The Golem of Hollywood (28 page)

The righteous woman who contented.

Perel, the daughter of Reb Shmuel.

A woman of valor, the crown of her husband.

Strange form of praise. Content with what? Her lot in life? Her husband? A rabbinic dictum had it that the rich man is one who is happy with his portion, so perhaps Perel had been famously pleased.

For all the stories he'd heard about the Maharal, none mentioned anything about a wife. But of course she'd existed. Jewish scholars were encouraged to settle down early. That Perel shared a name with his mother—middle name; but still—made him smile and shake his head.
Maybe that was what had attracted Sam to Bina in the first place. They were both women of valor. Standing before the tomb, it seemed less absurd to Jacob that his father continued to sing the Shabbat song. To love a dead woman was Sam's right as much as it was his failure. The same could be said of Jacob's unwillingness to forgive.

He crouched to pluck a pebble from the ground.

A beetle darted across his hand.

A startled shout burst from his throat, and he sprang back, crashing into one of the Hasidim and sending his camera flying. The Hasid began to scream at him in French, and Jacob apologized and snatched up his own camera from the dirt.

The beetle had meantime scampered back along the path; he spotted it in a bed of dry leaves, standing up on its hind legs, waving its black arms smugly.

Seized with rage, Jacob lunged for it, coming up with a handful of moist earth. He tried again, and again it danced back, and he began hobble-hopping after it, swimming upstream, worming his way through stocking legs and flip-flops and sensible shoes, raising screeches of disapproval.

The beetle flitted from stone to stone, its wings unfurling for one luminous instant and then vanishing into its black casing while it waited for him to catch up, its legs bent, poised to take flight.

He coiled to lunge again and hands grabbed hold of him, eight arms and four heads like some crazy Hasidic Vishnu, dragging him toward the exit, yelling curses in his ear in Yiddish and French. Jacob didn't understand a word of it except for
beheimah
—animal.

Shoved through the cemetery gates, he found himself in the narrow road facing the Alt-Neu, where he had only just left, as though he was pinned to some monstrous creaking wheel.

He stumbled away, making turns at random, coming to a side street. In the privacy of a doorway he collapsed, trembling like a wet dog.

Bugs were in cemeteries. Bugs were everywhere.

The Creator had an inordinate fondness for beetles.

The worst part was realizing that he'd failed: he'd forgotten to place the stone.

His pocket buzzed and he jumped.

Incoming texts filled the screen: the severed head, shot at multiple angles. A phone number for the
shul
's director of security, Peter Wichs.

The defaced, long-gone cobblestone.

Peter Wichs answered in Czech, but upon hearing Jacob's voice he switched to a fluid, idiomatic English. They arranged to meet at the Alt-Neu at five-thirty, allowing an hour before services.

Jacob bought himself a Coke, drained it in four desperate gulps, and set out for the Pension Karlova.

—

H
AVEL
THE
HOTEL
MANAGER
regarded the photos of the severed head with the resignation of a man who's not only seen worse but has also scrubbed it out of carpeting. While he couldn't definitively identify the head as belonging to the Brit who'd skipped out on his bill, he did agree to retrieve the guest registry, playing out his tale of woe with tragic brio.

“Who can do this? I am a good man, honest man, I pay taxes, I don't cheat.”

The registration form listed a UK passport number, issued to one Reginald Heap; a London address; a credit card number.

“Decline,” Havel said. “I call police.”

Heap's birthdate was given as 19 April 1966.

Right in the zone for the Creeper killings.

Hoping for hair or skin cells, Jacob asked Havel what he'd done with Heap's belongings.

“Throw away.”

Crap. “Can I get a copy of his information?”

Havel pointed to Jacob's phone. “Picture.”

“You want a picture.”

Havel nodded.

“With me?”

Havel frowned at him.
“Head
.
”

“A picture—of the head?”

Havel nodded.

“I'm not sure I can do that.”

Havel slammed the registry shut.

“Come on,” Jacob said. He opened his wallet. “Let's work this out another way.”

“Picture,” Havel insisted.

“You're serious.”

Havel set his jaw and looked past Jacob.

“Fine, what's your e-mail address?”

Once Havel had received the photo, he disappeared into a back room, gone for a solid fifteen minutes. Jacob dinged the bell, to no avail.

At last Havel returned. He handed Jacob a copy of the registration form and proudly displayed a black-and-white printout of the head, upon which he'd scrawled, in red marker, ten or so words in Czech.

Waving the gruesome photo, he taped it to the wall beside the key rack.

“Please don't do that,” Jacob said.

Havel proudly translated the caption: “This is happen for people who don't pay.”

—

W
ITH
A
TALL
GLASS
of beer in front of him, Jacob commandeered a booth at an Internet café.

