Behind the Iron

by William W. Johnstone

  Now Fallon turned to the brute wearing the bowler. The city hat was brown, as was the big man’s ill-fitting suit. He probably wore brown to please the corrupt president of the American Detective Agency. The suit did not fit Holderman well, but even Chicago’s best tailor would find it hard to outfit this mass of muscles.

  Fallon studied Holderman, his mustache and beard, too brown it seemed to Fallon. The monster likely dyed his hair with shoe polish. The brass shield on his chest that identified him as a private detective was tarnished. The bulge underneath his left shoulder indicated a revolver. A Chicago billy club protruded from his brown boot. It would be hard for Holderman to run with a nightstick in his left boot. From the size of Holderman, though, it would be hard for him to run anyway.

  Dan MacGregor, on the other hand, looked like he could run alongside a thoroughbred for six furlongs.

  You’re thinking of trying to escape, Fallon thought. Stop it. You’ve a job to do. Just remember this is all for Renee. For Rachel. For justice.

  No, he was fooling himself. Ten years inside Joliet had changed him. He no longer wore a badge. Even the American Detective Agency had not pinned a shield on him. He was just being used. But Fallon kept figuring a way that he could use Sean MacGregor and his minions. But not for justice.

  Revenge.

  “What’s the reason?” Fallon asked MacGregor.

  “I’ll tell you,” the young detective said, “when I’m sure the walls aren’t listening.”

  Holderman snorted.

  Doors opened down the hallway, and voices became louder. Fallon could hear the footsteps behind him.

  “All right,” Fallon said.

  MacGregor pointed. “Let’s go.”

  They walked to the elevator. Aaron Holderman rang the button, and two awkwardly quiet minutes later the carriage arrived, the door opened, and the elderly black man said, “Headin’ down, folks. Climb in.”

  Holderman moved in first, and Fallon started but felt something pull on the back of his vest.

  “After you, Christina,” Dan MacGregor said pleasantly, and gave a tall, attractive blonde woman his most handsome smile.

  “Thank you, Dan,” she said, and studied Fallon. “Who’s your friend?”

  “A lawman from way back,” MacGregor said. “Working on a case with us.”

  She was already in the elevator. So were two other men. MacGregor let the last man, a thin man with huge spectacles, step inside, too, before he smiled at the black elevator man.

  “You look crowded enough, Carlton,” MacGregor told the black man. “And Holderman weighs more than three men and takes up the space of four. Run these good people down and come back up for us, will you?”

  “Yes, suh.”

  “Aaron,” MacGregor called out to the big detective. “Go on. Meet us at the depot. Make sure everything’s ready.”

  “But . . .”

  “Just do it,” MacGregor said as the door closed.

  He turned toward Fallon but said nothing until the creaking and clanging of the elevator revealed that it was at least two stories below them.

  “There’s one thing my father did not tell me to tell you, Hank,” the handsome man said.

  Hank, Fallon thought. It’s Hank now. Only my friends call me Hank.

  “Just one?” Fallon shot back.

  MacGregor let out a genuine laugh. “One that I’m willing to share.”

  Fallon waited.

  “Judge Parker sentenced you to fifteen years,” MacGregor said.

  Still, Fallon waited. He could hear the elevator begin its ascent to the top floor of the brownstone building.

  “Parker was a federal judge.” MacGregor’s face showed no emotion. “So why were you sent to the Illinois State Penitentiary in Joliet and not the Detroit House of Corrections? Ever consider that?”

  Fallon did not part his lips to respond.

  “How many men did you send to Joliet? Other than Holderman, but if I remember right, you made that arrest in Illinois, after Holderman crossed the Mississippi around Cape Girardeau, and Illinois wanted him worse than Parker did.”

  That much was true. Fallon had arrested Holderman twice in the Indian Territory—another deputy had arrested him, too—but none of the charges ever stuck. So when Fallon had gone after Holderman all those years ago, across Arkansas, into Missouri, even into Kentucky briefly before back into Missouri, and finally into Illinois and made the arrest, he had found himself surrounded by some Illinois badge-wearers who wanted Holderman for stealing a horse, beating a blacksmith half to death, and robbing a Mason of three double eagles he had been taking to an orphanage.

