Free The Devil's Only Friend by Mitchell Bartoy Page B

in a really good scrap since I was a boy. Is it bad for you?”
    â€œIf I have to pay, I’ll pay,” I said.
    â€œWhat’s that?”
    â€œWhat did you dig up on the Negro girl?”
    â€œShe wasn’t up to any good in general. Messed up in the dope and—you might say—lax in her morals.”
    â€œI could have figured that much out myself.”
    He squinted down at my eye. “Doesn’t that bother you? Laxity of moral fiber?”
    â€œI don’t get you, Chew.”
    â€œWell,” he said, pushing down his brows, “it was easy enough to pull from the police files. She’d been nailed on a couple of easy fingers, got off with fines both times, both down in Ohio.” He scribbled something onto his scratch pad and squirreled the paper away in his vest.
    â€œWhat’s she got to do with Lloyd?”
    â€œNothing, far as I could figure. Plenty of men come in and out of that plant down there every day, looking for something to take their mind off their troubles. But … maybe you know something more about it?”
    â€œYou know I saw Lloyd the other day, then, ah?”
    â€œWell, it’s common knowledge.”
    â€œThe Old Man says— Why don’t you tell me everything you know before I start to blabbing?”
    â€œSure.” Chew’s face glowed with a smile. He came close again. “I couldn’t scare up any kind of hard evidence,” he said. “But a fella I know told me that the woman had been sawed up in pieces and left in a pile out in the open. Not just the usual wrangle-and-strangle dump job.”
    I tried to picture it with my foggy brain. I hadn’t seen it with my own eyes, and it was hard for me to really feel anything about it. I said, “You’ve seen something like this before?”
    â€œSomewhere or another there’s always some of that going on, sure. Or do you mean more lately?”
    â€œWell, I read in the paper that they found another girl outside the plant in Gary.”
    â€œYou told me you didn’t read the papers.”
    â€œI’ve been laid up.”
    â€œThey found her outside the plant or inside?” Chew asked.
    â€œI wouldn’t know,” I said.
    â€œAbout the girls I’ve got only a morbid curiosity. Until it happens here in Detroit, anyway. It’s the Lloyd angle that gets me.”
    â€œI can say the Old Man is plenty interested.”
    â€œWhy did he let you in to see him? What’s he want from you?”
    â€œWell, he doesn’t want me talking to you.”
    Chew threw up his arms and worked his little pencil through his fingers like a magician.
    â€œDon’t you remember how you called me the other day begging for help?” He seemed to have some genuine emotion about it. “Didn’t I drop what I was doing to come down and see you?”
    â€œOut of the goodness of your heart.”
    â€œThat’s how friends work, Caudill. I do a favor for you, you throw a little something my way. When you’re a grown-up man, you mix your business in with your friendships. You don’t think you’ll find a friend who’ll just heap you up with love and affection like your mother, do you?”
    â€œI hope not.”
    â€œI see how it is,” Chew went on. “I’m on a newspaperman’s salary, and Jasper Lloyd has cash to throw around—”
    Who can say how long Ray Federle had been standing in the doorway? He made no sound, but Chew and I both got the chill of it at the same time. We turned to see him there holding his hat in his hands. The entrance to the room was in shadow, and his round eyes glowed out at us.
    â€œThis fella bothering you, Pete?”
    Federle stepped in with a gentle smile forced onto his face.
    Though it hadn’t crossed my mind before that moment, the sight of him made me think that he had been a part of it. It didn’t figure, and I didn’t really believe it,