11
I said, “Johnny saw his doppelgangster before he
died?”
“Yep. That was one of
the calls I made while you was reading and Max was downstairs. I
talked to Johnny’s grieving widow.” Lucky rolled his eyes, and his
ironic tone indicated that Mrs. Gambello wasn’t as heartbroken
about her husband’s death as Johnny Be Good might have wished. “I
just didn’t want to have to say this twice, so I was waiting for
Max to come back upstairs.”
“Well?” I
prodded.
“Johnny come home the
other night, laughing and babbling about how he just seen a guy who
looked exactly like himself. He was drunk off his rocker, like
always, so his wife ignored him.”
“So he saw it?” I suddenly felt cold.
Lucky nodded. “The
missus says that Johnny claimed the guy he saw was a dead ringer
for himself. A perfect double. He told her he could’ve sent this
other guy home to her bed, and she’d never know the difference.
Except for . . .” Lucky lowered his eyes and shrugged. “Er, Johnny
thought his double would lack his amorous talents and that’s how
his wife would know the other guy was an imposter. But she says
Johnny overestimated himself in that regard, so if the double had
any more imagination than a dog, that’s
how she’d know it was a ringer.”
When Nelli picked up
her head and stared coldly at Lucky, he said to her, “Hey, it’s
wasn’t me. I’m just repeating what Johnny’s wife said. And she
don’t know from dogs, so let it go.”
Nelli sighed and put
her head back down on her paws.
“And that,” Lucky
continued, “was the last time Johnny’s wife saw him. He left the
house at some point the next day, while she was out, and he ain’t
been home since. Ain’t called, neither.”
“So Johnny’s
doppelgangster hasn’t visited his home,” Max mused.
“Unless that
was his doppelgangster,” I said.
“Pretending to have seen itself.”
“Huh?” Lucky
said.
“I
mean—”
“Oh! Never mind, I
get it.” Lucky added, “Based the estimated time of death, I figure
Johnny was whacked sometime after his wife saw him and before
Mickey Rosenblum played poker with him.”
And according to the
morning papers, Johnny was knocked unconscious before being dumped
in the river, so his death did indeed seem to be
murder.
“So Mr. Rosenblum was
playing cards with Johnny’s doppelgangster,” Max
mused.
“If that really
is Mickey I been talkin’ to on the
phone.” Lucky rubbed a hand over his face. “I hope so. I like
Mickey.”
“And now we know
both victims saw their perfect doubles
shortly before dying,” I said.
“Doppelgängerism.”
Max’s voice held conviction. “Charlie knew he’d been cursed. Johnny
Be Good just didn’t understand what he was seeing.”
“That’s easy to
believe,” muttered Lucky.
“But what is the
purpose of these doppelgangsters?” Max wondered.
“At a guess,” I said,
“murder.”
“Yes, but why has
such an elaborate phenomenon accompanied the murder of these two
individuals?” Max asked. “Were they especially important men? Did
they have unique powers?”
Lucky shook his head.
“Charlie was a good earner, but he wasn’t hard to replace. We moved
someone up into his spot by yesterday, and we expect Charlie’s, uh,
branch of the business to continue running smooth without him. And,
God forgive me for speaking ill of the dead, Johnny was a useless
momzer. It’s not like his death is a
kick in the nuts for us, even though the boss is upset about
it.”
“Hey,” I said. “Could
the guy you promoted to Charlie’s spot be behind this?” And then
Johnny’s murder, I supposed, would be misdirection, an attempt by a
rising Gambello mobster to keep suspicion off himself.
Lucky shook his head.
“No, he’s in Charlie’s spot now because we trust him. He was headed
for something good anyhow, so he sure didn’t have to whack another
Gambello to get it. Plus he knows what would happen to him if he
did that and we ever found out. And he ain’t the
doppelgangster-creating type. You can trust me on
this.”
“So we’re back to
regarding the Corvinos as the most likely suspects for killing
Gambellos?” I said.
“The most likely,”
Lucky agreed.
“Unless Doctor
Dapezzo had indeed been replicated, too,” Max pointed
out.
“We need to find out
for sure,” Lucky said, casting an accusatory glare at his silent
cell phone.
“And there’s
something else we need to find out,” I said. “Where are Charlie’s
and Johnny’s doppelgangsters now?”
Lucky’s jaw dropped.
“Holy Mother!”
Max’s eyes widened.
“Of course! Why didn’t I think of
that?”