  MacGregor went on. “You were arrested for robbery in the Creek Nation. They couldn’t make the murder charge of that federal deputy against you, though the solicitor tried his hardest. That’s a federal charge. Federal prisoners in that part of the country get shipped up to Detroit, Michigan. But you wound up in Joliet.”

  “So did Joey Kurth,” Fallon said. Fallon had run into Kurth in Joliet.

  “Yeah, but that was different,” MacGregor said. “Kurth was arrested for running spirits and resisting arrest. But he was also wanted for a string of robberies in Beardstown, so Parker sent him to Illinois to be tried there, sentenced, and upon completion, returned to Fort Smith to get sentenced again. Just didn’t happen.”

  Thanks to Kurth’s untimely demise during the riots at Joliet.

  “All right,” Fallon said. “The way it was explained to me was that because I was a onetime lawman, with many, many men I had sent to prison serving their time—some of those sentences were for life—in Detroit, I was being sent to Joliet for my own safety.” He shook his head, felt the gall rising again, and said again, his voice acid now: “Safety.”

  “Parker threw the book at you. You think he cared about your safety? He figured you betrayed him. From what I’ve read, Parker got you that job as a deputy marshal. He even talked you into reading for the bar. When you were accused of robbing that stagecoach, he felt like he’d been stabbed in the back.”

  The elevator arrived. The mechanical sounds echoed across the hallway.

  “Did it matter where I wound up?” Fallon said. “Detroit. Joliet. Neither one is quite the Drovers Cottage.”

  The doors began opening. “Chris Ehrlander was your lawyer, wasn’t he?”

  Fallon nodded.

  The black man in the red jacket reappeared. “You ready, suh?” he asked MacGregor.

  “Interesting,” MacGregor said, keeping his eyes on Fallon, before he turned around. “Yes, Carlton. My friend here has a train to catch.”

  * * *

  On the loud, grease-smelling elevator ride to the ground floor, visions of Judge Isaac Parker . . . of Renee DeSmet Fallon . . . of attorney Chris Ehrlander . . . of faces of men he had known as a lawman and as an inmate . . . all flashed through Fallon’s mind.

  MacGregor stared at the black elevator man in the red jacket. Fallon studied the back of Dan MacGregor’s head. He remembered the man from some university in Illinois who had stopped in at the marshal’s office in Fort Smith. The man talked to the marshal, the federal prosecutor, and the deputies who happened to be in town about how the shape of a man’s skull could determine if that man were a criminal or a decent person. Fallon and everyone else in that room had figured the man was no better than the confidence men with their shell games, marked decks, and rigged faro layouts, but now as he stared at Dan MacGregor’s head, he tried to remember exactly what shapes the Illinois professor had said meant a man was a criminal.

  The elevator came to an abrupt stop, and the jolt seemed to return Fallon’s faculties.

  He thanked the black man as he followed Dan MacGregor to the front door of the brownstone building. They stepped onto the sidewalk.

  Chicago was crowded at this time of day. Fallon walked alongside Dan MacGregor. Neither man spoke, they simply bent into the wind and moved along with the herd of people.

  This city wasn’t for him. Too many people
. No sense of order. No guard telling him where he needed to go or when he could hit the privy to relieve his bladder. No rolling hills and clear water of the Indian Nations. No wife. No daughter. And after spending what seemed like an eternity in that Hellhole called Yuma Territorial Penitentiary, after enduring the Snake Den, and some of the most ruthless cutthroats Fallon had ever seen—after escaping to Mexico and witnessing more carnage and destruction—Fallon just did not fit in with women in their bloomers and fine hats, men in their Prince Albert coats and shiny black leather shoes carrying grips and cases or umbrellas—even though the skies seemed clear.

  “Here,” MacGregor said, and he turned down another street, not as crowded, but far from deserted.

  Why doesn’t he hail a hack? Fallon thought. It is a damned long walk from here to the depot.

  Another turn. Another. And then one more that led them down a narrow alley. A cat screamed, leaped out of a stinking can of trash, and bolted between Fallon and MacGregor.

