The Devil's Only Friend (29 page)

“I had the idea he might come over here,” I said.

“Detective,” said Lloyd, “I should not have lived so long.”

“Take him back to his bed.”

The appearance of Jasper Lloyd seemed to drop a curtain on the whole show. The two smaller men dropped their bantering act and looked around the room in exasperation.

“Jesus Christ,” Pickett wheezed, “I'm too old for all of this.”

“Just sit back, old-timer,” the first man said. “Don't try to take over.”

“We'll run the show.” The second man looked down at me. “That's the way it is.”

I wanted to get up from the floor but I didn't seem to have the initiative.

“We were just trying to find out something about my baby sister,” Walker said gently. “We didn't mean for all of this—”

“I'm sorry about it, Walker,” the first man said. “There isn't any way to bring her back.”

“What do they call you, sir?” Walker asked him.

“Call me John, if it helps you.”

“You can call me Mike,” said the second man.

Finally I got up from the floor. I wanted to be flooded with rage toward them, but it wouldn't come. I stepped to a chair that looked like a little throne and sat down.

“Listen, Caudill,” John said. “I know it can't seem right, the way we handled you.”

Pickett made a move to get up and then sat back down on the bench by the door. “You guys are punks, that's all.”

“Come on now,” said John. “Do we really seem like punks to you?”

“You got the guns on ya,” Pickett muttered crossly. “I guess you can say what you want.”

“But what's it all about?” I said. “How can you do something like this?”

John put up his gun in the shoulder rig and stood in front of me. “We're all business,” he said. “And that's about it.”

“It's a war on, Caudill,” Mike said. “You can see how some things are more important than others in a time of war.”

“Punks,” Pickett said. “All talk is what you are.”

“Mr. Pickett,” Walker said, “it's not helpful.”

I said, “You should have just killed me.”

“You feel that way?” John squared himself to me. “Who wants to die?”

I wanted to speak up for myself, but it wasn't any use.

John said, “You don't want to die; you want things to be better.”

“Sure.”

Walker said, “What will become of us?”

“Don't worry,” said Mike.

“I can't help but worry.”

“Look,” said John, “what we're interested in is seeing to it that the plants keep working. That's what we have to do. Outside of that, we're not involved here.”

“Then we're free to go?” Walker asked.

Mike and John exchanged hard looks, and the big man at the door just shrugged.

“What about your friend, Caudill?” John asked. “Do you have a line on him?”

“I don't know anymore.”

“Are you all from the government?” Pickett asked. “Hoover's men?”

“Don't say Hoover,” Mike said.

The big man at the door said, “That's a bad word.”

CHAPTER 28

Federle had gone off in the Chrysler. When we stepped out with the two smaller men, I expected him to try a rescue, as in the movies, but he was nowhere in sight, and even a little Chrysler coupe isn't an easy thing to make disappear in an open area. There was no telling what Federle might be up to, if he was plotting an ambush, if he was taking the car to find Johnson or some other help, or if he had simply fled. The two men did not show any worry.

They weren't about to interrupt production at the plant by calling a general alert. Maybe the Lloyd plant had bunkers set up in case of an air raid. I don't think anyone in Michigan believed that the Japs or the Germans could make it so far into the heart of the country, but there were some who took it seriously. Though it was hard for me to picture the mass of men moving together in an organized way, I thought there would be enough room in all the tunnels to shelter everyone in a real emergency.

The two biggest men stayed back at the castle to sit watch over Jasper Lloyd. Walker and I and the old guard Pickett hitched a ride back to the plant, bouncing along in the hard second seat of a battered Willys that had been parked inside the garage. The car was open and noisy, and so there was no talk. John and Mike sat in the front seats without concern for us. I was beginning to be able to discern the difference between the two of them. We drove to the corner of the complex closest to the Lloyd's hideaway castle, where food service trucks dropped their loads across four stalls, and a white company bus shuttled white-clad workers from the building to the parking lots and the rail spur, far to the other end of the plant.

John tucked the Willys alongside the building, and we all entered at the little alcove. As far as I could see, there were no guards controlling the building.

John said, “You'd better find your friend.”

“Better keep him under your wing. Keep him close.”

“If he's loose in here, if he's causing a ruckus—”

“He'll do more harm than good, that's what we mean.”

I said, “How are we supposed to find him in all this mess?”

“Probably,” said John, “you should think of what he's looking for, Detective. Where will he go?”

“Do you know much about him?” Mike said.

I said, “He lives up the stairs from me.”

John said, “Do you know why he was kicked out of the service?”

“He got burned up,” I said.

“He suffered some rather severe burns on his legs, it's true,” said Mike.

“But that would hardly be grounds for a dishonorable discharge, would it, Mr. Caudill?”

“Wounded on the field of battle, as it were. Such a man might be made a hero.”

“So what do you want to tell me about it?” I asked.

“We can't tell you anything about it. It's confidential.”

“Why don't you ask him about it when you find him?”

“The hell with you guys,” I said. “You remember, if I get the chance, all four of you—”

“You shouldn't talk so much,” John said.

“You should try to be happy with what you have.”

“You were close to being dead, but we didn't let you die.”

“Now you've got the chance for a second life,” Mike said. “Don't squander time looking for revenge.”

The pair of them walked off and left us. The wet smell of fresh bread swallowed us. The noise in the food service building was constant but not as maddening as the din in the plant itself.

“Can you walk, old man?” I asked Pickett.

“I can do anything,” he said. “It takes a little longer.”

“We'll try to find Whit Lloyd. Where do you think he is, Walker?”

“I'll go along with Federle's idea. If it was me, I'd get far away. Don't they grow rubber in South America?”

