Friend of the Devil

by James D F Hannah

  Friend of the Devil

  A Henry Malone Clusterf*ck

  James D.F. Hannah

  Copyright © 2019 by James D.F. Hannah

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  For Alice.

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  A Note from the Author

  Also by James D.F. Hannah

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  1

  Raineyville sat two counties over from Serenity, in Chandler County. It consisted of a few streets that overlapped one another like the Stations of the Cross and damn little else. The place made Serenity look like Gotham City.

  The Dew Drop Inn was in what would have constituted “downtown Raineyville,” provided you had an active imagination. The building sucked up most of a short block, with the only other things around it being a tattoo parlor on one side and a walk-in doc-in-a-box on the other. It was one-stop shopping, if you think about it.

  September had crept its way out into the open, with the weather still warm after sunset, but the mugginess that choked the breath out of you had gone. I wore a polo shirt and blue jeans and clunky steel-toed boots awkward to walk in when you’ve got a bum knee. That was preferable, though, to getting my foot broken in the middle of the bar fight I’d been expecting since Woody called me and asked me to meet him here.

  Woody parked across the street from the bar in a municipal lot, sitting in a black 1979 Jeep Renegade with the top on. The surrounding vehicles were a hodgepodge of things: a one-ton diesel with dual sets of back tires; a row of Harleys lined up one by one next to each other with spacing so precise it was mathematical; a Chevy pickup with a back window sticker of Calvin pissing on a Ford emblem; an old Dodge, red body, a blue driver’s side door, hood painted flat black.

  I could hear the subtle strains of Toby Keith from the Dew Drop Inn as I got into Woody’s Jeep. The music from the bar was muffled there, replaced by Charlie Rich singing about what goes on behind closed doors.

  Woody stared straight out at the bar, sipping convenience store coffee. He reached down to the floorboard, got another cup, and handed it to me.

  I glanced down and saw still another cup on the floorboard.

  “How much coffee are you drinking?” I said.

  “The extra cup was if I needed to take a piss and didn’t want to leave.”

  “You sure you gave me the right cup?”

  “I know I didn’t piss twenty-four ounces to fill up a cup, so yeah.”

  I lifted the lid on my cup and peeked. It was coffee, the perfect shade of a paper bag brown.

  Woody’s focus never left the bar. “You don’t trust me?”

  “I trust you. I also don’t want to drink your piss. We’re not in that stage of a relationship yet.”

  “No one’s in that stage of a relationship, Henry.”

  “Depends on what part of the internet you go on.”

  Woody rested his forearms on the steering wheel. He wore a black T-shirt and faded blue jeans and Doc Martens. He was lean and sinewy, and you could see the definition of his muscles when he moved. No matter that he smoked, chugged coffee like it was his job, and was a recovering alcoholic—Woody looked like he had lived forever and would continue doing so.

  All he had said in his phone call was that he needed help to get a guy out of a bar. I didn’t like the sound of that, but Woody wasn’t inclined to ask for help, so whenever he did, you felt obligated to say yes, if only out of morbid curiosity.

  I drank some coffee. Even by my standards it seemed weak, which made me wonder how Woody stomached it. He consumed coffee that could be stored in containers used for industrial acids.

  “So who’s in there that won’t be happy when we try to take him out?” I said.

  “Guy named Dave Miller.”

  “Friend of yours?”

  “Guy I know.”

  “He in the program?”

  “No. Probably should be, but he isn’t.”

  “You’re not planning on the world’s worst intervention here, are you?”

  “No. Dave and I have a shared past.”

  “From whatever vague military past you had that you don’t talk about because you like to be all shadowy and mysterious?”

  “Yeah, that one.”

  “Why are we getting Dave out of there?” I said.

  “Because he shouldn’t be in there.”

  “Want to vague that up a little?”

  “I feel it’s sufficiently vague.”

  I took another sip of coffee. I opened the truck door and dumped the rest out onto the parking lot.

  “I think I’d have been better off with the piss cup,” I said.

  “Everyone’s got a thing, I guess. Check in the glove compartment.”

  I popped the latch and the tiny compartment light shone on three or four different handguns.

  “You know what you never see in glove compartments?” I said. “Gloves. Which is ironic right now because I’m betting I wouldn’t want my fingerprints associated with any of those guns.”

  “Nonsense,” Woody said. “They’re all clean. Hell, they’re fucking untraceable, and they’ll pass through a metal detector without a peep. There’s a small one in an ankle holster. It’s about your speed.”

  I ignored the comment. The one he was talking about was a snub-nosed four-shot revolver. I shut the glove compartment door and strapped the pistol around mid-calf and slid it down into my boot.

