The Golem of Paris

by Jonathan Kellerman

  She shook crackers onto a plate, poured the tea and slid it to him, pulling up a seat on the other side of the pass-through. “May I ask what brings you by?”

  “Nothing in particular,” he said. “I’m spinning my wheels, so.”

  “And how did you know I’d be home?”

  “I didn’t. I took a chance. But your car’s in your spot. It’s what we in the police biz call a ‘distinguishing mark.’”

  “Too true,” she said, adjusting her bathrobe.

  Only then did he notice that she was dressed for bed, the robe over scrubs.

  “I’ve just come off an all-nighter,” she said.

  “Shit. I’ll go.”

  “Don’t be daft. You just got here. What’s bothering you? The mother and child?”

  He filled her in on his halting progress.

  “When I asked the French cop about her victims’ eyelids, she didn’t say no. I know,” he said, “she didn’t say yes, either.”

  “How did she respond?”

  “By changing the subject, which to me means I touched a nerve.”

  Divya said, “It would be nice to confirm that this Tremsin fellow was actually in Los Angeles at the time of the murders.”

  “I contacted ICE for immigration records.” He bit down on a cracker: dust and must. “Meantime I’m floating around in a fact vacuum, surrounded by all sorts of fun things to play with.”

  “Such as?”

  “Susan Lomax said the guy who came to TJ’s class was wearing a big black ring. I found some blogger who hinted that Tremsin used to be a member of a KGB group called the Zhelezo Circle. I’ll bet you can figure out what ‘zhelezo’ means in Russian.”

  “‘Big and black’?” she said.

  “Close. ‘Iron.’”

  “Iron circle,” she said. “Cute.”

  “Not cute. They were a torture squad. A bunch of psychopaths with PhDs.”

  Divya bit her lip. “My God.”

  “It’s a blog,” he said. “Proves nothing. But you wonder, right? And Zinaida Moskvina insisted that the guy who came to the bakery was one of Tremsin’s men.”

  “Mm,” she said.

  He eyed her. “What.”

  “You’re quite persuasive,” she said. “And I don’t want to be a wet blanket.”

  “Just say whatever it is you’re thinking.”

  “This baker,” she said. “She’s the one who set you after Tremsin to begin with. Have you considered that she might be stringing you along?”

  “Her? No way. She was practically shitting herself, she was so scared.”

  “All right. But does it have to be him she’s scared of? Perhaps the real danger is from someone local, and she’s throwing you Tremsin’s name because it’s relatively low-risk. He’s halfway around the world. He’s never going to hear about it.”

  Smart girl.

  “Is she in trouble?” Divya asked. “Does she owe money?”

  “Don’t know about debts. Her record’s clean.”

  “Well,” she said. “If I were you, that’s where I would start.”

  He flicked his mug morosely. “Crap.”

  “I’m sorry,” she said. “I’m not trying to discourage you.”

  “Don’t be. That’s why I came. I’ve been holed up for a week talking to myself.”

  He got up, paced. “Last night I got sidetracked, reading up on Cold War stuff. Crazy, what went on. They had these female spies, swallows, trained to seduce men. They’d develop a relationship with a mark and pump him for information. Sometimes it went on for years, the suckers convinced they’d found true love. There were even marriages. Forget Us versus Them. It was Them versus Them. The Soviets, the Czechs, the East Germans—they were all spying on each other. That was a major part of their undoing.”

  “Without trust, there’s nothing,” she said.

  He felt a twinge of annoyance, unable to tell if she was admonishing him.

  “The first time Special Projects called me out to Castle Court,” he said. “It was just you and me. You knew it was Mai.”

  She hesitated. “I wanted to tell you up front.”

  “But.”

  “Commander Mallick thought she would respond better if you were frustrated.”

  He shook his head. “You people are amazing.”

  “We people?”

  “You know what I mean.”

  “Besides,” she said, taking his mug to the sink, “you can’t claim Mallick wasn’t correct. It worked.”

  Jacob said, “I’m frustrated now.”

  Her back to him, she said, “I hope that passes.” A graceful pivot. “I really do.”

  “You know what, I should let you get some sleep.”

  “You don’t have to run out the minute I show concern for you.”

  “I’m not running out,” he said. Then he said, “Do you sleep?”

  She laughed.

  “Don’t act like that’s a ridiculous question,” he said.

  “Not ridiculous. Just strange. I don’t understand you. First you say we’re full of it. Now you’re talking to me like a true believer. Which is it?”

  “Both,” Jacob said. “Neither.”

  “Make up your mind, would you? And for the record, yes, I sleep.”

  “All of you? Or does some part remain on alert?”

  Her voice dropped low: “Detective Lev, let’s not get bogged down in theoreticals.”

  It was an eerily terrific impression of Mallick.

  Jacob said, “Does he know you can do that?”

  She laughed. “Absolutely not. You can’t tell him, he’d thrash me.”

  She leaned in conspiratorially, her robe dipping open, dark dagger of skin.

  “You know,” she said, “sometimes I even feel myself starting to get hungry.”

