The Golem of Paris

by Jonathan Kellerman

  Hrubý takes notes.

  Alone in her dingy room, she pleads yet again with the hotel operator to grant her a connection to the United States.

  “I’ll pay for it in advance,” she says. “Please.”

  She hasn’t spoken to her husband or son in four days.

  What is she doing here?

  She wants to consider her decision to come to Prague as a form of temporary insanity, caught from Frayda. But she needed weeks to get ready. She had to get the visa, secure child care. So she isn’t insane, or else it wasn’t temporary.

  On the morning she left, Sam accompanied her to the gate at LAX, making a puppet of Jacob, waving his hand. Good-bye, Ima! We’ll miss you! She leaned in to kiss them and Jacob lunged out and clung to her. His nails bit into the nape of her neck. They grow so fast, and Sam is helpless with the clipper. She mumbled something about an emery board in the bathroom; she freed herself from her son’s arms, and walked down the Jetway to the sound of his screams.

  Clearly you have many sides.

  Never has she been aware of so many of them simultaneously; never have they felt so at war. Artist. Jew. American. Czech. Wife. Mother. The tide in her head builds to a roar as the operator informs her, for the fourth day in a row, that it is not possible to call abroad at the moment.

  Bina slams the phone down.

  • • •

  THURSDAY, OCTOBER 28, is a national holiday, the anniversary of the founding of the independent Czechoslovak state. Along with thousands of others, the group boards the tram to the parade grounds at Letná Plain. Weather balloons bob, numbered by city district, the sections further subdivided by employer: the Skoda automobile factory, the Ministry of Information. Members of the Workers’ Militia usher folks amid a tossing sea of tricolors. Scratch at the patriotism, though, and find mischief; a torn cup becomes a megaphone, used to direct a question toward the bandstand.

  “Here I am, Mr. Husák,” the man yells, addressing the absent Prime Minister. “Where are you?”

  The International Alliance of Jewish Artists has its own private section, set up with chairs so that they can observe the proceedings in comfort. A nice surprise is the presence of Ota Wichs’s family: his wife, Pavla, an angular woman toting a picnic basket, and son, Peter, who’s nine but looks five, with elfin features and a thatch of shiny black hair. His shy smile gives Bina a dull ache in her chest.

  Wichs’s attempts to translate are drowned out by overloud cheers. Then follows a lively display of strength, intelligible in any language: MiGs thunder overhead, soldiers march, a military band blares. The national anthem starts up, and thirty thousand people lift their voices, and Hrubý climbs up onto a chair, waving his arms like a conductor. Words Bina thought she’d forgotten fall from her mouth like tears.

  Kde domov můj? Kde domov můj?

  Where is my home? Where is my home?

  They sang it, her parents and their friends; potlucks in Prospect Park, the adults drunk at midday and telling sappy stories. Where is my home? Bina understands, now.

  It’s not a question, but an accusation.

  Where is my home?

  What have you done with it?

  The festivities last for hours, district divisions breaking down, people trampling the vast brown lawns, toasting, singing, dancing, hugging. They share sandwiches, a precious bottle of wine. A stranger hands Bina a cucumber, which he boasts was grown by the sweat of his labor on his allotment garden. He insists that she eat it, watching her with a squint of profound pleasure; when she finishes, he kisses her cheek and runs off.

  As dusk falls, she has put nothing else in her stomach except acrid water. Her bladder is bursting. She goes off in search of a bathroom that turns out not to exist. Men and women alike are simply doing whatever they need to do, wherever they can find room to do it. Bina weaves between the locust trees, her feet squelching. Over the plain roll accordion music and the urgency of sexual congress. Fireworks explode. She’s going to want a long, hot shower.

  Finding a suitable clump of privet, she waits for the night to fade to black before gathering up her skirt. To the west, the turrets of Prague Castle are lit red, white, and blue—a hilariously romantic view for peeing. She starts to giggle.

  “Promiňte.”

