The Golem of Hollywood

by Jonathan Kellerman

  “Oh . . . Well, from what I gather, they’re very considerate neighbors. They confine the pickup to the opposite side, so you won’t have traffic, and as far as noise goes . . . eh . . .”

  He was taking more photos and could hear her brain screaming pedophile alert!

  She endeavored to draw his attention to a different window by praising its lovely northern exposures.

  He looked at her. “What was that?”

  “I said, I know there’s not much to look at on that side, but over here the light is just fabulous.”

  He turned back and stared at the school.

  “Sir?”

  He started to walk out.

  “Did you—sir, did you want to take a brochure?”

  He took one, to be polite.

  —

  HE SAID, “They all face east.”

  Phil Ludwig was silent.

  “I still have no clue what it means,” Jacob said. “And Katherine Ann’s building is gone, so I can’t be a hundred percent sure. But we’re eight for eight on the others.”

  No clue was a white lie. He had a theory. Not one he felt happy with.

  East was significant in the Jewish tradition. Praying to the twice-demolished Temple in Jerusalem.

  Justice.

  Why complicate matters, though, before he knew more?

  For his part, Ludwig sounded content. “You did good.”

  “Thanks.”

  “I know I shouldn’t be, but I’m kicking myself right now.”

  “You’re right. You shouldn’t be.”

  “Well, whatever. Not that it’s worth a damned thing, but you have my blessing.”

  “I appreciate it.”

  “I e-mailed my scientist pal about your bug. He’s gonna get back to me tonight or tomorrow.”

  “There’s no rush.”

  “Screw you, no rush,” Ludwig said. “Lemme solve something.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  On the TV above the sushi bar, the Los Angeles Lakers were employing their go-to strategy of blowing a double-digit lead late in the fourth quarter. Lawyers in open-necked shirts thumped their tables and shook their Rolexes at the screen.

  Jacob had intended to celebrate his discovery by treating himself to a halfway decent dinner, consumed alone and in peace. That intention lasted as long as his miso soup, at which point the implications of his discovery began to sift down through his consciousness.

  That he was, apparently, the first person to notice the east-west pattern was no knock on the previous Ds, regardless of what Ludwig said. Mystery novels were fun, sometimes even for cops, but real-life whodunits provoked dread and anxiety. In most homicides, you assembled facts, filtered out noise, pursued leads that were usually obvious because criminals were for the most part stupid. Case closed.

  On whodunits, blind spots and biases were inevitable.

  It was, in fact, just such a bias that had enabled Jacob to recognize the pattern. And even now, he couldn’t help seeing everything through a Jewish lens.

  Member-of-the-tribe Creepers?

  His silent God forbid made him smile with self-derision.

  You could forbid if I believed in You.

  One Jewish Creeper taken out by another didn’t make him feel any better.

  The most palatable possibility was a new actor somehow rooting out the Creepers and engaging in felony cleansing. Better, but still repellent, because Jacob’s gut response to freelance revenge was the old collective-guilt atavism born of pogroms and inquisitions and blood libels.

  You did what? Oy vey, what will the gentiles think of us?

  An uncomfortable relic of Judaism’s tribal roots popped into his head: the goel hadam, the “redeemer of blood,” partially entitled by biblical law to hunt down and slay anyone who’d ended the life of a kinsman. Partial, because of a strange restriction: the goel hadam retained his right of vigilantism only in cases of manslaughter or accidental death. Willful murderers were to be tried and executed by a court of twenty-three judges.

  He raised his finger for another carafe of warm sake.

  A Harvard sophomore who considered himself an expert on Japan had once informed Jacob that heating sake was a trick to mask the imperfections of a low-quality brew. Cold and expensive was the way to go. Jacob liked imperfections. Like the failing exterior of Sherri Levesque’s house, crappy liquor was honest, reminding him he wasn’t drinking for the taste.

  He poured, swirled the lacquered box. In any other context he found sake cloying, but you couldn’t beat it for chasing tekka maki. The fact that every culture had its own form of alcohol, tailored to pair with its cuisine, pointed to an obvious truth: eating was merely an excuse to get blitzed.

  Banzai!

  Groans rose as the Enforcer Formerly Known as Ron Artest clanged a three-pointer.

  The day’s breakthrough had earned him the right to dinner, at least. He handed the waitress his white Discover credit card. A minute later she came back shaking her head.

  “Declined,” she said.

  Big surprise. Jacob tossed down four twenties and left.

  —

  THE SCENE AT 187 was the usual lukewarm mess, walls of sweaty bodies, what was probably music but sounded like a rhino stampede.

  “Yo,” Victor said, pouring him a bourbon. “I was just thinking about you.”

  “Do I owe you money?”

  “Your friend’s here.”

  Jacob looked around for his bug-bit mattress pal. Wouldn’t be the first time he’d encountered a one-night partner here. If he was lucky, this one might not remember him.

  It felt like you were stabbing me.

  Don’t count on it.

  He didn’t see her, mimed the universal sign for big breasts to Victor.

  “Nuh-uh, bro, the chick you was asking about. The supermodel.”

  Jacob’s chest tightened. “Where?”

