The Busy Body

by Donald E. Westlake

  Engel didn’t think twice. He ran up, shoved the owner out of the way, climbed into the cab, remembered to shift it into first, and he and the truck went tearing down the street.

  What a getaway! The glittering rainbow of a truck rocking and careening down the street, the children whooping and hollering as their twenty-five-cent ride suddenly began to exceed their wildest dreams, the little flying saucers swooping and circling on the back, the loudspeaker blaring … People along the right of way smiled and laughed, little children waved their hands and jumped up and down and in their excitement lost their grip on balloons, shopkeepers trotted out to the sidewalk in their aprons to wave and smile beneath straw hats, the drivers of cars and buses and trucks pulled over and, laughing, waved him through …

  And then the loudspeaker began to talk. “BE ON THE LOOKOUT,” it told the world, “FOR ALOYSIOUS ENGEL, SIX FOOT ONE INCH TALL, WEIGHT—”

  21

  Engel was a nervous wreck. He sat in a bar at the end of no-where and shakily raised a glass of Scotch on the rocks to his lips, sipped, and put the glass down again.

  He’d finally abandoned that damn truck and its load of delighted kids in the middle of 14th Street, near Eighth Avenue. With the instinct of a hunted animal, he’d then gone to ground, ducking into the first hole he saw, which happened to be the entrance to the subway. He went down flight after flight of concrete stairs flanked by yellow tile walls, and at the very bottom found the dingiest old subway train in the world, sitting down there as though time had stopped along about 1948. It had passengers to match, all sitting there silent and fat and kind of seedy, most of them reading newspapers which must surely have been predicting the election of Thomas E. Dewey. Engel had gotten aboard this train, and the doors had shut behind him, and the train had started off through the dark tunnel, stopping now and again, going under the East River to Brooklyn, eventually coming up for air and riding along as an elevated for a while, coming down to sit like a regular train at ground level by the time it reached the end of the line.

  Engel had never ridden this line before. He got off the train when it came to its last stop, and he was still in 1948. Wooden platform. Low buildings all around, old unrich residential, two-family houses. Engel walked to the nearest bar, ordered Scotch on the rocks, and waited for his nerves to settle down.

  The bar was named Rockaway Grill. Wasn’t there a section of Queens called Far Rockaway? Engel said to the barman, “What section is this?”

  “Canarsie.”

  Canarsie. Engel said, “In Brooklyn?”

  “Sure in Brooklyn.”

  “Good. You got a Manhattan phone book?”

  “Yeah. Hold on.”

  In the phone book Engel found Kane, Murray 198 E 68 ELdrdo 6-9970. “Thanks,” he said, and pushed the phone book back across the bar. “Fill the glass again.”

  “Right.”

  “A double.”

  “Right.”

  Three doubles later he was calm enough to leave the bar, go back to the subway station, and take the next train back to Manhattan. He got out at Union Square, and it was just five o’clock, and everybody had showed up for the rush hour. Since he hadn’t eaten since breakfast, and it’s impossible to go anywhere at rush hour in New York, and it would be better to wait till after dark before he did any more traveling anyway, he went into a little restaurant on University Place and had himself a meal.

  Through all of this, as time continued to tick along, he kept trying to figure it out. It was possible, of course, that Margo Kane had done everything, had stolen Charlie and murdered Merriweather and aimed Rose. As for Rose, that was definite, proved, no question. As for Merriweather, there was no doubt she’d been there, but somehow Engel just couldn’t see her wielding the knife. Besides, her reaction on seeing the body had been too good to be false. And, for a further besides, what about her crazy you-murdered-my-husband line? He no longer believed the explanation she’d given him for that scene, but he couldn’t think of any other explanation to take its place. As for stealing Charlie, there was still the problem of what she could possibly have wanted him for.

