The widow seemed to warm to me, smiling a little. “Yes, that’s right.”
“He’s also the guy who said, ‘Lord, grant me chastity… but not yet.’ ” I enjoyed a friendly chuckle over this all-too-human plea.
The widow’s expression turned cold. Apparently it was not one of her favorite saintly quotes.
Hoping to repair the damage, I said solicitously, “I hear you’ve seen Saint Monica weeping?”
“Yes.” She turned to gaze at the saint’s statue and crossed herself. “Yes, I have.”
A reverent expression warmed her face, making it even more beautiful. Also a little scary—there was a spark of zealous fervor there that, for a moment, didn’t look wholly sane.
She said in a passionate voice, “My devotion has been rewarded with the saint’s grace and mercy. She has shed tears for my sorrow.”
“That’s amazing.” Careful to keep my skepticism out of my voice, I asked, “When was this?”
“It’s happened several times.” The widow clasped her hands in front of her chest and gazed with rapture at Saint Monica. “She feels the pain of the brokenhearted, and she weeps for us.”
“ ‘Us’? I thought no one but you had seen her weep.”
Turning away from the saint, the widow gave me a cool, dismissive look. “You’re not the only one who doesn’t believe me.”
“I didn’t say—”
“Don’t patronize me. I know what I have seen.” Her voice was sharp. “And if you have not suffered enough sorrow in love to see it, too, you should be grateful rather than mock me.”
Now I felt bad. “I’m not mocking you. I swear.” I decided to fall back on a convenient excuse. “I’m Jewish, I don’t know from saints and their miracles.”
She blinked. “Oh, Diamond. Yes, that’s a Jewish name, isn’t it?”
“It’s certainly not Italian.”
“Are you converting?”
“Good God, no!” Seeing her offended expression, I added quickly, “My mother would die.”
Her eyes widened and, in what seemed to be a reflexive gesture, she raised her right hand to her neckline to close her fingers around the ornate cross that hung there on a silver chain. “It’s bad luck to say such a thing, even in jest.”
“Who’s jesting?” When the widow frowned and removed her hand from her throat, I noticed for the first time how lovely her pendant was. A graceful, old-fashioned piece, it consisted of a softly glowing mother-of-pearl cross embedded in a larger, ornate, silver one, and it was delicately decorated with tiny diamonds. “What a beautiful cross,” I said, hoping to change the subject. “Where did you get it?”
“It was my mother’s,” she said tersely.
Since it seemed unlikely she’d ever warm up to me, I decided to cut to the chase. “Look, I left my wrap here—”
“So ‘everyone’ knows your young man—your cop—at Stella’s?” she said suddenly, surprising me.
“Well, not everyone, but quite a few of the guys have met him by now.”
“So he’s a meat eater?”
Wondering why this question made her sneer, I said, “He’s not a vegetarian, if that’s what you mean.”
“What?”
I elaborated, “Lopez likes a good burger.” I knew this from our two lunch dates, which now seemed awfully long ago.
“Idiota! I said a meat eater. Don’t you know anything?”
“Huh?”
“He takes a boost, right?”
“A boost?” I frowned, confused. “You mean… a leg up?”
She looked exasperated. “Bribes. Kickbacks. Crumbs from the Gambellos’ table.”
I gasped. “He does not take bribes!” I finally got it. “Oh! A ‘meat-eater’ is a corrupt cop?”
She made a hand gesture that suggested it had taken me a long time to arrive at this realization.
I said, “I hadn’t heard that one before.”
She stared at me without warmth.
“Lopez is not a corrupt cop,” I said firmly. “He’s a straight arrow. Very dedicated.” As I had good reason to know.
“Then what’s Officer Lopez—”
“Detective Lopez.”
“—doing hanging around Stella’s place with all those goombata?“
“He doesn’t hang around there, and he certainly doesn’t hang out with goombata. He’s investigating Charlie Chiccante’s murder. Also Johnny Gambello’s murder.” I paused. “You did hear they’re dead?”
She made a spitting gesture. “Good riddance to them both!”
