Read Online The Styx by Jonathon King - Free Book Online

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,