“Back to work?”
“I’m following a lead. I’ve got to go meet someone.”
“You’re not safe,” I said urgently. “Don’t go.”
“The city’s on the verge of a mob war, Esther. That’s a very messy thing, and people besides wiseguys will get hurt. I want to get you out of here—”
“And maybe into an insane asylum?” I said sourly.
“—but I don’t have time to fight about it. I’ve got to leave.” He started collecting the bladed weapons from the table.
“What are you doing?”
“You sound insane, you’re talking about beheading people—”
“Not people!“
“—and chopping off heads is evidently Max’s bright idea. All things considered, I don’t think it’s a great idea for me to leave two swords and an ax lying around here when I go.”
“You can’t just take those! Don’t you have to have a warrant or something?”
“Let’s agree that I’m not taking them as a cop, but as your concerned… friend.”
“Give that back!” I grabbed the ax and tugged. “You can’t leave us defenseless!”
He used his free hand to grasp my wrist and torque it downward. A sharp jolt of pain made me let go of the ax and stumble. He twisted my arm behind my back and pulled me up against his chest. I was breathing hard and grimacing in pain. He looked angry, sad, and frustrated.
“Either you’re leaving here right now, or else these weapons are leaving.” His voice was quiet, his tone unyielding. “God knows what you might do with them, in your current state of mind.”
“Where do you want me to go?” I was angry and frustrated, too. “A psych ward?”
“That’s not a bad idea.” He lifted his brows. “Well?”
I lowered my head and tried to get control of my breathing, aware of our bodies pressed together. Aware of how different things were now than they had been only this afternoon. Nothing about this embrace resembled the one we had shared then.
“If you take these weapons,” I said, realizing there was a silver lining, “keep them with you. And if you see your perfect double—”
“No, Esther, I’m not cutting off someone’s head.” He released me. “But I will take the weapons.”
Ax still in hand, he picked up the two swords. “Don’t eat or drink or inhale anything else Max gives you—”
“Oh, for God’s sake.”
“—and I’ll try to call you tomorrow. We’ll talk about protective custody.”
“Lopez!” I followed him as he headed for the door. “Will you at least promise to call me immediately if you see someone who looks just like you?”
“We’ll also talk about you getting treatment.”
“Listen to me! What’s happening here is more complicated than just another mob war! The Gambellos—”
“Esther, I know you want to help.” He paused on the threshold and looked over his shoulder at me. “And some of what you told me tonight is helpful. It’s useful. Okay? But now you’ve got to stay out of this.”
And he left.
Max and Nelli were alone when they returned to the shop.
“Where’s Lucky?”
“He got a call while we were out. He has been summoned by the don of his famiglia.”
It was nearly midnight. “Don’t wiseguys ever sleep?” Max’s gaze fell on the table where I sat. “Where are our weapons?”
I told him what had happened.
When I finished, he patted my back. “Don’t blame yourself, my dear. I’m sure you explained the danger with excellent clarity. But I’ve learned through long and difficult experience that most people respond to mystical events precisely the way Detective Lopez does. That is to say, by dismissing some of the evidence and interpreting the rest according to their existing beliefs.” He added morosely, “Or else they respond the way Doctor Dapezzo did.”
Recalling the capo’s unbridled mirth, I said, “Well, at least Danny had a good time on the final night of his life.”
“And you mustn’t fret about the loss of the bladed weapons. I have more.”
“Really?”
“I have no more swords, alas, but I do have a rather good machete in the laboratory that will serve our purpose,” he said. “And it is somewhat comforting to know that Detective Lopez is now armed with suitable weapons for dispatching a doppelgangster.”
“He says he won’t use them.”
“We can only hope that, if confronted by his own perfect double, he will change his mind.”
“But then it’ll be too late! Once he comes face-to-face with himself, he’ll be a victim of the killer’s curse, and nothing can save his life after that! So how can we prevent him from meeting his duplicate?”
“Well, first of all, keep in mind that we have dispatched his double and that it’s entirely possible the killer is unaware of this. In which case, he won’t even consider making another duplicate until he suspects that something has gone wrong.”
“And then he will make another, and—”
“So far, the killer has only created one doppelgangster per victim,” Max said. “Therefore, it is not unreasonable for us to hope that he can only make one for each target.”
“But you’re not sure.”
“No. But logic suggests that, at least for the rest of tonight, Detective Lopez is out of danger.”
“Logic,” I repeated. “You must be kidding.” Still, this soothed my panic enough for me to remember what I had wanted to tell Max. So I explained what I had realized when confronted by the real Lopez.
“Hmm. Yes, this is most interesting, Esther!” He stroked his beard. “So Detective Lopez’s doppelgangster tonight was wearing exactly the same clothing that the real man wore at your apartment early this afternoon…”
“Plus the jacket,” I said, “which he didn’t have when he came to my place. So I guess he hadn’t been duplicated yet?”
“But by tonight, he was.”
“What I don’t understand is, how did Lopez avoid meeting his double? It sounds to me like they were both at the scene of the crime this afternoon. They both found the note with our phone numbers… Wait! Oh.”
“Ah!” Max nodded.