  “She came in like literally two minutes before you.” Victor squinted. “I don’t know where she went. Bathroom?”

  Jacob left his bourbon untouched and shouldered his way through the crowd, overturning drinks and jostling pool cues and disrupting make-out sessions.

  Watch it, asshole.

  The line for the ladies’ was four strong. Jacob cut to the front and, figuring he’d already seen everything she could conceivably care to hide, barged in.

  A woman he didn’t know squatted over the toilet with her jeans around her ankles. She was so busy texting that at first she didn’t notice him. Then she looked up and shrieked, dropping her phone in the bowl.

  “Sorry,” Jacob said.

  He left her scrambling for modesty and plunged back into the melee. He didn’t find her there, either, and he headed for the exit.

  Halfway across the dance floor, a meaty hand clamped around his biceps. He said, “Fuck off, pal,” but the hand dragged him back and he felt a rush of frustration and a surge of adrenaline, his limbic system telegraphing bar fight as a meaty arm put him in a meaty embrace that morphed into a decidedly nonmeaty noogie.

  “Lev, you skinny-ass son of a bitch.”

  Mel Subach grinned. “Didn’t know you came here, Jake.”

  Jacob tried to free himself. It was like gator wrestling. Subach, still smiling, let go. “Let’s have a drink. I’m buying.”

  “No, thanks.”

  “Come on, live a little.”

  Jacob pushed past him, toward the door.

  “I thought we were friends,” Subach yelled.

  Outside in the alley, a shape hurried away into the night.

  A woman—that much he could tell—but he couldn’t fix her; she was fifty feet gone and walking fast, and as he began jogging after her, she seemed to come in and out of being, like a faint star, detectable at the periphery of his vision, winking out when he
turned his gaze directly on her.

  Behind him, music blared; the door opening. “Jake. Where you going, man?”

  “Mai!” Jacob yelled.

  She glanced back.

  Saw him.

  Started to run.

  “Wait!” Jacob yelled, feet slipping drunkenly on gravel. The tread caught and he sprinted, Subach’s lumbering steps close on his heels. The big guy could move.

  So could Mai. The distance between them rapidly stretched.

  “Mai. It’s me, Ja . . .”—he was huffing—“Jacob. The—wait.”

  “Wait!” Subach yelled.

  The alley was roughly the length of a football field. Jacob put on the jets, and he seemed to be gaining on her, and for a moment he thought he might get to her, but they reached the mouth of the alley and Mai streaked into the street toward a vacant lot surrounded by chain-link and filled with dark weeds and he stumbled after without pausing for traffic and from his left came an onrushing air pressure and the heat of headlights and a gnashing aluminum grille and his collar tightened and he flew backward like a hooked vaudevillian so that the side of a van passed inches in front of him, close enough for him to count paint scratches.

  He landed hard, on his tailbone, on the concrete.

  The van fishtailed, coming to a halt thirty feet up the road.

  Panting, Jacob rose to his elbows.

  Mai had vanished.

  Subach knelt by his side. “You okay?”

  Jacob stared.

  In front of him: the vacant lot.

  To the right: a plumbing supplier.

  To the left: an unmarked warehouse.

  “Where’d she go?” Jacob said.

  He tried to stand but Subach restrained him gently. “Buddy. You got to relax.”

  The van gunned its engine and roared off, due south down La Cienega. Through the noxious orange of sodium vapor lamps, the weathered lettering was barely legible.

  CURTAINS AND BEYOND—DISCOUNT WINDOW TREATMENTS

  THE TOWER

  Lying in a windowless chamber whose torchlight sustains an eternal dusk, Asham passes in and out of consciousness, fleetingly aware of a man’s presence at the foot of the bed, blinking to find him replaced by a boy, the child’s studious gaze identical to his father’s.

  Veiled, unspeaking maidservants regularly appear to feed her, clean her, tend to her wounds. They stoke the fire and massage her feet. When she musters the strength to ask questions, they ignore her, leaving her alone and bedridden, too weak to stand, too weak to do anything but fix on a point in the air and will her broken body to mend faster.

  To occupy her mind, she maps cracks in the clay walls, counts freckles on the backs of her hands. She raises her limbs off the bed, one at a time, each day a few more, a bit higher.

  The maidservants bring heaping food, strange cooked grains and soured milks that make her gag. Knowing she must eat to heal, Asham forces them down without appetite. It takes considerable willpower to refuse the first dish that appeals to her: a roasted haunch, cut in thumb-thick slices, oozing juice, pink to the center.

  “Take it away,” she says to the maidservant.

  The girl stares blankly.

  The aroma is making Asham’s mouth water.

  She seizes a pillow and hurls it at the maidservant. “Leave.”

  The girl hurries out, grease sloshing from the tray and splattering on the dirt.

  If Asham had the strength, she would crawl over and lick it up. Instead she falls back, exhausted by her outburst, and drops into sleep.

  A short while later, she feels the bed sag.

  “I understand you’re doing better. Well enough to be difficult.”

  Asham does not need to open her eyes to see the mocking smile on his face.

  “Was something wrong with the mutton?” Cain asks.

