The Devil's Only Friend by Mitchell Bartoy

of lawsuits that holds the business world together. This indictment,” he said with phlegm rattling in his lungs, “this indictment doesn’t cost me any sleep. They’ll never get a thing out of me, if that’s what worries you. My time has come and gone. Harder men than these have stood against us.”
    â€œIf it’s the G-men, they won’t come to play footsie with you.”
    â€œThe federal men take their orders from behind the curtains, just like any other hired men. They make a wage—they are allowed to make a wage if they fall in line.”
    â€œYou say so.”
    Lloyd could muster just a spark of the fire he once had. There was only the flicker of dim hope to keep him animated. His eyes were moist and rheumy and he had lost so much vitality that his lower eyelids drooped down so you could see their pink insides. His sagging jowls worked around as he sat in thought.
    â€œI fear now for my son,” he said. “And secondarily for the company that bears our name.”
    It seemed unlikely that any spy could overhear our conversation; I could barely make out the old man’s reedy drone myself. I can’t say why he unpacked his heart to me—I had seen very old men lose their dignity before. Whitcomb Lloyd—“Nit Whit,” as he was known privately to men like Hank Chew—was Jasper Lloyd’s only son. He was the president of Lloyd Motors, a position secured not with his head for business but with the force of the company stock still held by the Lloyd family. As Jasper Lloyd explained to me, Whit had not shown an interest in the workings of industry. The younger Lloyd had enjoyed the family’s sudden wealth, and had shown only that wealth could be enjoyed best when frittered away. Young Whit was a sportsman, a hunter and a climber, a skier, and in general an inveterate traveler, even during wartime, more apt to be found playing tennis in Palm Springs than in the boardroom of the company he was obligated to lead. He fancied himself, Lloyd explained, after the model of the intrepid British explorers of the previous century.
    â€œHe had lived all his days here in the Middle West,” said Lloyd. “Until I sent him abroad to be schooled as a gentleman. The grandchild of farmers.”
    â€œI can’t say what you ought to do about it,” I said.
    â€œBut you’re here to help me, aren’t you, Mr. Caudill?” He muttered this so softly that I wasn’t sure I heard right.
    â€œYou’re thinking of Frank Carter,” I said. “Or my father, maybe.” Because I regretted having called Hank Chew, I thought I had come only to ask Lloyd for help in looking into the death of Walker’s sister. I had been vague with the guard at the gate. Now I wondered how it could be possible for the Old Man to have some other plan for me.
    â€œYou couldn’t hope to be half the man Frank Carter was,” said Lloyd, stiffening his backbone and swaying in his chair. “Imagine it! Mr. Carter once commanded a force of over three thousand security men for me. He was instrumental in the formation of one of the greatest industrial concerns in the history of the human race. The cancer that came upon him—so suddenly—in the midst of such a grand enterprise. A man such as yourself, Mr. Caudill, you couldn’t possibly see the whole of it. You couldn’t honestly aspire to replace such a man.”
    â€œI don’t see why I’d aspire to be your toady, old man,” I said. “Why did you let me in here at all?”
    â€œI left a standing order to have the men let you through to see me if you ever came,” he said. “I knew you’d return when the money ran out.”
    If I had smacked him then, his brittle bones could not have held against it, and I would have killed a giant, the last of the old titans. I stood up and began to walk away from him. Does he know about my father’s money? I