A Miami detective named Maria Band had e-mailed him, inviting him to call her cell.

He dialed her.

“This is Band.”

“Jacob Lev. LAPD.”

“Oh, yeah. Sorry about taking forever to get back to you. I'm getting crushed here.”

“Understood. Talk to me.”

Having reviewed the Casey Klute file, Band could confirm that the murder matched the pattern of the others: bound and unbound, throat slit, east-facing corpse.

“Nice gal, lots of friends, drove a pink Corvette, ran her own party-planning business, a talent for consistently picking the shittiest guys imaginable. Ex-boyfriend doing five to ten for possession with intent. Ex-husband with four priors, including one for armed robbery. I thought for sure he was our man but he was out of the country when it happened. After that we kinda ran out of air. Still bugs the hell out of me. I'm glad someone's on it. Just not me.”

He thanked her and promised he'd be in touch.

Next, a note from Divya Das.

Hey—

A little birdie told me you had to take a trip. I hope it's going well. Do keep me informed.

I wanted to reiterate my regrets that we had to part on an awkward note. I hope you can appreciate that it was never my intention to mislead you. Believe you me, if I had any say in the matter, I would relish the chance to get to know you better. But in the words of a great philosopher, you can't always get what you want.

Warmly,

D

He reread it twice, prying for meaning.

Why didn't she have any say in the matter?

Hey Divya,

Greetings from Prague. Interesting developments, though I'm not sure where it's all leading. I promise to keep you looped in.

About the rest of it, no problem. Like I said, I'm a big boy. It's been fun working with you and I wish you nothing but the best.

Anyhow, don't count me out yet. I've been known to wear a girl down.

Hope to see you soon.

Jacob

Pruning the rest of his inbox took him to the bottom of a second beer. He swirled his finger at the waitress:
Keep it coming
.

The address Reginald Heap had given turned out to be Waterloo Station, and after further searches yielded nil, Jacob began to worry that the name was bullshit, as well.

He tried
Reggie Heap
, and up came an archived page with an Oxford University domain name.

In 1986, when Reggie Heap had won the Undergraduate Art Society's award for a work on paper, the prize money was a modest two hundred pounds, a fifth of the present-day sum.

The other hit was a newspaper article, seven years old, concerning proposed legislation to ban fox hunting. The writer quoted one Edwyn Heap, of Clegchurch.

They ought to mind their own damned business.

To create ironic contrast, Heap's son, Reggie, was also quoted.

I can't conceive of anything more barbaric.

Jacob could.

He mapped the village along the M40, halfway between Oxford and London, then called the airline to price out a ticket, placing a hold on a short haul from Prague to Gatwick, leaving tomorrow mid-morning;
ditto a Monday morning reroute, Heathrow to LAX. He'd talk to the guys at the
shul
first, see if they could help him justify a $450 detour.

Five o'clock. He took a long draught, considered calling his father to wish him a
Shabbat shalom
, but balked. Doubtless Sam would want to know if he'd visited the grave.

I tried.

There were bugs.

The waitress approached with the sloshing pitcher. He covered his glass with his hand. “I'm good, thanks.”

The bill—six bucks for five beers—sparked a momentary fantasy about selling his worldly possessions and moving to Prague.

If he got past the case and looked at the city as any tourist would, it was lovely and vibrant. A place for new beginnings. Buildings built atop buildings. A police force wanting elder statesmen.

He could meet a nice Czech girl, convince her to lay off the eye shadow . . .

Remembering something, he flipped through the guidebook.

STATUE OF RABBI JUDAH BEN BEZALEL LOEW (1910)

NEW TOWN HALL, MARIÁNSKÉ NÁMESTÍ

This work, commissioned by the municipal authority and executed by famed Art Nouveau sculptor Ladislav Å aloun, imagines Rabbi Loew moments before his death. That it was chosen to adorn a public building stands as testament to the reverence with which all Czechs, Jew and gentile alike, regard Loew, and his importance to Czech culture as a whole.

The map showed the statue on his way to the
shul
. It wasn't the same as putting a stone on the grave, but a photo of the great man might soften Sam's disappointment.

He left a generous tip and got going.

—

C
ARVED
FROM
BLACK
STONE
, standing well over six feet tall, atop a five-foot pedestal, the Maharal cast a surreally long shadow in the late afternoon light.

For his subject matter, Å aloun makes use of a popular legend. It is said that, having achieved an unprecedented spiritual level, the Rabbi could foresee the coming of the Angel of Death. As the day drew near, he embarked upon a program of round-the-clock study, heeding a Kabbalistic tradition which states that any man so engaged cannot die.

One afternoon, the Rabbi's granddaughter entered his chambers to present him a freshly picked rose. Seizing the opportunity, the Angel stole into the center of the flower, and as the Rabbi paused to inhale its sweet scent, he expired.

