The Golem of Hollywood

by Jonathan Kellerman

  “Well,” he said. “Party time.”

  —

  THEY’D GONE HALF A BLOCK when they heard Des calling for them to wait.

  “Sorry,” he said, jogging up. “I was dealing with idiots.”

  “What’s up?” Jacob asked.

  “I thought of something,” Des said. “It slipped my mind before. When Reggie stayed with us, it began with him ringing us from the train station, asking us to come collect him. He’d just returned from Edinburgh and he’d had an accident.”

  “What sort of accident?” Norton asked.

  “He said a motorcyclist ran over his foot. He was limping and bloody. I told Charles, ‘Don’t bring him here, take him to hospital,’ which I think you’ll agree is the logical response, but Reggie was adamant about not wanting to go. He spent the whole night moaning like a zombie. It was three or four days before he would agree to see a doctor. Charles went with him, and on the way back, they went shopping for a new pair of shoes for when the cast came off. I was furious.”

  “I don’t blame you,” Jacob said.

  “I wanted him out immediately, but Charles said we couldn’t put him out on the street. Anyway, after he’d finally gone, I went down to the cellar—I drew the line at his sleeping upstairs—I went down there to clean up, and I saw the old pair of shoes. I think he tried to scrub the blood out, but it didn’t work, so he left them behind. I intended to chuck them, but I couldn’t bring myself to touch them. As far as I know, they’re still there.”

  An arriving caravan of rental chairs blockaded the front walk. Des led them around to the side of the house via a brick path lined with peonies. Though MacIldowney was out of view, his voice could be heard, cajoling the florist.

  Stone steps led down to the cellar, a space as crowded as the house was spare—though Jacob noted that his threshold for clutter had been raised considerably in Prague. Here they met the relatively benign resistance of wine racks and plastic storage bins. A shelf above the basin sink displayed bright bottles containing an array of poisons, from lye to metal polish.

  “I kicked them,” Des said.

  They looked at him.

  “The shoes. I know it’s childish, but I was so cross.”

  “Where’d they land?” Norton asked.

  Des waved vaguely. “Thereabouts.”

  Jacob found them behind the furnace. Crepe-soled loafers, brown suede uppers furred with dust, the right one mottled with stains one shade darker. Norton spitted each on a pen while Des rooted around for a spare bag.

  “Can I ask you something without offending you?” Jacob said. “I’d be remiss if I didn’t.”

  “I’m not easily offended,” Des said, “but you’re welcome to try.”

  “Was there anything between them, ever?”

  “Charles and . . . Reggie?” Des laughed. “No. I asked Charles myself. Reggie wasn’t the comeliest lad, but Charles took such an interest in him, and I wanted to know before I let him in our home. Anyway, Charles swore nothing had ever happened. He’s a hopeless liar, so I tend to believe that’s the truth.”

  He came up with a plastic shopping bag from Boots.

  “Fitting,” he said, holding it open for Norton. As she placed the shoes inside, he wrinkled his nose at the blood. “You don’t reckon it’s someone else’s, do you?”

  CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE

  One wonders,” Norton said, dabbing soup from her lips, “how a personality as sterling as Reggie’s was lost on a man of MacIldowney’s intelligence.”

  “I don’t think intelligence has anything to do with it.”

  “It so rarely does.”

  “You think he was being honest about not recognizing Mr. Head?”

  “Des said he’s a bad liar. They appeared candid enough.”

  “I agree. Too bad he didn’t recognize my guy.”

  “Cheer up. He gave you a name: Perry-Bernie.”

  “That’s a third guy.”

  “The mysterious American.” Her smile made a sweet little bulge under her chin. Her eyes were blue, on the cusp of purple—what the crayon makers called cornflower.

  “How about this,” he said. “Mr. Head and Reggie travel to L.A. For whatever reason.”

  “Sunshine and self-reinvention,” Norton said. “Or Perry-Bernie invites them.”

