The Busy Body

19

To look at Fred Harwell’s place of business, you’d never know he had charge of a multimillion-dollar operation with employees in the hundreds and customers in the tens of thousands. But, on the other hand, Fred Harwell’s operation was not the sort of business that put up glass buildings to itself on Fifth Avenue. Given the nature of his trade, a grimy and bankrupt-looking brick building on Tenth Avenue was just the perfect location for his home office.

This building was between 45th and 46th streets. The first and second floors housed a Spanish-language phonograph record company that specialized in low-fi records of people shaking gourds. The fourth floor was the office and warehouse of a company that sold odd-looking women’s underwear via mail order and did all its advertising in muscle-man magazines. Between these two, on the third floor, behind the name Afro-Indic Importing Corporation, lurked Fred Harwell and his organization of dope peddlers.

Another of those carnival-ride trucks was parked just down the block from this building as Engel arrived, but was happily playing music instead of Engel’s description. Engel walked past it, went into Fred’s building, and up the two flights of murky grimy stairs to the third floor, where there was a short hallway and two doors, one unmarked and one lettered AFRO-INDIC IMPORTING CORP.

The main motif up here was ancient wood flooring, with broad dust-filled holes between the slats. Cracked and dented plaster walls were painted a heavy shade of green reminiscent of the interior of the Minotaur’s stomach, and from somewhere there came a pervasive odor of soggy moldering cardboard.

Engel pushed open the door and entered a small barren room containing a wooden desk, a wooden filing cabinet, a hat rack, two huge dusty windows bare of curtains or blinds or drapes, a crumbling brown leather sofa, and Fred Harwell’s mistress name of Fancy, who was very plain.

Engel had no idea if Fancy knew the latest on himself, so he just bluffed it through to see what would happen. “Hi, Fancy,” he said. “I come to see Fred.”

She looked surprised, but that was only natural; he didn’t come around here very often. “He’s in,” she said. “You want I should announce you?”

“Naw, that’s okay.” Engel waved airily and crossed the room and pushed open the other door on its far side.

Fred Harwell looked up from his desk, where he’d been hard at work on last Sunday’s Times crossword puzzle. “All” he said, and then, as realization struck him, “Al? For Christ’s sake, Al—”

Engel shut the door. “Not a word, Fred,” he said. “Play it very cool.”

“Al, what are you doing here? Do you know how hot you are?”

“Yeah, I know how hot I am. What I don’t know is who lit the fire under me.”

Fred pressed the palms of his hands against his chest. “All Me?”

“You tell me.”

“Why would I, Al? Answer me that, why would I?”

“I don’t know yet. I got theories, that’s all.”

Fred shook his head back and forth. “This is crazy,” he said. “Everything’s crazy. One second I’m sitting here doing my job like always, everything’s jake, and the next second you come in and say I did something to you. Like what? Like how? Like why?”

Engel said, “What about me? One second I’m doing my job like always and the next second I’m a dead man, I got the cops and the organization both after me.”

Fred raised both hands, palms up. “Al, that’s the chance you took,” he said. “I always figured you were too smart to try a stunt like that, but there you are. And if it got back to Nick Rovito, why figure I or anybody else did it to you? You did it to yourself, Al.”

“Now wait a second,” said Engel. “Hold on a second, there. That was a frame-up, Fred. I never been on the take in my life.”

“Then I’m sorry. If that’s true, I’m sorry, Al, but what can I do? I can’t talk to Nick, I can’t—”

Engel decided to throw a curve and see what happened. “I just been to see Rose,” he said.

Fred squinted. “Rose who?”

“You don’t know who Rose is?”

“One of Archie’s girls?”

“Come off it, Fred. Rose is a man and you know it.”

Fred blinked several times, then suddenly flashed a very weak and shaky smile. “Oh, yeah,” he said. He was leaning farther back in his chair now, farther away from Engel. “Yeah, that’s right,” he said. “Rose is a man, I forgot that.”

“What are you doing, you simple bastard? Are you humoring me?”

“Oh, no,” said Fred. “No, no, Al, not a bit of it.”

“Rose is a last name, too, you moron. Like Billy Rose. You gonna tell me Billy Rose is a woman?”

Fred had to wait a few seconds to shift gears all over again, and then he said, “Oh. I see what you mean. A guy named Rose, that’s his last name it isn’t his first name. Al, I didn’t know, with everything so crazy all of a sudden I didn’t know but what maybe you, too, you know, maybe the strain of overwork or something, you can’t be sure about things like that...” and trailed away.

