Dopplegangster (42 page)

Authors: Laura Resnick

BOOK: Dopplegangster

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“Perhaps it wasn’t created until yesterday,” Max mused. “Perhaps that why it hasn’t crossed your path yet.”

“That . . .
imposter
managed to get my agent on the phone when I couldn’t,” I fumed. “And why on earth did it go to my audition in
that
dress?”

“The physical form of the doppelgangsters seems to be fixed at the moment of their creation,” Max said. “It’s part of their temporary nature. They’re created be convincing, but not to last long, after all.”

“And what kind of audition did my doppelgangster give that made them think I’m ‘absolutely perfect’ for the role of a homeless bisexual junkie prostitute?” I wondered.

“So for some reason, although your double evidently didn’t start living your life until yesterday, its creation is derived from your life two days earlier. The day when you were wearing that outfit and first trying to contact your agent about that audition.”

“Don’t get me wrong,” I said. “I’ve got the range. I can certainly play the role. But what did my doppelgangster
do
that made them look at me and see ‘junkie prostitute’? That’s all I’m wondering.”

“Unless your doppelgangster did start living your life sooner, and yet somehow has not encountered you. Is that at all likely, though?”

“
I
think I’m right for the role of a smart, fully clothed graduate student,” I said. “So what happened? Did the doppelgangster screw up the line reading?”

“Esther, if we could focus on the problem at hand?” Max prodded.

“Oh. Right. Sorry.”

“Overall, I suspect it’s a very good thing you didn’t go home last night.”

“Oh, my God!” I gasped. “You think that thing was in my apartment last night? Maybe even sleeping in my
bed?
”

“If it was indeed carrying on your normal existence to the best of its abilities, then I think that is entirely possible.”

I shuddered in revulsion. “That’s just . . .
wrong
.”

“You can’t go home,” he said decisively. “You can’t go to any of the places that comprise your normal life. The risk of encountering your perfect double is too great!”

“Max, right now,
this
is the place that comprises my normal life. I’ve been here constantly lately. When I’m not in church, that is.”

“Good heavens! You’re right! And the impulses that draw you here may well draw your doppelgangster here at any moment, too! I must find a way to keep it out!”

“I have an idea,” I said suddenly.

“Yes?”

“Lopez wants to put me in protective custody. I’ll call him and tell him I’m ready to agree. I’ll tell him to send a squad car to my apartment to pick me up. They’ll take my double away and put it someplace where I won’t bump into it!”

“What if your doppelgangster won’t go with them?”

“Lopez may tell them to take me anyhow. He thinks I’m crazy or under the influence, right?” I nodded. “It’s worth a try.” I opened my cell phone and called Lopez.

A split second after I heard his phone ringing, a phone in the bookstore started ringing.

It wasn’t the usual heavy ring of the shop’s old-fashioned phone that was sitting nearby. Max and I looked at each other, puzzled, as the ringing continued.

It seemed to be coming from one of the larger piles of debris on the floor. Max rose, crossed over to it, and stooped down to examine the feathery rubbish from which the ringing seemed to be emanating. He started brushing his hand through feathers, bird bones, and clumps of dirt. A few moments later, he grabbed something, then held up a ringing cell phone.

I thought I recognized it. “Answer it.”

He did. “Hello?”

I heard his voice clearly on my own phone.

“That’s Lopez’s phone.” I closed my cell phone and set it aside. “His usual one.” I had called it without thinking, accustomed to reaching him at that number. “The phone he said last night that he couldn’t find.”

“Pardon?”

I explained. Then I said, “If it was buried in that pile of doppelgangster leftovers, it must have been . . .”

“On the doppelgangster when I beheaded it,” Max said.

“I don’t understand,” I said. “Why didn’t it disintegrate the way the gun did?”

Max turned it over and over in his hands, frowning. “Because this . . . this is Detective Lopez’s cell phone. I mean to say, this is a real object that belongs to the real man.”

“How did the doppelgangster get a hold of it?”

“It could have been . . .” Max suddenly gave a sharp, jerky start and his eyes widened. “When did Detective Lopez lose his phone?”

“Yesterday.” When I broke his prepaid cell phone, he said it was the second phone he had run through that day.

“
When
yesterday? Did he say precisely?”

“No, but uh . . . Let’s see.” I could tell from Max’s fierce frown of concentration that this was important. “Here, give me that.” I took the phone from him, opened it, and looked at the readout of outgoing calls. “When he called me here late yesterday afternoon to say he was in Brooklyn to investigate Danny’s death, I’m pretty sure he was calling me from this phone.” I vaguely remembered seeing his name on my phone’s LCD panel before I answered the call. “Yes, here it is. This was the phone he used.”

I continued scrolling through the screen of outgoing calls that Lopez had made yesterday. “He called two other numbers during the next hour.” I didn’t recognize them, but they were presumably work-related, since he would still have been at the scene of the murder. “And here’s his call to the bookstore, when he hung up right after you answered. That’s the last call made from this phone.” I added, “When he called me later, while we were confronting his doppelgangster, he was using another phone by then. A spare.”

Max’s chest started rising and falling rapidly. He took the phone back from me and stared intently at it. “He used this phone to call me. He was consumed with a desire to come here and confront us. Then he lost this phone . . .”

“And this phone was on his doppelgangster when
it
came here to confront us,” I said.

“God’s teeth!” Max said. “So
that’s
how it’s being done.”

