23
“Nah, Gabriel’s family wasn’t connected to the
Gambellos.” Lucky looked up at Max. “How long before this stuff
washes off?”
“Several
days.”
Down in the
laboratory, Max was painting protective symbols on Lucky’s face,
back, hands, and feet with a mixture of henna, wax, oil, and some
unsavory looking ground-up ingredients that I had deliberately not
asked about. My face, back, hands and feet were already covered
with similar symbols. Nelli and Max were both also decorated
accordingly. So we had been busy while waiting for Lucky to return
from LaGuardia Airport.
Lucky had managed to
convince Elena Giacalona that her life was in danger, and she
should leave immediately—that very evening—for Seattle, where she
could stay with her sister. Although Elena hated Lucky, apparently
she was sensible enough to listen when a man in his profession told
her she was marked for death and should get out of town. She had
allowed him to escort her to the airport, and he had stayed there
until her flight was safely gone.
Upon entering the
laboratory, he was somewhat shaken to see the pile of rubbish that
had previously been Elena’s doppelgangster, but he adjusted better
than I had expected. Probably because he had just come from seeing
the real woman.
“So Gabriel was lying
about growing up around Johnny Be Good and the Gambellos?” I
asked.
“No, that’s true. He
and his mom lived in the same parish as most of the
Gambellos.”
“Just his mom?” I
asked, “Were his parents divorced?”
“No way, his mother
was a good Catholic. Nice lady. She died a few years ago.” Lucky
drew in a sharp breath and protested, “Ow, that stuff is hot,
Doc.”
“I apologize, my dear
fellow.” To keep the wax from solidifying before it was painted
onto skin, Max was keeping the mysterious mixture heated over a low
flame. He blew gently on his brush before he went back to painting
interesting symbols on Lucky’s feet.
With still no idea
how to protect us from a doppelgänger, Max had instead come up with
a means of protecting us from a curse based on using a personal
token that created a link to the victim. The symbols, ingredients,
and chanting involved in this protection should, he said, deflect
the fatal effect of encountering one’s own doppelgangster. Although
I was the only one of us whose doppelgangster was definitely
roaming around somewhere out there tonight, he thought it wise for
all of us to take precautions.
Nelli—with her face,
back, and four paws all covered in oily, waxy, lumpy protective
symbols that were the rusty color of henna—was sniffing at the
remains of Elena’s doppelgangster, trying to learn more about our
adversary’s work before tonight’s confrontation.
I asked Lucky, “So
where was Gabriel’s dad?”
“Dead. But even
without a dad, the boy turned out okay.” Lucky paused. “Uh, until
now, I guess.”
“I’ll wager he was a
quiet and studious youth,” Max said.
“You’re on the money,
Doc.”
“And we’ve certainly
seen that he developed good people skills,” I said.
“Yeah, he was polite
even as a boy,” Lucky said. “And his mother was so proud when he
decided to become a priest. It’s a darn shame he’s turned out to be
an evil sorcerer.” The old gangster shook his head. “Kids. Whaddya
gonna do?”
“How did his father
die?” I asked.
“Turned up one day in
a Jersey landfill with two bullets in his head.”
“What? I thought you said he wasn’t a
Gambello?”
“He wasn’t,” Lucky
said. “He worked for the Buonarottis.”
“Really?” This
surprised me. “The priest’s father was a Buonarotti
soldier?”
Lucky shrugged.
“Priests gotta have fathers, too, don’t they?”
“Why was he
killed?”
Lucky shook his head.
“No one ever said.”
“Who did
it?”
“No
idea.”
“Really?” I
said.
“Swear to
God.”
“There weren’t any
rumors?”
“Oh, there was
lots of rumors. But the cops found
squat, no one ever took credit, and no one ever got punished for
whackin’ a made guy. No one knew nothin’.” He shrugged. “For real,
that time.”
“Is it possible that
a Gambello did it and just didn’t tell anyone?”
“Sure, it’s
possible,” Lucky said. “That was one of the rumors. It’s also
possible a Corvino did it, which was another rumor. Both families
was havin’ serious disputes with the Buonarottis at the
time.”