Engel said, “Shut up, Fred.”

“Yes,” said Fred. “Right.”

Engel paced back and forth, back and forth, frowning with concentration. Fred was in the clear, that was obvious. He was the only one Engel had had even a glimmer on for motive and opportunity, and the bastard was clean. It just wasn’t possible that Fred was lying, that Fred was the one behind all this.

Fred, after a couple of minutes, said, “Can I say something, Al?”

“Speak.”

“As soon as you leave here, I got to call Nick and tell him you were here. You understand that.”

Engel nodded. “Yeah, I understand that.”

“I got a wife and kids, Al. I got Fancy. I got responsibilities, and that means I got to cover myself.”

“Yeah yeah yeah.”

“Al, I want you to know, for what it’s worth, I believe you. I known you a number of years now, and while we never been real close friends we always got along together and I always considered you a good reliable type and a pleasant personality. So if you tell me it’s a frame, I take your word for it. That don’t cut no ice with Nick, that don’t change anything at all in fact, but I want you to know.”

“Yeah. Thanks, Fred.”

“I wish I could help.”

“Yeah. You can, Fred.”

Fred had been looking very sincere. Now his expression changed, and he began to look like a man who, in the middle of a speech to a crowd of five thousand, has begun to suspect his fly is open. He said, “I can?”

“You can find out for me about Rose.”

“Rose.”

“I want to know Rose’s first name, and I want to know where I can find him.”

“I thought you already talked to him.”

“No. Don’t worry about that. I know he’s a businessman, this Rose, on the legit somewhere but connected with the organization. There had to be somebody he could talk to when he started to put the finger on me. It’s a safe bet he didn’t go to Nick direct.”

Fred said, “Then who?”

Engel said, “Rapaport.”

“Rapaport? Why Rapaport?”

“Because Rapaport is our union man. Rapaport controls the union end of the organization just the way you control the dope end and Archie controls the girl end. And the quickest connection a businessman will have with the organization is through a union.”

Fred said, “Granted. That’s okay, that’s smart, but then what? You should go see Rapaport, not me.”

“I can’t wander all over town, Fred. Remember? I’m hot.”

Fred said, “What can I do?”

“You can call Rapaport.”

“What? Are you out of your skull, Al?”

“No. You can call Rapaport and you can ask him about Rose.”

“Why? How? What’s my excuse?”

Engel shook his head, thinking hard. “You say to him, uh, you say, ‘Listen, there used to be a guy name of Rose owned this building, we had some trouble with him, I wonder is he the same one Engel was holding up?’ Then Rapaport tells you about Rose.”

“What if he don’t?”

Engel said, “Then you tried, that’s all. You tried.”

“Al, I honest to God don’t want to do it.”

Engel put his right hand palm up on the middle of Fred’s desk. He had a large hand with big knuckles. He said, “You see that hand, Fred?”

Fred said, “Yeah, I see it.”

“For purposes of discussion,” Engel said, “let’s us call that hand a lethal weapon.”

“Yeah?”

“Then let’s say you can tell Nick you had to make the call because I threatened you with a lethal weapon.”

“But—”

“And just so you won’t have to lie,” Engel said, closing the hand into a fist, “I will threaten you with it.” He raised the fist off the desk and held it close to Fred’s face.

Fred looked at it, sort of cross-eyed. He said, “But what if Nick don’t believe me?”

“I tell you what I’ll do,” Engel said. “If you don’t think you can put the story over, I’ll hit you once or twice, give you a couple marks. Not because I’m mad or anything like that, but just to help you convince Nick. Okay by you?”

“Wait a second, Al, uh, wait a second.”

“It’s up to you, Fred.”

Fred looked at the fist, and licked his lips, and tried various expressions for his face, and finally cleared his throat and nodded and said, “Okay.”

“Okay? Okay what?”

“Okay I’ll make the call. And you don’t have to leave marks, it’s okay. You don’t have to do a thing.”

“I just want to be helpful,” Engel told him. “That’s the way we all ought to be, helpful to one another.”

“I said I’d do it.”

Engel straightened and spread his hands. “And I thank you, Fred,” he said.

Fred made the call, and while he talked Engel leaned down close beside his ear so he could hear both ends of the conversation. It went:

Fred: Hi, this is Fred.

