The Devil's Only Friend (14 page)

“What's your relationship to this Mr. Chew of
The Detroit News,
Mr. Caudill?”

“Chew?”

“He takes great pains to mention you in his little article in the morning edition,” said Lloyd. “Lurid! Sensational! I suppose you haven't read it.”

“I never read the papers.”

“You might want to pick up a copy,” Lloyd said. He turned to face me directly and drew himself up. “If you're to have the run of any Lloyd facility, I'll have to request that you sever any contact with this man. I'm not pleased to be so serious, but you must understand that this company represents my father's legacy.”

“I see how it is.”

“If it seems your loyalty is wavering, Mr. Caudill, I'd suggest you waver to the better side.”

“You're threatening me now?”

“Why should I?” Lloyd asked. “My father trusts you. Why shouldn't I trust you, too? Jasper Lloyd is a folk hero for the common man, a legend in his own time.”

We were joined at a discreet distance by a guard and by a fat man with a clipboard. The fat man looked at first like a lady to me, and I had to look again.

“I'm trying to help you out,” I said. “You don't need to think about that bastard Chew.”

“I need to think about every little thing,” Lloyd said, “but it's a terrific drain on the constitution.”

I don't know if it was a show, but he seemed to sag visibly. He waved the guard closer. The fat man came along, too.

“You,” said Lloyd, waggling a long finger toward the guard.

“Yes, sir?”

“Why aren't you wearing a name tag?”

“I was never issued one, sir. Just the badge. It has a number—”

“Take my two friends here to the Security Office and have them each issued a gold badge.”

“Gold?”

“At my instruction—are you paying attention?—the paperwork is to be left blank. Do you understand?”

“But what about the income tax, sir?”

“My gentlemen friends are volunteering their services in our noble cause. Now, it's a matter of some importance.”

“I see, Mr. Lloyd.”

“A matter of national security. You'll have to trust that you're doing your part to support special programs quite beyond the scope of your knowledge.”

“Yes, sir.”

“If you fail in this duty, you'll answer to my father. Can you accept this responsibility?”

“I guess I have to, sir.”

“Good. There's a good man. I'll be down later to sign all the papers myself.” Lloyd moved his body in such a way as to cut his subordinates off from us. “Now, Caudill,” he said, “good luck to you. I can't say if we'll meet again. You might want to begin your quest with a copy of the
News.
Our Mr. Chew, if I remember correctly, mentions something about another body at our facility in—Illinois? I leave it to you to find the truth of it.”

Lloyd turned and took the fat man by his fleshy elbow and walked on up the line. The nameless guard looked after him and then back to us, trying to decide if there was a gag in play or if we were something substantial to trouble him.

“Let's go,” I said.

“We're on a schedule,” Federle said.

Though he had a badge and a uniform, we were harder than he was.

“Okay,” he said.

We walked back toward the stairwell.

“We got your number,” said Federle. “Your badge number.”

“Just keep quiet,” I told him. “Keep your yap shut.”

CHAPTER 14

It was a great relief to break out into the open world after the din and the stench of the great plant. I had lately not been in fighting condition at all, but I was surprised by the crushing fatigue that often came upon me in waves since I had been on the mend. Federle was fagged out from the double duty as well, but he was still hot to dig in. I let him drive back to the city.

“What a cookie that Lloyd is. He don't paddle straight.”

“He doesn't seem to know what he wants,” I told him. “That's the way to trouble.”

“We'll pick up a paper somewhere.”

“It doesn't matter,” I said. “I don't need to worry my eye with it. That weasel Chew knows how it is. If he comes around, he'll get the message quick. You need to get some sleep if you're pulling a shift tonight.”

“Sleep now? How can I sleep?”

“You're no good to me if I can't trust your wits.”

In part I guess because he was so run-down, he couldn't find any answer for me.

“You get some sleep now,” I said, “and leave me to poke around.”

