The Busy Body

16

Engel had seen that Chevrolet before. But the last time he’d been driving the damn thing, and this time he was put in the back seat to play passenger. One of the messengers got in with him, his hand staying warily near his jacket lapel. The other one got behind the wheel.

The boy at the wheel was named Gittel and the one next to Engel in back was called Fox. They were good professional muscle, constantly on loan to Pittsburgh or Seattle or Detroit, and Engel had known them both for years.

Gittel started the car and it stalled and he said several things. Engel said, “It’s standard shift. I was just driving this car last night.”

“Shut up,” said Fox conversationally.

Gittel, starting the car again, said through clenched teeth, “When we’re done with Engel, I’m goin round a little bit with that bastard Kenny.”

“He couldn’t do any better for me either,” said Engel. “It isn’t his fault.”

“Shut up,” Fox offered, “or I’ll break your head.”

Engel looked at him. “I thought I was your friend.”

“I got a dog instead.”

Gittel had the car going again. He pulled it cautiously away from the curb and headed uptown, in first.

Engel said to Fox, “Can I tell him he oughta shift gears?”

“That’s it,” said Gittel. “That’s all I can take.” He pulled the car to the curb again, barely two blocks from Engel’s apartment.

Fox said, “Hey! You outa your mind? We’re suppose to take him to Nick Rovito first. Besides, you call this a safe place?”

Gittel got out of the car, opened the back door next to Engel, and said, “Out, you son of a bitch.”

Engel got out, slowly, looking for a chance.

Gittel shoved the car keys in his hand. “You’re so smart,” he said, “you drive the damn thing.”

Engel looked at the keys. Behind him, Fox was saying, “Gittel, that ain’t the way it’s done! The mark don’t drive the car!”

“Shut up,” Gittel told him, “or you get it.” To Engel he said, “Get behind the wheel. We’ll both be in the back seat, and you oughta know better than try something funny.”

“Not anyway till I see Nick,” Engel said. “Where you supposed to take me?”

“The mission.”

“Right.”

They all got back in the car, Engel behind the wheel this time, and once more headed north. Engel by this time was somewhat used to the car, and all the way uptown he only stalled it twice.

The mission was on East 107th Street, in an old store front that had housed a tiny Jewish tailor until some of the neighborhood children had set fire to him. The owner had had a tough time finding another businessman to take the place over, and had been glad finally to rent it to the Jesus Loves You Mission, Incorporated, one of those fringe organizations that specialize in giving hot soup and mismatched shoes to alcoholics. Since this was one of the blocks where people started throwing bottles, garbage, furniture and each other out the windows at the mere sight of a cop, one of the blocks where the rat population exceeded the human and the rats kept it that way by constantly biting babies, one of the blocks the social workers just didn’t want to discuss, there was nothing unusual about a store-front mission opening up there. In fact, not even the owner of the building knew the Jesus Loves You Mission, Incorporated, was a front for the organization.

What safer place could there be in a slum for the neighborhood narcotics peddler than the hot-soup counter at a mission? Customers didn’t even have to go home to shoot up. And since the mission had a dormitory upstairs like any other mission, the customers didn’t have to go home after they shot up either.

Engel parked across the street from this mission now, and he and Gittel and Fox got out of the car. They crossed the rubbish-strewn street, Engel in the middle, and went into the mission.

The front windows of the mission had been whitewashed, and the name of the joint had been put on them in red-painted and very shaky lettering. A notice on the front door — grease pencil on a shirt cardboard — informed the public, with many misspellings, that organ recitals and hymn-singings took place every Friday and Saturday evening at ten o’clock. All welcome.

A half-dozen tottering brittle-boned winos had been clustered outside the door, looking like those who’d been called but not chosen, and at least two dozen more of the same were sprawled around on folding chairs within, in the long main meeting room just inside the door. Religious mottoes were everywhere along the walls, and at the far end, on a slightly raised platform, stood a podium and a small electric organ.

