Donald Westlake - The Busy Body

“I did what I had to do,” she said. “This was your idea, Murray.”

“What you had to wait for,” said Engel, “was a suitable body, a body loused up some way so there’d be no viewing. Then Brock stole the body, you put it in your factory and set fire to the place, and as far as anybody’s concerned Murray Kane is dead.”

“As a doornail,” said Kane.

“But Merriweather got suspicious somehow.”

Kane’s smile twisted even more. “He eavesdropped. He overheard Brock and my wife talking. He tried to blackmail us, to cut himself in for a percentage.”

Mrs. Kane said, “You were just going to talk to him, that’s all. You and your temper.”

“He was too greedy,” said Kane. “A fool, and too greedy.”

Mrs. Kane said, “If we’re going to talk, why don’t we all sit down?”

“Of course,” said Kane. “Mr. Engel, forgive me. I didn’t mean to keep you standing. If you will be so good as to walk very slowly to that chair there, and sit down with no sudden or excitable moves, I would be most appreciative.”

They all sat down in the living room, at a good distance from one another. Mrs. Kane said, “Now, where were we? Oh, yes. Murray went to see Mr. Merriweather, and I had the most awful premonition, so I followed him. I knew poor Kurt had been fired, for nuzzling with me behind the flowers, and when I saw you standing in the office, Mr. Engel, from behind, I thought you were Kurt, and I was terribly afraid you’d see Murray. You see, Kurt doesn’t know my husband’s alive.”

Murray smiled again. “Kurt understands an entirely different plot,” he said, “culminating in his running off to Hawaii with Margo and half a million dollars.”

“Poor Kurt,” said Mrs. Kane. “He’ll be so disappointed. At any rate, I saw you and thought you were Kurt, and so I said, ‘What are you doing here?’ because of course I knew you’d been fired. Then you turned around, and you weren’t Kurt, and Mr. Merriweather was dead, and it was too much for me, so I fainted.”

Murray said, “My wife faints whenever things are too much for her, Mr. Engel.”

“Then I woke up,” said Mrs. Kane, “and Murray was there. He’d been hiding on the cellar staircase. Well, the building was just full of policemen, so what was I to do?”

Engel said, “You sicked them on me.”

“Just so Murray could get away. Then things began to get complicated. I kept having to see you, to find out what you were doing, whether you were dangerous to us or not. And finally I had to get you in trouble with your boss, though I truly didn’t mean you to get in as much trouble as you did.”

The husband said, “You should have let well enough alone, Engel. My wife went to the trouble of calling Rose and the others back, fixing things up for you again. You should have quit while you were ahead.”

“I still had my job to do,” Engel said.

Mrs. Kane got to her feet and said, “All right, now we’ve told you everything. Now will you, for the love of God, tell me something?”

“You? Sure, what?”

“What are you up to, Mr. Engel? What do you keep snooping around for?”

“Charlie Brody. I was sent to get his body back.”

“But why? How did you even know he was missing?”

“I dug up his coffin and he wasn’t in it.”

The Kanes looked at each other. Mrs. Kane said, “Mr. Engel, I’ve got to know why. What set you off?”

“Charlie’s suit,” Engel said.

“His suit?”

“There was something in it my boss wanted.”

They looked at each other again. Mrs. Kane said, “The suit. All the time, it wasn’t the body at all, it was the suit.”

“We wanted the body suitable,” said Kane, “and he wanted the body’s suit.”

Engel said, “What did you do with it?”

Mrs. Kane shrugged. “I have no idea. Kurt took care of all that. I gave him one of Murray’s suits to dress it in.”

“So Kurt would know where the suit is.”

Kane said, “You understand, Mr. Engel, so far as you are concerned all this has become academic. It won’t be possible to let you live.”

Mrs. Kane said, “Murray, I don’t like this at all. At first it was just a simple honest insurance swindle, but now it’s becoming criminal. You’ve already murdered one man in cold blood, and now you’re going to do it again. Murray, you can’t allow yourself to get into the habit of thinking of murder as the solution to all your problems.”

“Don’t you lecture me,” Kane snapped. Then he composed his face again in the lines of pleasant humor, and said to Engel, “I’m sorry, Mr. Engel, I truly am. But I don’t dare leave anyone who knows I’m still alive.”

“Sure,” said Engel. He was thinking. Jump through one of the tall windows? He’d never get there in time. No, wait and see what developed.

Mrs. Kane was saying, “But how, Murray? What are we going to do with his body?” Abruptly, she giggled. “All at once we’ve got more bodies than we know what to do with.”

“Oh, I know what to do with Mr. Engel,” Kane said. “Yes, indeed. Mr. Engel won’t be found, darling, don’t you worry your pretty head about it.”

“You know what to do with him?”

“That I do.”

“What? Tell me!”

“I know a grave,” quoth Kane, “without a body. A casket and all, but no body.” He smiled upon Engel. “You won’t mind too awfully much, Mr. Engel,” he said, “if your headstone should read Brody?”

The nice thing about the trunk of a Lincoln Continental, it’s roomy. The bad thing about this particular Lincoln Continental was that Engel had to share it with a spade, a pick, a flashlight, a jack, a set of tire chains, and something small and round and cold and hard that kept sticking him in the small of the back.

The condition of the streets of New York City are a disgrace, a real disgrace. Back around 1960 the city hired some men to go out and paint yellow lines around all the potholes for some reason, but other than that and since then the potholes have been left to themselves. Engel, riding to and across Brooklyn in the trunk of Kane’s car, devoted a number of thoughts to the municipal government of the City of New York.

But all good things come to an end, and with a final jounce this ride did too. Engel waited, gripping the jack handle in the dark inside the trunk, thinking there was just a chance he’d be able to knock the gun out of Murray Kane’s hand as the trunk lid was being raised.

But no such luck. It was Margo Kane who opened the trunk, while her husband stood well back and slightly to one side, where Engel couldn’t get at him but Margo didn’t block her husband’s aim.

“Leave the jack there, Engel,” Kane said. “But do bring the pick and shovel and flashlight. Margo, get the blanket from the back seat.”

It was the well-remembered path to the well-remembered grave, except that last time Willy Menchik had been along. Yes, and last time it was Willy Menchik who had been slated to go into the grave. Things were a bit different now.

It was still early, only a little past nine, but the cemetery was as deserted as if it were three o’clock in the morning. They clinked and tinkled along the path to the still-raw grave, Margo spread the blanket for a groundcloth, and for the second time in three days Engel proceeded to dig up Charlie Brody’s grave.

The job seemed to go quicker this time, probably because last time he was in a hurry to be done and this time he was in no hurry at all, and so both times ran wrong, with the usual perversity of life. In just minutes Engel was down to the coffin, his spade making a hollow sound as it hit the top of the box.

Kane came over, saying, “Is that it?”