The Busy Body Read online

  So when his mother told him that after high school he should go on to college to make something of himself, “Not be a bum all your life like your old man, the bum,” Engel resolutely turned his back. He got his high school diploma, went to his father, and said, “Introduce me to somebody, Dad. I want to go to work for the organization.”

  “Your mother wants you to go to college.”

  “I know.”

  Father and son looked at one another, and understood one another, and smiled at one another through their tears. “Okay, son,” said Engel’s father. “I’ll call Mr. Meyershoot downtown tomorrow.”

  So at seventeen Engel went to work for the organization, first as a messenger boy for Mr. Meyershoot, who had an office way downtown on Varick Street, and then later on in various capacities, including even strong-arm now and then even though he was only of moderate weight and not particularly mean of disposition. He had also once or twice been a union official, and he’d for a while been a courier something like the job Charlie Brody’d had, and he’d worked here and there in the organization. He moved from job to job more than the average, but that was because he was young and restless and always interested in new things.

  Meanwhile his mother took about four years to get used to it. She blamed his father for being a bad influence, and gave him several million words on the subject, but eventually, in just about four years, she adapted herself to reality and stopped bugging him about missed opportunities.

  On the other hand, once she adapted she had something new to say. “Make a name for yourself, Aloysius,” she’d say. “Don’t be like your bum of an old man, the bum, a regular stick in the mud, never moved up out of that crummy store in thirty-four years. Make your mark, move ahead in the world. If it’s the organization you want to work for, work for it. Get ahead. After all, didn’t Nick Rovito start at the bottom of the ladder, too?”

  This kind of talk didn’t bother him so much. He didn’t possess much of the kind of ambition she was talking about—she wouldn’t have liked to hear how Nick Rovito had come up from the bottom of the ladder, but Engel was never so unfair as to tell her—but he was older now and able to let her words pass over him without leaving any marks. “Sure, Mom,” he said sometimes, and other times he didn’t say anything.

  If it hadn’t been for the Conelly blitzkrieg, Engel might have kept drifting along in the organization for years. But the Conelly blitzkrieg came along, and Engel was in the right place at the right time, and all of a sudden the kind of future his mother had been talking about for years was dumped in his lap. As his mother pointed out, all he had to do now was take the good things that were being offered him. He had it made.

  The way the Conelly blitzkrieg happened to help Engel was a little complicated. Conelly was a big florid hearty happy guy, Nick Rovito’s right hand. He and Nick Rovito had been partners for years, Conelly always at Nick Rovito’s right hand. But something had happened to Conelly, something had suddenly made him too ambitious. Despite the Central Committee down in Miami, despite his years of friendship with Nick Rovito, despite the risk involved and the unlikelihood of success, Conelly decided to get rid of Nick Rovito and take over the organization himself.

  Conelly wasn’t working alone. He had friends in the organization, middle-range executives that were more loyal to Conelly than to Nick Rovito, and Conelly one by one brought them over to his side, planning and hoping for a bloodless palace revolution. One of the guys he brought over to his team was Ludwig Meyershoot, who was Engel’s father’s boss. And Ludwig Meyershoot, having a soft spot in his head for Fred Engel, tipped him to what was about to happen. “So you wouldn’t wind up on the wrong side, Fred,” he said.

  Engel’s father promptly told Engel’s mother, who just as promptly said, “You know what that is, Fred Engel? That is your son’s chance for advancement, high position, a life of luxury, all the things you never got.”

  Engel himself didn’t know about any of this yet. He had his own place now, on Carmine Street in the Village, because of women. It always used to throw a damper on the proceedings when he would take a woman home for purposes of cohabitation and first have to introduce her to his mother. So now he had his own place and it worked out a lot better.

  Meanwhile, uptown, Fred Engel was going through one of those conflicting loyalty problems that big dull serious novels are made on. He felt the loyalty of habit toward Ludwig Meyerhashoot. He felt the loyalty of awe toward Nick Rovito. And he felt the loyalty of blood toward his son.

