Strawman Made Steel (37 page)

* Why me?

I yanked the paper out, and hunted in my
pocket for my card that was stamped with scrapyard grime. The one I’d dropped
as I ran for my life, hunting for a mirror, on the night my life got snarled
with the whole Speigh mess. I clipped it to the sheet and put it in the drawer,
but not in the closed-case folder. I put it in the next one along, the one that
held a sheaf of cold cases. They were the ones that spoke to me sometimes when
I opened the drawer, or got me up in the middle of the night and sent me out
onto New York’s cold streets.

— 24 —

Two months later I was in the Park, walking
the Ramble after dark. I could take it. I wore a bulletproof smile.

I was shedding tension after a morning in
court in Newer York. Evelyne’s deposition. The cops seemed to think I knew a
thing or two.

But something had already begun to unknot
my muscles. I found it deep in the Time’s notices, a two-line note, a
twenty-dollar job. It said:

To JM, Hans safe and sound. We begin
rebuilding the dream. T.

My now-legal immigrant friend, Thor, had
found his son. They’d made it.

See? Bulletproof. A crack junkie could have
pissed on me and I would have complimented the weather.

I discovered on making my apartment that
the smile wasn’t
bomb
proof.

I slipped my coat off to hang it on a peg
in the vestibule above Grace’s shoes, and ran a hand through its pockets on
habit. What I found in the right inner pocket was about ten megatons worth.

It was a note written on yellow legal pad
in a thin, elegant hand. This is what it said:

“Janus.

It could have been so different for you and
I.

But that is the past. My interest lies with
the future. Keenly. I am a luxury model, and the Tombs will not treat me well.
I shudder at the thought. It will kill me.

So I offer you a deal. Destroy the case
against me―you can find a way―and I will tell you why our paths first crossed.
Why I had to see Janus McIlwraith in the flesh and up-close―even if we did have
our misunderstandings. (I’m sorry to have set Gallant and Dunning on you. They
are both dead now. Will you forgive me?)

I cannot say more now—there are other,
powerful parties that would take an interest in your answer. They call you by a
different name: phlogiston”

(A memory rose of paging through Grace’s
Webster’s Unabridged for that word. Phlogiston: the combustive, fire-like
element at the center of a very old and very dead scientific theory.

Looks like the fire was
me
.

But why? What interest could anyone have in
a crusty provenor with a long-lapsed warranty?

Then my mind flashed further back, to a
scrapyard and a psychotic midget and a bioengineered dog. The midget had wanted
to ask me a question. With a bolt of intuition that felt like divine
revelation, I
knew
he’d wanted to ask me whether it was true my daily
commute took in two-and-a-half centuries.

Someone in Newer York other than Nate knew
about the mirrors.

But I quickly forgot this realization when
I read the rest of the sentence.)

“―other than that it has to do with your
wife.

Yes. Your instincts are right. She lives.

Please be quick.

Love?

Evelyne Speigh.”

For a moment I was struck dumb to my heels.

But only for a moment.

I took my coat back off the peg and
re-slung it across my shoulders. I stalked into the bedroom, and unclipped my
holster. I laid it and the Lady Smith snug at the back of the second drawer.

I went to the bookshelf where the record
player lay silent. I felt under its edge for the catch and popped it. I swung
it up and took a moment to gaze on what lay beneath.

A Russian KBP GSh-18 Pistol. Light as a
Glock; able to pack armor piercing 9mm rounds. Grade AA, for Apology Accepted.
No true safety catch. In my opinion, the most dangerous handgun ever carried,
in either New York...

I call it the Black Russian.

I lifted it from its cradle, hefted it
once, then strapped its holster against my flank. The wound there had finally
stopped weeping.

Then I strode to the mirror in the hall.

I paused to appraise myself like I had done
all those weeks before. For a moment I didn’t recognize myself. I couldn’t say
what had changed. Maybe the Black Russian was pulling me off-center.

After nine years I’d tripped across a line
to Grace. It was live, and its energy coursed through me.

The clock on the corridor wall was visible
in the mirror. It read 10.37 PM.

So close to midnight and I was heading
wild-side. I was done with the Cinderella act.

Steel don’t feel? Who said that? It’s
bullshit. It feels, all right.

But it sharpens too.

And Newer York was about to feel its blade.

I stepped through.

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DARK
MATTER
― Rasputin “Monk” Lowdermilk wanted to
end it all. But when he is run down by a car on the way to his suicide, he
finds that life is just beginning.

As he recovers from Chrysler-induced head
trauma, he begins to discover strange new abilities. He can draw portraits so
precise they look like photographs. He can remember with flawless clarity
everything he’s ever seen or heard, no matter how trivial. He can read
strangers so well it verges on telepathy.

But with these gifts come strange visions
tinged with menace. And the one thing Rasputin doesn’t know is that his new
abilities have been noticed, by ancient and evil forces who recognise what the
gifts mean and what they will become. Unfortunately, his new life is only of
benefit to them if he’s dead.

Dark Matter is a cerebral mystery that plays
fair ― and dares you to solve it.