The Busy Body Read online

  “Put them down.”

  “Oh, yeah.” Willy stepped out from under the tools, and they hit the ground with a clang.

  Engel nodded. “A real beaut,” he said. “Next to you, that car is a magic carpet, next to you.”

  “What?”

  “Never mind. Spread the blanket out.”

  “What the hell for?”

  “To put the dirt on.”

  “Dirt?”

  “That we dig up!”

  “On the blanket? You’ll get it dirty!”

  “It’s a groundcloth! So there won’t be dirt on the grass to show somebody was digging here.”

  “Oohh! By golly, that’s brilliant!”

  “Will you spread the cloth? Will you just for Christ’s sake spread the cloth?”

  “The blanket, you mean.”

  “Spread it.”

  “Right, Chief.”

  Willy grabbed a corner of the blanket and yanked, to spread it. Tools went clattering this way and that. Willy said, “Woops.””

  “Never mind. That’s all right. I don’t even care.”

  “You’re a good guy, Engel, you know that? You’re a real pal.”

  “Yeah, yeah.”

  Engel flashed the light around. They hadn’t put the sod down yet, so the brown rectangular outline of the grave showed clearly; that would make the job easier. Engel said, “I’ll hold the flashlight, you dig. Then after a while we’ll switch.”

  “Right, Chief.”

  “Throw the dirt on the blanket. You got it? On the blanket.”

  “On the blanket.”

  Engel watched mistrustfully, but Willy threw the first shovelful on the blanket, and the second, and the third. Engel backed up a few steps, sat on a tombstone, and held the light for Willy to dig by.

  It took quite a while, longer than Engel had expected. After about twenty minutes he took over on the shovel and Willy held the light. Willy sat on the tombstone and opened his pint and began to cry. “Poor Whatsisname,” he said. “Poor, poor Whatsisname.”

  Engel stopped digging and looked at him. “Who?”

  “The guy down there. Under the ground. Whatsisname.”

  “Charlie Brody.”

  “Charlie Brody? You mean Charlie Brody? Old Charlie Brody’s dead?”

  “You knew it half an hour ago.”

  “Well, I’ll be damned. Good old Charlie Brody. Did he owe me any money?”

  “I wouldn’t know.”

  “Naah. Nobody owes me any money. What do I get paid for this job?”

  “Fifty.”

  “Fifty. Good old Charlie Brody. Fifty bucks. I’m gonna light a candle for Charlie, that’s what I’m gonna do. Fifty bucks.”

  “Flash the light over here, will ya? What are you flashin it over there for?”

  “I was drinkin.”

  “Is that right? Flash the light over here.”

  “OOOHHH, ‘I dreamed I saw Joe Hill last night/As alive as you and—’”

  “Shut up!”

  “Ahhhh, ya brown-nose.”

  Engel ignored him this time, and just kept digging. Willy giggled for a while and then cried a while, and then whispered all the verses of “The Bastard King of England.” When he was done, Engel gave him the shovel back, and took the flashlight, and Willy dug a while.

  Willy was quieter when he was digging. He started to sing “Fifteen Men on a Dead Man’s Chest,” but he didn’t have the wind for it while he was digging, so he quit. Engel lit a cigarette, and watched the pile of dirt beside the grave get higher and higher. He was going to have to put all that dirt back himself, without help. Wonderful.

  Willy said, “Hey!”

  “What?”

  “I hit something! A treasure chest or something!”

  “You don’t suppose you hit the coffin, do you?”

  “Oh, yeah. Look at that, I scratched it.”

  “That’s a shame.”

  “That’s a real nice wood, too. Look at that wood. Who’d bury nice wood like that? It’s liable to rot.”

  Engel went over and looked down. Willy was standing in a hole shoulder-deep, with just a little of the coffin cleared of dirt. Engel said, “Finish getting the dirt off the top while I see can I find where you tossed the crowbar.”

  “You don’t suppose I left it on the blanket, do you?”

  “I wouldn’t be a bit surprised.”

  Engel looked around, and found the crowbar over near the tombstone he’d been sitting on. He brought it back as Willy was finishing clearing dirt from the coffin. Engel said, “Here. There’s two locks on it. Break them open, and then get me the suit coat.”

