The Golem of Paris

by Jonathan Kellerman

  But Molchanov had a hand up. “No problem.”

  He smiled at Jacob. “Remove clothes.”

  A beat.

  Jacob said, “I’d like to leave now.”

  Molchanov said, “Clothes.”

  The library temperature was mild enough, calibrated for long-term storage of paper. Jacob shook nonetheless as he stripped off his shirt and pants.

  “All clothes.”

  Jacob stood naked. Pelletier made a show of studying the floor.

  Molchanov set the knife down on an end table, removed his leather gloves, and began inspecting Jacob’s clothing, feeling along the seams.

  On his left index finger was an enormous black ring.

  Jacob, shivering, said, “What is that? Iron?”

  Molchanov stopped what he was doing to glance at his own hand.

  “Where’d you get it?” Jacob said.

  “It was reward,” Molchanov said.

  “Reward for what?”

  “Work,” Molchanov said.

  He tossed the jeans on the floor, picked up Jacob’s shirt.

  “How about this?” Jacob said, tapping the side of his own neck.

  Molchanov’s fingers darted to his hunk of scar tissue, as though to conceal it. A habit not quite broken. Quickly, he dropped his hand.

  He said, “Also reward.”

  He started to search the shirt—then, changing his mind, cast it aside.

  He took out a new glove, a latex one. Pulled it on.

  “Turn,” he said.

  When Jacob did not, Molchanov said, “I must look for weapon.”

  Still Jacob stood his ground.

  Molchanov advanced like the leading edge of a tsunami. He seized Jacob by the shoulders and spun him around, bending him over the back of a chair and kicking Jacob’s feet apart.

  Jacob gritted his teeth. “Whatever gets you off, asshole.”

  “I am not asshole,” Molchanov said. “This is asshole.”

  • • •

  JACOB CROUCHED: shrunken, damp, hurting, nauseous.

  His clothes hit him in the back.

  “Put on.”

  Pelletier was still gazing dispassionately at the floor.

  Jacob got dressed.

  “Okay,” Molchanov said. He spoke to the gunman in Russian, and the four of them left the library and began to walk.

  • • •

  THE HOUSE WENT ON and on and on.

  Ornate in spots, stark in others, room after room inhabited by domestics of every stripe. At Molchanov’s approach, they paused their chatter to give a respectful distance.

  An exterminator squatting by the baseboards, a spray tank on his back, stood and doffed his hat.

  Molchanov led them through passageways, switchbacks, miles of silk wallpaper. The further they went, the less the place felt like a fortress and the more it felt like a house. A really nice house, but a house. You could even overlook the security cameras, tastefully concealed behind leaded glass shades.

  The air moved gently against them, carrying a distinct but agreeable iodine tang.

  Jacob felt a dull ache where Molchanov had assaulted him. That had been more than security. It was an announcement—a change of plans.

  He wasn’t going to talk to Tremsin. He was being brought to Tremsin.

  Focus. Head up. Back straight.

  He glanced over at Pelletier. Serene as cream.

  They arrived at an elevator bank. Molchanov punched an ivory button. Pale, lustrous doors parted. “Lady first.”

  They stepped into the car. Its three interior walls were made of glass, exposing the elevator shaft, which was elaborately mosaicked with an abstract lattice. The elevator panels were made of the same lustrous metal as the doors.

  Molchanov pressed another ivory button and the car began to rise—sluggishly.

  Jacob saw letters and numbers tiled in among the lattice.

  The patterns weren’t abstract.

  They were chemical diagrams.

  A nice slow ride, offering plenty of time for you to admire them.

  Jacob said, “His creations.”

  Pelletier nodded.

  Jacob looked around again at the fixtures, wondering what the metal was. Nothing so pedestrian as white gold. Platinum, maybe, or something exotic that would excite a chemist. Palladium. Iridium.

  The main panel was engraved with a warning.

  EN CAS D’INCENDIE, NE PAS UTILISER L’ASCENSEUR.

