Doppelgangster

by Laura Resnick

  “But, Max, what about motive? I still don’t understand why Father Gabriel would do this.”

  “That’s because we only know what he has told us about himself, which is virtually nothing. But if he was telling the truth about one key point—that he grew up around the Gambello famiglia—then Lucky may know enough about him to postulate a motive when we explain our theory to him.”

  “I’ll tell Lucky we need him back here as soon as possible.” I opened my cell phone.

  “Excellent. We’ll review with him what we have learned tonight about the nature of the doppelgangsters while we prepare to confront our adversary.”

  “If we’re right this time, Max, how do we stop a homicidal priest and his violent accomplice?”

  “We will begin by destroying his immediate means of creating more doppelgangsters.” He added, “Before we go anywhere, though, we must protect ourselves. You summon Lucky while I commence preparations in the laboratory.”

  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 doppelganger, 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 guil
ty 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.