Strawman Made Steel (17 page)

By his side, clutched in his hand, was a
small black folder. Its purpose wasn’t obvious. But I didn’t need to know what
it held. It had already told me this guy, for all his self-assurance, felt the
need to appear to be working.

It made me smile.

The smile seemed to stop the laugh in his
throat. His gaze switched to Nicole.

“Nicki,” he said and crimped her in a hug.
“Shit, girl. Which creek you drag this guy from?”

She glanced at me. I saved her the trouble
of an introduction. Dug a hand in my pocket and produced a card. I offered it
to Eutarch. He paused a moment, with a wry grin, and clamped his fingers over
it.

But I didn’t let go.

“My mistake,” I said. “This one looks like
a dog chewed it. Let me get a fresh one.”

He let go. I pocketed the card, and fished
for another―spanking white with simple black lettering.

He took it and read.

I watched him digest the information on the
card, then reappraise my throbbing skull. He chuckled.

“I know who you are, shamus.” He nodded at
my head. “You always plough the ground with your head?”

“It’s all I have that breaks rocks,” I
said.

Nicole told us both that her brother wasn’t
always this rude and managed to say the exact opposite.

Eutarch pivoted to face a craps game. “Care
to wager?”

“I’m fresh out of cash,” I said, and mimed
patting my pockets.

“Breaking rocks with your head,” he said.
“What you expect?”

He dug beneath his jacket and retrieved his
wallet. He flashed it open, let me see the wad of cash stowed neatly there, and
jinked a chunk of it free. He held it out to me. “Here. On the House.”

I left it hanging there.

“Take it,” he said. “It’s your birthday.
Play money. I’ll take your bet, take it straight back.”

“What’s your wager?”

His gaze slid sideways. “Nicki.”

Nicole drew breath to speak but said
nothing. I watched her expression split between outrage and apprehension. I
realized she was hanging on my response.

“Keep your money,” I said. I dug the
Diogenes chip out of my coat pocket. “I’ll take your wager.”

I flipped the chip into the air and caught
it. He watched it like a cat. I’d found something for him to look at more
fascinating than my face.

We moved toward the table, and a gap opened
to allow us to its edge.

Eutarch spoke to the croupier. “Rocks for
the man.”

The croupier’s arm swept across the green
baize in an arc, and deposited two dice. I picked them up, massaged them around
my palm. Listened to their knuckle-bone clacking.

I put the chip on the pass line, and pulled
my hand back, cocked ready to throw. I looked at Eutarch. He’d doused his
cigarette, and was standing with arms planted in his pants pockets, chest
puffed out with mirth.

All eyes waited on my static fist.

“Doesn’t seem fair,” I said.

“What’s that?” he said, irritated I was
spoiling his drama.

“The wager. That chip for your sister. Tell
you what I’ll do. If I lose, I’ll throw in a story.”

“A story,” he said, brow dropping like a
man who’s built a mail-order bomb only to find a piece left over.

“Yeah,” I said. “A story about three boys
who had a wingding in an Eastside warehouse on the anniversary of there papa’s
birthday. One got lost on the way home. You’ll love it. It’s a comedy.”

I pulled the trigger, shot the dice across
the field. But I was watching emotions crawl over Eutarch’s face like a line of
caterpillars rippling head to tail. Good for him we weren’t playing poker.

“Seven out,” said the croupier. “The
gentleman wins.”

I smiled. “You got another sister?” I said.
“Go again. Double or nothing.”

All the mirth evaporated from the frame of
Eutarch Speigh. “You got a death wish, shamus.” He turned and stalked away.

“Your bet, sir,” said the croupier. He
pushed the chip to the table’s rim.

“Keep it,” I said. “Belonged to the House
anyway.”

I turned to smile at Nicole. “Your place or
mine, doll?”

But Nicole Speigh had stepped back into
winter. She ranged a frosty gaze on me. “Is that it? This is just a big game to
you? Aren’t you going to ask him what happened?”

My smile popped a tack, swung for a moment
by one corner, and fell to the floor.

“You need to learn the slow game,” I said.
“Give it time. He’ll tell me without my asking.”

I glanced about the room. A bar curved
along one side. “Let’s get a drink.”

She said nothing, but followed. I ordered,
took both drinks out onto a wide, glassed-in balcony. Light filtered through
curtains draped under the glass to be caught in effervescing liquid. At night,
with the curtains swept back, there would be a stunning blaze of Milky Way or
light pollution.

I leaned against a lintel and offered
Nicole a drink. She joined me, back against the glass, arms crossed until
thirst finally beat out annoyance and she took the glass.

“So you won. I’m yours,” she said. She
glanced at the ring on my finger. “What will you do with me? What will your
wife think?”

I clucked my tongue. “Not won. Redeemed.”
Then, “I lost my wife. Nine years ago.”

Her eyes grew luminous. “I’m so sorry. Was―was
she ill?”

“Ill? She married me, didn’t she?” I
swigged liquid from my glass, felt it fizz at the back of my throat. “But I
said she was lost not dead.”

I had a moment to watch her gaze warp with
confusion before the only other stray couple in the room quickly departed.

I indicated the door with my head.
“Patience. See?”

We hadn’t had to wait long. Two
black-garbed heavies took up station on the entrance to the balcony. Eutarch
entered, his game-show smile falling from his face like the curtain on closing
night.

He strolled over to us and planted his
feet. He shrugged his suit a couple of times to settle it on his shoulders.
Looked like a nervous tick to me. I don’t think he was even aware he was doing
it.

“So does the shamus want the carrot or the
stick?” he said.

“How about some answers,” I said. “Where
did you leave Eury Monday morning?”

“You think you’re a big enough fish to take
me, McIlwraith?”

