Donald Westlake: The Busy Body

“Al, I honest to God don’t want to do it.”

Engel put his right hand palm up on the middle of Fred’s desk. He had a large hand with big knuckles. He said, “You see that hand, Fred?”

Fred said, “Yeah, I see it.”

“For purposes of discussion,” Engel said, “let’s us call that hand a lethal weapon.”

“Yeah?”

“Then let’s say you can tell Nick you had to make the call because I threatened you with a lethal weapon.”

“But—”

“And just so you won’t have to lie,” Engel said, closing the hand into a fist, “I will threaten you with it.” He raised the fist off the desk and held it close to Fred’s face.

Fred looked at it, sort of cross-eyed. He said, “But what if Nick don’t believe me?”

“I tell you what I’ll do,” Engel said. “If you don’t think you can put the story over, I’ll hit you once or twice, give you a couple marks. Not because I’m mad or anything like that, but just to help you convince Nick. Okay by you?”

“Wait a second, Al, uh, wait a second.”

“It’s up to you, Fred.”

Fred looked at the fist, and licked his lips, and tried various expressions for his face, and finally cleared his throat and nodded and said, “Okay.”

“Okay? Okay what?”

“Okay I’ll make the call. And you don’t have to leave marks, it’s okay. You don’t have to do a thing.”

“I just want to be helpful,” Engel told him. “That’s the way we all ought to be, helpful to one another.”

“I said I’d do it.”

Engel straightened and spread his hands. “And I thank you, Fred,” he said.

Fred made the call, and while he talked Engel leaned down close beside his ear so he could hear both ends of the conversation. It went:

Fred: Hi, this is Fred.

Rapaport: Hi, Fred, whadaya say?

Fred: That was really something about Engel, huh?

Rapaport: You never know what goes on inside a guy’s head, I’ve said it time and time again.

Fred: You know, that guy Engel was holding up, that Rose, he—

Rapaport: Rose? How’d you hear about him?

Fred: Oh, uh... (Engel whispered, “From Nick.”) ...From Nick.

Rapaport: Yeah? That’s funny. He said he wanted that kept quiet.

Fred: Yeah, he told me the same thing. About this guy Rose, there was a guy name of Rose used to own this building, you know where I am on Tenth Avenue?

Rapaport: Is that right?

Fred: Yeah. We had trouble with this Rose, I remember, he was very down on the organization. I wonder could it be the same guy. What’s your Rose’s name?

Rapaport: Herbert. Herbert Rose.

Fred: Oh. No, this guy was Louie Rose.

Rapaport: It’s a pretty common name, Rose.

Fred: I guess so. This Herbert, he’s in real estate?

Rapaport: Naw, trucking. He’s got a nickel-dime delivery outfit over by the piers on the West Side.

Fred: Oh. Then there’s no connection, I guess.

Rapaport: With your Rose? It don’t look like it.

Fred: I just thought, if it was the same Rose, there might be more to it than Nick knew about.

Rapaport: You don’t think Engel did it?

Fred: Well, you never know, isn’t that right?

Rapaport: Well, don’t say nothing like that to Nick. He’s down on Engel, on account of he trusted him so much. He don’t even want to hear Engel’s name, much less to defend him.

Fred: Don’t worry, I’ll keep my mouth shut. Woops, there’s somebody on the other line. I’ll be talking to you.

Rapaport: Right. See you, Fred.

Fred hung up, and Engel walked back around to the other side of the desk and said, “You don’t have another line.”

“Rapaport don’t know that.”

“I appreciate this, Fred, and now I’m off.”

“Al, you understand I got to call Nick as soon as you leave. And I got to tell him you know about Herbert Rose.”

“Sure, I know that. You got a phone book?”

“Oh, yeah. Here.”

Fred dragged a directory out of a desk drawer, and in it Engel found Herbert Rose with a home address on East 82nd Street, and Rose Cartage Company with an address on West 37th Street, over near the piers. He shut the directory and said, “Well, that’s that.”

Fred said, “I wish you luck, Al, because I believe you. And you know why I believe you? I believe you because if you were guilty you’d already know what Rose’s first name was and where to find him, am I right?”

“Right as rain, Fred.” Engel leaned down over the desk, looking in Fred’s eyes. “You look tired, Fred,” he said, and his right fist came around very fast and clipped Fred on the side of the jaw. Fred’s head snapped back and forward, and Fred was asleep.

Engel was sorry he’d had to do it, but it would give him an extra few minutes, and he needed every spare second he could get. He went to the door, opened it and stepped out, said back into the office, “See you, Fred,” and shut the door. To Fancy he said, “Fred don’t want to be disturbed for a while.”

“Yeah,” Fancy said, disgruntled. “That’s the standing order around here.”

Engel hurried down the stairs to the street, and intercepted one of the odd cabs that had wound up this far over from the center of town. “Thirty-seventh Street and Eleventh Avenue,” he said.

The cabby made a face. “Don’t anybody go to midtown no more? I been over here the last hour and a half.”

“What do you want to go to midtown for? Get in that traffic jam?”

The cabby said, “Yeah, I guess you’re right. I didn’t look at it that way.”

They went over 47th Street and down Eleventh Avenue. The cabby had a transistor radio propped up on the dashboard in the left corner, playing rock and roll music. Then, as they rolled down Eleventh Avenue, it played news instead. They reached 37th Street, and as the cabby was making change for a five-dollar bill, the smallest Engel had on him, the radio said Aloysius Engel and began giving his description.

The cabby gave him change and a funny look. And another funny look. And a sort of squint.

Engel got out of the cab and walked away down 37th Street, looking for Rose Cartage Company. Behind him, the damn cabby kept looking and squinting, squinting and looking, and all of a sudden drove very fast away from there.

So how much time did he have? Five minutes? Maybe less.

And who’d get there first, the organization or the cops?

Engel hurried into the open garage door of the building labeled Rose Cartage Company, Herbert Rose, Incorporated.

“Mr. Rose?” The trucker pointed a thumb. “Up them stairs over there and through the door at the end.”

“Thanks.”

Engel hurried. All around him in the big echoing interior of the building men were working in, on and under trucks. None of them paid him any attention as he strode across the concrete floor and up the wooden stairs at the back.

The door at the end said Private, which at the moment meant less than nothing to Engel. He pushed open the door, went in, and there was Rose himself, standing behind a long table completely full of pink and white and yellow slips of paper.

Rose looked up, and blinked, and said, “Oh, my God.” Then he fainted. He fell on the table, and slid down off it, followed by all those slips of pink and white and yellow paper, and they settled to the floor around him like snow.

“I got no time for that,” said Engel. “No time.” He looked around, and in the corner there was a water cooler. He went over, grabbed a paper cup, filled it, and emptied it on Rose’s face.

Rose came up sputtering and sneezing and coughing and hacking and smacking himself on the chest.

Engel didn’t wait for him to stand. Instead, he squatted down in front of him and said, “Rose.”