The Styx (41 page)
It would be his final day of work. He had already tendered a resignation and would be accompanying his brother’s body on a train later in the week. He watched the McAdamses, Birches, et al, boarding for their trip back home.
If a warrant had ever been issued for the arrest of Mrs. Birch, there was no one available or willing to present it. Rumor had it that Sheriff Cox had not been seen since Judge Born left him stammering in the street after the recovery of Byrne’s watch.
Yet Mr. Flagler, accompanied as always by his entourage, walked imperiously from the hotel. At exactly nine-fifteen, after assisting his wife, he climbed aboard number 90. If he took note of Byrne, he did not let on. Byrne had no doubt that such a man would have been fully informed of the accusations against his inner circle and his guests. But he was a man who built things. The unraveling of human beings, their ethics, their motivations and their morality, were but the detritus left in the wake of his progress.
Mr. McAdams followed in Flagler’s steps, his head held high and extending handshakes to those seeing off the travelers with manners as cordial and confident as always. He did not notice Byrne until his daughter veered away from his side and headed in the direction of the Pinkerton.
Byrne stood his ground when Marjory approached, her green eyes holding his, any shame buried, if it indeed ever existed.
“I’m off for the city, then, Michael,” she said as if leaving a mate at summer camp. He kept all emotion out of his face.
“Do you have the deed to the former Styx land with you?” he said. It was the first time he’d seen her stumble.
“I have no idea what…”
“Kiss my Irish ass,” Byrne said. “You’ve got Danny’s valise and the papers to the property. Did he sign them before you got to the meeting or did you hold the pen in his dead hand to make his mark?”
Marjory McAdams stood silent, gathering herself, perfecting her words before she spoke. Byrne took it as a victory, but only for a few seconds.
“You have no idea, Michael, how it is to live in second place behind men who become rich and richer off your expertise and off your talent,” she said.
“True,” Byrne said and nothing more. Let them talk, just like on the streets.
“I’m sorry for the demise of your brother. He was actually a charming man in his own way.”
She raised her chin even higher.
“He was not as demure as you when it came to lovemaking, and his business acumen was impressively aggressive, though in many ways flawed.”
Byrne could imagine his brother in the same circumstance as he, standing naked with Marjory in the cool Atlantic. Danny would have taken what he wanted from this she-devil. She could delude herself all she wanted.
“So you screwed him and then tried to screw him,” he said, matching her crudeness.
“My father knew Daniel was shopping the binder to the Styx land to the highest bidder. He knew the value. He had helped Mr. Flagler acquire most of this land himself.”
They always have to justify when they’re caught, Byrne thought, no different than any pimp, scofflaw or pickpocket on Broadway.
“Others found out about the deal,” she said. “That ass Pearson, snooping through the telegrams. Then Birch wanted his share for lending my father the money to pay your brother’s price for the binder. When I saw Roseann Birch heading into the Styx that night I knew they were going to double cross us. I was supposed to meet Daniel myself an hour later when the fair across the lake was in full swing.”
“But Mrs. Birch was only avenging a stain to her honor,” Byrne said.
Marjory lowered her eyes. “And so she did. Daniel was dead when I followed her into the woods that night. I heard the gunshot. I saw her run. She did not see me.”
“But you saw Danny’s body.”
“Yes.”
“And his valise?”
“It was just laying there. I found it,” she said, a schoolgirl claiming finder’s keepers.
“So you had it all. And paid nothing for it,” Byrne said. “Why set the fire?”
“I pulled his body under the shed.” She looked past Byrne’s shoulder, seeing something in the night. “I smashed my lantern against the wood frame. I was only trying to burn away the signs of what had occurred, for everyone’s sake, even the Birches. But the kerosene, it just, just…I never meant to destroy people’s homes.”
A tear had actually begun to form in her eyes. An actress to the end.
“Bullshit,” Byrne said. “Your interest in Shantice Carver was only to make sure she hadn’t seen you out there once you’d stolen the valise. You tried to get her away before she could talk and then weaseled your way between her and anyone who might interrogate her. You were protecting your own ass.”
“I was protecting my father!” she said, raising her voice and letting in perhaps the first true emotion that he’d seen in her. “He needs someone to protect him, he needs a strong woman to watch out for him. But you wouldn’t understand such a thing, Mr. Pinkerton! You wouldn’t understand what families have to do for each other.”
Byrne watched her eyes, wet and angry and so naïve about the world of people who lived outside of her own sphere.
“Everyone has a father,” he said. “And when I get back to New York, yours will help me find mine, dead or alive. Your money, the Birch’s money and influence, will help me whenever I need it. I’ll rattle your skeletons until I’m satisfied that my family is reunited, even if it’s in death. That is what happens when you do business with the devil.”
When she looked into Byrne’s face she saw something that scared her, the young woman who was never scared of anything.
“And remember, ma’am, my brother was a very sound and able man. Be sure you’re not carrying part of my own family with you back to New York.”
L
ATE
season. One could feel it in the rising humidity, the warmer nighttime temperatures, the bundles of cloud in the west. In the afternoon water vapor would rise from the heating soup of the Everglades until the clouds turned dirty and dark and could hold no more. As they moved east, lured by the cooler air over the ocean, the afternoon showers would come.
Today there was a gathering at the beach; the allure was a unique baseball competition. Carlo Santos, it was said, had been cajoled to challenge the mighty Pittsburgh Pirate slugger John Peter Wagner—in Florida to convalesce a leg injury at midseason—to a test of batting prowess and strength. Such a showdown had never occurred before, and there were more than a few discussions of the properness of pitting a white slugger against a Negro in such an endeavor. But harkening back to the myopic distinction of Santos’s Cuban Yankees, it was pointed out that a Latin versus a white was not unduly provocative.