  Willy gulped and said, “You know what? All of a sudden, I’m scared.”

  “What are you scared of? You superstitious?”

  “That’s just what I am, I couldn’t think of the word.”

  “Just break those two locks. Give me the shovel.”

  Willy handed the shovel up to him, then bent reluctantly to break the locks with the crowbar. Engel waited, hefting the shovel, looking at Willy’s head. Willy broke the locks, and then stood there looking bewildered. “How do I open the top? I’m standing on the top.”

  “Get over on the edge.”

  “What edge? The top overlaps.”

  “Oh, hell. Get up here. Lie on the ground up here and reach down with the crowbar and lift the top up.”

  “Yeah, yeah.”

  It took a while to get Willy up out of the hole. He kept slipping back in, and threatening to drag Engel in with him, but finally Engel got a grip on the seat of his pants and dragged him out. Willy squirmed around, reached the crowbar down into the hole, and began fishing around with the crowbar for a grip on the lid. Engel stood on the other side of the grave, the shovel in one hand and the flashlight in the other.

  Willy said, “Got it! Here it comes, here it—Flash your light down here, will ya, I can’t see a thing.”

  Engel flashed the light down into the hole. The coffin lid was opened straight up, and inside was aft white plush. Engel stared.

  The coffin was empty.

  Willy shouted, “Oy! Oy!” He scrambled to his feet, shouting, “Oy! Oy!”

  Engel knew he was going to run, he knew the little bum was going to ran. He dropped the flashlight, took a two-handed grip on the shovel, swung wildly, missed the departing Willy by two feet, lost his balance, fell into the hole, landed on the white plush, and the lid slammed down.

  5

  Nick Rovito was not going to be pleased. Engel sat in the library of Nick Rovito’s town house, surrounded by shelf after shelf of the books the interior decorator had picked out, and told himself Nick Rovito was not going to be pleased at all. In the first place he wouldn’t be pleased because nobody is pleased to be gotten out of bed at four-thirty in the morning, but in the second place he wouldn’t be pleased with what Engel had to tell him.

  The last hour and a half had been somewhat hectic. After he’d struggled back out of that damn coffin, and wasted five minutes looking for Willy, he’d forced himself to take the time to fill in the hole again and smooth everything out and make sure there wasn’t any sign left that anybody’d been there. Willy had gone off without his pint, which still contained an ounce or two, and Engel gulped it down gratefully, then tossed the pint in the hole and covered it up. When the grave was filled in again, he rolled the tools into the army blanket, found his way back to the car, and drove back to Manhattan, mostly in first.

  Right now the car was in a no-parking zone out front, and Engel was sitting in the library waiting, while one of the bodyguards went to wake Nick Rovito. Engel smoked nervously, and wondered where Willy was by now. More important, he wondered where Charlie Brody was by now.

  The door opened, and Nick Rovito came in, in a yellow silk dressing gown with his initials in chartreuse Gothic script on the pocket. Nick Rovito said, “So where’s the coat?”

  Engel shook his head. “I didn’t get it, Nick. Everything went wrong. Willy’s still ali
ve, and I didn’t get the coat.”

  “Is this Engel? Let me look at your face. Is this my right-hand man, my trusted assistant, the man to which I gave every opportunity and all my trust and confidence? This cannot be Engel, this must be a ringer in a funny face. Two things I ask from you and you don’t do either one?”

  “He wasn’t there, Nick.”

  “Wasn’t there, wasn’t there, who wasn’t there? Whadaya talking about, ya disappointment, ya, whadaya telling me?”

  “Charlie, Nick. Charlie wasn’t there.”

  “Charlie wasn’t where?”

  “In the coffin.”

  “What did ya do, ya ungrateful bastard, ya digged up the wrong coffin?”

  Engel shook his head. “I digged—dug—digged up the right coffin, only Charlie wasn’t in it. Nobody was in it.”

  Nick Rovito came closer and said, “Let me smell your breath.”

  “I had a shot afterward, Nick, but nothing beforehand, on a stack of Bibles.”

  “Are you sitting there and telling me we give that grand send-off to an empty coffin? Are you telling me three Congressmen and eight motion picture stars and the Housing Commissioner for the City of New York made a special trip in the middle of the week to pay their last respects to an empty coffin? Is that what you have the gall and the disrespect to come and tell me to my face?”

