Dopplegangster (17 page)

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Authors: Laura Resnick

BOOK: Dopplegangster
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Those events were worse for Charlie, obviously, but I nodded and said, “I was very upset.”
“To see a man killed in cold blood right in front of you . . .” The priest shook his head. “How dreadful for you.”
I didn’t want to keep reviewing Charlie’s murder, so I changed the subject. “Lucky says there’s a weeping saint here?”
Taking my cue, the priest smiled and gestured to the stone statue of Saint Monica. “Yes, we’re very proud of it. Of course, only Elena Giacalona has seen the saint’s tears so far. She’s very devout, you know.”
“Prays to Monica twice a day, every day, I gather,” I said.
“Elena’s life has been plagued by tragedy and loss,” the priest said sadly.
I glanced at Lucky. “Indeed.”
“She’s had three husbands,” the hit man muttered. “I only killed
one
.”
“All the same, Lucky, you don’t think it’s maybe a doomed courtship?” I said. “And also not in the best possible taste?”
Father Gabriel looked at the ceiling and remained tactfully silent. As did Max, whose two marriages, centuries ago, had left him with a strong preference for bachelorhood. Which was just as well, since, for mystical reasons that weren’t entirely clear to me, his vocation encouraged celibacy. Much like Father Gabriel’s vocation, I realized.
“Elena will come around,” Lucky said. “I just need to give her time. But never mind that now.” Glancing from me to Max, he said, “I got someone you need to talk to.”
“And I should prepare for vespers,” said Father Gabriel. “If you’ll excuse me?”
“Of course,” I said.
After the priest exited through a side door, Lucky took my arm. “Let’s take a walk.”
“Oh, good. We’re going to sit in the pews?” My feet hurt. I don’t usually wear high heels.
“Not this time, kid. We gotta talk in the crypt.”
“The crypt?” I tried to pull my arm out of his grasp. “I don’t want to go into the
crypt
. Could you possibly suggest a creepier meeting place?”
“A perfectly understandable reaction,” said Max, nodding. “An underground vault, with all the inherent fear of suffocation and smothering that such places naturally engender in mankind.”
“You’re not helping, Max,” I said.
“And there’s no denying that a crypt is a shadowy and mysterious chamber rife with negative mythology,” he added. “Not to mention the atmospheric hint of dark rituals far older than Christianity itself!”
“Nah, it’ll be fine,” said Lucky prosaically. “They got electricity down there and everything.”
“Why can’t we talk up here?” I demanded.
“Because whatever’s going on, we gotta be discreet,” said Lucky. “Or whoever’s behind this situation might figure out that we’re sniffing him out.”
Since this made a certain amount of sense to me, I sighed and agreed to go into the damn crypt.
“Watch your language,” Lucky said. “You’re in church.”
9
 
