Dopplegangster

by Laura Resnick

  Breathing hard, Max slumped and started to keel over sideways.

  “Max!” I rushed toward him and caught him before he hit the floor.

  He was damp with sweat and panting with exhaustion. Nelli rose, staggering as she discovered that her foot was too tender to hold any weight, and hobbled a couple of steps closer to investigate Max’s condition, her black nose wiggling as she sniffed his head. I saw that the intense heat had melted the wax in the painted symbols on both their faces, so that they were now covered with runny, rust-colored streaks and splotches.

  I petted Nelli with one hand as I held Max in my arms. “Good work. Very good work.”

  Her tail wagged wearily.

  “Max? Are you okay?”

  “Fine. Just a little . . . fatigued.”

  We heard another gunshot.

  I stiffened. “Lucky!”

  “We must assist him,” Max said faintly. “Help me up.”

  “He said to stay here until he told us it was safe to come out.”

  “We can’t, Esther. There’s one more doppelgangster.”

  “I thought so.” I looked over my shoulder to demand the priest tell us who it was, even though I thought I knew.

  But Gabriel had escaped while Max was destroying the altar where the priest had cursed his victims with certain death.

  “He’s gone,” I said in dismay. “I didn’t beat him up enough.”

  “But you certainly gave it your best effort.” Max stumbled toward the door. “We must go to Lucky’s aid.” I followed him as he added, “He will be outnumbered and taken by surprise.”

  Nelli was limping heavily behind me. Max turned in the dark doorway and said to me, “Oh, bring the candle.”

  Nelli suddenly growled. I turned away from Max to look at her. I heard a dull thud behind me and whirled around. Buonarotti was standing in the doorway holding the gun with which he had just pistol-whipped Max. Max fell to the floor, unconscious. Buonarotti seized my throat, pulled me against him, and pressed the gun to my cheek. Holding me between himself and Nelli, who was snarling and barking, he backed out of the room, ordering me, “Shut the door.”

  I couldn’t speak, couldn’t breathe, couldn’t shake my head. I hung by my throat from Buonarotti’s squeezing fingers. His fingernails dug into my skin. The pain was mind-fogging. I thought I would pass out in another second.

  “Shut the door,” he repeated, “or I’ll shoot the dog. Now.”

  My hand fumbled for the door handle. I found it and pulled. Max’s body was in the way. Buonarotti kicked Max with his foot, rolling him over. My eyes watering with pain and my vision blackening, I pulled the door shut.

  “Good.” Buonarotti pressed up against me in the pitch dark hallway. “Now tell me where he is.”

  I made a strangling sound.

  “Huh? Oh.” He loosened his grip enough to let me talk. “Where is he? Tell me, bitch, or I’ll blow your head off.”

  “Where’s who?” I choked out.

  “Gabriel.”

  “I don’t know.”

  He slapped me so hard I reeled away, then he yanked my hair to pull me close again. No wonder Elena had called him an animal.

  “He ran off,” I gasped out.

  “Why?”

  “He’s a coward.”

  “What the hell is going on here?”

  “Huh?” And then the truth dawned on me. This Buonarotti’s face wasn’t bloodied. “Oh, my God. It was you.”

  Another gunshot rang out. Then two more. My captor stiffened. “Who is that?”

  “You don’t know?” I rasped.

  I was right about the final figure I had seen in the dying flames of the altar.

  Buonarotti’s doppelgangster grabbed my throat again. “You and I are getting out of here.”

  Well, Gabriel had said his partner was proving to be more trouble than he was worth. Apparently the priest had decided it was time to help him shuffle off this mortal coil. Once Buonarotti came face to face with his own perfect double, he’d be easy pickings. Perhaps the priest intended to bring about the three-way war by giving up Don Michael to the other two families now that he was vulnerable.

  Holding me by the throat, his gun pressed to my head, the doppelgangster hauled me down the pitch dark hallway. We paused at the doorway leading to the choir gallery, and my captor leaned against it, listening. We heard voices shouting on the other side of it.

  “No, not that way,” he muttered.

  “There’s another way?”

  “Stairway to the courtyard.” He dragged me to the end of the hall. “It’s how I came up.”