  Bina shrieks and leaps up.

  A whistle lances the sky, light bursts, and she discerns the shape of a boy.

  “Excuse me,” Peter Wichs says. “I did not mean to scare you.”

  Her heart is racing, a stray drop of urine trickling down the inside of her thigh. She feels vaguely assaulted. She reminds herself that he’s a child.

  She asks in Czech if he’s lost.

  “Please come with me,” he says, and he slips off into the night.

  • • •

  HE MOVES QUICKLY, playing a weak flashlight through the trees, short legs pumping.

  Bina hurries to catch up. They’ve gone some distance before she realizes they’re headed in the wrong direction.

  “We should go back,” she says. “Your father will be worried.”

  “My father sent me.”

  “To do what?”

  “Bring you.”

  “Bring me where?”

  “You can speak English,” he says. “I know how.”

  They stumble along the paths sloping toward the Vltava.

  “Peter.” She assumes her most maternal tone. “Peter, let’s stop for a second and you tell me what’s going on.”

  “Can you walk faster?”

  They reach an unpeopled area. The edge of the city comes into view.

  “That’s enough,” she says, grabbing at his sleeve.

  He regards her with weary patience. “I thought you would go sooner.”

  “What?”

  “To the bathroom,” he says. “I was waiting all day. What took you so long?”

  He removes her hand. “We’re late.”

  • • •

  CROSSING OVER THE ČECHŮV BRIDGE, graffiti shouting from its rusting balustrades, Bina finds herself starting to speed up, and then to outpace him.

  She knows where they’re headed.

  In the wan moonlight, the Alt-Neu shul broods like a bird of prey.

  “My father will be here as soon as he can,” Peter says, reaching into his shirt.

  He tugs out a key on a necklace of twine.

  They enter the synagogue and step down into the antechamber, chilly, resonant. She follows Peter along the hall. He unlocks a door and reveals an unlit stairway.

  “I’ll wait here to give you privacy,” he says, handing her the flashlight.

  He offers no further explanation. Bina makes her way down carefully, fingers brushing the wall for balance. The stones grow slippery, the air damp and fungal.

  She reaches bottom, a candlelit room with a small bureau, a stack of fraying towels, a camp shower in a plastic tub. Through an arch, she sees a second room. More candles dance in the rippling surface of a ritual bath.

  There’s no one to supervise her. No wise husband to teach her, no friend making obscure demands.

  We need you to be physically present.

  She is here. She could not articulate why she is here. Yet the moment is calling to her, like a song in a forgotten language.

  She strips, showers off, and immerses, finding the mikveh pleasingly warm. She dresses and heads upstairs, reaching the top just as Ota Wichs arrives.

  He bolts the front door and comes to join them. “Okay?” he asks.

  “Okay,” Peter says. “No one saw.”

  Ota kisses him on the head. “Well done.” Turning to Bina, he says, “I apologize for the secrecy. Obviously, we have had to be extra careful. Hrubý—you have seen enough of him to know what type of fellow he is. His father was a hammer, his mother, a sickle. But it’s all right, he’ll be dru
nk tonight.”

  He smiles. “Shall we ascend?”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  The Commander asked me to bring this by.”

  Detective Paul Schott stood on the landing outside Jacob’s apartment, a laptop dwarfed by his huge hands.

  Jacob stepped back to admit him.

  Of all the members of Special Projects, it was Schott, with his strong whiff of zealotry, who unsettled Jacob most. Fat, red-cheeked Mel Subach had a sense of humor and could give as good as he got; Mike Mallick was driven and condescending but a pragmatist at heart.

  Schott made no attempt to disguise his contempt as he lumbered in, carelessly Frisbeeing the computer onto the couch. He’d shaved off his mustache, which elongated his face and emphasized his frown.

  “I’d offer you a drink,” Jacob said, “but you’re going to turn me down.”

  Schott waved impatiently. “Fine, you know. I know you know. Congratulations. I’m going on record that I don’t trust you.”

