18
I screamed so shrilly, my ears rang. Nelli barked.
Lopez disappeared.
One moment he was
there, his body falling as his head was separated violently from
his shoulders by the mighty sweep of Max’s blade. And the next
moment he was gone as feathers, chunks of soil, pale little sticks,
leaves, and pebbles flew through the air and rolled around the
floor.
I sank to my knees. I
wanted to scream again, but my vocal cords wouldn’t work. All that
came out was a strangled, squealing sound.
Lucky was trying to
sit up, coughing as he brushed feathers and dust away from his
face. “Eph . . . ephem . . . ephemeral substances,” he
mumbled.
Nelli was busily
sniffing at all the detritus and debris, scrambling around the room
in furious haste as she examined the bits and pieces of what had
been, only moments ago . . .
“Lopez?” I
croaked.
Someone was screaming
my name over the cell phone that sat next to me. I stared in numb
shock at the ephemeral substances scattered all around me, while
Max helped Lucky off the floor. Then I picked up the cell phone.
Moving mechanically, I raised it to my face.
“Hello?”
“Esther? Esther!” Lopez shouted over the phone.
“Yes, I’m
here.”
“Are you all right?”
He sounded frantic. “Esther? It’s me! Can you hear me? Are you all
right?”
“I’m
fine.”
Lucky looked at me.
“You’re talkin’ on the phone? Now?”
I tried to say
Lopez’s name. Instead, I slid sideways and hit the
floor.
Drops of cold water
sprinkled across my face. I groaned irritably and turned my head
away.
A giant, warm, wet
thing brushed my face. I gasped and
opened my eyes—and immediately shut them as Nelli licked my face
again.
“She’s coming
around,” Lucky said.
Nelli made a little
crooning whine of pleasure.
I remembered that I
had just watched Max behead Lopez, and I sat bolt upright.
“Nooooo!”
The sudden movement
was too much for me, and I nearly blacked out again.
“Take it easy,” said
Lucky, his arm supporting me so I could remain
sitting.
“Lopez!” I
wailed.
“That was not
Detective Lopez,” Max said firmly. “That was a
doppelgangster.”
I was panting with
anxiety. “It’s not him? We’re sure it’s not him?”
“Yes,” Max
said.
“You’re sure?”
“Positive.”
Lucky shifted
position a little. “Take a good look, kid. No body. Just ephemeral
substances.”
“No
body?”
“No,” Lucky said.
“Just feathers and dirt and bird bones and crap like
that.”
I looked around the
room. It was a chaotic mess. And there was indeed no corpse. “Bird
bones . . .” I said vaguely. I remembered thinking that I had seen
pale little sticks when Lopez—oh, God,
Lopez!—exploded all over the room. Those must have been bird
bones.
Lucky said, “That
thing wasn’t real. It wasn’t him.”
I rubbed my hand over
my face. “It seemed like him. Just like
him. It seemed so real.” I tried to banish the memory of the
doppelgangster’s expression right before Max cut off its head. I
felt a surge of nausea. “It sounded just like him. It said exactly
what he . . .”
“Of course,” Max said
gently, handing me a glass of water. “It was fashioned after him.
It was created to be identical to him in all outward
appearances.”
I took a sip of
water, then said, “But you knew.”
“Nelli’s keen senses
alerted us,” Max said.
Nelli gave a little
woof! and wagged her tail.
“Yeah, that was damn
good work,” Lucky said to her.
The velocity of
Nelli’s tail increased until it could have seriously injured anyone
in its path.
“Her objective at the
sit-down, of course,” Max said, “was to identify doppelgangsters.
But until she encountered the creature posing as Lopez, we didn’t
know whether she could indeed do so. Tonight’s incident, however,
was conclusive. We now know we have an excellent means of detecting
the presence of a doppelgangster.”
“That’s a relief,”
said Lucky.
I found it unnerving
to hear Lopez’s perfect double described as “the
creature.”
“But it was the first
time I’d ever seen her react like that,” Lucky added. “So I wasn’t
a hundred percent sure until I cut that thing and saw there was no
blood.”