  “No, those stairs aren’t safe,” I protested as he dragged me toward them.

  “That’s just what he tells people to keep them out of here,” Buonarotti said dismissively.

  He took his hand off my neck long enough to open a door. Despite his comment, I was still anxious about descending a staircase in complete darkness with a gun pressed to my head. I was equally anxious about going anywhere with a murderous doppelgangster.

  So it was a relief when I heard a man’s voice coming from somewhere beyond the bottom of the stairs.

  Buonarotti went still and covered my mouth with his hand, pressing the gun harder against my head. Along with the voice, we heard a gurgling electrical noise, like someone switching channels on a radio. This was followed by a metallic sounding voice. I couldn’t make out the words, but I gave a reflexive start when I realized what the sound was: a walkie-talkie.

  And then I realized what the voices were talking about. I could make out a man saying, “Shots fired,” and giving this address.

  Someone was talking on a police radio. There was a cop at the other end of these stairs!

  I tried to cry out. Buonarotti squeezed my throat so hard I nearly blacked out. He shut the door and then dragged me back to the other door, the one that led to the choir gallery.

  “One sound,” he whispered, “and I’ll kill you.”

  I was coughing helplessly from the abuse to my throat, so this seemed like a pretty stupid threat. He opened the door a crack and listened.

  We both heard Gabriel whispering, “No, there’s a cop in the courtyard! We need to leave this way.”

  Buonarotti—the real one—whispered back, “How do you think we’re gonna get past Lucky? He’s between us and the door.”

  The doppelgangster’s body, which was pressed up against mine, stiffened. “Who the fuck is that?” When I didn’t respond, he prodded, “Who’s with Gabriel?”

  “You are,” I said.

  “Huh?” He made an irritated sound. “Dumb broad.” He opened the door and dragged me through it.

  The gallery was pitch dark, too. Buonarotti and Gabriel weren’t giving Lucky a target by illuminating themselves.

  “You and your bright ideas,” Buonarotti said to the priest. “I can’t see a fucking thing.”

  “Then neither can Lucky,” Gabriel said. “We’ll slip past him.”

  And then a familiar voice at the far end of the church shouted, “Police! Weapons down! Police! Drop your weapons! I’m a cop!”

  Lopez! Every cell in my body got a flood of renewed energy as I recognized the voice.

  “Hey, I’m not armed!” Lucky shouted. “Don’t shoot! I am not armed!”

  “That liar,” Buonarotti muttered.

  “Lopez!” I cried.

  “Esther! Stay down!” He didn’t even sound surprised to hear my voice. “Lucky, is that you?” he called.

  “Yeah. Watch out! Buonarotti’s the killer! He’s so off his rocker, he’ll whack a cop!”

  “Where is he?” Lopez’s voice was coming from a new position. He was getting closer to us.

  “I think he’s up in the gallery,” Lucky called.

  The doppelgangster drew in a sharp breath through its nostrils, thinking this meant itself.

  “What’s wrong with the lights?” Lopez shouted.

  “Not sure,” Lucky replied.

  “Shit! I don’t
have a flashlight.”

  “Listen, cop!” the doppelgangster shouted, its mouth so close to my ear that I flinched. “I’ve got your girlfriend!”

  “Who the fuck is that?” said Buonarotti in the darkness.

  In the dormitory hallway behind us, on the other side of the door we had come through, I heard a man shout, “Police! Weapons down! NYPD! Drop your weapons! This is the police!”

  The doppelgangster shouted down to Lopez, his voice carrying through the darkness, “I’ve got her right here, and I’ll blow her head off!”

  “He’s lying! His gun’s empty!” Lucky said.

  To clarify the situation, the doppelgangster fired a shot.

  “Holy shit!” said Lucky.

  “Who the fuck is that?” said Buonarotti.

  “Lucky,” I shouted, “there’s a dopp—agh!” The hand on my throat tightened.

  “Esther?” Lopez shouted. “Esther!”

  At our backs, on the other side of the door, the cop again called, “Police! Drop your weapons now!”

  “Esther!” Lopez shouted, his voice coming closer. Something crashed to the floor. “Goddamn it! Don’t any of these lights work?”