  Eventually the combination of Nick Rovito, blood ties and a shrill-voiced spouse did the trick. Fred Engel called his son to a meeting in the family apartment. “Al,” he said, because no one on earth but his mother called Engel by his full first name of Aloysius, “Al, this is important. Conelly is going to try to take over from Nick Rovito. You know who I mean? You know Conelly?”

  “I’ve seen him around,” said Engel. “What do you mean, take over?”

  “Take over,” his father explained. “As in take over.”

  “You mean throw Nick Rovito out?”

  “That’s it.”

  “You sure? I mean, what I mean is, you sure?”

  Engel’s father nodded. “I got it from a unimpeachable source.” he said. “But the thing is, I can’t pass the word on to Nick Rovito myself without lousing things up with my unimpeachable source, you know?”

  Engel said, “So? How come?”

  His father ignored the second part of that. In response to the first part he said, “So you tell him. I’ll set things up so you can see him personally. Don’t tell anybody but Nick Rovito himself, I don’t know for sure who else is in it with Conelly.”

  Engel said, “Me? How come me?”

  “Because there’s nobody else,” his father said. “And because,” he said, and Engel’s mother could be heard echoing in the words, “it can do you a lot of good in the organization.”

  Engel said, “I’m not sure …”

  “Did I ever steer you wrong, Al?”

  Engel shook his head. “No, you never did.”

  “And I won’t this time.”

  “But what if Nick Rovito wants proof? I mean, what the hell, he don’t know me from nobody, and Conelly’s his right hand.”

  “Conelly’s been dipping into the pension fund,” his father told him. “He’s been siphoning cash off into a secret account under Nick Rovito’s name. That’s the excuse he’ll use with the Committee. I’ll give you all the details I got, and when Nick Rovito says he wants proof you tell him what I’m telling you.”

  And that’s what happened. Through guile, persistence, cunning and terror, Engel’s father managed ultimately to arrange for the meeting between Engel and Nick Rovito, without having told Nick Rovito or anybody else what the meeting was for, and when Engel was alone with Nick Rovito and Nick Rovito’s bodyguard he told everything his father had said, except he didn’t say and wouldn’t say where he got his information.

  At first Nick Rovito refused to believe it. In fact, he got so irritated he grabbed Engel by the shirt front and bounced him up and down awhile for saying such things about his old friend Conelly. He had to reach up to do it, since Engel had about five inches and thirty pounds on him, but he could do it because Engel knew better than to defend himself. Still, despite the bouncing, Engel stuck to his story, not only because it was true but also because there was nothing else to do, and after a while Nick Rovito began to wonder, and then after a further while he sent somebody to go get Conelly “and tell him get his ass over here fast.”

  Conelly got there twenty minutes later, by which time Engel’s shirt was wringing wet with perspiration. Nick Rovito said to Engel, “Tell Conelly what you told me.”

  Engel blinked. He cleared his throat. He scuffed his feet. He told Conelly what he’d told Nick Rovito.

  When Engel was done, Nick Rovito said, “I haven’t checked the kid’s story yet, but I can. Do I have to?”

  Conelly got purple in the face, said, “Gahhh
!” and made a run for Engel, his hands out to take Engel apart.

  Nick Rovito reached into a desk drawer, took out a gun and tossed it casually to Engel. It was the first time in his career Engel had even held a gun, but there was no time to think, what with Conelly and those hands getting rapidly closer, so Engel just closed his eyes and pulled the trigger five times, and when he opened his eyes again Conelly was lying on the floor.

  Nick Rovito said to Engel, “You are my right hand, kid. From now on you’re my right hand, with all that that implies.”

  “I think,” said Engel, “I’m going to throw up.”

  And they both came to pass. Engel threw up, and became Nick Rovito’s right hand, abruptly replacing Conelly at some whim of Nick Rovito’s. This was four years ago, about a year before Engel’s father died from gallstones and complications. For the last four years Engel had been Nick Rovito’s right hand, which kind of meant private secretary, and all that that implied had been large amounts of money, new suits by the closetful, a far better class of woman, charge accounts in expensive restaurants, adoration from his mother (who now, through his financial help, had her own beauty shoppe), a key to the Playboy Club, instant obedience from the rank and file in the organization …

  … and digging up bodies in cemeteries in the middle of the night.