S
t. Monica’s was more than one hundred years old, but the crypt was less intimidating than I had imagined. Possibly because there were about one hundred folding chairs stored there, along with a piano and a rack of costumes from the Easter play that the parish children had performed last month. No room looks very murky and mysterious with a dozen pink bunny costumes in it.
The strangest thing in the room, however, was . . .
“An Elvis impersonator?” I said blankly.
“What’s an Elvis impersonator?” Max asked.
“I’m
not
an impersonator,” said the man seated at the piano. “I can’t help the resemblance.”
“You could try dressing a bit less like The King in his declining years,” I suggested.
The man was overweight and wearing a white leisure suit with silver trim. His red shirt was open halfway down his chest, revealing thick gold chains nestled in black chest hair. The hair on his head was coal black and thick, with long sideburns; I thought it looked like a wig. He wore a pair of rose-tinted glasses over his puffy, lined face.
“Show some respect,” Lucky said to me. “This is the boss’ nephew.”
“Which one?” I asked. The Shy Don had a big family.
“They call me Johnny Be Good,” the man said.
I blinked. “You’re Johnny Be Good Gambello?”
“You heard of me, huh?” he sounded pleased.
I had never seen him at the restaurant, because Stella had banned him from there years ago. She said Johnny Be Good was a very bad boy. He had notorious problems with drugs, alcohol, and gambling. Wiseguys disapproved of divorce, and he was on his third marriage. He’d even been caught embezzling from the Gambellos. The only reason he was still alive was that he was a nephew of the don himself, so only Victor Gambello could order his death. And the Shy Don, Stella said, had a soft spot for his blood relatives.
“Yeah, I’ve heard of you,” I said.
“But I’m afraid
I
have not had the pleasure of hearing about you,” said Max.
“Who’s this jerk?” Johnny asked Lucky.
“This is Doc Zadok,” said Lucky, “who’s got specialized knowledge that might be useful to our situation.”
“And the girl? She’s the one who saw Charlie go down for the dirt nap?”
“Yep.”
“The one who saw his double, along with you?”
“That’s right,” Lucky said.
Johnny regarded me. “She’s a looker. You didn’t mention that.”
“Did he mention that my boyfriend is a cop?” I said, not liking the oily way Johnny was assessing me.
He flinched. “You date a
cop
?”
“Why are we here?” I asked Lucky wearily.
“Johnny, tell these two people what you told me,” Lucky instructed, setting out a couple of the folding chairs for me and Max.
Johnny nodded and cracked his knuckles. As he began his tale, I draped my wrap over the back of a folding chair and sat down. Max sat next to me.
Johnny Be Good began his tale. “I was in a friendly little establishment uptown last night—neutral turf, you understand—enjoying a social game of cards.” He eyed us, as if daring us to mention his famously bad luck at all forms of gambling, including poker. “One of the other guys at the table was Danny the Doctor.”
“Who’s that?” I asked.
“Danny ‘the Doctor’ Dapezzo,” said Lucky. “He’s a capo in the Corvino family. Mean son of a bitch.”
“And he’s a doctor?” Max asked. “Medicine or philosophy?”
“They call him the Doctor,” Johnny Be Good said,
“because of the surgical way he cuts up bodies into nice, neat little parts. I’m telling you, Danny can get fifty pieces out of one skinny corpse.”
I said to Max, “You had to ask.”
Lucky said with reluctant admiration, “Yeah, it’s very hard for the cops to identify a corpse after Danny gets done with it. They can’t find enough parts.”
“So you’re playing cards with Danny,” I said loudly to Johnny.
“And . . .”
“And Mickey Rosenblum, from Las Vegas, is at the same table, and he’s having as great a night as Danny’s having a bad one.” He paused and added, “You oughta know Mickey. He’s Jewish. Same as you.” When I didn’t say anything, Johnny prodded, “You know him?”
“No.”
He looked at Lucky. “Didn’t you say she was Jewish? How come she don’t know Mickey?”
“So Mickey cleaned out Danny the Doctor?” I prodded.
“Yeah. And Danny, well, he goes away in a real bad mood, pockets empty, bitching about how he don’t even have cab fare left to go visit his girlfriend before he goes home to the missus.”
“Uh-huh.” Who
married
these men, I wondered?
“And two minutes later . . . Guess who enters the club and sits down at our table, fresh as a daisy? You got it! Danny the Doctor. And his pockets are full of dough! What’s even stranger is, he don’t remember a thing. He thinks
we’re
nuts when we talk about what just happened with him, right at this very table. And us, well, we figure
he’s
nuts, going senile or something. But his cash is real.” Johnny smirked and added, “And you know what? Mickey Rosenblum cleaned him out all over again!” Johnny guffawed long and loudly, occasionally pausing to repeat this last bit. Several times. “Cleaned him out all over again!”
Max and I looked at each other. Then we both looked at Lucky.
He nodded. “What did I tell you? We got us another doppelgangster somewhere out there. Only this one’s a Corvino.”
 