“That sounds
promising,” I said, thinking about possible motives for the current
murders.
“On the other hand,”
Lucky said, “it’s also possible that the hit was a piece of
Buonarotti housekeeping that got kept real quiet.”
“Was that a rumor,
too?”
“You bet.” Lucky
nodded. “And some people said he got popped by a crazy girlfriend,
or a jealous husband, or a crooked cop, or a tough mugger.” Lucky
shook his head. “But me, I always thought the hit was too clean and
professional for that.” He paused and added, “Well, maybe a crooked
cop.”
“Good heavens,” Max
said.
Lucky said, “But I
never heard of anyone who knew what
happened. And it was more than twenty years ago. So whoever popped
him might not even be alive anymore.”
“The father’s
unsolved murder would obviously be very disturbing for his son,” I
said. “But, well, the death wasn’t exactly a surprising way for a
wiseguy to go, was it? And since no one even knows who’s
responsible for the murder, I don’t understand why it would lead
Gabriel to trying to start a new Corvino-Gambello
war.”
“That’s because
you’re thinking rationally, my dear,” said Max, setting aside his
brush and wiping his hands as he finished his work on Lucky. “Our
adversary has a well-developed mind, but certainly not a balanced
one. Having lost his father in childhood, he became obsessed with
the idea of punishing his father’s killer.”
“But he doesn’t know
who that is.”
“Indeed,” Max said.
“Ergo, he blames everyone who might
feasibly be among his father’s killers.”
“But, as Lucky just
said, that description includes people who are dead by
now.”
“You’re still
assuming the priest thinks about this rationally, which I sincerely
doubt is the case,” Max said. “He has long since grown to blame an
entire class of people for his father’s death, and he has enacted a
plan to wreak terrible vengeance on them.”
“But why wait so long
to enact it?” I said. “His father died more than twenty years
ago.”
“First he had to grow
up,” Lucky pointed out. “And he probably spent a few years trying
to figure out who whacked his old man. Hey, that might even be why
he became a priest! Some guys tell their priests everything, y’know.”
Max said, “His
practice of his art and his adaptation to changing circumstances
have been resourceful. So I suspect Lucky is right in assuming the
young man attempted various methods of solving his problem before
choosing to access the dark arts. He would have been thorough in
his quest for a guilty party, I believe. And then, of course, he
would have needed some years of study and practice to prepare for
what he’s doing.”
I said grumpily,
“Well, I don’t see why he had to do it now, while I was waiting tables at Bella Stella. I
never would have witnessed his first hit or—”
“Opportunity,” Max said, his eyes
widening.
“Come again,
Doc?”
“Mercury is in
retrograde! That’s why Father Gabriel
chose now,” Max said. “It’s a time of maximum
confusion!”
“Right,” Lucky said, catching on. “What did you
tell us about it, Doc? Messages get lost, things get
garbled.”
“Communications get
misinterpreted,” I said, “and people have trouble
connecting.”
“Mercury Retrograde
made Gabriel’s plan more likely to succeed,” Max said. “It made his
victims more vulnerable and his various adversaries less
effective.”
“It certainly seems
to have worked in his favor so far,” I grumbled as I reviewed the
events of recent days.
“We’re up against one
smart mook,” Lucky said. “No doubt about it.”
“But what about
Buonarotti?” I asked.
“No, he ain’t that
smart,” Lucky said dismissively. “And he’s a hothead.”
“No, I mean that one
of the rumors you mentioned is that the Buonarottis killed
Gabriel’s father. So why would Gabriel work with Michael Buonarotti
now?”
“What if he
ain’t working with him?” Lucky
suggested, putting his shoes and socks back on over his painted
feet. “What if he’s just using him?”
“But Gabriel
duplicated the widow,” I argued. “Which we’re assuming was
essentially a favor to Buonarotti.”
“Well, sure,” Lucky
said. “If you’re using someone expendable to do your dirty work,
you keep him happy for as long as you need him. You give him little
things now, and you promise him big things later on.”
“I see!” Max said.
