22
“Your double was wearing the same outfit that you
wore the night we met Johnny Be Good in the church crypt?” Max
said.
“That’s what it
sounds like, from Thack’s secondhand description.” It was the dress
I had worn in doomed anticipation of a hot date with Lopez that
night.
“That was three days
ago,” Max said. “If your double was created then, where has it been
all this time?”
“Well, yesterday,
while I was looking for Vino Vincenzo in Brooklyn, it was going to
my audition,” I said, feeling bitter.
“Other than that, I don’t know.”
“Perhaps it wasn’t
created until yesterday,” Max mused. “Perhaps that why it hasn’t
crossed your path yet.”
“That . . .
imposter managed to get my agent on the
phone when I couldn’t,” I fumed. “And why on earth did it go to my
audition in that dress?”
“The physical form of
the doppelgangsters seems to be fixed at the moment of their
creation,” Max said. “It’s part of their temporary nature. They’re
created be convincing, but not to last long, after
all.”
“And what kind of
audition did my doppelgangster give that made them think I’m
‘absolutely perfect’ for the role of a homeless bisexual junkie
prostitute?” I wondered.
“So for some reason,
although your double evidently didn’t start living your life until
yesterday, its creation is derived from your life two days earlier.
The day when you were wearing that outfit and first trying to
contact your agent about that audition.”
“Don’t get me wrong,”
I said. “I’ve got the range. I can certainly play the role. But
what did my doppelgangster do that made
them look at me and see ‘junkie prostitute’? That’s all I’m
wondering.”
“Unless your
doppelgangster did start living your life sooner, and yet somehow
has not encountered you. Is that at all likely,
though?”
“I think I’m right for the role of a smart, fully
clothed graduate student,” I said. “So what happened? Did the
doppelgangster screw up the line reading?”
“Esther, if we could
focus on the problem at hand?” Max prodded.
“Oh. Right.
Sorry.”
“Overall, I suspect
it’s a very good thing you didn’t go home last night.”
“Oh, my God!” I
gasped. “You think that thing was in my apartment last night? Maybe
even sleeping in my bed?”
“If it was indeed
carrying on your normal existence to the best of its abilities,
then I think that is entirely possible.”
I shuddered in
revulsion. “That’s just . . . wrong.”
“You can’t go home,”
he said decisively. “You can’t go to any of the places that
comprise your normal life. The risk of encountering your perfect
double is too great!”
“Max, right now,
this is the place that comprises my
normal life. I’ve been here constantly lately. When I’m not in
church, that is.”
“Good heavens! You’re
right! And the impulses that draw you here may well draw your
doppelgangster here at any moment, too! I must find a way to keep
it out!”
“I have an idea,” I
said suddenly.
“Yes?”
“Lopez wants to put
me in protective custody. I’ll call him and tell him I’m ready to
agree. I’ll tell him to send a squad car to my apartment to pick me
up. They’ll take my double away and put it someplace where I won’t
bump into it!”
“What if your
doppelgangster won’t go with them?”
“Lopez may tell them
to take me anyhow. He thinks I’m crazy or under the influence,
right?” I nodded. “It’s worth a try.” I opened my cell phone and
called Lopez.
A split second after
I heard his phone ringing, a phone in the bookstore started
ringing.
It wasn’t the usual
heavy ring of the shop’s old-fashioned phone that was sitting
nearby. Max and I looked at each other, puzzled, as the ringing
continued.
It seemed to be
coming from one of the larger piles of debris on the floor. Max
rose, crossed over to it, and stooped down to examine the feathery
rubbish from which the ringing seemed to be emanating. He started
brushing his hand through feathers, bird bones, and clumps of dirt.
A few moments later, he grabbed something, then held up a ringing
cell phone.
I thought I
recognized it. “Answer it.”
He did.
“Hello?”
I heard his voice
clearly on my own phone.
“That’s Lopez’s
phone.” I closed my cell phone and set it aside. “His usual one.” I
had called it without thinking, accustomed to reaching him at that
number. “The phone he said last night that he couldn’t
find.”