“I could quit my job,” Federle said. “I'd do it in a minute. Lloyd would cough up some dough if we asked him. It's only pin money for either one of them Lloyds.”

“Then we'd be working for him for sure.”

“Well, who are we working for exactly?”

“We're just working,” I said.

“The Old Man's got something on you?”

“No.”

Federle pulled along the curb in front of our building. The day was straggling toward evening and the block was busy with schoolkids and women hurrying home to make supper.

“I feel like you're giving me the boot,” said Federle.

“I am. Don't get sentimental.”

“We'll go again tomorrow? We should brace those Hardiman boys. They got a hard-on for Lloyd. Rich bastards.”

“Sure.”

Federle took the car out of gear and cranked the hand brake. As he struggled out the door of the Chrysler, I caught sight of a bit of the scarred flesh over his ankle. It was like melted pink wax.

“All right, Pete.”

“You know how to keep your mouth shut, right?”

“Who am I gonna talk to?” He let a flash of irritation get away from him.

“Sooner or later that damn Chew will come around.”

“Let him come,” he said. He flashed a white smile but his eyes were dull. He drew his finger like a knife across his throat, and then he turned away and went into the building.

I got out of the car and came around to the driver's side. I sat down and tried to shift myself into a comfortable position—an impossible job. It had been a few months since I had sold off my Packard, and I had some worry that I might have lost the trick of driving. But the car was tight enough and had a hot enough motor to keep me moving along. I left Federle behind and drove off the wrong way so he wouldn't know where I was heading. It wasn't because I trusted him any less than anybody else; I knew he had been through some things, and so he'd have an idea about how he would handle himself in a pinch. I didn't want to think of him as a partner but rather as an assistant or something less vital. Federle, I could see from the first time I had met him, would always need to be kept at an appropriate distance.

I picked up a copy of the
News
from a stand just down from police headquarters on Beaubien, and then parked where I could still see the building. Chew's article hadn't even made the front page. I wondered naturally if someone at Lloyd Motors was leaning on the paper to keep the story dull. According to Chew, a set of bones had been found beneath an unused casting mold outside a small stamping plant on the east side of Detroit, one not owned directly by Lloyd but for many years supplying parts exclusively to the company. There had been such a crush for metal that every old slab had been taken for scrap. So they finally moved the old mold, several tons of steel, after it had been put aside for a number of years. It was clear that Chew was struggling to make it out to be more interesting than it was, and no one yet could say how old the bones might be; but he tried hard with his words to make some connection between the bones and the new murders.

He brought me into the story, I guess, to show what he could do to trip me up. “Former Detroit Police Detective Peter Caudill, now employed by Lloyd Motor Company, offered no comment. Mr. Caudill was recently the victim of a vicious assault, about which he offered no comment as well.” Although the mention of me was admirably useless for the story itself, it was enough to goad me along, to throw a wrench into the mix. I was sure that the notice would not escape my mother's little scissors. She had saved all the newspaper articles that ran when I shot the black boy years ago. Later, when my eye and fingers had been blown away, she was delighted to find my formal police portrait on the front page. I wasn't the type to be written up for a happy story, and so I suppose she had to take what was offered. Maybe she'd take out the scrapbook filled with the remembrance of dead and maimed relatives and add another page.

The only galling aspect of Chew's story, though, was that the paper had inset the photo of Walker's sister I had given to him. There was a formally posed picture of another woman, also a Negro, with the blank-eyed look of an alcoholic, with the unlikely name of Avis Davis. This was the woman who had been killed in Indiana. She was prettier and more composed than Walker's sister, but it was clear from the photo that she'd done some hard living.

