The Golem of Hollywood (45 page)

Jacob stalked the soldierly rows, fixed on the sound of labored breathing coming from a stand of fig trees.

A watery gray light in the shape of a man slumped on the ground, propped against a tree trunk.

Jacob raised the gun. “Lie down on the ground and don't move.”

Pernath didn't respond. For a moment, Jacob thought he was dead. But as he drew near, he saw the architect's chest fluttering, the gray outline moving with it.

“Down on the ground,” Jacob said. “Now.”

Pernath's head rolled toward Jacob and he sighed. His arm whipped over, taking his torso with it, and his body elongated and he sank a shard of glass into Jacob's thigh.

Jacob stumbled back, a groan swelling in his throat as he tripped over a fig root and the shotgun flew from his hands. He hit the ground and pain ballooned through his lower body and he began kicking at the dirt, scrabbling in the direction of the gun.

He reached it and saw that Pernath was making no effort to come after him.

The architect simply sat there, his head lolling, a contented smile on his lips.

Jacob looked down at the shard. At least eight inches long, half of that buried in his quadriceps. Blood dyeing the fabric of his jeans. Shivering, nauseated, he stripped off his shirt and tied his leg off at the groin. He slid a broken branch between the shirt and his leg, and twisted as hard as he could to cut off the flow of blood. Another wave of nausea coursed through him. He tamped it down and picked up the shotgun, approaching Pernath in a wide circle.

Pernath's hands were loose and open in his lap. His eyes were half shut.

Jacob said, “Reggie Heap. Terrence Florack. Claire Mason. Anyone else I need to know about?”

Pernath smiled wider, baring blood-rimmed teeth. Blood bubbled from his nostrils. The mucoid gray light surrounding him flickered. He was dying without regrets. Jacob thought about what he could say to take that away from him.

In the end he said nothing. There was nothing to say. His tourniquet had soaked through and he was starting to feel faint again.

He pressed the end of the barrel against Pernath's throat and leaned down with all his weight. Pernath's Adam's apple imploded. It sounded like a wet cardboard box getting stomped on. His eyes bugged and he suffocated and fought.

Jacob counted to ten and released the pressure, allowed Pernath a few thin breaths. Then he bore down again for another ten count.

He repeated the process eleven more times, once for each of the victims he knew about. He could hear the voices of the tall men coming through the trees, calling his name.
Jacob.
He placed the end of the shotgun on Pernath's throat.
Jacob, where are you.
He pressed down one last time for good luck.

Jacob. Jacob.

He pulled the trigger, severing Pernath's head from his body.

The recoil kicked Jacob back. He was falling as he answered them.
Here I am.

T
he nurse came into his room to announce a visitor. Assuming it was his father, Jacob waved permission and continued spooning oatmeal. The curtain shuffled aside and Divya Das stepped in.

He sat up, wiping his mouth. “Hey.”

She looked around for a place to sit, did not approach the unmade cot next to Jacob's bed.

“My dad's been sleeping here. Go ahead. He won't mind.”

Sam's copy of the Zohar lay on the pillow. She moved it to the nightstand and sat down, setting her orange bowling ball bag on her knees.

Jacob said, “I take it we're going dancing.”

She smiled. “How are you feeling?”

Jacob had no memory of his first night in the hospital. He'd sneaked a look at his chart and learned he'd walked into the emergency room on his own, ranting and raving. He assumed that Mallick, Subach, and Schott had dropped him off and left. The clinical notes said it had taken two doctors and three orderlies to wrestle him down. Now they had him on an array of barbiturates, along with B vitamins to ease his detox and IV fluids to counteract blood loss. The wound in his leg had been sutured neatly.

He was no longer having green dreams, which offered relief but also pangs of melancholy. His world appeared astringent and flat. Institutional linoleum, smudged bumper rails, oppressive overlighting. No
matter how much he slept, he felt tired. He was relaxed and bored and doped up, unable to care very much about anything.

He felt better and worse, trapped and free, blessed and punished in equal measure.

He said, “Sore.”

“May I?”

He nodded.

She lifted a corner of the thin hospital blanket, revealing his bandaged thigh.

“Missed the femoral artery by a quarter of an inch,” he said.

She tucked the blanket back in and reached for the chart, paged through it. “They gave you six units of blood.”

“Is that a lot?”

“You oughtn't to be alive.”

He spread his arms:
here I am.

She lingered on the page a bit longer, replaced the chart. “I'm glad you're coping so well.”

“Thanks. I thought you'd left town.”

“I was going to.” She dug in her bag and came out with a folder. “I wanted to deliver the results of your request personally.”

