Strawman Made Steel Read online

  Before his face got any redder, I said, “Cut the crap. I know Tunney told you to roll out the carpet for me.”

  He got surly then and let me through a cordon that was an attempt to partition off a non-entity―the space where a dumpster, and maybe a body, had been. The dumpster’s footprint was impressed into the sod at the base of the landward side of the warehouse. Beside that, the building looked like any one of the thousand warehouses jammed together on the Manhattan bank of the East River.

  Above the flattened dirt, a stairway ran up the wall, with one switchback, and terminated at a door.

  I climbed the stair and paused at the corner to admire the view. A crowd of reporters and locals had gathered. To the east, the remains of Queensboro bridge―a handful of pilings―stuck out of the water like the bones of a dead colossus. Then I went on up to the landing. As I got to the door, a technician emerged carrying a plastic bag. He was whistling, but then, he was dry.

  “Any more bodies?” I said.

  He shook his head and said, “Not much of anything. Maybe three sets of shoes came up here, but the rain isn’t helping. Inside, we lifted some prints.”

  I entered and waited for my eyes to adjust to the gloom. The only skylight in the place was long-clogged with debris.

  I was on a mezzanine overlooking a work floor. The work floor was sunk in deep gloom, and my eyes couldn’t pick out much more than an idle hoist wreathed in a century of cobwebs. In a corner of the mezzanine was a foreman’s office. Around the walls were dirty looking whiteboards and paper charts covered in scribbles that might as well have been hieroglyphics.

  The furniture was sparse―a table, three chairs all neatly tucked in. On the face of it, the only brand of death this room was dealing was boredom.

  I knelt and scraped a digit across the floor. It came away a dusty brown. I spotted a couple of gouges through the dust that could have come from chair legs, and maybe fancied I could see some of those boot prints the cop had mentioned.

  The table was stained and a smell of liquor hung over it. In the middle of it sat a handful of tumblers on a serving tray. They hadn’t been dusted for prints yet, so I retrieved from my coat the tumbler my banker had drunk from and, with a glance at the back of the technician on his knees in the foreman’s office, set it down next to the others. Fingerprint identification in Newer York was a labor-intensive job, and murder scene evidence had priority.

  I squatted again to peer under the table, then at the skirting under the empty cabinets lining one wall. There was nothing to see but dead cockroaches and a casino chip.

  I pinched the chip by the edges and pulled it into better light. Issue of Diogenes Casino. Enough pocket money for me for a year.

  On my way out I passed the technician with the bag, coming back up the stairs. I wondered if he was going to bag the cockroaches.

  From the landing I made out two sets of tire tracks within the cordon, fresh enough to have gathered rain in stripes and zigzags.

  I made my way to the edge of the swelling crowd, and nearly collided with a guy trying in vain to light a limp cigarette. When I offered him a light, his eyes widened a little more than my act of kindness warranted.

  I said, “Why are you following me around?”

  His gaze pinballed through the crowd before he said, “What are you talkin’ about?”

  “You were at the Miracle. And you weren’t here when I showed up but now you are.”

  He sucked on the cigarette then said, “Want the dope on the Speigh hit?”

  “You telling me you have it?”

  “No. But I know the guy who does. If you want it, meet me out back of Smiley’s Bar in half an hour.”

  I’d never heard of it so I took the address. He left. It was a short walk so I killed time in the neighborhood and tried not to get mugged. The wind was tearing holes in the clouds, and letting golden sun pour down like the rain had. I enjoyed the dazzle of it over the East River. It hid the muck.

  If ever there was a likely place to get mugged it was out back of Smiley’s Bar in Eastside.

  The opinion was retrospective by about one second.

  My contact was waiting in the alley, and I didn’t see the other man standing in a shallow portico. He sapped me and the lights went out on my epiphany.

  It was a while after consciousness stirred before they came back on, but didn’t avail me much. I was trussed by my arms to a girder with my feet on the floor, in darkness that felt spacious. I could smell rotting wood and accelerant. My headache had a friend, and I groaned just to check I was awake.