  MacGregor smiled, but the smile faded instantly.

  The cat wasn’t alone in the alley.

  Four men came from behind a mountain of trash. Two carried baseball bats. Brass knuckles reflected off the tallest man. The fourth wielded a knife.

  Fallon glanced behind him. Two other men, armed with revolvers, approached from the side street.

  CHAPTER THREE

  “You carrying a gun?” MacGregor whispered.

  “I don’t have one of your brass shields,” Fallon said. “And it’s illegal to carry a weapon in Chicago, especially for a hard-timer out on parole.”

  The four men coming down the alley began to spread out.

  “You have a gun,” Fallon said, adding, hopefully, “Don’t you?”

  “Not to see you off at the station, Hank.”

  Fallon’s mouth began to dry up like spit in the Arizona desert. “My friends call me Hank,” Fallon said. He stepped away from the detective and began easing his way to the approaching four men. “You take the ones coming up the alley,” he told the detective.

  “There are only two of them,” MacGregor said.

  “Yeah,” Fallon said. “But I have experience in this kind of fighting.” He glanced back and gave the young man a slight smile. “Besides, chances are, one of those two has a gun.”

  A cat screeched, stopping Fallon’s advance—and the approach of the four toughs—and the feral animal bolted off a box of garbage, started toward Fallon, hissed, its hair rising like spines on a cactus, spun around, and raced toward the four men.

  The one with the brass knuckles laughed as the cat ran between him and one of the men with a baseball bat. He laughed because the man yelped and dropped the bat.

  “Yer as yeller as a petticoat,” said the one with the knuckles.

  “Shut up!” The big brute bent to pick up the rolling bat.

  The one with the knife said something in some rough language, not German, but something European.

  “Let’s get to it,” said the tallest of the four, and he stopped slapping the thick part of the bat with his meaty left palm, and gripped the narrow end, just above the knob, with both of his ham-sized hands.

  Behind Fallon came the noise of a curse, shriek, and glass breaking, then flesh meeting flesh. MacGregor had started the row with those two other men, but Fallon dared not look behind him. He spread his legs wider, controlled his breathing, made sure he did not blink, and waited for the four men to get closer.

  They spread out as far as they could, which wasn’t that much considering how narrow the alley was, and how many piles of reeking trash had been started along the brick walls.

  That feral cat had stopped Fallon at the narrowest passage in the alley, where only three men could get through at a time. So, Fallon figured, this seemed as good as any place to wait. Three-against-one was better than four-against-one. He studied the trash near and all around him. He listened to the commotion behind him. He thought that maybe, just maybe, a Chicago copper might hear the ruckus and start blowing his whistle, or, even better, firing his revolver. But in this part of town, he figured, peace officers made themselves scarce.

  The four men reached the mountain of refuse. The man wearing the Irish woolen cap and carrying a baseball bat stopped, nodded at the one with the brown corduroy coat who sported the brass knuckles. These two stepped down the narrow pathway. The Pole with the knife and the skinniest one with the baseball bat let the first two come about halfway through the garbage, maybe three feet, before they started in behind them.

  That’s when Fallon’s left hand brought up the rusty horseshoe that was lying atop a busted wooden crate standing longways up, and let it fly. The horseshoe slammed into the center of the face of the man with the brass knuckles. He cried out, and spit out blood and bits of teeth, as more blood ran over the tarnished knuckledusters and his stumps of gnarled fingers.

  Someone—Fallon didn’t know which one, and he didn’t give a damn which one—cursed. The man with the busted face slammed against the trash heap on his left. His work boots flew out in front of him, tripping the first of the baseball-bat slingers, and toppled over to his side, still covering his face.

  By that time, Fallon had grabbed the busted crate. He thought he read a label proclaiming PEACHES, but he wasn’t sure. After he brought the crate down on the head of the man who was trying to push himself to his feet and grab the bat he had dropped, Fallon would never know what the crate originally carried. The wood splintered, sending chunks of wood back toward the remaining two thugs. The soft cap did nothing to lessen the blow, and the man fell back over the first brute’s legs. He lay unconscious. The one with the busted face sobbed, cursed, and kept spitting out blood, teeth and maybe a piece of his tongue.