He chose not to question the about-face. He thanked her and accepted the folder.

DNA recovered from Reggie Heap's bloodstained shoes matched the profile of the second Creeper offender—a perfect nine for nine.

He closed the file. “So that's that.”

“So it would seem.”

“I'll have to get in touch with the other Ds,” he said. “They'll want to know.”

“I'm sure they will.” Long black eyelashes fluttered. “I have a message from Commander Mallick. He congratulates you for your fine work in stopping two dangerous and violent individuals, and he wishes you a
speedy recovery. He said not to worry about the paperwork. They've got it covered.”

“I can handle it myself.”

“The Commander feels that you could use a break, after the ordeal you've been through.”

“Does he.”

“He—the detail as a whole—feels it wouldn't be appropriate to keep you in a high-stress position.”

“Why are you talking to me like that?”

“Like what.”

“Like a suit.”

“You'll have a month, paid.”

“And then?”

Her mouth bunched. “You're being transferred back to Traffic.”

Jacob stared at her.

She looked at the floor. “I'm sorry, Jacob. It wasn't my decision.”

“I'd sure hope not,” he said. “You're not my superior.”

She did not reply.

“He couldn't tell me face-to-face?”

“Mike Mallick is a very dedicated individual,” she said. “But he's stubborn, and his way of thinking isn't necessarily the most people-friendly.”

“No shit,” he said.

“We're not all the same, Jacob.”

“Whatever.”

“He's entitled to his opinion,” she said. “And I'm entitled to mine.”

“And what's your opinion?”

“As I said, the Commander can have trouble when it comes to predicting how a person might behave in the moment. Given what you've seen, it's hard for me to find fault with your actions.”

Jacob said, “Who is she?”

Silence.

Divya Das said, “The Commander congratulates you for your fine work in stopping two dangerous and violent individuals.”

“Seriously?” he said. “This is what we're doing? Do you have any idea what this feels like?” He tapped the center of his forehead. “What it's like in here?”

On the other side of the curtain, his roommate, a ninety-year-old man, gargled and snored.

“Please keep your voice down,” Divya said.

“Is someone going to show up with a machine that erases my memory? Do I get a complimentary lobotomy?”

His heart rate monitor was chirping aggressively. She waited for it to slow, leaned in to speak. “It seems to me that you have a choice. You can live inside your experiences or outside of them.”

“And so? What now?” he said. “I wait for her to come back?”

“She certainly seems attracted to you.”

“I can't imagine why,” Jacob said.

She smiled crookedly. “Don't sell yourself short, Jacob Lev.”

Silence.

“It had to be Traffic,” he said.

She tried a smile. “Consider it a vacation.”

A soft knock at the door. The curtain swished aside, and Sam appeared with a grease-blotched bag.

“Whoops,” he said. “I didn't realize you had company. I can come back.”

Divya Das stood up. “I was just on my way out. You must be Jacob's father.”

“Sam Lev.”

“Divya Das.”

“Good to see you,” he said. “How's the patient?”

“Better than most of the ones I deal with,” she said.

She turned to Jacob, laid a warm hand on his shoulder. “Be well.”

Jacob nodded.

After she'd gone, his father said, “She seems nice.”

“She came by to tell me I'm being demoted.”

Sam's eyes creased behind his sunglasses. “Really.”

“Back to pushing paper.”

“Mm,” Sam said. “I can't say I'm disappointed.”

“I didn't think you would be.”

“You're my son. You think it's easy for me to see you like this?”

“I don't think it's easy for you to see anything,” Jacob said.

“Touché.” Sam reached in the bag and unpacked a breakfast croissant. “I had Nigel stop off,” he said, putting the food on Jacob's tray. “Hospital food is dreck.”

“Thanks.”

“So? How's the leg? You want to take a rest? I can be quiet.”

“I'd rather talk,” Jacob said. He took a bite of the sandwich. It was pure artery-clogging pleasure. “You remember to put my
tzedakah
money in?”

“I did. I kept you in mind the whole time. I hope you felt it.”

“Oh, absolutely. An angel came down and touched me and now I'm all better.”

Sam smiled. “Lucky you.”

—

A
NEW
RESIDENT
CAME
BY
to inspect Jacob's wounds and declared the leg to be healing “okay.” He probed the scab on Jacob's arm, reviewed the chart, and offered the umpteenth lecture on the need for Jacob to cut back on his drinking.

“The good news is we're not seeing signs of infection.”

“What's the bad news?” Sam asked.

“There has to be bad news?” Jacob said.