According to Chew, both women had been “horribly mutilated.” I guessed that he had not bothered or been allowed to see the bodies for himself, and I wondered if he had even seen any direct evidence of any mutilation, even a crime scene photograph. Probably he had only heard off-the-record rumors from his usual contacts. The regular Lloyd security men were everywhere, and they had the money to buy some quiet wherever they wanted it, but they could not be everywhere at once. Whether or not the old bones at the stamping plant had anything to do with it, I saw that the story would prick up some ears. There was no telling who might now be interested in talking to me. The thugs who had roughed me up, whether or not they were working directly for Estelle Hardiman, would not have to worry about being picked up, because I had given no description of them to the police. The Hardiman boys likely knew my name as well. If it looked like a crime that crossed over state lines, then Hoover's men might well begin sniffing around. Should there be another murder at a Lloyd plant, anyone with half an interest in safeguarding war production would be tripping over themselves to get to the bottom of it.

All the ruckus might work out well for poor Walker, who only wanted to know what had happened to his sister. But it had gotten under my skin—gotten stitched into my skin like a tattoo. I wanted to extract my due share of blood in the ordeal, not only from the thugs but from all the men and women caught up in all the wrangling for money and power. It wasn't sensible or right for me to want to wreck things, but there it was. I could say that I had gone green with envy or black with bitterness. Or it was only that I was more sore and more tired than I had ever been. I thought it was possible in some way that the crush of business and wealth might be for the best, that it might do the most good for the most people. But I knew I was too small ever to be on top of it, too limited in my thinking even to understand anything about how it worked.

The queer duty I felt to the elder Lloyd also pulled me askew. Though I had never been able to pull the details from him, Jasper Lloyd was in some way involved with my father's death. Maybe because I knew that my father had trusted Lloyd enough to work for him, I thought it was my place to carry on in some fashion. Lloyd had built an empire on his own, but it didn't seem likely that the empire could hold together under Whit Lloyd's governance. What possibly could I do to affect such a thing? I figured I owed something to the Old Man and to my old man at least to look into it.

I wheeled over to Hamtramck, where I knew a man who ran an informal shooting range in his long cellar. It would have been possible to get a gun from him, but he was the sort to ask favors in return. I pried a box of shells from him for cash and pried myself out of the cramped basement when it became clear that he wouldn't have anything like a shoulder holster that would fit my new piece. Back in the Chrysler I slipped a few slugs into the clip. The gun felt smooth and well cared for, but I had some worry about carrying around a weapon that I had never fired.

Downriver to the west, where the factories were thick together, a sepia veil of soot hung always in the sky. Now, with the sun low and golden, it was pretty. The day's activity had worked my joints loose a little, but I knew I'd need to take the edge off the pain to get any sleep at all. I didn't want to run into Federle again, so I trolled down to Paradise Valley to see if I could find a quiet place to pick up a few drinks. Alcohol was scarce, but I thought I knew who might be connected enough to fix me up. Since the riots of the previous summer, things had settled back to the usual business in the Valley, the business section that the colored folks maintained, mainly along Hastings Street. After dark, white folks packed in to drink and dance and find the kind of company they couldn't find in their own neighborhoods. Though it couldn't be measured—an outsider wouldn't notice it—one thing had changed. Since the riot, every white man or woman kept a silent count of the number of steps it would take to reach the exit of every joint they entered in Paradise Valley. They all knew how far it was to the nearest taxi stand.

It was still early, hours before any of the jazz combos would start up, which was fine with me. I didn't need noise. I thought I might grab a bite to eat. There were niggers along the Valley who knew how to cook. But it was always just possible that someone would recognize me at a bigger joint, so I drove off to a quieter street and parked. I chewed on the remnant of Federle's wife's bread without anything to drink. I tore off pieces and kept them in my mouth till enough spit gathered to let me chew and swallow. It was relaxing.

There to the left of me was Walker's apartment building. Though it had been poorly used over time, the building was fully occupied. Every light in the place was on, and I could see that for most it was suppertime. But I decided to go up anyway.

Through Walker's door I heard quiet talk and a little radio music. When I rapped, it turned quiet. I heard quick, light footsteps—and I pictured Walker's children scurrying to the back room of the place. The door opened a bit, and Walker's wife Emily peered out at me over the chain.