“Pardon?”
I explained. Then I
said, “If it was buried in that pile of doppelgangster leftovers,
it must have been . . .”
“On the
doppelgangster when I beheaded it,” Max said.
“I don’t understand,”
I said. “Why didn’t it disintegrate the way the gun
did?”
Max turned it over
and over in his hands, frowning. “Because this . . . this is
Detective Lopez’s cell phone. I mean to say, this is a real object
that belongs to the real man.”
“How did the
doppelgangster get a hold of it?”
“It could have been .
. .” Max suddenly gave a sharp, jerky start and his eyes widened.
“When did Detective Lopez lose his phone?”
“Yesterday.” When I
broke his prepaid cell phone, he said it was the second phone he
had run through that day.
“When yesterday? Did he say precisely?”
“No, but uh . . .
Let’s see.” I could tell from Max’s fierce frown of concentration
that this was important. “Here, give me that.” I took the phone
from him, opened it, and looked at the readout of outgoing calls.
“When he called me here late yesterday afternoon to say he was in
Brooklyn to investigate Danny’s death, I’m pretty sure he was
calling me from this phone.” I vaguely remembered seeing his name
on my phone’s LCD panel before I answered the call. “Yes, here it
is. This was the phone he used.”
I continued scrolling
through the screen of outgoing calls that Lopez had made yesterday.
“He called two other numbers during the next hour.” I didn’t
recognize them, but they were presumably work-related, since he
would still have been at the scene of the murder. “And here’s his
call to the bookstore, when he hung up right after you answered.
That’s the last call made from this phone.” I added, “When he
called me later, while we were confronting his doppelgangster, he
was using another phone by then. A spare.”
Max’s chest started
rising and falling rapidly. He took the phone back from me and
stared intently at it. “He used this phone to call me. He was
consumed with a desire to come here and confront us. Then he lost
this phone . . .”
“And this phone was
on his doppelgangster when it came here
to confront us,” I said.
“God’s teeth!” Max
said. “So that’s how it’s being
done.”
“How it’s . . . Max!”
I grabbed his arm. “This means something? You know what’s going on
now?”
“This is very creative,” he said, clearly impressed. “I’ve
been reading about doppelgängerism for days without coming across
any suggestion whatsoever of such a thing! We are dealing with a
most innovative and resourceful individual!” He shook his head,
“You know, it’s really quite a shame that he uses his talents for
Evil.”
“He, who, Max?”
“Whoever imbued this
phone with mystical energy to create a perfect double of the
detective—a duplicate of the man at the very moment that this
object was taken from him.”
“I don’t under . . .
Imbued this ph . . . Wait. You’re saying that’s how it’s
done?”
Max nodded slowly,
thinking aloud. “He acquires a token from the victim. Something he
associates with him—or her. Something the victim possessed at the
moment of existence which is re-created within the perfect
double.”
“He acquires?” I
said. “You mean he steals, right?
Because Lopez didn’t give someone his phone. He just couldn’t find
it.”
“Yes. Stealing the
tokens seems most likely.”
“Stealing . . . Oh,
my God, that’s why that dress!” I said.
“I left my black wrap—the little see-through jacket that went with
my dress—at the church the evening that we met Johnny’s
doppelgangster. I forgot it when we left. So I went back to the
sit-down early the next night to get it. But it wasn’t in the
crypt, and it wasn’t in the lost-and-found box . . .”
“It was stolen!” Max
looked excited.
“The Widow Giacalona
was there when I was asking for it. She said that a number of
things had been stolen at church lately! She blamed young thugs and
goombata . . . but then I got
duplicated.”
“We must find out
what was taken from the widow,” he said, heading for the back of
the shop.
“I think I know!” I
followed him as I recalled Elena’s appearance that afternoon at St.
Monica’s. “Her necklace! That big cross. This afternoon at the
church was the first time I’ve seen her without it.”
