The Golem of Hollywood Read online

  “Yes, sir.”

  “You know what my master’s is in? Don’t look at the wall.”

  “That would be communications, sir.”

  “Very good. You know what you learn to do in communications?”

  “Communicate, sir.”

  “Bull’s-fucking-eye. You mean ‘fragile,’ write ‘fragile.’”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “They didn’t teach you that at Harvard?”

  “I must’ve missed that class, sir.”

  “I guess they don’t get to that till sophomore year.”

  “I wouldn’t know, sir.”

  “Refresh my memory: how come you didn’t finish Harvard, Harvard?”

  “I lacked willpower, sir.”

  “That’s the kind of smart-ass answer you give someone when you want to shut them up. Is that what you want? To shut me up?”

  “No, sir.”

  “Sure you do. I ever tell you I had a cousin who got into Harvard?”

  “You’ve mentioned that in the past, sir.”

  “Have I?”

  “Once or twice.”

  “Then I must’ve told you he didn’t go.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Did I say why?”

  “It was cost-prohibitive, sir.”

  “Expensive place, Harvard.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “You had a scholarship, if I recall.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Lessee . . . An athletic scholarship. You lettered in Ping-Pong.”

  “No, sir.”

  “Varsity nut juggling . . . ? No? What kind of scholarship was it, Detective?”

  “Merit-based, sir.”

  “Merit-based.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Merit-based . . . Hunh. I guess my cousin didn’t have as much merit as you.”

  “I wouldn’t assume that, sir.”

  “How come you got it, and he didn’t?”

  “You’d have to ask the financial aid office, sir.”

  “Merit-based. See, in my mind, that’s a lot worse than not getting a scholarship. In my mind, that’s the worst thing, when you have something and you piss it away. No excuse for that. Not even a lack of willpower.”

  Jacob did not reply.

  “Maybe you could finish up online. Like a GED. They got a GED for Harvard? You should look into that.”

  “I will, sir. Thank you for the suggestion.”

  “Till that day comes, though, you and I, our diplomas say the same thing. Cal State Northridge.”

  “That’s true, sir.”

  “No. It isn’t. Mine says master.” Mendoza kicked back in his chair. “So. Feeling burnt out, are we?”

  Jacob stiffened. “I don’t know why you’d think that, sir.”

  “I think it cause that’s what I heard.”

  “Can I ask who you heard it from?”

  “No, you may not. I also heard you’re thinking about putting in for some time off.”

  Jacob did not reply.

  “I’m giving you the opportunity to share your feelings,” Mendoza said.

  “I’d rather not, sir.”

  “Work’s got you down.”

  Jacob shrugged. “It’s a stressful job.”

  “Indeed it is, Detective. I got a whole bunch of cops out there who feel the same way. I don’t hear any of them asking for time off. It’s almost like you think you’re special.”

  “I don’t think that, sir.”

  “Sure you do.”

  “Okay, sir.”

  “See? That’s it. Right there. That’s exactly the kind of tone I’m talking about.”

  “I’m not sure I understand, sir.”

  “And again. ‘Not sure I gah gah gah gah gah.’ How old are you, Lev?”

  “Thirty-one, sir.”

  “You know what you sound like? You sound like my son. My son is sixteen. You know what a sixteen-year-old boy is? Basically, he’s an asshole. An arrogant, entitled, snotty little asshole.”

  “I appreciate that, sir.”

  Mendoza reached for his phone. “You want time off, you got it. You’re being transferred.”

  “Transferred where?”

  “I haven’t decided. Someplace with cubicles. Fight it if you want.”

  He didn’t fight. A cubicle sounded fine to him.

  Strictly speaking, burnout wasn’t the correct term. The correct term was major depression. He’d lost weight. He prowled his apartment, exhausted but unable to sleep. His attention drifted, words dribbling from his mouth, syrupy and foreign.

  These were the outward signs. He knew them well, and he knew how to hide them. He drew up a curtain of aloofness. He spoke to no one, because he couldn’t be sure how short his fuse was on any given day. He ceased to nourish his few friendships. And in the process he made himself out to be exactly what Mendoza thought he was: a snob.