  I saw a little light fall past me. It left a comet tail on my retina that burned green. The light bounced on the floor and lay still. As it sat it waned, but by then I’d woken up enough to see it was a cigarette butt.

  Then a voice from above spoke to me. It spoke the most profound things: “Half a pound of tuppeny rice, half a pound of treacle...” A pause. Another red light fell and bounced away in the darkness. Silence.

  There was another round of that, and this time I saw something else on the floor. The burning cigarette bounced behind an object. Even in the weak light, I could see the object’s silhouette. It was a can. My guess was it was filled with accelerant. A chill rode my spine like a helter skelter.

  My headaches, already joined in a duet, swelled to a forte.

  I summoned up the spit to talk.

  “How much?” I said.

  There was a pause, then, “What price a brother?”

  That voice was tickling my brain.

  “Make sense,” I said. “What brother?”

  “The brother you killed.”

  Now I had it fixed.

  “The psycho in the scrapyard? He was breathing when I left him.”

  (I didn’t mention the dog. Some people get emotional about dogs.)

  Another meteorite sailed down from above. It landed by the can and bounced clean across its mouth.

  “But you’re alive,” said the voice. “So he’s dead.”

  I stopped talking. In my experience psychos sometimes came in pairs, and there wasn’t much to be gained from conversing with them. Besides he was doing enough talking for both of us.

  More burning butts fell around the can. They looked like the eyes of possessed rats waiting for dinner.

  “Was it so much to ask?” he went on. “A simple answer to a simple question?”

  Another butt fell. His aim seemed to be improving.

  “But you didn’t even let him ask the question. And that was a failure, according to his boss...”

  There was such a glow around the can now I could see it clearly. A piece of wire looped from one side to the other made it a makeshift bucket.

  “...his boss, the Strawman.”

  The Strawman?

  May as well have said the Bogeyman.

  “Strawman, huh?” I said, and began sinking onto my shoulder joints. I dropped lower than a guy of my size should be able to, courtesy of abused tendons, and reached a foot toward the can. “You sure he wasn’t working for Vlad the Impaler? Or Ronald McDonald? How ‘bout Mary Poppins?”―those burning lights must have pushed me off my game; I was spraying anachronisms.

  The guy upstairs spat. I heard it strike the floor wetly. He muttered something unintelligible, and when I heard the repeated sounds of a lighter flint biting, I knew I had only seconds.

  My foot nudged the can, and for a moment I thought it would tip its fuel over the embers. Then I maneuvered my foot under the loop of wire, and swung my leg. I swung it upward in an arc, my shoe holding the wire till the weight of liquid carried it up and away at a tangent.

  I waited to be spattered with flammable rain.

  Instead, an explosion pounded on my head like a fist. Light flared through the cavernous space and woke a thousand shadows. The roar of ignited accelerant bounded back and forth, and somewhere in the middle of it I heard a curiously inhuman squeal.

  Then silence, and a flickering, muted light played over everything.

/>   Still restrained, I took stock of my body as best I could, and when finally satisfied no part of me was on fire, grunted in surprise. “One for the books.”

  It took me the best part of half an hour to work slack into the ropes holding me. I shrugged up and down until my trapezius ached. I think I was whistling Pop goes the Weasel.

  Up a short flight of stairs I found the corpse sprawled on a gantry. What was left of it was the spitting image of the psycho I’d left out cold in the scrapyard, except for the gold teeth. This was the identical twin with superior dental hygiene. I tamped out the few flames still feeding on his clothes before letting myself out.

  Outside, I took a bead on the city to orient myself. The sun had dropped out of view but the sky was full of second-hand light. I was across the river, but not so far from Eastside as the crow flies. The building was an old factory that had been converted to munitions assembly, all boarded up and left to rust.

  I found a drum full of rainwater and plunged my head under to clear away the foul mood. Then I went in search of a cab.

