The Devil's Only Friend

by Mitchell Bartoy

  “Federle,” I said. “Ray—”

  “You can’t just talk it away,” said Federle. “You can’t. I can see what that little shit is up to.”

  Charles looked intently at Federle, hoping I guess to penetrate to the core of the puzzle. He kept a perfect unflinching composure, an elaborate calm, that unmanned Federle’s fuming rant. His suit fit perfectly and seemed to give him a boxy and solid gravity.

  “It’s getting us nowhere, Ray.”

  “I agree, Mr. Caudill,” said Charles. “But I’m committed to hashing things out here and now if it will keep you from having to come back again to harass my brother and me. If you’ve anything productive or compelling to add, I ask that you do it now.”

  “Ray?”

  Federle worked his hands in the pockets of his pale trousers. He glanced at me apologetically and shook his head.

  “If you have any serious notion that Elliot and I might have had a part in any crime, it would be simple enough to trace our movements backward for several months, I should think. I’m afraid our time is so closely managed that we couldn’t possibly find the time to engage in such a fruitless leisure activity.”

  By this time I had grown tired of talk. I stood for a few more seconds regarding young Charles Hardiman, and he did not flinch under my bleary gaze.

  “Satisfied at last?”

  “As much as I’ll ever be,” I said.

  “Then I won’t have to see you again?”

  “It wasn’t me that killed your father,” I said. “I didn’t want any of that to happen.”

  “I know that, you fool.” Charles set his jaw again. He muttered, “I know more than you do.”

  I turned away from Charles and took Federle’s elbow. He was trembling weakly, as if he had burned all his energy keeping still for so long. We walked slowly into the bowels of the factory, and I did not flatter myself to think that Charles Hardiman watched us as we went.

  CHAPTER 19

  Despite the frailty I had felt in him after the encounter with the Hardiman boys, Federle seemed keen to examine the whole complex of mills and factories. But I felt the familiar healing fatigue setting in, and I found myself worn out more thoroughly because I was still half-thinking about everything he’d blurted out to me about himself in the morning. I was thinking about Walker, too. It had been a couple of long hours since we had to leave him. It was hard not to be a rube inside any of the massive buildings; it was hard to keep from gawking at the machinery, to keep from working out how power was transferred along belts and chains and cranes, how electric cars and light railcars came in and out with loads of raw or finished parts, assemblies, or gangs of men. There were blowers to move air and pumps to move water and other fluids, along with all the hoses and pipes and valves necessary to keep it all under control.

  Federle seemed to want to explore the whole plant like a kid, but I dragged him back to the security house. He had the sense or was dumbstruck enough not to say anything more until we had left the place. We picked up Walker, and Pickett brought the car around for us.

  “We’re on the track with those Hardiman bastards,” Federle said, sitting behind the wheel. “We ought to stick a knife in the both of them and be done with it.”

  “Have you ever put a knife in a man?” Walker asked, riding now in the back seat of the Chrysler.

  Federle’s muscles twitched from his jaw all the way up to his temple. “Sometimes you got to,” he said.

  “Have you ever done it yourself?”

  “I’ve seen plenty of Japs run through, if that’s what you mean.”

  “No, I mean have you ever—”

  “Walker,” I said.

  “Have you ever yourself—”

  “It don’t mean I’m proud, Walker! We all did some things.” Federle’s hands were splayed out, palms pressed to the steering wheel. “Sometimes I can’t sleep when I want to. I dream too much. Is that what you want me to say?”

  “Federle,” I said.

  “I see the face of some skinny cave rat right up close to mine, like our eyeballs were almost touching. You know how a bayonet can go right through a man?” He made the fingers of one hand into a point and jabbed his arm through the wheel. “Then I can see his face—I can’t help but to see right through to his bones, his skull—”

  “Federle,” I said, “keep your eye on the road.”

  “—I got my hand right through his ribs—see? And I can put my hand right through that stinking Jap and out the other side. I can see it plain as day. Only I’m not sure anymore if it was a dream or if it was something I really did. How would you like to carry that around, Walker?”