The old man said, “Maybe he ain't welcome down there either. He don't keep friends for too long.”

“We'll look for Lloyd at his office,” I said.

“That's good for a laugh,” Pickett said. “They'd grab him in a minute if he showed up there.”

Walker asked, “What kind of a show would he want to put up in here? He's a desperate man, and now he's got to feel like he's backed into a corner. It might be best to back up and let him run off before he gets a mind to hurt any more people.”

I said, “If he wants to go, he'll be gone already. If he's here, he'll try to make a big splash.”

“You mean a blowup?” Pickett said. “We've had blowups before. Anyplace you have a furnace you could have a blowup.”

I thought with dismay about the sheer size and complexity of the great plant, and about all the warrens and tunnels they had built over the years. Whit Lloyd probably knew every route, every shadowy corner, and it would be impossible to tell where he might go. Doubtless there were places in some of the buildings that hadn't been used in years, railcars parked along sidings, pump houses, shanties built and forgotten—it was like its own city, like Detroit, a sprawling blot on the landscape.

“We'll just try his office first, how's that?”

There was a moment of silence, and then the old guard turned and led us away. His spindly legs churned and churned, but the pace wasn't so fast that we ever got winded. Coming and going on the workroom floor through a number of buildings, we had only to show our badges to pass. Walker just kept between us. After a steady half hour's walk, we were inside the administration building. By this time many of the office regulars had gone out, and mop jockeys were beginning to swab things down. The smell of bleach affronted my nose.

With his ring of keys, Pickett got us up to Lloyd's floor. We stepped off the elevator, and though it seemed deserted, I could sense that it was the wrong kind of stillness. Walker sensed it, too, and we spread out on either side of the hall, leaving the old man to trudge resolutely down the middle toward the office. My hand itched for a gun.

“I'm going to need to piss before too long,” Pickett said. “So you know.”

One of the Lloyd security men stepped out where the hall widened in front of Whit Lloyd's office. He had drawn his gun from the shoulder rig, and now rested it casually along his backside.

“You've got no business here,” he said.

“We're looking for Whit Lloyd,” I said.

“You and everybody else. Seems young Whit doesn't want to talk to anybody just now.”

“He'll talk to me,” I said.

“Who are you?” said the security man. “I know you, you're the Old Man's monkey.” To him it seemed funny.

“We'll check the office.”

“You can check the door,” he said. “But you won't get in. It's a regular lockbox.”

I took it as an invitation to step closer. The handle was locked, and from the setup I could see how it was. I brought up a hard knuckle and rapped a few times.

“That should work,” the security man laughed. “I think I would've seen if he come by me already.”

Pickett stepped close and jingled his keys again. “Come on, come on. The crappers I get to work with.” He worked his fingers over the keys to select the one he wanted.

“How do you come to have a key here, old man? Nobody's supposed to have any keys in this area.”

“Nobody pays me any mind. I come and go where I please, and nobody pays me any mind.” He added, “You motherless bastard.”

He brought up the key to the polished brass plate of the door bolt. Because we were all crowding him, it seemed that his hand could not work fast enough.

“I'll go in first,” the security man said. “You all hold back.”

“That's all right with me,” I said, thinking now that Lloyd, even if he had not managed to make it to the plant or to his office, might have left a surprise. Walker and I moved back from the door and pressed ourselves along the walls of the hall.

Pickett finally made the key work, and then turned the big handle to set the door swinging. The security man elbowed his way past Pickett's belly and peeked into Lloyd's outer office. Then he stepped in with his gun down. From where I stood, I could just see across the room, which was unlit, to the tall windows facing the jagged skyline of the plant. Clouds had moved over the sky, blocking most of the light from the low sun.

It seemed that the outer office, at least, was empty, and Pickett moved through the door too. I was about to follow after them, but I stopped to try to think. Walker stood opposite me, his mouth and lips dry, looking tired and wary.

I patted up my ribs where I would have kept a gun if I had a proper rig, and then smiled across at Walker.

“I'll go in,” I said. “You find an angle out here in case he tries to come up behind us.”

Walker nodded, and then he began to scan the hallway for a place to set himself. He walked toward the alcove where the security man had stood in wait. Because Lloyd's office floor was covered with an assortment of woven rugs, I could hear only the intermittent tapping of Pickett's oversized feet as he went through the outer office.

“Do you have a key to this other door?” The security man rattled the handle on the door to Lloyd's inner lair. “I don't even see a lock here.”

As I came through the door, I caught from the corner of my eye a flash like lightning through the bank of windows. Where the thunder should have rumbled there was an immense shivering crack, followed closely by a blast of air that rattled the windows of the outer office. I could see, across the expanse of the plant, that there had been an explosion at the power station. The tall stacks were obscured by a swirling plume of fire and black smoke, and the nearer buildings were silhouetted and thrown in garish light.

I walked close to the windows and put my hand on the glass. The security man came quickly over.

“Good God,” he said.

Pickett's foul breath wafted over my shoulder. “That's the end of us,” he said.

Another blast blew out from the powerhouse, and I thought I could see two of the stacks tipping gracefully toward the river. From our position at the eastern end of the facility, we could see the power winking out from each building in the complex like a big wave had come over everything. When the loss of power hit us, the administration building seemed to shudder into darkness. For a few moments, we were lit up only by the big fire. As Walker crept in toward us at the window, an emergency generator somewhere tried to push juice through the wiring; I could feel it in the walls.

Alarm sirens began to moan across the plant. A weaker buzzer sounded in our building as a minimal flow of power helped a few emergency lamps flicker on.

Pickett said, “You really think Whit could do this?”

“It doesn't matter what I think about it now,” I said. “It's done.”