  — 5 —

  The elevators in my office building were out of action. The boiler was silent and the diesel backup had been a piece of found art for at least as long as I’d been a tenant. I slogged up the stairs to my office level thinking about salmon.

  Night had fallen, but instead of the faint glow of the pilot light pushing through the frosted glass of my office front, there was a blaze. I nudged the door open and saw Ailsa’s head cradled on her arms beside her hooded typewriter.

  I barely made a noise but she came awake when I stepped into the room. She answered the question on my face by pointing at my office door.

  The day’s hurts were coming home to roost. They put some spring back into my step. I flung my hat and coat onto a chair. I yanked the door open, saw a female form hugging itself by the window, and snapped out, “You’ve an unfortunate economy with the truth, Mrs. Speigh―” but stopped when I saw my mistake.

  The woman turned. On a stage you would have called it a pirouette. But this was discount office-space, and her face was riven by real tear tracks.

  “Miss Speigh,” she said, and that was obvious. She was the image of her mother―except for the eyes. They were pools of spring’s rainfall, dappled green.

  She came near, and trained that spring light on me. “You are hurt, Mr. McIlwraith. Did my mother...?” Her voice trailed away like vanishing rain. For a moment I thought I might fall into those eyes. Then I noticed something else the girl’s form didn’t share with her mother’s; it played fair with gravity. Her shoulders sagged as if they bore more than the light dress she was wearing.

  The only light in my office came spilling in through the door. Her hair caught up in coarse coils at the nape of her neck was the purest blonde. Still she looked pale.

  I rounded my desk and tugged a cord hanging beneath the standing lamp behind my chair. Its wick took the spark and, with a hiss, a yellow light forced the gloom back. It did nothing to expunge the haunting luminosity of her gaze.

  I said, “Your mother,” made it neither question nor statement.

  Miss Speigh approached my desk and sat in the customer’s chair, with mirror motions of her mother, an instinctual elegance. The tuck of her legs, even the stretch of her back to its full extent, though I sensed that cost her.

  She clasped her handbag, a slim, white leather satchel, with both hands in her lap. Her gaze searched now as if probing beyond a buttress. She hunted for something in my face.

  “My mother,” she said in a voice soft yet clear. “Has she been here? To engage you, I mean. Your agency.”

  “Miss Speigh, of all the places you could be tonight, my office makes about the least sense. This ain’t the Ritz, but I suppose it beats the morgue.”

  She reacted as if I’d hauled off and slapped her. The way her face pulled in different directions before tears pooled in her eyes and ran over her cheeks made me feel like dirt. Like I’d stepped on a flower.

  But I’d kindled a fire.

  She composed herself with a strength of will and said, “What a beastly thing to say. From talking with your secretary, I had formed such a promising impression of you.”

  “I’m forever having other people make promises on my behalf.” I grunted. “Promises. Nothing but the thing deferred.”

  Again her face melted, but by an emotion I recognized. Somehow, in a moment, she’d come to pity me.

  “What a lonely life you must lead, Mr. McIlwraith.”

  I decided my aching head was making me surly and made a belated attempt to buck the mood.

  “Miss Speigh―”

  “Please, call me Nicole.” I noticed her grip on that bag relax, but still her eyes dogged me.

  “It’s late. It’s been a long day. Another day the Devil made good.” Weren’t they all? “I don’t know why you’re here. I do know grief is not a meal best eaten with strangers, no matter what people say.”

  She spoke as if she had not heard me. “I know my mother visited you this morning. I want you to look me in the eye and tell me why.”

  “Okay. So you know that much. But I can’t tell you any more.”

  “Because she is your client?” she said, an odd note of triumph riding over her sweet contralto.

  I shrugged, more to wriggle under her gaze than anything else. I felt like I was sinking deeper into water, foot by foot, being compressed beneath her scrutiny. The psycho with the cigarettes was beginning to seem the light touch.

  “Client or not, I don’t blab.”