“Yeah, Lucky said they wouldn’t really be missed.”
“Lucky killed them?”
“What? No! No.” Although it was a doomed cause—and a warped one—I made a clumsy effort to improve the widow’s opinion of my friend. “Actually, Lucky’s working with the good guys on this one.”
“Lucky is working with Detective Lopez?” she said in astonishment.
“Uh, not in the strictest sense,” I said. “But Lucky’s trying to discover who killed Charlie and Johnny.”
“Of course he is. They were Gambellos.”
“Oh. Right.” So much for improving her opinion of Lucky. “And Lopez is trying to find the killer, too.”
“I see. What I don’t quite see is where you… Oh! Oh.” She nodded. “Now I recognize you. You’re the singing server who saw the slaying, aren’t you?”
“Does everyone in this town read the tabloids?”
“I’m a widow,” she said tersely. “I have a lot of time to fill.”
“Yes, I’m the one who saw Charlie get killed,” I admitted. “And I… sort of got dragged into Johnny’s death, too, though it’s complicated—and pretty disturbing—to explain how.”
“Johnny. That babbo.” She looked me up and down. “Yes, you look like his type.” The remark was clearly not a compliment—which wasn’t surprising, given her opinion of Johnny. I’d heard the word “ babbo” at Stella’s often enough to know that it meant someone who was a useless idiot.
I wondered if my costume was overdone. As per Lucky’s advice, I had done my best this evening to look like the type of gumata I often saw hanging out with the goombata at Bella Stella. My hair was teased and curled and sprayed within an inch of its life, I was wearing heavy makeup, berry-colored lipstick, too much mascara, and long, sparkly earrings. My blouse was satin, my skirt was faux leather, and they were both uncomfortably tight—as were my spike-heeled shoes.
I use the tiny spare bedroom in my apartment as my theatrical trunk. When preparing for an audition or rehearsing a new role I’ve been hired to play, I find it helpful to wear clothes that suit the character rather than my own clothes. So in addition to stocking that back bedroom with some basic props, I keep a huge quantity of costumes, accessories, and makeup there. It’s all stuff I pick up for peanuts at thrift shops and rummage sales, and it has come in handy many times.
So when Lucky had suggested I try to look like a Gambello girl tonight, I didn’t know exactly what I had in that room that would fit the bill, but I knew there would definitely be something. But the way the widow looked at me when she said I was Johnny’s type made me wonder now if I’d done too good a job with my costume.
“I was not involved with Johnny,” I said emphatically. “In fact, there’s a very real sense in which I never even met him.”
“You didn’t miss a worthwhile experience,” she muttered. “His father died in prison, his mother bullied him, and the Shy Don spoiled him. The result was a weakwilled, lying, skirt-chasing loser with a booze-pickled brain.”
“It sounds as if you knew Johnny well,” I said in surprise.
“No, I haven’t talked to him in years.”
“But all those details about his upbringing,” I said. “And the way he turned out—your description sounds just like the guy Lucky knew, too.”
She tilted her head and made a gesture of acquiescence. “I knew him a long time ago. Johnny was young then, but he was already pathetic and self-destructive.
I just never thought it was all his own fault.”
I frowned. “But he was a Gambello, so how did you…” I met her dark, angry expression, and my jaw dropped. “Oh. You’ve had three husbands.” Since Lucky had killed one of them, and since she clearly hated the famiglia, I had simply assumed that all of her husbands had been enemies of the Gambellos. But now I realized that Elena’s knowledge of Don Victor Gambello’s family life during Johnny Be Good’s youth must mean that… “One of them was a Gambello?”
“My first husband,” she said curtly.
“But what about your second husband?” I said, stunned. Had Lucky whacked a fellow Gambello to win the widow?
“He was a Corvino,” she said brusquely. “Is there anything else you would like to know about my personal tragedies, young woman?”
“What family was your third husband in?” I asked, too ghoulishly fascinated to remember things like tact or courtesy.
“I don’t want to talk about my husbands with you!”
