The Styx by Jonathon King Read Free Book Online

else to search for now, and a train to Florida was a portal to that quest. As he walked north the smell of the East River blew in, an air salty and fresh mixed with the refuse and excrement piled along its banks. He took out his own cheap watch and checked the time: seven fifteen. The sidewalks around him were already starting to busy up with pedestrians, their nostrils blowing with steam as they made their way through still freezing temperatures. They were mostly laborers at this time of day, men in the trade uniforms of construction and iron workers and steamfitters moving west as he was now along Forty-second Street. Within two blocks he could see the enormous train shed of the new Grand Central Station rising up at Lexington Avenue. The glass and steel construction dwarfed everything around it, and it was not yet finished. Already Byrne could hear the clanging echoes of iron against iron, the dragging friction of hard stone being moved. He went through the instructions in his head: meet with Pinkerton detective Shawn Harris on lower track three aboard the southbound train to Washington D.C.
    Byrne had worked the station as a cop, when it was in different stages of construction, but when he entered the enormous waiting area this morning and looked out from the staircase it was still bewildering in size and scope. Sixteen thousand square feet of chiseled and carved stone and marble, and across the way a cast-iron eagle with a wingspan that had to be the equal of any wagon on the street outside. Byrne stood a full five minutes, staring at the movement of people below, appearing in miniature like insects scurrying to assignments unknown. Unconsciously, he reached inside his coat and touched the shaft of his baton. He could not help but think of himself as like them, impotent BBs in a boxcar, as he moved down to join them.
    At an information kiosk he was directed to the southbound Hudson River Railroad line below. In the bowels of the building the noise created by the massive steam engines and their giant wheels screeching along steel rails was an assault on the ears and caused Byrne to narrow his eyes in a grimace. Making his way in the directions given, he had to search through clouds of smoke and steam to find the numbered markers and letterings. He stopped a uniformed railway worker and shouted in his ear: “The Flagler departure?”
    In response he got a finger wagged in a northerly direction, and of the response shouted back, the words “number ninety” was all he could make out. With his shoulders hunched as if to shield his chest from the onslaught, Byrne made his way down the platform, dodging the wheeled wooden carts of baggage handlers and the occasional geyser of steam spurting from the undercarriage of the train until his attention was snatched by a handsome forest-green railcar with the gold gilded lettering “90” expressed on its façade. He took a step back to take in the entire car. Above the row of windows the name Florida East Coast Railway flickered in the same gold lettering. It was Flagler’s private rail car. Since he couldn’t determine by sight which end of the train car held the back door he approached the most northern end, putting one foot onto the iron stair step. When he stood up, his nose met the knee caps of a large man balefully staring down into his face.
    “My name is Shawn Harris,” the man said. “And you had best be one Michael Byrne, lad. Or your ass is mine.”
    After he had assured the estimable Mr. Harris that he was indeed Michael Byrne, he was allowed to board the train “after you wipe the grime and shite from those company shoes, m’boy. We don’t allow that part of New York City to travel aboard Mr. Flagler’s railroad.”
    Once his soles were passable, Byrne climbed up the wrought iron stair and joined Mr. Harris inside the car. The warmth was the first of several surprises Byrne encountered as the two men entered.
    “This, lad, is number 90,” Harris said with a