Donald Westlake - The Busy Body

This building was between 45th and 46th streets. The first and second floors housed a Spanish-language phonograph record company that specialized in low-fi records of people shaking gourds. The fourth floor was the office and warehouse of a company that sold odd-looking women’s underwear via mail order and did all its advertising in muscle-man magazines. Between these two, on the third floor, behind the name Afro-Indic Importing Corporation, lurked Fred Harwell and his organization of dope peddlers.

Another of those carnival-ride trucks was parked just down the block from this building as Engel arrived, but was happily playing music instead of Engel’s description. Engel walked past it, went into Fred’s building, and up the two flights of murky grimy stairs to the third floor, where there was a short hallway and two doors, one unmarked and one lettered AFRO-INDIC IMPORTING CORP.

The main motif up here was ancient wood flooring, with broad dust-filled holes between the slats. Cracked and dented plaster walls were painted a heavy shade of green reminiscent of the interior of the Minotaur’s stomach, and from somewhere there came a pervasive odor of soggy moldering cardboard.

Engel pushed open the door and entered a small barren room containing a wooden desk, a wooden filing cabinet, a hat rack, two huge dusty windows bare of curtains or blinds or drapes, a crumbling brown leather sofa, and Fred Harwell’s mistress name of Fancy, who was very plain.

Engel had no idea if Fancy knew the latest on himself, so he just bluffed it through to see what would happen. “Hi, Fancy,” he said. “I come to see Fred.”

She looked surprised, but that was only natural; he didn’t come around here very often. “He’s in,” she said. “You want I should announce you?”

“Naw, that’s okay.” Engel waved airily and crossed the room and pushed open the other door on its far side.

Fred Harwell looked up from his desk, where he’d been hard at work on last Sunday’s Times crossword puzzle. “All” he said, and then, as realization struck him, “Al? For Christ’s sake, Al—”

Engel shut the door. “Not a word, Fred,” he said. “Play it very cool.”

“Al, what are you doing here? Do you know how hot you are?”

“Yeah, I know how hot I am. What I don’t know is who lit the fire under me.”

Fred pressed the palms of his hands against his chest. “All Me?”

“You tell me.”

“Why would I, Al? Answer me that, why would I?”

“I don’t know yet. I got theories, that’s all.”

Fred shook his head back and forth. “This is crazy,” he said. “Everything’s crazy. One second I’m sitting here doing my job like always, everything’s jake, and the next second you come in and say I did something to you. Like what? Like how? Like why?”

Engel said, “What about me? One second I’m doing my job like always and the next second I’m a dead man, I got the cops and the organization both after me.”

Fred raised both hands, palms up. “Al, that’s the chance you took,” he said. “I always figured you were too smart to try a stunt like that, but there you are. And if it got back to Nick Rovito, why figure I or anybody else did it to you? You did it to yourself, Al.”

“Now wait a second,” said Engel. “Hold on a second, there. That was a frame-up, Fred. I never been on the take in my life.”

“Then I’m sorry. If that’s true, I’m sorry, Al, but what can I do? I can’t talk to Nick, I can’t—”

Engel decided to throw a curve and see what happened. “I just been to see Rose,” he said.

Fred squinted. “Rose who?”

“You don’t know who Rose is?”

“One of Archie’s girls?”

“Come off it, Fred. Rose is a man and you know it.”

Fred blinked several times, then suddenly flashed a very weak and shaky smile. “Oh, yeah,” he said. He was leaning farther back in his chair now, farther away from Engel. “Yeah, that’s right,” he said. “Rose is a man, I forgot that.”

“What are you doing, you simple bastard? Are you humoring me?”

“Oh, no,” said Fred. “No, no, Al, not a bit of it.”

“Rose is a last name, too, you moron. Like Billy Rose. You gonna tell me Billy Rose is a woman?”

Fred had to wait a few seconds to shift gears all over again, and then he said, “Oh. I see what you mean. A guy named Rose, that’s his last name it isn’t his first name. Al, I didn’t know, with everything so crazy all of a sudden I didn’t know but what maybe you, too, you know, maybe the strain of overwork or something, you can’t be sure about things like that...” and trailed away.

Engel said, “Shut up, Fred.”

“Yes,” said Fred. “Right.”

Engel paced back and forth, back and forth, frowning with concentration. Fred was in the clear, that was obvious. He was the only one Engel had had even a glimmer on for motive and opportunity, and the bastard was clean. It just wasn’t possible that Fred was lying, that Fred was the one behind all this.

Fred, after a couple of minutes, said, “Can I say something, Al?”

“Speak.”

“As soon as you leave here, I got to call Nick and tell him you were here. You understand that.”

Engel nodded. “Yeah, I understand that.”

“I got a wife and kids, Al. I got Fancy. I got responsibilities, and that means I got to cover myself.”

“Yeah yeah yeah.”

“Al, I want you to know, for what it’s worth, I believe you. I known you a number of years now, and while we never been real close friends we always got along together and I always considered you a good reliable type and a pleasant personality. So if you tell me it’s a frame, I take your word for it. That don’t cut no ice with Nick, that don’t change anything at all in fact, but I want you to know.”

“Yeah. Thanks, Fred.”

“I wish I could help.”

“Yeah. You can, Fred.”

Fred had been looking very sincere. Now his expression changed, and he began to look like a man who, in the middle of a speech to a crowd of five thousand, has begun to suspect his fly is open. He said, “I can?”

“You can find out for me about Rose.”

“Rose.”

“I want to know Rose’s first name, and I want to know where I can find him.”

“I thought you already talked to him.”

“No. Don’t worry about that. I know he’s a businessman, this Rose, on the legit somewhere but connected with the organization. There had to be somebody he could talk to when he started to put the finger on me. It’s a safe bet he didn’t go to Nick direct.”

Fred said, “Then who?”

Engel said, “Rapaport.”

“Rapaport? Why Rapaport?”

“Because Rapaport is our union man. Rapaport controls the union end of the organization just the way you control the dope end and Archie controls the girl end. And the quickest connection a businessman will have with the organization is through a union.”

Fred said, “Granted. That’s okay, that’s smart, but then what? You should go see Rapaport, not me.”

“I can’t wander all over town, Fred. Remember? I’m hot.”

Fred said, “What can I do?”

“You can call Rapaport.”

“What? Are you out of your skull, Al?”

“No. You can call Rapaport and you can ask him about Rose.”

“Why? How? What’s my excuse?”

Engel shook his head, thinking hard. “You say to him, uh, you say, ‘Listen, there used to be a guy name of Rose owned this building, we had some trouble with him, I wonder is he the same one Engel was holding up?’ Then Rapaport tells you about Rose.”

“What if he don’t?”

Engel said, “Then you tried, that’s all. You tried.”