Aside from being an organization front, this place was also a legitimate mission, having as much hot soup and as many mismatched shoes as any other mission in New York, and counters to dispense these items were along the left wall. Juvenile delinquents, looking dangerously bored, manned these posts with less than apparent devotion.

At the far end of the room, near the organ, was a battered brown door with gold lettering on it seemingly done by the same shaky hand that had identified the front windows in red. The lettering announced:

Gittel pushed this door open and entered without knocking. Engel followed him and Fox brought up the rear. Their passage through the meeting room had caused no stir of interest or curiosity, the clientele of missions not normally being of the nosy-parker type.

The office they now entered was a cramped and sloppy room full of second-hand office furniture, on nearly all of which were cardboard cartons stuffed with double-breasted blue pin-stripe suits of a style that even Dennis O’Keefe has stopped wearing. A flabby scabby sloppy type in white religious collar, black clerical suit and red alcoholic nose sat at the desk, adding up numbers on a sheet of yellow paper, doing his work with a thick blunt stub of pencil. He had mud on his shoes, dust on his suit, dandruff on his shoulders, and he ran this joint. “It doesn’t matter,” he’d been heard to say, “where the support of my mission comes from, or what other uses it may be put to. Crime may produce the money, but the money is used for the Lord’s work, and nothing else can have meaning.” Most of the time, except for those rare intervals when he was cold sober, he believed what he said, and he made a far better operator of the mission than any cynic from the organization could have done. Nothing cons like sincerity. This fool’s name was Clabber, and he liked to be called Reverend.

Not Engel nor either of the other two called him Reverend or anything else at the moment. He looked up from his figuring, bleary-eyed, and watched them pass through, across his cluttered sanctum and through the door on the other side into a room painted black.

All black. Walls and ceiling, black paint on soundproofing. Floor, black linoleum. A black wooden kitchen table and four black kitchen chairs stood in the middle of the room, under a ceiling fixture with three bare twenty-five-watt bulbs in it. A man could scream at the walls and bleed on the floor in here, and none of it would make any difference.

Nick Rovito was sitting at the table, and so was another guy, a humble, hangdog, fiftyish loser with a worried face and bad posture. He looked up at Engel, and then quickly away again. He looked like the kind of natural loser who runs a business, goes bankrupt, sets fire to the store for the insurance and manages only to burn himself up.

Nick Rovito pointed at Engel. “Is that him?”

“Yuh.”

“Look at him. Be sure.”

The little guy looked at Engel, his eyes pleading as though he and not Engel were the one on the spot. Looking at him, thinking of business and fires, Engel wondered if Murray Kane could possibly have looked like this, but the answer had to be no. Something like this attached to a woman like Margo Kane? Impossible.

Also irrelevant. There were more immediate things to think about, like Nick Rovito saying, “Look at him. Look at his face. Is it him, or are you wasting my time?”

“It’s him.”

“All right.”

Engel said, “What is this, Nick?”

Nick Rovito got up from his seat at the table, came around, and slapped Engel across the face. “I treated you,” he said, “like my own son. Better.”

“I don’t rate this,” Engel told him. He knew he was in deeper trouble than he’d ever been in his life before, and he didn’t know why, but he had sense enough to keep his head and try for the reasonable approach. Nick Rovito’s slap had stung, but that was nothing.

Nick Rovito was saying to the little guy, “All right, that’s all. Go home. Tell your friends it’s taken care of, and other than that keep your trap shut.”

The little guy seemed to get down from the chair. He was closed in on himself like a spider that’s been poked with a pencil. He scuttled toward the door, blinking, licking his lips, not looking at Engel or anyone.

When he was gone, Engel said, “I don’t know what your grievance is, Nick. And I never saw that guy before in my life.”

“You will never mention my name again,” Nick Rovito said. “I will never mention yours. I wanted you brought here, you greedy little punk, because I wanted to say good-bye. Good-bye.”

