Amid the dizzying visual thicket, no family photos.
They went to Pernath’s study, wallpapered with ghoulish posters and production stills. Jacob sank into a depleted loveseat, declining with considerable reluctance Pernath’s offer of whiskey. He watched enviously as Pernath poured from a crystal decanter and crossed the room to open a built-in cabinet containing cut-glass bowls of nuts and a severed head.
Bloody and ragged and gazing out eyelessly.
Jacob leapt up.
Pernath glanced at him incuriously. He plucked the head by its hair and hurled it at Jacob, who caught it.
Rubber.
“For a cop, you seem a tad high-strung,” Pernath said.
He took out two bowls of cashews, setting one in front of Jacob.
“Apologies if they’re not at the peak of freshness,” Pernath said, folding himself behind a formidable oak desk.
From up close, the head was obviously fake, the paint job meticulously crafted to look correct at a distance of about fifteen feet—Monet meets Grand Guignol.
His heart still tripping, Jacob said, “You do that for all your guests?”
“You’re not a guest.” Pernath popped a cashew in his mouth. “You might want to get on with it,” he said. “I am eighty-four.”
Jacob sat down in the loveseat. “Tell me about the house.”
Pernath shrugged. “It was my father’s. He came from money, owned property all over the city. Houses, factories, raw land. It was a great deal of real estate, and when he died, that made for a great big fight.” He sipped whiskey. “The truth is I didn’t need the money. But my sister decided she had to have it, so naturally I decided I wouldn’t let her.”
“She’s deceased, your sister.”
Pernath cackled. “That’s how I won. I had a fifth column: Virginia Slims.” He sat back in his chair, which was large and creaky and studded with brass nailheads. In its grip he resembled a dried leaf. “Technically, I won. Lawyers gobbled up two-thirds of the pie. I kept the properties that brought in income and sold the rest. Made out like a bandit. The house was part of a larger plot that my father subdivided. He built it. His design.”
“He was an architect.”
“He was a pig,” Pernath said. “But, yes, he did draw. Personally, I’ve never cared for his work. Bit antiseptic for my liking.”
Jacob glanced at a stuffed monkey suspended from the ceiling. “So I gathered.”
Pernath chuckled and got up to pour himself another whiskey.
“That house,” Jacob said. “It brings in income?”
“Not a cent.”
“Then why not sell? Seems to me it’s wasting away.”
“That’s exactly the point. Let it rot. Every time I think about it falling apart, I get a nice fuzzy feeling inside.” Pernath stoppered the decanter and hobbled back to his chair, making a detour to reclaim the rubber head, which he cradled in his lap like a shih tzu. “It was supposed to be a haven for him, someplace he could go to dip into the well of creativity. I don’t think he so much as lifted a pencil there. He was creative, after a fashion, and no doubt he did a lot of dipping. Every secretary or office girl he ever hired saw the inside of that place—or the ceiling, anyway, while he bounced on top of them. It’s amazing he didn’t crush anyone to death. He was a pig, in every sense of the word. He destroyed my mother.”
“Why not tear it down, then?”
“Oh, well, I would never. It’s architecturally significant . . .” Pernath finished his second drink in one swallow. “Call it a monument. To adultery.”
“You haven’t been by since you inherited it.”
“Why would I?”
“Who else has access?”
“Everyone. I leave it unlocked. Anyone who wants to come in, that’s their problem. The more curses heaped upon that place, the better.”
Jacob frowned. That wasn’t what he’d wanted to hear.
“What kind of crime are you investigating, Detective? Something ugly, I hope.”
“A homicide.”
Pernath’s throat clicked. “Ugly as it comes. Shame. Whodunnit?”
“If I knew, I wouldn’t be talking to you.”
“Who died?”
“I don’t know that, either.”
“What do you know, Detective?”
“Not much.”
“That’s the spirit,” Pernath said. He tilted his glass. “Embrace ignorance.”
Jacob, thinking of the missing photos, said, “You have other family in town?”
“My ex-wife’s remarried, although I hesitate to call her family. She lives in Laguna. My son’s in Santa Monica. My daughter’s in Paris.”
“Do you see them often?”
“Not if I can help it,” Pernath said.
“So it’s just you,” Jacob said.
“Me,” Pernath said, stroking the fake head, “and Herman.”
—
PERNATH’S CHILDREN HAD INHERITED their grandfather’s preference for clean lines. Greta ran a gallery in the Marais that sold stripped-down works rendered edgy through the use of materials like chewed gum and donkey urine. Richard was an architect whose work consisted of steel-and-glass skeletons. Jacob clicked through his portfolio, reflecting on the generational pendulum, everyone rising up to slaughter their fathers’ tastes.
In any event, both seemed successful in their own right, busy people with busy lives.
Dead end.
A database search for similar crimes generated a short list of beheadings but nothing that matched his: no sealed neck, no burn marks (disappearing or otherwise), no Hebrew. Usually the bad guy was mentally ill and had been caught quickly. One offender had staked the head of his elderly aunt in the backyard and danced around it, singing “We Are the Champions.”
