The Golem of Hollywood (12 page)

I
apologize,” Jacob said, reseating himself. “It's this new phone. I tried to silence it, but for some reason it won't turn off. Anyhow, sorry. I hate to disrupt your Shabbos.”

“You're not. It's absolutely permitted. Your work is no different from a doctor's.”

“Nobody's going to die if I don't answer the phone.”

“Can you say that with certainty?”

“In this case, yes.” Jacob resumed eating, noticing that Sam hadn't taken more than a couple bites of his own food. “Abba? You're not sick, are you?”

“Me? No. Why? Do I look sick?”

“You'd tell me if you were.”

“Of course.”

“You've barely eaten.”

“Have I?” Sam squinted at his plate. “I guess I got distracted.”

“You were telling me about the Maharal.”

“Enough about that. I don't want to spoil the ending.” Sam's smile acknowledged the absurdity of Jacob—of anyone—reading his book. “I'd much rather hear about you.”

“Not much to tell. Busy.”

“So I gather. Anything exciting?”

“You really want to know?”

“I asked.” Sam's dim left eye winked. “Although maybe I'm just being polite.”

Jacob laughed. “Touché. Well, all right. I'm not sure how much I should discuss.”

“As much as you want,” Sam said.

“Right,” Jacob said. For the first time in his career, his work touched upon Sam's area of expertise, however tangentially. To say nothing felt artificially tight-lipped, almost unjust. “This homicide I've got, it's a weird one.”

“Homicide,” Sam said.

Jacob nodded.

“I thought you'd been reassigned.”

“They re-reassigned me.”

“I see,” Sam said. He didn't sound pleased. He began pushing slices of cucumber around, rearranging them into a watery green mosaic. “And?”

“And . . . so, they put me on this because they found some Hebrew letters at the scene.”

A silence.

“That's,” Sam said, “that's unusual.”

“No sh—no kidding.”

“What did the letters say,” Sam said.

“Tzedek
.
”

Another silence.

“You're still not eating,” Jacob said.

Sam put down the fork. “Is that what the call was about?”

“My case is connected to an old one. The victim has an ugly past.”

“How ugly?”

Jacob shifted. “I shouldn't . . . I mean. Pretty ugly. Let's leave it at that.”

“And now someone killed him,” Sam said. “To render justice.”

“That's more or less the size of it. To be honest, the whole thing makes me kind of uncomfortable.”

“Why?”

“I guess I don't want my avenger to turn out to be Jewish,” Jacob said. “It's not like I'm responsible for him, but . . . You know.”

“And if he is Jewish?”

“If he is, then he is. Follow the argument, wherever it leads.”

Sam appeared not to notice Jacob quoting him back to himself. “If you can't be objective,” he said, “you should recuse yourself.”

“I didn't say I can't be objective.”

“It sounds to me like you have doubts.”

“A decision I can make for myself, thanks. Anyway, he might not be Jewish, just trying to leave that impression.”

“I don't understand,” Sam said. “You said you were done with Homicide.”

“I told you. They asked me to come back. Ordered me, actually.”

Sam said nothing.

“Abba. What's wrong.”

Sam shook his head.

“Look,” Jacob said, “I'm not going to beg you.”

“I'm remembering how unhappy you were,” Sam said.

Jacob had made an effort to hide his depression, and now he bridled, feeling caught out. “I'm fine.”

“It wasn't good for you,” Sam said.

“Leave it alone, please.”

“You can't ask them to find someone else?”

“No. I can't. They want me precisely because I'm Jewish. Seriously, I don't want to discuss it anymore, all right? It's a done deal and it's not Shabbos table talk.”

Sam had often used the same rationale to block an objectionable topic of conversation; as before, he gave no sign of recognition. He nodded abstractedly, blinked, smiled. “Dessert?”

—

S
ECONDS
AND
THIRDS
of tea and cake left Jacob groaning. “I surrender.”

“But look how much is left.”

“There's no obligation to eat the entire thing in one shot.”

“I'm going to make you a doggie bag,” Sam said.

“Not a chance. You keep it for the week.”

“I'll never finish all that,” Sam said. “You have to do your share.”

“I think my share was done with my fourth piece of kugel.”

“Shall we
bentsch
?”

“Sure.”

Sam passed him a small prayer booklet, a white satin cover stamped with blue letters.

Bar Mitzvah of

Jacob Meir Lev

A
UGUST 21, 1993

“Old school,” Jacob said.

Sam fluttered his fingers in the direction of the library. “I have a box of them sitting around somewhere.”

“They belong in a museum.”
Of apostasy.

They recited the grace after meals.

“Thanks for dinner.”

“Thank you for taking the time . . . But Jacob? I meant what I said, before. You shouldn't minimize the importance of what you do. It's an ancient calling. It's in your Bar Mitzvah section. ‘
Shoftim v'shotrim
.'”

“Judges and policemen. Hey, maybe I should've been a jurist instead. Give you bragging rights, ‘my son the Supreme Court Justice.'”

“I'm proud of what you are.”

Jacob said nothing.

“You do know that, don't you?”

“Sure.” It was the first time he could remember his father expressing an opinion, positive or negative, about his line of work. Lev family culture didn't foster typical professional-class expectations, but neither did it encourage a cop's life, and Jacob assumed that his choice had made for a source of disappointment, similar to his loss of faith.

Now the burst of earnestness made him squirm, and he steered the conversation away. “Here's a question for you. The case got me wondering about the idea that justice and charity spring from the same root.
Tzedek
and
tzedakah
.”

“That's true in an imperfect world.”

“Ah?” Jacob said. “Say better.”

“What we call justice is a creation of human beings, and since we ourselves are creations, limited by definition, what we create is flawed. There's an enormous difference between Godly judgment and man's version. You might call it the defining difference. Human justice, like every aspect of this world, is tailored to meet our needs and suit our capabilities. In a sense, it's the opposite of pure justice . . .”

Jacob listened with half an ear as Sam got himself worked up into a rhythm. There was a reason his father was the rabbi and he the cop, and while it would be reductive to say that his career path had been forged in opposition to Sam's airy worldview, a childhood bent over books, both secular and religious, had lent allure to the notion of getting one's hands dirty.

“. . . perceive as opposites in this world, for example justice and mercy, are in fact unities in the mind of God—it goes without saying that I mean that metaphorically—which, speaking of, relates to what I was saying earlier, about dialectical truth . . .”

Jacob could appreciate now that his mother must have felt the same way. In her case, the urge to escape into concreteness was literal: he
remembered her fingernails, edged with brown clay that would dry and flake off in little crescent moons. A tiny accidental cosmos, accumulating in the linen closet, the pantry, waiting for the day she cleaned up the house and herself, a day that never came, so that Jacob would eventually lose patience and get out the vacuum himself.

He was both of them, neither of them—a phenomenon no less mysterious for its frequency.

Sam paused. “I'm prattling again.”

“No, no . . .”

“I am, I can see you.”

“See what.”

“You're smiling.”

“I can't smile because I'm happy?”

“I'd love for you to be happy,” Sam said. “Nothing would make me happier. But I'm not sure that's why you're smiling.”

“What you just said is very you.”

“Who else would I be?”

Jacob laughed.

“At any rate. It's good that we never face real judgment in this world. No man could withstand the scrutiny of the Divine gaze. Every last one of us would melt like wax before fire.”

“Yeah, well, I don't want to think about what I'm in for when I die,” Jacob said.

“I thought you didn't believe in any of that,” Sam said.

He said it so casually that it took Jacob a moment to grasp the import of what he was being confronted with. He said, “I don't know what I believe.”