“You got to tell me what you think I did,” Engel said. “I been a help to you for four years, I rate a fair shake from you now.”

Nick Rovito stepped back, frowning, squinting. “You never give up,” he said. “Or is there more than one thing I could have you on, and you don’t know which it is? Is that it?”

“I never did anything to you, Nick,” Engel said. “Not once.”

The second slap was harder than the first, because it was backhand. “I told you never to mention my name again.”

Engel sucked blood in from the corner of his mouth. “I been square with you,” he said.

“Tell me one thing,” Nick Rovito said. “Did you find the suit? Did you find it and keep it to yourself? That’s the kind of thing you’d do, isn’t it?”

Engel said, “One of us is crazy,” and that earned him the closed fist. He moved his head enough to catch it on the cheekbone instead of the nose.

Fox said, “Nick, please don’t mark him. We still got to transport him.”

Nick Rovito stepped back again, massaging his knuckles. “You’re right. I shouldn’t lose my temper with him.”

Engel said, “Just tell me what you think I did. I deserve that much.”

“Why waste your time, you punk? You don’t convince me, so drop it”

“All I ask is tell me in words what I did.”

Nick Rovito shook his head. “You just keep trying,” he said. “That’s one of the things I always liked about you, how you just kept trying. You want me to say it in words? Even though that guy Whatsisname, Rose, that guy Rose was here, you still think there’s a chance I mean something else, something you can weasel out of. All right, punk, you want it in words, I’ll say it in words.”

Engel waited, listening harder than he’d ever listened before in his life.

“You used my name,” Nick Rovito said. “You used your connection with me. You went to businessmen, legitimate businessmen like this guy Rose, and you held them up. ‘I’m Al Engel,’ you said. ‘I work with Nick Rovito, and you know who he is. You pay up to me, or I see to it you start getting trouble. Union trouble. Racket trouble. Cop trouble. All sorts trouble.’ That’s what you told them, you rotten greedy bastard. You worked your own racket inside the organisation.”

Engel shook his head. “I never,” he said. He knew how serious a thing that was, to use the threat of the organization for personal advantage. There was nothing you could do more serious than that except try to overthrow Nick Rovito himself. An organization can’t survive if the members are all trying to be boss, and it can’t survive if the members are all out for themselves all the time. So what he was being charged with was enough to make the sweat break out on his forehead and his hands start trembling at his sides.

Nick Rovito said, “I didn’t bring you here to listen to you lie.”

Engel said, “I wouldn’t do such a thing, Ni — I wouldn’t. I never saw that guy Rose before in my life.”

Nick Rovito shook his head. “Then why would he say it? Why would he accuse you? Why would he identify you? If you never saw him before, if he doesn’t know you, why should he take the chance?”

“I don’t know. All I know is I never been less than a hundred per cent with you, and you’ll know that some day.”

Fox laughed, and Gittel motioned like he was playing a violin.

Engel said, “I’m loyal to the end. Callaghan’s watching me, he’ll want to know where I am. He’ll make things hot.”

Nick Rovito grinned and shook his head. “Not if you’re a killer. Cops don’t waste time at all trying to find out who bumped off a killer. And as of tonight you’re a killer.”

“I am?”

“You went out with a gun tonight, and you killed a punk name of Willy Menchik. Over in Jersey, as he came out of the Bowlorama. You shot him, and then you dropped the gun when you ran away. The cops have it by now, and they’ll find your fingerprints all over it.”

More and more Engel was convinced he was dreaming. “My prints?”

“You might call me a string saver,” Nick Rovito said. “I never throw anything away. Like the gun you used on Conelly?”

“You kept it?”

“A nice set of prints, kept fresh in cold storage. By morning Callaghan will be looking for you with a warrant on murder one. By tomorrow night hell find you, rubbed out. No witnesses, no questions, no evidence. No need to waste time and money on a trial for you. Hell wash his hands and go think about something else.”

It was true. Engel shook his head, trying to rid himself of the notion, trying to make the last half-hour go away and not have happened, but it did no good.