  3

  So that was it for golf today, no question. Instead there was a meeting, right after the funeral.

  The boys all sat around the table, looking at Nick Rovito because he’d called the meeting all of a sudden out there at the cemetery, and nobody knew what it was all about except Engel, and he didn’t know much. Except there wasn’t going to be any golf this afternoon for one thing, and for two things he was all of a sudden a body snatcher.

  One of Archie’s girls came into the room with ashtrays, spreading them around at all the places around the table, and Nick Rovito gave her the fish-eye and said, “You shoulda had the ashtrays out already. Memo pads, pencils, glasses, pitchers of water, ashtrays, all done before we got here.”

  “We didn’t know nothing till the last minute,” she said, and Nick Rovito said, “Shut up,” and she shut up.

  Everything else was already on the table at all the places. There were the little three-by-five memo pads and the long yellow sharpened pencils and the thick-bottomed water glasses and the fat pitchers each full of ice water. Archie’s girl finished handing out the ashtrays and then she went away and shut the door.

  Nick Rovito lit a cigar. It took him a long time. First he unwrapped it, and then he stuck the aluminum tube back in his pocket to give to his kid to make a rocket out of with match-heads, and then he smelled it, putting it up to his nose like a mustache, and then he looked contented a few seconds, and then he licked it all over to get it good and wet with saliva, and then he bit off the end and spat the shreds down on the carpet, and then he leaned forward a little and somebody stuck a hand out with a gas lighter in it going hisssss, and Nick Rovito lit his cigar. It had to be a gas lighter, not a lighter-fluid lighter, because Nick Rovito could taste the lighter fluid if he lit his cigar from a lighter-fluid lighter, so all the boys carried gas lighters, whether they smoked or not. You never knew when.

  Nick Rovito took the cigar out of his mouth and watched the smoke a minute, coming up from the pale gray ash at the tip with the burning coal showing behind it, very luxurious, and the boys watched Nick Rovito watching the cigar smoke. Besides Engel, there were two others from the pallbearers, plus three guys that had been ushers. Everybody else from the funeral had gone home or gone to work, except the widow, who went off with Archie Freihofer.

  “What I should a done,” Nick Rovito told the cigar smoke, “what I should a done was not to waited. But I thought to myself, it’s better to mind the amenidies, and wait till after the send-off, and then send somebody over to Charlie’s old place and pick it up. What I didn’t count on is a stupid broad who she isn’t a brand-new widow I’d push her face in, that’s what I didn’t count on.”

  Somebody else around the table said, “Something wrong, Nick?”

  Nick Rovito gave him the fish-eye and didn’t answer him. Then he looked at Engel and said, “Tonight, Engel, sometime tonight you go dig him up, you got me?”

  Engel nodded, but somebody else around the table said, “Dig him up? You mean, like Charlie? Dig him up?” and Nick Rovito said, “Yeah.”

  Somebody else around the table said, “How come, Nick?”

  Nick Rovito made a disgusted face and said, “His suit. Charlie’s blue suit, that’s how come. That’s what I want you to get me, Engel, the blue suit that dumb broad buried Charlie in.”

  Engel didn’t get it for a second. He’d been thinking one way, and now it was some other way. He said, “You don’t want the body?”

  “Wha’d I want with a body? Don’t talk stupid.”

  Somebody else around the table said, “What’s so hot about this blue suit, Nick?”

  Nick Rovito said, “Tell him, Fred.”

  Somebody else around the table—it was Fred Harwell, he’d been one of the pallbearers, too, Charlie’d worked direct for him—said, “Holy Jesus, Nick, you mean the blue suit?”

  Nick Rovito nodded. “That’s the one. Tell them about it.”

  “Holy Jesus,” said Fred. But then he didn’t say anything else. He acted stunned.

