Strawman Made Steel (15 page)

The room was poorly lit, but I saw the
nurse’s already pale skin blanch. Her breath was coming in shallow pants.

“You paid for a ticket to hell; the rich
kids paid for a ticket to the show.” And someone was paying to hone the
performance of an expensive poison. Blood out the eyeballs? Bad for business,
if your business is hard-to-trace death elixirs. Good to spot that kink and
work it out before going to market.

I pushed myself up. I felt okay. Didn’t
need to vomit right away.

“Point me at the door and I’ll bid you fine
folks a goodnight.”

“What’s the hurry,” said wiry man. “At
least sleep the night. You might’ve been followed.”

“I don’t sleep here,” I said, meaning Newer
York. Call it a superstition.

Glances were exchanged. Then Thor lumbered
out the door and called me to follow.

I brushed past the wiry man. He shot out a
hand and clasped my wrist. “Give us away and I’ll kill you.”

I let him hold on. “Give you away and I’ll
kill myself.”

He searched my eyes then let go.

I followed Thor through another door, down
a flight of stairs, and along an access way with a curved wall. He dropped me
in a place that looked like a dead end. It was strewn with cardboard and rags,
evidence of infrequent habitation.

“I hope you find your brother,” I said.

“My son,” he said. “Hans is my son.”

I clapped a hand on one of his huge
shoulders, offered a silent prayer to whatever god ruled Newer York, and
dragged myself off to find a cab before I turned into a pumpkin.

I was barely conscious when I slumped
in front of the Royal 10. I could skip cleaning my teeth, but I knew from
experience of beatings like the one I’d had that day, if I didn’t dump the day’s
take onto paper it wouldn’t be sitting in the grey matter come morning.

It took me three goes to feed paper into
the machine. I wound it, cupped my head in my hands, and tried to dredge from
the day’s slurry the gold. My mind was like a stray dog looking for a kind hand.

I typed.

Day 2:

* Visited Speigh mansions and eyeballed the
hired help. Eunuch has the muscle for the job, but he’d have to fit through the
door first; Butler is a waif, but poison doesn’t need muscle.

* The poison that killed Euripides was
manufactured with Alltron Corp technology―Speighs a controlling interest;
Eustace Speigh, the oldest brother, has the executive; Eutarch project manages.

* Dorrita Speigh abducted for ransom, but
the only part of him to be seen again was his ring finger—more than money
involved?

* Poison activated at the Eastside warehouse
owned by Euripides’ father, Dorrita (also murdered?)

* Yours truly nearly put on ice by an
accountant, and subsequently saved by same.

* Why me?

The Sandman came with a club that night.

— 10 —

In and out in ten seconds. It could be
done.

I pried open the door to my outer office.
Through the gap, my eyes hunted for Ailsa, gathering intel for Operation Escape
with Manhood Intact.

“I know you’re there,” came her voice.
“Just assume you’re in trouble and stop being childish.”

So much for The Operation. I switched to
the contingency plan: evasive maneuvers.

I pushed the door open and made a beeline
for the inner office. Ailsa appeared from the blind side of the door, hooked my
arm, and swung in front of me.

“You’ve―” she began, then sucked in a deep
breath, and almost shrieked, “My God, Janus! What happened?”

Her next request would be a one-sentence
synopsis of War and Peace.

“A lot of Frenchies died,” I said.

Her eyes turned pleading. “You’ve got to
drop this case before it kills you.”

I shrugged out of her clutch, angry at
well-intentioned ignorance. “Only if it drops me first.”

She just stared. I couldn’t tell if I’d
hurt her.

I said, “Any mail?”

She shook her head.

“Good. I’m late already.”

“For what?” Drained of emotion, she drew
herself back behind her defenses. I’d seen it many times. It’s how you survive
in the immortal New York.

“For the first day of the rest of my life,”
I said, and tried to stir a smile onto my face. I managed something like a
facial tick.

Ailsa rounded her desk and sat, and said
without looking up, “I’d tell you to be careful, but...”

A minute later I emerged from the elevator
wondering how many conversations ended with that word.

Outside the air had a rare foretaste of
summer in it. A metrobus thundered past and the dust it raised hung over the
road like brown ground fog.

I wound and checked my watch. Already past
nine-thirty. The day was stealing away.

I hailed a cab, and felt a dip of
disappointment to find the driver wasn’t the boy from yesterday. A ridiculous
hope in a city with more cabbies than parking meters.

“Whipped Elephant,” I said to the driver.
“You know it?”

“Know it? I own it,” said the driver. A
joker. He and I weren’t going to get on well this morning. Some cabbies think a
dense commentary gets a fat tip. But the best cabbies have an eye for a fare
and know when to shut up.

I saw him glance at my face in the mirror.
“Looks like you bought it too.” He laughed and shared a joke with himself.

While he gassed about the mayoral election
and a mongrel he’d squashed on the road the previous day, I watched Harlem slip
by. I was having a time pulling my thoughts out from under Brooklyn Bridge and
into today.

The Whipped Elephant was buzzing with
newshounds on morning break. It was Wednesday. In the ebb and flow of the
weekend newscycle, Wednesday is rumor day. Get out, stir the pot, scent the
scoop. The unlucky weekend hacks would be pawing through the slush pile come
Thursday.

I spotted Coffey straightaway. One elbow
propped on the bar, fingers pinching the last quarter-inch of a cigarette,
burning it down to the filter.

The guy he was talking to, who was leaning
on the bar, facing him in mirror image, was a reporter for the Star. He thought
he was pumping Coffey for a story, but if I knew better, it was Coffey doing
the pumping, hulling the guy down to the fibers like that cigarette.

I ordered a sour and planted it on the bar
between the men.