From nowhere, Nicole spoke with a fury.
“Why won’t you answer, dammit!”

His eyes slid over to her. “Always so
emotional, Nicki.”

Tears mingled with her anger. “He was our
brother―”

“Don’t I know that!” he growled over her.
His heavy breathing filled the silence for a moment.

Emotion was running. I dived in, hoping it
would lubricate his tongue.

“Eastside or Park Ave, Eutarch. Where’d you
leave the body?”

He turned on me, face florid, and jammed a
finger into my breastbone. “Get out of my sight before I mince you.”

I held my hands up, conciliatory. “Okay.
Just thought I’d give you a chance to rehearse before you tell it to the cops.”

I brushed past him. Took one step. Then
another.

“Hell you talking about? The cops?”

My back prickled. His voice had dropped
into that register that stands the hackles up. Inside, he’d taken whatever was
burning him up and harnessed it, focused it. Only question was what he planned
to do with it.

I turned to face him. “They’ll pay you a
visit. Today. Tomorrow. Be polite, at first.”

Eutarch shrugged his suit again. His
shoulders were surging with his breath.

“Why would they do that?” he said.

I paused a beat, then said: “That’s what
they do to a guy who was the last to see a man before he was croaked.”

“And why would they think I’m that guy,” he
said, so low I barely heard it.

“They’ll work it out,” I said, and winked.
“Today. Tomorrow.”

His shoulders slumped the smallest way. His
life swallowed another bite of vigor. The gen-lines strained a touch tauter.
Now his head looked less the bust and more the platter of over-ripe fruit.

His gaze picked out a fleck of marble on
the floor and he spoke.

“It wasn’t just me. Eustace was there too.
It was Dad’s birthday. All three of us play poker there, once a year like
clockwork. It’s no secret.”

“Mother doesn’t know,” said Nicole.

“So what happened?” I said. “You lose a
hand?”

“We always do. No one cares. We play with
chicken feed. Toast Dad’s ghost. Tell stories. Get plastered—even Eury. Go
home.”

“But this time, Euripides didn’t go home,”
I said.

Eutarch picked his gaze off the floor and
gave it to me: “He was alive when I left.”

The words were on my tongue. They hovered
there, above the chessboard, the knight in ascension. My grasp lingered...
released.

“Sure. But was he breathing?” Check.

I saw in his eyes the crisis come. Damn my
curiosity if I wasn’t more intent on which way it would go than what I’d do if
it ran me over. Didn’t matter in the end.

He slid a hand beneath his suit. When he
pulled it free it held a pen. He dipped the other hand beneath the opposite
lapel and drew out a slip book. He scribbled in the book, tore off a slip, and
passed it to me.

“Get the hell out of New York. Don’t come
back.”

He brushed past me.

I looked at the slip. It was a check for
more money than I could make in my lifetime―legally or otherwise.

“I’m not that cheap,” I said, balled up the
check, and tossed it onto the floor.

He spoke over his shoulder. “Sure you are.
Just need to find the right currency.” He turned on the threshold. “I’ll ask
that pretty little secretary of yours. What’s her name―Effie? Ailsa?”

He leered, turned, and left. The two
heavies were sucked into his slipstream. Nicole and I were left to our
half-drunk liquor and our moods.

Outside I parted ways with Nicole. She
offered me a ride but I needed space. Having her near cluttered my head.

She argued like the good host. “But I’m
yours,” she said. The trace of self-mockery didn’t stop her words running over
my scalp like teasing fingers.

“No, you’re not. I meant it. Redeemed. Set
free.” Then, “Wasn’t that what Eury wanted?”

“I’ll never know.”

“Never’s a long time,” I said, and shut the
door on her. It pissed the chauffeur off, but I didn’t let it hurt my feelings.

It was barely three in the afternoon but it
felt like a full day. I splurged again and caught a cab to the police station.
Paid Tunney a visit and dropped a dirty, dog-eared card and vial of poison on
his desk.

“What’s this?” he said, like I’d dumped a
bedpan in his lap.

“The murder weapon, made with Alltron Corp’s
equipment if not blessing. And Eutarch Speigh’s fingerprints. Cross-check with
the crime scene and see who calls Snap.”

He withdrew his chubby hand from the vial
as if it had bitten him and indicated the card.

“We already have a hit on that. I was about
to follow it up.”

Now it was Tunney flinging the bedpans.

“A shot glass?” I said, thinking of the
banker’s glass I’d planted at the warehouse crime scene.

His brow wrinkled and he nodded. “You’re
uncanny, Mac,” he said. “I don’t have an angle on how the guy got twisted into
this mess, but his name is Ryan Tritt. Confidence man. He’s in the Tombs now on
some charge. I was about to send the boys to pay him a visit.”

“Forget it,” I said. “I planted the glass.
Couldn’t wait for a low-priority search. But check that card. You can thank me
later.”

I exited fast. Couldn’t make out what
Tunney shouted through the door. Sounded like a lot of one-syllable words.

I stalked the halls that bustled with New
York’s finest clad in blue, heading for the exit. I had thought the day done,
but Tunney had handed me an after dinner mint.

I decided I had room for a little more.

— 11 —

The Tombs.

From as far back as 1838 the city’s lockup
has been called the Tombs. The architect of the original copied an Egyptian
Mausoleum. Cute.

The latest incarnation of the Tombs stands
over the same ground as the original. Ground once hollowed and lapped by the
virgin water of a lake formed in a valley made by Bayard Mount and the oyster
middens of Chalk Hook, before it came to be called the Collect Pond.

And collect it did―the sewage of tanner and
slaughterhouse, and then the human sewage of the twice-failed colony. In the
end, they leveled Manhattan’s only hill to fill it, and the boggy,
mosquito-infested swamp that took its place hosted a slum named Five
Points―America’s first.