The Styx (29 page)

“Morning, Mr. Faustus,” said the woman behind the bar. “Hot already, eh sir?”

“Indeed, Miss Graham. A draft for my friend here if you please.” It was unusual to see a woman tending bar, but considering the hour, Byrne dismissed the propriety and motioned for a beer of his own.

Whatever the beliefs of Faustus’ brotherhood of Masons, Byrne was glad they didn’t include abstinence. The draft was as excellent as the first time he’d drunk it here with the binder boys. After taking a few swallows, Byrne decided that his approach with Faustus on the street had perhaps too disingenuous. He changed it.

“I’m no lawyer, sir, but it seems to me that there are some inquiries to be made about this incident of the man killed during a fire on the island. I mean, there are folks who say this Carver woman was not even there at the time of the man’s death.”

Faustus took a drink and made perhaps the same decision on candor as Byrne had.

“And you come across this information from which folks, Mr. Byrne? Miss McAdams from the hotel?”

Byrne gave up trying to plumb the breadth of Faustus’ connections to information.

“Yes. And some of the hotel workers who are in position to know.”

“And therein lies the problem, Mr. Byrne,” Faustus said. “As a Northerner, you may not understand the ancient mores that still hold this land and the law that still governs it. The sheriff is not a forward thinking Southern man. If a Negro woman has been accused of killing a white man it would be a foregone conclusion that she is not only guilty, but should in all practicality be hanged for such offense.”

Byrne had seen enough on the streets of New York to know that neighborhoods of Greeks, Italians, Poles and Jews operated on their own laws and precepts just like anywhere else. The “we deal with our own” attitude was one that the police had always worked both with and against to keep a lid on crime and to protect the moneyed civilians of the city. But even in a frontier like this he believed logic could still prevail.

“So let’s prove she didn’t do it. Certainly that doesn’t get ignored in a place that’s trying to become civilized.”

Faustus took another silent drink. He wiped away the residual foam.

“Let us?” he said. “Did you use the contraction ‘let’s’ as in you and I, Mr. Byrne?”

Byrne took a breath. “From my understanding, you are a lawyer, sir. And from your mouth to my ear you have admitted a medical background. And from my observation you also know most of the prominent people in this small town. So unless I’m a fool, I’d bet you know the coroner and you know how to do a basic autopsy and there is no better way to find out how a man was killed than to look for yourself.”

If he’d read Faustus correctly, the old man was avoiding some knowledge of his brother. An uncomfortable knowledge. Maybe a terrible knowledge. Maybe a knowledge that now lay in the coroner’s office.

Faustus absorbed the young man’s challenge. “A fine presentation, Mr. Byrne,” he said, draining his glass and spilling a few coins on the bar. He stood up and with cane in hand motioned to the front door. “Let us.”

The undertaker’s was on Clematis in a low-slung wooden building with a tin roof and double-wide doors in the front. There were sawed out places in the front wall for windows, but any view was blocked by paper hung from the inside. Wagon tracks led from the street to the back.

Faustus knocked at the door and without waiting for an answer walked in as if it were a storefront, which in effect, it was. George Maltby made his living by burying local folks, preparing the bodies of nonlocals for transportation north to their hometowns, and on occasion doing contract work for the county government, including holding the unclaimed bodies of victims of crime until given the order to move them either into the ground or to a family claimant.

When Byrne stepped into the building he noted that it was unnaturally cool. He was to learn later that the undertaker’s building was directly behind the G. G. Springer’s Ice Making Factory. Maltby had talked Springer into running a duct into the back of his place. The decision pleased both men as it kept down the odor of Maltby’s particular business from passersby as well as from Springer’s customers who came to load their own ice blocks from his factory’s back door. But when he first walked in, Byrne took the chill as a sign of death and it unnerved him. The room was, like many of its day, a single square structure. But this one was halved by a plush, purple curtain like that of a Broadway stage. When Faustus called out Maltby’s name, a plump and unusually jovial man swept away the corner of the curtain and stepped out like some master of ceremony for the Herald Square Theater in the Bowery.

“Well hello, hello, Mr. Faustus and friend,” said Maltby, recognizing Faustus at once and making Byrne wonder how often the old man had occasion to visit the undertaker.

“To what do I owe the honor, sir? I hope most sincerely that it is not a personal matter, meaning not a personal friend who may have fallen to an early departure from this grand and glorious world.”

Though the undertaker reminded Byrne of the sheriff in size and girth, his face was in direct opposition: florid and fat with pumped up cheeks that resembled a clown’s, eyes that seemed perpetually large and wide open, and lips that seemed unnaturally red.

“Thank you, George, for your concern,” said Faustus, tapping his cane. “But no, we’ve come on a bit of unofficial business and mean to inquire if you have taken possession of a body brought the other day from a fire on the island?

“My understanding is that the victim has not yet been identified, and for medical inquiry, it is my hope that I may spend a few moments in examination of the remains.”

Maltby’s expression fell immediately from the laughing clown to that of the down-turned smile of its forlorn opposite.

“Well, um, gosh, Mr. Faustus. You know, Doc Lansing already did that for the sheriff. I mean, he came in and took a look and said he was going to file a report with the sheriff’s office on the cause of death and all.”

“I was aware of that,” Faustus lied, and he did it well, Byrne thought. “But my inquiry is of a different nature, George. And as I said it will take only a few minutes. I require no extensive cutting or probing or further altering of the body from what you may have already accomplished.”

Maltby was still wary. He may not have been under specific instructions from the sheriff to shield the body, but it was a criminal case. And even though Faustus was a well-respected, if not always present, member of the community and a man known for his broad knowledge and a true Southerner like himself…Oh, what the hell.

