The Styx (37 page)
“But I plan to speak with Mrs. Birch tomorrow to see if she has any of her own insights on the events described by Mizz Carver. And in addition, your information about your brother’s new affinity for carrying his binder case was also confirmed by our client. She saw him with it on the night in question. So I shall also be visiting the mortician for another round of questions about its disappearance.” Faustus stood. “For now I suggest you get some rest. A bullet wound can be quite debilitating if not given the time to heal and fight off infection.”
With that the old Mason left the room, and Byrne soon fell into a fitful sleep with the images of gators and Tammany and a naked Marjory McAdams swimming through his head.
T
HIS
time Byrne woke with the sound of clinking glass in his ears, the smell of stale beer and cigar smoke and hot cooking oil. A sudden anxiety came into his head—was he in New York, in the trash alley behind McSorely’s? When he felt for the curb, he heard a moan. He was back in his mother’s apartment, she was dying in pain, her face ashen, a tear glistening down a grayed cheek. He forced his eyes open, determined to help her. The wound at his side bit him hard and the moan came again, from his own mouth.
Reality. I was shot yesterday. I’m in Florida, in the back room of a tavern and there are slats of sunshine coming in low through the window, which means it’s morning. Faustus is supposed to be here. We need to find out what Mrs. Birch knows. And shit, I was shot yesterday.
He swung his feet off the cot, sat upright and probed at the bandage Faustus had applied the night before. It was in place and not spotted on the outside, a good sign even though it still hurt like hell when he moved. Carefully, he pulled on a pair of clean pants and a cotton shirt that had been placed at the foot of the cot, his own ruined clothing gone from sight. When he felt he could stand, he did, while a bright light pulsed behind his eyes causing a bit of a swoon. He refused to go down. A minute, maybe two, and the dizziness passed. He moved to the door that opened to the barroom and went on through.
“Well, top o’ the day, Mr. Byrne,” said the woman at the bar, who was busy stocking beer mugs and bottles and any other thing that could create noises meant to penetrate a man’s brain.
“Many a man has stumbled through that door in the mornin’, sir, but you’d rank right up with the best of them for lookin’ like an overrun dog.”
“Aye, and to you,” Byrne said, making his way to a stool at the rail and finding purchase with one haunch to steady himself.
Without comment the barkeep poured him an ale from a tapped keg and placed the mug and a hard’boiled egg in front him.
“Patti Graham’s the name,” she said, extending her hand. “This here works for hangovers, sir, so it can’t be any harm to a gunshot wound neither.”
Byrne shook the woman’s fingers, and then sipped at the beer, a blessing in his throat. He took another.
“Heaven,” he whispered.
“That’s what they all say,” the bartender said, pushing a lock of her blonde hair out of the way. “Hell, I bet Mr. Faustus last night that a bullet through the gizzard wouldn’t put a good man down any more than a feisty night on the town.
“He said, Mr. Faustus that is, that he would be in this mornin’ so take yer time, sir. That egg’ll start you back to healin’, guaranteed.”
With the help of a fingerbowl full of shaved salt, Byrne had finished the first egg and was onto another by the time Faustus arrived.
“Now isn’t that a fine sight to see? Belly up to the bar the very day after cheating the dark angel of death,” he said.
“Maybe there’s just magic in that Johnson & Johnson,” Byrne said, feeling better with his second mug of beer.
“I see the clean clothes fit,” Faustus said. “You can wash up out back next to the privy where there’s a barrel of clean rain water. And since you’re in such good shape, taking refreshment and all, I believe I’ll be off to the undertakers and a possible visit with one Mrs. Birch on the island.”
Byrne slipped off the stool, keeping the look of pain out of his face.
“Give me ten minutes then and I’ll be right with you.”
Faustus exchanged glances with the bartender, who only shrugged her shoulders.
“Your call, son,” he said, slipping up onto Byrne’s empty stool, and ordering a morning beer for himself.
Faustus and a limping Byrne were making their way down Clematis Street when they saw Maltby the mortician heading toward them.
“Well fancy that, I was just now heading to see you, Mr. Maltby,” Faustus said. Maltby was less enthusiastic than when they’d first visited him and pointed out the discrepancies in Danny Byrne’s autopsy.
“Yes, well gentlemen, I am on my way to the island on an urgent matter.”
“Oh my,” Faustus said. “I do hope one of our guests has not met an untimely death.”
“No, sir. There’s been an accident and I’m told a housemaid has fallen to her death down an elevator shaft.”
“Really?” Faustus said. “And did they inform you of this woman’s name?”
“Abigail Morrisette was the name they gave,” Maltby said, information that, considering the station of the victim, seemed irrelevant. “She was a Negro woman who was employed there.”
At the sound of the name, Byrne turned to look out over the lake to the Poinciana. Abby, he thought. Another witness dead? Had she known his brother too?
“Well then, in that case,” Faustus said, “I do believe we’re heading in the same direction. May we accompany you, sir?”
The undertaker was too flummoxed to object. All three men walked down to the nearby docks and boarded the ferry boat to the hotel. The group remained relatively silent on the short trip across the lake. Maltby was no doubt trying to figure out the angles; why would Faustus be interested in yet another death on the island? And would he again be asked to quash any questions over the matter. These things were best taken care of quietly.
