“Napoli doesn’t know,” he said.
My shoulders sagged with relief. “Oh, that’s good.”
“No, it’s not good,” Lopez snapped. “Today I concealed evidence in a murder investigation, Esther!”
“Oh!” I realized what he was saying. “Oh. You found that note with our numbers on it, and you . . . pocketed it? To protect me?”
“Yes.” His voice was clipped, his expression dark.
“That was very thoughtful,” Max said, beaming at Lopez.
Lopez gave him a look that scared me.
“Max,” I said, “try not to talk.”
“Hmm?”
“If they find out,” I said anxiously to Lopez, “would you be suspended? Or . . .”
“Or charged?” He unleashed his anger now. “For stealing a note that connects my ‘fiancée’ to a brutal murder? Yes, Esther, I could be charged with obstructing justice. Probably, though, the department would rather keep it quiet and just kick me off the force. No one wants a scandal in the Organized Crime Control Bureau, after all, so the NYPD probably wouldn’t like to advertise, by charging me, that one of their detectives concealed evidence in a murder to protect the mob girl he’s been dating. The possibilities for tabloid headlines alone would be bloodcurdling, from my captain’s point of view.”
Feeling terrible about this, I said, “I never—”
“Merely suspending me, of course, is a possibility. That’s the kind of pass that a superior officer gives to a detective he likes and who has a track record in his department. But guess what?”
“I know,” I said, my heart pounding as I saw just how furious he was. “Napoli doesn’t like you, and you’ve only been in OCCB a few days. But—”
“And that’s not the point!”
Max said, “Perhaps we should all calm—”
“If you don’t shut him up,” Lopez said to me, “I swear to God I’m going to do something that they’ll have to charge me for.”
“Max,” I said sharply, “don’t talk.”
“The point,” Lopez said, “is that there’s been a murder, and I concealed evidence and removed it from the scene, and I’m a cop, and that’s not what I do.”
And that was the bottom line, I realized. He was more appalled by what he had done to protect me than he would be by anything that could happen to his career because of me.
“Then we have to face the music,” I said.
“What?” he snapped.
A sudden sense of fatalistic calm washed over me. “You’ve got to enter that evidence into the investigation. You didn’t destroy it, did you? So take it to work and say that you found it at the scene and something happened that distracted you, so you pocketed it without realizing it, and now you’re—”
“And as soon as Napoli finds out whose phone number is written on this note, he’ll know I’m lying,” Lopez said dismissively.
“Of course he will. But he’ll also know that, after you took the note, you came to your senses and brought it right back.” When Lopez didn’t respond, I said, “Or if you don’t like that plan, then go back to Vinny’s wine vault and leave the note there for someone else to find. You’re a cop, you must know how to plant evidence.” After a moment, I said, “That came out wrong.”
But his attention was suddenly on a different matter. “How do you know the hit happened in the vault? We haven’t released that information.”
I had seen enough episodes of Crime and Punishment to recognize the implication. “We didn’t kill Danny!”
“Gracious, no!” Then Max remembered he wasn’t supposed to speak. “My apologies.”
Lopez blinked. “For not killing Danny Dapezzo?”
My cell phone rang, making us all jump.
“You know we’re not killers,” I said as I went over to the table where my purse was lying.
“Don’t answer that,” Lopez said.
“I have to. It could be my agent,” I said. “At long last.”
“This late?” he said doubtfully.
“Maybe,” I said. “We’ve been having trouble connecting and this is important.”
“This is more important, Esther.”
“I’m trying to get an audition for something specific,” I said, opening my purse. “There’s very little time left.” In fact, I was afraid Thack was calling me to say it was too late by now, the part had already been cast.
“We’re talking about murder and concealing evidence,” Lopez said sharply.
The ringing persisted.
“The only reason I’m involved in this mess in the first place,” I said, searching my purse for the phone, “is because I was waiting tables when Charlie Chiccante died instead of working a real job. So I would think that you, of all people, would appreciate how important it is that I get this audition!”
The door bells chimed. I froze briefly as I thought about Corvino assassins again, then relaxed when I heard Lucky’s voice.
“Hey, has the Doc got some plastic bags or something?” he called. “Our favorite familiar left her calling card on the sidewalk.”
Nelli growled.
Lopez turned toward the sound of Lucky’s voice. “Jesus, Esther, please tell me that’s not who I think it is.”
“Hey, don’t growl at me,” Lucky admonished the dog. I heard the metallic click of him unhooking her leash. “You’re the one who . . . Nelli?”
I found my ringing phone in my purse, pulled it out, and looked at the LCD panel. Not Thack. Damn. The readout said “Caller Unknown.” I didn’t recognize the number.
Nelli’s toenails clicked on the floor as she trotted around the bookcase, still growling. She froze when she saw Lopez, her body tense, her floppy ears pricked alertly.
I flipped open my phone and raised it to my ear.
Nelli’s lips peeled back in a snarl, exposing her big, sharp teeth, and she crouched down on her massive haunches, letting out a ferocious growl.
Shocked, I dropped my phone. It fell to the floor with a clatter. “Nelli!” I said. “Stop that!”
Lopez looked at Max. “You got a vicious dog the size of a taxi cab? You really are out of your mind.”
Lucky appeared behind Nelli and said to her, “Hey! What’s with you?”
“Lucky Battistuzzi,” Lopez said with resignation. “Great. Just great.”
“Nelli, no!” I said, as the dog crept menacingly toward Lopez, still growling, her fangs bared. “Max, make her stop that.”
“That does it,” Lopez said, holding very still. “I’m having this dog impounded.”
“I don’t get it,” Lucky said to Lopez. “Kids in the street can walk right up to this dog, no problem. But one whiff of you, and . . .” He drew in a sharp breath.
I heard a man’s voice calling my name through my cell phone. Keeping my eyes fixed on Nelli, I bent down and fumbled around until my fingers felt the phone, then I picked it up.
Max drew in a sharp breath, too. Then he seized one of the swords on the table.
“Max, what are you doing?” I grabbed his arm and hung on. “Just reprimand her! You don’t have to kill her!”
Lucky reached into his pocket and shoved past the massive snarling dog. I heard the snap of metal, and I saw something glint beneath the overhead lights as Lucky made a slashing motion at Lopez’s face.
I cried out. Lopez moved just as fast. His fist shot out, his weight shifted, and the knife in Lucky’s hand flew past Nelli as the gangster went tumbling to the floor.
“Max,” Lucky rasped, sounding like he’d had the wind knocked out of him. “Now!”
Lopez had already picked up a chair and was using it to ward off Nelli, who was stalking him, her growls terrifyingly loud, her fangs dripping, her eyes glowing with feral aggression. “Call off your dog, Max, or I’ll shoot it!”
“Nelli, run!” Max cried, shaking off my slack grip. “It’s armed!”
I saw that the skin of Lopez’s cheek was gaping open from the wound Lucky had inflicted.
Ther
e was no blood.
“Oh, my God,” I said in a strangled voice. “Max! NO!”
The old mage rushed forward with his sword.
Still keeping the chair between himself and Nelli, Lopez reached for his gun. But dealing with three adversaries and surprised by Max’s attack, he wasn’t quite fast enough. He was still drawing his weapon when Max cut off his head.
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.
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