Donald Westlake - The Busy Body

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Engel had worked his way up to being Nick Rovito’s right-hand man, near the top of the Syndicate. And this was a delicate job — retrieving a very important jacket, loaded with heroin, from a fresh grave. But Engel found only an empty coffin...

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The mystery woman came over, undulating slowly across the room like something seen through water, and hitched herself gracefully onto one of the purple-topped bar stools. “You’re really a very interesting man,” she said.

... one part bar syrup...

“And I can’t tell you how sorry I am if I caused you any inconvenience.”

“No, that’s all right. As long as it all comes out right in the end.” ...two parts lemon juice...

“I just can’t believe you’re a gangster. Oh! Was that a terrible thing to say?”

Engel looked up from his preparations. “Is that what they told you at Police Headquarters?”

She had both elbows propped on the bar, forearms vertical and fingers entwined, delicate chin resting on her grouped hands, lips smiling again and eyes being... provocative. “They told me you were a desperate character,” she said. “They told me you were in the Mafia and Cosa Nostra and the Syndicate and I don’t know what all.”

“Diners’ Club? Did they mention Diners’ Club? Or the Masons?”

She laughed, a tinkly sound. “No, they didn’t. I can see they gave me a slanted report on you.”

“They’re prejudiced.” ...eight parts Scotch; two, four, six, eight...

“I don’t think you’re a gangster at all.”

“No?” ...shake vigorously...

“I think you’re charming.”

“Yes?” ...shake...

“Yes, I do. Like Akim Tamiroff on the Late Late Show. Only taller, of course, and without the mustache. And no accent. And your face is thinner. But the feeling is the same.”

“Is it?” ...vigorously.

“I’ve never told you my name, have I?”

Strain into whiskey-sour glass. “No, you haven’t.”

“Margo,” she said. “Margo Kane.”

“Engel,” he said, in his turn. “Al — uh, Al Engel.”

“Yes, I know. How do you do?” She extended a hand, high, the way women do.

For such a thin hand, it was very warm. Like holding an undernourished but attractive bird. “How do you do?”

“Fine, thank you.”

Engel released her hand and went back to the drink. Garnish with cherry...

“Fine, that is,” she went on, “all things considered. My bereavement and all.”

... and a slice of lemon.

Engel set the completed drink up on the bar in front of her. “Bereavement? What bereavement?”

“Well, that’s actually part of what I was going to tell you. It’s all part of the same thing.” Long pale fingers closed around the glass, lifted it to scarlet lips. “Mmmm. You do have the touch.”

Engel was making a fresh drink for himself now, a much simpler process: an ice cube, a splash of Scotch, a dash of water. “You’ve had a bereavement?” he said, trying to get her back onto the subject.

“Yes.” A wistful, sad, forlorn look came into her eyes. She tapped the long nails of her left hand on the bar just once, in a ripple, as though expressing the finish of something. “My husband,” she said. “He died quite suddenly yesterday.”

“Oh. I’m sorry to hear that.”

“Yes. It was quite a shock. So sudden, so terrible, and so unnecessary.”

“Unnecessary?”

“Yes. He was hardly an old man. Fifty-two. He should have had years and years of life ahead of — I’m sorry, I’ll be all right in a minute.”

A small white lace handkerchief had appeared in her hand, and tears in the corners of her eyes. She touched them away, shook her head slightly as though upset with herself for having thus given in to emotion, and took a strong swallow of her Scotch sour. “It’s such a terrible thing,” she said.

Engel was calculating. The husband had been fifty-two, and he by now doubted the wife could be more than twenty-seven or twenty-eight. It was the black clothing contrasting with the white skin that made her seem older at times. He said, “What was it, a heart attack?”

“No. An accident. One of those stupid... Well, there’s no point going over and over it, it’s happened and there’s an end to it.”

“You said,” Engel reminded her, “that I’d killed him. That’s how you sicked the cops on me.”

“I don’t know what came over me when I did that,” she said, and looked lost and bewildered. She touched the back of her hand to her brow.

Engel felt like saying he did know what had come over him when she said that, because what had come over him had been cops, but she was too easily distracted from her main line of thought, so he said nothing. He just waited, looking attentive.

“I had come to see Mr. Merriweather,” she said, as though recounting something sad that had happened long, long ago in the dim past, “to talk about the details of the funeral. Of course, my mind was full of thoughts about my husband, and how stupidly unnecessary his death had been — a kind of murder, in a way, murder by Fate, by Destiny, what you will — we never know what life has in store for us around the next cor—”

“Merriweather,” Engel suggested. “You’d come to see him about the funeral.”

“Yes. And then, seeing him there, lying there actually murdered, not by Fate but by some person, I suppose I just snapped for a minute.”

“You snapped,” said Engel. The way she kept skipping from style to style, from age to age, from mood to mood, he could believe she’d snapped for a lot longer than a minute.

“That must have been it,” she was saying. “You were there, and I got you all confused with Destiny, and poor Mr. Merriweather mixed up with my husband, and just everything all confused.”

“I’ll say.”

“I passed out — well, you know that — but when I came to I believe, I truly believe, I was no longer in my right mind. It seemed to me somehow it was my Murray who’d been murdered—” She passed a hand again across her brow, and said, “I can still remember just what I was thinking, and how sensible and natural and right it seemed at the time. Murray had been murdered, and in my mind’s eye I saw the face of his murderer, and it was you.”

“Just because I happened to be there,” said Engel.

“Yes. It was just another — accident.” A shadow crossed her face at the words, but then she shook her head and went on: “As soon as I regained consciousness, I tottered away to seek help, and when I saw you standing there by the door I... I said what I did.” Contrition shone in her face now, and embarrassment. “I’m sorry.”

Engel said, “You explained this to the police.”

“Oh, yes. They were angry at first, but finally they said they did understand how it could have happened.”

“You talked to Deputy Inspector Callaghan?”

“Not in person, no. On the telephone. He was still on his way to Headquarters when I left.”

“Excuse me one second,” Engel said. “I got to make a phone call.”

“Certainly.”

Engel came out from behind the bar, crossed the room to the phone, and dialed Horace Stamford again. As he stood there waiting for the call to be completed, he observed casually how tastefully the Widow Kane perched on a bar stool, one slender shapely leg crossed over the other, black-sheathed rump rounding neatly onto the purple plush.

Then Stamford came on. Engel identified himself and said, “The machine we talked about before. Has it started operating yet?”

“No, not yet.”

“Then cancel.”

Stamford asked no questions. Accuracy was his forte, not knowledge. “Will do,” he said.

Engel hung up and went back over to the bar, this time sitting on the stool next to his guest. “Business,” he said.

“Gangster business, I suppose.” She looked at him appraisingly, a friendly smile on her lips. “It’s so hard for me to think of you—”

She was interrupted by the sound of the fawn’s afternoon. Her eyes widened, and she said, “I can’t be found here!”

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