The Devil's Only Friend (16 page)

CHAPTER 16

Friday, April 14

Though it wasn't much of a night for sleeping, I got up early, put on some decent clothes, cleaned myself up, and went out for a quick bite. I bought a paper down on the street and opened it up on a bench along Mack with my collar up against the chill.

It was too early for any of the retail places to be open, but everyone was in a rush to get somewhere. I was right along the street, and I got my toes stomped and my hat tipped by gangs getting on and off the streetcars and swarming back and forth across the wide avenue. The noise was incredible. Electricity snapped and popped from the grid as the downtown cars rolled by. Up and down Mack and Gratiot, and all across town, you could hear streetcar drivers ringing their gongs and fanning their air brakes at pushy motorists and tardy pedestrians. Everybody was gabbling—a turkey farm before Thanksgiving.

I didn't see anything more from Chew in the newspaper, but that only meant he was out scrounging for something else, something new. I folded my paper and left it on the bench, and then I ambled back to my place. The hash and the two cups of coffee I'd put in me felt light on my belly, and the weather seemed promising, so I wasn't as worried as I might have been about seeing Federle. There was no telling what kind of life he had with his wife. She might have told him everything, blabbed it all as he shuffled in the door. He might not have cared about any of it either; or he might have. I didn't have the gun with me since I didn't yet have a good way to carry it.

He wasn't waiting at the car, at the front of the building, or at my door, so I went inside my room and turned on the radio. It was getting so you'd have to hear an announcer bleat out a pitch to buy war bonds after every number, which drove me buggy. I didn't own any records or anything to play them on, so I sat waiting in my chair with my thumb on the tuning dial, changing to another station when I heard any kind of spiel start up. It was in the middle of a pretty Dinah Shore tune, “You'd Be So Nice to Come Home To,” that Federle finally knocked on my door. I think it was already half past nine.

Federle came in looking sheepish and tired, dressed in slacks that were almost white and a pale yellowish jacket. He held a white straw hat in his hand.

“That's how they dress out in Hollywood?”

“I never was from Hollywood,” he said. “It's the nicest suit of clothes I have.”

“Don't worry about it. We don't make up the glamour squad exactly.”

“I can get some other duds.”

From the way he hung his head and avoided my eye, I could see that the wife had been talking.

“You don't want to go out?” I asked him.

“Sure I do,” he said. “What's the plan?”

“Game for a ruckus?”

“I don't know,” he said. “What sort of ruckus?”

“Any kind of ruckus. I guess I'm feeling pretty good today.”

“That's good, Pete.” He didn't show any smile. He worked the brim of his hat and kept his head down.

“What's eating you?”

“Did my wife come down here last night?”

“She was knocking, but I didn't let her in.”

“I'm sorry,” he said.

It didn't seem likely that he was going to throw a poke at me, but I kept myself sideways anyway.

“You're always apologizing to me for what your woman does,” I said.

He looked up and smiled thinly. “I can't do anything about it, Pete. Next time she comes down, you might as well let her in.”

“Like hell.”

Federle was shifting back and forth. “Listen, Pete. Can I trust you?”

“I wouldn't if I was you.”

He smiled more strangely, and his black eyes lit up. “When I got burned up over there, my pecker got fried like a sausage, too. Ain't that funny? What good am I with half a prick?”

“That seems funny to you?”

“Not at first it didn't! No sir! But after I worked it over for a while, it got to seem funny. Har-de-har funny, no, but you can see what I'm saying. You got that same type of humor like I do. I knew it the first time I saw that mug of yours.”

“All right, Federle, I don't want—”

“It's okay, Pete,” he said. He furrowed his brow and looked hard at me. “I don't want to dump all this on you. But I want things to be straight between us. I want you to be able to trust me so we can get to work on this case.”

The inside of my lip was raw from working it over my jagged teeth. He was standing between me and the door.

“If you want me out,” he said, “just give me the word.”

