Free Strawman Made Steel by Brett Adams Page B

swung off his chair.
    His large head was made to look pointy by a
fringe of black hair laced with silver that circled his bald dome like the
arboreal zone of a mountain. Wrinkles gathered over the entire surface of his
face as though he’d been slowly tapped of vital juices by daily labor, a prune
drying in the sun.
    But when he rounded his desk, which held a
maze of paper columns, his eyes were quick, and his movements lithe.
    He smiled and said, “You’re the man from
Dupont?”
    I smiled and said, “And you’re the
Thanksgiving turkey.”
    His smile got the quivers, threw its legs
in the air, and died. “You’re not the man from Dupont.”
    I said nothing about a turkey. I hadn’t
made my mind up yet.
    Then he fell back on territorial rights. “I
have an important meeting. With whom do you wish to speak?”
    “Someone who splits his infinitives and
burns his interrogatives.”
    His pruney eyes blinked once before he
replied, “Grammar is not my forte.”
    “What is your forte?”
    He decided then that I might be yanking his
chain. “I’m a biologist.”
    “What do you biologer?”
    “I run many projects. Most target
antivenins.”
    “Toxicology?”
    He spread his hands. “Of course. Target
practice is more fun with live birds.”
    “Would you show me some of these birds?”
    “Our poisons?” He got all patrician and
shook his head. “I’m afraid―”
    “Mr. Speigh would appreciate your showing
me.”
    That name had a visible impact on the good
doctor. His stance lost its bullocking cant. Doubt filled his eyes.
    He said, “Which Mr. Speigh?”
    Now it was my turn to be confused. “How
many do you keep around here?”
    “Mr. Eustace Speigh holds the executive
office, but his younger brother, Mr. Eutarch Speigh, manages a number of
programs.”
    “Yours one of them?”
    He nodded.
    “Good boss?”
    He gazed at the wall and tugged at his chin
with thumb and forefinger.
    “I wouldn’t say he has the managerial
touch.”
    “What’s that in English?”
    He let go his chin and returned my gaze.
    “He often mistakes his employees for
something stuck to the bottom of his shoe, but you didn’t hear that from me.”
    I hunted my pockets for a cigarette before
remembering I was on the wagon. I settled for plucking a card from the pack in
my pants pocket. I handed it over.
    “You’ve a nice place, Doc, but I don’t
fancy growing old and dying in it. Here’s the beef: I’m a private investigator,
here with the blessings of your boss, hunting a murderer who looks like he made
hay with one of your fancy poisons.”
    The good doctor paled. The wrinkles made
his face look like an arty line drawing by Giacometti, Portrait de l’Academic
Spooked or something.
    Anger flushed his face red again in no
time. “If you’re suggesting―”
    “No suggestions, Doc. Straight up: you guys
cook up death elixirs for the almighty dollar, then get worked up when someone
points out the bleeding obvious: put a loaded gun in a room and sooner or later
it’ll go off.”
    “Come,” he said, and strode from the room.
    I followed him along a corridor, then
another, then up a flight of stairs. At the head of the stairs was a pair of
heavy white doors inset with a pair of small, square viewports. The doctor
pushed the doors open and went through.
    I followed, and a smell like ether tickled
my nose. The doors closed noisily behind me and cut-off the sunlight from the
corridor. From the gloom emerged a lab, a dimness pocked by gaslights. At
benches spread through the lab, half a dozen men and women were hunched in
different postures of concentration.
    “Hydra,” said the doctor. “One of my
projects.”
    I patted my pocket again for a cigarette
before giving it away.
    “Why’s it so dark in here?” I said.
    “Sunlight kills things,” the doc said.
    “I thought that was the point.”
    He gave me a look that said ‘get an
education.’
    “Do you know how much legacy military
biotechnology leaked into native fauna