The Devil's Only Friend (30 page)

“You don't think it's that Federle?”

I had to give it some thought. “No,” I said. “I don't know what he'd do, but I don't think he'd want anything like this.”

The security man was at the window, tearing his hair and tapping his pistol to his skull. “This is a disaster,” he said. “A disaster.”

It grabbed him suddenly that he ought to do something.

“We'd better get over there,” he said. As he jostled again past Pickett's belly, he put his gun into the holster and smoothed his hair.

Pickett stood next to me for a moment more, and then waddled off after him.

It was something to watch. The power station was caught up entirely from within by white flame.

How many men?
I thought.

“Come on, Detective,” Walker murmured. “We had better get out of here.”

“Do you think Federle could have done this?”

“As far as we know, it could be an accident,” Walker said.

“Walker, that's no accident.”

As with any fire, we couldn't take our eyes off of it. Sometimes in the dead of winter the temperature is so low that the smoke belching from the stacks blows white and hangs in the air. But the smoke from the power station was black, and lit from within.

If Federle was like me, as he had always said, he would not want to pull the world down around him. If he was empty of hope, if he felt that his life had not panned out as he had dreamed it would, that he had botched up and ruined any chance for happiness, then he would want simply to be able to sleep. I thought it most likely that he had driven off in the Chrysler to some remote spot and put a bullet through his brain.

I wanted to do it, too. Not a day had gone by in the last several years without some thought of ending it all. John was right: It wasn't that I wanted so badly to die; I wanted things to be better, but I could not see how it could happen. I had been through my own fire, and it had stripped away for me the layer of illusion that makes life bearable and even happy for most men.

“We'd best be moving,” Walker said, standing shoulder to shoulder with me now.

“What's the rush?”

He was looking beyond me toward the big desk that Mrs. Bates kept. He walked over, picked something up, and pulled it close to his eyes. When he brought it close to the window to catch light from the fire, I saw that it was the picture of his sister I had given to Hank Chew. His tired eyes glistened.

The moaning alarm sirens now meshed with the familiar wavering air raid sirens. I saw that they had opened up a few powerful spotlights to rake the sky. Because I had never taken the idea of an actual air raid seriously, I had never taken notice, but I thought now that there might have been some sort of antiaircraft bunker set up to protect the plant. It was not a raid, though. Enough damage had been caused to cripple the whole facility for a time, but it could not be a raid. We were in Michigan, cradled by water and by friendly relations with our northern neighbor.

The fire at the powerhouse no longer flared like an inferno, but the thick black smoke that pushed out of the place went up and spread out like a sooty layer of cloud. They would be scrambling now, telephoning the far corners of the globe in an instant to ask for help and to pass on the news of the disaster. I knew that before too long the administrative personnel would be called back to the site to start to put things right again.

“Why would he do such a thing, Detective?”

I made no answer.

“Do you think it could be the money? When I think of my own son,” Walker said, “I just can't imagine it. It passes outside my understanding.”

“This will be the death of the Old Man,” I said. “How could he live through such a thing?”

“He's lived through the fullness of his life.”

Whitcomb Lloyd darkened the frame of the door leading to the hallway. “Let me tell you something about shame, Caudill.”

Walker tensed up as if he might try to make a rush at Lloyd, but he saw as I did that Lloyd held a revolver in one hand and an oddly curved blade in the other.

“You know a taste of what it means to disappoint a father so roundly. Surely you can't miss the irony? Granted, you haven't lived up your father's standard, you're a failure, but for me—well, it's a matter of magnitude. It's a matter of
degree.
”

“Come on, Lloyd,” I said. “What kind of man are you?”

“A tragic man?” He smiled broadly as he said it, and raised his gun to stop Walker from creeping to the side.

“I don't feel sorry for you, however you want to think about it.”

“Sorry?” He stepped into the room and with his heel closed the door behind him. Somehow he had changed into a London-cut suit and put a clean shave on his face. The hand and arm that held the knife were doused in blood, still wet. “It's a tragedy of epic proportion! The storming of heaven! Celebrate, Mr. Caudill. You'll never again see such a spectacle in your lifetime.”