  Margo Kane. He thought and thought. Margo Kane was linked up one way or another with Kurt Brock. Maybe he was the one who’d asked her to use her contacts to frame Engel. Maybe Brock was the one who’d stolen Charlie’s body; he sure had more opportunity than anybody else. Maybe he’d loused up one of the things he was supposed to do, the embalming and all that, and so he hid the body instead of putting it in the casket, but then Merriweather found out about it and Brock had to kill him and—

  Aside from being the most stupid idea he’d had all week, that was impossible. Brock had an airtight alibi.

  All right. He still didn’t have enough information, that’s all it was. He’d have to wait till he saw Margo Kane, and when he saw her he’d be damn sure to get the truth out of her.

  He was impatient, and finally decided he couldn’t wait till after dark. He paid for his meal, all of which he’d eaten but none of which he’d tasted, left the restaurant at five minutes to six, and at ten minutes after six he had a cab, mainly by bumping an old woman with a lot of packages from Klein’s out of contention.

  “That got her,” said the cabby. He didn’t care who won, they all had money.

  “Third Avenue and 67th Street,” Engel told him.

  “Check.”

  The cabby had paid no real attention to his face, and he didn’t have a portable radio, so Engel felt relatively safe for the moment. He sat far in the corner of the back seat, directly behind the cabby, and kept his face turned away from the pedestrians outside the window.

  The trip uptown was nerve-racking, but it was the driver’s nerves that were being racked, not Engel’s. He got out at 67th Street, paid and left a tip average enough to assure that the cabby would have no special reason to remember him, and then walked up to 68th Street and headed west.

  Number 198 was an old brownstone, with well-tended greenery in its tiny square of yard beside the front steps. The ground-floor windows were barred, and a barred gate closed off the ground-floor entrance beneath the steps. The first floor displayed two extremely tall windows to the left of the main entrance at the head of the steps, and the windows on the second and third floors sported green window boxes. Lights were on behind the first- and second-floor windows.

  Engel walked past the house the first time, checking to see if either the cops or the organization people were watching here. So far as he could tell, it was clear. He turned around, walked back, and climbed the steps to the front door.

  There were two doorbells, the upper one marked “Wright” and the lower marked “Kane.” Engel rang the Kane bell, and waited, and after a minute a grill beside the door said, in a tinny imitation of Margo Kane’s voice, “Who is it, please?”

  Engel leaned close to the grill. “Engel,” he said. He had to play it boldly now. If she refused to let him in, he’d have to get in some other way.

  But she said, “One minute, please, Mr. Engel,” and less than a minute later she was at the front door, opening it, smiling at him, saying, “You’ve become a very famous man since I saw you last. Come in, come in.”

  She was wearing black stretch pants and a black and red striped sweater and red slippers. She seemed as innocent and charming and undangerous as ever.

  Engel stepped in and shut the door. “Thanks for letting me in.”

  “Not at all, not at all. Come along, we’ll sit in the living room.” As she led the way down a long dark carpeted hall with a chandelier above, she said over her shoulder, “You didn’t tell me your gangster business included rubbing people out. That is the phrase, isn’t it? Rubbing people out?”

  “That’s the phrase.”

  She pushed apart sliding doors and they stepped through into the living room, where the tall windows were. “Sit down anywhere,” she said, shutting the sliding doors again behind them.

  The room was done in off-white, with Persian throw rugs and expensive antiq
ues all over the place, and the highest ceiling this side of a basketball court. The flooring gleamed, a towering pier glass stretched up between the front windows, and midway in the long wall opposite the double doors there was a marble fireplace containing the ashes of a real fire.

  “Something to drink?” she said. “A nice ruby port?”

  “Nothing for me.” He settled on a Victorian chair that looked rickety but wasn’t.

  She settled onto an antique davenport nearby. “I suppose,” she said, “you came to ask me to give you some sort of alibi for last night, but I’m terribly afraid I can’t. Even if the times were right, and they aren’t, you know, we were back in the city in plenty of time for you to have gone over to New Jersey and killed that poor man, but even if that weren’t true I still wouldn’t dare admit I spent any part of last night with you in New England. You understand.”

  “That isn’t what I’m here about,” Engel said.

  “Oh?”