  “How would you like to see your mother raped by a gang of white men?”

  “Ahh,” groaned Federle. “Jesus Christ.”

  “He’s going to crash us, Walker,” I said. “What’s got into you?”

  “Mr. Federle, I don’t mean to be hurtful. I don’t mean just to bring up bad feeling in you. But I’ve already seen more killing than I wanted to in this world. Can’t we find a way to work out a case like this without thinking of killing anybody?”

  “We don’t know what-for about the Hardiman boys yet,” I said. “We don’t know a thing.”

  “It’s only a way of talking, Walker. I didn’t mean it.”

  “You all got the freedom to talk that way,” Walker said.

  “I talk too much, I know.”

  “What we’re trying to do—leastways as I’ve been led along by Detective Caudill—is to find the man or men who killed my little sister. And to the length we’re working for Mr. Lloyd—”

  “Them Hardimans are nasty fish,” Federle said. “They want to wreck Lloyd.”

  Walker said, “They want to sniff after their fortune. That I can see. But I don’t see those fancy boys dirtying themselves up in such a way as to murder women in cold blood.”

  “It’s the queer blood, you can’t say anything about it,” said Federle. “That Elliot, if you had seen—”

  “Listen,” I said. “I can see your angle on this, Federle. But if there’s any chance that it could be the Hardiman boys—or if they’ve hired out the job—it won’t help us any to have you going off.”

  “I’m sorry, Pete. I’m sorry about it. I get carried away. I got a case of nerves, I guess.” Federle lit up a smoke and it fluttered in his hands as he drove.

  “I’ll tell you something,” I said. “You could write a book about what’s wrong with the Hardiman family. But we’re not set up for anything like that right now.”

  “I’ll keep a lid on it, Pete. You don’t have to worry about me.”

  “I’ll tell you something else,” I said. “This ain’t something Hank Chew needs to know anything about. Walker, you remember the girl—Jane Hardiman?”

  “Well, of course.”

  “You never met her, though. You never met any of them, did you?”

  “I sure didn’t,” Walker said.

  “Well, I’ll tell you now,” I said. “It was Roger Hardiman that sent young Jane over to Willard Frye and the gymnasium boys.” I remembered Frye well—he had taken my eye, my fingers, the life of my partner Bobby, and young Jane. Living in my own mind, I had never really considered that Walker and Federle had never set eyes on the man.

  Walker said, “You think Roger Hardiman would send his own little girl to that Frye? What kind of a man…”

  “That ain’t the half of it,” I said. “That’s a queer household, you know that. Jane came along late, some years after Charles and Elliot. I don’t think she could quite fit into the family entirely.”

  “You think she—you think the mother—” Federle’s brain was working. The fire had gone from his eyes, and he slumped forward, leaning on the wheel. “If the father—”

  Walker said, “Roger Hardiman didn’t care much for Jane because she was another man’s daughter.”

  “We couldn’t prove any of that now,” I said. “That’s the kind of thing that gets lost from the evidence room. But a
s far as Hank Chew is concerned, it would make a story to kill for.”

  “I see now,” muttered Federle. “I see.”

  “Those boys aren’t entirely soft, you can see,” I said. “And the woman—” I choked off what I might have said and watched Federle carefully. “Estelle Hardiman isn’t as pristine as the papers make her out to be.”

  “I guess so,” said Federle. He was wrung out. When he was tired and off in dreams, his fingers and hands worked and writhed like he had an itch in all his knuckles that he couldn’t ever scratch away.

  “If those Hardiman boys have the run of the Lloyd plant here,” Walker said, “they might just as well have that same privilege at the other plants.”

  “How can we know where they’ve been?” I said. “We aren’t the police anymore. We aren’t private dicks, either, really. How can we put up such a big investigation?”

  Federle looked pale and thirsty at the wheel, and he didn’t seem to hear us talking.