  The doppelgangster ordered, “Throw down your gun and get on the floor facedown, cop! I’m getting out of here! I’ve got your woman! You get in my way, and I swear to God, I will kill her!”

  “Esther!” Lopez shouted.

  “Answer him,” the doppelgangster said. “Tell him to let us pass.”

  I was coughing, unable to speak. In the hallway behind me, I heard a scuffle, a faint thud, and then a groan. The door behind us opened.

  “Esther! Goddamn it, where are you? Esther!” And then Lopez screamed, “I want LIGHTS!”

  The lights came on, blazing throughout the church. The sudden brightness made my captor and me both flinch. I squeezed my eyes shut as they stung and watered. The creature dragged me closer to the door behind us, ensuring that we remained shielded from Lopez’s sight by the dramatic velvet curtains that framed the broad balcony.

  “Freeze!” Lopez shouted, presumably at Buonarotti, who now stood exposed on the balcony with light blazing gloriously down upon him.

  “What the fuck . . .” Buonarotti said.

  As my eyes adjusted, I saw the mobster staring at me with an expression of appalled amazement. Then I realized he wasn’t staring at me.

  The doppelgangster sucked in its breath. “What the fuck . . .”

  Buonarotti’s gaze flashed to the disheveled priest who stood blinking and shielding his eyes, only an arm’s length away from him. The snarl of murderous hatred on Buonarotti’s face revealed that he knew his partner had betrayed him. He screamed—an inarticulate bellow of rage—and started beating Gabriel.

  “Freeze!” Lopez shouted somewhere below the two men on the balcony. “Freeze!”

  The gangster knocked down Father Gabriel, then reached for the candelabra I had knocked over earlier tonight.

  “I’ll shoot!” Lopez warned.

  “I’ll kill you, you bastard!”

  “Don’t do it!” Lopez shouted.

  Buonarotti picked up the candelabra and screamed at the cowering priest. “I’ll kill you!”

  A gunshot went off.

  Buonarotti cried out and staggered back, and blood rolled down his arm. I didn’t understand what was happening for a moment. Then I realized that Lopez had shot him.

  Undeterred by his bullet wound, Buonarotti stumbled back toward the priest, screaming, “I’ll kill you, you bastard! I’ll kill you!”

  “Stop!” Lopez warned. “Don’t make me shoot you twice!”

  The priest turned to run this way, apparently forgetting there was a doppelgangster in his path. Not to mention a woman who had just beaten the shit out of him.

  He stopped suddenly in his tracks, staring in sorrowful defeat. But he wasn’t looking at us. He was looking past us.

  “I was good, wasn’t I?” he said, his voice flat.

  I stared at him blankly.

  Then from behind me, Max answered, “You were very talented.”

  The priest turned and dove over the balcony railing.

  I choked on a startled scream and lunged forward reflexively as the body crashed into the wooden pews below the balcony. The doppelgangster was startled enough to release its grip on me.

  I got to the railing and looked down. It was a long drop, but survivable. The priest, however, had thrown himself head first into a bank of pews. He lay at a horrid angle, his neck evidently broken and blood pouring from his shattered skull.

  Lopez ran to the body and then leaned over to press his fingers against the neck, checking for a pulse.

  “Is he dead?” Lucky called from the other side of the church.

  “Yes,” Lopez said after a moment. “Dead.” His voice was grim.

  I made a choked sound. Lopez looked up and saw me.

  “Esther! Get out of there!” He quickly raised his gun to aim it at something on my left.

  I realized that the wounded Buonarotti, standing to my left, was also looking over the railing and that I was much closer to him than was wise. I turned to flee, then stumbled and halted. The doppelgangster was in my path. But only for a moment. Max swung the bloody hand ax—the one that Gabriel had used this evening to kill a chicken—and decapitated it.

  Buonarotti starting laughing as if the funniest thing in the world had just occurred to him. Within moments, he fell clumsily to the floor and just sat there, rocking back and forth, laughing, and saying over and over, “I’m a dead man! I’m a dead man!” His bleeding arm didn’t seem to bother him.

  Behind Max, I saw an unconscious cop in uniform.

