The Devil's Only Friend

by Mitchell Bartoy

  “No,” he said. “Now we’re just about coming to the end of it, I think.”

  “I guess you’re right about that.” I knew that the pieces would soon begin to fall. They’d string me up for all of it soon enough, no matter if it was the Grosse Pointe men, or Hoover, or Dilley and Foulard. I thought of the wrinkles that came up around Eileen’s eyes when she smiled, and tried to consider the best way to keep Walker and Federle away when everything came crashing down.

  CHAPTER 24

  She always told me her name was Bessie Love, and I wondered if she was even old enough to have seen any of the pictures that actress had made before they began to add the noise to the movies. Had she made up the name on her own, thinking that it gave her a worldly flair? Had she been named Bessie by her mother and added the Love on her own? Anyway, I always thought of her that way, as Bessie, and if we had the need to speak I would use that for a name.

  I had been seeing her—I had been putting the sex to her—for some months, ever since I had fouled things with Eileen. Maybe it wasn’t more than a dozen times. At first it was because I was plain crazy, and then it became easy after I settled into it. There was never any other woman. I had been with her the night the thugs pulled me off the street, and I had been with her the night I found Hank Chew’s arm outside Eileen’s house. I guess I should have known that my sorry life was an open book because I was too stupid to keep an eye out for trouble. It would have been easy for the thugs or for Ray Federle or anyone else to know my business; and now young Bessie was dead as dead gets. No mistake, either: whoever took her to pieces did it because of me, and they laid her out on Lloyd’s lawn because they knew I’d be one of the first to have a look at her.

  I wasn’t a drunk, ordinarily. The last time I saw her alive, though, I was lit up to the gills. Walker had made me look at the blind boy Joshua, and I wanted to blot out any thought of him for a while. I hopped the crosstown line to get over to Black Bottom and I staggered into the house where she kept herself. You went in the front and came out the back; that was how it worked. I expected the place to be busier than it was, and in my addled mind it was because of the holiday—because of Good Friday—but then I realized that I had missed it by a week. It seemed like a joke, and so I chuckled to myself.

  I didn’t have to wait long in the foyer. On some signal from upstairs I didn’t catch, the two leathery brown pugs at the bottom of the staircase gave me the nod. I stood up and hoped I hadn’t sucked up too much juice. My feet felt cold.

  They must have known me from the first time they laid eyes on me. The whole neighborhood must have known me. Pete Caudill, the nigger-hater, the nigger-killing cop, son of a cop. Maybe they knew that Walker had taken me to visit the blind boy earlier in the day. Maybe they knew everything about me, and they were keeping notes about it, all my failings. The Negroes were organized, they had some intent and purpose that was far enough outside my reach as to be impossible to see—for a one-eyed whore-chasing thug. If they talked about me, it was never to my face. Walker was the only colored man that ever took the trouble to try and reach me.

  There was a whole set of courtesies to be followed in such a circumstance. I had to knock at Bessie Love’s door, but I didn’t have to wait for any reply before I went in. She was seated at a little dressing table, turning over a wooden brush in her hands. Nothing in her face betrayed any surprise or concern over my ragged appearance.

  “Mr. Caudill,” she said, “sit right down. Would you like something to drink?”

  “No,” I said. “That would put me over.” I let myself down onto the battered couch and sat back to wait for her. The liquor had filled me up, and the tight room pressed me and made me feel stuffed after the walking I had done in the cool evening.

  Bessie came and began to take down my trousers. She slipped off my shoes and put them neatly to the side of the couch. By that time she knew what to do, and it was a great relief to let her do it.

  She took my coat and thumbed down the buttons of my shirt. I let her take it off me but I stopped her hands when she tried to peel off my Clark Gable. If she felt any disgust toward my mottled skin or the scabs or stitches, she kept it inside of her. She put everything off to the side neatly and let me watch her with her own things.

