The Styx (7 page)
Her natural skepticism, born of nearly sixty years of experience, told her this situation was no different. No different, that is, until screams started sounding from the far depths of the Styx.
The horses were the first to hear. The team had just started to pull away with a wagon load of residents when their ears pricked up at the unnatural sound, then their nostrils flared and they balked in their traces.
Miss Ida may have picked it up next and mistook the high, keening noise as some kind of animal cry. But the third wail, closing quickly from the east, caught the attention of everyone at the clearing and all of those in the wagon and they all turned their heads.
“What in Christ’s name now?” said the driver.
In the distance the image of Shantice Carver could be seen stumbling into view, and Miss Ida let a snort escape through her nose. Marjory looked at her in surprise as she had never witnessed a derogatory utterance come from the woman in the two years she’d known her. The young Carver woman was in a half jog, her arms bent at the elbow and hands up in her face as if to cover her eyes from some horrific sight, yet her fingers were splayed enough to allow her to see where it was she was running to. With her arms in such a position, she seemed to toddle more than run and the high-pitched noise coming from her mouth gradually turned from unintelligible screeching to words: “Theysaman, theysaman, theysaman…”
No one moved to meet her, but the anguished cries seemed to pull Marjory out of her initial shock and she alone stepped forward. She realized the distraught figure was certainly more than a girl and from the bouncing of her bosom was more in the line of a young woman. Still, she took the poor thing by the shoulders and allowed her to bury her face into her own neck as if comforting a child.
“It’s OK now, it’s OK.”
Despite the tableau of emotion, those in the wagon were now only mildly interested, as if they had seen such a display before, or had reason not to feel much compassion for this one of their own. But Miss Ida relented and walked over to the embrace between the two women, which had gone on long enough to have become an embarrassment.
“All right, Shantice. All right,” Miss Ida said with a voice not exactly comforting but still understanding of the situation. “It’s a hard time for everyone. What has you so all tore up, girl?”
At the sound of Ida’s voice the woman stepped back away from Marjory and again her fingers went fluttering up into her face.
“Theysadedman, theysadedman, theys…”
“All right, all right, now slow down, woman. Cain’t nobody understand what you’re trying to say with all that screechin’. You take a good long breath now and slow down.” It was obvious that the woman had taken stern orders from Miss Ida enough times in the past to nod her head and immediately start to suck air into her mouth and begin to swallow. Her next words were both several octaves lower and decibels quieter.
“Mizz Ida, ma’am. They is a dead man yonder near my place.”
This time those listening in the wagon began to rise and jump down on the ground. The driver was now too entranced himself to complain though he stayed in his seat.
“All right. All right, Shantice,” Ida repeated. She reached out to take the woman’s shaky hands in her own and covered them as if calming both of their hearts.
“Who is it, Shantice? Tell me who it is that’s dead?”
Now the small group was stone silent, waiting for grief to slap them.
“It’s a stranger, ma’am,” the woman called Shantice said. “I ain’t never seen him before, ma’am, honest to God.”
Ida’s brow furrowed in skepticism, a reaction that caught Marjory by surprise as much as the woman’s plea for believability.
“Now, Shantice, get yourself together, woman. You know every man in the Styx and most every other man on this here island. You think hard who you seen out there,” Ida ordered the woman.
“I ain’t never seen him, ma’am. God’s truth. He’s all burnt up, an he gots money…” At this point the woman’s hands started back to fluttering and her voice began to cry and climb. “He gots money in his mout,” she finally said, her fingertips now dancing near her own lips.
With the new information Ida shook her head with incredulity and started to turn back into the group as if this tale was a child’s exaggeration that went beyond belief at a time already full of unbelievable events.
“An he’s white, Mizz Ida,” Shantice blurted out, her words catching the elderly woman in midstride and freezing everyone within hearing distance. “It’s a dead white man.”
T
HE
train was ready when Flagler was ready.
After a breakfast of hot oatmeal and weak coffee, during which his new supervisor gave him his duties until such time they were out of the city, Michael Byrne was positioned at the head of Flagler’s car number 90 where he was instructed to “stand ready like a Pinkerton man and don’t let anyone approach while Flagler and his wife are boarding.”
With a newly requisitioned knee-length woolen coat, Byrne stood rather comfortable in the cold, his hands clasped behind his back like he’d been taught as a police recruit, only moving up and down the loading platform. No one was within a car’s length of number 90. The other passengers and material being loaded were up the tracks where the less glorious coaches and boxcars were aligned.
Byrne cut his eyes to the north when a contingent finally arrived out of the clouds of steam. Flagler was not difficult to pick out. He was the one in the middle, wearing a dark suit without an overcoat despite the cold. He was of average build—about five-foot seven and a thin one hundred and forty—despite his reputation as a giant of the business world. His most distinguishing feature was his full head of snow-white hair and a thick broom mustache to match. His back was straight, his chin held high, and his gait was best described as leisurely. He moved at a slow pace, though not because of any obvious infirmity. He was simply not a man in a hurry, nor one who needed to be.
