Strawman Made Steel (34 page)

The cabin crested an angle and its gimbal
screeched metal-on-metal into the ethereal silence as it rotated to keep us
level. I took the opportunity to try to spark a conversation. None had taken so
far. It didn’t matter to me. I was just trying to be sociable.

“It’s curious that your first instinct was
to try to rub me out rather than get away,” I said. “Not that it would have
worked, but you weren’t to know that.” I shifted forward over my knees, on my
forearms, letting the revolver dangle. “You knew once the elevator was rising,
someone was coming. From the trip-plate in the corridor at the very latest. You
hid, but chose not to stay hidden. So tell me, was it the folded underwear? You
couldn’t abide me loose with that image? Was that it?”

No bites. He didn’t move an inch. I held
onto the underwear theory.

I patted my pockets in search of a
cigarette before I remembered I was on the wagon. His eyes, big and small,
tracked my hand.

“Okay,” I said. “Let’s work backwards. How
did you get Eutarch Speigh’s body out of the Landmark?”

One side of his lip curled the smallest
amount. He knew he was being baited with professional cache, but resisted
manfully.

I continued. “No forced entry, so I assume
Eutarch was expecting you. Or at the very least happy to receive a drop-in
visit.”

Still nothing but the shimmer in his eyes
of reflected city lights sliding slowly away.

“Eutarch was no titan, but he must’ve
weighed―what?―a hundred and eighty pounds?”

The line took a nibble: “A hundred and
eighty three,” he said.

“Eighty-three, huh? You look like a fit
guy. Maybe you’re bench-pressing that much, but I can’t see you hauling a
hundred and eighty three pounds of anything very far.”

The line tugged with a respectable bite.

“Do you know what percentage of the body
consists of water?” he said.

“No,” I lied.

He swiveled to face me and sat up
straighter. His shoulders were hunched by his handcuffed wrists, pointing at me
in two knobbly domes. Hooked through the lip.

“Seventy percent.”

“Sure,” I said. “But most of that is tied
up in tissue. You can’t just open a plug in a man’s heel and drain it out.”

His lids folded over his eyes and re-opened
in a gesture that conceded the obvious.

“Blood accounts for seven liters, but you
are right. However, weight is never the problem with a body.”

I remembered the room on the 51st floor,
the lurch in my stomach when I’d slipped in the blood. I remembered the other
fluid stains, and the marks scored in the carpet.

I played the part, and shook a declamatory
finger at the cabin roof. “You’re right. The thing with bodies isn’t weight. It’s
size
. You pack a body for holidays and it’s guaranteed you’re picking it
up at the over-sized baggage counter.”

I couldn’t see his hands, but I remembered
the feel of them when I’d shackled him. Their skin was smooth, their fingers
thin and supple, not yet knotted by age. His fingernails were trimmed in
perfect arcs and filed smooth. They were the tools of his trade, and he
serviced them like his life depended on it. He was a professional turkey
carver.

“Three cases?” I said.

“Three cases,” he said.

“Ice on the way in, lumps of Eutarch on the
way out.”

He nodded.

“I hope you tipped the bellboy well.”

“I didn’t see him to tip him.”

My mind went to the finger of Dorrita
Speigh, that pruney lump of flesh and bone that, even age-shriveled, bore the
marks of a precise, expert dissection. The report in the Times had said as
much.

“And Dorrita?” I said. “I’m guessing just
the two pieces.”

He shrugged and sent his lopsided gaze out
the window. Touchy subject.

“How about Euripides? Poison, post-mortem
brutalization. If I didn’t know better I’d say you were branching out with that
one.”

His head jerked once in the negative, as if
I’d insulted his genius. “Just the poison,” he admonished.

“Given to Eury on the one day of the year
he was certain to take a drink—his pop’s birthday,” I said. “You must be very
smart or very lucky.”

His only response was to raise an eyebrow.

The cabin juddered again as we rode over
another ridge on the made-mountain. I watched his torso sway under the motion.
His gaze switched to the glass porthole above us, which offered a view of the
terraced upper levels of Liberty. The view seemed to quicken him.

He said, “You haven’t asked me why I saved
your life.”

“I haven’t, have I.”

I don’t think that was the answer he was
hoping for. Whatever play he’d been about to make sank back into the cesspool
that served him for a mind.

The cabin floor grated as it was pulled off
the line and dragged into an entry port. Someone was getting on.

The door slid open and strong perfume
puffed into the cabin heralding the arrivals. An elderly couple, the woman
wrapped in layers of silk, her head covered in a motley of velvet and feathers,
the man dour in double-breasted dark pinstripes and tailored shoes. His pocket
square was a burst of yellow and the only telltale he wasn’t a funeral
director. I guessed they were heading for a society soirée on an upper level. I
guessed the next time either of them hit the streets of New York would be in a
coffin. Maybe the man was dressed for the event.

They sat on the bench at right angles to
us. The woman smiled that well-practiced smile that doesn’t wrinkle the cheeks.
I returned the smile and watched as her eyes travelled over me. When they hit
the .38, the smile let go of the rest of her face.

I addressed myself to the surgeon again.
“Do you know how many homicides are committed by loved ones? By partners?
Lovers? It’s an astonishing statistic. A horrific statistic. An indictment of
the human race.”

I didn’t get an answer from him, so I tried
the couple.

I got no response from the woman either.
She was searching for the exit cable. Her husband nodded at me as if I’d
commented on the weather. A minute later the surgeon and I had the cabin to
ourselves again.

Another couple of minutes and it was our
stop. I hauled him upright and prodded him in front of me. I managed only one
wrong turn before finding the corridor I wanted. It was still bare. No one had
bothered to hang a frame or arrange some flowers. But it no longer felt like it
needed murder holes. The thing it reminded me of most of all now was the Bridge
of Sighs that arched from the real world into the Tombs all that way below our
feet.

