“Wait, Esther, there’s one more thing we gotta talk about.” Lucky turned to Max and said, “She saw the hit. Do you think she’s in any danger?”
Max frowned with concern as he considered this, but finally said, “I doubt it. I really do. A man with deadly enemies saw a portent of his own death. I think it very likely this was an isolated incident that will not recur, let alone involve Esther any further.”
At the time, it was a reasonable supposition. We had no way of knowing then just how wrong he was.
6
CHORUS GIRL WITNESSES MOB HIT! was the first head line I saw on my walk home from the subway station.
“Chorus girl,” I muttered unhappily as I picked up the tabloid and read the caption beneath a photo of “alleged Gambello hitman” Lucky Battistuzzi embracing me outside of Bella Stella last night.
I tried to resist looking at the other tabloids, but there’s a certain ghoulish fascination to seeing yourself demeaned in semiliterate prose at the local newsstand.
CHUBBY CHARLIE CHECKS OUT! announced The New York Post.
ACTRESS ALMOST AXED? asked the Insider. This “news story” reported that a “confidential source” claimed I might be the intended victim of last night’s hit, and Charlie Chiccante just an innocent bystander. Since the story below this one reported that Donald Trump had been dead for a decade and an impersonator had been running his empire all this time, I didn’t worry too much that Charlie had actually died because of me.
BELLA MORTE? quipped another headline. The article noted that this was the third violent death at Bella Stella in five years.
“Hmph.” I put the tabloid back down after reading a few lines. Then I saw that holding it for thirty seconds had been long enough to stain my hands with ink.
“Hey, ain’t this a picture of you on the cover of the Exposé?” asked the guy who ran the newsstand. He’d sold me my weekly copy of Backstage for several years, as well as various newspapers, magazines, and the occasional candy bar, but we’d never chatted before.
I took a good look and saw he was reading a copy of the Exposé that had my picture in it. I was not flattered that he’d been able to identify me from this shot: I was squinting and hunched over, trying to avoid the glare of the flash, and my mouth was gaping open in surprise. Lopez, whose arm was around me, had mostly been cropped out of the photo.
“That’s the photo they decided to use?” I said. “What did I ever do to them?”
The news seller frowned as he looked at me. “You got blue stuff on your face now.”
“I know.” The blue substance that had spilled on me in Max’s laboratory was on my arm, too, thanks to Lucky shooting up the place.
After looking at the photo again, the news seller said, “Well, at least your cheekbones look good.”
“My cheekbones always look good,” I said grumpily. “They’re my best feature.” Actors learn to be pragmatic about our looks. We need to know what casting directors see when they look at us.
The news seller studied me for another moment, then concluded, “Yeah, I’ll go along with that. Good cheekbones.” He waved the tabloid at me. “It’s a bad photo, no denying that. But the headline—SINGING SERVER SEES SLAYING!—that’s some lovely alliteration, don’t you think?”
“Lovely. In fact, I hope it’s what they put on my tombstone.” I turned my back on him, eager to go home.
“Hey, don’t you want any of these papers?” the news seller called after me. “This is your fifteen minutes of fame!”
I felt depressed.
As I was walking home, my cell phone rang. I saw that the call was from Lopez, and I flipped open the phone. “Hello?”
“It’s me,” he said. “Where are you? Are you okay?”
“I’m fine.” I was surprised at the urgency in his voice. “Why?”
There was a pause. “I guess I got a little . . . I’m outside your apartment—”
“You are?” I was less than a block from there, so I started walking faster.
Lopez said, “When you didn’t answer your buzzer or your home phone . . . Well, I couldn’t think of where else you’d be this morning. I got worried.”
“You thought I might be sleeping with the fishes?”
“That’s not funny.” He sounded exhausted. “Where are you?”
I rounded the corner and could see him sitting on the steps of my building. “Look to your right,” I said.
He did—and I saw his whole body sag with relief when he spotted me. I realized then how seriously he believed that witnessing Charlie’s death had put me in danger.