  “Really. Then what?”

  “I wait. It passes.”

  “I find that sad.”

  “Do you? I imagine most people would love to be able to have the ability. Put it in a pill and I’d make a billion dollars. You could call it Resolvex.”

  “I’m not talking need. I’m talking want.”

  “Desire is tyranny.”

  “I’m living proof of that. But I still wouldn’t get rid of it. No light without heat.”

  She said, “That’s not a completely foreign sensation to me.”

  She gathered up a bolt of hair, securing it with a rubber band. Her neck was smooth, an invitation, and he turned his face to look at everything but her.

  Shabby carpet.

  Walls blistered by water damage.

  Posters of gods and goddesses, blanched and peeling at the corners.

  Such a glorious creature. Living in such a grungy little place.

  But then she was coming around the counter, coming toward him, and he could see her, only her, her mouth opening to his, blinding, burning.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

  While it was happening, Jacob kept waiting for it to end—waiting for the cry of agony, the eyes rolling back in the head, the muscles locking up. His heart ran fast and rudderless, terror piled on top of arousal, needing her and needing to escape before he shredded another woman’s psyche.

  Divya Das was no ordinary woman.

  Astride him, her black eyes glistened. She did what she wanted, rolled off, positioned him on top of her as if he was tissue paper, bracketed her legs around him and held him fast and clawed his back and kissed him with force enough to incinerate the breath inside his lungs.

  Afterward, she lay back.

  He said, “Are you all right?”

  She turned on her side, grinning.

  Smug, even.

  She reached for him again.

  On the drive home, the world blared hyperreal.

>   Divya was one of them.

  She was immune.

  But was he? He kept leaning forward over the dash to peer up at the darkening sky, expecting retribution.

  The unseen fist, streaking down, to send his car tumbling end over end.

  Was this how it was going to be, for the rest of his sexual life?

  He could only sleep with the members of Special Projects?

  Member. Singular. Schott and Subach and the men in the vans, not his type.

  His laugh was brittle, forestalling the next wave of anxiety.

  Another mile. Nothing happened.

  He was now the protagonist of a cheesy ballad.

  Send me an angel.

  Send me an angel . . . hybrid.

  He made it back to his place in record time, parking on a slant and sprinting upstairs, eager for the mock safety of ceiling, walls, and floor.

  • • •

  HE SHOWERED, drank till he was right, fixed himself a batch of Paleolithic mac and cheese and ate from the pot, standing by the range. Using his free hand to work the laptop, he burrowed into Zinaida Moskvina’s history.

  Opened the bakery in 1998.

  Silent partners? Men who wore big vulgar rings?

  Naturalized in 1999.

  A debt with roots in the old country?

  All he could do was wonder. Nothing close to a concrete suspicion.

  Her daughter remained her most glaring weakness.

  The coke bust was for a small quantity that classified it as personal use, not dealing. It had occurred after her first DUI, before Katie had established herself as a chemical dependent. She pled out, no time served.

  No bankruptcies, no credit issues, no defaults.

  The icon for an incoming e-mail popped up, interrupting his train of thought. Thinking it might be from Divya, he opened his inbox.

  It was from an ICE agent.

  Subject: Query TREMSIN Arkady

  Jacob scanned the first line and grabbed his phone.

  Divya answered, groggy. “Hello?”

  He said, “He was in the country. Tremsin. He entered through LAX customs on a six-month visa, July 11, 2004. The victims were killed the night of December 19, discovered the next morning. His exit stamp was December 22.” He paused. “Hello?”

  “I’m here,” she said.

  “Okay. So? Interesting, isn’t it?”

  “Very,” she said, yawning.

  Her lack of enthusiasm irritated him a bit. Then he remembered her overnight shift. “I woke you up, didn’t I.”

  “Indeed you did.” She yawned again. “I’m glad for you, Jacob. Well done.”

  “Thanks,” he said. “Are you all right?”

  “Why wouldn’t I be?”

  “I mean, everything’s . . . okay.”

  “If you want to have a talk talk—”

  “No need here.”

  “Then let’s agree that it was a nice thing that happened and leave it at that.”

  “It was,” he said. “Nice.”

  “Well, I thought so.”

  He laughed softly. “Go back to bed.”

  “Aren’t you going to get some sleep yourself?”

  He glanced at the clock. Eleven p.m. For the last couple of weeks, he hadn’t gotten more than four or five hours a night. That he didn’t feel tired awakened a dormant fear: in a manic phase, his mother would stay up for days on end.

  His laptop sat open. More work to do, threads to pull.

  He said, “Stay on the line with me?”

  “Hurry,” she said, yawning.

  He didn’t bother to brush his teeth. He stepped out of his shoes, out of his clothes, and got into bed. He put the phone on speaker and set it on his chest. “Still there?”

  “Barely.”

  For a few minutes, they said nothing, sinking into the silence together. Then he said, “Good night, Divya,” and she said, “Good night, Jacob,” and he tapped the screen and rolled over.

  • • •

  IN HIS DREAM, the garden has changed.

