CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

Lights out. Back in the cell with Worsnop, Muldoon, and Frenchy, Fallon waited. His muscles ached, and he swore he could still smell broomcorn on his hands. His jacket stank of sorghum, too, and that smell was more pronounced since Fallon had rolled it up and stuck in under his head to serve as a pillow.

Fallon put his ear against the wall and tried to hear inside Ford Wagner’s cell. Nothing. A man suffering from consumption, living in a dark, dank dungeon, would likely be hacking up his lungs, and that kind of noise Fallon could at least detect.

He had been listening for what felt like an hour and heard nothing. That left him wondering if Ford Wagner was dead. Would Underwood leave the man in there to rot as he had left The Mole—Killer Coleman Cain—in the basement dungeon?

“Fallon.”

He tensed, and twisted his head, looking in the darkness.

“Yeah?” Fallon whispered back.

“What kind of key?”

He grinned then. Worsnop was a scrounger, and unlike Charley Muldoon, he was willing to take risks. Then again, Worsnop, unlike the weak little arsonist, wasn’t due to be released from The Walls anytime soon. Fallon slid up, using the cold, hard wall like the back of the chair. He had given up on hearing anything next door. Ford Wagner was either a corpse or . . . where could the guards have taken him? And why? The hospital.

“Not one to the front gate,” Fallon said, “if that eases your mind. But it’s one that could get you in trouble with the guards.” He quickly turned toward the bunk of the arsonist. “Charley.”

Muldoon did not reply.

“You’re not asleep, Charley.”

“And I’m not hearing a thing,” the little man said.

“You went to the hospital today.”

“Yeah. The old sawbones said he had to make sure I wasn’t sick before they send me out. And I thought they’d let me out tomorrow, but, no, no, that hard case Fowlson said they won’t let me out till the weekend’s over. He told me that today, while I was at Doc Gripewater’s office. Laughed when he said it, too, just sucked the breath out of me. Ain’t right. No. That ain’t right. Sentence ends tomorrow, and those bastards are keeping me in here till Monday. Ain’t right. Ain’t right at all. But at least I’ll be out of here . . . providing you boys don’t get another six months tacked on to the sentence that fool judge give me.”

“You’ll be back,” Worsnop said. “Your bed won’t even be cold.”

“Like hell.”

“Hey,” Fallon said. “Before you get into a fight, I just have one question for you, Charley. Was Ford Wagner in the hospital?”

“Wagner?” Charley Muldoon scratched the beard stubble on his chin. “No. No, he wasn’t. He . . .”

“Let it be, Charley,” Worsnop said. “If you really want to get out of here.”

Fallon felt the tension settling over the dark, cramped cell. Frenchy rolled over on his bunk, mumbled something, and fell silent again. He might be asleep, Fallon thought, or he might be listening. Fallon guessed it to be the latter. No one slept that soundly in prison.

All right, Fallon told himself. There was no need to bring up Ford Wagner. He wasn’t in the hospital. Most likely he wasn’t in the cell next door. The guards had taken him away in the dead of night for some reason, and the men in this cell knew that reason, but they were not about to tell a fresh fish. Especially a fresh fish who had been a federal lawman. Fallon had no reason to believe that little fact remained a secret. Secrets were as hard to keep in a prison like a good night’s sleep was hard to get.

“About that key, Fallon.” Worsnop was changing the subject, and Fallon was fine with that.

“To the basement cells,” Fallon said.

“That’s a big key,” Worsnop said.

“Your pal is a big cat.”

Muldoon pulled up his blanket. “I had a calico cat once. Do you know that practically all calico cats are girlie cats? You hardly ever see a boy calico cat. I don’t know why. But it’s a fact. My calico cat was named Johnnie. But that was spelled with an ie on account she was a girl.”

“Did you burn her, too?” Frenchy said. So he was awake.

“No. Of course not. I never burned no animals. At least, not on purpose.”

Fallon waited for the banter to cease. When it did, he listened again, but A-Hall remained quiet. His cellmates listened, too, and once Worsnop had convinced himself that no guard was lurking around the third tier of the building, he cleared his throat and whispered, “What do you need a key to the basement dungeons for?”

“I think I left something in there,” Fallon answered.

The room fell quiet again, until Frenchy broke out laughing. “You’re all right, Fallon,” he said and coughed a little laugh again. “Left something in there. That’s funny.”

“Only thing anyone ever left in solitary,” Worsnop said, “is about ten years off his life.”

“Can you get one?” Fallon asked.

“That’s a tad harder than cigarettes . . . and smokes ain’t easy because all the guards think we’d burn the damned place down.”

“Which we would,” Frenchy whispered.

“Pills is what mostly I get. Snuff, tiny bottles of hair tonic, needles, soap that won’t take the skin off a man’s body. Seidlitz powders. Plug tobaccy. And, well, money.”

“I don’t dip snuff,” Fallon said. “And hair tonic won’t get me inside the basement cells.”

“But hair tonic will give you a little kick,” Muldoon said. “Closest thing to liquor a man can get here.”

“A key,” Fallon said.