  Max followed my gaze, then said, “I was afraid the doppelgangster would harm him. It seemed best to remove him from the equation.”

  Nelli stood over the cop, holding her injured foot gingerly in the air. She snuffled the fallen man with concern. When the policeman groaned, her tail wagged with relief.

  Lopez’s running footsteps carried him up to the choir gallery via the long spiral staircase we had climbed in the dark earlier tonight. When he reached us, instead of covering the hysterically laughing Buonarotti with his gun, he pointed it at Max.

  “Put the ax down, Max,” he said.

  “Pardon? Oh!” Realizing that his holding a bloody ax had been misinterpreted as a hostile gesture, Max set it down. “I hope I didn’t alarm you.”

  “What the hell happened to McDevitt?” Lopez snapped.

  “Who?” I said.

  “The cop lying on the floor behind Max!”

  “Oh! That’s my fault entirely, I’m afraid,” Max said. “I hit him with the ax handle.”

  “Why, Max?”

  “I believed him to be Don Michael. Who was threatening to kill Esther.” Max added helpfully, “It was very dark, you know.”

  “Yes, I know,” Lopez said. “And the blood on the ax would be from what, exactly?”

  “A chicken,” I blurted.

  “A what?”

  “A chicken. Um, I guess that’s where all these feathers came from.” I kicked a pile of doppelgangster detritus with my foot. “The chicken.”

  “Father Gabriel killed it with the ax.” Max shook his head sadly. “He also threatened us with the ax. I’m afraid he was involved in some most unsavory activities. The Church wouldn’t approve at all.”

  “He was in league with Buonarotti!” I said.

  “I know.” Lopez glanced at the wounded mobster. The arm had only been nicked; it was bleeding, but didn’t look serious.

  I said, “Buonarotti’s been committing these murders!”

  “I know,” Lopez said.

  “You do?”

  “Are you all right?” Lopez asked me.

  “Yes.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Yes.”

  “What are you doing here?” he asked me.

  “Don’t you know?”

  “How would I know?” he said in exasperation.<
br />
  “Well, what are you doing here then?”

  “I asked the local patrolman to keep an eye on the church and let me know if anything unusual happened. So when he saw a woman, two men, and a huge dog entering furtively around midnight tonight, he called me. And since I had a feeling I knew who he was describing, I told him to stand by, and I came here. By the time I arrived, he thought he’d heard shots fired.”

  “Oh.” I frowned. “Wait a minute. It’s just the two of you?”

  “At the moment, thanks to Max assaulting a police officer,” Lopez said, “it’s just the one of me.”

  “Who turned on the lights?”

  “What?”

  “Who got the lights working again?” I asked.

  Lopez shrugged and looked at me and Max. We looked at each other.

  “Well, whatever brought the power back on,” Lopez said to me, “I’m just glad it happened. I thought you’d be dead in two more seconds.”

  Max was staring at him.

  Lopez noticed. “What?”

  I stared, too, remembering the fierceness in his voice at that moment: I want LIGHTS! And suddenly there had been light, in answer to his command . . .

  I blinked. Oh, good grief, what was I thinking?

  Don’t be ridiculous. It was just . . . coincidence.

  Max kept staring hard at Lopez, his posture erect, his gaze intent and speculative. Lopez stared back, probably thinking again about having Max’s place searched for drugs.

  “Max?” I prodded, feeling uneasy.

  “Pardon? Oh!” Max smiled. “Er, you were saying, detective?”

  “I’m all done saying. Now it’s your turn.” Lopez said to me, “What the hell are you doing here?”

  “We, uh . . .” I looked at Max.

  Max looked at Nelli, who had by now limped to his side. Nelli looked at Lucky, who came up the staircase at a slow, painful pace, grimacing as he reached the top step. She wagged her tail.

  Lucky said, “I’m gettin’ too old for my work.”

  “What ‘work’ was going on here tonight?” Lopez said, keeping an eye on Buonarotti, who was still sitting on the floor, rocking back and forth as he laughed hysterically and occasionally shouted, “I’m a dead man!”

  “Ah, forget it,” Lucky said genially. “You can take all the credit. We was never even here.”