Doppelgangster - Laura Resnick [63]
“It’s happened several times.” The widow clasped her hands in front of her chest and gazed with rapture at Saint Monica. “She feels the pain of the brokenhearted, and she weeps for us.”
“ ‘Us’? I thought no one but you had seen her weep.”
Turning away from the saint, the widow gave me a cool, dismissive look. “You’re not the only one who doesn’t believe me.”
“I didn’t say—”
“Don’t patronize me. I know what I have seen.” Her voice was sharp. “And if you have not suffered enough sorrow in love to see it, too, you should be grateful rather than mock me.”
Now I felt bad. “I’m not mocking you. I swear.” I decided to fall back on a convenient excuse. “I’m Jewish, I don’t know from saints and their miracles.”
She blinked. “Oh, Diamond. Yes, that’s a Jewish name, isn’t it?”
“It’s certainly not Italian.”
“Are you converting?”
“Good God, no!” Seeing her offended expression, I added quickly, “My mother would die.”
Her eyes widened and, in what seemed to be a reflexive gesture, she raised her right hand to her neckline to close her fingers around the ornate cross that hung there on a silver chain. “It’s bad luck to say such a thing, even in jest.”
“Who’s jesting?” When the widow frowned and removed her hand from her throat, I noticed for the first time how lovely her pendant was. A graceful, old-fashioned piece, it consisted of a softly glowing mother-of-pearl cross embedded in a larger, ornate, silver one, and it was delicately decorated with tiny diamonds. “What a beautiful cross,” I said, hoping to change the subject. “Where did you get it?”
“It was my mother’s,” she said tersely.
Since it seemed unlikely she’d ever warm up to me, I decided to cut to the chase. “Look, I left my wrap here—”
“So ‘everyone’ knows your young man—your cop—at Stella’s?” she said suddenly, surprising me.
“Well, not everyone, but quite a few of the guys have met him by now.”
“So he’s a meat eater?”
Wondering why this question made her sneer, I said, “He’s not a vegetarian, if that’s what you mean.”
“What?”
I elaborated, “Lopez likes a good burger.” I knew this from our two lunch dates, which now seemed awfully long ago.
“Idiota! I said a meat eater. Don’t you know anything?”
“Huh?
“He takes a boost, right?”
“A boost?” I frowned, confused. “You mean . . . a leg up?”
She looked exasperated. “Bribes. Kickbacks. Crumbs from the Gambellos’ table.”
I gasped. “He does not take bribes!” I finally got it. “Oh! A ‘meat-eater’ is a corrupt cop?”
She made a hand gesture that suggested it had taken me a long time to arrive at this realization.
I said, “I hadn’t heard that one before.”
She stared at me without warmth.
“Lopez is not a corrupt cop,” I said firmly. “He’s a straight arrow. Very dedicated.” As I had good reason to know.
“Then what’s Officer Lopez—”
“Detective Lopez.”
“—doing hanging around Stella’s place with all those goombata?”
“He doesn’t hang around there, and he certainly doesn’t hang out with goombata. He’s investigating Charlie Chiccante’s murder. Also Johnny Gambello’s murder.” I paused. “You did hear they’re dead?”
She made a spitting gesture. “Good riddance to them both!”
“Yeah, Lucky said they wouldn’t really be missed.”
“Lucky killed them?”
“What? No! No.” Although it was a doomed cause—and a warped one—I made a clumsy effort to improve the widow’s opinion of my friend. “Actually, Lucky’s working with the good guys on this one.”
“Lucky is working with Detective Lopez?” she said in astonishment.
“Uh, not in the strictest sense,” I said. “But Lucky’s trying to discover who killed Charlie and Johnny.”
“Of course he is. They were Gambellos.”
“Oh. Right.” So much for improving her opinion of Lucky. “And Lopez is trying to find the killer, too.”
“I see. What I don’t quite see is where you . . . Oh! Oh.” She nodded. “Now I recognize you. You’re the singing server who saw the slaying, aren’t you?”
“Does everyone in this town read the tabloids?”
“I’m a widow,” she said tersely. “I have a lot of time to fill.”
“Yes, I’m the one