Strawman Made Steel Read Online Free

look at a body.”

 
     
    — 3 —
    The Miracle Hotel commanded the corner
of Park Ave and East 56th. I took a cab to within a couple of blocks and walked
the rest.
    It was hard to believe, wading through the
flood of human flesh flowing on the sidewalk, it was little more than a hundred
years since New York had come to the brink of extinction.
    I’d read the history books. Following the
Event or Singularity ―science-speak for mysterious crap on a cosmogenic
scale―the city had shed folk like a cat sheds fur in summer.
    But here I was, shoulder to shoulder with
New Yorkers. The same purposeful walks, the same stares, focused beams that
slid over each other, fearing entanglement. And everywhere the subterranean
thrum of boilers.
    Chaos, recovery, war, and renewal changed
the face of New York, but not her heart.
    It took no time to find the alley with the
body. A crowd milled at its mouth, spreading back from the police cordon like
spilled milk.
    I pushed my way to the front, flashed my
license at a green-looking cop, and slipped under the ribbon.
    Major Jackson P. Tunney picked me out and
came at me as though he’d been waiting for a target.
    “Get lost, Mac,” he said.
    “Never,” I said. “Got a wonderful sense of
direction.”
    He grunted. “I’ve got a digit could direct
you.”
    Tunney had a medicine ball head―big, round
and red. A line of blonde fuzz connected his ears at the back. His eyes were
black buttons, and they fumed with habitual disappointment.
    “Where is he?” I asked.
    He jerked a thumb in the direction of a
rusting dumpster.
    “Time of death?”
    “M.E. said, ‘Some time in the past’, and I
could quote him on that.”
    “Who found the body?”
    “Doped-out Spaniard. Kept asking if there
was a ‘ recompensa, ’ like the stiff was a lost dog.”
    I nodded at the dumpster. “Can I take a
look?”
    He nodded like I was extracting his mother’s
death warrant. “Make it snappy. Forensics are about to bag him.” I had a
suspicion they’d been waiting for me.
    I grabbed a pair of rubber gloves from the
CSI trolley and hoisted myself to the rim of the dumpster. It was hard up
against the side of the Miracle, and from the smell, took garbage from the
restaurant and the laundry. It was one of two massive cast-iron buckets in the
alley, of the type that are hauled and emptied once a week. In winter, it wasn’t
uncommon to find folks sleeping in them, snuggled up with the rats.
    Euripides Speigh sprawled face down in one
corner like another piece of garbage, like a ragdoll some giant two year old
had thrown in a tantrum. I counted at least three important joints flexing a
way God never intended.
    I cast my eyes over the contents of the bin
before lowering myself in. I picked my way over to him and squatted in the
trash.
    From the corner of my eye I saw his leg
move. My heart went offline for the seconds it took to learn it was a rat
crawling up his trousers. I flushed it out, and poked it into a corner with a
rolled-up Times.
    There was no blood, and no impact crater,
which meant he hadn’t fallen. His shoes, which pointed in odd directions, were
supple-looking black leather―old favorites but cared for. His coat was tailored
wool. Beneath it, the collar of a starched white shirt could be seen, stained
with no more than a day’s worth of sweat and grime. The sum effect was expensive
but subdued elegance. The guy had taste.
    His head was rotated too far to the left,
and afforded a view of his profile. It left me no doubt he was a Speigh. If
this guy was forty-odd, the gen-lines were strong in his blood too. The one
dead olive eye visible was frosting up already, but the skin wouldn’t have
looked out of place on a college student.
    “We need to wrap.” It was a CSI.
    I sent my hands lightly over the dead man’s
coat, and into its pockets. Nothing beat a first-hand investigation. Sometimes
the technicians didn’t note which personal effects came from which pocket.
Sometimes that