  He nodded. “They do their thing. Twenty-month reign of terror, then the band breaks up, and Reggie, at least, leaves town. Mr. Head decides he likes it in L.A., and stays. That accounts for the fact that someone, the same person, takes them both out: Perry-Bernie.”

  “You’re pinning a lot on this fellow,” she said. “For all we know he’s simply another Charles MacIldowney, a nice chap trying to help out the hapless Reggie Heap.”

  He brooded, stirring his cold peanut noodles. He had no appetite; he felt like he could go without food for several days, and he was anxious to get back to work. He was also dimly aware of Norton watching him curiously. It wasn’t right, the way he felt.

  She said, “Do you want to go somewhere else? Aren’t you hungry?”

  “I’m okay.”

  “Of the three bites taken of your lunch, all have been taken by me. Can I offer you some tom yum? It’s gorgeous.”

  “No, thanks. I don’t like cilantro. It tastes like soap to me. Lemongrass, either.”

  “Who doesn’t like lemongrass?”

  “Be a lemon,” Jacob said. “Be grass. Choose.”

  “If you don’t like lemongrass, and you don’t like cilantro, then why are we having Thai?”

  “You wanted it.”

  “Gallant of you.”

  He raised his beer to her.

  She said, “There can’t have been that many Americans enrolled in a given year. You could check with Student Records. Although they won’t be open today.”

  “What about a yearbook?” Jacob said. “They have those?”

  “I’m sure they do, or something like it. I can ask Jimmy.”

  “What’s the deal with him?”

  “Friend of my father’s. I’ve known him since I was a girl.”

  “You grew up around here.”

  She nodded.

  “What’s that like?”

  “Loads of fun. Get pissed and beat up students. Huzzah.”

  Jacob smiled. “Was your dad a cop?”

  “Schoolteacher,” she said. “He taught Latin. A real grammarian, you know, the kind who’s singing along to the radio and Eric Clapton comes on, and he starts to yell, ‘Lie down Sally, lie down.’ My mother would say, ‘That’s all very well and good, John, but can we state with certainty that he’s not in fact pleading with her to smother him in goose feathers?’ And he would say, ‘Well, Emmaline, that’s hardly the point,’ and she would say, ‘Indeed,’ and then she would turn the volume up.” She smiled. “There you have it, my childhood in a nutshell. You?”

  Her pleasant memories brought home what he hadn’t been privileged to know.

  “Los Angeles. Born and raised. My mom’s dead. She was an artist. My dad’s a rabbi, although he wouldn’t call himself that.”

  “Ooh, that’s a rather fancy pedigree.”

  For a moment he came close to spilling everything to her. She was the first normal person he’d spoken to in weeks. In her presence, he’d managed to focus. She was smart and pretty and she wasn’t tall.

  She was sitting back, happy to listen.

  He said, “I was taught from an early age to chase the money.”

  “Joke if you must, but we don’t get a travel stipend.”

  “My boss is good at twisting arms.”

  “Is there a special fund for wooing the local constabulary?”

  He raised his beer again. “To international relations.”

  —

  THEY RETURNED TO HER OFFICE to use the computer.
/>   According to its website, the Oxford Undergraduate Art Society served those students not majoring in fine art but who wished nonetheless for opportunities to exhibit their work.

  Jacob read between the lines: art school being the cliquey affair that it was, the club functioned as a cocoon within the larger cocoon of the university, a venue for second-string aesthetes to gather and feel a sense of belonging.

  “Heap’s father told me Reggie wanted to transfer to fine art, then backed off.”

  “He couldn’t hack it,” Norton said.

  “I saw his stuff. He could draw.”

  “I was under the impression that that was no longer relevant to obtaining an art degree.”

  He laughed. “Either way, the club would be the wrong place for someone with serious artistic aspirations. Maybe Reggie was hanging out there for social reasons. Do they have a roster of past members?”

  She scrolled down. “Not online.”

  “A headquarters?”

  “They meet once a month in the Christ Church junior common room.”

  “When’s the next meeting?”

  “Three weeks.”