“You ripped open his
face, Lucky!” I shuddered in remembered horror. “If that had been
the real man, you’d go to prison for assaulting a police officer
with a deadly weapon.”
“Well, let’s say I
was ninety-five percent sure. Nelli never acted like that before,
after all. Not even at the sit-down, when Danny was disrespecting
her and deserved to get his leg chewed off.”
Nelli went back to
snuffling at the piles of ephemeral matter that were scattered all
over the floor.
“Yes, excellent
notion, Nelli,” Max said. “Continue studying our adversary’s
handiwork. We must learn all that we can from this
encounter.”
“How are you feeling
now, kid?” Lucky asked.
“Like I still want to
scream.”
“It’s most
unfortunate,” said Max, “that the doppelgangster was armed and
dangerous.”
“Y’think?” said
Lucky.
“Rather than
destroying it,” Max said, “I would have liked to capture and
question it. That’s why I hesitated, my dear fellow, to dispatch it
after you exposed its true nature.”
“Great, so now we
gotta capture one of those things?”
Lucky said.
“One that isn’t as
dangerous as this one was,” Max said.
“This one was only
dangerous,” I said angrily, “because he was—”
“It, my dear,” Max said. “It. You need to dissociate that mystical, ephemeral
creation from the man it resembled.”
“It didn’t
resemble him,” I said in shaky voice.
“It was absolutely identical to him! And it only became dangerous
because you all attacked it—which is exactly what would make Lopez
dangerous, too!”
“That’s a fair
point,” Max conceded. “The situation was fraught.”
“You really think
that gun woulda worked?” Lucky asked Max. “It was in that thing’s
hand when you lopped off its head, and—”
“Oh, God.” I felt
faint again.
“—I saw it explode
into dirt and stuff, too.”
Max frowned
thoughtfully. “At the time, I was too agitated by the realization
that the creature was armed with a deadly projectile weapon—as
Detective Lopez himself would be—to consider this. But you bring up
an interesting point, Lucky.”
“That the gun might
not have fired?” I asked.
“Yes. Or that it may
only have seemed to fire. The killer is
a very talented sorcerer, but his creations are illusions, after
all. They’re convincing, but they’re nonetheless subject to
practical limitations.” Max added, “However, we’re theorizing
without enough information. It’s also possible that a bullet which
is part of such an elaborate duplicate may indeed be effective, as
was the creature’s physical blow when it knocked down Lucky. So we
must treat any armed doppelgangster with extreme
caution.”
“Good point, Doc. And
even if the gun didn’t work,” Lucky said, “I guess the
doppelgangster coulda picked up a real weapon—one of them swords
you got on the table, maybe—and killed Nelli that
way.”
“Speaking of Nelli,”
I said to Max, “you never mentioned that if she detected a
doppelgangster, she’d try to tear it apart!”
“She did react quite
strongly, didn’t she?”
“So of course
he—it—threatened to shoot her! Nelli
shouldn’t have done that!”
I glanced in her
direction, but the familiar seemed fully absorbed in her
examination of the scattered debris.
“We must keep in
mind,” Max said soothingly, “that Nelli entered this dimension to
protect New York City from Evil. Therefore, she would naturally
react with vehemence to encountering a mystical entity created by a
killer for the specific purpose of cursing a human victim with
certain death.”
“Oh, my God!” The
realization hit me like a bucket of cold water.
“Lopez!”
“It wasn’t Lopez,”
Lucky said patiently. “It—”
“No, Lopez,” I choked out. “Duplicated! Cursed! In
danger!”
“Madre di Dio!” Lucky said. “She’s right! Now the
killer’s trying to whack the cop!”
Max said decisively,
“We must warn Detective Lopez.”
“Right away!” I said.
“Now! Where’s my phone?” I gasped, suddenly remembering. “He called
me! He was on the phone when I passed out.”
“That was he?” Max
said. “Oh, dear. I thought you said it was your agent. So I told
him you’d call him back and hung up.”
