The Busy Body

4

As if he didn’t have troubles enough, Kenny gave him a car with standard shift. “What the hell, Kenny,” he said, “what the hell do you call this?”

“A Chevy,” said Kenny. “Just what you asked for. A Chevy, couple years old, black, mud smeared on the license plates, kind of dirty and inconspicuous to go with a Brooklyn locale, speed and acceleration not a factor, two shovels and a crowbar and a blanket in the trunk.”

“But it keeps stalling” Engel told him. “I start it, and it jumps forward, and it stalls.”

“Yeah?” Kenny came over and looked in the window and said, “Well, you don’t have your foot on the clutch, that’s what the problem is.”

“My what? The what?”

“That dingus there, by your left foot.”

“You mean this here is a standard shift?”

“It’s the only car we got suits the requirements,” Kenny told him. “You want a white convertible, a powder-blue limousine, a red Mercedes 190SL—”

“I want a quiet car!”

“You’re sittin in it.”

“You know how long it’s been since I drove a standard shift?”

“You want a pearl-gray Rolls Royce, a pink and blue and turquoise Lincoln Continental, a gold and sea-green Alfa Romeo—”

“All right, never mind. Never mind, that’s all.”

“Anything you want, Engel, any car I got.” Kenny made a large gesture to include the whole garage.

“I’ll take this one. Never mind, I’ll just take this one.”

So all the way over to Brooklyn he kept stalling at red lights. It had been years since his left foot had done anything in a car but tap in time to the music from the radio.

It just fit in with the rest of the day, that’s all. Like he was barely home to Carmine Street from the meeting when the phone rang, and not thinking it out first he made the mistake of answering. He’d had some sort of idea in his head it might be Nick Rovito calling to tell him the whole deal was off, but of course it wasn’t, and as soon as he said hello, even before he heard a word from the telephone against his ear, he knew who it had to be.

And it was. “You were beautiful, Aloysius,” his mother said. “I looked at you coming down them church steps with all those important men, and I said to myself, ‘Would you believe it, Frances? Would you believe that was your son up there, so tall, so handsome, with such important men?’ I was actually crying, Aloysius, the people around me actually thought I must be a relative I was crying so. And when I told them, ‘No, I’m crying for happiness, that’s my son out there with the coffin,’ I got these very funny looks, how did I know how they’d take it?”

“Uh,” said Engel.

“Did you see me? I waved a scarf, that one from the World’s Fair? Did you see me?”

“Well, uh, I was kind of preoccupied up there. I didn’t notice very much of anything.”

“Oh. Well, that’s all right.” She sounded as though she meant she wasn’t bleeding too badly. “Anyways,” she said, brightening, “I got home in time to make you the most wonderful dinner you ever had in your life. Don’t thank me, you deserve it, the least a mother can do...”

“Uh,” said Engel.

“What? Don’t say you’re not coming, it’s too late, everything’s started. It’s all in the oven already. Even a mince pie, special.”

“I got a job to do,” Engel said. He would have said so anyway, and it was only a pity it happened to be true. “There’s something I’m supposed to do tonight for Nick Rovito.”

“Oh,” she said, this time sounding as though she meant she was bleeding very badly. “Your work is your work,” she said doubtfully.

“Nothing I can do,” he said.

And wasn’t that the truth! Now, shortly after midnight, driving toward Brooklyn, he reflected on it and was bitter. What a job for an executive! Digging up graves in the middle of the night. Conking people on the head with shovels. Driving standard-shift cars. He drove grimly, forgetting most of the time to shift out of first, and got lost twice over in Brooklyn.

He’d contacted Willy Menchik after the conversation with his mother, and arranged to meet him outside Ralph’s Pub on Utica Avenue in Brooklyn at one A.M., but with the standard shift and getting lost and everything, it was twenty minutes past one before he got there.