“He was duplicated after he found the note,” I said.
“The doppelgangster shared his memories up to that point. It recalled finding the note at the scene of the crime, concealing the evidence, and phoning this number to verify that it was indeed mine.”
“But it didn’t know about anything that happened later,” I said. “It wasn’t affected by the things that took Lopez’s mind off that discovery as the evening progressed. And it didn’t know about the surveillance photos, either, which bothered the real Lopez more than the note did.”
“The doppelgangster,” Max mused, “gave in to the impulse to come here immediately and confront you about the note. An impulse that Detective Lopez presumably felt when he found our phone numbers with the deceased, but couldn’t act upon at the time.”
“Because he was on the job. He could place a phone call, but he couldn’t leave.” I paused. “But, wait, the doppelgangster didn’t come here immediately, Max. It came here right before Lopez did.”
“It didn’t come here immediately after the discovery of the note,” Max agreed. “I postulate that it came here immediately after it was created.”
A chill went through me. “This is creeping me out.”
“So we know the doppelgangster came into being sometime after I received Detective Lopez’s extremely brief phone call and before the creature arrived here.”
“That’s a window of a few hours. Does this mean that’s how long it takes to make a doppelgangster?”
“Possibly. Or perhaps even much less time than that. Alternately, however, the process could have begun well before this afternoon and then been completed this evening.”
My shoulders slumped. “So we haven’t really narrowed down anything after all?”
“On the co
ntrary!” Max said encouragingly. “While we still don’t know how it was done—nor precisely how long the whole process took—we have discerned the moment of Detective Lopez’s life from which his doppelgangster was created: While he was angry about the note and conscience stricken over concealing it, but before his subsequent experiences began distracting his attention from this.”
“All right,” I said. “We know approximately when… but we still have no idea why.”
“Why he was duplicated?”
“The other three victims were all wiseguys. Why is the murderer trying to kill a cop now?”
“Because Detective Lopez is his adversary,” Max suggested.
“Wiseguys don’t target cops,” I said with a frown. “So are we looking for a wiseguy who’s violating that custom? Or are we…” It occurred to me for the first time. “Is it possible the killer isn’t a wiseguy?”
“Hmm. That’s a theory we’ve overlooked until now. The victims all had enemies in their own, er, profession, so we made the reasonable supposition that the killer is a colleague. However, you’re quite right—that needn’t necessarily be the case.” He continued, “On the other hand, our adversary is creative, devious, ruthless, and clever. Given the unconventional nature of these murders, I find it difficult to believe he abides by popular custom, so to speak, when choosing his victims. Therefore, he may well be a member of Lucky’s profession and yet entirely willing to target a police officer.”
“But if a cop dies…” I felt sick at the thought of which cop we were talking about, but made myself continue, “There’ll be hell to pay, and the killer must know that.”
“If so, then he is indifferent to that eventuality.” Max shrugged. “Perhaps he even courts it. It would certainly add to the violent chaos that is now imminent.”
“Yes, it would. And why this particular cop?” I said desperately. “There’s a whole team on the case!”
“Perhaps because the killer has identified him as a greater threat than his fellow officers are? As you are well aware, Detective Lopez is both astute and persistent.”
“I should have conked him over the head and locked him up in the laboratory.”
“No, he would get into mischief down there,” Max said.
“Not if he was tied up,” I said grimly.
There was a pause. Then Max said, “I don’t wish to alarm you unnecessarily—”
“Why bother, when there’s so much necessary alarm to be had?”
“—but before he left to see his superior, Lucky said that it’s not entirely impossible that you and I are now in some danger from the Corvino family.”
“Oh. Right. The thought had occurred to me.” I said, “Also to Lopez. When he got here tonight, he wanted to take us into protective custody. But now I think he wants to put me in a loony bin and you in a maximum security prison.”
“That sounds most incommodious.”
“Indeed.”
“Lucky says that since you’re a dame and I’m an old guy, and we’ve never whacked anyone, we won’t be high on the hit list if the two families go to the mattresses—”
“You’re learning his dialect, I see.”
“—but we should nonetheless take reasonable precautions until he knows exactly what the Corvinos’ intentions toward us are.”
“Such as?”
“He recommends that I keep the bookstore closed for the time being. And since I can ward this building against mundane intruders—as well as their firearms—you are to sleep here tonight.”
Actually, that sounded fine by me. It had been an exhausting day. The tense journey to Brooklyn, Danny’s murder and Vinny’s strange story, followed by a mind-numbing evening of doing more reading about apparitional bilocated doppelgangerism… All capped off by two awful confrontations with Lopez, during one of which I had watched him get decapitated. All in all, I realized I’d have trouble just crawling as far as the nearest bed now, never mind making it all the way home to be murdered in my own apartment by Corvino hitters.
Max said, “Hieronymus’ rooms on the third floor are vacant, if you think you would be comfortable there.”
“Hieronymus.” I grimaced.
“The accommodations are modest, but adequate for your temporary needs, I think.”
