The Devil's Only Friend (12 page)

But for those who come awake at night, there is no way to escape the thought of it. The human world is a place crawling with fellows who could go bad at any moment, and it's only the daily decision to stay civil that lets us paint our pretty pictures. I knew well what Federle was trying to tell me about the spiders. He had trusted me, on the first day he had ever spoken to me, to understand that he meant to do well but couldn't ever be sure that he would. I played it glum and made no answer then; I kept what I thought to myself. Federle had been to hell, and now he had come back to a place that wasn't much better. Federle wanted to show me, he wanted to let me in on something, but I already knew enough about it, and I had already decided for myself: It's best to keep such things quiet, not to let the words of despair come out of you.

By the time Federle crept up to return the key to the Chrysler, I had put myself together. My tub was rigged with a shower ring and curtains, and I managed to rinse part of the stench off me and to wash my hair. In just the couple days I'd been away, my razor had gone dull, and I would have cut myself up if my cheeks and neck hadn't been puffed out smooth. My clothes were wrinkled from the toss but still clean, and when I finished dressing and combing back my hair, I thought I knew the face looking back at me in the mirror. I threw out the glossy patch from the hospital and used one of my own. Despite myself I felt better, and I hoped that some movement might work away the stiffness and the tightness of my muscles. I was glad not to be hung over. My head seemed clear.

Federle came up and knocked softly at the door, even though it was near ten in the morning. I came over quickly and cleared the door and opened it for him. Though his movement always seemed crabbed, he skipped in my door with the same agility and sense a cat might have coming in from the rain. He held a small paper box in his two hands like a football.

“Pete, you look swell,” he said. “Are you heading out?”

“I might step out for a bite,” I told him.

“That car runs like a champ,” he said. “Don't look like she's ever been run much. You might've thought they kept her in a garage.”

“You got something for me?”

He seemed surprised by the question. With his two hands he pushed out the box to show me and then reflexively pulled it back to his belly.

“You ever played with a gun much?”

“Hand it over,” I said. “Don't I seem like a serious guy?”

“Sure,” he said, passing the box to me. “He wouldn't take no less for it. But I put a couple gallons in the tank from the garage service pump.”

There were a few rags wrapped around the piece to keep it from rattling. I pulled the whole mess from the box and began to peel it like a banana.

“That's like an officer's weapon,” he said. “Generally we only carried the long stick.”

I held the semiautomatic pistol in my hand and pointed it toward the floor. It was half again as heavy as my old Police Positive, and the grip felt too square in my palm. But from the action and the look of it, the gun had been cared for by someone. I wondered who it had been stolen from—and if it had been used in any other crime that would now track back to me.

“This fella wouldn't part with any rounds,” said Federle. “I figured you could pick them up somewhere. You know anybody?”

“Don't worry about the shells. He didn't have a shoulder rig to go with it? I should put this in my pocket?”

“You'd wear that on your hip—in a holster. I'm sorry, Pete. I can ask him about it.”

“No, no. Don't worry about it. I might have a rig somewhere.” I was thinking glumly that I'd have to dig through the standing forest of junk in my mother's garage. I had not been inside it since I found my father's stash of bills in the legs of the workbench.

“So it's all right?” Federle asked.

I turned the gun over in my hand. It was too heavy, too long, and too loud for the job, and automatic guns required too much trust in complicated machinery.

“It's fine,” I said. “That's one I owe you.”

He smiled and seemed to slack down from his edgy stance a bit.

“You should stay out of trouble,” he said.

“I should, but I don't ever listen to reason so well.”

“Pete, let me tag along with you.”

“Tag along where?”

“Wherever you're going. You're on the case, right? I'm not asking for any favor. I can handle myself. They give me an education in the marines.”

“You got a job already.”

His deep brown eyes showed hurt. “They got me scrubbing out toilets, Pete. I'm the low man. They got me swabbing up after niggers, Pete, scraping up chewing gum from the floor.”