  “Join the club,” Jacob said. “Call my ex-wife, she’s the president.”

  “Which one?” Schott grinned, a bulldog contemplating steak. “Yeah. I know all about you, too, Lev.”

  “Everybody needs a hobby,” Jacob said.

  “You could take up pottery,” Schott said.

  “You,” Jacob said, “can shut the fuck up.”

  The big man started.

  “You don’t mention her,” Jacob said. “You don’t allude to her. Ever. Got it?”

  Silence.

  Schott said, “That all, Your Highness?”

  “Yeah. Leave me the hell alone.”

  Schott snorted. “Best of luck.”

  • • •

  HAVING DECENT RESEARCH TOOLS felt like coming up for air. For the next twenty-four hours, Jacob reran names, combed databases.

  His relief faded fast. He could find nothing with a matching MO, not even close.

  He turned his attention to the owner of the bakery. Her name was Zinaida Moskvina. Her record was spotless, free of so much as a parking ticket, and he felt affirmed in his hunch that whatever had happened, she hadn’t been at the center of it but dragged along.

  Her daughter was a different story.

  Ekaterina Moskvina, twenty-seven, had racked up three DUIs in the last four years. Additional busts for coke, shoplifting, chucking a drink at a police officer. She called herself Katie on her Facebook page and declared herself “dat bitch u dont fuk wit.” Her posts consisted of announcements that she was hitting the club and sHiT gOn GeT kRaYzEe KrAy.

  Jacob agreed with her there.

  He spent that night staking out her Van Nuys apartment in an unmarked. She was disappointingly well behaved, in by seven and lights out by ten. The same went for the next several days. But he persisted, and late on Friday night, he got his reward.

  Eleven p.m., the hour for shit getting krayzee kray fast approaching. He’d skipped his visit to Bina and was composing a guilt-stricken text to Rosario when Katie emerged in circulation-choking jeans and a black halter top.

  She got into her Kia and sped off.

  Jacob tailed her to a dive bar on Magnolia. His breath quickened as he stepped inside, walking past Katie’s booth to occupy a stool at the end, scalloped wood a comfort beneath his backside.

  “What can I getcha?”

  Jacob tore his gaze from the blocky amber silhouette of the Jim Beam bottle and asked for a Bud Light. Moderation of a kind.

  Behind him, Katie & Co. were whooping it up, a multiethnic team, all wearing identically skimpy clothing: Girls Gone Wild meets the United Colors of Benetton. Over pitchers of margaritas, they debated hotly where to take the evening next.

  “Here you go, buddy.”

  Jacob had begun salivating well before he took the first sip. He white-knuckled through the urge to drain the bottle in one go.

  Katie seemed unencumbered by any such doubts. For the next hour, Jacob kept a refill count. He figured it wouldn’t take long. She was petite, five-three without the platform heels. Though she did have Russian genetics. And there was another variable: the strength of the margaritas.

  For the sake of research, he ordered one for himself. Medium.

  An hour later, he felt confident she would blow well over the limit.

  Now he had to hope that she’d offer to drive.

  “I’ll drive,” she announced, pitching back a half-full glass.

  Like ducklings the women filed out of the bar, went through the leggy contortions of fitting into Katie’s tiny car.

  He followed them over Laurel Canyon to the Strip. She’d had a lot of practice driving drunk. No twenty-mile-per-hour trepidation, no reckless lane changes. You could screen a video of her in driver’s ed as an example of road courtesy. They had that sad fact in common, he and poor Katie: both functioned better with a certain amount of intoxicant in their systems.

  Finally, at Sunset and Fairfax, she made an illegal U-turn, and he clamped the light on his dashboard and switched on the flasher.

  The compact lurched. Making a run for it?

  No. She was pulling over.

  When he reached her, her eyes were full of tears, her mouth full of breath mints. He asked her to step out of her vehicle.

  She blew a .129 and immediately demanded a blood test.

  “You got it.”