  “I can’t help it, Nick. It’s the truth. Me and Willy dug it up and opened it, and there wasn’t a damn thing in it. Willy got spooked and run off and I was too startled myself to grab him in time. In fact, I fell in.”

  “In fact, you did what?”

  “I fell in. In the grave.”

  “Why’d you bother getting out? Will ya tell me?”

  “I figured you ought to know what happened.”

  “So tell me what happened.”

  “Charlie wasn’t there, and his suit wasn’t there, and Willy got away.”

  “That ain’t what happened, that’s what didn’t happen. So tell me what happened?”

  “You mean, where’s Charlie?”

  “Yeah, that for openers.”

  Engel spread his hands helplessly. “I dunno, Nick. If we didn’t bury him today, then I just don’t know where he is.”

  “So find out.”

  “Like where?”

  Nick Rovito shook his head sadly. “You are the biggest disappointment of my entire lifetime, Engel,” he said. “As a trusted assistant, you are an abortion.”

  Engel frowned, trying to think. “I suppose,” he said, “I suppose the thing to do is go talk to the undertaker.”

  “Mortician. He likes you should call him mortician.”

  “The mortician. I figure he’s the last one to see Charlie’s body, maybe he knows what happened to it.”

  Nick Rovito said, “If he didn’t put it in the coffin, what the hell else would he do with it?”

  “Maybe he sold it to a medical student.”

  “Charlie Brody? What the hell would a medical student want with Charlie Brody?”

  “To experiment on, maybe. To make like a Frankenstein monster, maybe.”

  “A Frankenstein monster. You’re a Frankenstein monster. I send you on a simple matter, get me a lousy suit coat, you come back with Frankenstein monsters.”

  “Nick, it isn’t my fault. I was there. If Charlie’d been there, everything would of been okay.”

  Nick Rovito put his hands on his hips and said, “Let me tell you the story. Straight from the shoulder, cards on the table, no secrets between friends. You go out and you find me that coat. I don’t give a damn where Charlie Brody’s body is, and I don’t give a damn about medical students or Frankenstein monsters, all I give a damn about is that coat. You find me that coat, Engel, or you go back out to Brooklyn where there’s a nice empty coffin handy, and you dig it up again, and you climb in, and you shut the lid, and good-bye. Do I make myself clear?”

  “What a business,” said Engel.

  “Business? You call this a business? I call it Olsen and Johnson, that’s what I call it.”

  “Sometimes I think to myself, I could of gone in the army and retired at age thirty-eight.”

  Nick Rovito studied him thoughtfully for a second or two, and then his face softened. “Engel,” he said, much more calmly than before, “don’t talk that way. Don’t mind what I been saying, I’m just not used to this getting out of bed at four-thirty in the morning, and coffins with nobody inside, and grand send-offs with nobody sent off, and all the rest of it. I’m just not used to it, that’s all.”

  “What the hell, Nick, it don’t happen to me every day, either.”

  “I understand that. I put myself in your position, and I understand that, and I see you done everything you could of been expected to do, and you were right to come back here and tell me about it like this. After all, aren’t you the man saved me from Conelly? Aren’t you my right hand? I shouldn’t of blown up at you like I done, because if it’s anybody’s fault it’s Charlie Brody’s, and it’s just too bad the bastard’s already dead, because if he wasn’t you could kill him for me.”

  Engel said, “No, you were right to chew me out, I shouldn’t of let Willy get away, that was poor organization on my part.”

  “The hell with Willy, that don’t mean a thing. We’ll get Willy by the end of the week anyway. If worst comes to worst, we’ll let Harry get him at the Bowlorama. The important thing is the suit.”

  “I’ll look for it, Nick, that’s the most I can promise you, I’ll look for it.”

  “You don’t even need to say it, Engel, you know the way I feel about you. You are my trusted assistant, my altered ego, whither thou goest I am there in spirit. If anybody on God’s green earth can find me that blue suit coat, you are the man.”

  “I’ll do my best, Nick.”