Max paused at the
door to the cellar. “And now her doppelgangster is wearing it.
Excellent! I think I know what to do.”
He went down the
stairs, moving swiftly. I followed him.
Elena’s perfect
double looked up when we entered the laboratory. “Is this your
entire plan?” she said in exasperation. “To keep me tied up in a
basement? Don’t you think—”
“Did Don Michael take
your cross?” Max demanded.
“What?”
“I beg your pardon.”
Max said. “I know this is a distasteful subject, but I gather he
tried to force himself on you last night?”
“He’s a pig,” she
said with disgust.
“He manhandled you?
Was rough with you?”
“Yes. When I resisted
him, he got angry.”
“You
struggled?”
She nodded. “And he
pulled my hair, shoved me around, tried to unzip my
dress.”
“He is a pig,” I said. And Lucky would kill him when he
found out about this.
“And your necklace?”
Max said. “Your cross?”
“It came off while I
fought him.” She scowled, looking furious. “He picked it up and
wouldn’t give it back. It was my mother’s. It’s a sacred symbol! And that
stronzo wouldn’t give it back to
me.”
“So you kicked him
down the stairs.”
“Yes,” she said with dark
satisfaction.
“And what do you
remember after that?” Max asked.
She looked confused.
“After that?”
“After you kicked him
down the stairs, and he went away,” Max said. “What happened
next?”
“Next? Next, next . .
.” She looked puzzled as she thought about it.
“Tell me the very
next thing you can remember after that moment.”
Elena seemed
bewildered. “Next I . . . I came home today and found you in my
apartment.”
“Yes,” Max said.
“That is indeed what happened next.
To you.”
He reached around her
neck, grasped the silver chain that hung there, and snapped the
clasp.
“Max,” I said as he
removed the necklace from her throat. The ornate cross glinted in
the lamplight as it swung in his hand. “What are you
doing?”
Elena’s eyeballs
rolled back in their sockets. Her head fell backward. Her whole
body quivered. There was a small explosion, and a tower of
feathers, bird bones, pebbles, and clumps of dirt collapsed all
over the chair where, only a moment ago, the doppelgangster had
been tied up.
“The token used to
create the doppelgangster is the only part of the creature that’s
real,” Max explained. “Remove it, and the illusion
disintegrates.”
“Is there any more of
that sherry?” I couldn’t stand sherry, but I had felt the distinct
need for a soothing beverage, and sherry was all that Max had.
“Pour me another glass.”
He did, saying, “Try
to sip this one slowly.”
“Lucky’s going to be
upset when he finds out we killed it.”
“We didn’t kill
anything,” Max said patiently. “We deconstructed a convincing
illusion.”
“Well, at least we
didn’t have to behead it.” The second glass of sherry was helping
my hands stop shaking. With a grimace, I sipped a little more of
the revolting stuff. We were back upstairs, sitting at the big
walnut table, still surrounded by the filth of Lopez’s former
doppelgangster. I added with some relief, “So I guess we don’t need
to carry a machete around the city.”
“No, I think not,”
Max agreed. “From now on, when Nelli identifies a doppelgangster,
we merely need to determine what mystically imbued personal token
it possesses and remove the object. That will banish the
illusion.”
“You mean make it
explode into messy crap,” I said.
Max said
thoughtfully, “My reading in recent days led me to ponder the
possibilities of psychic transformation, soul possession, animation
of physically altered corpses—”
“Animation of
what?”
“There were some
theories I felt it best not to share with you unless I found
confirmation of them in our actual experiences,” he
admitted.
“Good call,” I said
faintly.
“But this . . .” He made a little sound of admiration.
“This is unprecedented in the annals of
doppelgängerism!”
“How
thrilling.”
“As is the use of
doppelgängers to facilitate—nay, to ensure—the success of
assassination!”
“Remarkable.”
“And at the same
time, it’s so absurdly simple!’
“It is?”