“Charlie ate dinner a
second time at Stella’s on Thursday without being aware it was his
second visit of the evening. Or so he said. So we can theorize that
Lucky and I saw his doppelgangster that evening, though we still
have no idea which diner was Charlie and which was the double,” I
said. “Johnny’s doppelgangster was talking to us yesterday. And
now, as far as we know, no one has seen either of them since the
hits. So where are they?”
“Hey! Hey, wait! I
got it!” Lucky skimmed his book, and then rested his finger on a
particular paragraph. “It says here, ‘The bilocate—that is to say,
the replica—is always formed of e . . . eph . . . ephemeral
substances enchanted through mystical means. While it looks,
sounds, feels, and perhaps even smells genuine, its very nature
means that it lacks the in . . . intrin . . . intrinsic permanence
of normal human matter. This is presumably why every recorded
bilocate—of which, it must be admitted, there are very few
instances . . .’ Madonna, this writer
is wordy! Uh, every recorded bilocate . . . ‘has only been known to
exist for a short span of time, and no bilocate has ever been
recorded developing an independent existence of its own.’
”
“Ah.” Max nodded. “Of
course.”
“Of course,
what?” I said.
“Don’t you see, kid?”
said Lucky. “A doppelgangster is created, given the contract, and
then vanishes when the hit is completed. The perfect
assassin!”
“No, I don’t see.
Johnny was already dead when we met with his ‘bilocate,’ ” I
pointed out.
“Hmph.” Lucky frowned
in thought.
“Why,” Max wondered,
“would the entity creating these doppelgangsters want at least one
of them to continue masquerading as the victim after he’s
deceased?”
“Of course!” Lucky
jumped up. “I got it!”
Startled, Nelli
jumped up, too, tail wagging, tongue lolling as she panted and
gazed expectantly at Lucky. Max and I gazed at him expectantly,
too.
“Okay, Charlie’s
death occurred in front of witnesses, no way to hide that,” Lucky
said. “But Johnny . . . He was found in the river. If you want to
get rid of a body quick, that’s a good place to put
it.”
I cleared my
throat.
“Apart from getting a
corpse out of your car trunk real fast, if you’re worried about
getting caught with it—er, speaking theoretically, that is,” Lucky
said.
“Of course,” Max
said.
“Apart from that, any
forensic evidence that was carelessly left on the body deteriorates
a lot faster in the water than on land. Plus, you can always hope
that something living in the water eats the corpse.”
“Do we have to go into this much detail?” I
asked.
“My
point—”
“And you do have
one?”
“—is that dumping a
body in the river is one way to confuse the trail for the cops. And
however the hell Charlie’s shooting happened, that’s obviously
confused the cops, too.”
“That’s for sure,” I
said, thinking of Lopez and Napoli.
“And what’s gonna
confuse ’em even more?” Lucky prodded.
Max and I gazed at
Lucky in bewildered silence. His expression suggested that we were
disappointing students at a seminar on the Way of the
Wiseguy.
“We ain’t the only
people,” Lucky continued, enunciating carefully out of
consideration for our slow wits, “who saw that doppelgangster
walking around and living Johnny’s normal life, even after Johnny
was floating face down in the East River.”
“Oh.” I rubbed my
hands over my face as I realized what he was saying. “Oh.”
“Oh, my goodness,”
Max said. “That explains it.”
“There will be
contradictory witness statements about when Johnny was last seen or
could have died,” I said.
“Exactly!” Lucky was
pleased we had finally caught the train.
“But ever since
Johnny’s body was found, no one has seen or spoken to his double.
Including us.” I shuddered when I realized, “That . . . that
thing suddenly decided to leave our
meeting in the crypt. Somehow it knew! Knew that its original had
just been found dead and its lifespan was over.”
Lucky nodded. “It
sensed that its job was done. That it was time to sink back into
whatever eph . . . ephemeral substances it came from.”
“But how did it know?” I asked. “And how did something
that seemed as stupid as Johnny’s doppelgangster—”
“A perfect replica of Johnny,” Lucky
muttered.
“—manage to conceal
the sudden awareness of Johnny’s death from us?”
“I hypothesize,” Max
said, “that it was created that way. I suspect the creature may not
have known that Johnny Be Good’s body had been found. It may not
even have killed Johnny. We must keep in mind that poor Chubby
Charlie saw his perfect double, but no
one saw who killed Charlie, even though many people were
present and the doppelgangster, based on what we know so far, is a
visible, tangible phenomenon.”
“So if we’re not sure
the double killed Johnny Be Good, and we’re not sure it even knew
he was dead . . .” I spread my hands in a helpless
gesture.