The figure twining around the Maharal's legs looked more imp than granddaughter. Notably, she was naked—pretty unseemly for a member of the rabbi's household.

The statue's impressive height is in keeping with a tradition that describes Loew as extremely tall. No portrait of him is known to exist, however, so Å aloun's rendering should be regarded as a work of pure imagination.

The sculptor might've been admired in his day, but his take on Loew's face revealed a certain laziness: grotesquely large nose; dour pout; eyes filled with Pharisaic scorn.

Obeyest thou the Law!

Still, Jacob didn't want to come home empty-handed, so he got the
camera out, zooming in and out on the statue's face, wondering what Loew had really looked like.

He finished and slid the camera back in his pocket. He stooped to the sidewalk and snatched a nugget of asphalt, placing it at the foot of the statue. He stared at it for a few moments, then changed his mind and brushed it away.

G
rand title notwithstanding, Chief of Synagogue Security Peter Wichs stood all of five-foot-four in polyester pants and a short-sleeved shirt with a chewed-up collar. Black eyes floating in black pools snapped from point to point on Jacob's face, committing him to memory—a veteran security man's practice.

“You are the detective Jacob Lev,” Peter said.

Jacob laughed. “Heard of me?”

Wichs's smile resembled a badly broken bone: jagged and white and protruding unnaturally through split flesh.

The handshake went on a bit too long for Jacob's taste; his palm felt moist when he offered it to Wichs's assistant, Ya'ir, a rangy blond man no older than Jan, with an Israeli accent.

They went inside the
shul
, ducking under the barrier rope and heading down the hall, past the rabbi's study and various offices labeled in flaking gilt, to a door marked
BEZPECÍ/SECURITY.

The log was kept in English, the guards' common language. The entry for the night of April 15, 2011, described a white male, 1.75 to 1.8 meters tall, approximately 70 to 80 kilos. He had light eyes and brown hair and wore metal eyeglasses, brown overcoat, gray suit, black necktie with silver or light blue stripes. He'd kept his hand in his coat pocket and appeared to be making a fist, raising the possibility of a concealed weapon. He sweated visibly and sounded nervous. He stated that he
came from the UK, but declined to supply a passport or ID. He could not correctly name the last Jewish holiday, and when asked to wait, he had run away.

“This guy,” Ya'ir said, “if I sawed him at the airport, I would pull to the alarm.”

“Did you call the cops?”

Peter gestured to the well-used logbook. “This is Prague. We can't report every unusual character. They'd stop taking us seriously.”

“Then the lieutenant contacted you.”

“For the tapes. Unfortunately, as I told him, the cameras are merely a visual deterrent.”

“Did he ask you to take a look at the victim?”

Ya'ir shook his head. Peter said, “I wasn't notified until later that afternoon. The body had already been removed.”

Jacob said, “What I'm about to show you isn't pretty.”

He handed his phone to Ya'ir, who recoiled from the gory image.

“Bear in mind, a lot of things change after death. Skin color, muscle tone.”

“He is not wearing glasses,” Ya'ir said. “But for me, I think yes, he's the same.”

He passed the phone to Peter.

The Czech guard's reaction was rather different: he glanced briefly at the screen, turned it facedown on the desk. There was none of the visceral horror that even now had Ya'ir chewing his tongue.

Peter Wichs simply stared off into nowhere, the epitome of indifference.

Jacob shifted, unnerved. As a rule of thumb, the more excitably someone acted in the interrogation room, the less likely he was to be guilty. Conversely, the worst guys put their heads down and took a nap. They had nothing to discuss.

“What do you think?” Jacob asked. “Same guy?”

Peter shrugged. “It's hard to say.”

“You want to take another look?”

“That's not necessary.”

“Or I can show you a different—”

“It's not necessary.”

“Uh-huh,” Jacob said. “Okay, well . . . I talked to Klaudia Navrátilová this morning. She seemed unclear on what had happened.”

“Naturally. She experienced a terrible trauma.”

“Did you discuss it with her?”

“Me? No. Our interactions were professional and infrequent.”

“Still, you must've been upset when you heard what happened to her.”

“Naturally,” Peter said.

“She's nice girl,” Ya'ir said.

“You were friendly,” Jacob said, more to Peter than Ya'ir.

The Czech guard shrugged again. “As I said, professional. And infrequent.”

“Did she give a reason for quitting?”

“I imagine she found the memories too painful.”

“She told me something I'm having trouble understanding.” Jacob opened his notepad to the page where Klaudia had written
bláto
. “Do you know why she'd say that?”

“I don't know what is this,” Ya'ir said.

“It means ‘mud,'” Jacob said. “Is that right?”

Peter nodded once.

“What do you think she meant by that?” Jacob said.