Rapaport: Hi, Fred, whadaya say?

Fred: That was really something about Engel, huh?

Rapaport: You never know what goes on inside a guy’s head, I’ve said it time and time again.

Fred: You know, that guy Engel was holding up, that Rose, he—

Rapaport: Rose? How’d you hear about him?

Fred: Oh, uh... (Engel whispered, “From Nick.”) ...From Nick.

Rapaport: Yeah? That’s funny. He said he wanted that kept quiet.

Fred: Yeah, he told me the same thing. About this guy Rose, there was a guy name of Rose used to own this building, you know where I am on Tenth Avenue?

Rapaport: Is that right?

Fred: Yeah. We had trouble with this Rose, I remember, he was very down on the organization. I wonder could it be the same guy. What’s your Rose’s name?

Rapaport: Herbert. Herbert Rose.

Fred: Oh. No, this guy was Louie Rose.

Rapaport: It’s a pretty common name, Rose.

Fred: I guess so. This Herbert, he’s in real estate?

Rapaport: Naw, trucking. He’s got a nickel-dime delivery outfit over by the piers on the West Side.

Fred: Oh. Then there’s no connection, I guess.

Rapaport: With your Rose? It don’t look like it.

Fred: I just thought, if it was the same Rose, there might be more to it than Nick knew about.

Rapaport: You don’t think Engel did it?

Fred: Well, you never know, isn’t that right?

Rapaport: Well, don’t say nothing like that to Nick. He’s down on Engel, on account of he trusted him so much. He don’t even want to hear Engel’s name, much less to defend him.

Fred: Don’t worry, I’ll keep my mouth shut. Woops, there’s somebody on the other line. I’ll be talking to you.

Rapaport: Right. See you, Fred.

Fred hung up, and Engel walked back around to the other side of the desk and said, “You don’t have another line.”

“Rapaport don’t know that.”

“I appreciate this, Fred, and now I’m off.”

“Al, you understand I got to call Nick as soon as you leave. And I got to tell him you know about Herbert Rose.”

“Sure, I know that. You got a phone book?”

“Oh, yeah. Here.”

Fred dragged a directory out of a desk drawer, and in it Engel found Herbert Rose with a home address on East 82nd Street, and Rose Cartage Company with an address on West 37th Street, over near the piers. He shut the directory and said, “Well, that’s that.”

Fred said, “I wish you luck, Al, because I believe you. And you know why I believe you? I believe you because if you were guilty you’d already know what Rose’s first name was and where to find him, am I right?”

“Right as rain, Fred.” Engel leaned down over the desk, looking in Fred’s eyes. “You look tired, Fred,” he said, and his right fist came around very fast and clipped Fred on the side of the jaw. Fred’s head snapped back and forward, and Fred was asleep.

Engel was sorry he’d had to do it, but it would give him an extra few minutes, and he needed every spare second he could get. He went to the door, opened it and stepped out, said back into the office, “See you, Fred,” and shut the door. To Fancy he said, “Fred don’t want to be disturbed for a while.”

“Yeah,” Fancy said, disgruntled. “That’s the standing order around here.”

Engel hurried down the stairs to the street, and intercepted one of the odd cabs that had wound up this far over from the center of town. “Thirty-seventh Street and Eleventh Avenue,” he said.

The cabby made a face. “Don’t anybody go to midtown no more? I been over here the last hour and a half.”

“What do you want to go to midtown for? Get in that traffic jam?”

The cabby said, “Yeah, I guess you’re right. I didn’t look at it that way.”

They went over 47th Street and down Eleventh Avenue. The cabby had a transistor radio propped up on the dashboard in the left corner, playing rock and roll music. Then, as they rolled down Eleventh Avenue, it played news instead. They reached 37th Street, and as the cabby was making change for a five-dollar bill, the smallest Engel had on him, the radio said Aloysius Engel and began giving his description.

The cabby gave him change and a funny look. And another funny look. And a sort of squint.

Engel got out of the cab and walked away down 37th Street, looking for Rose Cartage Company. Behind him, the damn cabby kept looking and squinting, squinting and looking, and all of a sudden drove very fast away from there.

So how much time did he have? Five minutes? Maybe less.

And who’d get there first, the organization or the cops?

Engel hurried into the open garage door of the building labeled Rose Cartage Company, Herbert Rose, Incorporated.