  “Shit.”

  “Hang on, though, there’s an archive of past competition winners in the Bod. Should we have a look?”

  —

  THE GUARD AT THE ENTRANCE to the Bodleian’s main stacks referred them to the admissions office in the Clarendon Building. There, a clerk made photocopies of Norton’s badge, along with Jacob’s passport.

  “Fill these out, please.”

  Please tell us why you need to use our resources.

  Norton said, “Oooh, let me.”

  She wrote To solve a murder.

  Jacob sighed and asked for another form, writing Dissertation research.

  “You’re deadly boring, you know that?”

  Ninety minutes and three bureaucrats later, they stepped out of an ancient elevator, a temporary access card and a call number tucked in Jacob’s shirt pocket.

  Since the award categories included sculpture and painting, they expected a storage room or a cage and crates. Instead they found themselves crabbing down a tight aisle, matching the call number to four oversized archival albums.

  They carried them to an abandoned carrel and squeezed in, shoulders touching. Norton wasn’t wearing perfume, but the aroma of soap and water was pleasant at close range.

  Oxford Undergraduate Art Society

  Awardees, 1974–1984

  Polaroids tucked into cloudy plastic sleeves featured the winning entries in each category. Most were unlovely in the extreme. A turgid statement of purpose accompanied each.

  “Edwyn Heap said Reggie had to forfeit his piece,” Jacob said. “No one else seems to have.”

  “Maybe he lied. He’s got it hidden away somewhere.”

  “He showed me Reggie’s other drawings. Why would he care if I saw that one?”

  He shut the first album and opened the second, Awardees 1985–1995, flipping ahead to the 1986 competition.

  “That’s why,” Norton said.

  To Be Brasher was a female nude. That wasn’t remarkable in itself. Jacob knew from examining the portfolio boxes at the Heap house that Reggie had drawn his fair share of nudes. Every artist did. There was a long and proud tradition of becoming an artist simply for the excuse.

  Every artist had his favorite body part. Reggie’s were breasts: heavy, and detailed, every crease and birthmark lovingly rendered. No alarm bells, there. Breasts symbolized motherhood, nourishment, comfort.

  She was spread-eagled. But the Schiele poster in Reggie’s boyhood room showed a woman similarly posed and that was considered a masterpiece. Jacob wondered if in fact Reggie had been making reference to that image.

  Whereas Schiele’s hand was erratic and jagged, Reggie’s was direct to the point of being clinical. An abundance of ornamentation was rendered in strong, swooping lines, a marked contrast with his previous nudes. The Reggie Heap who had drawn To Be Brasher was a realist, masquerading as a sensualist.

  Here, he had found his muse.

  Sinuously curved, the woman lay among undulant vines. They twined her limbs, bound her wrists and ankles. A draftsman more technically skilled or more imaginative might’ve left room for interpretive ambiguity. Reggie was both accurate and limited: he knew just what he wanted to draw, and he’d drawn it.

  His muse was headless.

  Energy radiated from her open neck, wavy lines that fanned out toward a rising sun.

  They stared at the drawing for a long time. Finally, Jacob turned the page over, revealing Reggie’s artistic statement of purpose.

  To examine the causes of life, we must first have recourse to death.

  CHAPTER FORTY-SIX

  Norton’s phone broke the silence.

  “It’s Branch,” she said. “He’s going to have my head.” Then, coloring: “Sorry. Poor choice of words, that.”

  She answered. “Yes, right away, sir. Sorry.” Hanging up. “I’ve got to get back.”

  Before they left, Jacob copied down the statement of purpose, then took a picture of the drawing, checking to ensure that it had come out in the low light.

  Norton punched the lift button. “I’ll stop by the college and ask Jimmy about yearbooks.”

  “Thanks. See you tonight?”

  “Eight o’clock. I trust you’ll be able to entertain yourself till then.”

  “Do my best,” said Jacob.

  “What’s it to be till then? Punting on the Thames?”

  “Not quite.”