“She's maid,” Ya'ir said. “She is all the time think about dirt.”

“Mud. Not dirt.”

“Put water, it's the same.”

Jacob waited for Peter to say more. Peter continued to gaze away. “Can either of you think of anyone who might've been in or around the building on the night of the attack?”

“Who would be here?” Peter asked.

“Somebody who has a key, say, and wants to come in early to get ready for davening.”

“We have enough difficulty getting a
minyan
, let alone at four in the morning.”

“Members of the community who take an especially protective view of the
shul?
”

“We all do,” Peter said. “It's our heritage.”

“You're chief of security, though. It must mean more to you than most.”

“Everyone respects the
shul
.”

Silence.

Jacob said, “There was a message left on one of the cobblestones.”

“We have graffiti,” Ya'ir said.

“This wasn't done by a run-of-the-mill vandal,” Jacob said. He lifted the phone off the desk, found the picture of the defaced stone, displayed it.

“You can understand,” he said, “why I think it's not entirely out of line to wonder about an offender with a Jewish background.”

The guards remained silent. Ya'ir shot a glance at Peter.

Jacob said, “Someone replaced the stone.”

“Naturally,” Peter said. “It wouldn't be appropriate to leave a hole in the ground.”

“Do you know what happened to the old one?”

“I assumed the police had taken it away as evidence.”

“Lieutenant Chrpa said he came back to look at it and it was missing.”

“I can't tell you anything about that.”

“Can't tell me?”

“I don't know,” Peter said.

Jacob looked at Ya'ir, who made a helpless face.

“Perhaps the lieutenant misplaced it,” Peter said.

“He didn't seem like the kind of guy who would,” Jacob said.

Peter tapped his chin. “Anything is possible.”

“I've also been told that the garret door was found open,” Jacob said.

“Occasionally someone tries to climb up the exterior ladder,” Peter said. “Tourists who've read the stories and had too many beers.”

“What do they do, once they're up there?”

“Come down. There is no access. The door is locked from the inside.”

“You're not concerned someone might fall?”

“We can't be expected to account for everyone's foolishness,” Peter said.

“Sure. Sure. But you told the lieutenant that a wind had blown it open.”

“Did I?”

“You did.”

“Well,” Peter said, “I imagine that's possible, too.”

“Not if the door's locked from the inside,” Jacob said.

Ya'ir looked intrigued.

Peter, harder to say.

He said, “Ordinarily, it's locked.”

“But?”

“I would have to imagine that it wasn't, that night.”

“You imagine,” Jacob said.

Peter smiled wanly. “It's a bad habit.”

“All right, then. Who do you imagine unlocked the door?”

Another silence, longer.

Peter said, “Go take the first shift, please, Ya'ir.”

“There is time still,” Ya'ir said.

Peter didn't reply, and the Israeli sighed and got up.

When he was gone, Jacob said, “What's wrong?”

“It's him,” Peter said. “Your head. It's the same man, the Englishman. I have no doubt.”

“You didn't want to say so in front of Ya'ir.”

“I didn't want to upset him.”

“He seems like a pretty tough guy.”

“On the outside. There's a program, young Israelis fresh from army service. We fly them out for a couple of years, then they go back.” Peter studied him. “How old are you, Jacob Lev?”

“Thirty-two.”

“This is your first visit to Prague.”

Jacob nodded.

“You never wanted to come before.”

“I never had the chance. Or the money.”

“How do you like it so far?”

“Honestly? It kind of creeps me out.”

“You're not the first to think so.”

“You never answered my question. How'd the garret door get unlocked?”

“It's possible that I left it open by accident.”

“You've been inside.”

“Often.”

“I thought it was forbidden.”

“Somebody has to tend it.”

“The chief of security doesn't have better things to do?”

Peter smiled. “A big title, for a small job.”

“Who else goes up there?”

“It's not open to the public.”

“Besides you, who has access?”

“No one.”

“What about the rabbi?”

“Rabbi Zissman has only been with us three years. He knows better than to ask.”

“How long does someone have to work here before they can go up?”

“Longer than three years.”

“And how often are you up there?”

“Every Friday.”

“Before Shabbat.”

Peter nodded.

“And do you typically unlock the door?”

“Not typically.”

“So, then.”

“It's merely one hypothesis,” Peter said.

“The other being?”

“Tourists.”

“You can't blame everything on them,” Jacob said.

“I don't see why not,” Peter said. He shifted. “I suppose I must've left it open, that day.”

“That's your final answer.”

“Yes, Jacob Lev,” Peter said. “I imagine it is.”

Jacob asked, “What's up there, anyway?”

He expected Peter to laugh, or to rebuff him with a cluck of the tongue.

Instead the guard stood, jangling his keys. He withdrew a small flashlight from a drawer and rapped its butt end against the desk.

“Come.”