“Don't try to pawn off your woman on me,” I said.

“You can see how it is. She's still a young woman. I can't keep her chained up.”

“You can keep some kind of a line on her.”

“Sure.”

“I got my own problems.”

“Then we're settled up?”

He wasn't going to quit until I gave him the word. Besides the lack of sleep, it didn't seem that Federle had been taking any food either. The light seemed to sink right into the skin of his face, forming bags and blue shadows.

“It don't look like either one of us is ever going to be settled,” I said. “It'll have to do. Let's go, now, before we lose the whole day.”

I picked up the gun and slipped it into my pocket, thinking to leave it in the car so it would be handy. We went down to the street and I tossed Federle the keys. It wasn't a pleasure to do it, but I was able to tip the front seat forward and slink into the back without going to pieces. There was plenty of room to sit up straight, but it seemed more comfortable to angle my legs. It was a bit easier on my lower back.

Federle eyed me in the rearview. “I'm a chauffeur now?”

“We're going to pick up a little help.”

“Yeah?”

“Just pull on out.”

He kept glancing back to me. “Where to?”

“Keep your eyes on the road.”

“All right,” he said.

“Head up McDougall to Forest,” I said. “You don't need to keep looking at me. I told you I never let her in the door.”

“It isn't that,” he said. He looked back at me in the mirror again and then looked away. “The baby isn't mine,” he muttered.

“What?”

“Sophia isn't mine. She couldn't be. When I came home, it was some surprise! But I treat her just fine, like she was my own. I change her diaper sometimes. I never had to do that with my first one, with Isabelle. What do you think of that?”

I looked at his reflection grimly for a time. He was smiling a little, cruising slowly out toward the big street.

“Head on over to Paradise Valley,” I said. “And don't spill any more on me till I'm done thinking on all of this truck so far.”

He seemed to like driving. Despite the streetcars and the foot traffic, it took just a few minutes to cut over from our place to the dark side of town.

“You know Sunnie Wilson's place?”

“Sure.”

“Head over that way.”

“Who are we picking up, some nigger?”

“You don't like niggers?”

“I got no preference,” he said. “But my wife goes a bad way just at the idea. She don't like birds either—makes her blood run cold.” He shrugged. “I've known plenty of niggers.”

“If it's going to be a problem—”

“Pete, I told you, I won't let you down. You can count on me to watch your back no matter what happens.”

“Don't get sore,” I said, watching him closely in the mirror.

“I'm not sore. I'm a little jumpy is all. You know I got a case of nerves.” He glanced sorrowfully at me in the mirror. “After I told you all that stuff.”

“Ray, I never asked you—”

“I know it,” he said quickly. “I'm just yanking your dick a little.” He turned to get a real look at me.

I felt like I was on ice with him, and so I pursed my lips. I could taste blood in my mouth from the places where the jagged teeth were wearing down the inside of my cheek. I asked him, “You know this part of town?”

“They don't know me by name at any of these places, that's for sure.”

“You're going to turn up here. There it is,” I said. “He's up there waiting on the porch.”

Walker stood on the narrow porch in front of his apartment. He wore a hat that kept the sun from his eyes and held his big hands over the bullet-chipped rail.

“Lay on the horn,” I said. “He doesn't know the car.”

Federle tried the horn but there was no sound. He tried it again, and I noticed that the button had somehow thrown a latch in the panel opposite me in the back seat. There was a space made out of molded binderboard under the armrest where you might stash a gun or a sap, and Federle had opened it with the horn button. I thought with a smile that the old Chrysler must have been used by Frank Carter and his goons in the old days when they were still trying to bust up the unions. I moved my shoe to nudge the cover of the stash; it was held in place by two pegs that swiveled to let it open when the horn button was pressed. My eye scanned the rest of the interior, and I realized that there were a number of places where the parts were funny.

By this time Walker was looking us over very carefully.

“Roll down your window and wave him over,” I said.

