The Golem of Paris

by Jonathan Kellerman

  He heaved a basket of birch branches at her, leaves twisting in the steam.

  Reaching the door to the antechamber, he realized the mistake in going through. The room was far smaller than the spa. No space to maneuver, no obstacles between them.

  The only escape an elevator that ran at a third normal speed. She’d be on him well before the car arrived. And the armed guard might’ve returned.

  He was fucked. He’d been fucked since getting into her Peugeot.

  But what choice did he have? He had relinquished all choice the moment he entered the embassy. Before that: when he’d spoken to Vallot. To Breton.

  Before all that: he’d been fucked since arriving in Paris; since he started to ask questions about a dead woman and a dead child.

  Pelletier could cut his throat and nobody would question her. She was the law.

  She’d say that Jacob had attacked Tremsin. She’d tried to stop him. Reaching for the nearest weapon, disabling Jacob, but not before the poor bastard’s heart gave out.

  Alas.

  How the hell was he going to make it out of the building alive?

  One thing at a time his lizard brain said.

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

  There had to be stairs. Somewhere.

  He hadn’t seen any in the antechamber.

  In one of the alcoves?

  So instead of going through the door, he hooked right, back around the swimming pool, passing alcove one, which housed a vast white marble whirlpool.

  No door.

  Pelletier came after him, tripping barefoot through the mess of branches, her decision to go shoeless looking more and more imprudent.

  Eventually he would run out of furniture to tip and baskets to throw. He’d come full circle and run smack into his own messes.

  But for right now he had open floor in front of him and she had junk in her way, and he chucked another basket at her.

  She dodged. He was becoming predictable.

  He came to the next alcove, a glassed-in sauna. No door.

  Alcove three contained a second whirlpool, green onyx. How many fucking bubbles did one person need? No door.

  As Jacob continued to run, he realized what distinguished the spa from the rest of the house: no cameras here. It was Tremsin’s private oasis. Too foggy, anyway.

  Pelletier knew that. She knew this place. She wanted him here.

  The next alcove, the fourth, was the barbershop.

  Parting the curtain, he looked past Tremsin’s body, hoping against hope.

  No door.

  He stopped then, because Pelletier had stopped too, retreating to the antechamber door. Letting him wear himself out.

  She said, “Let’s be dignified about this.”

  “Go fuck yourself.”

  She laughed.

  He laughed, too. He felt woozy and flushed.

  The only alcove he hadn’t checked was the fifth. Halfway between them.

  Forty feet of leaf-strewn tile and fragrant mist and gauzy orange light.

  If there was a stairwell, it had to be there.

  If he got close enough to find out, she’d be on him in seconds.

  Or maybe she wouldn’t bother. Maybe she’d bide her time till the cavalry arrived.

  A ray of illumination washed over him. He peered up at the skylight.

  Peaceful, abundant clouds.

  Was Mai behind them?

  Schott was in the building. Molchanov, too.

  Waiting for her.

  She knew. She wasn’t coming.

  Nobody was coming.

  Pelletier said, “Tremsin thought you were someone else.”

  “Who?”

  “We didn’t get that far,” she said. “You made him upset, though.”

  “He went to that party, didn’t he?”

  She said, “I’m not going to answer that.”

  “Why the hell not?”

  “You don’t get to learn the truth before you die.”

  “What makes you think I’m going to die?” he said.

  “What makes you think you’re not?”

  He ducked through the curtain into the barbershop, grabbed a razor with a knurled steel handle from the collection, swung it open, grabbed another blade, and reemerged.

  Pelletier had closed the gap between them to ten feet.

  She halted.

  He opened the second razor, held both weapons out like a teppanyaki chef.

  “Do you know how to use those?” she said.

  Jacob hated knives. In a way they were worse than guns. Even from close range, ninety percent of shots missed. A knife didn’t have to be accurate to do real harm. It could cripple you with a glancing cut.

  He said, “I guess we’ll find out.”

  He kicked up a fan of leaves and sticks and slurry and rushed her.

  She pivoted sideways to narrow her profile, her razor out, glinting, threatening, and he tried to slide off axis to hack at the inside of her elbow, hoping to disarm her right off the bat. But she was nimble and compact and she folded her limbs against her body and corkscrewed down and away from him.

  Momentum carried him past her, and the edge of a blade whispered along the back of his leg, opening the denim several inches below his left rear pocket, close enough that he felt thankful for not buying into the skinny jeans fad.

  He jerked around to slow himself, crouched, ready to fight her off.

  She hung back, her posture relaxed, quick eyes conducting damage assessment.

  They’d switched positions, relative to the antechamber door.

  Warmth trickled along the back of his knee, over the swell of his calf.

  No pain.

  Which was either good or a disaster, the wound either so minor as to be irrelevant or so deep that his nervous system had flooded with override signals, enabling him to do the sensible thing: flee.

  He didn’t want to look. If he looked, he’d know, and knowing could undo him, mentally. The crucial fact was that he was still standing, his left hamstring strong enough to bear weight.