  Bessie was an ordinary colored woman. She wasn’t pretty, but she kept herself clean. On her hands and arms and legs she used a kind of butter to make the skin shine. When she moved around the room before me, she did it slowly and deliberately, so I could watch her hips and her fanny and bosom turning and pressing inside her dress. Her eyes did not meet mine, but I could see that she was thinking of me; she knew how I watched her. Carefully she began to take down her dress, pulling the cloth flat and smoothing it over a padded hanger. While she hung up the dress, she lingered and tightened up her back so my eye could take it in properly. Then she turned and stepped close to me. She stooped to drop her half-slip, bringing her shoulders forward so that her breasts could swell up over the top of her brassiere. She wore nothing under the slip but her garters and stockings.

  Shame and guilt and alcohol burned through me. My face was hot and my hands and scars throbbed with blood. I watched her plump rear as she turned to hang up the slip, and my prick swelled up and flopped over my thigh.

  I had never been able to decide if it was wrong. I had the money and she had the sex to sell, but I could have bought relief from any number of white whores throughout the city. There was the usual bad feeling that I carried in my gut regardless of circumstance. But then, too, there was the shadowy thought that I had decided to smear my shame over this poor Negro woman only because I knew how I was hated in the community. In the beginning maybe it was true; but by that night I might have sworn that I never meant to hurt her—I had begun to think of her tenderly. Maybe everything was true.

  She was careful with her precious stockings. She never removed her low-heeled shoes or went to her knees on the tattered wool rug. After she hung up the slip, she came over and sat next to me on the couch. The way her legs were turned, I saw how odd her woolly bush and the warm glowing flesh of her thighs looked against the ghostly white of the silk stockings. With one soft hand she pulled my leg toward her, then went up my thigh to cradle my balls gently. She took up my prick with the other hand and worked it to a proper stiffness, and then produced a rubber from inside her brassiere. She rolled it down over me.

  Then she threw her thick leg over the top of me. Her shoes rubbed against the outsides of my thighs as she squatted with her belly close to my face. Then she lowered herself down and kept still for a moment.

  Even if I had not been through such a beating—even without the sharpness of how it reminded me of the night the thugs had taken me away—it was the kind of plunging, intense feeling that could bring water to my eye. And I was grateful that my prick at least could feel connected in some human way. I wasn’t crying, but water came to my nose and mouth and my scalp was prickling with sweat as if my body was rising up to meet with her hot wetness.

  She leaned forward against me and reached back to unfasten the brassiere. When she got both swinging breasts free of the thing, I drew in my breath against the thrill of it. She put one hand tenderly around the back of my neck and braced herself on the back of the couch with the other, and then began to stroke her whole body up and down over me. I had my arms over her thighs and my hands gripped the fat cheeks of her ass.

  I knew that later I would wonder if anyone else in the building could hear the noises we made or if they could feel our movement along the beams of the floor. I would worry that behind some mirror or through a peephole a camera might have snapped photos of this colored woman riding ex-detective Pete Caudill like a horse. I would think of Eileen, I would feel the sting of hard regret. But all the while as I was inside Bessie Love, I didn’t think of anything. And especially as I felt that last flush of wetness balling up, I didn’t think of how brown her skin was or what revulsion she might feel at my touch. When I closed my eye and let go, for ju
st that moment, the world was right again. Nature or God had made it that way so we could go on living even as we killed ourselves and made a hell of the world.

  There was the courtesy and the skill of long practice. After I was done, she waited for the proper moment to slip off of me, and then she pulled a clean rag from the table beside the sofa. Probably with every man she was different, but she knew how I liked for her to take off the rubber and squeeze the last juice out of me with her hand. She wiped me up with the rag and turned away to put herself together again for the rest of the night.

  I got up quickly and pulled on my shorts. I put on my shirt and my trousers and sat back down to tie my shoes onto my feet.

  “If you go on like this, Mr. Caudill,” she said, speaking from behind her dressing screen, “you’ll get yourself killed before your time.”

  “You think my time is set already?”

  She was quiet for a moment. I could hear the gentle splash of water in a basin.

