Donald Westlake: The Busy Body

Engel’s knees hurt. This was the first time he’d been inside a church in twelve years, and he wasn’t used to it any more. He’d come in here, all unknowing, and the first thing he knew he was on his knees on this hard wooden plank, and pretty soon the kneecaps had started burning, and then shooting pains had developed up and down the legs, and by now he was almost sure something was broken down there and he’d never walk again.

To his left, blocking the aisle directly in front of the altar, was Charlie Brody’s casket, draped with a black cloth bearing a gold embroidered cross. It was really very fancy-looking, and a nutty rhyme began to circulate around in Engel’s head: A tisket, a tasket,/A black and yellow basket,/Charlie Brody kicked the bucket/And now he’s in a casket,/A casket,/And now he’s in a casket.

The rhyme struck him funny, and he grinned a little, but then out of the corner of his eye he saw Nick Rovito giving him the fish-eye, so he dummied up again. Then his left knee suddenly gave him a particularly vicious twinge, and he got on his face an expression Nick Rovito couldn’t possibly object to. He leaned as much weight as possible on his forearms resting on the back of the pew in front of him, and he wondered how much longer this foofaraw was going to take.

In a way, none of this was even necessary, since Charlie Brody hadn’t kicked off in the line of duty, hadn’t been gunned down or anything like that. All he’d had was a heart attack. Of course, he’d had it just when he was putting some water on to boil for instant coffee, and he’d fallen over with his head in the flame, so he was just as much a mess now as if he had been rubbed out — closed coffin and all, no viewing the remains, the whole bit — but nevertheless, in the old days this sort of big-shot funeral had been reserved either for VIPs or guys sliced down on the job.

It was because of the New Look, that’s what it was. With the New Look, practically nobody ever got rubbed out any more, not so’s the body was left around, not since Anastasia, and that was just some guys showing off. With the New Look, there weren’t any rival organizations to have gang wars with, because the Central Committee gave everybody a territory and then settled all jurisdictional disputes itself at the conference table down in Miami. And with the New Look, nobody shot it out with the cops any more, they just went along nice and quiet and let the organization lawyers handle everything. So, because of the New Look, it had been years and years since the organization had been able to throw a really first-class supercolossal Cecil B. DeMille extravaganza of a funeral.

And now here was Charlie Brody, not much more than a punk. A courier is all he was, between the organization here in New York and the suppliers down in Baltimore. But he was dead, and he was the first active member of the organization to kick off in three or four years, and when Nick Rovito heard about it he’d rubbed his hands together and got a gleam in his eye and said, “Let’s us give old Charlie Brody a send -off! What I mean, a send-off!”

The other guys around the table had all looked pleased and said sure, good old Charlie Brody, the guy deserved a good send-off, but it was obvious they hadn’t been thinking about good old Charlie Brody at all, they’d been thinking about the send-off.

Engel was still pretty new at these meetings, so he hadn’t said much of anything, but he too had been pleased at the idea. He’d joined the organization too late to have any memories of send-offs himself, but he could remember his father talking about them when he was a kid. “That was a grand send-off,” his father used to say. “The church packed to the rafters, five thousand people on the sidewalks outside, mounted cops all over the place. The Mayor showed up, and the Sanitation Commissioner, and everybody. That was a great send-off!”

Not that Engel’s father had ever been high enough in the organization to rate a seat at a send-off like that, but more than once he’d been a part of that crowd of five thousand on the outside. At his own funeral, three years ago, there’d been only twenty-seven people. None of the bigwigs in the organization had shown up except Ludwig Meyershoot, who’d been Engel’s father’s boss for eighteen years.

But now, nostalgia in their eyes, the boys were deciding to give the recent Charlie Brody a grand-slam all-stops-out good old-fashioned send-off. Nick Rovito rubbed his hands together and said, “Somebody call Saint Pat’s.”

Somebody else at the table said, “Nick, I don’t think Charlie was Catholic.”

Nick Rovito looked indignant and said, “Who cares what the hell Charlie was? No church on earth can give you a send-off like the Catholic Church. Whadaya want, a bunch a Quakers sitting around, looking gloomy, spoiling the whole occasion?”

Nobody had wanted that, so Charlie was getting a good Catholic send-off, with Latin lyrics and sharp costuming and good strong incense and a lot of holy water and the whole complete routine. It wasn’t Saint Pat’s, that had already been reserved, but it was a church over in Brooklyn, almost as big, and nearer the cemetery anyway.

Only if he’d remembered about the knees, Engel told himself, he would of come down with a virus this morning and let somebody else play pallbearer, the hell with it.

Well. The service was anyway grinding to a close. Nick Rovito got to his feet, and the other five pallbearers got to their feet right after him. Engel’s knees cracked so loud you could hear an echo bounce back off the stone wall of the church. Nick Rovito gave him the fish-eye again, but what could Engel do? He couldn’t stop his knees from cracking, could he?

His legs were so stiff he was afraid for a second he wouldn’t be able to walk. They were all over pins and needles, like there hadn’t been any blood getting down there in quite a while. He flexed them, doing half a deep-knee bend before he realized he was in the front row of the church practically and everybody could see him, so he straightened quick and went on out to the aisle with the others.

His place was at the left rear. They all stood there in position a second, their backs to the altar, and Engel could see all the people jammed into the church. Not counting the undercover FBI agents and the undercover Crime Commission agents and the undercover Treasury agents and the undercover Narcotics Squad agents, and not counting the newspaper reporters and the wire service reporters and the photographers and the lady reporters to write the human interest stories, there were still maybe four hundred people in the church that had been invited by Nick Rovito.

The Mayor wasn’t there, but he’d sent the Housing Commissioner in his place. Besides him there were three Congressmen that had come up through the ranks and gone on to represent the organization down in Washington, and a few singers and comics that were owned by the organization and fronted night clubs and restaurants for the organization, and a lot of lawyers in very conservative suits, and a few doctors looking fat and dyspeptic the way doctors do, and some sympathetic-looking people from the Department of Health, Education & Welfare, and some television and advertising executives that hadn’t known Charlie Brody at all but did know Nick Rovito socially, and a lot of other notables. It was a very distinguished crowd, all in all, and Charlie Brody would have been flabbergasted if he could have seen them.