He pulled to the curb in front of Ralph’s, and a shadow disengaged itself from the wall and reeled over, tilting heavily to the left. It stuck Willy Menchik’s narrow face through the open window on the passenger side, exhaled whiskey fumes all over the car, and announced, “You’re late. You’re twenny minutes late.”

“I had a little trouble.” Engel had remembered this time to put the gear lever in neutral. His left foot was pressed down on the clutch anyway, just to be on the safe side. “Get in,” he said. “Let’s get this over with.”

“Righto.” Willy straightened up, without getting his head out of the window first. There was a crump, and a sigh, and Willy sank out of sight.

Engel said, “Willy!” There wasn’t any answer. “He’s drunk,” said Engel, and nodded his head. That was all he’d needed.

He got out of the car, and walked around to the passenger side, and opened the door, and picked Willy up and dumped him onto the seat, and closed the door, and walked back around to the driver’s side, and got behind the wheel, and tried to drive away in neutral. The motor roared, but they weren’t going anywhere. He cursed, and tried to shift into first gear without puting his foot on the clutch. He made it, but then the car made a terrible noise, and leaped forward, and stalled. Willy rolled off the seat, hit his head on several things, and finished all crumpled on the floor under the dashboard.

Engel looked at him in exasperation. “Wait a while, will you?” he asked. “First you help me dig, okay? We’ll conk your head to your heart’s content later on, but first you help me dig, you got it?”

Willy was out, so didn’t answer him. The car was out, too. Engel got it started again, and remembered about his left foot, and drove away from there.

He finally did get to the cemetery, around some cockamamie back way with the road under repair, and parked in pitch-blackness under a tree near the cemetery gate. He’d left Willy on the floor, figuring he couldn’t fall anywhere from there, and now he turned on the inside light and started jabbing Willy in the kidneys to wake him up. “Willy! Hey! We’re at the cemetery!”

Willy made a face, and groaned, and shifted around, and said, “Whadaya do?”

“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-separable!”

“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.”

“You know what it is? It’s the tension. This place gives me tension, and acidi-diddy. Acid indigestion.”

“Put the tools down. We’re here.”

Willy looked around, open-mouthed. “Oh, yeah?”

“Put them down.”

“Oh, yeah.” Willy stepped out from under the tools, and they hit the ground with a clang.

Engel nodded. “A real beaut,” he said. “Next to you, that car is a magic carpet, next to you.”

“What?”

“Never mind. Spread the blanket out.”

“What the hell for?”

“To put the dirt on.”

“Dirt?”

“That we dig up!”

“On the blanket? You’ll get it dirty!”

“It’s a groundcloth! So there won’t be dirt on the grass to show somebody was digging here.”

“Oohh! By golly, that’s brilliant!”

“Will you spread the cloth? Will you just for Christ’s sake spread the cloth?”

“The blanket, you mean.”

“Spread it.”

“Right, Chief.”

Willy grabbed a corner of the blanket and yanked, to spread it. Tools went clattering this way and that. Willy said, “Woops.””

“Never mind. That’s all right. I don’t even care.”

“You’re a good guy, Engel, you know that? You’re a real pal.”

“Yeah, yeah.”

Engel flashed the light around. They hadn’t put the sod down yet, so the brown rectangular outline of the grave showed clearly; that would make the job easier. Engel said, “I’ll hold the flashlight, you dig. Then after a while we’ll switch.”

“Right, Chief.”

“Throw the dirt on the blanket. You got it? On the blanket.”

“On the blanket.”

Engel watched mistrustfully, but Willy threw the first shovelful on the blanket, and the second, and the third. Engel backed up a few steps, sat on a tombstone, and held the light for Willy to dig by.

It took quite a while, longer than Engel had expected. After about twenty minutes he took over on the shovel and Willy held the light. Willy sat on the tombstone and opened his pint and began to cry. “Poor Whatsisname,” he said. “Poor, poor Whatsisname.”

Engel stopped digging and looked at him. “Who?”