The most rational beheader—so to speak—was a Pakistani in Queens who had strangled and decapitated his teenage daughter for texting racy photos to a classmate.
Religious fervor brought out the best in people.
Justice.
Jacob perused the files on Jewish terror groups in the United States.
Broadened his parameters to include any example of Hebrew at the scene of a homicide.
Broadened them to include any burns.
Broadened them to include the word justice.
Nada.
He sat back, stomach growling. It was nine forty-five p.m. His untouched breakfast waffle sat on a cold plate beside the computer, its surface glazed with syrup and caulked with congealed butter. He scraped it into the kitchen can. He knew the fridge was bare, but he checked it for form’s sake before walking down to 7-Eleven to buy a couple of hot dogs.
—
JACOB DOUBTED HIS PERP would risk a second revisit of the scene, especially now that the message had been erased. But he had no fancy evening plans, and it seemed worth a few hours of his time. He drove up to the hills and eased the Honda onto the shoulder fifty yards past Claire Mason’s driveway. He uncapped a beer, racked the seat back, and waited for good luck to strike.
Shortly before three, he started awake, whanging his elbow against the steering wheel. His back was stiff, his mouth dry. He had a full bladder and a raging erection.
Crickets tittered at him as he got out to take a piss at the side of the road. He’d been dreaming of Mai, naked in the garden, closer to her yet still unable to touch her. While he waited for his penis to relinquish her image, and soften up, he considered the meaning of the distance between them. His missed opportunity, perhaps. But that very incompleteness, the tension it created, had a pleasurable aspect to it. He thought of her playful ease with her own body, the way she hid nothing from him, making the erotic innocent.
He could use some of that in his life. His work over the past seven years had forged a link in his mind between sex and violence. He did
n’t like it, but there it was. If a woman like Mai wanted to come along and redeem him, he had no objections.
At the same time, he knew exactly the kind of chick who hung out at 187.
You’re a nice-looking man, Jacob Lev.
He wondered if she’d ever go back there.
One way to find out.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
The owners of 187 were a pair of ex-cops who knew what cops wanted: strong booze, loud music, and a kitchen that stayed open until four-thirty a.m. to accommodate guys coming off the mid-p.m. shift, at two forty-five. For maximum grit, they’d rented a subdivided warehouse, sandwiched between a sandblasting company and an auto body shop on Blackwelder Street, an industrial zone south of the 10.
The door was unmarked, the handle a welded tire iron. He hauled it open and bass thundered out, rattling chain-link and razor wire.
The nearest residences were two blocks east, across Fairfax, which might or might not put them beyond the sonic blast zone.
Good luck getting anyone to serve a noise complaint.
The floor thronged with law enforcement and those who loved and lusted for them. Female cops seldom bothered, making 187 a popular choice for civilian women slightly past expiration date.
Jacob paused near the entrance, scanning for Mai.
She’d stand out in this crowd.
Plenty of cleavage. Plenty of tramp stamps rising above low-riding waistbands as the bearers bent to aim for the corner pocket, to whisper, to lick an earlobe.
No Mai.
It was tough for him to imagine her here. She must’ve felt like raw rib eye. Tougher still to imagine her finding him, chatting him up.
Taking him home? That was impossible to imagine.
Another dead end. Time to go.
But the PA was blasting Sublime, and he felt too keyed up to sleep.
He fought his way to the bar, three-deep with boozers and flirters. An hour before closing, desperation reigned, couplings forming and imploding like some frantic game of human Tetris.
Behind the bar, Victor was already pouring him a double bourbon. Loyalty born of bad habits. Jacob pictured his own funeral: a tearful crowd of bartenders and convenience store clerks.
Victor set his drink down and turned to collect another order.
“Yo,” Jacob yelled, waving him back. “You remember a girl was in here couple nights ago?”
Victor gave him a look like they made you a detective?
“She left with me,” Jacob said.
Victor laughed. “You’re not narrowing it down none.”
“She came with a friend. Hot as hell, if that helps.”
“We don’t allow that kind,” Victor said. He tapped the rim of Jacob’s glass. “Four more, I bet you find someone who looks just like her.”
He hustled off to confront demands.
Jacob sloshed the bourbon, watching it cling to the side of the glass, feeling no desire whatever to have a drink.
But high-functioning alcoholism demanded dedication.
He tipped the liquor back, tossed a twenty on the bar, turned to go, ran smack into a pillowy chest.
His usual midweek prize, soft around the edges, hard in the face; bleached, un-picky, and deep into her cups.
She pouted. “You spilled my drink.”
He sighed and signaled to Victor.
—
HE WALKED HER TO HER CAR, pointed out his own, and told her to follow, adding, “Drive carefully.”
She snickered. “Who’s gonna pull me over?”