“Don Michael’s motive for working with Father Gabriel is to
position the Buonarottis to gain power. But it doesn’t necessarily
follow that he’ll get what he wants when the Corvinos and Gambellos
descend into chaos.”
“Oh,” I said, also seeing. “Gabriel will betray
him, or expose him, or turn on him.”
“Or get the Gambellos
and the Corvinos to turn on the Buonarottis after we’ve already
turned on each other,” Lucky said. “A three-way war would make a hell of a
mess.”
“Yes,” I said with a
nod, realizing Lucky was right. “If he does indeed want to destroy
all three families, that may well be his plan.” I felt appalled as
I realized the scope of the devious scheme. “But innocent people
could get hurt, too! Even killed. Doesn’t he realize
that?”
“He’s evidently so
obsessed with revenge that he considers it acceptable,” Max said
grimly. “After all, he’s trying to kill you, though you had nothing
whatsoever to do with his father’s murder.”
“He’s trying to whack
Elena and your boyfriend, too, who aren’t wiseguys, either,” Lucky
added. “But if Max is right, and Gabriel ain’t willing to get
physical—which sure sounds like how I remember him as a
teenager—then he had to have a wiseguy help him get this thing
started. He couldn’t do it alone. And Michael Buonarotti was the
easiest one for him to recruit, since Gabriel’s father was on his
crew back when Michael was a young capo.”
“Ah,” Max said,
nodding. “So that’s how the accomplice was chosen. Opportunity. How fitting.”
“Do you think it’s
possible Don Michael killed his father?” I asked.
“Of course, it’s
possible,” Lucky said. “And you can bet it’s occurred to Gabriel.
But he’s never found no evidence, no motive, nothing to convince
him.”
“How do you know?” I
asked.
“Because if Gabriel
thought he knew who done it, would he bother doin’ all this?”
“Good point,” I
said.
“And even if Don
Michael didn’t do it,” Max said, “then he and his organization must
nonetheless suffer for failing to protect his employee and prevent
the murder.”
“And also for failing
to find out who did it and punish him,” I said.
“Hey, you know
something?” Lucky said, looking pleased. “You two are finally
startin’ to understand how Our Thing works.”
I would have
preferred to search the big old echoing shadowy interior of St.
Monica’s during broad daylight and with lots of people around.
Going there at midnight to confront Evil wasn’t my favorite
possible plan.
However, if Father
Gabriel suspected we were getting close to the truth, he would be
escalating his activities. So we couldn’t wait until daylight.
There might well be another victim by then—perhaps several. We had
to find and destroy his workshop or altar now.
Since the church was
where he acquired most of his tokens, as well as where he spent
most of his time, we decided to start our search there. With our
painted faces and our massive dog, we had trouble hailing a cab—go
figure—so we wound up walking to St. Monica’s. By the time we got
to our destination, Lucky was complaining that his feet
hurt.
The main entrance to
the church was locked when we arrived. This didn’t surprise us, and
Lucky and Max were both adept at entering locked buildings—albeit
via drastically different means—so we were able to open the door
within moments.
Inside, the church
was pitch black.
“Stay here, I’ll hit
a light,” Lucky said.
A few moments later,
I heard the click of a nearby switch, but the church remained
cloaked in darkness.
“It’s not working,”
Lucky said quietly. “Do you think the priest cut the
power?”
“Maybe. Or maybe that
switch is one of the gazillion things here that needs fixing.” I
now remembered that the women’s auxiliary report had mentioned
faulty electrical wiring in the sanctuary. I wished I had thought
to bring a flashlight. “We’ll have trouble confronting Evil if we
can’t even see it.”
“There are candles
here,” Max said. “Let’s make our way to some of
those.”
“I ain’t got
matches,” Lucky said.
“Not to worry. I can
generate an incendiary effect, but it’s momentary and volatile.
Ergo, the stabilizing medium of physical substance is
exigent.”
“He needs something
to burn,” I said to Lucky.
“Oh, okay. Here, take
my hand, kid.” A moment later, he said, “That ain’t my hand.”
“I’m sorry,” I said.
“I can’t see anything.”
