Donald Westlake: The Busy Body

“I’ve seen him around,” said Engel. “What do you mean, take over?”

“Take over,” his father explained. “As in take over.”

“You mean throw Nick Rovito out?”

“That’s it.”

“You sure? I mean, what I mean is, you sure?”

Engel’s father nodded. “I got it from a unimpeachable source.” he said. “But the thing is, I can’t pass the word on to Nick Rovito myself without lousing things up with my unimpeachable source, you know?”

Engel said, “So? How come?”

His father ignored the second part of that. In response to the first part he said, “So you tell him. I’ll set things up so you can see him personally. Don’t tell anybody but Nick Rovito himself, I don’t know for sure who else is in it with Conelly.”

Engel said, “Me? How come me?”

“Because there’s nobody else,” his father said. “And because,” he said, and Engel’s mother could be heard echoing in the words, “it can do you a lot of good in the organization.”

Engel said, “I’m not sure...”

“Did I ever steer you wrong, Al?”

Engel shook his head. “No, you never did.”

“And I won’t this time.”

“But what if Nick Rovito wants proof? I mean, what the hell, he don’t know me from nobody, and Conelly’s his right hand.”

“Conelly’s been dipping into the pension fund,” his father told him. “He’s been siphoning cash off into a secret account under Nick Rovito’s name. That’s the excuse he’ll use with the Committee. I’ll give you all the details I got, and when Nick Rovito says he wants proof you tell him what I’m telling you.”

And that’s what happened. Through guile, persistence, cunning and terror, Engel’s father managed ultimately to arrange for the meeting between Engel and Nick Rovito, without having told Nick Rovito or anybody else what the meeting was for, and when Engel was alone with Nick Rovito and Nick Rovito’s bodyguard he told everything his father had said, except he didn’t say and wouldn’t say where he got his information.

At first Nick Rovito refused to believe it. In fact, he got so irritated he grabbed Engel by the shirt front and bounced him up and down awhile for saying such things about his old friend Conelly. He had to reach up to do it, since Engel had about five inches and thirty pounds on him, but he could do it because Engel knew better than to defend himself. Still, despite the bouncing, Engel stuck to his story, not only because it was true but also because there was nothing else to do, and after a while Nick Rovito began to wonder, and then after a further while he sent somebody to go get Conelly “and tell him get his ass over here fast.”

Conelly got there twenty minutes later, by which time Engel’s shirt was wringing wet with perspiration. Nick Rovito said to Engel, “Tell Conelly what you told me.”

Engel blinked. He cleared his throat. He scuffed his feet. He told Conelly what he’d told Nick Rovito.

When Engel was done, Nick Rovito said, “I haven’t checked the kid’s story yet, but I can. Do I have to?”

Conelly got purple in the face, said, “Gahhh!” and made a run for Engel, his hands out to take Engel apart.

Nick Rovito reached into a desk drawer, took out a gun and tossed it casually to Engel. It was the first time in his career Engel had even held a gun, but there was no time to think, what with Conelly and those hands getting rapidly closer, so Engel just closed his eyes and pulled the trigger five times, and when he opened his eyes again Conelly was lying on the floor.

Nick Rovito said to Engel, “You are my right hand, kid. From now on you’re my right hand, with all that that implies.”

“I think,” said Engel, “I’m going to throw up.”

And they both came to pass. Engel threw up, and became Nick Rovito’s right hand, abruptly replacing Conelly at some whim of Nick Rovito’s. This was four years ago, about a year before Engel’s father died from gallstones and complications. For the last four years Engel had been Nick Rovito’s right hand, which kind of meant private secretary, and all that that implied had been large amounts of money, new suits by the closetful, a far better class of woman, charge accounts in expensive restaurants, adoration from his mother (who now, through his financial help, had her own beauty shoppe), a key to the Playboy Club, instant obedience from the rank and file in the organization...

... and digging up bodies in cemeteries in the middle of the night.

So that was it for golf today, no question. Instead there was a meeting, right after the funeral.

The boys all sat around the table, looking at Nick Rovito because he’d called the meeting all of a sudden out there at the cemetery, and nobody knew what it was all about except Engel, and he didn’t know much. Except there wasn’t going to be any golf this afternoon for one thing, and for two things he was all of a sudden a body snatcher.

One of Archie’s girls came into the room with ashtrays, spreading them around at all the places around the table, and Nick Rovito gave her the fish-eye and said, “You shoulda had the ashtrays out already. Memo pads, pencils, glasses, pitchers of water, ashtrays, all done before we got here.”

“We didn’t know nothing till the last minute,” she said, and Nick Rovito said, “Shut up,” and she shut up.

Everything else was already on the table at all the places. There were the little three-by-five memo pads and the long yellow sharpened pencils and the thick-bottomed water glasses and the fat pitchers each full of ice water. Archie’s girl finished handing out the ashtrays and then she went away and shut the door.

Nick Rovito lit a cigar. It took him a long time. First he unwrapped it, and then he stuck the aluminum tube back in his pocket to give to his kid to make a rocket out of with match-heads, and then he smelled it, putting it up to his nose like a mustache, and then he looked contented a few seconds, and then he licked it all over to get it good and wet with saliva, and then he bit off the end and spat the shreds down on the carpet, and then he leaned forward a little and somebody stuck a hand out with a gas lighter in it going hisssss , and Nick Rovito lit his cigar. It had to be a gas lighter, not a lighter-fluid lighter, because Nick Rovito could taste the lighter fluid if he lit his cigar from a lighter-fluid lighter, so all the boys carried gas lighters, whether they smoked or not. You never knew when.

Nick Rovito took the cigar out of his mouth and watched the smoke a minute, coming up from the pale gray ash at the tip with the burning coal showing behind it, very luxurious, and the boys watched Nick Rovito watching the cigar smoke. Besides Engel, there were two others from the pallbearers, plus three guys that had been ushers. Everybody else from the funeral had gone home or gone to work, except the widow, who went off with Archie Freihofer.

“What I should a done,” Nick Rovito told the cigar smoke, “what I should a done was not to waited. But I thought to myself, it’s better to mind the amenidies, and wait till after the send-off, and then send somebody over to Charlie’s old place and pick it up. What I didn’t count on is a stupid broad who she isn’t a brand-new widow I’d push her face in, that’s what I didn’t count on.”

Somebody else around the table said, “Something wrong, Nick?”

Nick Rovito gave him the fish-eye and didn’t answer him. Then he looked at Engel and said, “Tonight, Engel, sometime tonight you go dig him up, you got me?”

Engel nodded, but somebody else around the table said, “Dig him up? You mean, like Charlie? Dig him up?” and Nick Rovito said, “Yeah.”

Somebody else around the table said, “How come, Nick?”