  He went at her again, driving her back over the tiles, swinging the razors in two planes, her belly, her neck. Instinct. Two blades were a bitch to control; he had to slow down to avoid cutting himself, and Pelletier exploited his treadling gait, drawing him away from where he needed to go, which was the alcove behind him, maybe the one with the stairs.

  He did the sensible thing.

  He stopped attacking her.

  Turned and ran.

  The next moment swelled monstrously, a blister in the soft tissue of time. He slipped. His injured left leg slewed loose in mud and dead vegetation and his foot lost contact with the ground and he pitched forward, landing on the beak of his elbow, bone on tile, a stunning wave of pain traveling up his humerus and into his shoulder socket. He rolled partway onto his flank, scrabbling with his heels, kicking at the floor, backstroking through debris as Pelletier charged toward him.

  He saw her dark brown roots and her neat bared teeth, the diagonal creases of her shirt, her arm spring-loaded across her body, razor held high, front leg planting, torso unwinding to loose the backhand that would spill his innards.

  He didn’t have time to shout, to shut his eyes, to throw up his arms.

  He listened to his heart’s closing measures.

  A wet socket punched through her forehead, just left of center, and her head snapped back and the live pressure dumped out of her body and she flopped down atop him. Her face mashed his chest, then lolled over so that he was staring into her matte eyes.

  The exit wound had taken off the back of her skull. In the airspace above them hung microscopic drops of blood and cerebrospinal fluid, clinging to the perfumed mist, a pink filter through which to view the skyli
ghts.

  The moon had come out.

  A tinny pip, as the razor slipped from her hand and fell to the tiles.

  Soft bootsteps approached.

  A waxy face drifted into view, a human eclipse.

  Dmitri Molchanov said, “Nu.”

  CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT

  He stepped on Jacob’s left wrist and kicked the razor out of Jacob’s right hand, into the pool. He stepped on Jacob’s right wrist and did the same for the razor in Jacob’s left hand. He kicked Pelletier’s blade in with the other two.

  “Up.”

  Jacob stood. Blood and tissue and splinters of bone smeared his shirtfront.

  Molchanov was holding a black-and-brown pistol, surveying the chaos, trying to reconstruct what had happened, his eyes finally fixing on the barbershop alcove.

  He waggled the pistol: move.

  Jacob took half steps, partly because his left leg was starting to throb, partly because he had a notion that he’d be shot as soon as Molchanov saw Tremsin’s body.

  The bead curtain was still swaying, just perceptibly.

  Jacob stepped into the alcove, Molchanov close behind.

  Tremsin’s smock had soaked up so much water that the fabric had darkened several shades, the true red visible in patches near the collar.

  “I’m sure it won’t matter,” Jacob said, “but I didn’t kill him.”

  Molchanov’s gaze shifted toward the main room.

  Jacob nodded. “She injected him with something. The needle’s in her wristband.”

  “Hm,” Molchanov said. His accent rendered it as chm.

  He regarded Tremsin dispassionately. “Thirty-six years.”

  “That’s how long you worked for him?” Jacob said.

  Molchanov nodded.

  “That’s a long time,” Jacob said.

  “Whole life,” Molchanov said. “He goes, I go.”

  Jacob said, “I’m sorry to hear it.”

  He felt ridiculous. Sullied. Consoling one monster over another monster.

  Molchanov touched his earpiece, spoke in Russian. Then he told Jacob to kneel.

  “Face down. Arms behind.”

  Assuming the position limited Jacob to a few inches of peripheral vision, as well as a clear view down the corridor of his shins. Rusty streaks in his left pant leg. He didn’t appear to be actively bleeding.

  Take what you can get.

  Molchanov kicked aside one of the overturned hand baths and stepped toward the counter that held the collection of straight razors. Jacob snuck a glance. The Russian was opening drawers in search of a clean smock, which he draped over Tremsin’s body. Then he opened a razor and began sawing the cord off the hairdryer.

  He noticed Jacob watching and clucked his tongue. “Face down.”

  Jacob’s head throbbed against the tile. His shoulders screamed from the effort of keeping his arms up and back. He was getting dizzy, bright spots stippling his field of vision. Through the gap in his feet, he noticed a black speck near the junction of the cabinetry and the floor. Tremsin’s ring.

  A shadow shifted, Molchanov circling around behind him. Jacob flinched. Waiting to be strangled, raped; a blade, a bullet; any combination.

  Molchanov tightly bound Jacob’s wrists, pulled him up, marched him back through the curtain, made him kneel by the edge of the pool.

  Wet warm scummy water seeped into Jacob’s jeans.

  He said, “What did you want to talk to me about?”

  Molchanov raised an eyebrow.

  “Last night, when you were chasing me. You wanted to have a conversation,” Jacob said. “We could have it now.”

  Molchanov smiled. “Talking is complete.”

  The spa door opened. Two new guards appeared.

  They held Jacob at gunpoint while Molchanov left the room.

  Another silence, longer.

  The skylight pinged: the rain returning, tiptoeing at first, then steadily gaining in confidence.

  He weighed the pros and cons of trying to run.

  He said to the guards, “Your boss is dead.”

  They didn’t reply. A sullen pair, each sporting the beginnings of a beard.

  “That makes you unemployed.”