  The fellow with the second baseball bat tried to charge through the passage but tripped as the first baseball-bat slinger crashed in front of him.

  His bat disappeared in the heap of two-bit muggers, and as he came toward Fallon, Fallon brought his right knee up. It caught the wailing, waving fool in his chin. From the sound of the crunch, Fallon figured he had broken the man’s jaw. Still, just to make sure, he slammed two more punches into the man’s head just as he crashed against more trash, sending old cans and bottles empty of everything but rainwater and urine spilling onto the mud, dirt, and grime.

  This wasn’t the first time Fallon had gone into a fight outnumbered. Before he had pinned on a deputy marshal’s badge, he had cowboyed on herds heading to Kansas, and many a waddie always enjoyed a good round of fisticuffs to help celebrate a long trail drive of eating dust and smelling cow dung for months on end. Fallon couldn’t remember the number of saloons he had busted to pieces, or the eyes he had blackened or lips he had split wide open.

  As a deputy marshal, there had been more fights. Some Fallon had won. More than he would care to remember he had lost. Fort Smith, Arkansas, wasn’t populated by Quakers, after all, and the Indian Nations were home to some buckets of blood and inns that were worse than some of those joints Fallon had visited in Kansas as a kid.

  Those had seasoned Harry Fallon. Ten years in Joliet, on the other hand, had finished his education in the ways to use one’s fists, knees, elbows, fingers, head, teeth and turn anything from a pencil or a spoon to a pillow or a piece of paper into the deadliest of weapons.

  A knife? Hell, nobody at Joliet was scared of a knife. Fallon didn’t even need a weapon to meet the last of the four goons who had challenged him.

  He picked up the bigger of the two bats, however. It wasn’t like their original owners had use for them anymore.

  As soon as he realized that Fallon had the baseball bat, the giant with the knife backed up. Harry Fallon hurdled over the mass of moaning or unconscious men, slipped on the wet ground, but slammed against the trash, sending old newspapers, magazines, and who could tell what, bouncing off the surface. Somehow, Fallon managed to keep his feet, and he sucked in his gut as the knife swept past his stomach.

  The thug had taken a desperate swipe upon
realizing that Fallon had stumbled. He muttered something in his native tongue as the momentum of his desperate swing took him spinning toward some rotting woolen blankets.

  Fallon started toward the last of the men, but something grabbed his foot, twisted it, and down went Fallon. He rolled over and saw the one who had eaten the rusted horseshoe had stopped whimpering. Despite his contorted, bloody, ugly and ruined face, the man had found enough strength to climb beneath his two unconscious colleagues. He spit red saliva. Hatred filled his eyes. His knuckledusters remained on his right hand. His left, however, gripped a derringer.

  The angry villain brought the little pocket pistol up.

  Lying on his back, hearing the goon with the knife scrambling to his feet, Fallon brought his left leg up, bending it at the knee, and sent his bootheel smashing into the face of the man with the knuckledusters and the derringer. That blow caught the vermin in his forehead, sparing Fallon’s footwear most of the blood, and letting that pathetic criminal join three of his pals in unconsciousness.

  Fallon thought about scrambling for the derringer. But he knew he didn’t have that much time. In fact, he had no time.

  He rolled over, saw the flash of the blade, and this time brought both of his legs up. His hands shot up and somehow managed to grab the rock-hard wrist just below the big knife. His knees, calves, and boots stopped the rest of the giant’s body from crushing his chest. Fallon rocked backward and sent his legs—and the big man—over his head. His hands let go of the man with the knife. He watched the big man somersault and land on his back on the heaping pile of his three comrades.

  Instantly, the big man rolled over. Fallon was rolling, too. He saw that the man still gripped the knife. Fallon sucked in a deep breath, let it out, and grabbed the baseball bat as he backed out of the narrow passageway. His chest heaved again, and with more room to operate, he used the bat to help push himself back to his feet.

  Still in the six-foot-long canyon of trash and other foul matter, the tough came at him, crouching, slashing the knife left to right, then right to left. The man grinned, but Fallon knew the criminal was hurting.