  PRENDRE L’ESCALIER.

  In case of fire, do not use the elevator. Take the stairs.

  It sounded so much more refined in French.

  They reached the top floor.

  The doors opened.

  Molchanov said, “Lady first.”

  • • •

  THE MOSAICS CONTINUED across the floors and walls of a six-sided antechamber. There was only one way to go, through a door incongruously narrow and rustic, roughhewn from light-colored wood.

  Molchanov stepped toward it but stopped, his hand going to his earpiece. “Da.”

  Whatever the message was, he didn’t like it.

  “Nyet. Nyet. Devyanosto sekund.”

  Molchanov lowered his voice, shot off a command in Russian, hustled back into the elevator. Through the glass, Jacob saw him pry open the panel and turn a knob. The car plunged out of sight.

  “What was that about?” Jacob said.

  Pelletier shook her head. “He said he’d be back.”

  She had a brief conversation with the gunman in Russian, which ended with his shrugging agreeably and stepping aside.

  “We’ll go ahead,” Pelletier said to Jacob.

  She started across the antechamber, paused. “Have you prepared your questions?”

  “A whole list.”

  “Pick two or three.”

  He said, “Why’s Tremsin curious to meet me?”

  “You’ll want to address him as Doktor,” Pelletier said.

  “You said he was curious to meet me,” Jacob said. “What did you tell him?”

  “That you are an American police officer, in town to talk to him.”

  “You gave him my name.”

  “Naturally.”

  “What else?”

  “That was it,” she said.

  “What exactly did he say?”

  She said, “Only that he looked forward to meeting you.”

  CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN

  She opened the door and they stepped into a cloud.

  The room was gigantic, hexagonal, tiled on every surface. There was a six-sided swimming pool, surrounded by frothing whirlpools and five arched alcoves, like the side chapels of a church. They were standing where the sixth alcove would have been. All the recesses were dark except the one in the far right corner. Light spilled through a dense curtain of crystal beads, the angle too oblique for Jacob to see inside.

  Through a series of hexagonal skylights, a muffled night slunk by.

  Jacob heard a low, methodical whickering coming from the lit alcove, like the sound of a blade drawn through paper, again and again.

  Just him and Pelletier. The gunman had hung behind in the antechamber.

  Can’t see the boss in his birthday suit?

  But a cute blonde could?

  “Careful not to slip,” Pelletier said.

  She went around the pool to the right.

  Jacob stepped through puddles, his shoes leaving watery black prints.

  The slicing got louder. Crisper. Deliberate. Decisive.

  Aromatic steam billowed, wet cedar and wet leaves and other scents of the earth. At strategic points sat pyramids of tightly rolled towels, teak chairs, wicker baskets containing dried birch branches for whipping the skin. Footlights set an ambience that under ot
her circumstances Jacob would’ve described as romantic.

  Pelletier stopped a few yards shy of the curtain to announce them. “Pardon, Doktor. Nous sommes là.”

  The slicing droned on.

  A gentle voice said, “Entrez.”

  Pelletier waved Jacob forward.

  They parted the curtain.

  “Odette.”

  Arkady Tremsin wasn’t in his birthday suit. He was wearing a red silk robe and matching velvet slippers, both embroidered with his initials. Never a small man, he’d acquired a paunch, sitting with his legs comfortably splayed, exposing thin ankles suggestive of lost muscularity. His skin was pale. A sharp line halfway up his calves demarcated the start of gray, downy hair. The flesh of his throat was gray and papery and freshly shaven.

  “Mr. Lev,” Tremsin said.

  He was getting his hair cut.

  The alcove was a salon, or a private version of one, counters lined with luxe editions of the normal accoutrements: horn combs soaking in antiseptic, etched jars, an array of polished cutting implements, boar’s-hair brushes. A single chair, plated in that same white metal.

  The silk robe, Jacob saw, was actually a silk smock.