  What was once gold and green has been leached to mud gray, leaves of stone and tendrils of graphite, dead and depthless.

  Flitting from a distant corner of his consciousness:

  Forever.

  The ground trembles and smokes, and he turns, looking for her. Mai?

  You said forever.

  He still can’t see her. Can you come out, please?

  You lied.

  The air shimmers dangerously.

  You need to understand how this is for me he says. I’m a human being. I’m alone.

  When she replies, her voice is full of quiet menace.

  What do you know about loneliness?

  Mai. He starts to walk toward the sound of her, but a hellish wave of heat drives him back, and he blinks at the garden, rippling beyond a curtain of invisible flame.

  Let’s be reasonable about this he says.

  A wild laugh. Oh, no. Oh, no, no no no. I’m not going to let you get away with that again.

  Get away with wh—

  You think because you’re good with words you can talk your way out of anything.

  I don’t think that.

  “I have loved you forever and I will love you forever still.”

  Mai. I don’t know what you’re talking about.

  You think I don’t remember? “I need you to come home to.” Lies.

  I never said those things to you he says.

  Yet the text is familiar, a lesson from the womb.

  If I did he says then I apologize.

  No answer.

  I’m sorry he says. Then shouts it.

  But the heat closes in, and amid the stench of broiling hair, blackening flesh, he perceives that he, too, is aflame.

  • • •

  JACOB SEIZED AWAKE.

  His upper lip itched like mad.

  Every smoke detector in the apartment was howling.

  He charged out of bed and ran toward the bitter clouds billowing from the kitchen.

  The leftover mac and cheese, sending up a pillar of smoke.

  He threw up a window, wrapped his hand in a towel, dumped the pot in the sink, ran cold water, thermal shock crackling the aluminum.

  The upper left burner, cranked to high, screamed with blue flame.

  He remembered shutting it off, before heading to bed.

  He wasn’t sure, now.

  He twisted the knob down.

  A cold gust passed over his naked body, and he turned and saw the living room window, cracked an inch.

  He was sure: he’d never opened it.

  He walked over.

  Outside, the streetlight, insects coalescing, an electric dandelion.

  He slammed the window down, latched it, yanked the curtains together.

  • • •

  HE CHECKED EVERY INCH of the apartment, finding nothing else amiss.

  Returning to bed, he sat with his damp back against the wall.

  He said, “I don’t know if you can hear me. I’ll assume you can.”

  Silence.

  “I’m not going to call Mallick,” he said. “In case you’re worried about that. I’d never try to hurt you.”

  He imagined her reply: Promises, promises.

  “I don’t think you really want to hurt me, either.”

  He thought that was true. She could have easily done much worse.

  “You need to think about it,” he went on. “What if the batteries in my smoke detector were dead and I never woke up?”

  Shivering, he drew the blanket up to his chin.

  “I had one decent pot,” he said. “You ruined it.”

  Eventually the sun rose, slashing open his bedroom. He sta
rted to get dressed, thinking he ought to get on with his day.

  The bed began to vibrate.

  He bunched with dread.

  His phone buzzed its way out from under his blanket.

  The screen showed a mass of digits—a foreign number.

  Odette Pelletier, having second thoughts?

  But it was a man’s voice, barely, that said, “Allo. Police?”

  “This is Detective Jacob Lev. Who am I talking to?”

  A rattle of phlegm. “Capitaine Théo Breton.”

  The man began speaking in a hurried whisper.

  “Slow down, please. I can’t understand you.”

  “Pelletier,” the man said. “She is bullshit.”

  “Pe—are you a cop?”

  There was a commotion on the other end of the line.

  “Hello? Hello.”

  A rustling sound came over the phone. Then a rush of incoherent anger, growing louder until Breton managed to croak out a single, hoarse word.

  “Tremsin.”

  Before Jacob could respond, a woman came on and began reprimanding him in blistering French. The line went dead.

  Jacob pulled up the number on caller ID.

  “Institut Curie, bonjour.”

  “Hello, English?”

  “Yes, monsieur.”

  “I just had a call from you,” he said. “I got disconnected.”

  “With whom you were speaking, monsieur?”

  “Mr. Théo Breton. I’m a colleague of his.”

  “Pardon?”

  “From the police department.”

  “One moment.”

  The line rang and rang and rang. He tried several more times before giving up.

  Jacob sat on the edge of the unmade bed, thinking.

  The smell of smoke was still fresh in his nostrils.

  After a few minutes, he fetched down an overnight bag from a high shelf in his closet. He filled it with a variety of clothes, suitable for a variety of tasks. It was December, so he grabbed all three of his sweaters. Then he began looking around for his passport.

  • • •

  THE SOONEST FLIGHT to Paris was a red-eye that evening. He bought the last remaining coach seat and sent an e-mail to Mallick.

  Late in the day, packed and ready, he wondered if he had enough time to visit his mother. In the end, he decided not to go. What could he say that didn’t risk harming her?

  He phoned Sam instead, bypassing hello and getting right to the point.