Donald Westlake: The Busy Body

“We’re at the cemetery. Come on.”

“We’re at the what?” Willy sat up, startled, and slammed his head into the dashboard, and went back down again.

“I might as well gone to college,” said Engel, “like my mother wanted. I might just as well gone legit, and took the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune. So I got money, I got prestige, I got the respect of my community, I even got a pipe with my name on it at Kean’s, but is it worth it? To be involved with slobs like this masochist on the floor here, is it worth it? To go dig up graves and conk people on the head with shovels and drive a standard-shift car and get lost forty times in Brooklyn and associate with slobs like Willy Menchik at this hour of the night, I might as well been a milkman.”

He opened the door and stepped out, still grambling. “I might better off been a milkman, they got a union.” But then he said, “Ahhhhhhggggggghhhhh,” in disgust, because he knew it was worth it. Up till now, being Nick Rovito’s right-hand man had been a simple and pleasant job. Make the phone calls, keep the appointment book, deal with the smaller matters of executive decision, it was like being the boss’s son at an ad agency.

Yeah. And now after four years he was finding out that every once in a while, also like being the boss’s son at an ad agency, there was going to be a grave to be dug up or somebody to be conked on the head with a shovel or a standard-shift car to be driven through Brooklyn, and then for a little while the job was going to be demeaning, actually demeaning. Even unsanitary.

Thinking about it, he walked around the car and opened the door and Willy fell out onto the ground and hit his head on a rock. Engel said, “Will you stop it? You keep on this way, you’ll build up a immunity, and a shovel’s all I got with me.”

Willy groaned and rolled over, and when he rolled over, his head was just under the car. Engel saw what was coming, and grabbed Willy’s ankles, and just as Willy’s head was coming up Engel yanked him clear, and Willy sat up untouched for once, and made a face, and said, “Man, I got a headache.”

“You’re drunk, that’s what your trouble is.”

“So what are you? You sober?”

“Of course I’m sober. I’m always sober.” Which was an exaggeration, but by comparison with Willy a very small one.

Willy said, “That’s what I don’t like about you, Engel, that goddam holier-than-thou attitude of yours.”

“Come on, get on your feet, we’re at the cemetery.”

But Willy just sat there. He wasn’t done talking yet. “You are the only guy I know,” he said, “what would get the word to go out and dig up a grave in the middle of the night and not get drunk. You probably didn’t even get drunk on V-J Day, that’s the kind of guy you are.”

“The kind of guy I am,” Engel told him, “Nick Rovito tells me to go dig up a grave I don’t sit on the ground and bitch about it.”

“Brown-nose.”

“What was that?”

Willy raised his head and squinted belligerently, moonlight on his face. Then all at once the belligerence faded away, and he looked baffled. He said, “What did I say?”

“That’s what I want to know. You know who you’re talking to?”

“Engel, I’m drunk. I’m not responsible. I apologize, Engel, I apologize from my bottom. From my heart. From the bottom of my heart.”

“Come on, let’s get started.”

Willy sighed. Whiskey fumes drifted upward. “It’s alius the same thing,” he said. “I get to drinkin, I ran off at the mouth. One of these days I’m gonna talk myself into a lot of trouble, you mark my words. You just mark my words, that’s all.”

“Come on, Willy, on your feet.”

“You’ll watch out for me, won’t you?”

“Sure.”

Engel helped him to his feet. Willy leaned against the side of the car and said, “You’re my buddy, that’s what you are.”

“Sure.” Engel opened the car door and got the flashlight out of the glove compartment.

“Buddies,” said Willy. “We alius been buddies, right from the beginning, huh, pal? Thick and thin, thummer and winter. Ever since good old PS One Eighty-four, ain’t that right? Remember good old PS One Eighty-four?”

“I never went there.”

“Whadaya talkin about? You and me was inseparable. In- sep arable!”

“Quit shouting. Here, hold the flashlight.”

Engel handed him the flashlight, and Willy dropped it. “I’ll get it, Engel, I’ll get it!”

“You just stand there!” Engel got the flashlight and held it himself. He went around to the back of the car and opened the trunk. The tools were there, wrapped in an army blanket. “Come here, Willy, carry this stuff.”

“Second. Second.”

Engel flashed the light at him, and Willy was patting himself all over, like a man looking for a match. Engel said, “Whadaya got now? Bugs?”

“Pint,” said Willy. “I had a pint.” He fumbled the door open, and the inside light went on again. “Ahh!”

“Quiet!”

“Here it is! It musta fell on the floor somehow.”

“Will you come here?”

“I’m on my way.”

Willy slammed the door, and lurched to the rear of the car, and Engel flashed the light on the rolled army blanket. “Carry that stuff.”

“Aye aye, sir.” Willy saluted, badly, and gathered up the army blanket in his arms. “Ufff! Heavy!” The tools clanked together inside the blanket.

“Carry it on your shoulder. On your shoulder. Put it up on — let me — get it up on — up on your — don’t drop it!”

Engel picked up the tools and the blanket, rolled them together again, and put the package on Willy’s shoulder. “Now, hold it there!”

“Got it, Chief, got it. Rely on me, Chief. Got it right here.”

“All right, let’s go.”

Engel shut the trunk, and they started away from the car, going through the cemetery gate and down a gravel pathway that made crunching sounds beneath their feet. Engel went first, shining the flashlight ahead of himself, and Willy came stumbling along behind him, the tools clanking together on his shoulder. After a minute Willy started to sing a song to the tune of “Maryland, My Maryland”: “‘One Eighty-four, One Eighty-four/You’re the school that we adore;/One Eighty-four, One Eighty-four/In the Bronx on—’”

“Shut up!”

“Well, it’s a very mournful place, that’s all.”

“Just shut up for a minute.”

“Very mournful place.” Willy began to snuffle.

Engel didn’t know exactly where he was. He flashed the light around and led the way up one gravel path and down the other, and behind him Willy shuffled and snuffled and sometimes mumbled to himself. The tools made muffled clanking sounds inside the army blanket, their feet crunched on the gravel, and pale marble monuments crouched in the moonlight all around them.

After a while Engel said, “Ah. Up this way.”

“Very mournful place,” said Willy. “Not like California. You ever been to California?”

“It should be right over here.”

“I never been to California. Some one of these days, you betcha life. ‘Cal-i-forn-ia, here I come/Right back where—’”

“Shut up!”

“Yah, ya brown-nose.”

“What?”

“You’re makin all the noise yourself, ya bum. I saw through you way back in PS One Eighty-four. You were a brown-nose then, and you’re a brown-nose now, and you’ll be—”

Engel turned around and said, “Shut your little face, Willy.”

Willy blinked five or six times and said, “What did I say?”

“You better start listening, that’s what I say.”