“The guy down there. Under the ground. Whatsisname.”

“Charlie Brody.”

“Charlie Brody? You mean Charlie Brody? Old Charlie Brody’s dead?”

“You knew it half an hour ago.”

“Well, I’ll be damned. Good old Charlie Brody. Did he owe me any money?”

“I wouldn’t know.”

“Naah. Nobody owes me any money. What do I get paid for this job?”

“Fifty.”

“Fifty. Good old Charlie Brody. Fifty bucks. I’m gonna light a candle for Charlie, that’s what I’m gonna do. Fifty bucks.”

“Flash the light over here, will ya? What are you flashin it over there for?”

“I was drinkin.”

“Is that right? Flash the light over here.”

“OOOHHH, ‘I dreamed I saw Joe Hill last night/As alive as you and—’”

“Shut up!”

“Ahhhh, ya brown-nose.”

Engel ignored him this time, and just kept digging. Willy giggled for a while and then cried a while, and then whispered all the verses of “The Bastard King of England.” When he was done, Engel gave him the shovel back, and took the flashlight, and Willy dug a while.

Willy was quieter when he was digging. He started to sing “Fifteen Men on a Dead Man’s Chest,” but he didn’t have the wind for it while he was digging, so he quit. Engel lit a cigarette, and watched the pile of dirt beside the grave get higher and higher. He was going to have to put all that dirt back himself, without help. Wonderful.

Willy said, “Hey!”

“What?”

“I hit something! A treasure chest or something!”

“You don’t suppose you hit the coffin, do you?”

“Oh, yeah. Look at that, I scratched it.”

“That’s a shame.”

“That’s a real nice wood, too. Look at that wood. Who’d bury nice wood like that? It’s liable to rot.”

Engel went over and looked down. Willy was standing in a hole shoulder-deep, with just a little of the coffin cleared of dirt. Engel said, “Finish getting the dirt off the top while I see can I find where you tossed the crowbar.”

“You don’t suppose I left it on the blanket, do you?”

“I wouldn’t be a bit surprised.”

Engel looked around, and found the crowbar over near the tombstone he’d been sitting on. He brought it back as Willy was finishing clearing dirt from the coffin. Engel said, “Here. There’s two locks on it. Break them open, and then get me the suit coat.”

Willy gulped and said, “You know what? All of a sudden, I’m scared.”

“What are you scared of? You superstitious?”

“That’s just what I am, I couldn’t think of the word.”

“Just break those two locks. Give me the shovel.”

Willy handed the shovel up to him, then bent reluctantly to break the locks with the crowbar. Engel waited, hefting the shovel, looking at Willy’s head. Willy broke the locks, and then stood there looking bewildered. “How do I open the top? I’m standing on the top.”

“Get over on the edge.”

“What edge? The top overlaps.”

“Oh, hell. Get up here. Lie on the ground up here and reach down with the crowbar and lift the top up.”

“Yeah, yeah.”

It took a while to get Willy up out of the hole. He kept slipping back in, and threatening to drag Engel in with him, but finally Engel got a grip on the seat of his pants and dragged him out. Willy squirmed around, reached the crowbar down into the hole, and began fishing around with the crowbar for a grip on the lid. Engel stood on the other side of the grave, the shovel in one hand and the flashlight in the other.

Willy said, “Got it! Here it comes, here it — Flash your light down here, will ya, I can’t see a thing.”

Engel flashed the light down into the hole. The coffin lid was opened straight up, and inside was aft white plush. Engel stared.

The coffin was empty.

Willy shouted, “Oy! Oy!” He scrambled to his feet, shouting, “Oy! Oy!”

Engel knew he was going to run, he knew the little bum was going to ran. He dropped the flashlight, took a two-handed grip on the shovel, swung wildly, missed the departing Willy by two feet, lost his balance, fell into the hole, landed on the white plush, and the lid slammed down.