guard approaching.
“All right,” he said as he looked again at the paper in his hand. Maybe it was Malcolm Maxwell, the attorney general. But if it was someone else, Fallon needed to know.
He hadn’t realized how many possible things could go wrong in an assignment like this. All those weeks of training, of learning about sugarcane and cotton and how to be a spy and detective, he hadn’t had time to think of how one mistake, one item no one had considered, could get Harry Fallon killed.
The guard made himself grin. “Lucky day, eh, Alexander?”
“Yeah,” Fallon said, doing his best to sound overjoyed and overwhelmed. He waved the commutation decree at the guard. “Ten years.”
“That ain’t what I meant, Alexander. Ya gots a visitor. That sweet-smellin’, fine-lookin’ petticoat of yourn. She be waitin’ in the visitin’ room.”
Fallon tried to look amazed and excited.
He quickened his pace toward the office door, thanking the warden and the reporter. Once they were out in the hallway, alone, Fallon asked his escort: “You think I can find a privy?”
“Boy, I’d piss my pants if it meant I could see that bride ya gots.”
“C’mon, boss. I gotta go.”
The guard sighed. “Downstairs. I let ya piss on the superintendent’s pot, I’ll be emptyin’ spittoons fer the rest of my career.”
On the lower floor, the guard nodded at the dark room in the corner. Fallon thanked him and stepped into the indoor privy. Times were changing. He saw the cord he needed to pull to flush his stuff away. Sitting down, he withdrew the cigarette papers with his left hand while finding the pencil in his sock with his right. A sharpened pencil could be a dangerous weapon in a place like The Walls. He began writing quickly until the guard banged on the door.
“If ya don’t hurry, Alexander, I’m gonna see yer petticoat myself.”
Fallon returned both items, rose, pulled the cord, waiting a few seconds, and then stepped out of the toilet. He wiped his hands on his trousers.
“You’re a pig,” the guard said.
“A pig that’ll be free in ten years.”
“If ya lives that long. Let’s go.”
* * *
Christina Whitney leaped from the chair when Fallon entered the room. “Harry!” she exclaimed, clasping her heart. Tears of joy streamed down her cheeks. Damn, Fallon thought, she knew how to play her role.
“No touching,” the boss of the visiting room said. “You’ve been here before. Break the rules and you won’t come back.”
Fallon moved over to the chair, settling into it as Christina sat opposite him. She wore a yellow dress this time, with lace that accentuated her breasts. Fallon pulled out his cigarette papers and laid the pack on the table.
“Let me roll you one, honey,” Christina said, and looked at the guard. “May I, sir?”
“Girl, I’d like to see you lick it. Go right ahead.”
She gave the brute a glare and pulled the papers closer. Fallon spun around in the chair and frowned hard at the guard, even balled his hands into fists. He tried to look angry, but that was hard because the guard was staring right back at Fallon, instead of watching Christina Whitney’s sleight of hand.
“Go ahead, punk,” the guard said. “Ten years can get tacked onto your ten in no time. Might turn out to be a life sentence after all.”
Fallon spun around in his chair.
Christina handed the rolled cigarette toward him. “See,” she told the guard, “I didn’t touch him.”
“Good. You can touch me, baby. Just not your husband.”
She frowned, blushed, fanned herself, and said, “Don’t let him worry you, Harry. It’s all right now. You’ll be out in ten years.”
“Ten years,” Fallon snapped. “You shouldn’t wait for me.”
He stopped, turned his head. “You shouldn’t wait for me.” They had gone over that line several times during their training. Fallon had said it countless times, but now it struck him. That’s something he had never demanded of Renee. Hell, he had thought he would be freed at any moment, that the deputy marshals riding for Judge Parker would have learned the truth, caught the real robber, and sent him to Detroit while begging forgiveness from Harry Fallon. Maybe, eventually, he would have given up hope. Hell, he had. But only after they brought him news that Renee was dead. And so was Fallon’s daughter.
“Harry . . .” Christina pleaded.
Fallon rose, trying to look hurt and angry, and headed for the door. The guard sounded about as happy as Christina sounded heartbroken.
“You damned fool,” the guard muttered. “Best-looking petticoat to come in here in the past six and a half years, and you tell her to stop coming. Hell, Alexander, the only reason we let her in here is because of how pretty she is.”
* * *
When Christina Whitney reached her room in the Sam Houston Hotel, she bolted the door, drew the shades, turned up the lantern, and pulled out the package of cigarette papers that she had swapped with Harry Fallon. She peeled out the first paper, bent low, and read Fallon’s message:
Need names of parole board.
The Weasel, inmate, now my cellmate. His story?
Background on Rufus Conley, ed., Texas Times in Indianola.
She pressed the paper against the globe of the lantern until it lighted, then dropped the paper in the a
shtray and watched it burn.
* * *
When Harry Fallon got his five-minute break in the mill, he moved toward the window and began rolling a cigarette in the paper Christina Whitney had exchanged with him.
$13,500 stolen from stagecoach strong box on Houston–Beaumont Pike last Saturday. Convict job? Be careful. Watch your back.
He read the last line again, found himself smiling, thinking of the operative as he brought the cigarette up and ran it under his nose, trying to catch the fragrance of the pretty woman. But all he could smell were odors of the mill. He licked the paper, put the smoke in his mouth, and found a match. Seconds later, he was taking long drags on the cigarette, hating the taste in his mouth, recalling Whitney’s beautiful cursive penmanship.
Fallon made himself stop thinking about Christina. He tried to picture Renee and Rachel again.
“Alexander!”
Looking up, he saw the foreman waving at him. So much for a five-minute break. Fallon took two more quick drags on the cigarette, then dropped it into a puddle of water and riddled the cigarette, paper, and flakes of tobacco with the heel of his shoe.
He was walking back to his station at the carding machine when one of the inmates stopped him.
“Light?” the man said, a cigarette dangling from his lips—the last thing Harry Fallon remembered.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
His eyes opened and immediately closed from the pain of the light. A million stampeding buffalo ran across the back of his head. Tentatively, Fallon brought his left hand up and found the cloth bandage that failed to hide the walnut-sized knot on his skull.
“Careful there, Mr. Alexander,” the voice said softly.
Fallon recognized the prison doctor’s drawl.
Slowly, Fallon made himself sit up. When his eyes opened again, he made himself adjust to the light, which no one in his right mind would have considered bright. The shades were drawn tighter than a rawhide hatband, and the only light burning in the doctor’s office was over at the old codger’s table. The doctor himself sat in a chair, smoking a pipe, which he set on an ashtray, and slowly rose and ambled the eight feet to Fallon’s bed.
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