Walker had put on his better shoes, a shirt so white it looked blue, and a pair of wool pants with a strong pattern woven into them. He also wore a light jacket. Though he was stocky in build and roughened by circumstance, he made a nice figure. Certainly he fared better coming down the steps than Federle or I would have done.

“Hah,” said Federle, “think of that. He's coming.”

I could see Walker assessing the situation as he approached the car. I put my face against the glass so he could see me. The Chrysler coupe was too low for him to get a good look at the driver without stooping, so he opened the suicide door and flopped down onto the seat. He reached over and pulled the door shut.

Federle craned his head to get a better look at Walker, and Walker turned to look around inside the car. He pulled off his hat and rubbed his palm over his near-bald head.

“What's the story, Walker?” I said.

“I wasn't sure you were coming.”

“Hey, Walker, don't you know me?” Federle sat with a goofy grin across the seat from Walker. He bobbed his head to try to find a place with good enough light to show his face.

Walker turned and eyed him with some reserve. Then recognition flickered in his eyes, and he let his mouth move into a sour smile.

“Well,” he said. “Ray Federle. I didn't think I'd run into you again.”

CHAPTER 17

Federle's open grin was too much for me. I felt like I needed to get out of the backseat to stretch my legs, to clear my head of all that he had spilled to me. It seemed to ease his worry, and his happiness at seeing Walker upset me somehow.

“Now, hell,” I said, “why would you two know each other?”

“Before I got my executive position swabbing floors I did some jobs around town,” Federle said.

“He drove a forklift on the dock for a time—”

“About a week!”

“—until he got fired from Palmer's,” said Walker.

“You got fired from Palmer's?” I asked. “How in hell does a guy get fired from a job like that when they're scraping up cadavers to work these days?”

“That's a funny story,” said Federle.

“Never mind,” I said. “I don't want to hear it. Drive over to the Lloyd plant before all the shooters head out to lunch.”

“What about Walker?”

“What about him?”

“Well, he don't have a badge like we do, eh? They'll put up a front, you know that.”

“We'll see what swings when we get there.”

Federle pulled away from Walker's place, and I chewed my lips and kept quiet. Here Federle had just now offered his wife to me, confessed that his dick had been burned off, and made a point to let me know that he was changing the diapers of some other man's baby. He was humming to himself now because the radio didn't work on the car either. Whatever foul mood anyone else might have been in, Federle seemed happy just to move along. Walker, I guess, was used to sitting still and waiting. He stared out ahead, and I could see the nicks and little scars at the back of his neck and head.

I wondered about my own mood and my own intentions. Only a day or two earlier I had been so miserable that I would have eaten a bullet. Looking forward, I knew that mood would fall on me again—and again and again until my light finally went out. What a miserable life it was! Such a botch of everything, such a span of years wasted. For myself I would not have gone on. But slumped as I was in the back seat, driving off to Lloyd's noisy, fiery, reeking pit without a clue what I wanted to do there, I could at least see the truth about myself. For my own sake I wouldn't do anything, because I hated what I had become—scarred, mean, and unhappy as a pit dog. It seemed I was ready, though, to latch on to anyone else's need. Walker had asked for my help, as had Jasper Lloyd. Eileen had a young son out roaming somewhere in the world, and Federle—Federle was as much of a wreck as I was. I had let myself get soft toward him because I had the pathetic idea that I could do something for him.

The more I found out about him, the more I realized that it was beyond me to help him. Either he would get me killed in the whole mess or I would see him drop away entirely, as it had been with Alex. But curiously, the grisly expectations didn't weigh on me like the months of doing nothing had. My wounds and bruises were healing up nicely, and though my back still dogged me, I thought I might crack a head or two if the need arose. We were heading to the Lloyd plant, one of the largest industrial complexes in the world, and I knew well that I'd be ineffective, even lost, inside it. But the lack of any plan or strategy could not deter me. As much as anyone, I didn't have anything better to do.