Strawman Made Steel by Brett Adams Page A

the giant’s temple―before I
retrieved my .38, stepped round in front, and said, “Don’t do that.”
    He kept his hands there, but must have
relaxed his hold. Color drained from the accountant’s face, and he heaved air
into his lungs.
    I holstered my gun. The giant removed his
hands from the accountant’s throat―and hauled off and punched him in the face
with a hundred-car freight train. Blood flowed from both nostrils, and the
sight of it seemed to calm the giant down. The accountant was out cold.
    The giant got up, shook my hand, and said
that word again.
    “McIlwraith,” I said.
    “Thorsten,” he said. He said it Torsten .
    “I’ll call you Thor.” He didn’t object.
    At the desk, I put my hands on the
accountant’s neat stacks of paper and made a mess of them looking for I didn’t
know what.
    “This door,” said Thor in a thick accent.
“Where does it go?” He was pointing at the door to the loft.
    To hell , I
thought, and said, “Loft.” He grasped the door handle, and I said, “Careful.
There’s a whole team of dead guys hanging from the rafters.”
    He went out in a rush that sucked air from
the room.
    I pawed over the paper on the desk. No sign
of Alltron letterhead anywhere. There were some accounts with cryptic entries,
and notes in a shorthand I couldn’t interpret. And lists. Many lists of names.
Nothing odd about the names―if I was in Europe. Czechs, Poles, French, a few
Russians, and Germans.
    I heard a cry come from the loft. My .38
was in my hand before Thor came back through the door, but I holstered it again
when I saw the smile splitting his melon-head from ear to ear.
    He had a nice smile, but it soon collapsed,
leaving the hardened face I’d seen watch while he brained a guy with a single
devastating blow. A glitter in his eyes was the only trace of the smile.
    “Hans is not there,” he said.
    Hans. There
were no Hans’s on the lists I’d read. I passed a sheaf of them to Thor. He
snatched them from my hand, held them close, and ran a finger down the top
sheet like he was doing times tables.
    My gaze fell on the safe. I wanted it open.
    That’s when I heard footsteps clattering up
a staircase. More than one pair, and coming fast.
    Thor stiffened, then stuffed the lists into
his coat and went to the door I guessed led to the stairwell.
    “Locked,” he said. “But dünn . Thin.”
    He caught me looking at the safe, and said,
“You want to open this?”
    I did.
    “Hold the door,” he said. “I’ll open.”
    He went to the desk and dug his personal
effects out of the mess I’d made. He stuffed them all into his pockets except
for the pince-nez, which he clipped to the wide bridge of his nose. He angled
the standing lamp’s articulated neck until the element poured bright light over
the safe’s face.
    I drew my gun and took up station, back to
the wall, on the opening side of the door. My ears were in the stairwell, my
eyes on Thor as he squatted at the safe.
    Thor’s massive back obscured his hands, so
that I couldn’t see what he was doing. Lucky for me he kept up a commentary in
his German English.
    “Light and touch,” he said. “All you need
to crack these. And time.”
    He had the first in abundance. I guessed he
had the second. The third would be a problem. The clatter of shoes on stairs
switched to the pounding beat of men in a hallway. I’d been wrong about it
being three men. There were four closing on our position.
    I flicked the Lady’s safety off.
    Drowning now beneath the noise of
approaching bodies was the faint clicking of the safe’s dial. It wound up and
down, a rattler’s tail.
    Thor was still speaking. “Last to first.
Combination number. No tumblers like a door lock. Each number notched in a
metal disc. Just need to line them up.”
    I made a shushing noise. The storm of
footfalls had reached the other side of the door and died.
    The door knob rattled. Gentle then violent.
    “Freiter?” said a voice. Sounded like a
name. I glanced