The Golem of Paris

Chapter nine

He drove to the alley where the bodies had been left.

It was a wretched place to end up. The gentrification that had touched Hollywood’s periphery had yet to soak this far into its flesh. He walked a grubby tenth of a mile, shooting video and photos on his phone.

The north side comprised the hind ends of a liquor store, a medical supplier, an art gallery, an ethnic market, an ethnic bakery, a sheet metal supplier, a glazier, a psychic. All were shuttered at that hour and presumably had been between ten p.m. and two a.m. on a Sunday night.

To his astonishment, he discovered the same collection of fifty-gallon cans — identical brand and color, at least, lined up behind the bakery, giving off an obscene vibe, lids ajar, black bags bulging, like deep-sea fish coughing up their own swim bladders.

Jacob wondered which one the killer had used to prop up his handiwork.

He supposed he could ask the psychic.

Throw in another $75 and she’d solve the case for him.

He made a second pass, concentrating on the residential buildings along the alley’s south side, counting some four dozen windows with an unobstructed view.

Ballard hadn’t recorded a canvass. One of the missing pages, maybe.

Jacob headed around to Eleanor Avenue. It was late enough to begin knocking on doors, early enough that he didn’t expect to get a lot of answers. Starting with the El Centro Capri Apartments, he worked his way down the block, buzzing the manager’s unit and, if he got no answer, playing call box directories.

There were nine addresses in all: six multifamilies, two detached homes, as well as an auto body shop fronting to Gower. By lunchtime he’d gained access to four of the apartment complexes. None of the occupants of the rear units had been living there at the time of the murder, though they didn’t seem surprised to learn that one had taken place.

Nobody recognized Marquessa Duvall.

Nobody recognized her son.

Santa Monica was now open for business. He talked to bosses, employees, anyone who’d stick around to listen.

Zip.

He hadn’t eaten solid food in over thirty hours. He headed for the bakery, concluding a futile interview of the counterwoman by buying a pair of mushroom pirozhki. Beneath a corkboard papered with fliers for piano and violin lessons, he sat on a bench, balancing the file on his thigh so he could read as he ate.

The pastries were earthy and filling, made of humble ingredients brought together out of necessity but elevated by human ingenuity; exemplars of the cuisine of poverty that had recently become trendy, and therefore expensive, and therefore self-defeating.

“Delicious,” he told the counterwoman.

She nodded brusquely.

Neither Ballard nor Krikorian put much stock in the idea of a crime of passion. The scene was too well thought out — at once clinical and grandiose.

That in itself didn’t necessarily indicate a stranger murder. Marquessa had had a number of boyfriends. Ballard had questioned, swabbed, polygraphed, eliminating them one by one, including the boy’s biological father. Thomas White Sr. had the best alibi possible: he was in county lockup, serving out a nine-month sentence for possession.

Theresa Krikorian began the tedious task of sorting through known sex offenders. She hadn’t gotten very far. In 2007, the California registry was in its infancy, and it wasn’t at all clear that it would survive challenges to its constitutionality.

More to the point, she didn’t know where to begin looking. The alley was not the scene of the crime. The same problem applied to the search for witnesses.

How many gunshots went off on a given Sunday night in the greater L.A. area?

How many of those went unreported?

If the murders had taken place even a few blocks west, any caller reporting shots would’ve gotten routed to the sheriffs. LAPD might never have heard about it. Either way, the tapes would be long erased.

Time for some human intelligence.

“Excuse me, please,” the counterwoman said.

Thickset, lantern-jawed, she frowned ostentatiously at the ceiling and drummed the softened marble countertop.

He realized he had the file open to a photo of Thomas White’s brutalized face.

“I have customers,” she said.

Strictly speaking, it wasn’t true: they were the only people in there, unless you counted the infant girl pictured on the box of chocolate bars beside the register.

The counterwoman cleared her throat. “Mister.”

Jacob took his lunch to go.

Dan Ballard’s obituary stated that he was survived by his mother, Livia. Back at his apartment, Jacob searched for her on his home computer and got another obituary.

A lifelong bachelor? Or estranged from his ex, his kids?

Jacob felt an unwelcome sense of kinship.

He phoned Theresa Krikorian’s widower, a retired firefighter out in Simi Valley, and introduced himself.

“The file’s pretty thin,” he said. “I figured maybe she mentioned it to you.”

“Huh,” the husband said. His name was Ray, and he sounded like every firefighter Jacob had met: gregarious and mellow and sheltering, a cop without the jaded edge. “I’d love to help you out, but I really don’t remember much. Mind if I ask what made you guys decide to reopen it?”

“It was never officially closed.”

“Honestly, it’s kinda hard to talk about those days. It happened right around the time she got sick.”

“I’m sorry,” Jacob said.

“It is what it is.” Ray paused. “I always thought that was a dumb thing to say. You know? Anyhow... Terri always did have trouble leaving her work at work, and that case really got to her. From what I recall, it was pretty heinous.”

“It was.”

“We have a daughter about the same age.”

Today she’d be fourteen or fifteen. Crushes, first kiss, crystallizing sense of self.

Stages Thomas White Jr. would never attain.