“Our adversary
combined vastly different traditions—competing schools of thought,
you might say—to enact his plan. Doppelgängerism is an abstract,
elusive, and isolated mystical phenomenon. But the use of personal
tokens in the practice of magic is common and widespread among
multiple disciplines—all of them entirely unrelated to the highly
esoteric mystery of doppelgängerism!” He shook his head in wonder.
“I am forced to congratulate our foe on his imaginative practice of
his art.”
“Max, if we could
cease the thunderous applause for a moment, I’d like to point out
that our imaginative foe is trying to kill me.”
“Oh! Yes, of course.
How thoughtless of me, Esther.” He pulled himself together. “Do
forgive me.”
“Let’s look at
motive, means, and opportunity,” I said, using Crime and Punishment as my tactical guide. “The
motive is evidently to destroy—or at least severely damage—the
Gambellos and Corvinos by manipulating them into a new mob war when
both families would much rather avoid that.”
“Agreed.”
“The means is
innovative, devious, and mystical. So the person behind this is
someone who combines a shrewd intellect with the ability to conceal
his true nature from others.”
“I’m convinced of
it.”
“Which brings us to
opportunity,” I said.
“Indeed. We must
determine who has had the opportunity to steal tokens from the
known victims.”
“Someone who’s a good
pickpocket, I suppose.” A moment later I gasped as I realized what
I had just said. “A pickpocket.”
“Esther?”
My heart was
pounding. “The day I saw Chubby Charlie’s perfect double.” My God,
had it been a week ago? How time flies when you’re fighting Evil.
“Now I know!”
“Know
what?”
“Which one was the
duplicate!” I turned to Max.
“Charlie thought of
himself as a sharp dresser, and he paid special attention to
accessorizing. He always wore matching socks, tie, and pocket
handkerchief. The evening that two of
him came to the restaurant, the first one had all his accessories.
The second one, utterly identical in every other way, was missing
the pocket handkerchief. I noticed it because I had just seen
Charlie, and I had just straightened
that thing for him.”
“And the second one
was missing it?”
“He said it had been
stolen. And I remember wondering who’d be reckless enough to pick
the pocket of a Gambello killer!”
“That was the token!”
Max said. “The handkerchief was stolen and used to create the
doppelgangster that you encountered at Bella Stella’s that evening,
shortly before the real Chubby Charlie
came to dinner.”
“Okay,” I said. “We
know that Michael Buonarotti took the widow’s necklace. But I don’t
see how he could’ve have taken the handkerchief, too. Not without
getting caught. I think Charlie would’ve noticed the don of a rival
family getting that close to him.”
“Don Michael took the
widow’s necklace in violence and without stealth or secrecy. So,
no, he doesn’t seem a likely prospect for subtly extracting a
valued accessory from the pocket of an experienced Gambello
captain.” Max added, “I doubt that Chubby Charlie would have been
an easy target for theft. Therefore, I propose that the thief was
someone he felt comfortable with. Someone whom he trusted, in a
sense.”
“But who did Charlie
trust that Danny Dapezzo trusted, too?”
“It might help if we
had some idea what token Doctor Dapezzo . . .” His eyes widened.
“Oh!”
I realized it at the
same moment he did. “His reading glasses!” At the sit-down, Danny
was using a new pair that he didn’t like.
My old ones are missing, goddamn it. Those frames
were real gold, you
know.
Max said, “So we’re
hunting an adversary who was able to get close enough to steal
Doctor Dapezzo’s gold reading glasses as well as Charlie
Chiccante’s handkerchief.”
“But I wasn’t pickpocketed,” I said. “I was just
careless. I left my wrap in the church crypt. How did the killer
know? Was I followed?”
“The widow told you
there have been thefts at the church lately. Perhaps the killer
lurks there and stole the wrap out of habit, upon seeing the
opportunity.” Max slapped his hand on the table, making me jump.
“And now we know how the victims are chosen!”
I blinked.
“How?”
“Opportunity.”
“Oppor—Oh! I see! He
didn’t set out to kill Charlie.