  “But she’s my mother.”

  “So try asking her.”

  She leaned back into her chair. He shoulders wilted again. Finally, she broke eye contact and let her gaze rummage through my office. At length she said, “What if I was your client?”

  “Sure. Who’s sleeping with whom, and how many photos you want?”

  She smiled. An immaculate finger lifted off the bag in exclamation. “I’m on to you, Mr. McIlwraith. You play at crude, but you’re not driving me out.”

  I dragged a hand over my face. It caught and pulled at wrinkles I didn’t remember having.

  “I’m not playing anything, Miss Speigh. You want to be my client? Fine. Give me a case, but be quick about it. I’ve some things I want to go anaesthetize, and I can’t until you leave.”

  She ran the tip of her tongue along her bottom lip―an unconscious gesture. I don’t think she meant to play coy. She snapped her bag open and fished for a piece of paper, which she laid on the desk in front of me.

  It was a slip of green-deckled writing paper. On it, written in black ink in a neat, small hand, was a list of names and numbers.

  I planted my hand on the paper and swiveled it right way up and read.

  “Dorrita, Evelyne, Eustace, Eutarch... This is your family.”

  She nodded, her lower lip compressed between her teeth.

  I said, “What are the numbers?”

  “Birthdates,” she said.

  I raised my eyebrows.

  She said, “I thought it would help with your investigation.”

  “What investigation?” I said, and noticed for the first time a shadow fallen across the space of floor seen through my door.

  “I want to hire you to find who murdered my brother.”

  Great. Perhaps the police department would be paying me next to solve the same crime.

  I plucked the list from my desk and held it closer, flush to the light falling over my shoulder.

  “Dorrita. That your father?”

  “Was, yes.”

  “You have two brothers still with us. You want to tell me about them?”

  She did. “Eustace is the oldest. Very much a first child. Eury and I used to make a joke of calling him Junior. But never to his face. All of my father’s enterprise fell to mother, but she leaves the day to day oversight to Eustace.”

  “Married?”

  “No. None of them are.” She dipped her eyes.

  “P
layboys?”

  “Please, Mr. McIlwraith.”

  I pulled the desk lighter over to where my hand rested on the desk and began flicking the mechanism. Each time a flame was born it was reflected in her pupils.

  “What about Eutarch. He in the family way?”

  “I don’t see much of him. He gives the impression of being dogsbody to Eustace, but I think he does as he pleases.”

  “Were you all at this party yesterday?”

  She nodded.

  “Eury seem happy to be graduating to the board of the Speigh Empire?”

  She shrugged, and with a trace of irony said, “Who wouldn’t?”

  “Your mother said something got up his nose.”

  “That something is usually her,” she said.

  I glanced at the paper again. “You haven’t put your name on this list, Miss Speigh.”

  Her lips parted in surprise. “What would you like to know?”

  “What you’re doing here.”

  “But I already told you.”

  “I guess people don’t put much stock in the police any more.”

  She leaned forward and caught my gaze. “Anything to help my brother’s spirit sleep.”

  We sat like that, staring at each other, my hand idle on the lighter, till I wrenched my eyes free.

  “Alright, Miss Speigh. But I got to close this day out. As it stands I’ll have a job getting myself some sweet dreams.”

  “Of course,” she said and stood. “I’ve been rude.” She rose and glided into the outer office. I fancied I heard the furtive noises of Ailsa slipping back into her chair.

  I followed the Speigh girl to the door and noticed a scar beneath her jawline that until now had been obscured by shadow and make-up. It was a half-moon of thin, red flesh, beginning just under the corner of the left side of her jaw and reaching forward almost to a point beneath the point of her chin.

  “How did you get that?” I said.

  “Oh. This?” She placed a hand over it reflexively. “I tripped down a stair and landed on the balustrade. I almost forget it now.”

  “Can I escort you to the street, Miss Speigh?”

  “Thank you, but that won’t be necessary. My driver is waiting for me.”