  Woody took a final sip of coffee. “You were right; that coffee does suck pond water.” He tossed the entire cup out the window. It smashed against the windshield of a pickup, the contents splattering across the glass and the cup rolling slowly off of the hood and landing on the pavement. “You sure you want to do this?”

  “I’m still not sure what ‘this’ is, but I’m here and carrying an illegal firearm, so fuck it, why not?”

  2

  To get into the Dew Drop Inn, you had to ring a buzzer at the door, which we did. An eyehole slid open and someone stared at us long enough for milk to sour before he let us in.

  The guy behind the door stood six-six and clocked in at least around 350, none of it muscle, but that didn’t matter because someone had designed him for fear and intimidation. His shaved head glistened in the light positioned directly over the door, and his arms tested the tensile strength of a poly-cotton T-shirt. He gave us a once-over with eyes pushed deep into his head, almost hidden behind a lifetime of third helpings.

  “I don’t recognize you boys,” he said.

  “From out of town,” Woody
said.

  “What the hell you doing here then?”

  “We heard the people were charming and the food was good,” I said. “Your Yelp reviews were excellent.”

  “Don’t be a smartass, son; I ain’t stupid, and I’m fluent in sarcasm myself.” He took a metal detection wand off the floor and ran it over Woody. Woody lifted his arms, hands in the air like he just didn’t care. The wand remained silent.

  “Five bucks,” the bouncer said.

  Woody fished a ten from his wallet. “I got the smartass’s back.”

  The bouncer took the money and moved Woody through. He shook his head at me. Ran the wand over me. Nothing. He motioned me into the bar and repositioned himself on his stool. “I see you guys so much as make a remark I don’t like to someone, I’ll throw you both out and make sure your skulls bounce off the pavement for the trouble.”

  I looked at Woody. “See, this is why we can’t ever go anywhere nice.”

  The bouncer moved to hop off the stool. Woody stepped between us. “My friend here has issues. He got a measles vaccine when he was a kid, and he was never right after that.”

  The bouncer nodded. “Whatever. The rest of the night, it’s your job to keep him under control.”

  Woody grabbed me by the front of my shirt and pulled me away.

  The inside of the Dew Drop Inn was everything you could have hoped it to be if you had abandoned the concept of hope. Rusted license plates covered the walls, mirrors advertised crappy macrobrew beer, and animal heads hung in the rare blank spot. Someone had painted a Confederate flag across one wall, faded and chipped with time, with the words “If the South Would Have Won, We Would Have Had It Made” over it. The floor looked buckled and ancient and felt sticky with multiple generations of spilled beers coating everything.

  Stupidity and cigarette smoke hung thick in the air. A pair of assholes barely old enough to shave worked a pool table, joined by girls in enough clothing to not get arrested. The guys laughed and talked between lining up shots, and the girls stared at their phones as if awaiting instructions from the mothership. On the other side of the room, the presumed owners of the Harleys outside gathered around a long table. They looked every inch the biker type, in leather cuts, bandanas, and attitudes of general defiance to the world.

  Hank Williams Jr. blared over top of the ruckus, blathering on about something that only further reminded me how great his father had been, and made me wonder about the nature of a universe that took Hank Sr. away from the world so young, but his ill-begotten spawn refused to leave us all the fuck alone.

  To Woody, I said, “This is my own personal concept of hillbilly hell.”

  Woody wasn’t listening. He was scanning the room, making a threat assessment. If shit went askew, Woody wanted to see who would pose the biggest challenge. Where were the nearest exits? What could be a weapon if needed? It only took him a few seconds, but he did this anywhere we went. It brought a fun edge to dinner, but tonight it made me nervous.

  He said, “I don’t see him.”

  “You sure he was here?”

  “I am. She said he came here on Saturday nights.”

  “Who’s ‘she’?”

  “Sheila, his wife.”

  “Did you see him walk in?”

  “No. His van’s parked outside, though.”

  “Then he’s in the bathroom.”

  “Probably. Come on and let’s get a Coke.”

  The counter was the standard horseshoe-shaped piece of scarred wood pushed against the back of the building. Bumper stickers plastered across the top imparted bits of wisdom like “Stop tailgating me or I’ll flick a booger on your windshield!” and “Honk If You Love Jesus (Keep Texting If You Want to Meet Him!).” There were newer ones, ones that read “Somewhere In Kenya, A Village Is Missing Its Idiot” and “I’ll Keep My Money and My Guns, and You Keep Your Change.”

  The bartender was a chubby guy with a beard but no mustache and his hairline retreating like Sherman at Atlanta, but he’d grown what remained into a ponytail running halfway down his back. Never underestimate the power of denial.