He found an
opportunity to steal a token from Charlie, and that turned Charlie
into a victim.”
“Yes! Similarly,
Doctor Dapezzo became a victim because
of the loss of his glasses,” Max said. “The killer’s objective was
to create murder victims in each famiglia and to do so without his accomplice, who
actually committed the slayings, being identified. However, it
didn’t particularly matter to him which
family members died violently.”
“Just as long as long
as their deaths led to a war.”
Max said, “This is
why even Lucky, who knew the victims well, was unable to see a
basis for how they were being chosen. Because the basis was, in a
sense, quite random. They were simply the individuals from whom it
had been possible to steal a token.”
“But why duplicate
me? I’m not a Gambello or a
Corvino.”
“And, indeed, the
killer may have originally intended to restrict his victims to
Gambellos and Corvinos. But then he realized you posed a threat to
his plans. Just as Detective Lopez did. And so, since he had
already stolen your wrap, the killer then overcame any scruples he
may have had, and he duplicated you.”
“Well, that certainly
didn’t take long,” I said sourly.
“I don’t believe
there was ever any serious possibility that the killer would remain
selective about his victims, even if he commenced his activities
with that intention,” Max said. “Evil is always
voracious.”
I thought of the
widow and realized how right Max was. She had been targeted for
death just because she rejected a rough pass. “This guy really
is evil.”
“I suggest that he is
also fully aware of our investigation.”
“Right. I didn’t get
duplicated just for hanging out too much in a church lately.” I
felt icy insects all over my skin again. “But why duplicate me,
rather than you or Lucky? Don’t both of you pose a bigger threat to
the killer than I do?”
“Don’t underestimate
yourself, my dear!” Max added, “In any case, I am not, to my
knowledge, missing any of my belongings. Nor has Lucky mentioned
the loss of any personal possessions.”
“But I was careless
with my wrap,” I said grimly. “So I became a target of
opportunity.”
“Opportunity,” Max
said again, dwelling on the word. “Our adversary is an improviser.
He thinks on his feet and continually adapts his plan to new events
and information.”
“And he’s filching
stuff from a church.” I was annoyed. “I
loved that outfit.”
“You’ve spent more
time at St. Monica’s than I have,” Max said. “Whom have you noticed
lurking there?”
“The Widow Giacalona,
certainly.” I shrugged. “Other women, I guess. They’ve got the hots
for the priest.”
“Ah, yes. Well, he is
an appealing young man, and it’s amazing how often celibacy creates
an aura of . . .” Max sat up straighter, looking stunned. “Good
gracious! The priest lurks around the
church.”
“Yeah, but that’s his
job,” I said dismissively.
“Which means his
lurking would pass unnoticed!”
“Oh, but, Max, he’s
such a nice . . .” I went blank for a moment, and then a shower of
recollections fell on me. “That’s what
the victims have in common!”
“The church! The
priest.”
I nodded. “Danny was
a parishioner there. Lucky said that Charlie went to Mass and
Confession every week. And Charlie certainly knew Father Gabriel.
He mentioned him the night he died.”
Max said, “We have
seen Don Michael Buonarotti there ourselves, whom we believe is the
accomplice. And he seems to be on congenial terms with the
priest.”
“Buonarotti even
courted the widow at the church.”
“Johnny Be Good
occasionally went to the church to pray for positive results in his
gambling exploits,” Max said. “And by all accounts, he was a
careless man from whom it would have been quite easy to collect a
token.”
“So easy, it’s probably not even worth trying to
figure what the token was.” I recalled, “Johnny must have known
Father Gabriel for years. The priest told me a little about
Johnny’s youth and said that he—Gabriel—grew up around the
Gambellos.” I brought my hands up to my cheeks as I realized what
else the priest had told me “Oh, my
God!”
“What?” Max rose
halfway out of his chair. “What is it?”
“Father Gabriel was
the one who planted the suspicions about Elena in my head. Mind
you, her own comments made that easy. But he told me at length
about her reasons for hating both the Gambellos and the Corvinos.”