Nick Rovito gave him a mock salute. “Good-bye, you punk,” he said. “Good-bye, you second-rate cheap bastard.”

“Nick—”

“Take him out of here.”

Gittel and Fox closed in, getting him by the arms just above the elbow, squeezing hard, in a grip he’d used himself more times than he could count. They took him out of the black room and through the office with its blinking fool and through the main meeting room and out to the street and across to the car.

The hubcaps were all gone. So was the radio antenna. So was the glass from the taillights. The glove compartment had been rifled and the rear seat had been slashed with a knife.

Gittel looked this way and that along the quiet street. “Those kids,” he said. “They got no respect for nothing.” To Engel he said, “You drive again.”

Fox said, “Are you crazy?”

“Engel won’t try nothing. Will you, Engel?”

Engel would, but he said, “Not me. I know you guys.”

“That’s right,” said Gittel. “He’ll play on our sympathy, and on friendship, and he’ll try to buy us off, but he won’t pull anything cute, will you, Engel?”

“You know me, I guess,” said Engel.

Fox said, “I am doubtful. I just want you to know that.”

They all got into the car again, Engel behind the wheel and the other two in back. Fox let Engel know he had his gun out and ready for anything, and Gittel again told Fox there was nothing to worry about. Engel asked where to now and Gittel said, “Triborough Bridge. Up to a Hundred Twenny-fifth Street.”

“Right.”

Engel bided his time. He concentrated a lot of his attention on the car, shifting constantly back and forth, pushing the car uptown practically by physical strength. He also, in order to keep Gittel and Fox unsuspicious, talked away to the two in the back seat, using the exact techniques Gittel had prescribed for him, alluding to their past friendship, trying for their sympathy, subtly leaving himself open to suggestion on bribes. But he didn’t expect any of this to do him any immediate good. What he had to do, somewhere along the line, was purely and simply get away from these two.

The tollbooths for the Triborough Bridge were right up in the middle of the bridge. Engel contemplated simply getting out of the car there and walking away, doubting that Gittel and Fox would dare shoot him next to the tollbooths, but the problem was there was nowhere to run away to. If the toll-booths had been down at ground level he might have tried it, but not this way, stuck on the bridge on foot.

After the bridge they directed him onto the Grand Central Parkway, which curved around through Queens. “Take it to the Long Island Expressway,” Gittel told him, “then take the Expressway east.” Which meant out on the Island, out away from New York.

Grand Central Parkway was landscaped on both sides, with a central mall. Now, a little after one o’clock in the morning, there wasn’t much traffic moving in either direction.

Engel waited, biding his time. He stayed in the farthest left lane of the three, driving at about forty miles an hour. He waited, driving along, talking to the two guys in the back seat, and finally the conditions were just right. There was no traffic near him in any lane. The road was straight. There were no overpasses immediately ahead.

He put the gear shift in neutral, opened the door, and rolled out onto the mall. As he left, he heard somebody say, “Hey!”

It was quite a sensation, hitting turf at forty miles an hour. Engel had rolled himself into a ball as he was leaving the car, and now he just went tumbling forward, end over end, until he gradually lost momentum and opened out flat on his back in the middle of the greenery.

He sat up, with difficulty, finding himself dizzy and a little nauseous. Ahead of him and still pulling away, down now to about twenty miles an hour but far from stopped, the black Chevy was still moving along. It had drifted over to the center lane, but was still going pretty straight. Kenny would see to things like wheel balancing and front-end alignment.

Engel could imagine Gittel and Fox in the back seat, both scrabbling to get up front, to climb over the seat, each getting in the other’s way, the both of them shouting and jumping and wasting energy.

While Engel wasted time.

Right. He got to his feet — he seemed to have muscle aches in about thirty different places — staggered over the mall, across the eastbound lanes of traffic, over the turf on the other side to the metal fence there, climbed the fence, attained one of the little dim streets of Queens, and ran for his life.