  “I’m here to ask you how come you sent Herbert Rose to frame me.”

  She smiled, rather uncertainly. “Herbert Rose? Did he see you do the shooting or something?”

  “Maybe you didn’t know what a good frame it was,” Engel told her. “Maybe you just thought I’d get into enough trouble to stop me looking for Charlie Brody.”

  “Charlie—? All these names, Mr. Engel, I’m sorry—”

  “That’s okay,” said Engel. “Don’t let it worry you.”

  “Well, I just wish I knew what you were talking about, that’s all.”

  Engel said, “The story Rose told my boss was enough to make my boss order me rubbed out. That’s the phrase, Mrs. Kane, rubbed out.”

  Her eyes widened. “Oh,” she said. “Surely not. Just for stealing?”

  “You just made an admission,” Engel pointed out.

  She brushed it away impatiently. “Of course I did. I was the one who talked to Herbert Rose and the others. I did it last night long-distance from Connecticut.”

  “While you were at the powder room.”

  “Of course. And do you know why?”

  “You’re going to tell me why,” Engel said.

  “That’s right, I am. Because I like you, that’s why.”

  Engel said, “What was that?”

  “Forgive me if I give you a swelled head, Mr. Engel, but I must admit I found you a fascinating man. If only, I thought, if only Mr. Engel could get out of that gangster business and into something safer and more acceptable, there’s no telling where my feelings for him might go.”

  Engel watched her with his mouth hanging open. “You’re incredible,” he said. “You’re unbelievable.”

  “So I thought,” she sailed serenely on, “I thought the thing to do was get you in trouble with all the gangsters so they’d throw you out. And then I could talk to you, guide you, help you, and the first thing you know—”

  “Stop it,” said Engel.

  “Well, good heavens,” she said, “I didn’t think they’d be mad enough to kill you! Why should they anyway, they’re a bunch of crooks themselves, aren’t they?”

  That much Engel believed, that she hadn’t known she was putting a death sentence on him with her little frame. As for the rest, it would wash a lot of hogs. In order to set things straight, therefore, he took a couple minutes out to explain to her just why the frame had been so lethal, and then he took a couple minutes more to explain that the Menchik murder was an additional frame growing out of the first one. “That’s what you did to me,” he said.

  “Well, good heavens,” she said. “Good heavens. I’m terribly sorry, I really am. I don’t know what I can do about the murder, but I can surely set things right with your boss. I’ll call Herbert Rose and the others right this minute and tell them to go to your boss and tell him the truth.”

  Engel pointed. “There’s the phone,” he said.

  “You doubt me?” She got to her feet and went over to the phone and dialed. “Herbert, please,” she said, and then a minute later, “Herbert? This is Mrs. Kane.” Her voice had noticeably harshened. “I’m changing my mind about Mr. Engel. I want you to go back and tell the truth, admit that you lied about Mr. Engel.”

  Engel went over and took the phone out of her hand and listened. “—beat me up or some such—” It was the voice of Herbert Rose all right. He handed the phone back to her.

  She gave him a look that said “smarty pants,” and into the phone said, “I don’t care about that, Herbert. You tell them the whole truth, except for my name. Don’t tell them my name, just say Mr. Engel will explain that part of it. But tell them you were forced to do it and you’re sorry. And I’ll call the others and tell them the same thing. Yes, I will. You do that right now, Herbert. Yes, Herbert. Good-bye, Herbert.”

  She made four more phone calls, all of a same order, all equally legitimate, and when she was done she said, “There! All fixed.”

  “Except for the murder rap.”

  “Well, your bosses started that, so let them stop it.”

  “Yeah, sure.”

  “I’ve done what I can,” she said. She seemed to be pouting now, as though she’d expected him to be more pleased.

  “There’s still more,” Engel said.

  “What more could there be?”

  “Why’d you steal Charlie Brody? Where is he now? Why’d you kill Merriweather?”

  “Steal—kill—what?”