Looking back at the conversation with a new perspective, I could
see that he had incited my curiosity and made leading comments that
encouraged me to ask him for more information. “And the information
he gave me about her past was so incomplete that it misled
me!”
He’d certainly neglected to mention that Don Victor had
forgiven Elena for marrying a Corvino and gave her his blessings.
After hearing Elena’s version of the past from her doppelgangster
earlier tonight, I had assumed that Father Gabriel had merely been
misinformed, relaying the popular gossip to me. But now . . . now I
saw that he had been deflecting the possibility of suspicion
falling on him by directing it elsewhere: to the thrice-widowed
Elena.
“Oh, Max,” I said,
feeling guilty. “He also . . .” I nodded. “Father Gabriel also
tried to drive a wedge between me and Lucky, and it almost
worked!”
“How?” Max
asked.
“He, uh . . . he told
me something bad about Lucky that wasn’t true. But I believed him
until tonight.”
“Ah, of course he
would try that, upon realizing you were working together. Divide
and conquer.” Max nodded. “I gather that Father Gabriel’s lie is
the reason for your irritability toward Lucky lately?”
“Yes.” I frowned. My
revulsion had intruded on our relationship, but it hadn’t ended our
work. “But if the priest intended me to stop cooperating with
Lucky, why didn’t he tell a bigger lie?”
“We’re dealing with a
subtle individual,” Max said. “He chose a lie that would distract
you and, as you say, create a wedge between you and Lucky. But he
avoided the mistake of telling a lie so big that you would either
disbelieve it or immediately confront Lucky with it.”
“Crafty,” I
said.
“Father Gabriel no
doubt also underestimated your commitment to confronting Evil. He
may have hoped that telling you something disturbing was enough to
make you abandon your quest. It would be a common reaction, after
all.”
“He pretended to help
me look for my wrap after he had filched it, and he used his
minutes alone with me to mislead me. And I fell for it.” I folded
my arms. “Lopez was right. I’m naive.”
“But since we know
that the Widow Giacalona is not the killer, you can rest assured
now that your talking to her about Detective Lopez is not what led
to his being duplicated.”
“I still may be the
cause of that, Max. The widow was being courted by Buonarotti.
Maybe she told him what I said to her.”
I remembered that
Buonarotti recognized me easily the night of the sit-down despite
my disguise as a mob girl. Had the widow told him about my presence
in the church? Or had Father Gabriel told him after he left the
crypt and I remained down there alone for a few minutes? Had the
priest and the don been meeting somewhere in the church before I
arrived? If they were conspirators, it seemed likely.
I also remembered how
the priest had encouraged the Widow Giacalona to accept
Buonarotti’s company that evening. Perhaps he had done it to keep
Buonarotti happy, but perhaps he also wanted Buonarotti to get a
full account of what Elena and I had discussed. “Besides, she’s a
devout woman who’s always at church. Father Gabriel has influence
over her, and she no doubt confides in him.”
“We confided in him,
too.” Max’s expression was heavy with self-reproach.
I nodded. “At the
sit-down.” We hadn’t questioned the priest’s presence there as
peacekeeper. “He found out exactly how much we knew.”
“And, being well
practiced at deceit, he convincingly pretended to find our theories
absurd. He also encouraged Lucky to believe that, despite their
denials, the Corvinos were indeed murdering
Gambellos.”
With a sinking heart,
I recalled, “Today he urged me to go straight home and rest my knee
when I pretended that I had hurt myself as an excuse to leave
quickly. At the time, he seemed so nice, so concerned. Now . .
.”
“Now you’re wondering
if he was trying to arrange a meeting between you and your
doppelgangster by directing you to go home?” Max said. “I think it
very likely, my dear.”
“I wonder if he knew
I had deliberately cut Elena, that I was checking to see whether
she was real?”
“If he suspected,
then he will likely escalate his activities, realizing that we’re
getting closer to unmasking him.”