After I found Lucky’s
hand with mine, I stretched out my other one. “Max?”
I felt the clasp of
Max’s fingers, and then the three of us made our way gingerly down
the left aisle, followed by Nelli. We shuffled toward the altar of
St. Monica and the candles we hoped to find there. After we had
gone perhaps thirty feet, Nelli started growling.
The stained glass
windows allowed a faint amount of light to stream in from the
streetlamps, and as my eyes adjusted, I could start to make out
general shapes in the dark. So when something man-shaped rose from
one of the church pews, I screamed.
This startled Max,
who stumbled. Still holding my hand, he inadvertently yanked me
with him. We fell together into the well of one of the old church
pews. Lucky had let go of my hand when my fall yanked it out of his
grip, and I heard his exclamation as he now saw what I had seen.
Nelli was barking and snarling.
A moment later, the
beam of a flashlight shone into Lucky’s face. He squinted, turned
his head away, and then dived sideways into the
darkness.
The person holding
the flashlight called, “Max? Esther? I know you’re there. I don’t
want to hurt you.”
It was Lucky’s
voice.
I stopped
breathing.
Oh, no, I thought.
No.
The flashlight turned
in our general direction. Since we were on the floor, the beam of
light missed us and hit Nelli. From my prone position, I could see
the snarling dog stiffen and freeze, evidently shocked by the sound
of her friend’s voice coming from the creature she instinctively
wanted to attack.
From the darkness
about ten feet to our left, Lucky demanded, “Who’s there? Who’s got
that light?”
“Who d’you
think?” Lucky’s voice came from
directly behind the flashlight, about fifteen feet in front of
where Max and I lay in an awkward heap.
Nelli whined and
backed away from the voice, unnerved by this turn of events. She
stepped on my hair, immobilizing me. I could tell she was
trembling.
“Who is that?” On our left, Lucky sounded confused and
hostile.
“It’s me, you putz,”
said the voice with the flashlight.
I started breathing
again. In short little pants of panic. “Max,” I whispered. “What do
we do?”
Max cleared his
throat and called, “Lucky?”
Two men answered at
once. “Yeah?”
“Oh, dear,” Max
said.
“Shit,” said Lucky.
“Lucky,” Max said, “I
want you to think about what token you may have lost
recently.”
“What?” said the
creature with the flashlight.
“Token?” said Lucky
on our left.
“Think hard,” I said.
“Right! What the hell
that did that pickpocket priest filch from me?” Lucky said to
himself. “What am I missing?”
I tugged at Nelli’s
leg, trying to get her to take her foot off my hair. She was making
confused little whining noises and still shaking.
“Doc? Get Nelli to
calm down,” said the flashlight voice. “Look, I’m not gonna hurt
you. I’m gonna behead that thing.”
“Thing? Oh, you gotta
be kidding me,” said Lucky, outraged. I
could tell that he was on the move, changing his
location.
The doppelgangster
could tell, too. The beam of its flashlight was searching the
church, using its target’s voice as a guide. While searching, it
called to us, “Doc, I just want to give you and Esther a quick poke
with my knife and make sure you are who I think you
are.”
“Poke?” Lucky said.
“I think . . . hang on . . . yeah! One of my knives is missing,
Doc! It’s not in my pocket. That demented priest stole a knife from
me!”
“Then you know what
to do, Lucky!” Max called.
“I was here to talk
about funerals,” Lucky said angrily.
“And he stole from me! In church.”
“Focus, Lucky!” I shouted.
“It turns out that
the two of you was here talkin’ to Father Gabriel the other day
when I thought you was in Brooklyn with
me,” the doppelgangster said. “So now we’re gonna have to figure
out who’s real and who ain’t.”
“The priest is lying
to you!” I shouted at the doppelgangster. “He’s the one who’s
behind all of this! And, anyhow, you’re
the one who’s not real!”
The doppelgangster’s
footsteps started approaching us. “Oh? Fine. Convince
me.”
Nelli’s shaking got
worse, and a horrible sound came out of her throat. She shifted
position, evidently intending to protect us, but obviously
reluctant to attack something that sounded like just Lucky.
