The Golem of Hollywood

Chapter ten

Fred Pernath lived on June Street, north of Beverly Boulevard, in a stately Georgian at odds with the Neutra-like stylings of Castle Court. Jacob did detect a certain similarity in the lack of upkeep. Every other home on the block had been landscaped, repainted, reroofed. Pernath’s gutters sagged; brown smeared the front lawn.

One look at the man himself went a long way toward ruling him out as a suspect. He was pigeon-chested and emaciated, leaning on a cane whose tip squeaked against the hardwood as he beckoned Jacob in and hobbled off into the gloom.

Like its exterior, the house’s overflowing interior stood in contrast to the emptiness of Castle Court. Jacob didn’t see any severed heads, but he might well have missed them, lost among the quivering electric sconces, the still lifes in carved gilt frames, the Chinese vases sprouting dusty silk flowers. Ornate, polished furniture impeded easy passage — reverse feng shui — every space remotely horizontal clustered with gewgaws.

Amid the dizzying visual thicket, no family photos.

They went to Pernath’s study, wallpapered with ghoulish posters and production stills. Jacob sank into a depleted loveseat, declining with considerable reluctance Pernath’s offer of whiskey. He watched enviously as Pernath poured from a crystal decanter and crossed the room to open a built-in cabinet containing cut-glass bowls of nuts and a severed head.

Bloody and ragged and gazing out eyelessly.

Jacob leapt up.

Pernath glanced at him incuriously. He plucked the head by its hair and hurled it at Jacob, who caught it.

Rubber.

“For a cop, you seem a tad high-strung,” Pernath said.

He took out two bowls of cashews, setting one in front of Jacob.

“Apologies if they’re not at the peak of freshness,” Pernath said, folding himself behind a formidable oak desk.

From up close, the head was obviously fake, the paint job meticulously crafted to look correct at a distance of about fifteen feet — Monet meets Grand Guignol.

His heart still tripping, Jacob said, “You do that for all your guests?”

“You’re not a guest.” Pernath popped a cashew in his mouth. “You might want to get on with it,” he said. “I am eighty-four.”

Jacob sat down in the loveseat. “Tell me about the house.”

Pernath shrugged. “It was my father’s. He came from money, owned property all over the city. Houses, factories, raw land. It was a great deal of real estate, and when he died, that made for a great big fight.” He sipped whiskey. “The truth is I didn’t need the money. But my sister decided she had to have it, so naturally I decided I wouldn’t let her.”

“She’s deceased, your sister.”

Pernath cackled. “That’s how I won. I had a fifth column: Virginia Slims.” He sat back in his chair, which was large and creaky and studded with brass nailheads. In its grip he resembled a dried leaf. “Technically, I won. Lawyers gobbled up two-thirds of the pie. I kept the properties that brought in income and sold the rest. Made out like a bandit. The house was part of a larger plot that my father subdivided. He built it. His design.”

“He was an architect.”

“He was a pig,” Pernath said. “But, yes, he did draw. Personally, I’ve never cared for his work. Bit antiseptic for my liking.”

Jacob glanced at a stuffed monkey suspended from the ceiling. “So I gathered.”

Pernath chuckled and got up to pour himself another whiskey.

“That house,” Jacob said. “It brings in income?”

“Not a cent.”

“Then why not sell? Seems to me it’s wasting away.”

“That’s exactly the point. Let it rot. Every time I think about it falling apart, I get a nice fuzzy feeling inside.” Pernath stoppered the decanter and hobbled back to his chair, making a detour to reclaim the rubber head, which he cradled in his lap like a shih tzu. “It was supposed to be a haven for him, someplace he could go to dip into the well of creativity. I don’t think he so much as lifted a pencil there. He was creative, after a fashion, and no doubt he did a lot of dipping. Every secretary or office girl he ever hired saw the inside of that place — or the ceiling, anyway, while he bounced on top of them. It’s amazing he didn’t crush anyone to death. He was a pig, in every sense of the word. He destroyed my mother.”