  “No,” she said.

  “Maybe my time already went by, and I’m living on past when I’m supposed to.”

  “That could be so,” she said. “But I’ve never heard of it.”

  There was a piece of glass the size of a baseball on her dressing table, flat on one side. Pearly swirls of violet rose like smoke from the bottom of the globe. I put money under the glass, not more or less than the customary amount. The bills were rough and wrinkled, and it made me ashamed. I wanted to stay. I put my jacket on and walked to the door.

  “If I got killed tonight,” I said, “would you miss me?”

  Because I had stepped across a certain line of manners, I was sure that she would make no answer for me. She knew I had to leave.

  “I might think of you from time to time,” she said. “If ever a thing came along to put me in mind of you”—she paused a moment—“I wouldn’t try to forget.”

  I pressed my welcome for a few seconds more, and then I put my hand to the doorknob.

  “I don’t want you to get killed, Mr. Caudill. I don’t want anyone to get killed. There’s been enough of that.”

  I leaned against the door and listened. I listened for the whisper of her slip or the rustle of her dress, for water to splash in the basin. But it seemed that she had stilled herself behind the screen, waiting to see how I might answer her. Quietly I turned the knob and opened the door enough to let myself out. The clicking of the latch as I closed the door seemed to echo in the hall.

  There was a little toilet and a sink at the end of the hall, but I didn’t stop to clean myself. As I walked down the back stairs, I did not know that Bessie had already spoken the last words she would ever say to me. I didn’t know that I would see her soon enough, cold and cut up and twisted into a mockery on the Lloyd estate. I should have known, I should have been able to feel the malice that my presence had turned toward her. But I remember what I was thinking, I remember it very clearly—I was wondering where I could get another pint of whiskey to rejuvenate my faded liquor high. I was keen to press on into the darkness before me.

  Now, sitting inside the old Chrysler with Walker outside the Lloyd estate, my impulse was to put the brakes to it. It was only a matter of time before some lawman put me together with Bessie Love. How could anyone fail to recognize a mug like mine? Whit Lloyd was so full of worms that he didn’t know who he was. With all the mortar shells raining in on him, I knew there wasn’t much I could do to save him. There was something of the Old Man in him yet; if he could stall and weave long enough for the war to be over, he might come out all roses. But it was too much for me to juggle. The only thing I thought I might do is figure out who had cut up the girls—before they pinned the whole deal on me.

  Walker and I were just outside the gate at Lloyd’s place. They had brought in a meat wagon to take the girl away.

  “Walker, do you remember that boy I killed?”

  “You haven’t killed anybody, Detective.”

  “You remember it, Walker. I’m not talking about Joshua.”

  He let his eyes go out of focus. His hands were on his knees. “I remember,” he said.

  “Do you remember his name?”

  “His name was Davis.”

  “Sure it was. Do you remember anything about his family?”

  “Why do you bring this up just now?”

  “The dead woman they found at the Lloyd plant in Indiana was named Davis.”

  “I’ll ask you once again, Detective, if it might not be best for us to go right to the police with all of this.”

  “I’m falling to pieces all over again, Walker. I shouldn’t put any of it on you. But it’s my skin they’re after this time, whoever it is. They’re trying to pin it all on me somehow.”

  “Maybe it’s just a coincidence after all. Davis isn’t an unusual name.”

  “I don’t believe it.”

  “Well,” he said, “it’s far enough along now so that the story will play itself out no matter what we do.”

  It was a philosophical way of looking at things, but it offered me no comfort. I took the car out onto Jefferson and wondered where I thought I could go.

  CHAPTER 25

  I pulled up to the alley alongside my apartment building and waited outside to see if Federle would pop out on his own. Soon enough, he came down, wearing the same loud suit he had worn when we braced the Hardiman boys at the Lloyd plant. Without a word, Walker slipped out of the Chrysler and got into the rear seat.

  “What’s the situation, Pete? Where have you been?”