“That’s understandable,” I admitted.
In an apparent effort to regain control of the conversation, she spread her hands and said, “I don’t understand—if you’re Jewish and you’re not converting, then why are you here at St. Monica’s? Again.”
Considering what she had just told me, this didn’t seem the right moment to say that I was here tonight for a Corvino-Gambello sit-down. So I blurted, “I need to go into the crypt. Will you come with me?”
“Excuse me?”
“I left something down in the crypt,” I explained. “A wrap I was wearing last night. And I’m afraid to go down there alone to get it.”
“Why?” she asked, in the same tone she might use with a staggering drunk.
I tried to think of the simplest way to explain it. “I saw an apparition of Johnny Be Good down there.”
Her gaze sharpened. “Why would Johnny haunt the crypt of St. Monica’s?”
“When you put it that way, maybe you can understand why I’m afraid to go down there alone.”
“Johnny Gambello was not devout,” the widow said disapprovingly. “Not even mildly faithful. Not to his various wives or his family, and certainly not to God.”
“I hear he prayed whenever he bet big on a longshot,” I offered. “So he must have come here semiregularly from the sound of it.”
“Of all the places he might turn up in the afterlife… church?” She shook her head. “No, I don’t think so.”
“Nonetheless, he was in the crypt yesterday.”
“Since you say you never even met him, what makes you so sure it was Johnny?”
“Lucky was there. He says it was definitely Johnny.”
“So you and Lucky both saw Johnny? After he was dead?”
I nodded. “Which is why I don’t want to go into the crypt alone.”
“Maybe you’re mistaken about the timing,” she said. “What did this apparition look like?”
“Just like Johnny, but—”
“Did he ask Lucky for money?”
“Well, yes.”
“So that explains what Johnny was doing in church,” she said. “Unless he’d bet on another longshot right before dying.”
“But—”
“Obviously, you saw Johnny just before he was murdered.”
“No, he was murdered well before we saw—”
“Father!” Elena looked over my shoulder and her face brightened.
“Elena!” Father Gabriel called across the church. “You’re here late this evening. I missed seeing you at the service today.”
“I was sorry to miss it, Father. So I thought I’d meditate in prayer for a while now. If,” the widow added with an unfriendly glance at me as I turned to face the priest, “I can find a few moments of peace, that is.”
Father Gabriel had entered through a side door. Leaving the dark wooden door ajar behind him, he crossed the floor of the church to the widow. Then he glanced at me and said warmly, “And who is this with you, Elena? A friend? A relative?”
“Neither,” she said. “This is Esther Diamond.”
Still smiling, Father Gabriel frowned a little in confusion. “No, no, I know Esther, and she’s… er…” His gaze flickered over my cheekbones, up to my hair, then back to my eyes. “Esther?”
“Hello, Father, nice to see you again.”
He recovered from the shock of my appearance with admirable speed and grace. “And a great pleasure to see you here again, too. I talked to Lucky today, so I was expecting you, of course. I just didn’t quite recognize… Well, you look very pretty. Again.”
I beamed at him. “Thank you, Father.”
“If Lucky’s coming,” grumbled the widow, “he can go into the crypt with you.”
“Yes, that’s what Lucky said,” Father Gabriel said.
“Huh?” I said.
“I’ve set up some chairs, a table, and some refreshments in the crypt for you, as per Lucky’s instructions,” the priest said cheerfully.
“We’re meeting in the crypt? Again?”
The widow gave me another sharp look. “I thought you said Lucky was like an uncle to you.”
“He is. Do you really imagine,” I said in annoyance, “that I would choose the crypt of a church for my amorous encounters?”
“I thought Lucky chose the place,” she retorted.
“We’re conducting business down there,” I said. “Regarding these murders.”
She lifted her brows. “Indeed?”
Father Gabriel said, “And I’m so pleased you and Lucky chose St. Monica’s for this meeting. A house of God is certainly the right place to take the first step toward ending this new round of violence and renewing our bonds with each other as brothers and sisters in Christ our Lord.” He did a little double take when he looked at me and remembered I wasn’t a Christian. “And also certainly the loving bonds of, er, Moses, Abraham, Yahweh… Yes, indeed. All very good people, too.”
