The Devil's Only Friend Read Online Free Page B

said.
    â€œHiya,” I said. “It’s Pete Caudill.”
    â€œCaudill! We been wonderin’.”
    â€œYou been wondering what?
    â€œWondering if you blew out of town. Wondering if you were dead.”
    â€œWell, I wouldn’t spring to call you long-distance,” I said, feeling already that I had made a mistake in calling him. “I’m still around, but I’m not around as much as I used to be.”
    â€œPretty quiet though, eh?” said Chew, gathering steam. “Not like the old days. Quite a rabble-rouser you were, quite a gent with the fisticuffs. Made me a bundle in those days. Haven’t been to a smoker like that for years.” He broke off for just a moment, and I thought I could hear him taking a drag from the pipe he kept in his watch pocket. “Now that I think of it, there’s a thing or two I’d like to ask you, Caudill. You still in tight with Old Man Lloyd?”
    â€œJesus Christ, who told you that?”
    â€œWell, well.”
    â€œI haven’t had a word with that old bastard. What’s the story? Can’t a fella just call to be friendly?”
    That pulled a laugh from him. “Nobody ever calls me to be friendly. Nobody ever calls but if they want something out of me.”
    â€œOkay,” I said. “I never did like you, Chew, it’s true. We were never friendly. Talk around the station was that you’re a pig-poker.”
    â€œMeet me over to Drake’s,” he said. “Buy me a beer and I’ll let you go on insulting me.”
    â€œGive me some time to get over there,” I said.
    â€œSure. I got nothing but time and a deadline.”
    I put down the phone and stood in the booth thinking—trying to set something up, some lie that would satisfy Chew so I could get what I wanted from him without spilling anything I didn’t want spilled about my botched caper with Jasper Lloyd and the Black Legion the previous summer. The papers had made a jamboree for themselves for weeks out of the mess, and I knew that Chew and his fellow hacks were sharp enough to have put me in the know about it. I had managed to keep clear of it all, and I liked it that way.
    Even though I had gotten awful tight with a nickel, I walked along Mack only until I could flag a cab. We went down the avenue pretty quick until we were caught up in the thick part of downtown, just under the Penobscot Building. What Chew meant by Drake’s was the English Tavern in the Hammond Building. Drake wasn’t the name of the fella who ran the place—and as far as I could tell, he wasn’t English. The place got to be named Drake’s somehow by all the men who put their elbows to the bar over the years, not by any sign or point of actual fact.
    It was still a bit too early for the place to be full of businessmen taking their lunches. The war had been good for one thing, at least—there was so much work all around town that shifts were running all across the weekends, bringing more business to places like Drake’s. In fact, I don’t think the joint was even properly open for the day. But I opened the door and stepped gratefully out of the wind and found Chew on a stool at the bar.
    He was dressed in his usual getup: a clean white shirt twice the size he needed for his small frame, held tight to his body by a buttoned-up tweedy vest. He leaned back to the bar with both elbows propping him up. One dangling hand held his hat and the other gripped the top of an empty mug like a spider.
    â€œCaudill,” he said. “Walkin’ in like the Devil himself.”
    â€œSure, Chew,” I said. “It’s well known the Devil wears beat-up duds.”
    â€œWell, now, Caudill, according to certain unimpeachable sources, the Devil might slither into a place dressed as any old thing—a serpent, say, or a politician.”
    â€œDevil or no, I didn’t have any trouble getting you to meet me down