“Well, I don’t see any harm in that, Mr. Faustus. I mean, it is science and all, eh?” Maltby extended his hand to show the way.

Behind the heavy curtain there were three waist-high tables lined up in the middle of the space and all were occupied, and carefully shrouded, except for the middle one where Maltby had obviously been . working before he was interrupted. A table sat next to that corpse upon which rested a tray of took, a leather box of what looked like rolls of hair samples in a variety of colors, and a collection of jars and bottles of makeup, lipstick and moisturizing creams. There was also some kind of hand pump that brought to Byrne’s mind a plunger the likes of which the reluctant railway bombers might have used only a few days ago. Byrne was struck by the odor of chemicals that suffused the air, not so unpleasant that he had to cover his nose but enough to warn him that worse may be yet to come.

“I was just now preparing to do a formaldehyde transfer for this poor soul,” Maltby said when he noticed Byrne’s gaze. “He’s going home on the train to New York tomorrow and the family very much wants him to look as if he has a tan when he arrives.”

Faustus paid no attention and moved directly to the far table, where a corpse was wrapped in a simple wool blanket.

“I, uh, was reluctant, sir to begin the process of embalming on this gentleman, though,” Maltby said, quickening his own pace to catch up with Faustus before he began uncovering the body. “I mean, since no relative or representative has claimed the deceased…”

“Yes, why waste the expensive arsenic or formaldehyde if you’re only going to dump him into a pauper’s grave,” Faustus said abruptly. “I understand, George.”

Faustus stood at the head of the corpse and waited for Byrne to come alongside. There was a long pause, both men anticipating the possibilities which they had both been dancing around for days.

“Are you prepared for this, Mr. Byrne?” Faustus said quietly.

“Yes.”

Faustus pulled back the blanket and looked down at the burned and partially decomposed face of the corpse. Despite its condition, the look of the body confirmed the rumors of not only the fire, but the identity of the dead.

Byrne’s face was stoic, unwavering. His eyes went first to the head and stayed there, studying, it seemed, the contours of nose and cheekbone and then chin. His brother could lose many things in death—color and flesh and dancing eyes and muscle mass—but not that chin. It had always been out there, up and defiant when he had to be, turned just so to the right when he was pretending to ponder a trade or study a situation, tucked and careful when he was in a fight. Danny’s eyes were closed, whether by death or by the coroner, and Byrne was relieved not to have to see their blueness, or the opposite, an unseeing lack of color and light.

Faustus watched as Byrne’s own hand carefully reached out to place just his fingertips on the corpse’s wrist. On Byrne’s face, a single tear rolled down his left cheek.

After allowing the moment to pass, Faustus leaned in to the body and carefully examined it from the face down. He was careful not to touch anything, in deference to Byrne, whose reaction had confirmed what Faustus had been surmising all along. When it seemed obvious that Byrne would hold back any more show of emotion, Faustus shifted into professional mode.

“You have done some work here, George,” Faustus said and Maltby stepped closer.

“No sir, not really. I did tap the internal organs to keep them from bloating, but certainly no cosmetic work and an extensive work it certainly would be if his family did indeed contact me and requested some form of restoration…”

“Ah, but George,” Faustus said. “Here at the throat it appears you’ve done some stitching and a bit of cover with, what is that, clay?”

There was silence from the mortician. Faustus turned and picked up a steel probe from the tray behind him and then pointed at a circular area of the corpse’s throat that was obviously a different color from the pale flesh. Faustus poked at the area and in so doing uncovered a series of white stitches that had been used to close a hole.

“Oh, yes. Well, it was a nasty-looking wound and seemed quite inappropriate to leave open,” Maltby started, but Faustus looked up and held the undertaker’s eyes. “Getting squeamish in your old age, George? I somehow find that hard to believe.”

Faustus turned the body’s head to the side with some difficulty against the rigor and examined the back of the neck.

“I see no one had to repair an exit wound. Does that mean, George, that you found the bullet that entered this man’s throat? Lodged perhaps in the cervical vertebra of the spinal column?”

“Well, certainly not, Mr. Faustus. That would not be of my purview,” said Maltby, who was now sweating despite the coolness of the room. “If such a thing was discovered it would have been by Dr. Lansing who was, as I said, contacted by the sheriff to do an autopsy of the victim.”

Faustus ignored the undertaker and was examining the body’s torso.

“And as for the knife wound that was originally given as cause of death,” he said, now to no one in particular, “I see no indications here of such a wound nor an attempt to cover it up if there had been one. Can you help me out with that, sir?”

Maltby had obviously had enough. He stepped to the table, took hold of the blanket and pulled it up over the corpse. Despite his profession—and one would think an innate sense for such things—the undertaker had not picked up on the slight show of grief and emotion on Byrne’s face.

“Mr. Faustus,” he said. “I don’t see how this serves a scientific purpose and really I must ask that this line of questioning be directed to the sheriff or Dr. Lansing as I do not find them appropriate here, sir, with all due respect.”

The undertaker had taken a defensive stance, arms now folded over his chest and standing in front of the corpse as if now he was willing to defend it.

“That’s fine, George. Really,” said Faustus, gathering his cane and hat. “I certainly didn’t mean to upset you, sir. We’ll be on our way.”

Byrne showed no unwillingness to follow, but as they were making their way through the curtain and out of the shop the undertaker shuffled behind them. “And excuse me, sir,” he said to Byrne. “I didn’t get your name or title, sir?”

Byrne was about to answer when Faustus cut him off.

“He didn’t give it, George.”