Dopplegangster

by Laura Resnick

  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 hated 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.”

  “Oh.”

  “Lucky,” I elaborated, “who murdered her second husband.”

  “And between her loathing of Lucky and her fear that Detective Lopez could pose a serious threat to her plans . . .”

  “The following day—yesterday—Lopez’s doppelgangster suddenly appeared.”

  Max frowned. “But not Lucky’s.”

  “What?”

  “Why did she duplicate Detective Lopez before Lucky?” Max mused. “Indeed, why did she kill Charlie Chiccante rather than Lucky? It sounds as if Charlie played no direct role in her sorrows, whereas we know that Lucky did.”

  “I assume she’ll get around to Lucky,” I said. “We’ve got to stop her before she does. Let alone before she duplicates Lopez again and curses him with certain death!”

  “When I saw her at St. Monica’s,” Max said, “she did not strike me as a patient woman. To say the least. And her hatred of Lucky was, er, energetic. So I find it puzzling that he was not her first victim. Nor does he even seem to be her fourth intended victim.”

  I thought about this for a moment. “We talked yesterday about the killer gaining psychological power over his—her—victims with the weirdness of these murders. Maybe she’s enjoying toying with Lucky, building up the anticipation. Maybe she has intended all along that he’ll be her final victim, rather than her first. And that by the time he sees his doppelgangster, it’ll terrify him witless.”

  “Hmm. Yes, I can easily believe that of the person behind these killings. As I’ve said before, this seems to be a subtle and devious individual.” He frowned. “But I find it less easy to believe such patience and planning have been exercised by the emotional, volatile, direct woman whom we saw in that church.”

  “We hardly know her, Max. She could be acting, to conceal her true nature.”

  “Ah! Yes.” He thought it over. “Yes. Certainly my sense of our adversary is that this is someone quite capable of concealing his—or her—nature from others.”

  “So what do we do now?”

  “The sorcerer—or sorceress—creating these doppelgangsters must have a workshop or laboratory. At the very least, an elaborate altar of some sort. And finding this would give us conclusive evidence that the widow is indeed the killer. It would also enable us to destroy her means of creating any more of these deadly creatures. And such a discovery may also lead us to any remaining doppelgangsters roaming the city so that we can dispatch them.” He nodded decisively. “Ergo, we must search the widow’s abode.”

  “Her home?”

  “Yes.”

  “I don’t know where she lives,” I said.

  “It seems likely that Lucky would know.” His gaze met mine. “And I don’t think we should deceive him about our reasons for asking.”

  I sighed and said, “He won’t like this.” But I pulled out my cell phone and called the old gangster.

  “Esther!” Lucky said when he answered his cell. “Are you at Max’s?”

  “Yes. Where are you?”

  “With the boss.”

  “Still?”

  “I’m about to leave. He’s agreed to talk by phone today with the boss of our mutual acquaintances.”

  I frowned. “The boss of our mutual acquaint . . . Oh! You mean the don of the Corv—”

  “No names on the phone, kid,” Lucky admonished.

  “Huh? Oh. And, er, the other boss? Has he also agreed to have this conversation?”

  “I’m still workin’ on that,” he said. “But luckily, after what happened to the departed yesterday, there’s a few boys in that camp—I think you know them—who are urgin’ their boss to consider it.”

  I puzzled this over for a moment, then realized he meant that some or all of the Corvino soldiers whom I had recently met—Fast Sammy Salerno, Mikey Castrucci, Nathan, and Bobby, as well as Vinny Dapezzo—were telling the famously dapper Don Carmine Corvino that the Gambellos might not be responsible for Danny’s bizarre death.

  Lucky continued, “But it’s a very delicate situation, and everyone’s real jumpy. So if anyone else should happen to wind up dead, things are gonna go up in smoke around here.”

  “I see.”

  “I’m heading over to St. Monica’s to talk to Father Gabriel about Charlie’s and Johnny’s funerals. Then I’ll come back to the bookstore.”

  “The funerals?” I said. “I thought the cops didn’t want to release the bodies?”

  “Yeah, they’re still draggin’ their heels, but they can’t hold the bodies forever,” he said. “They must have strong stomachs at the police morgue. Do you know how much a corpse stinks after a few days if it ain’t
been embalmed?”

  “No, and I don’t want to know,” I said firmly.