  Nick Rovito laid a fatherly hand on Engel’s shoulder. “Wherever that suit is,” he said, “it ain’t going anywhere before morning. You look tired, you been digging and everything, and—”

  “Kenny gave me a car with standard shift.”

  “He did? What the hell for?”

  “I’m not complaining, it was the only car he had suited the requirements.”

  “I didn’t know they even made standard shift any more. Anyway, that’s neither here nor there. The important thing is, you need your rest if you’re gonna operate at peak perfection, so the thing for you to do is go home, get a good night’s sleep, and when you’re all rested you go out and see can you find the suit. Fair enough?”

  “I could use some sleep, I guess.”

  “Sure you could. And don’t mind what I said before, I was just upset, you know?”

  “Sure, Nick.” Engel got to his feet, and said, “Listen, I left the car out front. Could somebody else take it back for me? I’ll grab a cab home from here, okay? I mean, my left foot’s exhausted.”

  “Leave everything to me. Don’t worry about the car or nothing, concentrate your energies exclusively on the suit. You’ll do that for me?”

  “Sure, Nick.”

  Nick Rovito patted his shoulder. “You’re my boy.”

  6

  The sign on the front lawn that said

  AUGUSTUS MERRIWEATHER

  Grief Parlor

  was three feet wide and in neon, but it was blue neon, for dignity. Behind this sign and beyond the manicured lawn was the building, a robber baron’s town house when it was built in the latter part of the nineteenth century, its gables and bay windows all done in a rotten stucco now painted a gloomy brown. A broad empty porch spread across the broad vacuous face of the house, and as Engel came up the slate walk he saw that this porch was full of uniformed policemen.

  He broke stride for a second, but of course it was too late, he’d already been seen. Trying his best to look nonchalant, he came walking on.

  There were maybe thirty of the cops on the porch, and they didn’t seem to have anything to do with Engel’s presence here. They were standing around in groups of three and four, talking
together in low voices. They were all wearing their white Mickey Mouse gloves, and their uniform coats were miserably tailored in the time-hallowed custom of the force, and when Engel got over the jolt of seeing them all there, he realized it had to be just another wake. Merriweather, no bigot, planted the departed on both sides of the law.

  The glances that were turned on Engel as he went up the stoop and into the middle of the swarm of cops were curious but cursory. Nobody was very interested. Engel crossed the porch, opened the screen door, and bumped into a guy coming out. “Woops,” said Engel.

  The guy, flailing his arms around as he staggered off-balance, was a cop, short, stocky, middle-aged. His uniform sleeve was so covered with yellow stripes and chevrons and hashmarks it looked like the yellow brick road. He grabbed hold of Engel while he got his equilibrium back, and then he said, “That’s o—Say! Don’t I know you?”

  Engel squinched his cheeks up as he took a cautious close look at the cop’s face, but didn’t recognize him as anyone who’d ever collared him or had dealings with him connected with the organization. “I don’t think so,” he said. “Not that I know of.”

  “I could swear …” The cop shook his head. “Well, it don’t matter. You on your way in to see him?”

  Engel might have said yes if he’d known who “him” was. Instead, he said, “No, I got business with the undertaker. Merriweather.”

  The cop hadn’t yet let go of Engel’s arm. Now he frowned, saying, “I could swear I’ve seen you some place. I never forget a face, never.”

  Engel worked his arm free. “Must be somebody else,” he said, edging his way around the cop and through the doorway. “Must be somebody …”

  “It’ll come to me,” the cop said. “I’ll think of it.”

  Engel let the screen door close between them and gratefully turned his back on the cop. He was inside at last, and the place looked exactly the same as for Charlie Brody’s wake yesterday, except for the uniforms. But there was the same orange-brown semi-darkness, the same muffled Art Nouveau appearance to everything, the same sickly scent of flowers, the same thick carpeting, the same sibilant whispering from the mourners.

  Just inside the door, on the right, stood a podium and a man. The man was taller, the podium somewhat thinner, and both gave off the same sepulchral air of Gothic anemia. Both were mostly in black, with a white oblong at the top. The white oblong at the top of the man was his face, a chalky droopy affair like the face of a bleached basset hound. The white oblong at the top of the podium was an open book, in which the mourners were to inscribe their names. Next to the book, attached to the podium by a long purple ribbon, there lay a black pen.