Strawman Made Steel (6 page)

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.

“Playboys?”

“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.