He folded his cell phone and put it in his pocket as he stood up. He had removed his tie, and he held his jacket slung over his shoulder. I dropped my cell phone into my purse and met him in front of my building. He had dark circles under his eyes, and he looked tense and tired.
His gaze roamed over my face, and he reached up to touch my cheek. I thought it was a gesture of affection until he frowned and asked, “Why are you all blue and scratched?”
“Oh! That damn dog.” I turned my head and brushed self-consciously at my face.
“What dog?” He took my chin and gently lifted it so he could see the scratches Nelli had left on my cheek and forehead.
“Max got a dog. So to speak.” I was longing for my bed by now.
Lopez went very still for a moment, then dropped his hand. I realized belatedly that I should have guarded my words.
“You’ve been to see Max?” His voice was flat.
“Yes.” I didn’t want to argue about it, so I pulled my keys out of my pocket and started up the steps of my building. “And his dog pummeled me.”
He followed me. As we entered the building, he said, “Max got a vicious dog?”
“No, just a big one. Nelli is, um, exuberant.”
“Why did you go to see him?” Lopez asked tersely, following me upstairs to the second floor.
“I needed to ask him something.”
“About last night?” He was trudging heavily up the steps behind me.
“Yes.” I got to the door of my apartment and unlocked it.
“Esther.” The exasperation in his voice got on my last nerve.
“What?” I snapped. I turned around and confronted him as he followed me inside and closed the door. When he didn’t answer, I said, “Well, what?”
He hesitated, evidently realizing I was in no mood to be told how to choose my friends. As I held his gaze, I realized that his eyes were bloodshot.
I took a breath and said in a more mild tone, “You haven’t had any sleep, have you?”
“Not yet,” he grumbled. “I came straight here from work.”
“That was quite a long shift,” I said, realizing he must be running on fumes.
“Yeah.” He rubbed a hand over his face.
“Does Napoli know where you are?”
“What do you think?” he said irritably.
“I think he grilled you about how we know each other—”
“ ‘Grilled’ is too nice a word for it.”
“—and would handcuff you to your desk if he knew you were here right now.”
“Good guess.” He tossed his jacket on the couch and said to me, “We have to talk.”
I was sure that would be a big mistake, in more ways than one. I was tired and slow-witted, and he was exhausted and cranky. So I said, “No. Not now.”
“Yes, now.”
“Later,” I said, reaching for his hand.
He frowned. “This can’t wait, Esther.” But he followed me as I tugged him across the floor and out of the living room.
When we got to the door of my bedroom, though, he balked. “What are you doing?”
“Going to bed,” I said wearily, pulling him into my bedroom—and not at all flattered by the way he dragged his heels and tried to tug out of my grasp.
“Whoa! Even if this were a good idea right now, which it’s not, I am honestly in no condition to—”
“Yes, that
much is obvious,” I said. “You look like last week’s leftovers.”
“Oh.” He blinked. “I suppose I do.”
“And I feel like I’ve been dragged behind a subway train.” I pushed him toward my bed. “My head is pounding. My stomach hurts.” I pushed him again, and he sat down abruptly as his legs encountered the mattress. “And I don’t think I had as much as three hours sleep last night.”
“I’m sorry,” he said, his expression softening. “I should’ve realized you wouldn’t be able to sleep after what you saw.”
“So I refuse to talk about anything until I’ve had a nap.” I kicked off my shoes while he watched, and then I crawled onto the mattress beside him. “What you do is up to you, but I think you should get some shut-eye before you take another step. You look ready to drop. And there’s room for both of us.” I plumped up a pillow and lay down. “Either way, I’m going to sleep now.”
I closed my eyes and sighed, nestling into my bed. After a moment of stillness, Lopez shifted his weight to kick off his shoes, which hit the floor with a couple of soft thuds. Then I heard the click of his belt buckle and the whisper of the leather sliding through his belt loops as he took it off.