“You did what?”
“Hey,” Lucky said,
“you were lyin’ on the floor in a cold faint after seeing your
boyfriend’s head cut off. You weren’t exactly in shape to talk
business.”
“But—”
“In any case,” Max
said soothingly, “this means we know that Detective Lopez was fine
just a short while ago.”
“Oh, my God,” I said
more slowly. “He was on the phone. He heard.” He must have thought I was in the middle of
a deadly riot. And then Max had spoken to him. “If he realized
where I was when he called me . . .”
“His doppelgangster
looked for you here,” Lucky said, handing me my cell phone. “So the
real McCoy might look for you here, too.”
“Yes.” My heart was
pounding. I heard a siren in the distance, approaching
fast.
Lucky heard it, too.
He went still and listened intently. When it sounded as if the
vehicle had turned onto Max’s street, Lucky’s eyes met mine. “Here
comes the cavalry.”
The wailing siren
came to a stop right outside the bookshop, then went silent. I
heard a car door slam.
“Lucky,” I said
faintly, “help me stand up. Max, go to the door and show him
in.”
Max trotted around
the nearby bookcase and headed for the door while Lucky hauled me
to my feet. I felt like a toddler learning to walk, sure I would
topple over at any moment. But I took a couple of faltering steps
away from Lucky and toward the bookshop’s entrance.
The door crashed
open. The bells rang wildly. Nelli gave a little bark and lunged in
that direction.
Lucky grabbed her
collar. “No, don’t,” he admonished. “This one might be the real
thing.”
I heard Max say in a
rush, “Ah, Detec-yahhh! Esther’s fine! She’s right here! There’s no
need for a gu—Agh!”
The sound of
scuffling feet moved rapidly toward me. Max came around the
bookcase by stumbling backward. He was propelled by Lopez, whose
left hand was on Max’s throat. A gun was in his right hand. Lopez
pointed it at Nelli and Lucky while his gaze went to me. Nelli
growled.
I said, “No, Nelli!
No!”
Max’s knees sagged
and he made a little choking sound, as if the grip on his throat
was tightening. His distress agitated Nelli, who growled more
vehemently.
“Are you all right?”
Lopez said to me.
“You have to let him
go, you’re upsetting the dog,” I said, terrified of what was about
to happen.
“Maybe that’s not what’s making her growl,” Lucky said in
an ominous voice.
“No,” I said to Lucky. And then to Nelli, “Stop
that!” And then to Lopez, “Please let Max go.”
“Are you all right?”
he demanded.
“I’m fine, I’m fine,
everything’s fine,” I babbled. “You called at a bad moment, that’s
all. I’m fine. Now please let him go.”
Nelli’s growls were
getting louder.
Lucky’s hand crept
toward the pocket where he kept his knife.
Lopez wasn’t looking
at the gangster, but he saw the motion anyhow. “Freeze!”
Lucky froze. We
all froze. Nelli even stopped
growling.
Lopez said more
calmly, “You’re sure you’re okay?”
I tried to sound
calm, too. “Yes.”
“What
happened?”
I shook my head.
“It’s hard to explain, but . . .” I searched for something that
would get him to let go of Max, so Nelli would calm down. “They
were protecting me.”
It worked. He
released Max. Then he said, “Is there anyone else
here?”
“Well, not anymore,”
Lucky said.
Max staggered toward
me, wheezing for air. I caught him by the arm and patted his
back.
As Lopez holstered
his gun, he looked around at the unsanitary mess covering this
portion of the shop. “What the hell is going on here?”
Realizing that Nelli
was calmer now, Lucky released her collar. She looked uncertainly
at Lopez for a moment, then crept forward and delicately sniffed
his legs while Lucky said, “Oh, this mook came into the store a
little while ago and got out of hand, that’s all.”
“Who?”
Lucky looked at me. I
looked at Max.
Max said faintly, “We
have not yet ascertained the name of the individual responsible for
the mayhem here tonight.”
Good
answer.
Looking again at the
mess surrounding us, Lopez asked, “What is all this crap?”