“It's not bad, per se,” the resident said. “But everyone's puzzled by your bloodwork. Your iron is still pretty elevated, as are your magnesium and potassium, although not to the same degree. Iron overload can be a risk factor for liver disease. Do you eat a lot of meat?”

“Do hot dogs qualify?”

The resident frowned. Young and cranky. He'd age badly. “I can't recommend that one bit. Anyhow, we reran your blood twice more, looking for other anomalies. A few other things popped up that I'm having trouble interpreting.”

“What's that mean?” Sam said.

“Do you take a silica supplement?” the resident asked Jacob. “Some people use it because they think it prevents hair loss.”

Jacob ran his hand over his thick, dark waves.

“Uh-huh. Other supplements? Anything homeopathic?”

“Nothing.”

“Hunh. Okay. Well. I asked some colleagues for their opinion, and Dr. Rosen in psychiatry had a thought.”

Jacob stiffened. “What's that?”

“There's a condition called pica, where a person gets cravings to eat inedible things, like hair or dirt or plaster. It mostly happens in pregnant women, or sometimes in individuals with severe anemia. In very extreme cases, you can get unusual trace minerals showing up in the blood. What I'm seeing from you isn't exactly consistent—you'd expect lower than average iron, not higher—but I'm having trouble coming up with a better explanation for why you have so much silicon in your system.”

Jacob said nothing.

“Aluminum, also,” the resident said. “Unless you're bathing yourself in antiperspirant.” He paused again, glanced at Sam, back at Jacob. “Is that something you've, uh, done?”

“Eating dirt?” Jacob asked. “Or bathing in antiperspirant?”

“Either.”

Jacob said, “No.”

The resident seemed relieved. “I'm sure it's a lab error. We'll definitely keep an eye on it, though. Rest up.”

Jacob lay back, absently running his fingers over his scabbed arm. The taste of mud was faint in the back of his throat. He was thinking
about Mai, and Divya Das, and his father saying to her
Good to see you
rather than
Good to meet you
.

He looked at Sam, inscrutable as always. “Abba? I think I'd like to sleep a little now.”

His father nodded. He reached for the Zohar. “I'll be here when you wake up.”

F
our days later, his blood had yet to normalize, but as he was reporting no obvious ill effects, neither the resident nor his insurance could justify keeping him in the hospital any longer. They gave him painkillers and a follow-up appointment. A nurse wheeled him to the curb and he hobbled on crutches to the waiting Taurus.

Nigel got out to hold the door for him. “Lookin good.”

“You should see the other guy.”

—

T
HE
PLAN
WAS
to recuperate at Sam's. They stopped by Jacob's place to pick up clothes.

The Honda sat in the carport, looking somehow different. As Nigel helped him limp up the steps, Jacob realized what it was: for the first time in months, the car had been washed.

Jacob asked Nigel if he'd done it.

Nigel laughed. “Nope,” he said, fishing out Sam's copy of the apartment key. “Maybe some girlfriend did you a favor.”

—

E
VERYTHING
S
UBACH
AND
S
CHOTT
had brought—the desk, chair, computer, sat phone, camera, printer, router, battery pack—was gone. The TV had been restored to its original position and reconnected. The
bookcase had been repatriated to the living room, the potter's tools neatly arrayed on the shelves.

Also gone were Phil Ludwig's boxes of evidence, along with the murder book Jacob had put together.

The bathroom smelled piney. The fridge had been purged. He didn't own a vacuum cleaner but there were outfield stripes in the bedroom carpet. A zip-top bag on his nightstand contained his wallet, keys, and badge.

His old cell phone was plugged in, fully charged and getting five bars.

His backpack sat on the floor by the closet. He looked inside and saw his
tefillin
bag; a bunch of candy wrappers; his Glock and the magazine. They'd left him the binoculars, affixed with a Post-it, two words written in a whispery scrawl.

You're welcome.

He had gotten used to the chaos. The reversion to form disoriented him. He packed hurriedly, stuffing items into a duffel. Nigel hoisted it over one shoulder, the backpack over the other, and went down to put them in the car. While he was gone, Jacob limped to the living room, stood at the bookcase, examining the tools. Combs, paddles, a wire cutter, a set of knives.

One of the knives, the longest one, was missing.

Nigel reappeared in the doorway to help him down the stairs. “Ready to go?”

“Hell yes,” Jacob said.

—

D
OWNSTAIRS
, a white work van was parked across the street.

CURTAINS AND BEYOND—DISCOUNT WINDOW TREATMENTS

An unfamiliar man sat in the driver's seat. He was black, sitting up so tall that the top quarter of his head was out of view. He appeared not to
pay them any attention, but as the Taurus eased into the street, Jacob raised a hand to him, and he waved back.

