Doppelgangster - Laura Resnick [139]
“What’s wrong with the lights?” Lopez shouted.
“Not sure,” Lucky replied.
“Shit! I don’t have a flashlight.”
“Listen, cop!” the doppelgangster shouted, its mouth so close to my ear that I flinched. “I’ve got your girlfriend!”
“Who the fuck is that?” said Buonarotti in the darkness.
In the dormitory hallway behind us, on the other side of the door we had come through, I heard a man shout, “Police! Weapons down! NYPD! Drop your weapons! This is the police!”
The doppelgangster shouted down to Lopez, his voice carrying through the darkness, “I’ve got her right here, and I’ll blow her head off!”
“He’s lying! His gun’s empty!” Lucky said.
To clarify the situation, the doppelgangster fired a shot.
“Holy shit!” said Lucky.
“Who the fuck is that?” said Buonarotti.
“Lucky,” I shouted, “there’s a dopp—agh!” The hand on my throat tightened.
“Esther?” Lopez shouted. “Esther!”
At our backs, on the other side of the door, the cop again called, “Police! Drop your weapons now!”
“Esther!” Lopez shouted, his voice coming closer. Something crashed to the floor. “Goddamn it! Don’t any of these lights work?”
The doppelgangster ordered, “Throw down your gun and get on the floor facedown, cop! I’m getting out of here! I’ve got your woman! You get in my way, and I swear to God, I will kill her!”
“Esther!” Lopez shouted.
“Answer him,” the doppelgangster said. “Tell him to let us pass.”
I was coughing, unable to speak. In the hallway behind me, I heard a scuffle, a faint thud, and then a groan. The door behind us opened.
“Esther! Goddamn it, where are you? Esther!” And then Lopez screamed, “I want LIGHTS!”
The lights came on, blazing throughout the church. The sudden brightness made my captor and me both flinch. I squeezed my eyes shut as they stung and watered. The creature dragged me closer to the door behind us, ensuring that we remained shielded from Lopez’s sight by the dramatic velvet curtains that framed the broad balcony.
“Freeze!” Lopez shouted, presumably at Buonarotti, who now stood exposed on the balcony with light blazing gloriously down upon him.
“What the fuck . . .” Buonarotti said.
As my eyes adjusted, I saw the mobster staring at me with an expression of appalled amazement. Then I realized he wasn’t staring at me.
The doppelgangster sucked in its breath. “What the fuck . . .”
Buonarotti’s gaze flashed to the disheveled priest who stood blinking and shielding his eyes, only an arm’s length away from him. The snarl of murderous hatred on Buonarotti’s face revealed that he knew his partner had betrayed him. He screamed—an inarticulate bellow of rage—and started beating Gabriel.
“Freeze!” Lopez shouted somewhere below the two men on the balcony. “Freeze!”
The gangster knocked down Father Gabriel, then reached for the candelabra I had knocked over earlier tonight.
“I’ll shoot!” Lopez warned.
“I’ll kill you, you bastard!”
“Don’t do it!” Lopez shouted.
Buonarotti picked up the candelabra and screamed at the cowering priest. “I’ll kill you!”
A gunshot went off.
Buonarotti cried out and staggered back, and blood rolled down his arm. I didn’t understand what was happening for a moment. Then I realized that Lopez had shot him.
Undeterred by his bullet wound, Buonarotti stumbled back toward the priest, screaming, “I’ll kill you, you bastard! I’ll kill you!”
“Stop!” Lopez warned. “Don’t make me shoot you twice!”
The priest turned to run this way, apparently forgetting there was a doppelgangster in his path. Not to mention a woman who had just beaten the shit out of him.
He stopped suddenly in his tracks, staring in sorrowful defeat. But he wasn’t looking at us. He was looking past us.
“I was good, wasn’t I?” he said, his voice flat.
I stared at him blankly.
Then from behind me, Max answered, “You were very talented.”
The priest turned and dove over the balcony railing.
I choked on a startled scream and lunged forward reflexively as the body crashed into the wooden pews below the balcony. The doppelgangster was startled