Fortunately, the uncertain shuffling of her paws allowed me to free
my hair and sit up.
“Hey, you!” Lucky
shouted from another part of the dark church. “Over here,
schmuck!”
“Hold still and face
the music like a man!” the doppelgangster snapped at Lucky. The
beam of the flashlight roved around in search of its quarry. “I
promise you won’t feel a thing.”
While the
doppelgangster’s attention was distracted, I nudged Max, and we
started hauling ourselves off the floor and out of the pew as
quietly as we could. I grabbed Nelli’s leash, which Max had dropped
when he fell, and tugged. She resisted, still swamped with
indecision about the doppelgangster.
“Doc, an evil wizard
made this thing,” Lucky called out to Max in the dark. “So I’m
thinking it ain’t such a good idea to let it get near you and
Esther with a knife!”
“He’s right,” I
whispered to Max.
“Indeed.”
Lucky would never
hurt us. But that creature wasn’t Lucky, and we didn’t know enough
about doppelgangsters to be sure it
would never hurt us. Under duress, Gabriel might be fiddling with
the recipe, so to speak.
When Lucky spoke
again, his location had changed once more. He shouted to us, “I’ll
deal with this mook! You two, go. Go!”
“Nelli, come!” Max commanded sharply.
Max grabbed my hand
and dragged me through the dark. Nelli came with us, her feet
stepping on ours, her whining giving away our location. Perhaps the
next time we confronted Evil, I thought, we should leave Nelli at
home. We slipped past shadowy pews and a hulking shape that was
probably St. Monica. Behind us, I heard the sounds of clattering
wooden pews, cursing in Italian, and then a crash of
glass—candleholders I guessed—as Lucky and his doppelgangster
chased each other through the dark church.
When we reached the
end of the aisle, we walked into a staircase. We didn’t know where
it led, but we followed it blindly, ascending above the vast, dark
area where Lucky and his doppelgangster were engaged in deadly
stalking.
“Max, we can’t just
leave Lucky,” I whispered urgently as we crept upward on the spiral
staircase.
“We must! This is a
delaying tactic,” Max whispered back.
“It’s a deadly tactic.” I was panting as I dragged Nelli
behind me. She had decided she didn’t like climbing unfamiliar
spiral stairs in the dark to an unknown destination. “That thing is
armed with a knife! A real
one.”
“The preparations we
made before we left the lab will protect Lucky from the fatal
curse.”
“What’s going to
protect him from that thing stabbing him in a struggle?” I
said.
“If Lucky gets the
knife away from it—”
“That’s a big
if, Max!”
“—it will
disintegrate. Lucky knows that. The creature doesn’t.”
“That seems like an
awfully slim advantage!”
“That doppelgangster
is a trap, a distraction!” Max was climbing the curving staircase
rapidly, just ahead of me, dragging me as I dragged Nelli. “The
priest wants us to stay there and
remain ensnared in dealing with that problem, rather than proceed.
We must find Father
Gabriel’s—oof!”
I froze when I heard
him go splat. “Max? Max!”
He said faintly, “The
stairs end here.”
I carefully climbed
the remaining couple of steps, then felt around in the darkness. I
found Max’s arm and helped him rise. Nelli shoved past me, then she
stumbled a few feet later, too. As I made my way across the uneven
floor, my heel caught on a broken tile.
“We’re in the choir
gallery,” I said. “Be careful. The floor is need of
repair.”
“Yes, I’ve noticed
that.” Max still sounded winded. “We must find a means of
illumination!”
I moved through the
darkness with my hands up, palms outward, hoping to find a wall and
then to move along it in search of a light switch. Somewhere below
us, there was a terrible clatter of pews and some shouting. I
glanced over my shoulder and saw, in the church below us, the
flashlight flying through the dark. It went out when it hit the
floor, leaving the church in complete darkness again. So Lucky had
at least gotten the flashlight away from the
doppelgangster.
An ear-splitting
shriek of organ music made me jump out of my skin. Nelli barked. I
bumped into something tall and hard, but not very stable. It fell
over with a crash.