  “What can I get you?” he said.

  Woody held up two fingers. “Two Cokes.”

  The bartender filled up two glasses and handed them to us. Woody slid him a ten and told him to keep the change.

  I stared at the soda. I hadn’t had a drink in a while and hadn’t been tempted. I hadn’t been in a bar, either. Bars were bad places for alcoholics. Not just for the obvious reasons. For me at least, it was because I liked the atmosphere in bars. Not this one. Sure as hell not this one. But ones where I used to drink, when I was a state trooper stationed in Morgantown, I hung out at bars where professionals came after work, or college students burned off excess energy and brain cells. I never hit bars like the Dew Drop. The Dew Drop was where you drank when you had given up.

  The Coke was flat and syrupy, and I set it back on the counter. Woody was still checking over the room. He focused most of his attention on the bikers. These guys weren’t recreational bikers, the ones who used a Harley as a sword to slash against the cruelties of being a middle-aged white guy. They weren’t playing dress up for the weekend. No, these guys were outlaws.

  Signs over the bathroom doors indicated “Bros” and “Bitches.” Someone walked out of the men’s room. He wore a trucker cap and a pale blue work shirt with what looked like his name sewn into a patch just above his heart and the sleeves cut off, showing chunky arms covered with tattoos. Thin, greasy hair sprouted from the rear of his cap and spread out across his shoulders. His movements were those of someone damn near defeated by life, by repetition, by circumstances beyond his control.

  He walked past us without a look and took a spot at the end of the bar. He made a waving motion to the bartender, and the bartender popped the lid off a fresh Budweiser and set it in front of him.

  Woody didn’t move, didn’t respond, but there was a momentary flicker—a twitch or something—in his face when the guy walked by.

  “Was that him?” I said.

  Woody leaned against the bar railing, resting his forearms against the counter, and nodded.

  “He blew by us like you were a bad idea,” I said. “Pardon my ignorance here—”

  “I do frequently.”

  “But maybe it’s weird you’re the one that got asked to pull him out of a bar, and he doesn’t seem to know you.”

  “That’s because we’ve never met.”

  “You said you and he were friends.”

  “No, I said he was a guy I know.”

  “Fucking hell of a time to pick nits, Woody. So this guy, he’s someone you know?”

  Woody craned his head back, stretching out his neck, scratching at the rough, tanned skin. “That may have been something of a fib.”

  “How much of a something?”

  “Closer to an out-and-out lie.”

  “But you’ve met him, right?”

  “I know his wife.”

  I didn’t say anything to that. Didn’t have to. Woody’s face said what needed said.

  I flipped around, my back to the rest of the room. “Do we have a plan?”

  “We do not.”

  “Should we have one?”

  Woody laughed. “Are you actually going to bitch at me for not having a worked-out plan?”

  “The irony is rich, I’ll grant you, but factor that this joint is crowded, that guy doesn’t know you from Adam, and those bikers over there would kick our asses for amusement. This could go south faster than a buttered slug on a downward slope.”

  “Then what do you think we should do?”

  I glanced down the length of the counter to find Dave drinking his beer, minding his own business, wallowing in whatever his personal sorrows were.

  “Why?” I said.

  Woody hadn’t moved. “Why what?”

  “Why are we pulling him out of here? How much trouble is he causing?”

  “Man’s got a wife and kid. Should be home with the
m.”

  “Then who the hell died and made us moral arbiters of a man’s Saturday night?”

  Woody let out a low whistle barely audible over the roar of the shitty redneck music. “Someone been pondering their word power in Reader’s Digest.”

  “I’m asking what you owe this woman.”

  Whatever twinkle or humor Woody may have had, left. “Sheila called and asked me to do her a favor.”

  I took another sip of my Coke. It was still terrible. “Does he know about you?”

  “Nothing to know. Before they married. Lifetime ago.”

  “What’ll happen if we go up to him and say his wife called us up and asked him to come home?”

  “No clue. He look like a brawler to you?”

  Dave didn’t look like a fighter. There might have been a point when he had been—most of us have that stage, and if we’re smart it doesn’t last long—but he looked to have settled well into an ass-broadening, gut-expanding middle age.

  “He doesn’t,” I said. “Most of the rest of this joint does, however. That includes the women.”

  “I wouldn’t want to end up on their wrong sides.”

  “Then what’s the play here?”

  “I guess we talk to him. Mano a mano. Like reasonable men.”

  “That’d be a first time.”

  “Groundbreaking, I know.”

  I let my attention wander down to that side of the bar. Dave was gone.

  Woody jerked his head in a direction. “Over there.”

  Dave was at the bikers’ table. He was nose to nose with one while the others fanned out around them.