Donald Westlake - The Busy Body

The door opened, and Nick Rovito came in, in a yellow silk dressing gown with his initials in chartreuse Gothic script on the pocket. Nick Rovito said, “So where’s the coat?”

Engel shook his head. “I didn’t get it, Nick. Everything went wrong. Willy’s still alive, and I didn’t get the coat.”

“Is this Engel? Let me look at your face. Is this my right-hand man, my trusted assistant, the man to which I gave every opportunity and all my trust and confidence? This cannot be Engel, this must be a ringer in a funny face. Two things I ask from you and you don’t do either one?”

“He wasn’t there, Nick.”

“Wasn’t there, wasn’t there, who wasn’t there? Whadaya talking about, ya disappointment, ya, whadaya telling me?”

“Charlie, Nick. Charlie wasn’t there.”

“Charlie wasn’t where?”

“In the coffin.”

“What did ya do, ya ungrateful bastard, ya digged up the wrong coffin?”

Engel shook his head. “I digged — dug — digged up the right coffin, only Charlie wasn’t in it. Nobody was in it.”

Nick Rovito came closer and said, “Let me smell your breath.”

“I had a shot afterward, Nick, but nothing beforehand, on a stack of Bibles.”

“Are you sitting there and telling me we give that grand send-off to an empty coffin? Are you telling me three Congressmen and eight motion picture stars and the Housing Commissioner for the City of New York made a special trip in the middle of the week to pay their last respects to an empty coffin? Is that what you have the gall and the disrespect to come and tell me to my face?”

“I can’t help it, Nick. It’s the truth. Me and Willy dug it up and opened it, and there wasn’t a damn thing in it. Willy got spooked and run off and I was too startled myself to grab him in time. In fact, I fell in.”

“In fact, you did what?”

“I fell in. In the grave.”

“Why’d you bother getting out? Will ya tell me?”

“I figured you ought to know what happened.”

“So tell me what happened.”

“Charlie wasn’t there, and his suit wasn’t there, and Willy got away.”

“That ain’t what happened, that’s what didn’t happen. So tell me what happened ?”

“You mean, where’s Charlie?”

“Yeah, that for openers.”

Engel spread his hands helplessly. “I dunno, Nick. If we didn’t bury him today, then I just don’t know where he is.”

“So find out.”

“Like where?”

Nick Rovito shook his head sadly. “You are the biggest disappointment of my entire lifetime, Engel,” he said. “As a trusted assistant, you are an abortion.”

Engel frowned, trying to think. “I suppose,” he said, “I suppose the thing to do is go talk to the undertaker.”

“Mortician. He likes you should call him mortician.”

“The mortician. I figure he’s the last one to see Charlie’s body, maybe he knows what happened to it.”

Nick Rovito said, “If he didn’t put it in the coffin, what the hell else would he do with it?”

“Maybe he sold it to a medical student.”

“Charlie Brody? What the hell would a medical student want with Charlie Brody?”

“To experiment on, maybe. To make like a Frankenstein monster, maybe.”

“A Frankenstein monster. You’re a Frankenstein monster. I send you on a simple matter, get me a lousy suit coat, you come back with Frankenstein monsters.”

“Nick, it isn’t my fault. I was there. If Charlie’d been there, everything would of been okay.”

Nick Rovito put his hands on his hips and said, “Let me tell you the story. Straight from the shoulder, cards on the table, no secrets between friends. You go out and you find me that coat. I don’t give a damn where Charlie Brody’s body is, and I don’t give a damn about medical students or Frankenstein monsters, all I give a damn about is that coat. You find me that coat, Engel, or you go back out to Brooklyn where there’s a nice empty coffin handy, and you dig it up again, and you climb in, and you shut the lid, and good-bye. Do I make myself clear?”

“What a business,” said Engel.

“Business? You call this a business? I call it Olsen and Johnson, that’s what I call it.”

“Sometimes I think to myself, I could of gone in the army and retired at age thirty-eight.”

Nick Rovito studied him thoughtfully for a second or two, and then his face softened. “Engel,” he said, much more calmly than before, “don’t talk that way. Don’t mind what I been saying, I’m just not used to this getting out of bed at four-thirty in the morning, and coffins with nobody inside, and grand send-offs with nobody sent off, and all the rest of it. I’m just not used to it, that’s all.”

“What the hell, Nick, it don’t happen to me every day, either.”

“I understand that. I put myself in your position, and I understand that, and I see you done everything you could of been expected to do, and you were right to come back here and tell me about it like this. After all, aren’t you the man saved me from Conelly? Aren’t you my right hand? I shouldn’t of blown up at you like I done, because if it’s anybody’s fault it’s Charlie Brody’s, and it’s just too bad the bastard’s already dead, because if he wasn’t you could kill him for me.”

Engel said, “No, you were right to chew me out, I shouldn’t of let Willy get away, that was poor organization on my part.”

“The hell with Willy, that don’t mean a thing. We’ll get Willy by the end of the week anyway. If worst comes to worst, we’ll let Harry get him at the Bowlorama. The important thing is the suit.”

“I’ll look for it, Nick, that’s the most I can promise you, I’ll look for it.”

“You don’t even need to say it, Engel, you know the way I feel about you. You are my trusted assistant, my altered ego, whither thou goest I am there in spirit. If anybody on God’s green earth can find me that blue suit coat, you are the man.”

“I’ll do my best, Nick.”

Nick Rovito laid a fatherly hand on Engel’s shoulder. “Wherever that suit is,” he said, “it ain’t going anywhere before morning. You look tired, you been digging and everything, and—”

“Kenny gave me a car with standard shift.”

“He did? What the hell for?”

“I’m not complaining, it was the only car he had suited the requirements.”

“I didn’t know they even made standard shift any more. Anyway, that’s neither here nor there. The important thing is, you need your rest if you’re gonna operate at peak perfection, so the thing for you to do is go home, get a good night’s sleep, and when you’re all rested you go out and see can you find the suit. Fair enough?”

“I could use some sleep, I guess.”

“Sure you could. And don’t mind what I said before, I was just upset, you know?”

“Sure, Nick.” Engel got to his feet, and said, “Listen, I left the car out front. Could somebody else take it back for me? I’ll grab a cab home from here, okay? I mean, my left foot’s exhausted.”

“Leave everything to me. Don’t worry about the car or nothing, concentrate your energies exclusively on the suit. You’ll do that for me?”

“Sure, Nick.”

Nick Rovito patted his shoulder. “You’re my boy.”

The sign on the front lawn that said

was three feet wide and in neon, but it was blue neon, for dignity. Behind this sign and beyond the manicured lawn was the building, a robber baron’s town house when it was built in the latter part of the nineteenth century, its gables and bay windows all done in a rotten stucco now painted a gloomy brown. A broad empty porch spread across the broad vacuous face of the house, and as Engel came up the slate walk he saw that this porch was full of uniformed policemen.