  A manicure in progress, as well: Tremsin had his hands resting in tubs of foamy water. Nearby stood a wheeled cart set with nail files and emery boards, and on it, a crude black iron ring, removed so he could soak without the flesh swelling up and causing an uncomfortable constriction.

  The woman doing the pampering was petite, with strong features and dark hair. She stood on a low footstool in order to snip around the crown of Tremsin’s head. She looked a bit like Lidiya Georgieva.

  She made a few finishing cuts, then reached for the blow-dryer.

  Tremsin waved to dismiss her, spattering sudsy water.

  She exited without a word.

  Tremsin put his hand back in the bath. He smiled at Jacob. “Too noisy,” he said.

  The hairdresser’s footsteps faded to nothing.

  Tremsin said, “What brings you to Paris?”

  His moment. Yet Jacob felt stupefied, entranced by the glint of white metal everywhere, as if he was in the belly of a false god.

  Hatred roiling in his own belly.

  Tremsin studied him; murmured in Russian to Pelletier.

  “You don’t look like your father,” Pelletier translated.

  Jacob, thrown, said, “My mother.”

  “Ah,” Tremsin said. “Better for you.”

  His father?

  Pelletier nodded to prompt him. “Please, Detective.”

  “Marquessa Duvall,” Jacob said. “TJ White.”

  Tremsin’s smile arched in confusion. “Pardon?”

  “You own a Gerhardt Falke S,” Jacob said. “You bought it in 2004 during the L.A. auto show.”

  Tremsin spoke to Pelletier. It was evident from his tone that he was saying something along the lines of what the hell is he talking about?

  The anger in Jacob’s gut took a nasty detour toward anxiety.

  “That’s where you met Marquessa,” he said. “She was a model. Beautiful girl. Bright future. Did she tell you about her son right then, or did it take some time?”

  Silence.

  Tremsin was blank. Utterly calm.

  He said, “Who are you?”

  “What about Lidiya and her son?” Jacob said.

  Pelletier said, “Okay, Detective. That’s enough, please.”

  “Lidiya and Valko. Did you ever know their names?”

  Pelletier said, “Detective—”

  Jacob sidestepped her, toward Tremsin. “Let’s talk about Prague.”

  Now Tremsin sat up erect, jaw grinding.

  “You must be proud of your work,” Jacob said. “At the hospital. You kept your records. I just saw them, in the library.”

  Tremsin stood up, flinging a swarm of hair trimmings into the air. “Out.”

  “I know what you did,” Jacob said. “I know everything.”

  Blood was filling up Tremsin’s cheeks as Pelletier took Jacob firmly by the arm and began wrestling him toward the curtain, hissing, “Move. Now.”

  “I know,” Jacob said. “I know.”

  Pelletier shoved him backward through the curtain. His sneakers slid around on the wet tiles. He straightened up as Pelletier came out of the alcove to confront him.

  “Wait outside,” she said.

  Behind her, the beads swung, revealing Tremsin, still on his feet, clenched hands dripping, his chest heaving.

  “Wait outside,” Pelletier said, “or I will have you arrested.”

  Jacob walked along the length of the pool toward the exit.

  He didn’t know what had just happened.

  He didn’t know what he ought to feel.

  What he did feel was rage. Disappointment at the hideous anticlimax.

  What do you expect? He’ll wither in the face of your righteousness?

  He could hear Pelletier trying to placate Tremsin, pleading with him in Russian while he screamed at her, their voices echoing off the spa walls like some petty domestic squabble, idiotically magnified.

  Jacob reached the rustic wooden door and paused. He had half a mind to turn around and go back.

  Priorities rolled around in a jumble.

  He needed to find Paul.

  Or: Paul was the last guy he wanted to see.

  Get out safely.

  Go home. That was enough.

  It wasn’t enough.

  It would have to be enough.

  The argument pouring from the alcove broke off, replaced by a swinish sound.

  Tremsin groaning, pleasurably.

