Dopplegangster by Laura Resnick Page A

We had no way of knowing then just how wrong he was.

6
     
    C HORUS GIRL WITNESSES MOB HIT! was the first head line I saw on my walk home from the subway station.
    “Chorus girl,” I muttered unhappily as I picked up the tabloid and read the caption beneath a photo of “alleged Gambello hitman” Lucky Battistuzzi embracing me outside of Bella Stella last night.
    I tried to resist looking at the other tabloids, but there’s a certain ghoulish fascination to seeing yourself demeaned in semiliterate prose at the local newsstand.
    CHUBBY CHARLIE CHECKS OUT! announced The New York Post .
    ACTRESS ALMOST AXED? asked the Insider . This “news story” reported that a “confidential source” claimed I might be the intended victim of last night’s hit, and Charlie Chiccante just an innocent bystander. Since the story below this one reported that Donald Trump had been dead for a decade and an impersonator had been running his empire all this time, I didn’t worry too much that Charlie had actually died because of me.
    BELLA MORTE? quipped another headline. The article noted that this was the third violent death at Bella Stella in five years.
    “Hmph.” I put the tabloid back down after reading a few lines. Then I saw that holding it for thirty seconds had been long enough to stain my hands with ink.
    “Hey, ain’t this a picture of you on the cover of the Exposé? ” asked the guy who ran the newsstand. He’d sold me my weekly copy of Backstage for several years, as well as various newspapers, magazines, and the occasional candy bar, but we’d never chatted before.
    I took a good look and saw he was reading a copy of the Exposé that had my picture in it. I was not flattered that he’d been able to identify me from this shot: I was squinting and hunched over, trying to avoid the glare of the flash, and my mouth was gaping open in surprise. Lopez, whose arm was around me, had mostly been cropped out of the photo.
    “ That’s the photo they decided to use?” I said. “What did I ever do to them?”
    The news seller frowned as he looked at me. “You got blue stuff on your face now.”
    “I know.” The blue substance that had spilled on me in Max’s laboratory was on my arm, too, thanks to Lucky shooting up the place.
    After looking at the photo again, the news seller said, “Well, at least your cheekbones look good.”
    “My cheekbones always look good,” I said grumpily. “They’re my best feature.” Actors learn to be pragmatic about our looks. We need to know what casting directors see when they look at us.
    The news seller studied me for another moment, then concluded, “Yeah, I’ll go along with that. Good cheekbones.” He waved the tabloid at me. “It’s a bad photo, no denying that. But the headline—SINGING SERVER SEES SLAYING!—that’s some lovely alliteration, don’t you think?”
    “Lovely. In fact, I hope it’s what they put on my tombstone.” I turned my back on him, eager to go home.
    “Hey, don’t you want any of these papers?” the news seller called after me. “This is your fifteen minutes of fame!”
    I felt depressed.
    As I was walking home, my cell phone rang. I saw that the call was from Lopez, and I flipped open the phone. “Hello?”
    “It’s me,” he said. “Where are you? Are you okay?”
    “I’m fine.” I was surprised at the urgency in his voice. “Why?”
    There was a pause. “I guess I got a little . . . I’m outside your apartment—”
    “You are?” I was less than a block from there, so I started walking faster.
    Lopez said, “When you didn’t answer your buzzer or your home phone . . . Well, I couldn’t think of where else you’d be this morning. I got worried.”
    “You thought I might be sleeping with the fishes?”
    “That’s not funny.” He sounded exhausted. “Where are you?”
    I rounded the corner and could see him sitting on the steps of my building. “Look to your right,” I said.
    He did—and I saw his whole body sag with