Doppelgangster - Laura Resnick [90]
Apart from wanting to finish our interrupted tryst, I knew it was time to come clean with him—though I wasn’t yet sure just how much that meant telling him.
“I will,” he promised. “And if there’s a miracle and I’m wrong about working late tonight . . .”
“Let me know,” I said.
After I hung up, I told Max and Lucky what had happened.
“Oh, dear,” said Max.
“Angelo? That punk!” Lucky said in exasperation.
“How do you think he learned about the hit so quickly?” I wondered.
“Word travels fast in our business,” Lucky said. “And that Falcone kid is always hangin’ around and trying to soak up juice. He probably heard about the hit before your boyfriend did.”
“So you agree with Detective Lopez’s initial assessment that Angelo Falcone didn’t commit the murder?” Max said. “But I don’t understand. What does the young man get out of falsely claiming he did it?”
“He thinks he’s getting the attention of the don,” Lucky said. “What he’ll actually get is an early grave. If the Corvinos don’t whack him, the Gambellos will.”
“Goodness! Why?”
“Because of all the trouble that putz is about to cause.”
“Is it that bad?” I asked.
Lucky nodded. “Even with Vinny, Nathan, and Bobby telling the Corvinos the truth, it wasn’t gonna be easy to convince the family that the Gambellos didn’t whack Danny. But now, with that babbo boasting about the hit, they’ll think he did it to get his button. They’ll figure we ordered the hit. Or at least hinted that we wanted it done. What else could they think?”
“But if the cops don’t think Angelo did it,” I said hopefully, “then maybe the Cor—”
“It don’t matter what the cops think.” Lucky shook his head. “Angelo has stood up for the hit. In our business, there’s no taking that back.”
“Not even if we can find out who’s really doing all this?”
“That won’t help Angelo stay alive. It might calm down the two families, though,” Lucky said. “But we ain’t having much luck so far in figuring out this thing.”
“We’ve got to do better,” I said.
“Yes, we must,” Max agreed.
Lucky nodded. “Or there’s gonna be a full-scale mob war the likes of which ain’t been seen in a long time.”
I knew he was right. I also suspected that now that Danny was dead, everything Lucky had said to him last night might be interpreted by the Corvinos as a threat rather than an attempt to help him.
Whatever dark feelings I had about Lucky’s murder of Elena Giacalona’s second husband, I didn’t want him to die. And I knew that what he wasn’t saying was that he would be high on the Corvinos’ list of targets now.
17
“Shelley, the English poet, saw his doppelgänger shortly before he drowned,” I said wearily. “Fascinating.”
“ ‘He’? The guy’s parents named him Shelley?” Lucky shook his head. “I guess they took one look at that baby and could tell he’d grow up to write poetry.”
I looked up from the book I was perusing with fast-growing boredom. “Actually, they named him Percy,” I said. “Percy Bysshe Shelley.”
“Percy.” Lucky rolled his eyes. “What’s with the English, anyhow?”
Sitting at the big table in Zadok’s Rare and Used Books, I flipped impatiently through the pages of the volume in my hands. “According to this, a double or doppio may also be known as a ‘beta body,’ or a ‘subtle body,’ or—”
“Ain’t nothing subtle about getting whacked,” Lucky said gloomily.
“—a ‘fluidic body.’ In Irish and English folklore—”
“The English again,” Lucky grumbled.
“—it’s called a fetch.”
I sighed and tossed the book aside. It hit a pile of other equally boring books sitting on the edge of the table. They fell over and crashed to the floor. Lucky, who was pacing around the shop, drew in a sharp breath and flinched. Nelli, who was napping, woke up and leaped to her feet with a sharp bark. Max, also sitting at the big table, looked up from his reading, blinked, then went back to reading.
“Sorry,” I said to Nelli. “My fault. Go back to sleep.”
She yawned, wagged her tail, then turned three times in a circle before lying down and returning to