“It’s ephemeral
matter,” Lucky said. “Makes a helluva mess, don’t it?”
“What’s it doing
here?”
“It came with the
mook,” Lucky said.
Lopez stared at him.
“Did the mook say why he had a load of
feathers, dirt, and pebbles with him?”
“He didn’t happen to
say why,” Lucky said. “Fortunately, it’s over now and everyone is
fine. It’s good thing me and Nelli came back from our walk when we
did.”
“Nelli?” Lopez looked
down at the dog. She paused in her olfactory examination of him to
meet his gaze. After a moment, she wagged her tail hesitantly.
“Max’s new roommate, I take it?”
“Yeah.”
“And why are there
two swords and an ax on the table?”
“They’re antiques,”
Lucky said. “Max was showin’ us his collection.”
Lopez studied the
objects. I had a feeling he was looking for blood. My gaze went
involuntarily to the blade which had beheaded his perfect double
tonight. Fortunately, the weapons were so old, they really did look
like collector’s items. It occurred to me they were probably
valuable.
“All right,” Lopez
said, “I’ll need a statement from each of you—except Nelli—and a
description of the guy who came in here.”
“We didn’t get a good
look at him,” Lucky said.
Lopez looked at
Lucky, who looked at Max, who looked at me.
I said, “Um . .
.”
There was a long,
extremely uncomfortable moment of silence.
Lopez sighed and
said, “Everyone who isn’t Esther, take a walk.”
Lucky bristled. “You
got a warrant?”
“I don’t need a
warrant to talk to her.” Lopez glanced at him. “And I’m sure I can
come up with a reason for probable cause if I decide to search you
right now for an unlicensed gun.”
“Max, let’s take a
walk.” Lucky clipped Nelli’s leash back onto her
collar.
“Er . . .” Max looked
doubtful.
“It’s all right.” I
squeezed Max’s arm reassuringly. We knew from Nelli’s reaction that
this was the real Detective Lopez. “Take Nelli for a
walk.”
Already halfway to
the door with Nelli, Lucky added, “And bring some plastic bags, for
the love of God. What do you feed this dog, anyhow?”
“Don’t say ‘dog.’ ”
Max stumbled after them.
As soon as the
doorbells chimed to hail their departure, I said to Lopez, “Have
you seen your own perfect double?”
That caught him
flat-footed. “Huh?”
“Have you seen anyone
who looks just like you?”
He frowned. “You mean
. . . ever?”
“No, I mean quite
recently. Today. Maybe yesterday?”
“No,” he said. “Now
what the he—”
“Think hard,” I said.
“It might be someone who you think just looks a little like you.”
“What are you talking
about?” he said impatiently.
“We tend to think we
look like the image we see in the mirror. But that’s a reflection,
so what we’re seeing is actually in reverse. Actors have to know
what others see when they look at us, but many people are surprised
by their own appearance in photos and don’t really know what they
look like.”
“Fascinating,” he
said. “Now let’s talk about—”
“So have you seen
anyone who looks even a little bit like you? Same height and build?
Same age and coloring?”
“Probably dozens of
people,” he said. “So what?”
“He was wearing the
same clothes you’re wearing now,” I said. “Blue jeans, pale shirt,
denim jacket . . .”
“He? Who are we talking about?”
I froze as I realized
what I had just said. “The same clothes . . .” Both versions of
Charlie were wearing the same suit on the night that Lucky and I
saw his doppelgangster at Bella Stella’s. And Lopez’s
doppelgangster had been wearing what the real Lopez was wearing
tonight.
“He who, Esther?”
Did this information
mean anything?
“What was Johnny
Gambello wearing when he was pulled out of the East River?” I
asked.
“What?” Lopez was
confused by the sudden change of topic.
“Was it a red shirt
and white leisure suit with silver trim?”
Frowning at me, he
shook his head. “No.”
So was I on the wrong
track? No, not necessarily. Johnny had gone home and talked to his
wife after seeing his doppelgangster. So maybe he changed his
clothes sometime after he was duplicated and before he
died.
