The Devil's Only Friend (13 page)

“Who's this?” the guard said, nodding toward me.

“He's my secretary,” Federle said.

“That's right,” I said. “Secretary and personal valet.” I tried to nod curtly, as I had seen James do.

“How come he don't drive?” asked the guard.

“He's got a bum eye,” Federle said. “And a wooden leg. He's a good secretary, though.”

“All right. Hold on.”

The guard seemed to have been hired mainly for his deliberate slowness. He took the badge back with him to the shack and got on the horn to someone on the inside. As he waited for an answer, he continued to stare hard at the little glittering badge, as if it was a kind of magic trick that demanded an unwavering eye. When he got through on the line he mainly nodded into the phone and muttered answers tersely. It seemed to take an eternity. I tore open the butcher paper and began to pull apart the loaf of bread Federle had given me. I sawed off a bite and worked it around a little. It was good bread, very salty.

“I guess you guys check out,” said the guard, handing the badge back to Federle. “Pull on through and park right along the way, you see? Somebody will come out to take you in.”

“Thanks, brother,” said Federle. He made a derisive salute with two fingers to his forehead.

The whole long gate rolled away on casters after the guard made a signal to the controller. Federle pulled in slowly, leaning forward to get a better look through the windshield.

“Can you believe this?”

“It's a factory,” I said. “You didn't have any factories in California?”

“Sure, but still. Guys like us.”

“They got you cleaning toilets at a factory, don't they?”

“But over there I don't get to come in the front door.”

Somebody's assistant had come out to get us, some flunky, and we stepped toward the building. I brushed a trail of bread crumbs from my jacket and my slacks as I shuffled along. The front of the building was impressive but in a halfhearted way. You could see the grim businesslike hand of the Old Man holding back the designers. Everything worked to shuttle the pencil pushers and the bean counters to their holes inside. Visiting businessmen could be processed, whatever their language, like DPs on Ellis Island.

The brisk assistant walked off ahead of us and stopped to wait at each turn. He used a key to open an elevator, and we stepped inside. There was only an unmarked button inside, and we rode upward to what I guessed was the fourth floor.

It wasn't any different from the ground floor, as far as I could see. A great many doors lined the hall, and through these an assortment of suited and uniformed men streamed quietly to and fro. There were women inside the offices and inside filing rooms. Federle and I caught glimpses of them as we passed, but nobody said anything to us. Something about the design of the place made it hard to bear; we could see people talking but couldn't make out the words. My head was beginning to spin from the walking.

The lackey led us through an unmarked and open door into a round reception area. He stopped dead and jumped back, bumping Federle and bringing our whole train to a halt. By the window stood a stooped man of medium height pinching dead leaves from a potted plant.

“Mr. Lloyd!”

Lloyd turned brightly toward us. He was taller than I had first been able to see.

“Mr. Caudill and his secretary, sir.”

Lloyd walked over to Federle with amusement on his face.

“Mr. Caudill?” he said.

“I'm Caudill. He's Federle.”

“Whitcomb Lloyd.” Lloyd put out his hand eagerly to both of us but shook with a poor grip. He pushed my hand away when he was done, clearly glad to be through with the formality.

The lackey piped up. “But Mr. Lloyd,” he said, “where is Mrs. Bates?”

“I've given her the remainder of the day to pursue her leisure.”

“Shall I find someone else?”

“Think for yourself, Rogers. Don't we pay you to take care of things?”

Rogers scuttled behind the broad, rounded desk and picked up the telephone there.

“Now, Mr. Caudill, Mr. Caudill. My father has spoken well of you, but I must say—”

“I'm not so easy on the eyes right now.”

Lloyd smiled and led us back into his inner office. “I know about your mishap,” he said. “But I was going to say that your face is clouded with worry. And also yours, Mr. Federle.”

“We weren't born with the silver spoon,” Federle said. “Sir.”

