Doppelgangster - Laura Resnick [95]
Lopez was dressed in the same clothes he had worn this afternoon, jeans and a pale shirt. Since then, he had added a denim jacket to his ensemble.
“Hi,” I said. “Why are you here?”
“Because of the note you gave him.” Lopez’s voice was tired, flat, and a little cold.
“The note?”
“I found it at the scene.”
I just stared blankly for a few moments. Then my brain woke up, and I realized what he was talking about.
“That phone call a few hours ago!” I blurted. “The hang-up. That was you?”
Lopez nodded.
“I don’t understand,” Max said. “Why did you hang up?”
“Because I didn’t call to talk,” Lopez replied tersely.
Max asked, “What note have you found? What is its significance?”
“It was on Danny when he died?” I guessed.
“Danny,” Lopez repeated. His voice got chillier. “You were on first-name terms?”
I said to Max, “He’s talking about the piece of paper I gave Danny last night.”
“It was near the body,” Lopez said. “Probably fell out of the victim’s hand—or maybe a pocket—when he died.”
“Oh, dear,” Max said.
Lopez said, “It’s easy to see how it got missed. The scene was such a mess. And your note was stuck by dried blood to a broken bottle so that it almost looked like part of the torn wine label. It’s just luck that I’m the one who noticed it.” His expression didn’t suggest that the luck was necessarily good. “No names. Just two phone numbers. I recognized one of them right away.” He looked at me again. “Yours.” His voice was still flat. “I had a bad feeling that I knew who the other number belonged to, but I was hoping I was wrong.” He shifted his gaze to Max. “Until I dialed it and found out I was right.”
This comment was followed by an awkward silence. My heart sank. I recalled thinking this afternoon, just before I left Lopez so I could try to help Danny, that I would tell him the truth tonight about where I’d gone today. But this wasn’t how I had intended to break the news.
I asked, “Has this made things very bad with Detective Napoli?”
“Napoli doesn’t know,” he said.
My shoulders sagged with relief. “Oh, that’s good.”
“No, it’s not good,” Lopez snapped. “Today I concealed evidence in a murder investigation, Esther!”
“Oh!” I realized what he was saying. “Oh. You found that note with our numbers on it, and you . . . pocketed it? To protect me?”
“Yes.” His voice was clipped, his expression dark.
“That was very thoughtful,” Max said, beaming at Lopez.
Lopez gave him a look that scared me.
“Max,” I said, “try not to talk.”
“Hmm?”
“If they find out,” I said anxiously to Lopez, “would you be suspended? Or . . .”
“Or charged?” He unleashed his anger now. “For stealing a note that connects my ‘fiancée’ to a brutal murder? Yes, Esther, I could be charged with obstructing justice. Probably, though, the department would rather keep it quiet and just kick me off the force. No one wants a scandal in the Organized Crime Control Bureau, after all, so the NYPD probably wouldn’t like to advertise, by charging me, that one of their detectives concealed evidence in a murder to protect the mob girl he’s been dating. The possibilities for tabloid headlines alone would be bloodcurdling, from my captain’s point of view.”
Feeling terrible about this, I said, “I never—”
“Merely suspending me, of course, is a possibility. That’s the kind of pass that a superior officer gives to a detective he likes and who has a track record in his department. But guess what?”
“I know,” I said, my heart pounding as I saw just how furious he was. “Napoli doesn’t like you, and you’ve only been in OCCB a few days. But—”
“And that’s not the point!”
Max said, “Perhaps we should all calm—”
“If you don’t shut him up,” Lopez said to me, “I swear to God I’m going to do something that they’ll have to charge me for.”
“Max,” I said sharply, “don’t talk.”
“The point,” Lopez said, “is that there’s been a murder, and I concealed evidence and removed it from the scene, and I’m a cop, and that’s not what I do.”
And that was the bottom line, I realized. He was more appalled by what he had done to protect me than