I reviewed the
encounter, then shook my head. “I don’t know if he suspected. I
just don’t know. But it’s certainly possible. Because if we’re
right about him, then he’s a very good
actor.” I looked sadly at Max. “Damn. I really liked him.”
“That’s precisely why
he has been so successful in his bold scheme. He is tremendously
skilled at concealing his true nature and at presenting a likeable
and trustworthy persona to the world.”
“Well, I never would have suspected him,” I admitted,
recalling that I had previously thought Father Gabriel seemed like
someone who’d be good to turn to in a crisis.
“I’m still puzzled,
though, by how he came into possession of Detective Lopez’s
telephone.”
“Oh, my God, I know
how!” I said, realizing. “Father Gabriel went to the scene of the
crime!”
Max’s eyes widened.
“Ah, yes. Lucky called him to Danny’s side after the
murder.”
“Because that’s what
you do when a guy dies,” I said slowly, “even a guy like Danny. You
call his priest.”
“And Detective Lopez,
a normally efficient and alert young man, was distracted by the
discovery that you and I were involved with the brutally murdered
Corvino capo whose death he was investigating.”
“So the lurking
Father Gabriel,” I said with a scowl, “found an opportunity to
steal his phone.” Maybe Lopez had set down the phone and turned his
back on it. Or maybe he had put it in an outer pocket of his jacket
and never realized the kindly priest at the scene of the crime was
a skilled pickpocket.
Max met my gaze.
“Opportunity.”
“He’s not just evil,
he’s insanely evil,” I said. “He’s
trying to kill two women and a cop, as well as start a raging mob
war.”
“The appetite of Evil
always expands rapidly,” Max said.
“But considering how
well the priest has concealed his true nature and his activities,
why team up with an accomplice? Especially someone like Buonarotti,
who doesn’t come across as either trustworthy or discreet,” I said.
“Why would Father Gabriel take that risk? Why not just commit the
murders himself, since the curse ensures that no one sees the
killer anyway?”
“Hmm.” Max frowned in
concentration as he thought about it. “He’s an educated young man,
a parish priest, and a talented sorcerer who has invested himself
deeply in the study and practice of his art. He may well have had
no time and no occasion to learn the physical logistics of murder.”
He stroked his beard as he continued, “Above all, though, I suspect
this is a question of individual temperament. It seems likely that
Father Gabriel has no stomach for violence. In his public persona,
he chose to become a cleric rather than a member of Lucky’s
profession. And in his secret life, he has also chosen an
intellectual and spiritual path, albeit of a very different nature.
So while he willfully victimizes people with his sorcery, I think
it likely that physical confrontation is anathema to
him.”
“You mean he’s a
physical coward,” I said scathingly. “It’s fine to curse me with
death, but he needs someone else to strike the fatal blow for
him.”
“Precisely. Therefore
he developed a strategy that would incorporate an accomplice to do
the physical slayings,” Max said. “And he chose a man who takes
pleasure in violence and who has something to gain if these murders
lead to a war between the Gambellos and the Corvinos.”
“What a team they
make,” I said grimly.
“Distressingly
effective, to date.”
“But, Max, what about
motive? I still don’t understand why
Father Gabriel would do this.”
“That’s because we
only know what he has told us about himself, which is virtually
nothing. But if he was telling the truth about one key point—that
he grew up around the Gambello famiglia—then Lucky may know enough about him to
postulate a motive when we explain our theory to him.”
“I’ll tell Lucky we
need him back here as soon as possible.” I opened my cell
phone.
“Excellent. We’ll
review with him what we have learned tonight about the nature of
the doppelgangsters while we prepare to confront our
adversary.”
“If we’re right this
time, Max, how do we stop a homicidal priest and his violent
accomplice?”
“We will begin by
destroying his immediate means of creating more doppelgangsters.”
He added, “Before we go anywhere, though, we must protect
ourselves. You summon Lucky while I commence preparations in the
laboratory.”