  Pelletier, doing what she could to keep him calm.

  Disgusted, Jacob opened the door to leave.

  The antechamber was empty.

  The gunman gone.

  As Jacob lingered on the threshold, puzzled, another series of sounds reverberated down the length of the room: a different sort of groan; an alarmed shriek; a crash.

  Silence. Then frenzied movement, the beads of the curtain swinging.

  He treaded back along the pool, came into view of the alcove.

  He saw the hand baths knocked over, the manicure cart overturned, the iron ring rolled somewhere out of sight.

  Tremsin, flat on his back.

  Pelletier, straddling him, her hips hammering back and forth.

  The motion was a close facsimile of sex. But Tremsin’s smock had fallen aside, his penis semi-erect and visible. Pelletier was fully dressed, using the heel of her hand to vigorously put weight down on his sternum, huffing and struggling and counting.

  She was giving Tremsin chest compressions.

  Soapy water pooled around them, soaking into her pant legs, his smock.

  Jacob stepped through the curtain.

  Pelletier looked up and saw him and said, “Go for help.”

  He didn’t move.

  “He’s having a heart attack,” she said.

  The heart attack was over. Jacob could see that. Lines of spittle trailed from the corners of Tremsin’s mouth; his eyes had fallen open, unnaturally wide. She was pounding on a corpse. “For God’s sake,” she yelled.

  Why did she need him to get help? She had a phone.

  “Stop staring and hurry,” she yelled.

  He was staring at her fitness tracker, flung free of her wrist by her frantic pumping. It lay on the tile, six inches behind her left knee.

  The green band had come apart and was lying in a C shape. One end appeared normal.

  The other terminated in a half-inch-long hypodermic needle, an amber bead quivering at its tip.

  Pelletier paused her compressions. Followed his gaze.

  Saw the needle and the droplet and said, “Merde.”


  Laughing, she let her hands fall by her sides. “Merde . . .”

  She reached over and picked up the bracelet.

  Sighed, put it back on, carefully inserting the needle into a corresponding hole. The gap snicked together magnetically, leaving the bracelet unassuming. Standing, she smoothed her slacks. Her blouse was undone to the navel. She began closing it.

  “It would’ve come to this, sooner or later. He was always making threats when he couldn’t have his way. You can’t do that forever. People get tired of it.”

  She raked her fingers through her hair several times. “Anyway,” she said, “it’s over now.”

  Jacob watched the bracelet, wobbling on her wrist.

  She said, “I know. Clever, isn’t it? Here’s an irony to reflect on: the formula’s a variation on one he invented, a modified tetrodotoxin. We rode by the formula in the lift. Between the third and fourth floors. His was much slower-acting. Thirty minutes from injection to effect. This one’s far better. Sixty seconds, which happens to be the maximum amount of time I can stand to keep his cock in my mouth. He deserves credit for laying the groundwork, though.”

  Jacob said, “Théo Breton had a heart attack.”

  Pelletier rolled her eyes. “Please. Don’t be boring. The vial is single-use.”

  She walked to the counter. “You can’t blame me for everything.”

  She kicked off her heels.

  She picked up a bone-handled straight razor.

  Opened it.

  Lunged.

  The extra second she had taken to remove her shoes allowed him to perform myriad primal lizard-brain calculations: the distribution of his body weight on a slippery surface, the radius of danger produced by her outstretched arm plus three inches of honed steel, the probable arc of the blade as it aimed for a clean sever of the jugular vein.

  By then he’d moved out of the way.

  He backpedaled through the curtain, whipping heavy beaded strands at her.

  Harmless, but it did the trick, entangling her as he broke for the exit.

  He ran, tipping over tables, kicking over chairs. He couldn’t move quickly on the tiles. But neither could she. She was barefoot. Fingertips, palms, toes, soles—they were all covered in friction skin. It gave better traction. But not much. Man did not evolve in a spa. She might’ve been better off keeping her heels on. She was running on instinct, too.