I thought about it and gave an involuntary shudder. “Oh, I don’t think I want to sleep in a bedroom that was recently inhabited by a demented young wizard who would have wound up killing half the city if we hadn’t, er, sent him away.” Remembering what we had done to Hieronymus made me think of Lopez again, which made me feel anxious and weepy. “My nerves are frayed enough as it is, Max. I’ll just sleep on your couch.”
He nodded. “Nelli usually sleeps on the couch, but I feel certain that she would be pleased to relinquish her usual place to you, given the circumstances.”
“I’m wiped out. I think I’ll go straight to bed.” I stood up. Nelli, who’d been sitting nearby, rose to her feet, too, and yawned. I asked Max, “Are you coming upstairs now?”
“In a little while,” he said. “I need to meditate and focus my strength to ensure this building is well protected for the rest of the night.”
I nodded, turned, and walked to the back of the shop. Nelli followed me. I opened the stairwell door so we could ascend to Max’s sparsely furnished apartment on the second floor. I’d only been there once before, but I knew where the bathroom was. I went in there, turned on the light, and conducted a quick and very basic nighttime toilette. Then I poked gingerly around the apartment for a few minutes in search of a blanket. I found a worn but clean cotton quilt that was folded up and lying in a cedar chest in Max’s monklike bedroom. I took it back into the living room, turned out the light, and lay down. I would sleep in my comfortable knit dress. The couch sagged a little, but was relatively comfortable. Unfortunately, though, only days after her arrival in this dimension, it was already redolent of Nelli. I would definitely need a shower in the morning.
Nelli didn’t seem to mind my being in her usual sleeping place, but she mistakenly thought the couch was big enough for two. Without warning, she cheerfully climbed on top of me and started settling herself into the cushions with contented little snuffles, impervious to my attempts to shove her off. After a brief argument which didn’t seem to faze her a bit, I decided that as long as I could breathe, I was too exhausted to care about retaining feeling in my legs. And although I thought at first that her snoring would keep me awake all night, it wasn’t very long before my own fatigue overcame the noise. I sank into oblivion and slept like the dead until late the next morning. I didn’t even hear Max come upstairs and go to bed, nor go back downstairs again to resume his work sometime after sunrise.
And as is so often the case, getting enough sleep for the human brain to function effectively made a tremendous difference. The following day, I woke up knowing who the killer was and why Lopez had been targeted.
20
“The Widow Giacalona?” Max said when I confronted him in his laboratory with my revelation.
“Yes! I was so exhausted and upset last night, I couldn’t see it at the time.” The truth had hit me within minutes of waking up. I had raced downstairs without a shower, my hair in a rat’s nest and my clothes stinking of Nelli, to put the facts before Max. “And it’s probably a good thing Lucky’s not here. I don’t think he would listen to reason. He’s in love with her, you know.”
“Oh, dear.”
“Who hates the Corvinos and the Gambellos enough to kill men in both families? Elena Giacalona. Why? Because a Gambello killed her second husband, and a Corvino killed her third.”
“I can see how that might stoke vengeance in her heart,” Max said sadly.
I started pacing as I reviewed the next point. “Johnny Gambello was a useless momzer who was no threat to a rival family. Danny Dapezzo, a Corvino capo, even played cards with him, for goodness sake! The Corvinos had no reason to whack him. And Don Victor had forbidden any of the Gambellos to kill him. But who hat
ed Johnny enough to want him dead? The woman who’d lost her first husband because of Johnny!” I told Max, “Anthony Gambello died horribly, leaving Elena a widow, because Johnny masqueraded as Anthony while having an affair with a violent drug lord’s girlfriend.”
“Good heavens!” Max said.
“The night before last, when I got to St. Monica’s a little early for the sit-down, I told Elena that Lucky and I had encountered an apparition of Johnny after his death. And she tried to convince me that’s not what I had seen, that I was mistaken about the timing.”
“But isn’t that what Detective Lopez thinks, too?”
“Yeah, but that’s because he thinks I’m delusional.”
“Might not the Widow Giacalona also think you’re delusional?”
“Might not the Widow Giacalona,” I said, “be trying to cover up the trail of her handiwork by insisting I saw the real Johnny Be Good and not an apparition?”
“It does sound feasible.”
I continued, “Elena wouldn’t spare Johnny just because he was under the Shy Don’s protection, the way others have spared him. It’s hard to believe she cares what the old man wants, and easy to believe she’d like a chance to make him grieve. After all, Victor Gambello not only ordered the death of her second husband, he also tried to strangle her for the sin of marrying a Corvino!”
“Zounds!”
I recalled thinking at one point during my conversation with her that Elena didn’t look wholly sane. I had thought it was excessive religious fervor. Could it instead have been homicidal mania?
“Who would be crazy enough to want to start a new Corvino-Gambello war? Who would do something so dangerous and destructive?” I concluded, “The widow who hates both families so bitterly!”
“It is a most convincing theory,” Max admitted. “Is Detective Lopez investigating her? Is that why he has been selected as the next victim?”
I sat down suddenly, feeling sick and guilt-ridden. “No, that’s my fault.”
He blinked. “How is that possible?”
“I told her about Lopez. That he was a smart, honest, hardworking detective who was investigating the case. And although I didn’t mean to, I think I gave her the impression that he and Lucky were cooperating on the investigation.”
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