  “I don’t want it.”

  “It’s delicious.”

  “It’s disgusting.”

  “There’s no shame in eating meat,” he says. “Everyone here does. It’s considered a great luxury, excellent for health.”

  Asham doesn’t answer.

  “I’ll bring you something else.”

  “You mean you’ll have them bring it.”

  “Tell me what you’d like.”

  “Who are they?”

  “My servants.”

  “Where do they come from?”

  “Everywhere. They’re wanderers, like me.”

  “Killers,” she said. “Like you.”

  He shrugs. “There’s more than one way to fall out of favor. You’d be amazed by how many, actually. Together, we’ve made a home for ourselves.”

  “They refuse to talk to me.”

  “I’ve instructed them not to bother you.”

  “Does that include not answering my questions?”

  “You need to rest,” he says. “It’s not good to overextend yourself.”

  At last she opens her eyes. “The people in the city,” she says. “They serve you, as well?”

  Cain bursts out laughing, the way he did when she was a child and said something stupid.

  “What,” she says.

  “No, the entire city doesn’t cater to me. Only those who choose to.”

  “No one would willingly serve another.”

  “Again—you’d be amazed. And I seem to recall our father being a big proponent of service.”

  “To the Lord.”

  “That’s different?”

  “It absolutely is,” she says. “There is no law except that of Heaven.”

  “You’ve become quite the zealot.”

  “It’s not zealotry to do what’s right.”

  “Is that why you’re here? To do what’s right?”

  She does not reply.

  “Well, whatever the reason,” he says, taking her cold hand, “I’m glad you’ve come.”

  —

  THE NEXT MORNING SHE WAKES to find the boy, Enoch, crouched in a corner, his head tilted, his tongue extended in concentration.

  “I didn’t hear you come in.”

  “I was quiet.” He leaps up and begins to skip around the room, stopping to inspect minute variations in the walls. “You don’t eat mutton. Why not?”

  Because your father wants me to.

  “I don’t like it,” she says.

  “What do you like to eat?”

  “Fruit. Nuts. Whatever grows from the ground.”

  “I like those, too.”

  “We have something in common,” she says.

  “You should see the market,” he says. “It’s full of growing things.”

  “When I’m well enough, you can show it to me.”

  “When will you be well enough?”

  “Soon.”

  “How soon?”

  “I don’t know.”

  He plops down on the floor, elbows on knees, chin on fists. “I’ll wait here.”

  She smiles. “It might take a while.”

  “Then I’ll come back tomorrow.”

  “I don’t know if I’ll be ready tomorrow, either.”

  “Then I’ll come back the day after that.”

  “You’re very persistent,” she says.

  “What does that mean?”

  “Ask your father.”

  “I will,” he says. “He’ll know. He’s the wisest man in the valley. That’s why everyone loves him. When I grow up, I’m going to be a builder like him. I’m going to have a son and name a city for him. Would you like to see my toys?”

  “Not right now,” she says, somehow fatigued by the thought of construction. “I think I need a nap. Hand me that blanket, please . . . ? Thank you.”

  “You’re welcome.”

  True to his word, Enoch comes the
next day, and every day thereafter. Affairs of state occupy Cain’s time, and weeks go by in which the boy is the only person Asham talks to. It’s less a conversation than an interrogation. What does she think about turtles? Has she ever seen a full moon? Does she know any good riddles? His chatter momentarily dispels the gloom; it distracts her from the pain of sitting up, or swinging her legs over the edge of the bed, or standing with quaking legs, supporting herself on the bedpost.

  “Very good!” Enoch yells when she reaches some new milestone. “Very, very good!”

  He dances around, the clanging bell summoning servants. They see who’s calling them and grit their teeth and leave.

  It is in part due to his unquenchable enthusiasm that she is soon hobbling back and forth across the chamber, leaning her weight on a wooden stick.

  “Go faster,” Enoch says.

  “I’m trying.”

  “You can do it. Follow me.”

  “Enoch. Slow down.”

  “You can’t catch me! You can’t catch me!”

  “I can, and—”

  “You can’t!”

  “I can, and I will, and when I do I’m going to clobber you.”

  “Ha ha ha ha ha!”

  He fetches her sweets from the market, hot stones to ease her backache. Her hair has begun to grow; he combs it for her. The maidservants still won’t speak directly to Asham, but they will answer Enoch, who acts as her intermediary.

  “No more yogurt,” Asham says. “Tell her that.”

  “No more yogurt,” Enoch says.

  “Master has said yogurt will give her strength.”

  “Tell her if she brings any more I’ll dump it on master’s head.”

  “But I like yogurt,” Enoch says.

  “Fine. Give it to him.”

  “Give it to him,” Enoch says.

  “No; you.”

  “You.”

  “Not her. You. You as in Enoch.”

  “Enoch.” Wide-eyed: “You mean I can have your yogurt?”

  “That’s absolutely what I mean.”

  “Hooray! Give it to me!”

  “Yes, master.”

  She reminds herself that she cannot permit herself to love him. Love is rich earth; regrets take root; and while she pulls them up as fast as she can, new ones break through every day.