“Keep in mind the
short lifespan that Lucky has mentioned. I suspect the creature was
created to last only until the death of the original was
discovered,” Max said. “At that moment in time, and quite possibly
without knowing why, the doppelgangster felt a sudden compulsion to
depart. Shortly thereafter, I suspect, it ceased to
exist.”
“So . . .” Lucky
thought it over. “The reason we ain’t seen Charlie’s doppelgangster
since before he got whacked is because there were witnesses to his
death.”
Max nodded. “There
was no interval between Charlie’s death and the discovery of his
demise. I postulate that his double ceased to exist almost
immediately thereafter. But in Johnny Be Good’s case . .
.”
I said, “The river
has damaged the evidence, and there are witnesses who’ll confuse
the trail considerably because they saw or spoke to ‘Johnny’ hours
after the forensic estimate suggests that he was already
dead.”
“The police will be
forced to conclude,” Max said, “that a serious mistake was made in
the collection or interpretation of the physical evidence. And
they’ll never be able to pinpoint what it was.”
“So the killer
doesn’t even need an alibi for the time of the murder,” I said.
“Because the cops will never be sure when it
happened.”
“Meanwhile, in
between when Johnny’s wife last saw him and when he turned up dead,
no one was lookin’ for him because no one knew he was missing.”
Lucky said with reluctant admiration, “This is one slippery hitter.
The cops’ll never figure out who whacked Johnny. Or
Charlie.”
I looked at Lucky.
“And you know who else might never figure this out?”
Lucky let out his
breath and nodded. “The Gambello family. The Corvinos found a
hitter that can pick us off like wooden ducks at a carnival
shooting gallery. And we might never figure out who it is or how
he’s doing it.”
“You’ve got two
deaths in the family, and you’re just guessing it’s the Corvinos,”
I said. Lopez was just guessing, too. “But I don’t see how that
makes sense. Not with a killer as smart as you say this one is.
Surely the Corvinos must know you’ll suspect them and hit back. So
why isn’t the killer trying to make these deaths look like an
accident?”
Lucky shrugged.
“Because in our line of work, one death might be an accident, but
two is always a business problem. No matter what it looked like,
we’d suspect the Corvinos by the time the second guy bought the
farm. So why bother to disguise it? For the Corvinos, the main
thing is to keep the cops from nailing them for these hits.” As his
phone rang, he added, “Betcha they’re enjoying this.” He glanced at
the readout. “It’s Danny.”
“We need to meet
him.” Max added firmly, “Without bloodshed.”
Lucky answered his
phone by saying, “I been tryin’ to reach you since last night, you
putz.”
Max looked at me
anxiously.
“Danny won’t hang
up,” I assured him in a low voice. “This is how people in Lucky’s
profession talk to each other.”
“Ah! Another
interesting example of their dialect. I see.”
Lucky said, “What?
Huh? Why should I believe you? Who? When? Get real.” After another
minute or two of this, he covered the receiver with his hand and
said to us, “Danny says the Corvinos been watching the news and are
feeling very concerned. They claim they didn’t do these two hits on
our family, and they want a sit-down to make sure we ain’t gonna
hit them back, because that would be a terrible
injustice.”
“Do you think that’s
Danny talking? Or is it his double?” I asked.
“Don’t really
matter,” Lucky said. “Whichever one it is, Max wants to talk to
him. Er, it. Whatever. Right, Doc?”
“Indeed,” said
Max.
Lucky nodded and said
into the receiver, “I’d rather kiss Osama Bin Laden than have a
sit-down with you, you jerk.”
Max gasped and
reached for the phone. I stopped him, figuring Lucky knew what he
was doing. While I struggled with Max, my own phone
rang.
Lucky covered his
phone while I checked the LCD panel on mine. “Relax, Doc,” he said.
“Reverse psychology. Let’s let Danny think this sit-down was
strictly his idea, that we don’t even want to come. It’ll make our
hand stronger when we’re face-to-face.”
“Oh!” Max relaxed. “I
see.” He smiled. “My dear fellow, clearly I should leave this in
your hands. I apologize!”
My caller was Lopez.
I flipped open my phone. “Hello?”
“Hey, it’s me. I’m
sorry about last night.”
Lucky whispered to
me, “Should I suggest the bookstore?”
“For what?” I
said.
Lopez said, “Uh, for
canceling our date.”
I covered the phone
for a moment so he wouldn’t hear me speaking to Lucky
again.
Lucky said, “For the
sit-down. Do we want to meet here?”