  “You probably still have some friends on the police force, Detective. Though you aren’t so friendly as you ought to be.”

  “If we could put a tail on them now— You think they always stick together?”

  “Pardon my saying so, Detective, but I don’t think you could follow anybody without being noticed. Do you still keep that glass eye?”

  I turned to face him and let loose the ragged grin. “You think I ain’t a regular guy?”

  “You aren’t regular, if there’s one thing you aren’t.”

  “Go on,” I said. “You ever done any tailing?”

  “I never got so far into law enforcement, if you’ll remember.”

  “What about you, Federle?”

  He gave no response. His face was slack except for his pursed lips.

  “He likes to drive,” Walker said.

  “Listen, Walker, I was thinking of something else. I know that Estelle Hardiman has some Negro help staying at the place. Maybe those two boys—”

  “All the colored folks in the city are friendly with one another. Is that what you want to say, Detective?”

  “Okay, Walker. Don’t start in on it.”

  “We all have a secret society. We call it ‘The Secret Society of Colored Folks.’ Only I ought not to be so free with you about it.”

  “I’m only saying, if I was in your place, if everything was stacked against me like it is around here—”

  “Matter of fact,” said Walker, “I think my wife knows the maid at the Hardiman place in Grosse Pointe. She knows her people anyway.”

  “Then why do you have to prop me up when I only asked you a simple question?”

  “Well, when everything is stacked up against you, as you say, it can bring a little pleasure to be able to throw some grief around yourself.”

  Federle was smiling vaguely at this or at some part of his dream life.

  “Okay, Walker, I can take a joke,” I said. “Can you at least see what you can find out on that end?”

  “The Secret Society meets every Sunday.”

  Federle drifted to the curb near Walker’s place. It was toward suppertime, and there was a sort of lull over the area. I stepped out to allow Walker passage from the rear seat, and then leaned back in to grab my hat.

  “Take the car back and get some sleep,” I told Federle. “I’m going to grab something to eat here.”

  “Yeah?”

  Inside my pocket I peeled off two bills from the folded money.

  “Here’s forty dollars. Buy something nice for your wife.”

  “Yeah? I’ll get something for the kids.”

  “Don’t wreck the car.”

  I pulled the door forward to close it, and Federle drove slowly away.

  “I got some doubts about that man,” I muttered.

  “Every man can do right or wrong,” Walker said.

  “Some people get plumb crazy. They can’t help what they do.”

  “Do you believe that?”

  “You know it’s true.”

  “Do you think Mr. Federle will fall onto that path?”

  “Honestly, Walker, I’m not even sure about myself.”

  “Heaven help us all, then.”

  “You were starting to tell how Federle got fired from his work at Palmer’s.”

  “You want to hear that story?”

  “Sure.”

  “I was there on the dock, lifting and pulling with a hand jack, you know. They needed a forklift driver, and they couldn’t see letting me do it, even though I had done some of that work in the past. So they hired Federle, though it was clear he hadn’t ever learned to drive one. He hadn’t been there even a week, I don’t think. He was the type of man that wanted too much to be chummy right off.

  “One of the drivers—a great big roly-poly one—came in every day at the same time with his rig and went into the bathroom while we loaded up the trailer. He used to shut himself up in the stall and smoke a cigar and read the paper. Every day it was like this.

  “So the one day—probably it was a Friday, payday—Mr. Federle filled up a toy balloon with oxygen and acetylene—they do a bit of welding over to Palmer’s. You can guess. He went into the bathroom and lofted the balloon into the stall, knowing that the driver would pop it with the cigar.”

  “Popped it with the stogie!”

  “Blew the door right off the stall. Shattered some of the lights in there. The driver came out with his pants around his ankles. He started crying after a while, like he just couldn’t figure out what had gone on.”

  “That’s a good one,” I said.

  “He wasn’t hurt except for his hearing. But that was the end of Federle.”

  Thinking it over, I started to laugh. Even Walker let loose a low chuckle. I coughed only a little.

  “It doesn’t seem so bad,” I said.

