Donald Westlake - The Busy Body

The trouble was, in the game of cops and robbers he just wasn’t set up to be a cop. His sympathies, his interests, his training and his inclination were all on the other side. No wonder he was going at things backward, no wonder he was coming to dead ends.

Thinking these things, he came out to the street, looked right and left, and went off to the right, toward Tenth Avenue, which was closer. There he stood, on the corner, waiting for a cab.

It took a few minutes, Tenth Avenue being a bit off the beaten path. He stood there, gradually getting impatient, and finally decided to walk down to Ninth. He’d taken half a dozen paces from the corner when a white open Mercedes-Benz 190SL rolled by, with Margo Kane, the mystery woman, at the wheel. She had replaced her black gown with white stretch pants and a bulky orange sweater, and she was looking so hard for a parking space along the curb that she didn’t notice Engel at all.

Of course there were no parking spaces, there never are in New York. Ahead of Engel, on the other side of the street, there was a cleared area along the curb by a fire hydrant, and this is where Margo Kane parked, turning the wheel with casual graceful abandon. She got out of the car — her sandals were lime-green, the same color as Brock’s polo shirt — tripped across the street on dancing feet, and went into Brock’s building.

Engel stood on the sidewalk, looking toward the doorway into which she had disappeared. “Oh ho,” he said. Not that he knew what this new development meant, if anything, not that he could immediately connect it up with the disappearance of Charlie Brody, but just that it was interesting. So interesting, in fact, that he said it a second time: “Oh ho.”

There was another note from Dolly, printed with lipstick on another résumé and attached with another false fingernail:

Honey?

Where are you?

Dont you want to see me?

Don’t you remember?

Engel remembered. He looked at the note sadly, shook his head, took it down from the door, and went into the apartment. He made himself a Scotch and water without the water, sat down by the telephone, and started making his calls.

First to Archie Freihofer, who ran the girl part of the organization. When he got hold of Archie, Engel identified himself and said, “I want to see Charlie Brady’s wife.”

“What, Bobbi?”

“That’s it. Bobbi.”

“Al, I’m sorry. We decided, all things considered, the little lady oughta have a few days to herself before she comes back on active duty. It’ll be the first of the week before she starts to work, and then to be truthful with you there’s a waiting list as long as your arm. A lot of the boys have chosen to decide, it seems to me, to make a really beautiful gesture of affection and respect for Charlie Brody and at the same time see to it a little extra cash against emergencies goes into the little lady’s stocking.”

There was no interrupting Archie once he got talking. The only thing to do was wait till he decided to stop again, even if only to take a breath. At this point, spying a little bit of silence coming up after the word “stocking,” Engel quickly threw some words of his own into the breach, saying, “No, Archie, that isn’t what I want. I’m talking about business.”

“So what have I been talking about, a game Scrabble?”

“I want to talk to Mrs. Brody,” Engel said.

Archie said, “Al, she’s using her professional name again. Bobbi Bounds.”

“Whatever name she’s using, I want to talk to her. Official business. You can check with Nick Rovito.”

“Check? I take your word for it, what do you think? You want to go see her, or you want her to come see you?”

“I’ll go see her. Is she living at the same place where she lived with Brody?”

“No, she’s moved in with a couple other girls, you know how they are they like to be with friends that understand the situation, you know?”

“What about the apartment?”

“The old one? Charlie’s? I wouldn’t know.”

“Give me her phone number, Archie. Maybe we can save time, I can meet her at the old apartment.”

“Hang on, I’ll look it up.”

Engel hung on. Archie came back a minute later, gave him the number, and Engel thanked him and broke the connection. Then he dialed the number Archie had just given him.

It was answered on the third ring by a female voice harsh with suspicion: “Yeah?”

“Is Bobbi there?”

“Who’s calling?”

“Al Engel. I’m calling for Nick Rovito, on urgent business connected with her late husband.”

“Hang on.”

Again he hung on, and the next voice he heard belonged to Bobbi Bounds, saying, “Mr. Engel?”

“I rode in the car with you yesterday,” Engel reminded her. “Up front.”

“Yes, sure, I know who you are.”

The tone of respect in her voice surprised him, till he remembered just how far down in the pecking order of the organization Charlie Brody had been. The grand send-off had tended to make him forget that.

He said, “Has everything been cleared out of the old apartment yet?”

“No, not yet. I’ve taken some of my own things, but Charlie’s stuff is still all there.”

“I want to meet you there, this afternoon. Are you free?”

“Sure, I guess so.”

Engel looked at his watch and it was four-thirty. “At six o’clock,” he said.

“Is there something wrong, Mr. Engel?”

“Not exactly. A little problem we got to get straightened out, that’s all.”

“I’ll be there.”

“Fine.”

Next, Fred Harwell, who was in his office. Engel said, “Fred, has Nick told you the latest development?”

“Which latest development is that?”

“About Charlie Brody’s suit.”

“The last I heard about that was at the meeting, when Nick told you go dig it up. About which, Al, you know you could do me a big favor if you’d talk to Nick about that, how it wasn’t really my fault about not remembering the suit. I mean, nobody—”

“Fred, I—”

“Wait a second, Al, this is important. Because nobody remembered that suit, Al, not just me, nobody. Al, if you could—”

“Fred, will you—?”

“You’re closer to him than anybody, Al. If you could just put in a good word for me, explain about how—”

“I will,” Engel said, just to shut him up.

“It could have happened to anybody,” said Fred, who apparently hadn’t heard him, or couldn’t adapt to Engel’s having agreed so easily.

“Right,” Engel said. “I’ll talk to him.”

“You will?”

“I will. If you’ll shut—”

“I appreciate that, Al.”

“Yeah. If you’ll shut up and let me talk to you , I’ll talk to him. If not, the hell with you.”

“Al, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to monopolize the conversation.”

“Yeah, well—”

“It’s just been preying on my mind, that’s all. Nick hasn’t said anything to me since then, but I know—”

“Shut up, Fred.”

“What?”

“I said shut up, Fred.”

Engel really didn’t believe the silence that followed, and it stretched for maybe ten seconds before he understood that Fred had shut up and it was now possible to talk. When he got that straight he said, “I want to ask you about Charlie, Fred, because we don’t have the suit yet, and we don’t have the suit yet because we buried an empty coffin yesterday.”

“We bur — Oh, I’m sorry.”

“Yeah. Now, Nick’s given me the job of finding out where the suit is now, which means find out where the body is now, which means find out who took him, and how they took him, and why they took him. But mostly who. I found out how, because the undertaker was bumped off today and—”