Doppelgangster - Laura Resnick [108]
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