I shook my head. I
was disinclined to hold a Mafia sit-down in the place where Max
lived and worked.
“Esther?” Lopez said,
sounding puzzled. “Are you okay?”
I removed my hand
from the receiver and assured Lopez, “I’m fine. Everything’s fine.
You really don’t need to worry so much about me.” Then I said to
Lucky, “How about Bella Stella? It’s closed and
empty.”
“Oh, please, don’t
you start on me, too,” said Lopez. “Stella Butera is bad
enough.”
“What?” I said
absently into the phone.
Lucky shook his head.
“No way will the Corvinos come to Stella’s. It’s Gambello
turf.”
Lopez said, “Stella’s
lawyer is claiming restraint of trade and . . . oh, a bunch of
other stuff. I can’t keep his jabbering straight after two minutes.
And it turns out Stella’s got friends in high places. So it looks
like we’re going to have to let her reopen the restaurant
soon.”
Lucky said, “Danny’s
suggesting St. Monica’s.”
“That’s good,” I said
with a nod to Lucky.
“Not it’s not good.”
Lopez sounded irritable. “Look, I know you like Stella, and I know
you want to start earning again—even though I really want you to find a safer job—but it’s a
crime scene, Esther. A crime where we can’t even figure out how the
crime was committed! So we might need to go over the scene again.
But it looks like that’s just too damn bad, and Stella will get her
way.”
Lucky said to me and
Max, “Okay, we’re on. The sit-down is set for St. Monica’s. Tonight
at eight o’clock.”
“Meanwhile,” Lopez
continued wearily, “the Shy Don’s lawyer—who, by remarkable
coincidence, is the same lawyer representing Stella—is pressuring
us to release the bodies of Chubby Charlie and Johnny Be Good, so
that the family can hold their funerals.”
“So release the
bodies,” I said absently.
Lucky and Max looked
at me. I waved a dismissive hand at them.
“It’s a murder investigation, Esther,” Lopez said. “And
we’re not scheduling our work around the Gambellos’ social
calendar!”
“Sore subject?” I
guessed.
“Sorry. I didn’t mean
to snap at you.” Lopez sighed. “Anyhow, until we sort out the
discrepancies between the physical evidence and various witness
statements, releasing the bodies to be embalmed isn’t our favorite
choice.”
“I know there are
discrepancies,” I said. “But I told you exactly what I saw. I told
Napoli. I told you both. Over and
over.”
“I didn’t mean you,”
Lopez said soothingly. “Well, not just
you.”
“Oh?”
Nearby, I heard Lucky
making the exchange of insults with Danny that signaled they were
preparing to say good-bye and get off the phone.
Lopez said to me,
“We’ve got witnesses who say they talked to Johnny Gambello hours
after the medical examiner says he was already dead.”
“So there’s confusion
about when Johnny Be Good died?” I asked, a little loudly. When
Lucky and Max looked at me again, I nodded.
“We’re going to have
to reinterview everyone we’ve talked to,” Lopez said, sounding
tired.
I prudently decided
not to mention that I was one of the people who’d spoken with
Johnny after he was dead.
Deciding it was time
to change the subject, I said to him, “Never mind dead wiseguys.
How are you? You’ve been working
ridiculous hours. You haven’t even had a day off since coming back
from Long Island!”
“Oh, I’m fine.
Actually, that’s why I called,” he said in a lighter tone. “They
finally noticed my overtime and ordered me to take a couple of days
off. Are you free tonight?”
“Tonight?”
“Yeah.”
No, no, no . . . I wanted to drum my heels and
cry.
“I wish I was free,” I said sincerely. “But I have
plans I can’t change. Uh, too many people involved.”
“If it’s an orgy, I
could come along and be your partner,” he suggested.
“I can’t bring a date
to this,” I said truthfully.
“Oh, well. Okay.” The
fact that he never sulked was fast becoming one of my favorite
things about him. He asked, “What about tomorrow? I could come
over.”
“Yes,” I agreed
readily. “Absolutely. Let’s do something together
tomorrow.”
“You know what I want to do together.” His voice was
silky now.
I glanced at Max and
Lucky, wishing they’d feel a sudden, doppelgangster-like compulsion
to depart.
“And I want to
cooperate fully with that,” I said carefully.
Lucky gave me a wary
glance. I shook my head and rolled my eyes, hoping he’d think I was
just humoring Lopez about the investigation.
“Well, I was thinking
. . .” Lopez said. The tone of his voice made me fantasize about
the expression on his face right now. “Since dating has turned out
to be too complicated for us to manage, maybe we should back-burner
this dinner that we keep canceling.”