“How it’s . . . Max!” I grabbed his arm. “This means something? You know what’s going on now?”

“This is
very
creative,” he said, clearly impressed. “I’ve been reading about doppelgängerism for days without coming across any suggestion whatsoever of such a thing! We are dealing with a most innovative and resourceful individual!” He shook his head, “You know, it’s really quite a shame that he uses his talents for Evil.”

“He,
who
, Max?”

“Whoever imbued this phone with mystical energy to create a perfect double of the detective—a duplicate of the man at the very moment that this object was taken from him.”

“I don’t under . . . Imbued this ph . . . Wait. You’re saying that’s how it’s done?”

Max nodded slowly, thinking aloud. “He acquires a token from the victim. Something he associates with him—or her. Something the victim possessed at the moment of existence which is re-created within the perfect double.”

“He acquires?” I said. “You mean he
steals
, right? Because Lopez didn’t give someone his phone. He just couldn’t find it.”

“Yes. Stealing the tokens seems most likely.”

“Stealing . . . Oh, my God, that’s why
that
dress!” I said. “I left my black wrap—the little see-through jacket that went with my dress—at the church the evening that we met Johnny’s doppelgangster. I forgot it when we left. So I went back to the sit-down early the next night to get it. But it wasn’t in the crypt, and it wasn’t in the lost-and-found box . . .”

“It was stolen!” Max looked excited.

“The Widow Giacalona was there when I was asking for it. She said that a number of things had been stolen at church lately! She blamed young thugs and
goombata
. . . but then I got duplicated.”

“We must find out what was taken from the widow,” he said, heading for the back of the shop.

“I think I know!” I followed him as I recalled Elena’s appearance that afternoon at St. Monica’s. “Her necklace! That big cross. This afternoon at the church was the first time I’ve seen her without it.”

Max paused at the door to the cellar. “And now her doppelgangster is wearing it. Excellent! I think I know what to do.”

He went down the stairs, moving swiftly. I followed him.

Elena’s perfect double looked up when we entered the laboratory. “Is this your entire plan?” she said in exasperation. “To keep me tied up in a basement? Don’t you think—”

“Did Don Michael take your cross?” Max demanded.

“What?”

“I beg your pardon.” Max said. “I know this is a distasteful subject, but I gather he tried to force himself on you last night?”

“He’s a pig,” she said with disgust.

“He manhandled you? Was rough with you?”

“Yes. When I resisted him, he got angry.”

“You struggled?”

She nodded. “And he pulled my hair, shoved me around, tried to unzip my dress.”

“He
is
a pig,” I said. And Lucky would kill him when he found out about this.

“And your necklace?” Max said. “Your cross?”

“It came off while I fought him.” She scowled, looking furious. “He picked it up and wouldn’t give it back. It was my
mother’s
. It’s a sacred symbol! And that
stronzo
wouldn’t give it back to me.”

“So you kicked him down the stairs.”

“Yes,”
she said with dark satisfaction.

“And what do you remember after that?” Max asked.

She looked confused. “After that?”

“After you kicked him down the stairs, and he went away,” Max said. “What happened next?”

“Next? Next, next . . .” She looked puzzled as she thought about it.

“Tell me the very next thing you can remember after that moment.”

Elena seemed bewildered. “Next I . . . I came home today and found you in my apartment.”

“Yes,” Max said. “That is indeed what happened next.

To
you
.”

He reached around her neck, grasped the silver chain that hung there, and snapped the clasp.

“Max,” I said as he removed the necklace from her throat. The ornate cross glinted in the lamplight as it swung in his hand. “What are you doing?”

Elena’s eyeballs rolled back in their sockets. Her head fell backward. Her whole body quivered. There was a small explosion, and a tower of feathers, bird bones, pebbles, and clumps of dirt collapsed all over the chair where, only a moment ago, the doppelgangster had been tied up.

“The token used to create the doppelgangster is the only part of the creature that’s real,” Max explained. “Remove it, and the illusion disintegrates.”

“Is there any more of that sherry?” I couldn’t stand sherry, but I had felt the distinct need for a soothing beverage, and sherry was all that Max had. “Pour me another glass.”

He did, saying, “Try to sip this one slowly.”

“Lucky’s going to be upset when he finds out we killed it.”

“We didn’t kill anything,” Max said patiently. “We deconstructed a convincing illusion.”

“Well, at least we didn’t have to behead it.” The second glass of sherry was helping my hands stop shaking. With a grimace, I sipped a little more of the revolting stuff. We were back upstairs, sitting at the big walnut table, still surrounded by the filth of Lopez’s former doppelgangster. I added with some relief, “So I guess we don’t need to carry a machete around the city.”

“No, I think not,” Max agreed. “From now on, when Nelli identifies a doppelgangster, we merely need to determine what mystically imbued personal token it possesses and remove the object. That will banish the illusion.”

“You mean make it explode into messy crap,” I said.

Max said thoughtfully, “My reading in recent days led me to ponder the possibilities of psychic transformation, soul possession, animation of physically altered corpses—”

“Animation of
what?
”

“There were some theories I felt it best not to share with you unless I found confirmation of them in our actual experiences,” he admitted.

“Good call,” I said faintly.

“But
this
. . .” He made a little sound of admiration. “This is unprecedented in the annals of doppelgängerism!”

“How thrilling.”

“As is the use of doppelgängers to facilitate—nay, to ensure—the success of assassination!”

“Remarkable.”

“And at the same time, it’s so absurdly simple!’