So maybe . . . “Yes!”
I said, grasping it.
“Yes, what?” Lopez
prodded.
Maybe the clothing
the doppelgangsters wore could help us pinpoint when they had been created!
“I have to tell Max,”
I said, heading for the door.
Lopez grabbed my arm.
His grip was hard. “Tell him what? No, wait, never mind. Whatever
you think you have to tell Max, you and I have things we need to
talk about first.”
“You’re right.” My
thoughts were scattered. I was still in shock from seeing him
beheaded. I had to pull myself together. Focusing on the single
most important thing we needed to discuss, I said, “You’re in
danger.”
“Yeah, of getting
suspended.” He released my arm.
I looked at him in
surprise. “Because of the note that I gave Danny?”
“The one with your
phone number? And Max’s land line? Yeah, I found it near the
body.”
I gazed at him in
confusion. How could he and his double both have found it?
He continued, “At the
time, I was . . . upset.”
“Upset,” I repeated
faintly.
He rubbed a hand over
his face, looking tired. “But you know, it’s been such a hell of a
day since then, I kind of forgot about it.”
“What?” I didn’t
understand. The doppelgangster had been furious.
With a weary,
resigned expression, he reached into his pocket and pulled out . .
.
“Photos?” I
said.
“Surveillance
photos.” His voice was flat, tired, a little cold. “We look at most
of them digitally. These are just a few that I printed out for
myself tonight. Call me sentimental.”
They were four-by-six
color prints with a matte finish. He laid them out slowly on the
table for me to look at, one by one.
The photos had all
been taken at night on a city street. The composition wasn’t good,
and neither was the lighting. There was a dark car outside what
looked like the entrance to a church, a couple of men, a
gumata with big hair and shiny clothes
that were a little too small for . . .
“Oh, my, God!” I
blurted. “I didn’t realize how that blouse gapped when I
moved.”
Even with the bad
lighting, you could see a glimpse of my bra in one of the shots. I
looked up at Lopez to explain that I’d put together that costume on
short notice.
Our eyes met, and I
realized that probably wasn’t important just now.
I gasped as another
thought occurred to me.
“You’ve got me under
surveillance?” I demanded.
“No,” he said with
forced patience. “We’ve got capos in the major crime families under
surveillance, Esther.”
“Oh. Right.” And I
was so naive, this hadn’t occurred to me when I met with Danny “the
Doctor” Dapezzo in Little Italy last night. “Of
course.”
He put another photo
on the table. It showed me handing a small piece of paper to Danny.
The next photo Lopez laid down was a shot of me, Max, and Nelli
leaving St. Monica’s together last night.
Lopez said, “What in
the name God did you think you were doing?”
“Napoli’s going to
want to question me again, isn’t he?” I said in
resignation.
“No, he thinks these
are pictures of Danny’s daughter.”
“What?”
Lopez shrugged.
“There’s definitely a resemblance. Well, when you’re dressed like
that, I mean.” After a moment he added, “She hasn’t got your
cheekbones. And your shape’s a little different. But since it was
dark and the pictures aren’t that good, Napoli didn’t
notice.”
“But you did.” Of
course.
“I look at you a lot
more than he does.”
“You have to tell
him,” I said quietly.
“No, I don’t think
so.”
I shook my head. “I
don’t want to be the cause of you doing something you think is
wrong.”
“Too late now,” he
muttered.
“You can still fix
this.”
“Well, I know this
will sound unconvincing if I wind up having to explain it later to
someone, so I hope I don’t . . . but we’re already wasting time on
one dead end, thanks to the Falcone kid’s story, and I don’t think
we should waste any time on another.”
“So it was Angelo who claimed credit for the
hit?”
“Yeah. And, like I
figured, it’s all over the news now. You haven’t seen it?” When I
shook my head, he continued, “Something like this makes it harder
for the DA to prosecute a case after the cops find and arrest the
real killer. So we can’t afford not to
treat Angelo seriously, even though he’s full of shit. We have to
take him apart so well that he can’t be used to help a slick
defense lawyer create reasonable doubt with a jury.”