  “It’s a rough crowd. That sort of joshing can get ugly pretty quick.”

  “Sure.” Walker meant that it could get especially ugly for a colored man when a joke turned bad. I was wondering if he’d found out anything while he was cooling his heels at the Lloyd plant, and I was about to ask him about it.

  “I’m going to show you something, Detective,” he said.

  We walked a couple blocks east without any talk between us. It was a pretty nice district, filled to the brim with colored families. Because of the war, everybody was either signed up or holding decent jobs, and some real money was working its way through the neighborhood. It wasn’t anything like Indian Village or Boston-Edison or Palmer Park, but I could remember how the colored folks lived in past times. The children now had shoes and trousers in good repair, and the old ladies had cushioned chairs to rock in on their porches. Maybe some of them had lost their men, but it was funny to me to think how much good the war had brought to that neighborhood and to Detroit in general.

  Walker led the way up to the porch of a nicely kept house on Russell. He rapped politely at the door and stood with his hands clasped behind his back.

  “You’re not carrying that weapon?” he whispered.

  I had to pat myself down to check. “It’s in the car.”

  “All right then.”

  The door opened inward and a tall Negro woman smiled out at us. She was very dark, almost black, and it was hard to tell how old she was.

  “Jonah Walker! Why don’t I see you on my doorstep more often than this? And why don’t I see you in church on Sunday? I see that pretty wife of yours.”

  “Auntie Lu,” said Walker. He took her two hands and leaned in to kiss her cheek. “Auntie Lu, I brought someone to see you. This is Mr. Caudill.”

  She looked at me very seriously and appraised my ugly mug.

  “I’m Lu Ella Marker, Mr. Caudill. I’m so pleased to meet you.”

  She reached out her hand to me, and I clasped it for a moment, though not as easily as Walker had.

  “Ma’am.” I couldn’t think what Walker had in mind. I was sure I had never met the woman before. My mind raced to bring up a picture of all the da
rk faces I had seen years before when I had been through the trouble after killing the black boy as a patrolman. There had been so many faces over the years, dark and light.

  “Come right in, now. I’m just in the middle of supper.”

  Walker and I stepped through the door and into the small room at the front of the house.

  “Set yourselves down while I check on my soup,” Auntie Lu said.

  There were two chairs and a wooden bench with a cushion and carved rails at the back. I sat on the bench, and Walker continued to stand.

  “What’s it all about, Walker?”

  “Auntie Lu can cook.”

  “I can smell it. But I didn’t mean in the car that I wanted you to set me up with any chow. I can feed myself.”

  Walker looked down at me sadly. “Have a little patience, Detective.”

  There was an enormous leather-covered Bible, worn to tatters with use, on the table next to the most frayed chair. The low light of evening angled in the front window and glinted in Auntie Lu’s eyes as she stepped toward us again.

  “Now, Jonah. We’ll have to see about you missing the service every Sunday.”

  “I’ve got to work, Auntie.”

  “Work!”

  “You know I have to feed my family.”

  “We’ll talk about this later, Jonah Walker. Now, Mr. Caudill, what can I do for you?”

  “Ma’am, I don’t know.”

  “I think you know Mr. Caudill, Auntie. He used to be a detective with the police.”

  “No,” she said. She peered more closely at me, wiping down her hands on her apron. There was a shrewdness to her that held back almost all the reaction that came when the light clicked on for her. She craned her head toward the staircase and barked, “Boy! Come down here!”

  “Auntie?”

  “Visitor!”

  “All right, Auntie.”

  I heard papers rustling and the sound of clumsy footsteps across the floor above us.

  “Mr. Caudill, would you care for something to drink?”

  “No. Thank you, ma’am.”

  The boy’s footsteps were wrong—one soft, one loud, a tap and then a quick thump. It was clear as his feet and legs appeared that he was gangly and spastic, and still I could not guess who it was. When his face came into view, I could see that he was smiling broadly—too broadly. He wore smoked glasses over his eyes.