In his kitchen, he stood with his pants around his ankles, a drawer handle poking his bare ass, a bottle of Beam in hand to swig from whenever his enthusiasm waned.
She paused from going down on him to shoot him a stern look. “Don’t pass out on me.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“No whiskey dick, either. Hang on, I need to pee.”
Her knees cracked as she stood up and left the room.
Jesus Christ, he thought.
He heard the stream. Loud. She’d left the bathroom door ajar.
“Very classy,” she yelled.
“Can you get a condom, please? Bottom drawer left.”
The toilet flushed, the sink ran, and she reappeared, sans jeans, shirt open, flapping the condom like a sugar packet.
“You have roaches,” she said.
Though he knew it wasn’t fair, he couldn’t help but compare her to Mai.
Maybe she was what he needed to help him forget.
Uncomplicated.
He sat down on a kitchen chair, rolled the condom on, gave his thigh a slap.
“At your service,” he said.
She stumbled over and positioned herself over him, her breasts swinging in his face. She was about to lower herself when she paused and kicked at something on the floor.
“Uch. You need Raid.” She kicked again, let out an annoyed yelp. “Fuck.”
“What.”
“Fucking thing bit me.”
“What?”
“Whatever,” she said, plopping down on his lap.
She gasped.
Another satisfied customer.
He took hold of the flesh at her hips and started to swivel her back and forth atop him and then he realized that she was gasping still, and it didn’t sound like she was having any fun.
He looked up and saw her eyes rolled back into her head, her head lolling, chin to chest, drooling.
This was a first for him. He’d been known to pass out mid-act but he’d never been the other party. Feeling slighted, he gave her a shake. “Hey.”
She slumped forward against him, her body seizing violently.
He swore and tried to hold her up and she pitched backward off his lap onto the linoleum, bashing her head against the fridge door and landing with her legs spread.
He dropped to his knees, ready to do CPR.
She was blinking up at him, white with terror. “What’s happening.”
“You tell me,” he said.
She stared down at her own genitals; at his; at his face.
She scrambled from the kitchen.
He followed her into the bathroom, watched her hop into her clothes.
“Are you sure you’re all right? You hit your head.”
“I’m fine,” she said.
As she raised her foot to tug on her heel, he noticed a red welt on her left instep. “Are you allergic to something?”
She didn’t answer.
Then she said, “It felt like you were stabbing me.”
He said, “I . . .”
He stopped. He didn’t know whether to apologize, or . . . what. He felt he should make an effort to get her to stay, at least until she was good to drive. He started to say so and she waved him off, grabbing her purse and rushing out into the milky morning.
From the window he watched, unnerved, as she sped away.
He dressed and got down on hands and knees to hunt for roaches.
He couldn’t find any, not there or in the bathroom.
All the same, he tied up the trash bag containing his old waffle and took it out to the thirty-three-gallon cans at the side of the building.
He walked to 7-Eleven, bought one can of bug spray and one box of roach motels.
Thinking that the bug bite theory didn’t have much going for it.
Her eyes white. Her breath whistling.
It felt like you were stabbing me.
Maybe she had a condition. Dryness. After all, she’d gone with Extra Lubricated.
A funny thought popped into his head. The Hebrew word for penis: zayin.
Also the seventh letter of the Hebrew alphabet: .
Also the word for weapon.
The shape had it. A blade or an axe or a mace.
>
His was the dick of death.
A schlongsword.
Excockabur.
He started to laugh. He couldn’t help himself.
He went around setting out the motels, spraying poison until the apartment was well and truly fogged. He threw open the windows and went to get cleaned up.
CHAPTER TWELVE
The sat phone was dinging as he stepped from the shower, a voicemail from his father, a text from Divya Das: ring me.
Today was Friday. He hadn’t given Sam an answer about dinner tonight. “Hey, Abba.”
“Did you get my message?”
“I’m swamped. Can we reschedule?”
A brief pause. “Of course.”
“I’m sorry I didn’t tell you sooner,” Jacob said.
“You do what you need to do,” Sam said. “Have a good Shabbos.”
“You too.” Jacob disconnected the call and thumbed the directory for Divya Das.
“Good morning, Detective.”
“I got something for you,” he said. “You got something for me?”
“Indeed. Are you free to meet up?”
“Name it,” Jacob said.
She gave him an unfamiliar address in Culver City.
He told her he’d be there in fifteen minutes.
The white work van was parked across from his building. He had a faint recollection of it being there the night before. He was far from sure. He’d been drunk, focused primarily on getting his lady friend up the stairs without her pitching over the railing. If he was right, though, the vehicle hadn’t left the block in several days, shifting from space to space.
Somebody had a lot of curtains to put up.
He jogged over to peek through the windshield.
Tools, rods, boxes of fabric.
No hulking dude on a headset monitor.
He told himself to stop acting ridiculous.
En route to Culver City, the sat phone rang: his father again. Jacob let it go to voicemail.
The Golem of Hollywood Page 8