At the end of the corridor the same wooden
door barred our way with its lion’s head knocker. I gave the lion a pat and
rapped once on the door.

We were greeted by the eunuch. He hesitated
before opening the door wide. Inside, in the vestibule, he held his hand out
for my gun.

“This?” I said. “It’s a cigarette lighter.”

He had to shift a lot of flesh, but he proved
he could smile. He turned on his heel and left us.

The next sentinel to challenge us was
Evelyne’s strip-thin butler. He still looked like doped fabric stretched over a
wooden frame. His gaze took us in with that indefatigable calm common to his
trade.

“Mr. McIlwraith, it is a pleasure,” he
whispered. “Whom did you wish to see?”

“Mrs. Speigh,” I said.

“Is she expecting you?”

“I doubt it.”

He raised his hand. “I’m afraid then you
will need to make another appointment. She is entertaining visitors.”

“Family?” I said.

He pursed his lips coyly.

“Perfect,” I said, and prodded the surgeon
forward.

“I’m afraid I cannot―” the butler began.

I waved the .38 at him. “Need a light?” I
said.

A calm fell over his face. He stepped to
one side and with a tilt of his head indicated for us to pass.

We went single file beneath the twin,
sweeping staircases, and past the fixed glares of Liselles of Christmas past.
The drawing room where Evelyne had reclined and pronounced judgment on her
family was dark and silent. A gentle breeze probed between the open glass doors
that gave onto the terrace and gardens. I pushed the surgeon out into the cool
night air and let him trailblaze through the curtain of thorny vine.

I kept the point of the barrel in the small
of his back while I attempted to button my coat with one hand. It was cold,
near dew-point. And silent, as if the city noise down below had to struggle
against gravity, and failed.

As we emerged from beneath the trees I
spotted a table and, clustered around it, three people lit by hurricane lamps
scattered across the lawn and gardens.

But for a moment all I saw was the sky.
Swept away was the day’s smog. Even the high haze of cirrus was gone. I stared
straight into the unimaginable Deep. The stars burned at arm’s reach. I tilted
my head back as if they were rain and for a moment felt clean. Fortified.

A gasp signaled that someone had seen us.
As we approached the table I saw it was Nicole. She half-rose and turned toward
us.

“Hi, Honey,” I said. “Don’t get up on
account of us.”

Silent as death, the butler appeared and
arranged two extra chairs around the table. The man had style.

I pushed the surgeon into one, and sat in
the other, gun trained on him.

“Janus―” Nicole began and was interrupted
by Eustace Speigh.

“Trust a shamus to crash a party,” he said,
but I chose to find a twinkle in his eye. He didn’t seem any happier since last
we’d met.

“Crash?” I said. “Access all areas, wasn’t
it?”

Evelyne sat resplendent in a chiffon
evening robe, her neck swathed against the cold by a delicate fur. Her gaze
travelled from me to the surgeon and back again. Her expression was unreadable.

At last she said, “Good evening, Mr. McIlwraith.
To what do we owe the pleasure?”

“I thought you’d like to know,” I said, and
swept my hand in a gesture that took in the two Speigh women. “I’m done.”

Nicole’s brow wrinkled in confusion. She
glanced from the gun to its target. “What are you playing at, Janus? Have you
been drinking?”

I wished.

She continued, “And why are you holding
Mister Dunning at gun point?”

“Who?” I said.

“Father’s surgeon,” said Nicole. “You must
know that.”

I turned to look at Dunning as if to
confirm this information.

“Oh, his surgeon. Yeah,” I said. “And, if I
may add something of importance to my two clients―” I nodded in turn to Nicole
and Evelyne “―also his murderer.”

While I waited for a reaction, I turned
toward the butler who was waiting in the half-dark between lampfall, motionless
as the gargoyles perching on the ledge nearby, and said, “Can I get a drink?”

“Certainly, sir,” he said.

“Sour and straight,” I said. “No spit.”

Evelyne was the first to speak. “Is this
another example of your darling wit? A practical joke?”

“I seem to remember expressing a suspicion
along those lines days ago,” I said. “Do you remember? But, no. I’m quite
serious. You engaged my services to find your son’s murderer. Here he is. It
just so happens he also murdered your husband.”

I watched Eustace. His figure was a
patchwork of dark and light carved by the lamplight, but even so I marked how
his back came away from his chair. The fingers of his free hand, resting on the
table, curled together. He watched Dunning, but he spoke to me.

“Spill it, McIlwraith. I’m not in the mood
for games.”

The butler returned with my drink. I drank and
took a moment to lubricate my tongue. From the corner of my eye I noticed one
of Eustace’s fists disappear from the table.

I trained my revolver on him and said,
“Nicole, would you kindly relieve your remaining brother of his firearm. I’d
just as rather not have another murder tonight.”

For a moment Eustace’s eyes seemed to blaze
with a real fire. Then the fire died, leaving in its wake a blankness that only
a fool would think less dangerous. With a jerk, he tossed a gun across the
table. It skidded and clunked to a stop next to Nicole’s plate. She glanced at
it once and left it where it lay.

He said, “You’d better be playing it
straight. It’s worth your life.”

“You tried that already,” I said with a
grim smile. “Apology accepted.”

Evelyne spoke to Dunning. “It seems Mr. McIlwraith
believes what he says, but surely it can’t be true, Peter?”

The surgeon glanced at me and replied, “You
have entangled yourself with a madman, Evelyne. What can I say?”

His reply seemed to hearten her. She turned
to me and said, “Janus, how could Peter be implicated in any of this? He is a
medical man. A
surgeon
. What on earth would drive him to...” Her eyes
glinted with moisture.