“A key, like you said, would get me in trouble with the guards,” Worsnop said. “I’d have to bribe them good. And I mean real good.”

“Which cell do you want?” Frenchy asked.

“The locks are all the same,” Worsnop told him, or maybe he was just thinking out loud. “A key would unlock all the cells, I think, in this here prison. At least A-Hall.”

“But not the front door,” Frenchy said. “I’ve been here long enough to see how those locks work. One key to the doors coming in or out this dungeon. Another one for the doors to the cells. But the ones down in the basement here. I think that’s a different key.”

“I ain’t hearing none of this,” Charley Muldoon whined again.

“I don’t want a key to the front door,” Fallon said. “Just one to the basement cells.”

“It’ll cost you,” Worsnop said.

“I figured. How much?”

Worsnop started thinking. “Ain’t you going back to the doctor in the morning?”

“Gripewater said I was to come back. That doesn’t mean Brandt, Fowlson, or Underwood will let me go back.”

“Yeah. That’s a fact. But, well, the doc has a lot of gin. A bottle of his hooch. And ten dollars. The dollars need to be script money. One-dollar bills. Those are easier for Edmond Dantès to carry.”

Fallon laughed out loud. In prison, that had to be the perfect name for the cat. Worsnop surprised Fallon. The prisoner was well-read, but then Harry Fallon had to guess that any convict, who knew his letters, would enjoy reading The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas. Fallon had read it at least three times while he was serving his sentence at the Illinois State Penitentiary in Joliet.

“What about the gin?” Frenchy asked.

“The bottle of hooch stays here,” Worsnop said. “I’ll share it with you boys, though, just a little. A buck a snort.”

Another silence filled the dark cell. Fallon guessed that his cellmates were imagining savoring the swill Doc Gripewater called gin.

“What about it Fallon?” Worsnop said.

“You drive a hard bargain,” Fallon said, “but that’s a deal.”

“I’ll need the money in advance,” Worsnop said.

“I’ll pay you tomorrow night,” Fallon said. He had to guess that he could get some money from Doctor Gripewater, and if the sawbones wouldn’t come up with the cash, Fallon had heard that newspaper reporters sometimes, if desperate enough, would pay their sources a few bucks for a good story. And Julie Jernigan seemed desperate enough.

* * *

That morning, when the cell door was dragged open and the guards started their bellowing and cursing, Fallon braced himself for that line stick to crack his skull open. It didn’t happen, though, and he turned to stand next to the railing, head down, eyes on his boots, Muldoon in front of him and Worsnop and Frenchy behind him. He did manage to sneak a look at Ford Wagner’s cell. That door still remained closed and locked.

“Bathhouse, then mess hall,” the lead guard barked.

And so Fallon’s morning went. A quick scrubbing of hands and face, drying off with a towel that felt like a brick, and then into the dining hall for another wretched meal of boiled potatoes and cold, repugnant coffee. They did serve biscuits this time, which if you dipped into the coffee for a few minutes did not break your teeth. And there was a smidgen of ham, or something that looked kind of like ham, with the potatoes.

After breakfast, he marched with the others to the broom factory, while other groups went off to make saddle trees, or shoes, or furniture; some went to the exercise yard; more than a few went to break rocks; and others were returned to their cells. No one was sent to the hospital. And Ford Wagner remained nowhere to be seen.

At the broom factory, Fallon was ordered to the makeshift barn in the corner, where he and other inmates whose names he did not know found the bins of sorghum, tons and tons of broomcorn, sorted out by grades in quality.

He set to it, scooping up an armful of the dried, tan crop and moved in a line from the barn to the factory, always with his head down, always in an orderly fashion, and once he was inside the rank-smelling factory, he followed his instructions. He deposited the corn in the basin where another inmate would put a broom together. Then Fallon was heading back to the barn to gather more sorghum.

It was work. Like the jobs he had been given in Joliet, mostly where he had worked in the laundry. It was work. Yes, sir. And Fallon thought about the men who had to do this to put food on the table for their wives and kids. He understood how he had been blessed with the jobs he had held. Driving cattle, sitting on a horse, free as the day is long. It wasn’t easy work. Not by a damned sight, but it had seemed so wonderful all those years ago. Those jobs weren’t the same anymore, though. The railroads had ended the long drives. So had barbed wire. And working as a deputy marshal had always seemed like being free, too. Dangerous. Even deadlier than punching cattle. But he was good at it. And, deep down, he knew how much he loved it. Not the killing. Not the gunfights. Not the pressure of not knowing who might be waiting behind the door you were about to kick open. But he was free.

Always free.

The whistle blew at last. Again, Fallon’s clothes and hands and fingers smelled like the straw, the broomcorn, the working end of hundreds of brooms, that he had been handling all day. He stank of his own sweat. His legs and arms and back were sore. He filed into a line and waited to be marched back to the bathhouse and maybe over to the exercise room. It looked like he would not be visiting Doctor Thaddeus Gripewater this day. Maybe never.

“Fallon!”

Eyes down, Fallon stepped out of line. “Yes, sir!” he answered.

A brute of a guard came to him. “Step in front of me, fish,” the guard said. “You’re to report to the hospital. Ready. March!”