Free The Styx by Jonathon King Page A

the elderly man did not miss a beat.
    “Amadeus Faustus,” he said, extending his gloved hand. Byrne shook it. “She was dedicated on Friday, September 26, 1873,” Faustus continued. “The eighty-seventh anniversary of the independence of The Grand Lodge of Free and Accepted Masons of Pennsylvania.”
    This time Byrne looked directly in the man’s light gray eyes, holding them. Was this the pitch of recruitment that Harris had warned him against?
    “Thank you, sir. I will not forget,” he said.
    Faustus did not disengage his look. He reached into his vest pocket.
    “I have no doubt of that, young man,” he said and flipped a large coin into the air in Byrne’s direction. Byrne snatched the object with a movement and speed like that of a snake strike. His reaction was habit, formed from hours of practice at a game he and Danny had perfected. Since they’d been kids on the street they’d passed idle time by positioning three coins on their forearms and then in a motion tossed all three into the air in front of them. The goal was to snatch all three out of the air, individually with separate strikes of the hand, palm down, before the last coin touched the ground. They’d been working on four coins when Danny left New York.
    Byrne turned the coin in his hand and slipped it into his pocket.
    “Not going to bite it to test its quality?” Faustus said, passing him in the direction of the entryway to the Temple.
    “No sir,” Byrne said. “That would be crass.” He heard a sharp whistle from the direction of number 90 and hustled back to Harris’ side.
    “Mr. Flagler will need you to escort him to a business meeting, lad, while I accompany the missus to Wanamaker’s,” Harris said. They squared their shoulders in the direction of the departing Faustus, watching after him. Byrne showed the detective the coin the old man had tossed to him.
    “I don’t recognize it,” Byrne said. “Worth anything?”
    Harris looked at the markings on the metal and laughed.
    “Not a penny,” he said. “It’s an old Confederate fifty-cent piece re-strike, lad. Not worth the metal it’s stamped on. Useless, just like the man who gave it to ye.”

C HAPTER 6
    B Y mid morning there were more white people in the Styx than had ever set foot there at one time.
    Mr. Wayne T. Pearson, the manager of The Poinciana and the Breakers, had arrived with his assistant. At first he’d simply been riled by the lack of a consistent staff at the hotels as the Negro workers had begun taking turns surveying their burned homes and sifting through the ashes for anything they could salvage. But when reports that the body of a man, a white man, had been found in the debris, Pearson was compelled to investigate. The fire had now become an urgent matter of rumor control.
    Since it was his wagon being used to transport the black workers, Mr. Carroll, the head liveryman, was also there. Thorn Martin had relayed to him word of the white man’s body, and that news, as well as blatant curiosity, had pulled him to the place as well. And then there was Miss McAdams, who had not left Ida May Fleury’s side.
    When Mr. Pearson arrived, the rest of the group was still standing near the rear of Shantice Carver’s burned out shack, and they parted as if his substantial chin were the prow of boat.
    Pearson did not say a word, only reading the eyes of the gathered people who glanced back at a flame-darkened lean-to. It was indication enough where the focus of the day lay. He stepped beyond the gathering and looked down on the corpse of the dead man. The body was stretched out on a platform of wood and protected to a degree by the lean-to roof that had obviously been used to store kindling and firewood. Pearson surprised the onlookers by going down on his haunches to get a better view. His assistant initially tried to follow suit but blanched at something—the look of the dead man’s partially seared face or maybe the smell of burned flesh—and quickly