  Nick Rovito told the story for him. “Charlie was a traveling man,” he said. “He traveled for Fred here. He traveled to Baltimore, and then he traveled back to New York. On the train, so there’s no reservations. Right, Fred?”

  “Holy Jesus,” said Fred. “That blue suit”

  “That’s the one.” Nick Rovito puffed at his cigar and tapped some pale gray ash in the ashtray in front of him and said, “What Charlie did, he took things places. To Baltimore, he took money. From Baltimore back to New York, he brought horse, not yet cut. You got it now?”

  Somebody around the table said, “In the suit? In it?”

  “Sewed in the lining on the way down, the dough. Sewed in the lining on the way back, the horse. That suit was ripped up and sewed back together again once, twice a week for three years. You’d never see seams so good in a suit that old. Right, Fred?”

  “Holy Jesus,” said Fred. “I never thought.”

  “When Charlie kicked the bucket,” Nick Rovito said, “he’d just come back from Baltimore. He had a couple hours before the drop, so he went home to make himself a cup of coffee, and the rest is history. Right, Fred?”

  “It slipped my mind,” said Fred. “It absolutely slipped my mind.”

  “A quarter of a million dollars’ worth of heroin slipped your mind, Fred. And I knew it did, I knew you forgot all about it, and we got to talk about that sometime.”

  “Nick, I don’t know why it happened, I swear to Christ I don’t. I’ve had so much on my mind lately, this school rezoning’s been driving me out of my mind, all of a sudden every kid on the payroll is all together at the same school and all the customers are to hell and gone the other side of Central Park, then there’s been this rumor going around about airplane glue that’s taking the customers away, and I—”

  “We’ll talk about that some other time, Fred. Right now the important thing is we get that suit back. Engel?”

  Engel looked alert.

  Nick Rovito said, “You got it, Engel? Tonight you dig him up and get me that suit.”

  Engel nodded. “I got it, Nick,” he said.

  Somebody around the table said, “Like Burke and Hare, huh, Nick?” and Nick Rovito said, “Yeah.”

  Engel said, “Yeah, come to think of it. Alone, Nick? That’s a hell of a lot of digging. I need somebody to pitch in.”

  “So get somebody.”

  Somebody around the table said, “Hey! I got an idea, Nick.”

  Nick Rovito looked at him. Not the fish-eye, just blank, waiting.

  The guy said, “I got this guy, this Willy Menchik. The one that fingered Gionno?”

  Nick Rovito nodde
d. “I remember,” he said.

  “We got the clearance to rub him, just day before yesterday. I had it set up for over in Jersey, Friday night, he’s on this bowling league, see? And it struck me, a bowling ball, now, that looks a hell of a lot like the old-fashioned kind of bomb, you know what I mean? So I thought I’d—”

  “You’re supposed to rub Menchik,” Nick Rovito reminded him. “Not the whole goddam Bowlorama.”

  “Sure, so this is better. We can double up. Willy goes with Engel, see, and helps him dig it up, and then Engel rubs him and leaves him in the coffin with Charlie, and covers it all up again, and who’s to find Willy? You gonna look for him in a grave?”

  Nick Rovito smiled. He didn’t do that very often, and it made all the boys around the table happy to see him do it now. “That’s pretty nifty,” he said. “I like the feel of that.”

  Somebody around the table said, “It’s like a poetic humor, huh, Nick?” and Nick Rovito said, “Yeah.”

  Somebody else around the table said to Engel, “Maybe Charlie’d like that, huh, Engel? Somebody to pass the time with.”

  Somebody else around the table said, “You can throw in a deck of cards.” He laughed when he said it, and everybody else around the table laughed except Engel and Nick Rovito. Nick Rovito smiled, which for him was the same as laughing. Engel looked glum. He looked glum because he felt glum.

  Somebody around the table said, “They can play honeymoon bridge!” All the boys laughed again at that, and Nick Rovito even chuckled, but Engel still kept looking glum.

  Nick Rovito said, “What’s the matter, Engel? What’s the problem?”

  “Digging up a grave,” said Engel. He shook his head. “I don’t like the whole idea of it.”