“Why not tear it down, then?”

“Oh, well, I would never. It’s architecturally significant...” Pernath finished his second drink in one swallow. “Call it a monument. To adultery.”

“You haven’t been by since you inherited it.”

“Why would I?”

“Who else has access?”

“Everyone. I leave it unlocked. Anyone who wants to come in, that’s their problem. The more curses heaped upon that place, the better.”

Jacob frowned. That wasn’t what he’d wanted to hear.

“What kind of crime are you investigating, Detective? Something ugly, I hope.”

“A homicide.”

Pernath’s throat clicked. “Ugly as it comes. Shame. Whodunnit?”

“If I knew, I wouldn’t be talking to you.”

“Who died?”

“I don’t know that, either.”

“What do you know, Detective?”

“Not much.”

“That’s the spirit,” Pernath said. He tilted his glass. “Embrace ignorance.”

Jacob, thinking of the missing photos, said, “You have other family in town?”

“My ex-wife’s remarried, although I hesitate to call her family. She lives in Laguna. My son’s in Santa Monica. My daughter’s in Paris.”

“Do you see them often?”

“Not if I can help it,” Pernath said.

“So it’s just you,” Jacob said.

“Me,” Pernath said, stroking the fake head, “and Herman.”

Pernath’s children had inherited their grandfather’s preference for clean lines. Greta ran a gallery in the Marais that sold stripped-down works rendered edgy through the use of materials like chewed gum and donkey urine. Richard was an architect whose work consisted of steel-and-glass skeletons. Jacob clicked through his portfolio, reflecting on the generational pendulum, everyone rising up to slaughter their fathers’ tastes.

In any event, both seemed successful in their own right, busy people with busy lives.

Dead end.

A database search for similar crimes generated a short list of beheadings but nothing that matched his: no sealed neck, no burn marks (disappearing or otherwise), no Hebrew. Usually the bad guy was mentally ill and had been caught quickly. One offender had staked the head of his elderly aunt in the backyard and danced around it, singing “We Are the Champions.”

The most rational beheader — so to speak — was a Pakistani in Queens who had strangled and decapitated his teenage daughter for texting racy photos to a classmate.

Religious fervor brought out the best in people.

Justice.

Jacob perused the files on Jewish terror groups in the United States.

Broadened his parameters to include any example of Hebrew at the scene of a homicide.

Broadened them to include any burns.

Broadened them to include the word justice.

Nada.

He sat back, stomach growling. It was nine forty-five p.m. His untouched breakfast waffle sat on a cold plate beside the computer, its surface glazed with syrup and caulked with congealed butter. He scraped it into the kitchen can. He knew the fridge was bare, but he checked it for form’s sake before walking down to 7-Eleven to buy a couple of hot dogs.

Jacob doubted his perp would risk a second revisit of the scene, especially now that the message had been erased. But he had no fancy evening plans, and it seemed worth a few hours of his time. He drove up to the hills and eased the Honda onto the shoulder fifty yards past Claire Mason’s driveway. He uncapped a beer, racked the seat back, and waited for good luck to strike.

Shortly before three, he started awake, whanging his elbow against the steering wheel. His back was stiff, his mouth dry. He had a full bladder and a raging erection.

Crickets tittered at him as he got out to take a piss at the side of the road. He’d been dreaming of Mai, naked in the garden, closer to her yet still unable to touch her. While he waited for his penis to relinquish her image, and soften up, he considered the meaning of the distance between them. His missed opportunity, perhaps. But that very incompleteness, the tension it created, had a pleasurable aspect to it. He thought of her playful ease with her own body, the way she hid nothing from him, making the erotic innocent.

He could use some of that in his life. His work over the past seven years had forged a link in his mind between sex and violence. He didn’t like it, but there it was. If a woman like Mai wanted to come along and redeem him, he had no objections.

At the same time, he knew exactly the kind of chick who hung out at 187.

You’re a nice-looking man, Jacob Lev.

He wondered if she’d ever go back there.

One way to find out.