I spoke to the Star reporter. “Flock of
flying pigs circling Trademark Tower. Better get on it before it becomes a
frenzy.”

He stood up straight, digging in.

“I’m working here,” he said.

“Do you want to be the story?” I said.

He left to eavesdrop on a group of beat
cops that had just settled around a bowl of pretzels.

Coffey hoisted his glass and openly
appraised my face. “Do I want to know what happened?” he said.

“You don’t like your face the color it is?”

He let it drop.

I said, “Tell me―” but stopped when I saw
Coffey’s gaze dart sideways. The smell of a park in spring twined around me,
and I didn’t need to turn to know who it was.

“Miss Speigh,” I said, sculled the whiskey,
and angled myself to include her. “Fancy.”

“Mr. McIlwraith,” she said.

Coffey introduced himself with a smile in
his eyes. She lifted a hand from the handbag she held primly at her midriff and
shook his hand. “Mr. Coffey.”

She was the picture of elegant simplicity,
swathed in a white dress that appeared sewn from a single cloth, open at the
neck. A delicate silver charm hung from a chain at her neck, a counterwoven
Celtic design. She wore no make-up that I could tell, and the only sign of
grief was the lingering darkness beneath her eyes.

Chatter in the bar dropped.

She turned back to me, saying, “Sorry to
follow you, but I arrived at your building just as you left. I hope I’m not
intruding―” and choked to a stop.

“Your face! Were you―”

“Yes,” I said, cutting her off. “All
itemized on my expenses. You’ll get a copy when I’m done.”

“Now,” I said, and yanked a barstool into
the space between myself and Coffey. “Take a seat.” She did. “I was just about
to ask my friend here to tell me what he knows about your scar.”

Coffey’s lips twisted in a half-smile. It
was all he could ever manage. The nerves down low on one side of his face had
been damaged digging dirt on a previous administration. When it slurred his
speech he called it his Pulitzer.

“Awkward,” he said looking not at all
abashed.

Miss Speigh sat, tight-lipped.

“I haven’t got all day,” I said to Coffey.
“Don’t you want to get busted back out of the social pages?”

“I may have heard something.”

“Well hurry it up. I may have heard
something about a coup in City Hall.”

His eyes flashed. Fully awake now. “When?”

“Hasn’t happened yet.”

“Who?”

“It’s a toss up.”

He drank, grimaced as whatever he was
drinking drained down his throat.

“Stirrer,” he said.

He checked his watch, ran an eye over the
Elephant’s dusky interior, then dragged another stool over and sat.

I pulled a stool up to make us a cozy
threesome.

He picked a cigarette from his shirt pocket
and lit it with a precise flick of his thumb on a silver lighter. Coffey is one
of those guys who don’t think well with empty hands.

He stowed the lighter, dragged on the
cigarette, and, not looking at Miss Speigh, said, “Denied of course, but a
couple months back the Speighs were touched by a little scandal.”

“Uh-huh” I said, one eye on Miss Speigh.
She displayed no reaction.

“The lady’s choice of partner at the Mayor’s
Winter Ball was questioned.”

“By who?”

Miss Speigh, appearing at ease, turned and
ordered a highball.

“Members of her family.”

“Which members?”

Coffey drew hard on the cigarette. “Calm
down, McIlwraith. I already have my ass in the wind. This is the social pages
we’re talking about. Sheer rumor. The lady could set you straight.”

Miss Speigh received her drink, sipped at
it, and said, “I wouldn’t want to interrupt. You tell it so well.”

Coffey’s eyebrows popped up and he gave her
a there’s-no-pleasing-some-folk look.

“The talk, from those who claimed to
witness anyway, put the youngest Speighs―Nicole, Eutarch and the sti―” He
stopped and glanced at Miss Speigh. “―Euripides, at the scene.”

“Scene?” I said.

“Yeah. An ‘altercation’.” The undamaged
side of his face twisted. He was mocking the society he depended on for scoops.
The veneer of civility that covered relish for scandal and schadenfreude.

“The Messrs. Speigh confronted the young
turk, a Mr. ...” Coffey glanced at Miss Speigh, but she didn’t supply his
faulty memory, just let her gaze rest on his irritation, deadpan, hands cupping
the part-drunk highball.

Coffey went on. “I forget. Big guy. Sewer
contractor.”

“Your brothers didn’t like his portfolio?”
I said to Miss Speigh.

Coffey answered. “Word was, it was his
hands
they didn’t like. They were travelling hands.”

I watched Miss Speigh. Still nothing.

Coffey finished. “The brothers caught up
with the happy couple away from the crowd, and spoke to Mr. Sewers. In the wash
up, he got a warning the color of two black eyes and some busted ribs, and Miss
Nicole Speigh got the wound that became that scar.” He jabbed his cigarette at
Miss Speigh’s slender neck, and the pink flaw that ran in a crescent under her
jaw.

“This Mr. Sewers still breathing?” I said
to Miss Speigh.

Coffey grunted a laugh thinking I was
joking.

Miss Speigh, though, had got me: “Yes,” she
said, “but his New York contracts have been terminated.”

I glanced at Coffey and in his scleral eyes
saw the birth of the scandal’s sequel.

It took me a moment to realize she was
still speaking. It was the chill that crept over my shoulders and up my neck
that woke me and wrenched my attention back to her.

“My left breast,” she said, and placed her
right hand on the smooth white cloth over her heart, where it strained a little
over the swelling of her flesh. It sat there a moment, cupping her bra as
though it were the most natural thing in the world before returning to the
glass.

“He clutched my left breast first. Slipped
his arm around my trunk from behind.” Again she acted out her narrative with an
efficient detachment.