  —

  THE LIBRARIAN IN CHARGE of the Bodleian’s Special Collections was a surly ostrich of a woman named R. Waters. The regular reading room was undergoing renovation and her interim domain was the basement of Radcliffe Science Library, an ill-lit concrete catacomb blockaded by portable humidifiers and dehumidifiers waging a war of attrition.

  Unable to find fault with Jacob’s temporary access card, she begrudgingly showed him to the computer kiosk. A search of the electronic catalog for the Maharal, limited to documents prior to 1650, yielded a single entry, the Prague letter.

  Jacob asked if there was any way to tell who had examined it previously.

  Waters sniffed. “That information is privileged.”

  The document request slip she thrust at him required a signature guaranteeing that he would not eat, drink, chew gum, write in ink, take photographs, or use a mobile phone. As a temporary user, he was also forbidden from requesting more than one item at a time or more than four items per day, although, as R. Waters added, that would be unlikely, given that it was nearing half-three, and the collection closed at five.

  Jacob traded away his rights for a pair of white cotton gloves and an eraserless golf pencil. He waited, sitting at a padded-leathertop table while the document came up from storage.

  At four o’clock sharp, it arrived, suspended in an archival board folder borne on the librarian’s palms. She opened the flaps with a snide flourish, withdrawing to a nearby workstation so she could spy on him.

  He stared at the letter anxiously without reading it, aware of precious minutes ticking by. It measured about five inches square, three of its corners eaten away, its edges mottled, its center water-stained and shot through with wormholes, so fragile that he held his breath, afraid to exhale and scatter it into dust.

  He held his gloved hand over the ink, millimeters from the paper that had touched the skin of the great genius of Israel.

  R. Waters didn’t miss her opportunity. “I must ask that you please refrain from touching the material excessively, sir.”

  “Sorry.” He tucked his hand in his lap. The great genius of Israel had atrocious penmanship, careless about keeping his lines straight. Letters thinned where his quill had run dry, blotched after he’d redipped it.

  Thes
e imperfections made Jacob feel like a trespasser, a peeping Tom; they also helped restore his equilibrium. The great genius of Israel had been a man, a real man—not a character, scissored from history. He’d eaten, belched, used the bathroom. Had good days and bad days, found himself subject to the push and pull of right and wrong.

  You’re very cynical, Detective Lev.

  Jacob switched on the magnifying lamp and bent over the lens.

  The going was excruciatingly slow. The letter was a couple of hundred words at most, but the script was hurried, the gaps numerous, the Hebrew poetic and obscure. The idea of Reggie Heap plumbing this material for inspiration was outlandish. Jacob, with a yeshiva education, would need hours, if not days, to fully decipher it. He’d gotten through the date, the salutation, and half of the first line before deciding that his time was better spent transcribing, allowing him to work later, at his own pace.

  He opened his notepad and began to copy, his attention wholly on the shape of the words and not on their meaning. That was challenge enough.

  R. Waters checked her wristwatch and clucked her tongue.

  At last he came to the signature.

  Judah Loew ben Bezalel.

  Jacob was about to put his hands up—done!—when his breath caught.

  It meant lion. The English rendering, Loew, was little more than convention, German processed into Hebrew, reprocessed into English, shedding its vowels along the way.

  It could easily be read as Lowe, or Leyva, or Levai.

  Your name, it means “heart” in Hebrew, I think. Lev.

  By his own admission, Peter Wichs spoke hardly any Hebrew. That was why he kept the security log in English, the better for him to communicate with his Israeli subordinates.

  Yet he’d felt the need to tutor Jacob.

  I know what it means.

  Ah. Then I think perhaps I have nothing more to offer you.

  Jacob picked up the golf pencil and wrote the word for heart in his notepad—

  The simplicity of Hebrew reduced it to two letters: lamed and bet. Bet was the first letter of the Five Books of Moses—the initial letter of Bereshit, Genesis. In the beginning. And lamed was the last letter of its last word—Yisrael. Israel.