Lloyd studied Federle for a moment. He drew his posture out and seemed to grow a few more inches. “I was born into a poor mechanic's family,” he said. “My father and my poor departed mother worked to impart to me the values of thrift and diligence from the time of my infancy.”

“Did the lesson ever sink in?” I asked.

“Certainly not! I should say never! Does my father seem happy to you, Mr. Caudill?”

“No.”

“He's never once been satisfied. Every triumph he's made has been attended by a dozen new worries. He's never been the sort of man who can step away from the fray to contemplate and remember what's happened in his lifetime.” Whit Lloyd drew himself up to his full height, and I saw that he was as tall as I was.

“So you see, Mr. Caudill, that I've learned from my father how
not
to spend my life. Are you satisfied so far with the course of your own life, Mr. Caudill?”

“I don't say so.”

“Follow along, then, and perhaps you'll become enlightened.”

He opened the door to what seemed to be a closet and revealed a tiny elevator at the rear of the office. Lloyd waved us in, and I could see that Federle had to bite down on himself to keep from balking. We crowded onto it; it might have held four men if I hadn't been so bloated. Lloyd closed the pocket door and pressed the lowermost button on the panel. When we hit bottom, we stepped out into a broad, well-lit corridor.

“We're perhaps thirty feet below the ground here,” Lloyd said. “Have you a fear of enclosed spaces?”

“We've got business, Lloyd.”

“Call me Whit. Why shouldn't you? When again will you have the chance to hobnob with a titan of industry?”

“It's about the murders,” I said.

“Murders?”

“The Old Man asked me to stop over to look into it, that's all. He seemed to be worried about you.”

“You can see, Mr. Caudill, that I'm well secured here. As it is, I can't get a moment's leisure. Presently we'll be joined by a guard and a clerk wielding a clipboard. They appear from every corner of the place. I can't be rid of them. That's why I like to travel whenever I can.”

Federle stood apart and regarded the corridor. It ran as far as the eye could see and sloped gently upward in the distance, and it was apparent that it branched off to the various sections of the great plant. There was a little propane-powered cart parked along the wall.

“I come all the way out here,” I said. “I don't want to play.”

“How much did my father pay you?” Lloyd asked.

“He didn't pay me anything.”

“Then you did it for love. I was going to offer you double payment not to trouble me, but I don't trade in such fickle currency.” He cocked his ear and listened to the footsteps echoing down the stairwell next to the elevator. “They follow me in case I say something brilliant that needs to be recorded for posterity. We'll outrun them.”

He climbed aboard the cart, and Federle and I joined him. The thick metal door of the stairway opened, but Lloyd started the motor and we puttered off down the corridor.

“I'm sympathetic to your position, Mr. Caudill.” Lloyd drove eagerly, with his head craned forward and his belly almost touching the wheel. “I know how painfully tedious the workings of such a situation can be, and I'm keen to help. But really I'm of no use. I know nothing about these killings. You've no idea what a grip the legal department has in such a place as this. No one here is even permitted to speak to me personally of any criminal activity. Let's kill all the lawyers! There is a chain of responsibility. You're the only one who's dared to broach the subject with me. But you're an outsider! So I suppose it's all right.”

“Can you give me an idea why these murders might be happening just now?”

“Hypothetically, if such a crime were to occur? You mean now, as opposed to any other time in the company's history when we weren't surrounded by the sharks of commerce, when we weren't caught up in a great war?”

“So you think it's possible someone might be doing this—”

“We are beset at every turn and in every arena by men of boundless energy and deadly purpose, Mr. Caudill. Even the subordinates in my own plants, if they're worth their salt, have designs. It's really quite exhausting even to think of it. It's intractable.”

Federle said, “Now
you're
unhappy.”

Lloyd turned back to look at Federle with delight. “But I have an escape!” he said. He stopped the cart at the end of a side corridor and cut the motor. “I have a life outside this place.”

“I've got a wife and kids, too,” said Federle. “It ain't all peaches and cream.”

