Donald Westlake - The Busy Body

Through all of this, as time continued to tick along, he kept trying to figure it out. It was possible, of course, that Margo Kane had done everything, had stolen Charlie and murdered Merriweather and aimed Rose. As for Rose, that was definite, proved, no question. As for Merriweather, there was no doubt she’d been there, but somehow Engel just couldn’t see her wielding the knife. Besides, her reaction on seeing the body had been too good to be false. And, for a further besides, what about her crazy you-murdered-my-husband line? He no longer believed the explanation she’d given him for that scene, but he couldn’t think of any other explanation to take its place. As for stealing Charlie, there was still the problem of what she could possibly have wanted him for.

Margo Kane. He thought and thought. Margo Kane was linked up one way or another with Kurt Brock. Maybe he was the one who’d asked her to use her contacts to frame Engel. Maybe Brock was the one who’d stolen Charlie’s body; he sure had more opportunity than anybody else. Maybe he’d loused up one of the things he was supposed to do, the embalming and all that, and so he hid the body instead of putting it in the casket, but then Merriweather found out about it and Brock had to kill him and—

Aside from being the most stupid idea he’d had all week, that was impossible. Brock had an airtight alibi.

All right. He still didn’t have enough information, that’s all it was. He’d have to wait till he saw Margo Kane, and when he saw her he’d be damn sure to get the truth out of her.

He was impatient, and finally decided he couldn’t wait till after dark. He paid for his meal, all of which he’d eaten but none of which he’d tasted, left the restaurant at five minutes to six, and at ten minutes after six he had a cab, mainly by bumping an old woman with a lot of packages from Klein’s out of contention.

“That got her,” said the cabby. He didn’t care who won, they all had money.

“Third Avenue and 67th Street,” Engel told him.

“Check.”

The cabby had paid no real attention to his face, and he didn’t have a portable radio, so Engel felt relatively safe for the moment. He sat far in the corner of the back seat, directly behind the cabby, and kept his face turned away from the pedestrians outside the window.

The trip uptown was nerve-racking, but it was the driver’s nerves that were being racked, not Engel’s. He got out at 67th Street, paid and left a tip average enough to assure that the cabby would have no special reason to remember him, and then walked up to 68th Street and headed west.

Number 198 was an old brownstone, with well-tended greenery in its tiny square of yard beside the front steps. The ground-floor windows were barred, and a barred gate closed off the ground-floor entrance beneath the steps. The first floor displayed two extremely tall windows to the left of the main entrance at the head of the steps, and the windows on the second and third floors sported green window boxes. Lights were on behind the first- and second-floor windows.

Engel walked past the house the first time, checking to see if either the cops or the organization people were watching here. So far as he could tell, it was clear. He turned around, walked back, and climbed the steps to the front door.

There were two doorbells, the upper one marked “Wright” and the lower marked “Kane.” Engel rang the Kane bell, and waited, and after a minute a grill beside the door said, in a tinny imitation of Margo Kane’s voice, “Who is it, please?”

Engel leaned close to the grill. “Engel,” he said. He had to play it boldly now. If she refused to let him in, he’d have to get in some other way.

But she said, “One minute, please, Mr. Engel,” and less than a minute later she was at the front door, opening it, smiling at him, saying, “You’ve become a very famous man since I saw you last. Come in, come in.”

She was wearing black stretch pants and a black and red striped sweater and red slippers. She seemed as innocent and charming and undangerous as ever.

Engel stepped in and shut the door. “Thanks for letting me in.”

“Not at all, not at all. Come along, we’ll sit in the living room.” As she led the way down a long dark carpeted hall with a chandelier above, she said over her shoulder, “You didn’t tell me your gangster business included rubbing people out. That is the phrase, isn’t it? Rubbing people out?”

“That’s the phrase.”

She pushed apart sliding doors and they stepped through into the living room, where the tall windows were. “Sit down anywhere,” she said, shutting the sliding doors again behind them.

The room was done in off-white, with Persian throw rugs and expensive antiques all over the place, and the highest ceiling this side of a basketball court. The flooring gleamed, a towering pier glass stretched up between the front windows, and midway in the long wall opposite the double doors there was a marble fireplace containing the ashes of a real fire.

“Something to drink?” she said. “A nice ruby port?”

“Nothing for me.” He settled on a Victorian chair that looked rickety but wasn’t.

She settled onto an antique davenport nearby. “I suppose,” she said, “you came to ask me to give you some sort of alibi for last night, but I’m terribly afraid I can’t. Even if the times were right, and they aren’t, you know, we were back in the city in plenty of time for you to have gone over to New Jersey and killed that poor man, but even if that weren’t true I still wouldn’t dare admit I spent any part of last night with you in New England. You understand.”

“That isn’t what I’m here about,” Engel said.

“Oh?”

“I’m here to ask you how come you sent Herbert Rose to frame me.”

She smiled, rather uncertainly. “Herbert Rose? Did he see you do the shooting or something?”

“Maybe you didn’t know what a good frame it was,” Engel told her. “Maybe you just thought I’d get into enough trouble to stop me looking for Charlie Brody.”

“Charlie—? All these names, Mr. Engel, I’m sorry—”

“That’s okay,” said Engel. “Don’t let it worry you.”

“Well, I just wish I knew what you were talking about, that’s all.”

Engel said, “The story Rose told my boss was enough to make my boss order me rubbed out. That’s the phrase, Mrs. Kane, rubbed out.”

Her eyes widened. “Oh,” she said. “Surely not. Just for stealing?”

“You just made an admission,” Engel pointed out.

She brushed it away impatiently. “Of course I did. I was the one who talked to Herbert Rose and the others. I did it last night long-distance from Connecticut.”

“While you were at the powder room.”

“Of course. And do you know why?”

“You’re going to tell me why,” Engel said.

“That’s right, I am. Because I like you, that’s why.”

Engel said, “What was that?”

“Forgive me if I give you a swelled head, Mr. Engel, but I must admit I found you a fascinating man. If only, I thought, if only Mr. Engel could get out of that gangster business and into something safer and more acceptable, there’s no telling where my feelings for him might go.”

Engel watched her with his mouth hanging open. “You’re incredible,” he said. “You’re unbelievable.”

“So I thought,” she sailed serenely on, “I thought the thing to do was get you in trouble with all the gangsters so they’d throw you out. And then I could talk to you, guide you, help you, and the first thing you know—”

“Stop it,” said Engel.

“Well, good heavens,” she said, “I didn’t think they’d be mad enough to kill you! Why should they anyway, they’re a bunch of crooks themselves, aren’t they?”