Doppelgangster - Laura Resnick [83]
“Right. Danny said we shouldn’t allow anyone into the cellar. Then he said . . .” Vinny started swaying a little. For a moment, I thought he might pass out. “This whole thing is so crazy!”
“Take a steady, deep breath,” Max said gently, “and give yourself a moment to put your thoughts in order.”
Vinny gave Max a grateful look and nodded. After a few slow, calming breaths, he said, “Okay. I’m telling you exactly what happened, even though it sounds nuts.”
Max nodded. “Understood.”
“Danny said the killer was crafty, ruthless, and might be disguised—might even look just like him. Identical. A perfect double.” Vinny shook his head. “He was jumpy and confused, not making much sense. He kept babbling in Italian—”
“He talked Italian,” Lucky said pointedly to me.
“So this was serious,” I guessed.
Vinny continued, “He said something about a doppio—”
“A double,” Lucky translated.
“—and then, looking scared out of his wits, he started shouting stuff. It didn’t make any sense. Stuff like, ‘La mia propria faccia nel viso di un altro!’”
I drew in a sharp breath. “That sounds exactly like what Charlie said to me!”
Vinny asked, “Who’s Charlie?”
“Charlie Chiccante,” I said.
“Who?”
Lucky said to me, “Vinny ain’t in the family business.”
“Oh. And I guess you don’t read the tabloids?” I said to Vinny, a little pleased.
“Oh, wait a minute! Charlie Chiccante.” Vinny nodded. “Yeah, I read about it. Isn’t he that Gambello capo who got whacked on Saturday night by a chorus girl with ties to the mob?”
“I didn’t whack him,” I snapped. “I just saw him get whacked!”
Today was Wednesday. I prayed that by the following weekend, some celebrity scandal would make tabloid fans everywhere forget all about me.
“So . . . I don’t understand,” Vinny said. “Are you saying that Charlie Chiccante and Danny got done by the same hitter?”
Though not in the family business, he’d obviously grown up with the vocabulary.
“We think so,” I said. “Lucky, what does that phrase mean? The one that Charlie and Danny both said before dying? La mia . . . whatever.”
Lucky said, “ ‘I saw my own face on someone else’s face.’ ”
“Doppelgangster,” Max said with a nod. “Like poor Chubby Charlie, Danny understood what he had seen.”
“Because we tried to warn him,” I said.
Vinny looked bewildered. “So that stuff Danny was babbling, that means something to you guys? I thought he was just having a stroke or something.”
“Believe me, I know exactly how you feel,” I said, “Go on, Vinny, what happened next?”
Vinny wiped his glistening forehead, nodded, and made an obvious effort to collect his thoughts.
“Nathan over there, he works for Danny.” Vinny pointed to the young man guarding the door. From this angle, I could see that Nathan had a gun tucked into his belt at the small of his back. “Danny left him and Bobby at the entrance there, with instructions to search everyone who came in. Everyone. I didn’t like it, and I knew the customers would hate it. But, well, Danny’s not really a guy you say no to. And he’s the one who bank-rolled me to open this shop, after all.”
“I see that Nathan’s still by the door now,” I said. “But where’s Bobby?”
“With the body,” Vinny said. “It didn’t seem fitting to, um, leave it lying alone before the priest gets here.”
“You called a priest?” I said.
“It’s what you do when a guy dies.” Vinny glanced at Lucky. “Even a guy like Danny, I guess.”
Max said, “So the two young men guarded the door and searched everyone who came in?”
“Actually, no one came in. Middle of the week, slow day. Nothing happened,” Vinny said.
I nodded, recalling that the street outside was almost empty when we got here.
“So about an hour passes,” Vinny continued. “I’m stocking the shelves, and then . . . BOOM!”
I jumped a little.
“Shotgun blast,” Lucky said. “Always loud.”
“I didn’t know what it was at the time,” Vinny said. “I just knew it sounded like a cannon and had come from the cellar. So I told Nathan and Bobby to stay by the door and, if asked, say that a wine casket had exploded in the cellar. It’s stupid, but it would get rid of people. And I went