It proved to be impossible to have an intelligent conversation with Johnny Be Good Gambello in the room, so it was a relief when he suddenly asked Lucky to loan him some cash so he could go enjoy himself elsewhere while the night was still young.
After Johnny left, Lucky said to Max, “I put the word out after talkin’ with you and Esther yesterday morning. I know you thought Charlie’s doppelgangster was a one-time thing, Doc, but my gut told me otherwise.”
“And your gut seems to be very wise,” Max said respectfully.
“So by this morning, the whole
famiglia
knew to report anything unusual to me. And since Johnny ain’t never been able to keep his yap shut,” Lucky said, “it didn’t take long for me to hear about him seeing two Danny Dapezzos last night. That’s when I figured I better get you two together with him in someplace discreet.”
“Like the crypt of a church?” I muttered.
“Well done!” Max beamed at Lucky.
“I don’t see what’s wrong with meeting in an ordinary coffee shop,” I said.
“You are
so
naive,” Lucky said dismissively.
I decided to shelve that argument and move on to an obvious question, one that I felt sure Lopez would bring up if he were here. “Look, it’s no secret that Johnny Be Good has killed a few billion brain cells with booze and narcotics. So why shouldn’t we assume that Danny Dapezzo simply went to an ATM and returned to the poker game, and Johnny has fantasized the rest of the incident?”
“Wiseguys don’t use ATMs!” Lucky said, looking shocked. “Not for our
own
money, anyhow.”
“Okay, so maybe Danny had a stash nearby. Or mugged someone outside the club. Whatever,” I said. “And then maybe he pulled Johnny’s leg a little when he saw he could get away with it. My point is, how do we know that Johnny’s story is accurate?”
“Because after I talked with Johnny, I talked to Mickey Rosenblum,” Lucky said. “We grew up in the same neighborhood, I known him all my life. His family is where I learned some Yiddish words.”
“Ah,” I said.
“Mickey’s sharp as a knife,” Lucky said. “And his story is exactly the same as Johnny’s.”
“Why isn’t he here?” I asked.
“It’s a parole violation for him to be out of Nevada, so he’s on his way back to Vegas right now. Before some nosy cop finds out he’s been here.” Lucky gave me a warning look. “Which I’m sure we can assume won’t happen.”
“You need to stop telling me things you don’t want my boyfriend to know,” I said firmly. “I don’t like being put in the middle.”
“So I gather Mickey Rosenblum is a reliable witness,” Max said, “and we can rule out the possibility that Mr. Be Good is speaking out of delusion?”
“That’s right,” said Lucky.
I said, “So if they both saw Danny the Doctor’s doppelgangster . . .” Then Lopez was wrong, I realized. Chubby Charlie had not been having a manic episode. He had really seen own his perfect double. And I had seen it, too.
“This Danny the Doctor,” I said to Lucky. “He’s an enemy of yours? An enemy of the Gambello family?”
“Yeah. Like all the Corvinos.”
“But Chubby Charlie was one of your own,” Max mused.
“Which means,” said Lucky, “that someone’s hiring these doppelgangsters to whack made guys on
both
sides of the street.”
“If you’re right, if that is what’s going on here . . . Then why is someone doing this?” I wondered.
Lucky shook his head. “It don’t make no sense.”
I thought about Lopez’s primary theory. “So you think that whatever is going on, it’s not another Gambello-Corvino war?”
Lucky shook his head. “I don’t know who killed Charlie, but I
do
know that we haven’t put out a contract on Danny Dapezzo. So if his doppelgangster’s walking around now cursing him with death, well, it ain’t us that ordered the hit. That’s a guarantee. So this ain’t no Gambello-Corvino thing. We ain’t going to the mattresses with them. Not yet, anyhow.”
Max frowned. “Going to the mattresses?”
“Going to war with another
famiglia
,” I translated. “It involves sleeping in hideouts where your enemies can’t find you. So that you won’t wake up dead.” I’d learned a lot working at Stella’s. “Going to sleep on different mattresses, in other words.” Often rather unsanitary ones, I gathered, in a grimy flop shared by several soldiers from the same family.

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