“Whatever,” I said. “The point is, there’s something Evil going on here, and we need to put a stop to it before anyone else winds up dead.”
“The men who have been killed,” the widow said, her voice bitter, “men like Johnny and Charlie. Why do you care? Do you know how much misery they caused in their time? Why should you want to prevent the deaths of more men like that?”
“I witnessed one of these deaths, so the cops think the killer may target me,” I said. “And there’s too much about these killings that we don’t understand, such as how they were accomplished—”
“The papers say Johnny was hit over the head and dumped in the river,” Elena said. “No mystery there.”
“—and what the role of these doppelgangsters is.”
“Doppelgangsters?” the priest and the widow said together.
“Um, it’s complicated,” I said. “Anyhow, my point is, these aren’t typical mob hits; there’s something very strange occurring, and since we don’t know why Charlie and Johnny were chosen for these murders, we can’t say for sure that the next victim won’t be an innocent bystander—like me or Lucky.”
“There is nothing innocent about Lucky Battistuzzi,” the Widow Giacalona spat.
Since she had every reason to feel that way, I didn’t argue. Instead, I asked the priest to escort me into the crypt.
“Now?” he said. “You don’t want to wait for the others?”
I explained that I had come early in search of my wrap. Seeing his blank expression, I asked, “Didn’t the administrator I spoke to on the phone today give you the message?”
He shook his head. “At least, I don’t think so. I admit, I can be a bit absentminded. But I was in the crypt earlier, Esther, to set it up for your meeting, and I don’t remember seeing an evening wrap there. Of course, I’m not very knowledgeable about ladies’ accessories, and I wasn’t looking for it. Shall we go and have a look now?”
I nodded and thanked him. He gestured for me to precede him, then encouraged the widow to find solace in her prayers. With Father Gabriel
’s sturdy footsteps echoing behind me, I went toward the stairs that led down into the crypt.
13
Once Father Gabriel and I were out of earshot of the widow, I said, “I think I made her angry. I didn’t mean to.”
“Well, it must be admitted that she’s prone to anger,” Father Gabriel said gently, as we descended the stairs to the crypt. “Especially when the subject of, er, certain families comes up. The Gambellos and Corvinos have given her much to grieve over.”
“Both families?” I asked curiously.
“Oh, yes. Both families. It’s terribly sad. The trials she has been through, the sorrows and injustices…”
The lights were already on at the bottom of the brick-lined staircase, as well as inside the crypt. Within the underground chamber, I found no memories of Johnny, thank goodness. Just bunny costumes, chairs, tables, and food. A lot of food.
I said, “Wow! When you said refreshments, I thought you meant a pot of coffee and a box of doughnuts.”
There was a folding table set up near the far wall, and it was practically groaning beneath the weight of deli foods from, I assumed, one of Little Italy’s mouth-watering salumerie. Paper-thin slices of prosciutto were delicately rolled and arranged on the same platter with shining slices of fresh mozzarella, creamy-colored provo-lone, plump purple figs, well-marbled salami, crisp-looking slices of red and green bell pepper, and pale green melon balls. Another tray contained slices of lightly seasoned roasted eggplant and grilled zucchini, four kinds of olives, and marinated mushrooms. There was a basket of Italian bread, and a generous supply of miniature cannoli—crispy tubes of dessert pastry stuffed with sweetened ricotta cheese and tiny bits of dark chocolate, then dusted with powdered sugar. A selection of sodas, fruit juices, and bottled water was chilling on ice, and there was an electric cappuccino maker with a pitcher of milk beside it.
“There’s no wine,” Father Gabriel said apologetically. “I just thought, you know, a tense meeting about a deadly matter among bitter enemies…”
“Ah,” I said. “Yes. Alcohol might not be a good idea. They could get tipsy and shoot up the church.”
“Or one of us,” he said with feeling.
“Good point,” I said.
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