Byrne knew little about the man other than he was rumored to be in his late seventies and had long ago become rich as the partner of John D. Rockefeller when the two of them established the Standard Oil Company. His was a station of the upper class that a man like Byrne was well to stand out of the way of and at attention to. Flagler’s world was nothing that a working-class Mick such as he could ever understand, nor would he want to. They’re different, the rich, and so be it.
Walking a half-step behind Flagler was a woman whom Byrne assumed was his wife. He was careful to only glance at her as not to catch her eye, and he noted that just from her profile she looked many years younger than Flagler and was dressed in the fine conservative style of a woman of means. Her skirts were not flowing; her coat was not of ostentatious fur or fabric. Her dark hat was certainly large but plumed with only a small shaft of feathers the kind Byrne had never seen even though he’d stood guard at several dignitary functions or special performances at the Metropolitan Opera.
Following behind the couple was Flagler’s personal valet and a phalanx of business types carrying briefcases. And then the porters wheeling an entire baggage cart loaded with luggage. Harris nodded an unspoken greeting to Flagler and then helped Mrs. Flagler with a hand boarding the step rail. Then the two disappeared into their car. Byrne would barely see even a glimpse of them for the rest of the trip.
He and Harris helped load the baggage, and within ten minutes of Flagler’s arrival, the train whistle ripped through the enclosed space under Grand Central Station and the train pulled out.
Hours later Byrne’s eyes were still watering, and it was from something besides the cold. The train was only minutes out of the rail yards at Jersey City, heading south. There was something foreign in the air that seemed to sear the insides of his lungs when he took deep breaths. He was stationed at a designated spot at the forward door to private car number 90, where Harris had placed him.
“No one goes past you without Mr. Flagler’s personal word,” Harris had instructed. “I’ll be back once we get underway again and take you on a bit of a tour.”
So Byrne stood on the outside platform and found that if he inched his back close to the adjoining car in front, he was able to withstand the cold by hunkering down into the turned up cowl of the coat and burrowing his hands deep in its pockets. The morning’s events—seeing Flagler and his entourage close up, the glimpse of the rich interior of the private train car that he was to guard and the melancholy sight of New York City fading behind them—had spun so quickly in his head he was just now able to use the minutes alone on the platform to assess his decision to take on this assignment.
If he was to be nothing more than a bodyguard for Flagler and a watchman for his rail car then he’d made a mistake. The work that he’d done for Captain Sweeney—putting together the names of certain Tammany bosses and politicians and documenting their travels to and from the opium dens and brothels of the Lower East Side—had come with the promise of a certain career. Sweeney had been impressed by young Byrne’s ability to write, a skill not learned through schooling but from pure memory and copying of words and phrases picked up from newspapers and signage on the streets and the handbills that Danny was sometimes paid to give out. Sweeney had then been shocked further by Byrne’s photographic memory of faces and seemingly flawless ability to attach names to such faces.
The young police officer’s lists and detailed observations had, according to Sweeney, been invaluable in the department’s battle against corruption, but the changes would be slow in coming. At one point, the captain had said it was too dangerous for Byrne to stay in the department. Thus, the Pinkerton offer.
The arrival of Danny’s telegram had been an additional push and had given him this Florida destination and Sweeney encouraged it.
“A perfect solution. Go south into the sun for awhile, Michael,” Sweeney said. “It’ll be like a fine vacation and then you can come back home when things calm down a bit and these bastards from Tammany Hall are out on their arses. Then we’ve got a job waiting for you, son.”
But now he was second-guessing, watching the buildings of Jersey City shrink down with each mile and the landscape becoming greener and more expansive than he’d ever witnessed as a city boy. Florida seemed a foolish dream now. What if he couldn’t find his brother? What the hell would he do in the sun anyway? Only rich New Yorkers or people with tuberculosis went to Florida seeking a place to stay warm and breathe more easily. As if the thought alone caused it, Byrne bent over in a coughing fit, and as if on cue Harris nearly knocked him overboard coming through the door to the other cars.
“Don’t be afraid of it, lad,” Harris said, again sporting the smile that said, I know what you don’t know. “It’s the air, son. Your city lungs’ll have to get used to it.”
Byrne straightened and spat down onto the rail bed rushing by below.
“Why,” he said, wiping his mouth with the back of his sleeve. “What’s in the air?”
“Nothing,” Harris said, now starting to laugh. “There’s nothing in it but clear, clean air the likes of which you haven’t taken a breath of since you were born in some Irish tenement what with the soot and smoke and rubbish stink of place.
“It’s like a taste of pure water that you pour into your mouth for the first time. It’s so different your body isn’t ready for it. Keep breathin’, boy. It’s good for you.”
Byrne took a shorter breath, but his eyes were on Harris, and the burn of his deprecating tone was running up into his ears.
“Your name isn’t Harris is it?” he finally said, his eyes holding the big man’s.
The older detective lost his smile.
“It was O’Hara when my father and two sisters got to New York in 1860, lad. The old man figured it was better changed unless you wanted to starve with the rest of the Irish. You might do well to consider it, Byrne,” Harris said. “Now, let’s take a walk.”
Harris led the way, passing slowly through the first passenger car, touching the top corners of each seat as he passed. The gesture was made not to collect his balance—his experience of walking through the rolling train was like that of a seaman and he rarely wavered—but to signify some sense of ownership to the riders he seemed to study one at a time.