Donald Westlake - The Busy Body

“What do you mean, you know to the minute when he was killed?”

“What do you care for?”

Engel cared because the Merriweather killing was, he was convinced, connected somehow with the missing Charlie Brody and his missing suit, but what he said was, “It’s a provocative statement, that’s all. You say you know to the minute when he was killed, and it was when you and I were out front, so it’s a provocative statement. I’ve got a natural curiosity about how come you know to the minute when he was killed.”

Callaghan said, “He was talking on the phone. He said, ‘There’s someone at the door, I’ll call you back.’ Then he broke the connection. The party he was talking to had something to say to him right away, and dialed his number again, and got a busy signal. The reason for that is, when he was stabbed he knocked the phone off his desk and the receiver came off the hook. So he was killed between the time he hung up and the time the fellow he was talking to finished dialing again and got the busy signal, which is about a minute, and this fellow knows what time that minute was because he was late for an appointment and looking at his watch the same time he was dialing.”

“Who was he talking to?”

Callaghan frowned. “You ask a lot of questions. Get the habit from talking to cops?”

“You don’t have to tell me,” Engel said, “I was just curious, that’s all, just making conversation.”

“It was a fellow named Brock, Kurt Brock. Merriweather’s assistant. Merriweather fired him yesterday, or laid him off, I couldn’t get it straight which, and Brock was talking to him about coming back to work for him. When Merriweather hung up, Brock thought he was just giving him the brush-off, and he had a date to get to, so that’s why he called back right away.”

“Giving himself and me alibis,” Engel said.

Callaghan said, “Sharp, aren’t you? We checked that, and he’s alibied from the other end. His landlady knows he was there, and knows when he left. She’s one of those landladies knows everything happens on the block.”

Engel said, “So I’m in the clear.”

“I could make trouble for you if I wanted,” Callaghan told him. “Malicious mischief, maybe, or obstructing a policeman in the performance of his duty. You committed about thirty-seven misdemeanors this afternoon, whether you know it or not. But I don’t want you on any misdemeanor, that’s the easy way out. Get you a fine, maybe thirty days in the Tombs if I’m lucky, you can shrug that off as just the price for a good story you can tell around the bars. No, what I want you on is a felony, a big felony. Something that’ll stick, and something that’ll get you out of circulation for good. Something like murder one, say, that ought to do the trick.”

“Sure,” said Engel. “You have a lot of fun.” He smiled, free and easy, because he knew for once he was clear and clean and safe. Callaghan would be looking for murders Engel had performed, and murder was just about the only felony Engel hadn’t performed recently, so there wouldn’t be anything out there for Callaghan to find but a wild goose and he was welcome to it.

“I’ll be seeing you again,” Callaghan said. “Don’t leave town, in the meantime, you may be a witness in the Merriweather case.”

“Sure. I’ve got nowhere to go.”

“Except Sing Sing.”

On that note Deputy Inspector Callaghan left, taking his surly disposition with him. Engel shut the hall door after him and then went back through the living room and deeper into the apartment. In the bedroom he said, softly, “All right, Mrs. Kane, it’s safe now. He’s gone.”

There wasn’t any answer.

Engel frowned. He looked in the soundproof room and it was empty. He looked in the bedroom closet and under the bedroom bed. He called, “Mrs. Kane? Mrs. Kane?” He looked in the bathroom and in the sauna (producer), looked in the kitchen, looked everywhere.

Finally he got to the rear door, which let out on a narrow room where the cistern and the service elevator were, where his milk would be delivered if he had milk delivered, and she wasn’t there either.

“Well, I’ll be damned,” he said to himself. “She’s gone again.”

How many Kurt Brocks could there be? According to Engel’s telephone directories, one in Manhattan, none in Queens, two in Brooklyn, none in The Bronx. Total: three.

The Manhattan Kurt Brock was nearest, so Engel went to see him first. He wanted to talk to the Kurt Brock who’d been fired by Merriweather, because he wanted to know how long ago this firing had taken place. If Brock had been fired before Charlie Brody’s body arrived at the grief parlor, nothing more was to be said. If he wasn’t fired until more recently than that, there was a good chance he might know something Engel could use.

Kurt Brock number one lived on West 24th Street, between Ninth and Tenth avenues. The south side of that block was one long apartment building, London Terrace, which covered the whole area bounded by 23rd and 24th streets and Ninth and Tenth avenues. Brock lived across the street from this monstrosity, in one of a row of identical elderly narrow buildings four stories high, all converted to one- and two-room apartments, each set back a bit from the sidewalk with greenery or concrete in front, depending on the owner’s whim. The buildings were all run together in a row, with no space at the sides, in the normal New York manner.

The one Brock lived in had shrubbery and gravel intermixed in its front space, in a vaguely Japanese effect spoiled by a heavily European thick iron fence across the front boundary. Engel pushed open the gate in this, crossed the slate path to the front door, and was about to step inside when a voice above him called, “Kurt! Kurt, did you remember the liquor store?”

Engel stepped back a pace and looked up. An amiable heavy-set middle-aged woman was looking at him from a second-story window. When she saw his face she stopped smiling, looked baffled for a second, and then said, “Oh, I’m sorry, I thought you were Kurt.”

“Kurt Brock?”

“Yes, that’s right.”

“He’s the one I came to see. Isn’t he home now?”

“He’s gone to the supermarket. Down at the corner. He’ll be back soon, why don’t you sit down and wait?”

“Thank you.”

There was a low bench set against the front of the building, beside the door. Sitting on it, one could look across the shrubbery, over the fence, and out to the sidewalk, the street beyond, and — the normally near horizon of New York — the bulging brick apartment building across the way. Engel sat down there, lit a cigarette, and waited. This might be the wrong Kurt Brock, he might be wasting his time right now, but as long as he was here he might as well check this one off the list. No sense coming back twice if he didn’t have to.

He waited ten minutes, and then the gate was pushed open by a tall slender young man with his arms full of grocery-store sacks. He was about Engel’s height and slenderness, but looked to be half a dozen years younger, probably in his early twenties. He had black hair, dark piercing Mediterranean eyes, prominent cheekbones, sallow skin. All in all, vaguely decadent good looks, as though he might have once upon a time been a gigolo.

Above Engel’s head, the woman called, “Kurt! Did you remember the liquor store?”

“Right here.” He waved a smaller brown paper bag held in his right hand, out at the perimeter of the larger grocery sacks. When he smiled up at the woman in the window his face softened, he looked much more pleasant and much less cynically worldly-wise.

“There’s a man here to see you,” the woman called, presumably pointing down at the top of Engel’s head.