Walker said, “Will you kill us, Mr. Lloyd?”

“Why shouldn't I, Mr. Walker?”

“I have a wife and children who look to me to keep them from living in the street.”

“I, too, am in a family way.”

“You have the money to take care of them, even if you go to jail for all this.”

“You should tell him not to inflame me, Mr. Caudill.”

“Woman killer,” I said. “And now a bomb?”

“There was no bomb,” Lloyd said. “Do I look like an anarchist to you? It's a matter of throwing a few switches, opening a valve or two, and closing the vents.”

“Either way, it makes you a coward.”

“Coward! At least I can face up to what I am. And you? A whoremonger! A cripple—an adulterer. You've no moral standing to say a word to me, Caudill. After all this?”

He was keyed up to bursting. The light in the room was dim, but his eyes glowed with such fire that I knew he would have no trouble putting a bullet or two wherever he wanted. The gun followed every movement, every sigh Walker and I made, like it was connected by wires to us. Lloyd stepped sideways until he was away from the door.

“Pick up the statue on the desk. Yes, the woman. Pick her up and press the base of the statue over the handle of my door there.”

His words were clear, and I could see what he wanted me to do, but I moved like molasses. Lloyd was not rushed, though, as he knew that he had finally come to the end of things. He meant to kill the Old Man; but he could have simply put a blade to him any time he wanted to. What Whit Lloyd wanted was to make the Old Man die of shame, of a broken heart.

“Put the base of the statue to the—it's magnetic, you see. There you have it.”

The statue was around eighteen inches tall and weighed a good fifteen pounds, and when I stood it on end over the handle to the door to Lloyd's office, I could hear the lock click. I pushed the door in slowly.

Inside the outer office, the shot from Lloyd's gun blasted like a drum. The bullet passed not two inches from my ear and slapped into the door. Bits of shattered shellac and oak bit into my face.
If you care so little,
I told myself,
why don't you rush him now?

“Don't think of attacking me with the statue,” Lloyd said. “Just drop her on the floor. Or rather put her back on the desk there.”

Walker and I stood before him unhappily, but there was no way to get a drop on Lloyd. I rubbed my thumb over the ample bronze breasts of the statue and put her down on the desk.

“Go on in and see how Mrs. Bates has fared.”

The doorway was wide enough for Walker and me to go in together. We went slowly, in the vain hope that there might be a place to duck aside or split up so that we could scramble for something to use against Lloyd. But we were tired.

“Mrs. Bates didn't deserve to die,” Lloyd said. “Certainly not Mrs. Bates. But you can see just the same she's gone.”

It wasn't until I looked closely that I could see that Mrs. Bates was in pieces. Lloyd had arranged her on the floor to look like she was taking a peaceful nap, lying on her side. Her ankles were crossed, and the knees were hidden by the bottom hem of her dress, so it was not easy to see that they had been disconnected. One plump severed arm served the old woman for a pillow.

“It's no use,” I said. “You can't try to pin all this on me. Nobody will believe it.”

Lloyd looked at me quizzically. “I wouldn't try to pin anything on you, Mr. Caudill. I was only trying to see if you were clever enough to figure it out for yourself.”

“Well, I'm sorry,” I said.

“Perish the man whose mind is backward now!” Lloyd cried.

Walker took a few halting steps away from me and then crumpled down to the floor as if he had been struck low. I rolled across Lloyd's desk and down to the floor behind it, then flipped up the desk and charged it toward Lloyd. I could feel the two shots hitting the desktop but I could not see where Lloyd had gone in the dimness.

The desk came to ground on top of Mrs. Bates and continued to roll toward the door. Walker crawled rapidly to one side, and I saw a flash of Lloyd along the wall, racing toward the row of potted plants before the window. I angled myself to intercept him, intending to tackle him and smash us both through the window to the ground four floors below. But as we connected, I found that the broad window was so thick that we bounced off it.