“My wife! My wife and I have, you might say, a marriage of conviviality. I haven't seen the woman more than three times in the past year. My children are off to school, well coddled, to be sure.” He turned a mocking dour look toward me. “And safe, too, I should say.”

Federle muttered something that was lost in the echoing tunnel.

A guard sat on a stiff chair before the door at the end of the corridor. As we approached, he stood and spoke into a grate in the wall.

“Can you manage a few steps?” Lloyd was at least ten years older than me, and though he was sometimes stooped and slack about the jowls, I could see that he had some of the spring and grit of his father. If Federle and I seemed crippled to him, I could let it pass.

“Go on,” I said.

We plodded up a couple dozen steps and another guard let us through to the factory floor. Though the din broke partway through to the stairwell as we climbed, the full sound blasted like a wave when the thick door opened. Lloyd stepped aside to let us be awed by the spectacle. Compared to the cramped passageways and elevators, and even to the office building we had been through, the factory was so big as to seem like the outdoors. Here it was easy to see how a minor god full of purpose had tried to make a world in his own image—and had succeeded as well as any man in history.

Aircraft engines came slowly along on hooks like hogs in a slaughterhouse, then came down to the men on the line with air-driven grinders and bolt guns. The great line turned back on itself and crossed over an immense craneway, unused for now. The comforting stench of grease and oil and pneumatic fluid swirled up from the floor and out through an immense bank of sunward windows, thirty feet or more above. So much was happening at once that I knew I would never be able to understand, even if it could be explained to me; but I did not really envy the men who had to understand.

“Twenty-four hours a day,” shouted Lloyd close at my ear. “And yet there's talk of default on our military contracts. A great deal of pressure, as they say.”

It was hard for me to imagine how they could squeeze more production out of the place than they already had. I looked out on the whole thing through the haze of dust and humidity that hung in the air and the softness of my brain. I had been through any number of smaller plants inside Detroit, but the Lloyd plant was monstrous. I saw that a few of the men on the line had noticed our presence. From the way they stiffened and turned hard to their labor as we came near, I could guess that Whitcomb Lloyd was not much loved, and I wondered why he had no fear for his well-being.

“We are beset on all sides by men in uniform as well,” Lloyd said. “You see there the young Hardiman brothers in conference with a colonel and a—a captain? Can you see so far, Mr. Caudill?”

Across the line not far down from us, on a yellow-painted path along the craneway, stood a group of six or seven men. They kept close together to be heard over the din. I could not see well enough to pick out the military rank of the officers, but I thought I could pick out the Hardiman boys. They were stockier than their father, not as tall, but each sported the same head of wavy hair. Because they had to shout, it was hard to tell just how hot their conversation was. But the men in shirtsleeves—shop foremen—seemed to stand nervously outside the square, clutching rolls of blueprints, keeping their faces averted.

“The Hardiman family controls a large portion of our publicly traded stock,” said Lloyd. “The boys have inherited all their father's flame and flair for the increase of wealth. Really a formidable duo.”

Federle said, “Can we cut out of here? This place drives me nuts.”

“Is it the noise? You'll get used to it.” Lloyd considered Federle blithely.

“I don't mind the noise. It's the smoke.”

“These Hardiman boys got an angle on them?” I said.

“We all have angles, Mr. Caudill. Some are more acute and some more oblique. I would say that the Hardiman boys are certainly better than most at playing their angles to great advantage.”

To placate Federle, Lloyd had begun to walk up the line. As we left the grinders, the din grew deeper and less jangling. Here the moving line was high along the ceiling, and the space below was filled with rolling racks and cases of smaller parts, staged for easy delivery to various points along the line. There was a great deal to see, but it tired me. In my mind I brought up the image of Roger Hardiman's face as it had looked after much of it had been splattered away by Barton Rix's shotgun aboard Jasper Lloyd's yacht the previous summer. In my mind it seemed so clear. I wondered if Estelle Hardiman knew enough of the real story to impart it to her sons.
She must have seen the body,
I thought.
She must know everything. She blames me.