I wrestled with it. He was pent up and quivering, a wiry retriever waiting for me to toss him a stick.

“Come on,” he murmured.

“You got a license to drive?”

“Clean and healthy,” he said.

“Go on and get cleaned up,” I told him. I pulled my lips together and ran the tip of my tongue over my broken teeth.

“Ten minutes,” he said.

He was out the door and down the hall before I could say anything to take back my offer. I kicked the oily rags and the box toward the closet where I kept the trash because I didn't care to endure the pain of stooping to pick anything up. Since the gun was only a danger to me without bullets, I stashed it in the bare cupboard. I wondered if it would be possible to sneak into my mother's garage without her noticing. I felt the dread that seeing my vile condition might bring up some motherly feeling in her. And I knew that the garage would reek with my father's presence. My old cleaning kit had weathered a Michigan winter there, but I knew it would contain everything I needed to take care of the piece. It didn't seem likely that the old shoulder rig would do for the bigger pistol, but I thought I might at least try it out—if I could find it at all.

My plan was to go out to the Lloyd main plant just to see if I could actually get in with the pass badge. Beyond that, I thought I might have a look around to see if I could scare anything up by accident—I had that much of a plan. If Whitcomb Lloyd was there and if he would see me, he might be willing to talk. The Old Man had surely sent word to him if he was in town. Probably Jasper Lloyd couldn't keep himself from sending a steady stream of notes and messages to his boy even though he was supposed to have given up control. I didn't see how Whit Lloyd could possibly keep as tight a grip on things as the Old Man had been able to do with Frank Carter's help. Accountants were running things these days.

Federle came down and rapped at my door. He was dressed in a white shirt and gray flannel slacks. He had passed a dry razor over the thick beard that grew toward his chin. As I stepped out into the hallway, he offered me another bundle.

“My wife Patty baked some bread for you,” he said.

“Hell. I get my bread around the corner.” I took the package anyway.

“She cooks good.”

We struggled down the stairs to the street. I followed along as he continued to gab about his wife's cooking, about the weather. The Chrysler was parked along Heidelberg, and as I squatted to get into it, I tried to see who might be watching. I didn't have as much of the panic I had felt after running away from the hospital. The dope they had been feeding me had trickled away, and my head felt clear but for the railroad spike that had evidently been driven through it. Probably the new car on the block had pricked the interest of the neighbors, and I couldn't shake the feeling that someone or other might try to put a tail on me. But I couldn't actually see anything wrong. Even as a kid, I didn't ever see so very well, and now with the one eye it was hard to pick things out in the bright light. Sensibly I might have picked up some specs to make the vision better in the one eye—or just one lens and a piece of frosted glass over the patch.

Federle wanted to head west on Vernor, and I didn't say anything about it. We drove by the cemetery and kept on Vernor for a time, even though it would have been faster to roll down Mack. But just as we crossed over Grand River, Federle forced the car into a veering left onto Third Street from the right-hand lane, and then turned east again on Cherry. He slowed down almost to a stop and kept his eyes on the rearview mirror.

“I thought you told me you knew how to drive,” I said.

“You said to keep an eye out,” he said. “I got spooked.”

“Go on down to Michigan Avenue, it goes straight out. And don't try any more trick moves. If somebody wants to put a tail on us—”

The whine of a motorcycle cop's siren made me clap my mouth shut. I turned my whole body around so I could see.

“Just the one thing I asked you to do, Federle. Just the one thing.”

“The clutch is tight!”

“Just stop the car,” I said.

The officer pulled the cycle ahead of us and angled it toward the curb with its lights pulsing weakly in the bright sun. He put the stand down and swung his leg off the machine.

“You didn't lie to me about the operator's license, did you?”

“I got it with me.”

The tall officer put his gloved hand at the corner of the windshield and bent low. I could only see his mouth but I thought I recognized his way of talking.