Ray had fallen silent again. To draw him out, Jacob asked about his daughter.

“Phoebe? She’s terrific. Sharp, like her mom.”

“Any other kids?”

“A boy, Will. Twelve.” Ray laughed. “He’ll be happy driving a shiny red truck.”

“Who wouldn’t?”

“Yeah, well. He talks about the Marines, too. I told him to save his back. That’s what finished me off. Disc degeneration.”

“You served.”

“Desert Storm.” A beat. “I will tell you that when Terri caught the case, it was a big step up for her. Till then, she’d done auto theft and burglary. She was psyched to work her first homicide. I don’t know why they thought it was smart to give her this one in particular. I mean, Christ, they knew she had young kids at home. Maybe they thought they were doing her a favor, tossing her into the deep end.”

“Sure,” Jacob said, although he considered it more likely that the mechanism behind Terri Krikorian’s case assignment was like everyone else’s: indifferent.

“It changed her,” Ray said. “Before that, she was never the overprotective type. The opposite, actually, easygoing. She and I were both busting our butts, trying to get ahead, working these crazy hours. We used to leave our kids with the neighbor. But once Terri started working the mother-son thing, her attitude did a total one-eighty, it was, ‘No, it’s not safe, one of us needs to be home.’ Have you ever been out to Simi Valley?”

“Once or twice.”

“Then you know, it’s not the mean streets. You got kids running around in their front yards, playing together. The biggest danger is peanut allergies. Terri, she starts asking me to cut back on my shifts so I can do day care. We fought about it a lot. I was like, ‘Why should I be the one to adjust? It’s your job, yadda yadda.’ Looking back, I can’t believe what a big deal I made about it.”

The remorse in his voice pinched Jacob’s heart.

“You get stuck believing certain things are so important, and they’re vanity and bullshit. Tell me she’ll be gone three years later, you think I’m standing my ground?”

“You didn’t know,” Jacob said.

“Yeah.” Ray laughed sadly. “Whoever said what you don’t know can’t hurt you was the biggest idiot that ever lived. What you don’t know is exactly what beats the shit out of you.”

Around dinnertime, Jacob phoned Pacific Continuing Care to ask about his mother. The nurse who picked up sounded casual. Appetite normal, vitals normal, not a peep in the last twenty-four hours.

He’d never expected to feel relieved to hear that Bina was nonresponsive.

“Can you please tell her I’ll swing by tomorrow?”

“Sure.”

“And if she does anything unusual, you’ll let me know?”

“Unusual like what?”

He hesitated. “I’ll be by tomorrow.”

For form’s sake, he checked the fridge. One-third of a six-pack. He pretended to feel disappointed in himself, then set out for his daily dose of nitrates.

The guy working the 7-Eleven register was the owner’s son, a tubby Asian-American named Henry who greeted Jacob, as always, with a listless fist-bump.

“What’s the good word?” Jacob asked.

“Not much,” Henry said. He seemed distracted.

Jacob let him be. He knew about tough days; he was having one.

He got his hot dogs, piled on toppings, couple bottles of Beam to wash it down.

Usually Henry cracked wise about Jacob’s drinking, knowing it wouldn’t make a difference: an addict is an addict. Tonight he rang up the bourbon without comment.

“D’you see that car?” he asked.

“Which one?”

“Green Nissan. There.”

A patchy sedan, black in shadow, sat parked along Airdrome on the far side of Robertson.

“It’s been there for two hours,” Henry said.

“Maybe he’s picking up someone at the rec center.”

“It was here yesterday, too.”

“Sitting there, doing nothing?”

Henry nodded.

Jacob squinted, unable to make out the driver. “Did you call the cops?”

“They said no law against parking.”

Jacob used his cell to zoom in and snap a picture of the license plate. It came out too blurry to read, the driver’s face obscured.

He left Henry his card. “Anything more, call me right away. Don’t be shy.”

The clerk nodded skeptically. “Thanks.”

Jacob took his dinner and his clanking plastic bag of booze and exited the convenience store. Crossing Robertson, he saw that the car was indeed dark green, a Mazda rather than a Nissan. The driver hunched behind tinted windows and a hoodie.

Jacob strolled by, eating a dog, noting the shape of a second person in the backseat. He memorized the tag number, jotting it down once he’d rounded onto Wooster.

Henry was right. A parked car, no matter how sketchy, would elicit no serious response. Even in this relatively quiet stretch of West L.A., the cops had more pressing matters to deal with. All the same, Jacob felt on edge as he walked home.

His tension ratcheted up fast at a hulking, dark shape lurking on the landing outside his apartment door.

He set his bags down in the driveway, gripping a bottle of Beam by its stubby neck and quietly mounting the steps.

The bulb on the landing had been dead since April. Again and again Jacob had mentioned it to his landlord and gotten the same response: right away. He could’ve dealt with it himself, but the issue had hardened to a matter of principle.

Vanity and bullshit.

The man leaning against Jacob’s front door was muscular, the back of his thermal shirt straining as he fiddled with a phone. Its blue glow limned a black scalp shaved clean.