  “Why don’t we let Walker drive?” I said. “What do you think?”

  “Sure,” Federle said. “But what gives?”

  “Come on, Walker. Let me get in the back.”

  “You can be our driver,” said Federle, “if we can’t get him inside the plant. He can drive, can’t he? And listen—I been waiting for you all this time—I haven’t had a bite to eat since four o’clock yesterday afternoon.”

  “Walker can drive.”

  We shifted ourselves around and headed out vaguely toward the Lloyd plant. To put off making any kind of real decision, I steered Walker along what amounted to a backdoor passage to the great plant. I managed to pick up the pistol and put it back into its hiding place. Once we were out on the road, Federle turned around to see what I would say.

  “Come on, Pete. Patty told me about the rush you were in this morning.”

  Settling in for the drive, Walker said, “The detective keeps losing his friends.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “Walker means that Hank Chew went to pieces.”

  “That so?”

  Walker said, “I keep my ear to the ground, Detective. They have Mr. Chew’s arm on ice in the morgue—so I hear—with a tag on his finger reading ‘Chew, Henry James.’”

  “What else have you heard, Walker?” I asked him.

  “You never asked me if I found out anything while I was waiting for you outside the Lloyd plant on Friday.”

  “You find out anything about the Hardiman boys?” Federle asked.

  “Listen, Federle. There’s this other thing. Walker and I just came from Whit Lloyd’s place. A girl got left on the grass last night.”

  “Like the others?”

  “Like the others. Set up to remind me of Jane Hardiman, specifically. You know what I’m talking about?”

  Federle shook his head. “I never met the girl.”

  “I thought those men were gone,” Walker said softly.

  “As far as I know. But somebody sure knows my name,” I said.

  “Did you learn anything about the Hardimans at the plant, Walker?” Federle piped.

  “That old man who parked the car for us took me around some.”

  “That old guy!” said Federle.

  “He’s been froze out, so he says. They have to let him stay on because Jasper Lloyd puts the word in for him. I heard the whole story about how he has to keep working because his wife is sick and a tree fell on his roof, t
he whole thing.”

  “Well, you were passing the time of day with him,” I said.

  “I wasn’t occupied any other way.”

  “Pull up over here, Walker, so Federle can get a sandwich. There’s a lunch counter there, see?”

  Walker hung along for a moment until it was clear, and then turned the car around to park at the curb on the east side of Junction Street. I slipped Federle a few bills, and he stepped out toward the counter.

  “Just a sandwich,” I said. “We’re in a pinch.”

  “Okay,” he said. “What do you want?”

  “Nothing messy,” I said. “Ham and cheese.”

  “Walker?”

  “No, thank you.”

  I considered getting out of the backseat, but it seemed like an effort that wouldn’t pay. Walker and I waited in silence while Federle fetched the grub. When he returned, he put a paper cup of coffee on the dash and handed my sandwich back to me. I realized I couldn’t eat it.

  “Now, how about this old geezer, Walker?” Federle said. “Did he have any ideas about the Hardiman boys?”

  “I don’t think he knows anything about the murders. I’m certain he would have told me if he knew anything about my sister’s murder. He told me every other thing that crossed his mind.”

  “Where’s this taking us?” I said.

  “He was talking to me about rumors is all. You can’t really put your faith in any of it. But according to what he’s heard, the Hardiman family is buying up stock in the Lloyd Company.”

  “Well, that’s only sensible,” I said.

  “They aim to push young Whitcomb out once old Mr. Lloyd is gone.”

  “They told me as much themselves.”

  “According to the old-timer, the Hardiman boys have been in some trouble. The younger one had been sent away for a while.”

  “I told you,” Federle said.

  “What’s that mean?” I said. “He went away to school?”

  “He was trying to work it up into a real mystery for me,” said Walker. “I can’t say what he was trying to tell me. He was hinting that there had been some bad behavior, but I don’t think he really had any details to tell me. However you look at it, the Hardiman family doesn’t seem to want to lie low in the background.”