“That's a bad display of driving, sir. Can you explain what you wanted to do back there?”

Before he was asked for it, Federle put out his operator's license for the officer.

“I'm sorry,” he said. “I missed a turn.”

“Is this how they drive in California?”

“No, sir. I did a wrong thing there. It won't happen again. I'm just getting adjusted to the streets here.” Maybe Federle was worried that I had stuffed the piece under my jacket. The tendons on the back of his hand stood out white as he pressed on the steering wheel with his fingertips.

The officer put a foot on the running board and bent down to have a look at me. Though the light was working against us, he could see me well enough. An easy smile came to him.

“Pete Caudill,” he said. “I almost called you detective.”

“Good to see you, Johnson. They got you down to traffic now?”

“I like the outdoors.” He slipped the license card back to Federle. “Sewer gas and diesel fumes, just like back home in Kalkaska.”

“You put on a few pounds, Johnson,” I said. “You got a girl cooking for you?”

“I get a girl now and again. But listen, Pete, what's with the mug? What happened to you?”

“I got thrown from a horse.”

He was talking right over Federle, who had his hands in his lap and his lips pursed.

“That's the story?” he said.

“It's a hard town, Johnson.”

“I'd be happy to … You've got a friend or two left, Pete. If it's bad, you should let the regular police in on the deal.”

I could see that Johnson was considering a talk with Captain Mitchell of the major crime squad, his natural uncle. “Johnson, I appreciate the concern. But there ain't much to do now, unless you can change a bandage.”

“All right, Pete. I know how it goes,” he said. He looked down at the pavement for a moment, considering. “I go all over, but I hang my hat at the precinct here if you want to say anything about it later.”

“I appreciate it, Johnson. But I ain't in any trouble. I'm just driving around with my friend here.”

He looked us over for a bit longer, and then stretched his neck. On his face I could see the worry and cagey concern. It was a face that had lost a great deal of boyishness in the months since I'd seen him last. He and Walker had done well with the bad hand we had been dealt before the riot, and of the three of us, he was the only one who seemed better for it.

“It's good to see you, Pete,” he said. “It sure is.”

“I feel the same way, Johnson. Good luck to you.”

Johnson stepped back and drew himself up to run the kinks from his backbone. He straddled the cycle and looped back the way he had come. Federle and I sat for a stiff moment in the car.

“A police detective, eh? I knew you were on the force, but that's something I might never have figured you for.”

“I never figured myself for it either,” I said.

Had I ever spoken to him about being on the force?
It seemed either that I had lost the knack for remembering what I gave away with small talk or that Federle wasn't playing straight. But for the time I let it pass, and with some difficulty I rolled down my window and tried to enjoy the cool wind and the sunshine. It was good to be out and about in the light of day, while the spiders had all tucked themselves away to wait for darkness to come again.

CHAPTER 13

“Regular army,” Federle muttered as we drew close to the administrative gate at the Lloyd plant.

They wore their rifles slung back and didn't seem to have much to do. As always, the entire area was a hive of activity, and with change-of-shift on the way, I was glad we were about to get off the road. There was growing worry about industrial saboteurs, and so security at all critical war production plants had been tightened up. It seemed unlikely on this sunny day that anything might run amiss, but I knew a storm or two had passed over Lloyd's pride and joy, and not so long before.

Federle drove up to the guard shack at the gate. A Lloyd company guard with an oversized cap and a sidearm in a white holster stepped down from his post.

“What can I do for you, gentlemen?”

I passed the badge to Federle, and he gave it to the guard.

“We're here to see Mr. Lloyd,” Federle said. “We've got free passage.”

The guard peered at the badge, looked us over, and peered at the badge again. He stepped back, looked over the old Chrysler with an odd look on his face, and then came close.

“Mr. Caudill, do you have a specific appointment with Mr. Lloyd?”

“Sure I do,” said Federle. “The Old Man sent us.”