As the jarring wail
of the organ faded, Max said, “I do apologize.”
“Ow.” Realizing what
I must have bumped into, I bent over and felt it. “Max, I’ve found
a candelabra.” I hauled it upright and felt my way along its
branches. “I think it’s got—yes!
Candles!”
“Excellent!” Max
stumbled over to the sound of my voice. He took one of the thick
candles between his hands, chanted in another language for about
thirty seconds, and then blew.
Nothing
happened.
“I, uh . . . I’m
feeling rather stressed and distracted.” He sounded
embarrassed.
“It’s all right.
Don’t rush.” My heart was pounding. “Take your time.”
I flinched when I
heard the crash of something heavy downstairs.
Max tried again and
this time it worked. He blew a mystical flame onto the wick of the
candle in his hands. It flickered uncertainly for a moment, then
stabilized and burned steadily. I squinted as my eyes adjusted to
this point of light. Max used the burning candle to light the
others. Then we lifted the candelabra and brought it closer to the
balcony railing. We looked out over the dark church, trying to see
what was happening.
In the dim glow cast
by the burning candles on the scene below us, it was easy to tell
Lucky apart from his doppelgangster since he was the one with the
weirdly painted face. That’s how I knew he was the one lying on the
floor, while his perfect double was the one standing over him with
a knife.
“Lucky!” I screamed.
Lucky twisted and
drove his heel into the doppelgangster’s knee. It cried out and
fell sideways, rolling away. The creature retained its grip on the
knife.
Lucky looked up at
the choir gallery and shouted, “I got this covered! Go stop the
priest!”
Max and I each held a
burning candle. I asked, “Where should we look first?”
“Normally, I’d say
the crypt. But that room obviously gets too much use in this church
to be a sorcerer’s secret lair.”
“And all those pink
bunny costumes . . .” I shook my head. “It just doesn’t say ‘lair’
to me.”
Deciding where to
look first became easy when we heard a woman’s piercing
scream.
It came from
somewhere beyond the east side of the choir gallery. Max, Nelli,
and I dashed toward the door there. It was locked. Max gathered his
focus and made a circular gesture with his arms, then a flicking
motion with his wrists, as he spoke in rhythmic Latin. A moment
later, the lock clicked, the doorknob turned, and the door opened
to let us through. On the other side of it was a dark hallway.
There was a light switch right next to the door. I flipped it.
Nothing happened.
“He must have killed
the lights for the whole building,” I said.
“He knows the church
intimately. We’re strangers here. He counted on this to disorient
us.”
The hallway was eerie
in the candlelight, but probably ordinary by day. This part of the
church didn’t seem to be in use. The floor sagged, the paint was
chipped, and the overhead lights looked older than Lucky. There
were a number of doors, both to our right and our left. They were
all closed. I turned to my right and tried the first door I came
to. It was locked.
“These must be the
old dormitory rooms,” I said, recalling the secretary’s report from
today’s meeting. “I don’t think anyone comes up here.”
“No one but our
quarry,” Max murmured.
Nelli’s ear pricked
alertly and she trotted to the very end of the hall. She stopped
when she reached a door that had, I noticed, shiny new hinges and a
new lock instead of the rusting, decades-old hardware that was on
the other doors up here. She started growling.
We approached the
door. I could hear voices on the other side of it. One of the
voices, which obviously belonged to a woman, was agitated and
angry. The other voice was lower. Possibly a man. It sounded as if
he was chanting.
Both voices ceased
abruptly when Nelli scratched at the door, growling louder, wholly
focused on whatever was on the other side of it.
Max’s eyes met mine
in the dim light of our flickering candles. “It’s time to confront
our adversary.”
My heartbeat was
deafening. I realized I was breathing like a runner. I swallowed
and nodded. “Let’s do it.”
Max put his hand on
the doorknob and turned it.
“Don’t move,” said a male voice.
In the dark hallway
behind us, I heard the sound, familiar to me from many episodes of
Crime and Punishment , of someone
cocking a semiautomatic gun to fire it.
On the other side of
the door, the woman screamed again.