The Devil's Only Friend (34 page)

Maybe all of it would be laid out in words in the papers Lloyd had given me. It might explain or excuse what Lloyd had tried to do, what my father had been thinking. Maybe the papers would show me something of my father that I had been too stupid or too proud ever to see for myself. Lloyd was a great man in a time of change for the city. When I thought of how much he had done compared to the great mass of workaday laborers here and across the country, how he had been able to amass and arrange so much—no one could say that he had been born with the silver spoon. So far as I knew, he still held on to his life at the castle at the edge of the plant. Maybe he could look out at it through a little window.

Lloyd had been a great man, a truly great man.

But my father had been a good man.

I knew what I had to do to be a good man. Though I had failed to stave off the riot the previous year, and I had failed Ray Federle, and I had failed to help Jasper Lloyd in any way, I had at least one task left.

Alex's mother was laughing across the grass with her new beau. She could laugh even though such a part of her was missing, had been torn away too soon and with too much wrongness. Alex was thinking of her, he had to be, even if his life with her seemed far away to him now, wherever he roamed. I knew that it would be easier and easier for him to stuff the feeling away deep inside himself over time, and so I felt the urgency.

Such a perfect day—a day to eat and rest and to patch up the social bonds I always left untended. The breeze seemed to clear away everything else.

There would be time to read Lloyd's papers. If I had to spend the rest of my days scouring the earth for my nephew, there would be time. For now, I rested on my bench. I felt the weak April sun soaking into my back, and I tried hard to remember.

ALSO BY MITCHELL BARTOY

The Devil's Own Rag Doll

This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously.

THE DEVIL'S ONLY FRIEND
. Copyright © 2006 by Mitchell Bartoy. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews. For information, address St. Martin's Press, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010.

www.minotaurbooks.com

LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA

Bartoy, Mitchell.

The devil's only friend / Mitchell Bartoy.—1st ed.

p. cm.

ISBN-13: 978-0-312-34089-6

ISBN-10: 0-312-34089-3

1. Rich people—Fiction. 2. Automobile industry and trade—United States—Fiction. 3. Police—Michigan—Detroit—Fiction. 4. Detroit (Mich.)—Fiction. I. Title.

PS3602.A843D478 2006

813'.6—dc22

2006044506

First Edition: October 2006

eISBN 9781466839908

First eBook edition: February 2013