Donald Westlake - The Busy Body

The smile vanished at once, and Kurt Brock’s face took on such a guarded, wary quality it was almost as though steel plates had been erected all around it. He came forward walking catlike, ready to leap in any direction, the armful of grocery sacks unfortunately spoiling the effect. “You wanted to see me?”

“You’re the Kurt Brock who worked for Augustus Merriweather.” Engel had begun the sentence as a question, midway through had thought better of it, and had finished it as a direct statement. He instinctively didn’t want Brock to see any doubt or indecision in him.

Brock’s wariness lessened, replaced by feigned weariness. “You’re from the police again, I suppose.”

Engel made a head-and-hand motion that might have meant yes.

“I’ve already made a statement twice,” Brock said. “Once on the phone, and once to two patrolmen who came around.”

“Red tape,” Engel explained, knowing it was an explanation that would satisfy anybody about anything official.

It satisfied Brock, who sighed, shrugged behind the grocery sacks, and said, “Very well. Come along upstairs.”

“I’ll carry one of those for you.”

“Would you? Thanks.”

They went into the building and up the stairs, Brock leading the way, Engel following, each carrying a sack of groceries. Brock also carried the smaller package from the liquor store, and stopped at the door to the second-floor front apartment in order to deliver it. There was a delay while the woman thanked Brock, found her purse, paid him for the bottle, and thanked him all over again, while the sack of groceries in Engel’s arms steadily put on weight. In the interval, with nothing else to do, he memorized the contents of the sack, as much of them as he could see: celery, English muffins, eggs, raspberry yogurt, tomatoes. Plus cans of this and that down at the bottom of the sack, which he couldn’t see but his arms could feel.

Finally the liquor transaction was done and Brock led the way up one more flight, fumbled with his key, and let Engel into a small neat room that somehow didn’t look like a place where anyone lived. It had more the appearance of an anteroom or dressing room; a place where one came to rest and prepare for something to be done outside. Perhaps the matador, before going out to meet the bull, would dress and bless himself in a room like this, tucked away beneath the stands. Perhaps the brand-new Presidential candidate, before going out to address the convention, would sit and go over last-minute changes in his speech in a room like this, past a small door behind the platform.

The room was functional, that’s why, merely functional. A studio couch which was presumably a bed by night was now covered neatly with zebra-stripe material and two ornamental orange cushions. A neat breakfast set, table and two chairs of formica and tubular chrome and orange seating material, was tucked away against the wall next to a tiny, clean, white, barren kitchenette. The carpet was gray, the curtains orange and white, the rest of the furniture bright and neat and functional and uninteresting, of the kind loosely called Danish Modern but which might with more accuracy be called Motel Standard.

Brock said, “Do you mind if I put these things away while we talk? I have some perishables.”

“Go ahead.” Engel put his grocery sack on the table, flexed his arms, and said, “As I get it, you were on the phone to Merriweather just before he was killed.”

“Yes.” Brock opened the refrigerator door and started putting things away. Within the refrigerator his food was lined and stacked as neatly as on any supermarket’s shelf. “At least, that’s what the police say. I know when I tried to call him back the line was busy.”

“Because the phone was knocked off the hook when he was killed, I know.” Engel lit a cigarette, thinking carefully. Brock had assumed he was a cop, and that was good because it meant he’d answer questions. But now the problem was to ask the questions a cop might reasonably ask and still get the answers Engel wanted. He tossed his match into a gleaming spotless glass ashtray inscribed Acapulco Hilton, and said, “You were calling about your job, is that it?”

“Yes. Getting it back, yes.”

“I don’t have that part straight. You quit your job, you were laid off, you were fired, what was it?”

Brock finished putting his groceries away and shut the refrigerator door. “I was fired,” he said. He grinned sheepishly, and shrugged. “I suppose I deserved it,” he said, and folded up the grocery sacks and put them away.

“You were fired when?”

Brock came out of the kitchenette, leaving it as spotless and unused-looking as before he’d gone into it It made Engel vaguely uneasy to be in the presence of a man who traveled with no wake; as though he’d seen a cat walk through mud and leave no tracks. It was somehow ghostly.

Brock said, “Fired yesterday. Why don’t you sit down, Mr. — ?”

“Engel.” When there’s no need to lie, don’t lie. Engel sat down in a trim lightweight chair with wooden arms and frame, bright-hued foam rubber cushions, and a look of transience, while Brock settled himself gracefully on the zebra-striped studio couch. He was wearing black slacks, somewhat tight, and a lime-green polo shirt.

Engel said, more to himself than Brock, “Fired yesterday...” Which meant Brock was still an employee when Charlie Brody had come under Merriweather’s care. Engel said, “What were you fired for?”

Brock smiled again, that boyish pleasant grin. “Incompetence,” he said, “sheer incompetence. Plus being too often late for work and not taking a sufficiently whole-hearted interest in my profession.” The smile broadened, became positively collegiate. “Somehow,” he said, “I never could see myself being a mortician the rest of my life.”

Nor could Engel. He said, “How did you go to work for him in the first place?”

“I was a chauffeur for a while. I worked for some people on Long Island, until...” He shrugged casually. “That’s all past, a long story and not related. When I needed another job, I thought I would still drive. I almost went to work for a taxi-cab company, but then I answered an ad in the Times and it turned out to be Mr. Merriweather, looking for someone to drive the hearse.”

“Is that what you did, drive the hearse?” Which would be unfortunately removed from any connection with Charlie Brody’s body.

“At first. But Mr. Merriweather took an interest in me, and so I suppose did Mrs. Merriweather. At any rate, he was training me to be his assistant, eventually perhaps his partner. So I wound up doing general work for him, just about everything there is to do in a funeral home.”

“And then he fired you?”

Brock again combined the smile and shrug. “The more I learned about the business,” he said, “the less I was enthralled by it. On the other hand, I wasn’t at all ready to leave that employment, which is why I phoned him today, to see if he’d calmed down and would take me back.”

“Had he?”

“I didn’t have a chance to find out.”

All things considered, Engel was willing to guess there was more to the story than Brock had told, and his further guess was that the rest of the story had to do somehow with Mrs. Merrieather. Had Brock been doing a little extracurricular work there? Or had Mrs. Merriweather merely tried too hard to be helpful to Brock with her husband, with or without Brock’s request that she do so? It was something like that anyway, and Engel was pleased with himself for figuring it out, but on the other hand, it wasn’t getting him any closer to Charlie Brody and that goddam blue suit, so he said, “I’ll tell you the truth, Mr. Brock, I don’t know a thing about the undertaker business, and now with Mr. Merriweather murdered I’ve got to do some learning. I’ve got to know the routine, the methods, what Mr. Merriweather’s normal day was like, you see what I mean?” Engel, saying all this, could barely keep a smile of pleasure from spoiling the whole effect. It was just that he was working with his own memory of interviews with cops in order to try to sound like a cop himself, and he was proudly sure he was doing just fine.