  No answer.

  Molchanov returned carrying a clunky metal cylinder, an attached hose and wand.

  The exterminator’s spray tank.

  He set it down and dismissed the guards. Righted a teak chair and sat down a few feet in front of Jacob, propping the pistol on his knee. He produced Jacob’s phone from his greatcoat pocket and began thumbing through it.

  Searching for the picture Jacob had taken of him in the Marais?

  No: Molchanov turned the screen around, showing the photo of the Gerhardt fob.

  “You have it?” he asked.

  Jacob shook his head.

  “Where is it?”

  “I gave it to the French police. They’re running it for prints.”

  Molchanov nodded, unconcerned.

  Jacob said, “Tremsin must have paid you well, you can afford a car like that.”

  “Doktor Tremsin,” Molchanov corrected.

  Thirty-six years.

  He goes, I go.

  Jacob said, “Did he have anything to do with Lidiya and Valko?”

  Molchanov appeared briefly confused. Then he said, “From embassy.”

  Jacob nodded.

  “No,” Molchanov said.

  “That was all you.”

  Molchanov gazed wistfully at the picture of the fob. “After I lost, I called dealership. Three thousand euros to replace.”

  “What about Marquessa and TJ? All you?”

  Molchanov lobbed the phone into the pool.

  “How many others?” Jacob said.

  Molchanov tucked the gun in his coat pocket, swapping it for the potter’s knife.

  “Your friend,” he said, rolling the handle between his fingers, “did brave thing.”

  He wiped the blade against his coat sleeve, leaving an iridescent blue trail.

  “He tried to fight.”

  Jacob suppressed a retch of terror and grief.

  Oh God. Oh no.

  “Very brave,” Molchanov said. “Also very stupid.”

  Jacob said, “He was your kind.”

  Molchanov said, “I have no kind.”

  He stood up. He hefted the spray tank, tried to put it on. The straps were too narrow for his huge frame.

  To afford himself a little more slack, he shrugged off his greatcoat and draped it over the back of the chair, managing then to get the tank on.

  He felt around for the dangling wand, gave a few test sprays.

  Jacob said, “You really think that’s going to work?”

  Molchanov smiled, shrugged. “Bug is bug.”

  He tugged his scarf up over his face and came behind Jacob.

  “What is it with you about mothers and sons?” Jacob said.

  Molchanov barked a laugh. “You never knew my mother.”

  With the sprayer hand, he grabbed a handful of Jacob’s hair and pulled back, resting the blade against Jacob’s windpipe.

  “However,” Molchanov said, “I knew yours.”

  CHAPTER FORTY-NINE

  PRAGUE

  FALL 1982

  Bina steps out onto the far end of Lunatics’ Boulevard, Dmitri close behind.

  They pass the other solitary confinement cells. Behind one of those doors, Olga is serving out her punishment. Bina will not get a chance to say good-bye to her.

  She won’t get a chance to say good-bye to Fat Irena.

  To Majka—poor lovely Majka.

  They made a pact, yet she’s stealing away in the dead of the night like a thief.

  No stealth in it: the sedat
ive gives her a shuffling gait and her rubber-soled shoes squeak on the linoleum. The noise draws the interest of other patients. Cages rattle, voices demand to know.

  Who is leaving?

  Why?

  Starbursts of fatigue rock her back on her heels.

  Dmitri takes her by the arm and hurries her along.

  They pass the snoring staff room; doctor’s offices and treatment rooms, Hydrotherapy, Electroshock. She struggles to keep pace with Dmitri’s brisk strides. They pass a series of doors marked with numbers. One, two, three. Four, five, six. Seven. Eight.

  Her body knows what’s coming: it’s starting to seize in anticipation.

  Dmitri grabs her around the waist before she keels over.

  “You must walk,” he says.

  She hides from room nine, ceaselessly shaking her head: no, no, no.

  “You are leaving. You are going home.”

  Sick. A sick joke.

  “Look at me,” he says.

  She won’t. He takes her chin in his gloved hand and forces it around and up.

  “Look at me,” he says. “You have a son.”

  She gapes at the face strangely handsome, the features continuously reweaving themselves.

  “I read it in your file. What is his name?”

  She won’t tell him. Won’t allow him to desecrate it.

  She whispers, “Jacob.”

  “Don’t you want to see him again? Jacob?”

  More than anything else in the world.

  “Then you need to walk.” He props her up. “He is not coming to you.”

  • • •

  THE GUARD AT THE GATE snaps off a salute. “Sir.”

  Dmitri hands him paperwork certifying that the patient Bina Reich Lev has been remanded into his custody for discharge.

  The guard salutes again and goes to unlock the gate.

  Snow throws a shroud over the courtyard. Frigid air needles through her thin sweater. Behind her lies an indictment, rows and rows of cell windows. She will not turn to gaze upon their misery, lest she become a pillar of salt.

  Dmitri puts his hand on her elbow, urges her forward.

  Bina stumbles through the gate. Cured.

  • • •

  HE DRIVES AGGRESSIVELY, rolling through red lights, taking turns at high speed, muttering to himself about the poor quality of the brakes.