“Take him
apart?”
“Prove he didn’t kill
Danny,” Lopez said. “And prove he had his reasons—however dumb,
warped, and shortsighted—for lying and saying that he
did.”
“I see.”
“And that takes time.
So I don’t want to waste any more time or stretch the team any
thinner by giving Napoli a crazy old bookseller and well-meaning
actress to chew on.”
“Oh.”
“Did you have
anything to do with killing Danny Dapezzo?”
“No!” Caught off
guard, I was startled and indignant.
“But you knew him?”
His voice was clipped.
“Briefly.”
“How briefly?”
“I met him the night
before he died.” I added in surprise, “Last night, I mean.” It already seemed like a long
time ago.
“Did you see him
today?”
“No. But you must
know that, since you had him under surveillance.”
“Surveillance isn’t
like what you see in the movies,” he said. “We don’t have the
budget or the manpower to cover these guys nonstop. So we don’t
know where Danny was between leaving St. Monica’s last night and
winding up dead in his cousin Vinny’s wine cellar this
afternoon.”
“I don’t know where
he was, either.”
“So what were you and
Max doing at St. Monica’s with half a dozen wiseguys last night?”
He added, “And why were dressed like that? Both of
you?”
“We were trying to
fit in. It was a sit-down. Max and I were Lucky’s, um,
guests.”
“Why did Lucky bring
you two to a sit-down?”
“He thought we could
help prevent a mob war.” Unnerved by Lopez’s stony expression, I
said in a rush, “That’s why I’m involved in this. Max, too. To stop
anyone else from getting killed. To prevent a mob war. All we’ve
done is talk to people! Trying to get
information and to convince them not to act rashly.”
“Trying to get
what information?”
“Trying to find out
who’s behind the killings. The Gambellos didn’t hit Danny. Danny
said the Corvinos didn’t hit Charlie and Johnny—and Lucky believed
him,” I said. “Lucky and Danny couldn’t stand each other, but
neither of them wanted another mob war, and that’s why they met
last night.”
“What did they say at
the meeting?”
I thought about it.
“Actually, I guess Max did most of the talking.”
“Oh, good God.” Lopez
rubbed his forehead as if it suddenly ached. “We’ll be lucky not to
have corpses all over Mulberry Street by tomorrow.”
“That’s what we’re
trying to prevent! And as far as I can
tell, the Corvinos want to avoid a war just as much as the
Gambellos do. But these are jumpy, violent guys who don’t trust
each other, so every time someone else gets killed—”
“You have
got to get out of this.”
“And now it’s gone
beyond that! Now you’re—”
“Esther, I’m taking
you—”
“Listen to
me!”
“No, you listen to me.”
“You’re in danger.” I
tried to keep my voice calm and rational, not to sound hysterical.
It wasn’t easy. “Whoever is behind these murders has targeted you.
You’re next. He’s trying to kill you.”
“These guys don’t hit
cops, Esther,” he said. “They’re not geniuses, but they’re smarter
than that.”
“This one,” I said,
“is breaking the rules. He’s trying to kill you. You must believe
me. You’re in terrible danger.”
He frowned. “Who is
it?”
“We don’t know yet.
That’s what we’re trying to find out! It’s why we’re involved in
this.”
“All right,
now you’re going to listen to me.” He
took my shoulders in his hands. “You’re a civilian. Max is a loon.
You ignored me after I told you to stay out of this, and now you’ve
gotten yourself right in the middle of a very dangerous situation.
I’m taking you into protective custody. Max, too, God help
me.”
A little while ago, I
was ready to embrace protective custody with open arms, and to drag
Max with me. But not now. “Not while this . . . this . . . this
person is trying to kill you! I won’t
go! And Max won’t go! He can help you! He’s probably the only one
who can help you!”
“What the hell are
you talking about?”
“I want you to listen
to me. Just listen.” I took a steadying breath and tried to
organize my thoughts. “Do you know anything about
doppelgängers?”