Donald Westlake - The Busy Body

Apparently he was. Brock leaned forward in an attitude that declared his desire to help, and said, “Anything I can tell you, Mr. Engel, I’ll be glad to.”

“I tell you what,” said Engel. “Let’s take the last body you worked on, you and Mr. Merriweather, you tell me everything that’s done from beginning to end.”

“Well, not everybody likes that kind of detail, Mr. Engel.”

“I don’t mind. In my business...” Engel let the sentence end with his own smile-shrug combination, then said, “We’ll just take the last body you worked on. What would that be?”

“The last client?”

“Client?”

Brock’s sudden smile this time was slightly sardonic. “That was Mr. Merriweather’s word,” he said. “He’s a client himself now, isn’t he?”

“All right, who was the last client you worked on?”

“That would be the retired policeman, O’Sullivan. He was buried this morning.”

Engel covered his disappointment. “Of course,” he said. “That was the last one you worked on.”

“Of course,” said Brock, “I didn’t deal with him all the way through, I got fired first, but I could tell you what part I did, and then what Mr. Merriweather did after I left, it’s all standard stuff.”

“I’d rather,” Engel told him, seeing a ray of hope, “you told me about a client you actually worked on all the way through. Who would that be, the one before O’Sullivan?”

“Yes, that would be another man, a Mr. Brody.”

“Brody.”

“Yes. Heart attack. I think he was a salesman of some kind.”

Engel settled more comfortably on the chair, and said, “Fine. Tell me about him.”

“Well, it was the widow who called. Some business associate of her husband’s had recommended Merriweather, I think. I went out with the pickup car, made the initial arrangements with the widow and met with the doctor, and the pickup team with me put the client in the travel box.”

“Travel box,” said Engel.

“That’s what we call it. Looks pretty much like a regular casket, but with handles coming out of each end, like a stretcher. I think the city boys use a wicker basket, which would be more practical for cleaning and everything, but families might get upset if they saw a client stuffed away in a basket, so we use the travel box.”

“Sure,” said Engel.

Brock seemed to consider. “Nothing special about the Brody case,” he said. “Well, one thing. There’d been an accident of some sort, he was burned rather badly about the head, so there wouldn’t be any viewing. Actually, there’s the whole area of cosmetology we didn’t get into with Brody, maybe I ought to pick a different client to tell you about.”

“No, no, that’s fine, we’ve started with this man Whats-isname—”

“Brody.”

“Right, Brody. We’ve started with him, let’s finish with him. Then, if there’s anything different you’d do normally, we can go back over it again.”

Brock shrugged and said, “If you think that’s the way to do it.”

“I do.”

“Then fine. All right, we brought Brody back and put him in the icebox overnight. In the morning the widow came in — with some friends of her husband’s, I think — and they selected the casket, worked out the arrangements; I remember it struck me it was a surprisingly big funeral they were setting up for a little salesman, whatever he was.”

“Then what?”

“Then we embalmed him, of course. Or actually we did it the night before.”

“Embalmed.”

“Yes. We drain the blood out of him, and put the embalming fluid in.”

“In the veins.”

“And arteries, yes.”

Engel was beginning to feel slightly less than well. He said, “Then what?”

“Then of course we clean out the internal organs and—”

“Internal organs.”

Brock motioned at his own torso. “Stomach,” he said. “All that.”

“Oh.”

“Then we fill the cavity with cavity fluid and—”

“Cavity?”

Brock made the same motion as before. “Where the internal organs were.”

“Oh,” said Engel. He lit a cigarette and it tasted like a barn in summer.

“That’s all done the night before,” said Brock. “When we get the client. Then we wait till the next morning for the restoration.”

“That’s when Brody’s wife came.”

“Well, that’s what’s happening up stairs. Downstairs, usually, there’s the restoration. Cosmetics, you know, this and that, we make the client look as though he’s sleeping. Sew the lips shut, use make-up for any little deformities, any little problems—”

“Yeah, fine, that’s fine.”

“Of course, with Brody we didn’t do all that, because there wasn’t a viewing.”

“Right.”

“We did some of course, the normal embalming procedures, but there was hardly any face there to put make-up on, you know. And no lips to sew.”

Engel swallowed and put his cigarette out. “Yeah, well, then what?”

“Then we arrange the client in his casket. Well, no, first he goes back in the icebox till the viewing, or the wake, whatever you want to call it. Then we arrange him in the casket and bring him upstairs for the viewing. With Brody there was a wake, but no viewing. Closed casket. He got a pretty big crowd anyway, a lot more than I expected. I can’t figure out what he sold, to get that kind of crowd at his wake.”

“Who does that part?” Engel asked. “Putting him in the casket, getting him ready for the viewing.”

“Well, either Mr. Merriweather or me. Sometimes I’d do the whole job on a client myself, sometimes he would, most times one of us would do one thing and one would do another.”

“What about Brody? As an example, I mean.”

“Well, I went and got him, had the first discussion with the widow. Then Mr. Merriweather had the second discussion with the widow. I did the embalming, and he arranged the client in the casket and set up the casket in the viewing room.”

So Merriweather was still the last one to see Brody dead. Unless...

Engel said, “Is there anybody else around when you’re doing all this? People drop in to watch or anything?”

“Oh, no.” Brock gave the collegiate smile again. “It isn’t the sort of operation to draw a crowd,” he said. “Besides, it’s illegal to have anyone present at the embalming, against the law. Oh, I think members of the family could be there, but they never are.”

It was a dead end. Engel got to his feet and said, “Well, thanks. You’ve been a big help.”

“You want a drink before you go?” Brock patted his own trim belly, said, “Something to fill the inner man, eh?”

Cavity fluid. Engel said, “No, thanks,” and then, remembering Callaghan, added, “Not on duty.”

“Oh, right, forgot about that. Well, if there’s anything else, any time at all, I’ll be more than glad to help.”

“That’s fine. Fine.”

Brock walked Engel to the door, smiled one last time, and shut the door as Engel walked away down the hall to the stairs.

Going down the stairs, it seemed to Engel he was wasting his time, going at this whole thing the wrong way. Instead of starting with Merriweather, and going through Brock to... well, to wherever, instead of doing that he should start at the other end, with Charlie Brody himself. He should talk to Brody’s wife, and he should talk to Brody’s immediate boss Fred Harwell, and he should talk to anybody else who might have known about the heroin in Brody’s suit. Even if Merriweather’s murder were connected with Charlie Brody’s disappearance — and though he still believed it was, because otherwise the coincidence was just too pat, he nevertheless realized coincidence does happen sometimes and he could yet be wrong — but even if there were a connection, he was still going at things the wrong way. He hadn’t fully realized it up to now, but now that he’d come to a dead end with Brock, he could see just how he’d been going wrong.