I opened one eye and saw him removing his gun and holster. He set them on the bedside table, along with his wallet. Then he lay back on the mattress, sighing as his head sank into the pillow next to mine. He closed his eyes for a moment, then turned his head to meet my one-eyed gaze.
“I’ve been fantasizing for weeks about getting into your bed,” he said, his voice more relaxed than it had been before. “In my head, it was never quite like this.”
I snuggled against him and murmured, “This’ll do for now.
“Yeah.” He slid his arm around me and rested his cheek on my hair. “It will.”
A minute later, he broke the contented silence. “Esther?”
“Hmm?”
“How did the dog get your face all blue?”
“Shhh,” I said.
Within minutes, the even sound of his breathing soothed me to sleep.
A shrill ringing woke me up.
I sat bolt upright, looking around the room in a bleary daze.
Another shrill ring!
Hoping to stifle the noise, I reached for the alarm clock. Clumsy in my sleepiness, I missed it and knocked over the lamp on my nightstand. It fell to the floor with a clatter, which was when Lopez sat bolt upright, too, looking around in obvious confusion before he realized where he was.
The ringing continued, so I reached for the bedside phone next. When I picked up the receiver, all I heard was a dial tone. So then I picked up the silent alarm clock and stared at it stupidly.
Lopez lay back down and squinted at me in the afternoon light sliding through the Venetian blinds. “What are you doing?” he asked sleepily.
“Did we set the alarm?” I asked in a scratchy voice, not remembering why he was there, but not that surprised to find him in my bed. I had, after all, thought often about him being there.
“Huh?” He rubbed his eyes as the shrill ringing continued. “Oh, wait . . .” A five o’clock shadow darkened his jaw. “Sorry.” Still lying prone, he fumbled in his pockets. After a moment, he held up his cell phone. “I turned the . . .” He cleared his throat. “I turned the ringer way up last night so I could hear Napoli and my captain phoning me. The crime scene was so noisy . . .”
“Answer your phone,” I said tersely as it rang again.
“Huh? Oh. Right.” Still half asleep, he flipped open the phone and mumbled, “Hello?” He stiffened and looked a little more wakeful as he said, “Hi, Mom.”
I stiffened, too. We were both fully clothed and had done nothing in this bed but sleep. Even so, I started straightening my clothing and trying to smooth my hair.
Lopez glanced at me and started to smile. “Yeah, I was taking a nap.”
Feeling groggy, I was about to rub my hands over my face but then I noticed they were dirty with tabloid ink.
“Because I was tired,” he said into the receiver. “I worked a long shift last night.” After another moment, “I’m not sure. I lost count after I’d been on the clock for fourteen hours . . . I’m fine. Just tired.”
When I started to slide off the bed, he grabbed my arm and pulled me down into the pillows. I looked pointedly at the phone in his hand and shook my head. He grinned and, despite my squirming, pulled me closer while he listened to his mother’s next question.
“No, I didn’t have time,” he said. “Okay, I’ll go to Mass later. Yes, I promise.” He slid his arm around my waist and continued, “Yeah, it was the shooting at Bella Stella. We were on it all night.” He nuzzled my neck, his hair tickling my cheek. “Mom, I need to go, can I call you back la . . . What?” He froze in midcuddle and his tone changed. “The tabloids?”
Startled, I stopped wriggling.
He shifted position so that our gazes met, and he said to his mom, “Yeah, that would be the same Esther Diamond.”
Great.
Resisting the urge to curl up into a fetal position, I sighed and rolled away from Lopez. He didn’t wrestle me when I slid out of bed this time.
I looked over my shoulder at him and whispered, “I’ll make coffee.” He nodded and sat up. I headed for the bedroom door.
On my way out of the room, I heard him make a brief, doomed effort to go on the offensive. “Never mind that! What are you doing reading tabloids, Mom?”
It wouldn’t work, of course. I went into the kitchen and started brewing some strong coffee.