So it was that Santos and Wagner were standing bat to bat on the Palm Beach Island beach. The rules had been set: each man would face a pitcher who stood with his back to the ocean and delivered strikes to the batters over a home plate set in the sand. Each batter would receive ten pitches and have the chance to blast the ball into the sea. A set of judges standing out on the wharf would determine whose ball splashed down farthest out. Best out of ten would win.
The new manager of the Poinciana was posing as umpire and score keeper, the former manager having boarded a train for the north less than a week after both the Birches and the McAdamses had left the island. Judge John Born had posted a statement that “all men are equal under the law of the combined United States of America and if a crime has indeed been committed someone will eventually have to answer for said crimes.”
Those with money had gone north to their respective homes in New York to await subpoenas that would never come. Michael Byrne had taken his brother’s body back to the city and buried him next to his mother. All charges were dropped against Shantice Carver, but she was surreptitiously fired and moved back to be with her people in North Carolina.
On this day a home run derby was in progress. Women guests from the Breakers were carrying their parasols, and the men were still in their luncheon attire with boaters shading their eyes as they followed the long arc of baseballs as they catapulted off the ash wood of the hitters’ bats, rose into the cerulean sky and then fell to splash without a sound in the distance. A white flag would be raised from the pier if Wagner’s shot was longer, a black flag for Santos. Nearly everyone, including the daily staff at the Breakers, was in attendance. One spectator in particular was missing.
“Where Mizz Ida?” asked one of the laundry women who had gathered under the pier in the shadows.
“She said somethin’ bout getting somethin’ done down in the basement,” said the one next to her. A black flag went up, a tally changed, and Santos took the lead six to four.
“I cain’t believe she would miss her boy playin’ this out,” said one of the housekeepers.
“No, no. Here she come now,” said the first one.
The maids made a prime spot for Ida May to stand. Her work dress was smeared with some kind of heavy dust and there was even a smudge of ash on her face, unusual for a woman known for her fastidiousness. She greeted the others, set her feet in the sand and then looked out at Santos, who was taking a few warm-up swings while Wagner was at bat. He made eye contact with Miss Fluery and a silent message was passed.
The patrons on the beach were all focused on Wagner, following the parabola as the professional put his tenth ball in the Atlantic at a distance yet unmet in the contest.
Carlos Santos didn’t watch his opponent’s hit, but concentrated instead on the sky behind them. He detected a curling spiral of black smoke rising directly above the beachfront hotel. A slight smile played at the corners of his mouth. When he approached the makeshift plate, Ida May carried a look of glowing grace as she watched her Santos. One of her underlings turned to another and whispered: “Ain’t like he’s the holy spirit or sumthin’.” The woman next to her cut her eyes to Mizz Fleury’s face, knowing her colleagues’ subject without asking.
“She seein’ some kind of glory,” she whispered back.
At the plate Santos dug his back foot into the sand and cocked his bat. He took one last look at smoke now pouring out of the dormered windows at the rooftop of the Breakers and then faced the pitcher. The ball cruised in at a nice level speed, perfect for creating a symbiotic energy between the now powerfully turning bat and the approaching orb. The shattering sound of bursting glass giving way to a ballooning internal heat and that of hard ash on a hard, leather wrapped baseball split their respective air simultaneously.
The patrons watched Santos’ ball make a silent plop in the water, an obvious ten yards past Wagner’s last attempt. Game over. Applause fluttered the beachfront air.
Ida May Fluery clapped too. Her adroit nose began to fill with the smell of dry plank wood charring in fire behind her. She did not see when the crowd’s attention left the ballplayers, but their expressions of mild entertainment turned to surprise and excitement when they noticed the smoke and tongues of fire eating the luxurious Palm Beach Breakers. Ida May Fleury instead watched her boy come to accept a kiss of congratulations on his sweaty cheek. She knew by the rustle of women’s skirts and the unaccustomed yelps of rich men’s voices that, for one day at least, Eden was theirs.
On a clear and sunny day in 1903, the Breakers Hotel in Palm Beach burned to the ground. Hundreds of wealthy vacationers were forced out and lost their possessions to the fast moving flames. Since it was near the end of the tourist season, many simply returned to their true homes in the north.
Less than a year later, Henry Flagler had rebuilt the hotel and the soon-to-be-dubbed “snowbirds” returned the next winter. On February 1, 1904, the beachside hotel reopened to universal acclaim.
END
Jonathon King is the Edgar Award–winning author of the Max Freeman mystery series, which is set in south Florida, as well as a thriller and a historical novel.
Born in Lansing, Michigan, in the 1950s, King worked as a police and court reporter for twenty-four years, first in Philadelphia until the mid-1980s and then in Fort Lauderdale. His time at the
Philadelphia Daily News
and Fort Lauderdale’s
South Florida Sun-Sentinel
greatly influenced the creation of Max Freeman, a hardened former Philadelphia police officer who relocates to south Florida to escape his dark past. King began writing novels in 2000, when he used all the vacation days he accrued as a reporter to spend two months alone in a North Carolina cabin. During this time, he wrote
The Blue Edge of Midnight
(2002), the first title in the Max Freeman series. The novel became a national bestseller and won the Edgar Award for Best First Mystery Novel by an American Author.
A Visible Darkness
(2004), the series’ second installment, highlights Max’s mission to identify a dark serial killer stalking an impoverished community.
Shadow Men
(2004), the third in the series, revolves around Max’s investigation of an eighty-year-old triple homicide, and
A Killing Night
(2005) tells the story of a murder investigation in which the prime suspect is Max’s former mentor. After finishing
A Killing Night
, his fourth book, King left journalism to become a full-time novelist.