  He drove her down Sunset, turning onto Wilcox toward Hollywood Station but stopping a block shy to veer into the parking lot of a Staples. He cut the engine and turned around.

  “Listen,” he said. “You’re fucked. You know that, right?”

  Her mascara was running in streaks. “I want a blood test.”

  “I’m trying to reason with you, first.”

  “Lawyer. Lawyer.”

  “Pipe down a sec.”

  “Lawyer. Lawyer. Lawyer.”

  He said, “There’s another way.”

  Her eyes got big. “What?”

  “Help me out and this doesn’t need to happen.”

  She said, “You’re fucking disgusting.”

  Jacob burst out laughing. Even in his heyday, he maintained some minimal standards of hygiene. Katie Moskvina had vector of infection written all over her.

  “Don’t flatter yourself,” he said.

  “Fuck you,” she said, crying harder.

  “Do yourself a favor,” he said. “Shut up.”

  “I’m going to sue your ass.”

  “Listen to me carefully. This is your last chance. You can help me out or we can drive over to the station and they’ll jab your arm. Fourth DUI in four years? You’re looking at sixteen months, mandatory minimum. I tell the judge how you spit at me, it’ll be worse.”

  “I never—”

  “—especially after you grabbed my arm. Especially after you threw that drink at that cop. That’s called a pattern of aggressive behavior toward the police.”

  “You’re a fucking liar.”

  “And you’re a drunk,” he said.

  Katie began to weep quietly. “Asshole.”

  “Great,” he said, dialing his cell. “Now that we’re on the same page.”

  He put the ringing phone on speaker. “Tell your mom to get over here. Speak English.”

  • • •

  WHEN ZINAIDA MOSKVINA ARRIVED, Jacob allowed her a look at her daughter, cuffed and stuporous in the back of his car. Then he led her off a ways, to a splotch of deathly yellow light on the parking lot blacktop.

  “That speech about the police banging on your door in the middle of the night? Very powerful stuff. Definitely gave me a few ideas.”

  She shifted her glare from him to the unmarked.

  “She must drive you up the wall,” Jacob said. “Hardworking woman like you, you give her opportunities, and she just keeps screwing up.”
<
br />   Zina’s temples bulged.

  “I don’t want to lock her up. I don’t think that’s the place for her. Rehab, maybe. But, a girl like her, at County? She’ll get eaten alive.”

  He stepped toward her. “I know you’re frightened.”

  “You don’t know nothing.”

  “Talk to me,” he said. “I can keep you safe.”

  She laughed. “You can’t touch him.”

  “Who?”

  She laughed again. “You think I’m stupid?”

  “I think you’re scared. I saw how you looked when I showed you the boy’s picture. I can see what it’s doing to you, keeping everything inside. You’re going to feel better if you tell me.”

  Silence stretched.

  “I was not there,” she said.

  “Who was?”

  Another silence, longer and denser.

  “Remember what he did to a child, Zina. He’s going down, whether you help me or not. The only question is if you’re going to let your own child go down in the process.”

  He paused. “I mean, I don’t know. Maybe she had something to do with it.”

  Zina looked up sharply. “No.”

  “Whatever,” he said. “I’ll find out one way or the other.”

  He started walking back toward his car. “I’ll make sure she gets her lawyer.”

  He got in and slammed the door hard, jarring Katie awake.

  “What’s—what the fuck,” she said.

  “Time for that blood test,” he said, starting the engine. “Mother knows best.”

  He shifted into drive.

  Katie flopped onto her back and began screaming and kicking at the door.

  He stomped the brake. “Knock it off.”

  She had rolled off the seat and was lying on the floor, tangled up, sobbing.

  He swore quietly. Now he had to actually book her.

  Bullshit. Paperwork. Testimony. And no lead.

  He swung the unmarked toward the exit, was about to turn when he heard a shout. In the rearview mirror, Zinaida Moskvina was running after them, waving her arms.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  Even then, she wouldn’t say the name out loud.