I knew Lopez had told his parents he was interested in someone, but I didn’t know he had told them my name. I wondered if they had dragged the information out of him during his father’s birthday weekend, or if he had told them voluntarily at some point. I knew he was close to his family. He might roll his eyes when his mom phoned, but he spoke with her often, and they seemed to have a very open, frank relationship and lots to talk about. And his affection for his father was obvious when he spoke about him. He was also clearly fond of his brothers.
By contrast, I only talked to my parents in Wisconsin about once a month, and I talked to Ruth, my married sister in Chicago, much less than that. There was no hostility between me and my family, we just didn’t have that much to say to each other. None of them had ever disapproved of my becoming an actress and moving to New York, but they didn’t understand it, and I knew they thought of it as a madcap phase I’d recover from when I matured.
One of the many things I liked about Lopez was that he wasn’t an actor. (I like working with actors, but dating them is an exercise in masochism.) But something else I really liked about him was that he seemed to understand that acting was my vocation, it was who I was and always would be. In the same way that I could see that being a cop was more than just a job to him—it was who he was.
I frowned as I thought about Max’s doppelgänger theory and wondered how much to say to Lopez about last night.
“No, I’m not going to stop seeing her.” I heard his raised voice in the bedroom as he got exasperated with his mother. “Oh, really? Well, then maybe you shouldn’t have brought me up on all those stories about how you defied the family to date Pop!” After a moment, he said, “I don’t see how it’s different . . . Yeah? And what makes you so sure I’m not going to marry her and raise three ungrateful sons who won’t give me grandchildren?”
“Oh, I was so right not to attend his father’s birthday party,” I muttered in the kitchen.
I gathered from Lopez that the desire for grandchildren had dominated his parents’ agenda lately. His two brothers had each come up with creative ways of getting their folks off their backs. The eldest had told his parents he was gay, and the middle brother announced he was becoming a priest. They were both lying, but it took the subject of marriage off the table for a while.
And Lopez, the youngest, had told his parents he was interested in an unstable Jewish woman with unsavory friends (i.e. Max).
I didn’t doubt
that Lopez’s attraction to me was sincere. He was a dedicated cop and it was clear that dating me wasn’t good for his career at the moment, so I didn’t think that being in my apartment today was a casual choice for him. But I knew it was nonetheless convenient for him that he was seeing a woman whom his mother wouldn’t want him to marry. And just in case she decided she could cope with a daughter-in-law who wasn’t Catholic, he’d been holding back the shocking news that I was an actress. He was saving that tidbit for an “emergency,” he’d told me.
Well, it looked like the cat was out of the bag now. According to today’s tabloids, I was a chorus girl with ties to the Mafia. (And since there was a sense in which this was perfectly true, I felt depressed again.) So now Lopez was getting an earful in my bedroom about his taste in women.
“All right, enough,” I heard him say wearily to his mother. “Give it a rest, would you? Look, I have to go . . . Because I have things to do . . . Of course I’m trying to get you off the phone. Is it going to work?”
“Last year, I played Kate in The Taming of the Shrew in summer stock,” I grumbled to myself. “But do the tabloids mention that? Nooooo.”
The scent of fresh-brewed coffee was filling the apartment when Lopez finally came out of the bedroom, looking sheepish.
“Sorry about that,” he said.
“I’m just glad it wasn’t my mother who called,” I said sincerely.
“I never suspected her of reading tabloids.” Lopez frowned. “I wonder if my dad knows?”
“I guess everyone’s got a dark secret.”
He sniffed the air and asked hopefully, “Is the coffee ready?”
I realized I didn’t know how he took it. We were still so new to each other. I held up the milk and sugar, and I raised my eyebrows in silent query.
He shook his head. “Just black.”
“Look on the bright side,” I said, handing him a full mug. “It seems certain that as long as we’re dating, she’ll never suggest you think about getting married.”
“Good point.”
That led me to something I wanted to get off my chest. “Look, I’m sorry I told everyone at Stella’s that you’re my boyfriend. And, um, that they think we’re engaged. It’s just that I needed—”
Dopplegangster Page 9