—

S
AM
INSISTED
ON
TAKING
the pullout couch and giving Jacob his bed, and he proceeded to astonish Jacob by handing him the remote control for a brand-new thirty-inch flat-screen television on a stand.

“Since when do you have that?”

“I'm not a Luddite.”

“You hate TV.”

“You want to argue about it or you want to watch it?”

—

T
HE
BARBITURATES
CLEARED
from his system within forty-eight hours, and withdrawal set in.

Sam watched from a chair by the bedside, a pained expression on his face, as Jacob shivered and leaked sweat. “We should go back to the hospital.”

“N—nnnn, not a ch—chance.”

“Jacob. Please.”

“Juh—just got to ri—ride it . . .
out
.”

His hands were shaking so much that he couldn't lay his
tefillin
straight.

Sam said, “Don't feel obliged because of me.”

“You want to argue about it,” Jacob stuttered, “or you want to help me?”

His father got up and cradled him from behind, wrapping the leather straps in evenly spaced coils. They were close against each other, Jacob's nose pressed to Sam's scratchy neck, and the smell of Irish Spring made him aware of his own, stale stink.

“I'm so sorry,” he mumbled.

Sam shushed him gently and reached for the head
tefillin
, smiling as he centered them between Jacob's eyes.

“What,” Jacob said.

“I was remembering the first time I showed you how to do this,” Sam said. He adjusted the box to the left. “How big they looked on you. No more talking, please.”

Flat on his back, Jacob recited an abridged service, getting through as many of the core recitations as he could manage before the prayer book slipped from his hands.

Delicately, Sam lifted Jacob's head off the pillow and loosened the
tefillin
. He removed them; removed the arm
tefillin.
He fetched a cold towel and sponged down Jacob's forehead, soothing the spot where the leather box had bitten into his skin.

—

T
REMORS
YIELDED
to low-grade headache and fatigue, the harbingers of a coming downturn in his mood, emotional nausea to go along with the physical kind. Sam appeared to sense the change, too. He responded by seeking to fill the hours with mild distractions, idle chatter and endless streams of riddles and puns.

Jacob doubted he could stave off full-blown depression with word games, but it was hard not to be charmed somewhat by his father's enthusiasm for providing care rather than accepting it. It had been a long time since he'd seen how Sam actually lived, and the self-sufficiency his father demonstrated was eye-opening.

Shuffling to and from the kitchen, ferrying tuna fish sandwiches and Gatorade and ice packs, going to the bathroom to rewet the compress or wash out the puke bucket.

Knowing the TV set had been bought for him, Jacob tried to show his appreciation by sticking to programming his father might conceivably enjoy: sports and news. They lamented the Lakers' early exit from the playoffs, watched baseball without comment. Sam studied while Jacob dozed. Jacob's major accomplishment of the first week was summoning the energy to call Volpe, Band, and Flores to relay the good
news. Grandmaison he didn't bother with. Let him figure it out on his own.

—

W
HEN
HE
FELT
WELL
ENOUGH
, he and Sam began going out for long, slow walks, building up to three times daily, their tempo set by the drilling pain in Jacob's leg. Along the way they would encounter neighborhood folks, many of whom greeted Sam by name. A soft-bodied woman pursuing a pair of rambunctious grandchildren; a young father wrestling with a stroller. It was as if they owed Sam a great debt of gratitude, as if the weight of his existence lessened theirs, and Jacob thought of Abe Teitelbaum's refrain about his father being a
lamed-vavnik
.

On a Thursday evening, near the corner of Airdrome and Preuss, a girl on a bicycle called to them as she whipped by.

“Hi, Mr. Lev.”

Sam raised a hand.

“Popular guy,” Jacob said.

“Everybody loves a clown,” Sam said.

For his part, his father gave no indication of being burdened. Jacob reckoned that had to be true. If you thought you were a
lamed-vavnik
, you couldn't be a
lamed-vavnik
. The reason for that went beyond a lack of the requisite humility. A
lamed-vavnik
could never recognize the immensity of his obligation, because the instant he did, the crush of worldly sorrow he was required to bear would paralyze him.

Jacob glanced back at the girl, her pigtails streaming. “Who was that, anyway?”

“How should I know? I'm blind.”

—

T
HEY
TURNED
DOWN
A
IRDROME
S
TREET
.

Jacob said, “Do you remember we used to have our Sunday morning study sessions?”

“Certainly I remember,” Sam said.

“I have no idea what you were thinking, exposing me to some of that stuff.”

“What did I expose you to?”

“You taught me about capital punishment when I was six.”

“In a purely legalistic sense.”