  “So how we doin’ at your end with solving our problem?”

  “Better,” I said, meeting Max’s anxious gaze. “We have a suspect.”

  “Yeah?”

  I threw caution to the winds and used her name.

  As expected, Lucky was utterly appalled by my theory. He interrupted me with angry arguments and protests so often, it took me three times as long to explain my reasoning as it should have taken. After I had laid it all out for him, he remained adamant in his denials.

  “No,” he said. “No. You got it all wrong.”

  “Lucky,” I said, sorry to be breaking his heart, despite everything he’d done. “She’s got the motive to commit these murders. Now we need to find out if she’s got the means.”

  “She ain’t got the motive! She ain’t like that! She’s pure of heart.”

  “I think you’re not seeing this cl—”

  “You don’t know her! I do! I’ve known her for thirty years,” he insisted. “Ever since Anthony married her. I admit she’s hotheaded, but she’s not a killer.”

  “Look, I understand that you—”

  “And can you really picture her blowing Danny away with a shotgun?” Lucky demanded.

  “I’m trying not to picture anyone doing that,” I said. “But maybe she can handle a shotgun, Lucky. It’s an unusual method of murder for a woman, but it’s certainly not unprecedented. And we’re dealing with an unusual killer, after all.”

  “You’re saying you think she bashed in Johnny’s skull then dumped his body in the East River? Oh, come on.”

  I knew it wasn’t impossible, but I had to admit it was hard to imagine. “Unless . . .” I looked at Max. “What if she has an accomplice?”

  “Someone who does the dirty work?” Lucky said.

  “An accomplice,” Max said, rising to his feet. “Of course!”

  “Yes,” I said, realizing it would explain a number of the things that had puzzled us.

  “Forget it,” Lucky said. “She’s not involved in this.”

  “This original, subtle, and inventive sorcery we’ve witnessed,” Max said as he stroked his beard. “Contrasted to the violent, unimaginative nature of the actual killings.”

  I looked at Max and said, “Two killers!”

  “She ain’t a killer!” Lucky shouted over my phone.

  “Two completely different styles of dispatching the same enemy!” Max was pacing around the room in his excitement. “Two drastically dissimilar personalities cooperating on the same murders!”

  “One of them a woman,” I said to Max.

  “One of what?” Lucky said me.

  “She had the power to create the doppelgangsters and the shrewdness to play on old enmities to generate a mob war between the two families she hates,” I continued. “But she needed the assistance of someone who could actually commit the physical slayings. She had no experience at that. And probably no stomach for it, either.”

  “Will you stop?” Lucky said.

  Max said, “So she found an accomplice who was willing to finish off her victims once she had ensured they would be defenseless!”

  “Who?” I wondered. “Angelo Falcone?”

  “You gotta be kidding me,” Lucky said. “That putz?”

  “She’s a beautiful woman,” Max said. “And we’ve seen for ourselves that at least two, er, experienced men of action are enthralled by her allure.”

  Our eyes met. We both knew that she wouldn’t have invited Lucky to be her partner in crime; he would certainly be one of her intended victims.

  “Don Michael ‘No Relation’ Buonarotti,” I said slowly.

  “No way is Elena in cahoots with him!” Lucky said, having heard this. “Are you nuts?”

  “Buonarotti’s infatuated with the widow,” I said. “He’s an experienced killer. And I’ll bet he didn’t become the don without having plenty of ambition. So maybe he thinks the Buonarotti crime family can take advantage of the situation and come out on top if the Corvinos and Gambellos tear each other apart in another mob war now.”

  “Yes.” Max was nodding furiously and tugging at his beard. “Yes, this is an excellent theory, Esther!”

  There was a leaden silence on my telephone.

  “Lucky? We have to search the widow’s place,” I said. “We have to look for evidence that she’s creating the doppelgangsters.”

  “She’s not, I tell you.” He sounded anxious now, uncertain. Worried. “She turned to the church in her grief, not to whacking people.”

  “All the same, we must search her home.” Recalling Lopez’s words last night, I said, “Look, if there’s nothing there, then we won’t find anything.”

  There was a tense pause. Then he said, “And if you don’t find nothin’, then you’ll get off her back?”

  No, we would try to figure out where else she might be conducting her mystical activities. But I said, “Yes.” Because sometimes you just have to say whatever it takes to make progress on a problem.