Nathaniel, one of Mallick’s, sometimes took the late-night surveillance shift on Jacob’s block, parked in a fake plumber’s van.

Nathaniel had never come to his door. No watcher had.

Transferring the bottle to his dominant left hand, Jacob stopped halfway up the steps and barked, with as much macho hostility as he could muster, “Can I help you?”

The man jerked and gasped and spun around, and Jacob found himself looking up at a familiar face: Nigel Bellamy, his father’s caretaker.

Terrified.

Jacob realized he was inches away, hefting the bottle like a weapon.

“Crap.” He lowered it. “I’m sorry, man. I didn’t realize it was you.”

“Who’d you think it was?” Nigel had his hand pressed to his chest and was breathing hoarsely and rapidly.

“I don’t know. I wasn’t thinking. I’m really sorry.” Jacob unlocked the door to the apartment, then ran back to the driveway to collect the other bottles.

In the interim, Nigel had sunk to the living room sofa, still huffing, massaging his sternum, rubbing a small gold cross. His lips were dry, his color worrisome.

“You can’t sneak up on a man like that,” he said. “I’m no kid.”

Jacob apologized again. The adrenaline was wearing off, and it disturbed him that his perception had gotten so out of whack, nearly leading him to clobber a good man. Nigel was as close to saintly as anyone Jacob knew. He’d been tending to Sam since Bina’s death—

Jacob caught himself. He made that mistake a lot.

Tending to Sam; leave it at that.

Since banishing his father from his life, Jacob had been out of contact with Nigel, as well, and he noted changes: the thickness was there in the trunk, but the arms had shrunk a degree or two, the crow’s-feet grown entrenched.

“You didn’t tell me you were coming,” Jacob said.

“That’s right, Yakov Meir,” Nigel said. “Blame the victim.”

Jacob went to the kitchen, snuck a quick bolt of liquor, filled a glass with water, and returned to the living room, hurrying to clean up the blizzard of crime scene photos and police reports.

“Long time no see,” he said.

“Your dad asked me to drop in.”

The phrasing was telling: not sent me but asked me. Sam never could get comfortable in the role of ward. The fact that Nigel’s salary was paid by a wealthy friend, Abe Teitelbaum, didn’t help matters. Abe took great pains to reframe his charity, employing Sam as the superintendent for one of his rental properties and calling Nigel Sam’s assistant. The act grew less and less convincing as Sam’s weakening eyesight demanded greater and greater maintenance.

Jacob wondered how bad it had gotten since they’d last talked.

He wanted to ask.

He kept his mouth shut.

Nigel said, “He’s been trying to reach you for a while.”

He finished his water, set it down, sat up straight and tall.

Jacob felt a nervous flutter. Could he be one of them, too? In his most paranoid moments, anyone over six feet tall fell under suspicion of working for Special Projects.

He’d have to suspect himself, then.

Where did it end?

Nigel said, “Would it kill you to talk to him?”

“That’s a lousy standard for decision-making.”

Nigel opened a palm. “‘Bear with one another and if anyone has a complaint against another, forgive each other; just as the Lord has forgiven you, so you also must forgive.’”

“Sounds New Testament.”

“Colossians.”

“Lucky me,” Jacob said. “Not my book.”

“Good advice is good advice, no matter who’s giving it.”

Jacob shrugged.

Nigel said, “You two got your differences, it’s not my business. But I do know—”

“Hang on a minute,” Jacob said.

“He’s suffering, and you know he’s had enough suffering in his life. That’s something you ought to be able to appreciate. He’s a good man, one of the finest I know. You get a little older, you realize how rare that is.”

Jacob pressed the heel of his hand to his forehead. “You have no idea, do you.”

“I told you, not my business.”

“What did he tell you happened? He must’ve told you something.”

“I asked why you haven’t come around, he said you won’t talk to him.”

“He didn’t tell you why.”

“No, and I didn’t ask.”

Jacob hated himself for what he was about to do. It had to be done, though.

“Every week,” he said, “you drive him to Alhambra. To a long-term care facility.”

“Wednesday.”

“You don’t go in with him.”

“I drop him off,” Nigel said. “Pick him up in a couple hours.”

“You’ve never been inside.”

Nigel shook his head.

“Who does he say he’s going to visit?”

“A friend.”

“What friend?”

“He never saw fit to mention it,” Nigel said. “It’s his business.”

“It’s my mother,” Jacob said.

Nigel seemed to short-circuit. His head jerked, his forehead clumped into wrinkles. “Your mother’s dead.”

“Not as of six o’clock yesterday, she wasn’t. I talked to her myself. In person.”

“... I don’t—”

“He buried a box,” Jacob said. He didn’t have the energy to raise his voice. “Then he lied about it. He lied to you. More important, he lied to me, for close to half my life.”

Nigel grimaced, felt for his cross, squeezing it as though to draw strength. “I know your father. He doesn’t do things without a reason.”

“Can you come up with one?”

“I haven’t had a chance to ask him.”

“Start there,” Jacob said. “Then you can feel free to lecture me.”

Nigel’s lips shook. He rose, stooping as he walked to the door. Turning the knob, he looked back at Jacob, then left without a word.