“I'm not sure a first grader can reliably make that distinction.”

“Is this where you tell me how I've ruined your life?”

“You haven't ruined my life,” Jacob said. “I take sole credit for that.”

At Robertson Boulevard, the orange and green 7-Eleven sign loomed in the twilight, firing up Jacob's cravings for bourbon and nitrates.

“Can we turn around?” he asked. “It's too noisy here.”

“Of course. Are you getting tired?”

“Another couple blocks,” Jacob said.

They walked east.

“Abba? Can I ask you something else?”

Sam nodded.

“Did you know Ema was sick when you married her?”

Sam said nothing.

“I'm sorry,” Jacob said. “You don't have to answer that.”

“It's all right. I'm not angry. I'm thinking about it, because I want to say it right.”

They walked in silence a moment.

“Let's consider the question from another perspective. If I could go back, would I do it again? And the answer to that is, yes, without a doubt.”

“Even knowing what happened to her?”

“You marry someone for who they are, not who they could become.”

In the silence, Jacob's crutches scraped the pavement.

You can live inside your experiences or outside of them.

He was having trouble choosing.

He was having trouble deciding if that was an authentic choice, or an illusion.

“I worry that it's going to happen to me,” he said. “I worry that it's happening already.”

“You're a different person, Jacob.”

“That doesn't make me exempt.”

“No. It doesn't.”

“So what makes you so sure?”

“Because I know you,” Sam said. “And I know what you're made of.”

It had begun to get dark.

Jacob said, “I was thinking, maybe, we could try it again sometime, learning together.”

“What did you have in mind?”

“I don't know. Pick something interesting. I'm sure as soon as I get back they're going to slam me with a bunch of busywork, so, I can't promise my attendance will be perfect. But I'm up for it if you are.”

“I'd like that,” Sam said. “Very much.”

At La Cienega, traffic reared up. They retreated westward. It took them twenty minutes to make it back to the house. Sam didn't seem too put out; for the moment, at least, they'd found a mutually agreeable pace.

—

I
T
FELT
WRONG
to tell Phil Ludwig over the phone. On a Sunday morning, Nigel picked Jacob up and they drove down to San Diego, where they found the good D crouched in his front yard, optimistically installing geraniums beneath the inland heat.

Ludwig stood, blinking sweat out of his eyes. “This is either gonna be a real great day or a real fucking bad one.”

Over lemonade, Jacob recapped the events and the evidence, lapsing into generalities in describing Richard Pernath's final moments. Ludwig listened stonily. In his curt verdict—“Good”—Jacob saw an honorable effort to conceal disappointment. His success made Ludwig's failure official.

“I haven't talked to any of the families yet. I was hoping you'd be able to help me out with that. Not the Steins. Them, I'd like to speak to myself.”

Ludwig said, “Let me think about it.” Then, perking up, he said, “I got something for you, too. When you e-mailed, it reminded me I never gave you an answer about that bug.”

“Don't worry about it.”

“Fuck don't worry about it. I was up half the night. You're gonna pretend to be interested.”

Out in the garage, Ludwig cleared the tabletop of the work in progress, a pristine tiger moth mounted on a bright white mat. He took down a crumbling, acid-ravaged reference book.

“I forgot I even had this,” he said, stroking the warped cover, red cloth stamped in black.

Insecta Evropae

A. M. GOLDFINCH

“I picked it up years ago, at a library sale. I don't think I bothered checking it before cause it's Old World species.”

He had bookmarked the entry with a color printout of one of Jacob's photos. He aligned it with a pen-and-ink illustration of
Nicrophorus bohemicus
, the Bohemian burying beetle.

Jacob crowded the table to read.

Found along the riverbanks of central and eastern Europe,
N. bohemicus
, like other burying beetles, displayed a behavior unusual in the insect world: mates remained together to rear their young. In the Bohemian, the tendency was pronounced, with couples pairing for life.

“Here's the thing,” Ludwig said. “This book's from 1909. I looked online for a color photo and Wikipedia comes back that the species went extinct in the mid-1920s.”

Jacob continued to stare at the images—to his eyes, identical creatures.

“You've got to remember,” Ludwig said, “insects, it's hard to say that definitively. They're small, they live underground, and most people see em and just want to smash em. There's this beetle from the Mediterranean nobody's seen in a hundred years, and last year it turned up in the south of England. So, it happens. My thought was we pass this along to my friend. If he agrees, maybe then we go to one of the journals.”

“Go for it,” said Jacob. “No need to include me.”

Ludwig frowned. “They'll want to know who's making the claim.”

“Tell them you took the picture yourself.”