  Lucky let out puff of breath. “All right. After I’m done with my other business, I’ll search her place today.”

  “You don’t have to do that,” I said, hearing how unhappy he sounded. “Max and I will search it.”

  I met Max’s gaze again, and he nodded emphatically. “You don’t trust me?” Lucky said wearily. “You think I’m going to find some doppelgangsters hanging in the closet and not tell you?”

  “I don’t think you’re going to find anything quite that obvious,” I said patiently. “This is a mystical problem. You might not recognize something incriminating in Elena’s apartment. That’s why Max has to do this.”

  “All right, tell the Doc to meet me at Elena’s place.” He gave me the address.

  “What time should we be there?”

  “You’re not coming with him. While we search her place, you’re gonna keep an eye on Elena.”

  “What?”

  “Relax, she ain’t guilty. Anyhow, you’ll be perfectly safe. You’ll be in church.”

  Since Lucky timed his own visits to St. Monica’s specifically to see Elena, he knew her schedule for prayer and church activities. She was a member of the women’s auxiliary club, and they were meeting at St. Monica’s that afternoon to discuss fundraising. The church was over one hundred years old, and portions of it were in dire need of update and repair.

  The stairs to the bell tower and to the courtyard were dangerous. There was faulty electrical wiring in the church sanctuary. The floor in the choir gallery needed to be renovated or replaced; the tiles were so chipped and uneven, several choir members had tripped and fallen lately. The church organ needed tuning and cleaning. The old dormitories above this meeting room should be renovated and put to good use. The bathrooms for the congregation needed refurbishment. All of this necessary work would require a great deal of money.

  I learned all this because I attended the women’s auxiliary club meeting to keep an eye on the Widow Giacalona while Lucky and Max searched her apartment. She lived on Mulberry Street, only three blocks away from St. Monica’s, in the opposite direction from Bella Stella’s. My job was to call Lucky when Elena left St. Monica’s, ensuring that he and Max had enough time to leave her apartment before she got home.

  Today’s gathering, I realized after I got there, was a social event as much as it was a business meeting. There was plenty of coffee, food, and gossip, and no one seemed in a hurry to call the meeting to order. This gave me plenty of time to read the secretary’s report that summarized which renovation projects and fundraising efforts the group would be discussing today.

  Elena had noticed me when I entered this meeting room in the east wing of St. Monica’s, but it had obviously taken her a couple of additional glances to remember who I was. Then her expression grew cold and she didn’t deign to meet my eyes again. Which was just as well. I was tense and afraid of arousing her suspicion.

  Her outfit was
even more austere than usual, just a simple dark dress with a modest V-neck. No scarf or jewelry, and her hair was scraped back severely from her face. Her settled expression of resigned unhappiness made her look mysterious and vaguely tragic, rather than sour and embittered even though, in reality, I believed it had turned her into a devious and demented killer.

  The rest of the women here were well-dressed, well-coiffed, wearing makeup, and gaily accessorized . . . and yet it was Elena’s stark, still beauty that attracted the eye in this chatting, giggling, fluttering throng. The good light in this meeting room made her true age—early to mid-fifties, I assumed—more readily apparent to me than it had been the first time I met her. The naked skin of her throat and the creased corners of her eyes revealed her years today. But she still wore time very well.

  I checked my watch. Lucky and Max should be in her apartment right now. I counted on Max to convince Lucky that the evidence they found there was damning and the widow must be stopped.

  “Esther?”

  “Huh!” I jumped.

  “Did I startle you?” Father Gabriel asked. “I’m sorry.”

  “Oh! Uh, no.” I pulled myself together and met the priest’s luminous brown gaze. “I was lost in thought, that’s all. How are you, Father?”

  “I’m delighted to welcome you to St. Monica’s once again.” He smiled warmly as he shook my hand.

  I had showered and tidied up at Max’s before coming to the church, but I was still wearing my black knit dress from yesterday, and it was the worse for wear by now. I saw the priest’s nostrils quiver slightly as he got a good whiff of Nelli.

  “Sorry,” I said. “I was, uh, playing with a friend’s dog before I came here.”

  “I’m more of a cat person.” He smiled and added, “It’s wonderful to see you taking such an interest in our crumbling old church! Is your interest in this meeting architectural? Or dare I hope that our congregation holds some spiritual attraction for you?”

  “I . . .”