“That’s right,” I
said, realizing. “You’ve never even bought me dinner!”
“Not for lack of
trying,” he pointed out.
“The bum!” Lucky
said.
“Is there someone
with you?” Lopez asked.
“I’m in a shop.”
Strictly speaking, this was true. “You were saying?”
“Oh, you’re shopping?
Okay, since you’re busy, I’ll make this fast. I was thinking I’d
come by tomorrow afternoon for a few hours of hot sex—you know, the
kind that makes the neighbors complain about the noise. And
then I’ll take you out for dinner. Or
maybe we’ll just order out. We’ll play it by ear after we’ve
exhausted each other. Deal?”
A wave of heat washed
over me, and I didn’t trust myself to say anything in front of Max
and Lucky that wouldn’t make the rest of the day extremely awkward
for me.
“Still there?” I
could hear the smile in Lopez’s voice.
“Yes,” I said
faintly. “It’s a deal.”
“See you then,” he
murmured. “Oh, and don’t bother dressing up for the occasion. I
don’t plan to be gentle with whatever you’ve wearing when I get
there.”
I made an involuntary
sound. Lopez laughed. Max and Lucky looked at me
strangely.
“Bye,” I choked
out.
I gently folded my
cell phone shut, then sat there staring at it with a stupid smile,
feeling flushed and dizzy . . . and extremely conscious of the two
men gazing at me with fatherly expressions. Max looked anxious,
Lucky looked annoyed.
“What did the cop
want?” Lucky said. “You look all pink and guilty.”
“It’s under control,”
I said, continuing my pretense that Lopez had called about the
case.
“Don’t kid yourself,”
said Lucky. “Love ain’t never under
control.”
I thought of the
Widow Giacalona and supposed he was speaking from
experience.
“One gathers from
your end of the conversation that, as we surmised, the police are
indeed struggling with physical evidence that conflicts with
eyewitness accounts?” Max said.
“Uh-huh,” I
said.
“This is a realm in
which the mundane forces of law and order, though well-intentioned,
are helpless—and possibly even an impediment.”
“You mean the cops
could get in the way?” Lucky asked.
“Precisely.” Max’s
expression grew concerned. “Or even endanger
themselves.”
“And you’re not
looking at me that way because you’re worried the charmless
Detective Napoli could be in danger,” I guessed.
“Well, I feel some
concern for Detective Napoli’s safety, too, but I know you are not
attached to him.”
“No,
indeed.”
“And as you and I
have previously seen,” Max said gravely, “Detective Lopez is a most
dedicated and astute young man. He may pursue this case with more
determination that is healthy for him.”
Realizing Max had a
point, I looked at Lucky.
The old hit man said,
“Don’t even think about it. I ain’t gonna expend energy to watch a
cop’s back.”
“He’s my boyfriend,”
I pointed out. “Or almost.”
“You should be more
careful about the friends you choose,” Lucky grumbled.
“I believe that, in
good conscience, we must count Detective Lopez as an innocent under
our protection,” Max said to Lucky.
Lucky snorted. “I met
this guy, and I can guess how he’d like that description.”
“Max didn’t say we
should tell Lopez we’re watching out
for him,” I said, knowing Lucky was right. Lopez would be appalled
to learn how involved in this I was, and he’d be somewhere between
amused and insulted that Max and Lucky were thinking of watching
his back. “But even so . . .”
“Oh, for God’s sake,”
Lucky said in disgust. “Fine. Whatever. We’ll watch your
boyfriend’s back. But if you think he’s going to return the favor
and watch ours, then you don’t know
nothin’ about cops.”
“Thank you, Lucky.” I
beamed at him. He scowled back at me.
Max said, “Did he
press you about our plans?”
“Huh?”
“Did Detective Lopez
attempt to ascertain our next move?”
“Oh! Um,
no.”
“So we can go ahead
with the sit-down without worrying the cops will bust in?” Lucky
asked.
“Yes.” The case had
obviously not been Lopez’s priority when he called me. I felt hot
again. “We’re good to go.”
“Well, then,” Max
said brightly, “let’s plan our strategy. Er, how does one prepare for a meeting of this
nature?”
“First rule of a
sit-down,” Lucky said, “you gotta leave your piece at
home.”
“My piece?” Max
said.
“Your rod. Your
peacemaker,” Lucky elaborated.
“We don’t want to
make peace?” Max asked in confusion.
Lucky sighed. “I can
see we got a lot of work ahead of us before tonight.”