Faustus and Byrne were turning questions of their own. What had Abby seen the night of the fire, and what did she see transpire between Danny Byrne and Mrs. Birch? Was it something that would have been worth killing her for?
When the ferry tied up at the dock on Palm Beach, Faustus and Maltby were the first ones off. Byrne lagged behind, leaning into his wound.
“Please, you two go ahead. There is a ride here for me,” Byrne said nodding to the so-called Afromobile and its stoic driver parked at the side. “I’ll follow when I catch my breath.”
Faustus gave him a silent look: I know where you’re going and be damned careful, it said.
At the concierge desk of the Royal Poinciana, Maltby’s papers, written on Dade County Sheriff’s stationary and authorizing him to remove the body of the victim, got them an escort to the basement of the northern wing of the hotel. Along the way Faustus, with an air of officialdom, asked questions of the concierge.
“Can you tell us, sir, when this unfortunate accident occurred?”
“Very early this morning, I’m afraid. Perhaps five or six.”
“You’re not sure of the exact time?”
“There were few people up at that hour other than early staff members, and as far as we know there were no reports of any sort of, well, screaming.”
“Then who discovered the body?”
“I believe it came to our attention through one of the wait staff. He had encountered difficulty in getting the freight elevator to work for a delivery on the fifth floor, and when one of our maintenance men arrived to rectify the problem, well, there she was.”
“I see,” said Faustus. Maltby remained silent. “And who, may I inquirer, identified the unfortunate woman?”
“There was some difficulty at first,” the concierge said. “There are so many housemaids and linen staff and such, and they all look the same.”
Faustus raised an eyebrow in disdain, but the look was lost on the concierge. “I believe the original waiter was brought into the shaft and recognized her as a Miss Abigail Morrisette. Her records indicated that she was assigned to the Birch family, one of our more prominent seasonal guests. Mrs. Birch is quite upset.”
It was the first time that the concierge gave any indication of empathy over the situation.
The men followed the concierge to the basement.
In the tight space, Faustus noted the presence of electrical wiring running under the floorboard above his head. The availability of electrical service inside of homes and structures was inconceivable even five years ago in the South, he knew, and would have been only a dream in frontier Florida before the arrival of Mr. Flagler. The group moved to a now open service door that led to the very bottom of the elevator shaft,
On the bare floor lay the crumpled body of a young Negro woman, perhaps in her early twenties, dressed in the typical maid’s uniform of the day. Her face covered with what appeared to be a dinner table napkin. She could have been sleeping there but for the impossible angle of her right leg, which was folded like a hanger, the knee bent in the opposite direction from what would be normal. Her left forearm was similarly broken, snapped at a midway point between the wrist and the elbow, forming a grotesque third bend in the arm.
Faustus crouched at the woman’s head and removed the napkin. Abigail Morrisette’s neck was obviously broken and a certain amount of rigor mortis had already set in. Pulled by gravity, the blood had drained from her face, already seeking the lowest parts of her body.
“That’s enough for me.” Maltby was watching over Faustus’ shoulder. He turned to the concierge, who was looking up into the rising shaft, avoiding the two men’s inspection. “I will require a thick blanket and two men with strong backs to remove the body to the mainland.”
The concierge nodded. “Certainly. The sooner the better. We must get the elevator back in service before the luncheon rush.”
But Faustus did not stand. Instead he took Abigail Morrisette’s head in his hands and moved his fingers over her scalp, finding flat contusions from blunt trauma, but no unusual shapes such as the use of a blade or an obvious dent in the bone that some hand-held object might cause.
“Satisfied, Mr. Faustus?” Maltby asked.
Faustus raised one finger to him and took the woman’s right hand in his own, straightened her frozen fingers and inspected her fingernails. On more than one occasion during the war he had been witness to the aftermath of rapes and other degradations visited on women of the South by Yankee soldiers. And although proof was rarely used to any legal remedy, there were times when a family took some comfort when Faustus was able to tell them that their daughter fought and scratched against such attacks. Removing a pen knife from his pocket, Faustus scraped under the dead woman’s nails and looked closely at what he could only speculate might be a trace of powdered flesh.
He asked Maltby to assist him in turning the body over. The undertaker gave Faustus an angry look, but bent to help. Faustus carefully looked for obvious wounds or blood on the woman’s clothing, but found nothing. But gripped in her left hand he discovered a matted and crushed wad of feather. Faustus was a student of the unique birds of Florida and was thus an opponent of the fashion of using their plumes to decorate women’s hats. The wad of this feather held the pinkish tinge of the plume of a roseate spoonbill, one of the most uniquely colored wading birds of the state. How a maid would have one held tightly in her dead hand would be a question for another woman.
He stood. “I, sir, will require an introduction to Mrs. Birch.”
The concierge knitted his brow and looked from Maltby to Faustus and then back to Maltby. The undertaker remained unambiguously silent.
“Very well,” the bureaucrat said and then extended his palm toward the service door. “Shall we retreat?”