Lloyd's gurkha knife sliced lightly through my shirt and opened a nick against my rib as we fell to the floor near the elevator, but I was worried about the gun. I got close enough in to his body to take away the angle he might use on the knife, and I smacked his head sideways as I went for the pistol. I was lying over him, trying to put my weight down, using both my arms to stretch out his gun hand so he couldn't point the weapon at me. In such a struggle it's better to have your hands free, and it was putting him at a great disadvantage to keep hold of both weapons. He wouldn't let go of the knife, which was doing some damage against my leg and back, but the gun went skittering away.

Lloyd pulled himself in and managed to slip partway out from under me. He brought the butt of the knife against the side of my head, bone against bone. I knew that Walker would get the gun if I could keep myself between it and Lloyd, so I concentrated on keeping free of the blade.

Lloyd was far more limber than I was, and faster, and he was on his feet, slashing furiously. I couldn't get up fast enough or protect myself with my hands, so I rolled backward and put my feet up to keep him back.

“Get up! Get up!” he said.

He was set to fall onto me when Walker's shot sounded close to my head. He missed with the first shot but hit Lloyd square on the kneecap with the second, knocking his leg out from under him.

Lloyd still flailed with the knife, though I could see how the gunshot had shocked him. I rolled away and came up to standing again, and Walker let loose another slug that hit Lloyd's knife arm between the wrist and elbow. I could see from the puff and spatter of blood coming out through the fine striped cloth of Lloyd's suit that the shot went through bone.

Still Lloyd would not give up his grip on the gurkha knife. If it had been a family heirloom, I could not judge. I could attest that it was sharp enough.

With my foot I forced Lloyd's broken arm to the floor and then I stepped on his writhing hand. My shoe leather was thin enough that I could feel finger bones snapping as I put my full weight on the hand. I brought down the other knee quickly to Lloyd's chest and heard the wind go out of him, and then I took hold of his throat with my bad hand and got ready to bring down a hard fist between his eyes.

“I prithee take thy fingers from my throat, for though—
ck
—
ck
—”

Whatever more he wanted to say I choked from his mind.

It was when Whitcomb Lloyd stopped wanting to talk and began to look at me with twinkling eyes that I became interested in what he had to say.

“We'll need to get this man to a hospital before he bleeds out,” Walker told me.

“He won't bleed out from a shot in the knee,” I said. “Let him bleed.”

I eased my grip around his neck, but Lloyd held his tongue because he knew it would cost him a slap if he tried to speak. He was in great pain, I knew, because his kneecap had been clipped; and if any part had been broken off, it would likely have been pulled up the inside of his leg by the long muscles there.

“What about Mr. Federle?” Walker asked.

“Hopefully he got out.”

Lloyd caught his breath at this, and I pushed his head to the floor. His wet scalp was hot against my hand.

“If he didn't get out, and he's carrying that gun, there will be trouble for him,” Walker said.

“He's got a badge, hasn't he?”

“You two had better get your story straight,” Lloyd hissed.

I hooked my claw hand around his windpipe and gave a squeeze.

“We should just kill him, Walker, before anyone comes up here.”

“You should,” Lloyd spat.

“I'm not willing,” Walker said.

“He's got the dough to put off trouble.”

“With the lady lying dead there, I would think that there would be cause to convict him.”

“He's not stupid—are you, Lloyd?” I pressed my knee harder to the middle of his chest and turned his arm to rotate his shoulder past where it wanted to be. “He'll find a way to make it look like we did this.” I was thinking of the dead whore on Lloyd's lawn, a girl I had put my pecker into not two weeks before. To my fevered mind it seemed probable that Lloyd was not merely toying with me; he might well have planted some incriminating bit of dope at my apartment or on the girl herself.

“We'll have to let him tell his tale,” Walker said. “You have some faith in justice, don't you, Detective?”

“I never did.”

“You should worry about your pretty Eileen—” Lloyd's choked words seemed like a whisper.