  “No,” said Engel. “You didn’t do it all, that isn’t your style. You send other people to do it for you. Like you sent Rose to take care of me, because he could do it and you couldn’t. So I suppose you had Kurt Brock get the—”

  “I never heard that name in my—”

  “I saw you go in his apartment yesterday afternoon, when he told you I’d been there. That’s why you called me to have dinner with you, so you could find out what I was up to.”

  She seemed really angry now. “I have no idea,” she said, “what you’re talking about.”

  “I’d just left him before you got there,” Engel said. “I was still out front.”

  “That’s impossible. I would have seen you!”

  “You were in too much of a hurry to see Brock!”

  “Kurt Brock is nothing to me, nothing. He consoled me in my grief, that’s all, I have no connection with him, I don’t even know why you bring him up.” Now she was distraught, a lace handkerchief being rummaged in her hands. “Why be jealous of him?” she cried. “In comparison with you he’s—”

  “Stop that!”

  “Don’t shout at me!”

  Engel opened his mouth, then shut it and inhaled instead. Then, softly, he said, “All right. I won’t shout. I’ll just tell you what I know, and when I’m done you tell me the rest.”

  “I’m beginning,” she said, “to get tired of—”

  “If you keep interrupting,” he said, “I’ll have to shout.”

  She closed her mouth with a snap, and turned her head to glare toward the pier glass.

  Engel said, “Your style is send somebody else to do the job. Send Rose to take care of me. Send Kurt to get Charlie Brady’s body. Did you kill Merriweather yourself, or did you send somebody else to do that, too? And will you tell me for Christ’s sake what you wanted with Charlie Brady’s body?”

  She jumped to her feet. “What about you?” she shrieked. “Charlie Brady’s body, Charlie Brady’s body, can’t you think of anything else? You’ve been driving me crazy, you never stop, what’s the use of it? The man’s dead, what do you want with his body?”

  “What do you want with it?”

  “Nothing, I don’t have it, I don’t know what you’re—”

  “You’ve got it!” Engel snapped at her. “You didn’t get it yourself, you sent somebody else to get it for you, but you got it! What do you—?” And he stopped, open-mouthed.

  She looked at him. “What?” she said.

  “Uh huh,” he said. He was looking into the middle distance, but his expression was more as though he were
looking inward, watching a movie being screened on the inside of his skull. “Yeah,” he said, and nodded. “That’d do it,” he said.

  “Do what?” She came closer to him, dropping the handkerchief in her distraction. “What are you thinking now?”

  “Things going bad,” he said. “Spending faster than you earn, you’d do it, that’s your style. And stealing from the business, that’d fit in. And probably owe the government back taxes. Everything closing in all at once.” He spread his arms around. “You’ve got a place like this—”

  “We rent the top two floors,” she said quickly. “That helps with taxes and upkeep. Murray and I just live here and downstairs.”

  “A Mercedes,” he said, “That’d be your car, your husband would have a car of his own, a Cadillac …”

  “Lincoln,” she said. “Continental. Cadillac is common.”

  He nodded. “That’s right. Everything goes together nice.”

  “I wish,” she said, “I really wish I knew what you were talking about.”

  He looked around, and there was another set of closed double doors at the far end of the room. He moved toward them, slowly, saying, “It’s easy when you look at it right, put everything together the right way. Like a jigsaw puzzle. Like you always send somebody else to do what you can’t do, you do that all the time. So the only question is, what did you send Charlie Brody to do that you couldn’t do yourself?”

  “You are completely out of your mind. Come away from there.”

  “And the answer,” he said, his hands touching the doors, “is that you sent Charlie Brody to take the place of’—he slid the doors open—“you,” he said to the heavy-set glint-eyed man standing there in the darkness.

  The heavy-set man smiled, and took a gun from his pocket, and aimed the gun at Engel.

  “Murray Kane,” said Engel. “You’re Murray Kane.”

  “How do you do, Mr. Engel,” said Murray Kane.

  Behind Engel, the woman said, “Now see what you’ve done? You’ve just made things impossible for yourself.”