The woman took a meek step backward.
The lump moved.
The woman seized up. She wanted to run, but her legs wouldn’t respond.
The lump moved some more, and a head of mussed hair popped out of the blankets.
“Are we there yet?”
The woman stood paralyzed.
“Are we there yet? Key West?”
The woman finally managed a light, trembling voice. “Key…West?…”
“Key West,” repeated the man. “This is my big day. The biggest day of my life.”
There was a pause. The woman’s voice quivered again. “Uh…what day is that?”
“January twenty-second!”
The woman looked through the windows at the beautiful summer day outside. “January?”
“Of course,” said the man, “1912.”
No reply.
“If we’re not there yet, I could use some more sleep.”
“We’re…uh, not there yet.”
“Good,” said the man, rolling over and covering his head with the blanket.
Two officers in a squad car were en route to a report of golf rage at a local country club when they received the intruder call from the Flagler Museum and made a squealing U-turn. The officers reached the museum’s south lawn and found a garden hose stretching across the grass to the side of the train car. They drew service pistols and quietly climbed up the observation platform. As they filed down the car’s tight hallway, they heard water running. Then singing. The first officer reached the door of the shower and peeked in. The curtain came up to the shoulders of the intruder. His eyes were closed as he rubbed shampoo into his scalp.
“Everybody’s doooo-in’ a brand new dance, now!…”
The officers looked at each other.
The intruder opened his eyes. “Oh, my VIP escorts. Be with you in a minute.”
“Henry Morrison Flagler was born of humble roots in 1830 and, with John D. Rockefeller, founded the Standard Oil Company. By the time he retired at the relatively young age of fifty-three, profits and interest were building up in his bank accounts faster than any human could spend. Some say what Flagler did next was out of guilt from the brutal business practices and obscene profits of his oil company. Others say the man was like one of those ants that spend all day lifting ten times their own weight, and Henry had no choice but to build, build, build!—”
“Objection!” said the prosecutor, jumping to his feet in courtroom 3C, Palm Beach Judicial Circuit.
“What grounds?” asked the judge.
“Your Honor, this is a simple trespassing case. A bum sleeping in a train car at a museum. The court has already been overly generous letting this man represent himself, but now he’s abusing the privilege and turning the proceedings into an utter travesty.”
The judge turned to Serge at the defense table. “What do you have to say?”
“The historical underpinnings of this case go directly to my motivation. I must be given wide latitude to establish my state of mind in order to defend myself against these unfair but highly imaginative charges.”
“Your Honor,” interrupted the prosecutor. “It’s clear the defendant needs psychiatric attention. He’s already wasted enough of the people’s time and resources.”
The judge looked at the defendant. “Tell me, are you Henry Flagler?”
“Of course not,” said the defendant. “That would be crazy.”
“What’s your name?”
“Serge. Serge Storms.”
“I’m going to allow it,” the judge told the prosecutor. “After hearing your legal arguments for the last few years, I find the change of pace rather refreshing.”
The prosecutor sat down and fumed. The judge faced the defendant again and got comfortable in his big chair. “You may continue.”
“Thank you, Your Honor. Now where was I? Oh, yeah. Henry looked south and saw Florida, an empty canvas. The Spanish, French and English had been at work on the place for three centuries with nothing to show. The massive St. Johns River, just below Jacksonville, was the natural barrier preventing serious progress. The first crucial thing Flagler did was bridge that gorge. It changed the whole ball game. He began laying train tracks like nobody’s business and built a string of luxury hotels down the coast. Northerners came in droves. By 1904, Flagler’s railroad ran all the way to Homestead, south of Miami, the very bottom of Florida. Most people would have stopped. But did Flagler?”
Serge turned toward the prosecutor’s table. “Did he?”
The judge was grinning now. He looked at the prosecutor. “Well, did he?”
The prosecutor rolled his eyes. “I’m sure he didn’t.”
“That’s right!” said Serge, slapping the defense table. “With the Spanish-American War just over, that freed up the sugar and pineapple crops in Cuba. Flagler could load it all on ships and sail to Key West. If only he had a train station there. But surely a railroad couldn’t be built a hundred miles out to sea, facing the open ocean and hurricanes, right?” Serge slapped the table again. “Wrong! Flagler heard of a man named J. C. Meredith, who was doing new things with reinforced concrete down in Mexico, and brought him in on the project. Ten thousand workers came south. The cost blew the mind. This was something on the level of the pyramids, the Manhattan Project and the moon program. But no government was behind it — just one man. They said it couldn’t be done. Flagler’s Folly, they called it. And it looked like they were right.” Serge began pacing and gesturing. “All types of setbacks and geological barriers — they had to invent new kinds of engineering on the spot. Flagler himself was falling apart, almost blind, a year to live, tops. Didn’t look good. But on January twenty-second, 1912, The Extension Special, pulling Flagler’s private train car, rolled into Key West as bands played and schoolchildren cheered and threw roses on the tracks.”
Serge looked around the courtroom and dabbed his eyes with a handkerchief. “As he pulled into the station, Flagler said, ‘I can hear the children, but I cannot see them.’” Serge sat down at the defense table, buried his face in his arms and began sobbing.
The judge cleared his throat. “What does the court psychiatrist have to say?”
“Your Honor, the defendant obviously needs treatment. He’s on a variety of medications, and when he takes them, he’s fine. But when he stops, he has episodes, like the other day at the museum.”
“Is he dangerous?”
“Only to himself. There’s nothing violent in his record…”
“Nothing yet,” interrupted the prosecutor.
“…Only a string of night burglaries,” continued the psychiatrist. “Cypress Gardens, Trapper Nelson’s Pioneer Home, the Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings Estate.”
“What does he do? Take stuff?”
“He leaves stuff.”
“Come again?”
“He leaves stuff.”
“Like what?”
“Little historic artifacts and souvenirs he’s collected over the years. He finds them at swap meets or on the Internet or even with a metal detector,” said the psychiatrist. “He told me he wants to make sure they’re preserved by the appropriate authorities.”
Serge raised his head and nodded urgently in agreement.
Over the prosecution’s vociferous objections, the judge suspended sentence and ordered the defendant to perform fifty hours of community service polishing the brass on Henry Flagler’s private railroad car. Then he headed for his chambers, chuckling to himself, “Wide latitude.”
8
The sun hung just below the Atlantic horizon on another clear Florida morning. Cigarette wrappers and cellophane bags blew across a grimy alley on the sour north end of Miami Beach. Another ocean gust, and a Burger King cup started rolling toward the gutter and was flattened by an all-weather tire. The tire belonged to a white Mercedes Z310 that drove down the alley and backed up to a service door behind a strip mall. Five men in tropical shirts got out and unloaded brown cartons from the trunk and carried them in the back door of The Palm Reader.