  Not as obvious, and harder to conceal, was the dull sorrow that shook him awake before dawn; that sat beside him at lunch, turning his ramen into an inedible repugnant wormy mass; that chuckled as it tucked him in at night: Good luck with that. It revealed the raw injustice of the world and made a mockery of policework. How could he hope to correct a worldly imbalance when he could not get his own mind right? His sadness made him loathsome to himself and to others. It was a sick badge of honor, a family inheritance to be taken out every few years, dusted off, and worn in private, a tattered black ribbon, the needle stuck through naked flesh.

  Up ahead, in the Crown Vic, he could see the outlines of the two men.

  Apes. Heavies, in case things got heavy.

  It was all he could do not to wheel right around and go home. Special Projects had to be a euphemism for fates best avoided.

  It sounded like what you got when you thought you were special.

  Maybe he hadn’t vetted them thoroughly enough.

  He could send a text, let someone know where he was going. Just in case.

  Who?

  Renee?

  Stacy?

  A jittery message to the ex-wives would make their respective days.

  Mr. Sunshine.

  Renee’s title for him, imbued with nuclear scorn. Stacy had adopted it, too, after he’d made the mistake of telling Wife Number Two about Wife Number One’s nagging and Wife Two came to empathize with “the crap you put her through.”

  Everything turned to shit in the end.

  So he was bound for someplace unpleasant. What else was new.

  Determined beyond all reason to enjoy the ride, he eased back in his seat, nudged his mind toward Mai. He put her in street clothes, then removed them, piece by piece. That body, injection-molded, freakishly proportional. He was about to rip the tallis off when the Crown Vic made a sharp turn and Jacob swerved after it, hitting a pothole.

  The sign said ODYSSEY AVE, an ambitious name for a grimy, two-block afterthought. Wholesale toy dealers, import-exports with Chinese signage, a shuttered “Dance Studio” that looked as if no feet, agile or otherwise, had crossed its threshold in ages.

  The Crown Vic pulled over outside a set of rolling steel doors. A smaller glass door was inscribed 3636. A man in the dress of LAPD brass stood on the sidewalk, shading his eyes. Like Subach and Schott, he cut an imposing figure—towering, gaunt, pallid, with two frothy white tufts over his ears, suggestive of wings. He wore ash-gray pants, a luminous white shirt, a service firearm in a lightweight mesh holster. As he approached the Honda and bent to open Jacob’s door, the gold badge around his neck swung forward, clicking against the window, COMMANDER in blue enamel.

  “Detective Lev,” the man said. “Mike Mallick.”

  Jacob got out and shook his hand, feeling like a different species. He was six feet tall, but Mallick was six-six,
easy.

  Maybe Special Projects was where they put the freak shows.

  In which case, he’d fit right in.

  The Crown Vic honked once and drove off.

  “Come on in, out of the sun,” Mallick said, and he glided into number 3636.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Mike Mallick said, “Lev, would you say times are good or bad?”

  “I’d say that depends, sir.”

  “On what?”

  “Individual experience.”

  “Come on, now. You know better than that. For us, the creatures that we are, times are always bad.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “How’s life in Valley Traffic?”

  “Can’t complain.”

  “Sure you can. Basic human right.”

  The room was, or had once been, a storage garage. Concrete walls breathed acrid, nose-pinching mold. It was icy, cavelike, windowless save the glass door, free of furniture but for a crooked halogen lamp turned a quarter of the way up, its cord snaking off unseen.

  “What’re you working on?” Mallick asked.

  “Fifty-year citywide data analysis,” Jacob said. “Car versus pedestrian accidents.”

  “Sounds stimulating.”

  “Without a doubt, sir. It’s a regular diamond mine.”

  “My understanding is you needed a break from Homicide.”

  This again? “As I told Captain Mendoza, I was speaking out of frustration. Sir.”

  “What’s his beef with you? You steal his lunch or something?”

  “I like to think of Captain Mendoza’s style as a form of tough love, sir.”

  Mallick smiled. “Spoken like a true diplomat. Anyhow, you don’t have to justify yourself to me. I get it. It’s natural.”

  Jacob wondered if he’d been picked for some sort of experimental psychobabbly program; a puppet to trot out for the press, help dispel LAPD’s well-earned reputation as an orgy of paramilitary machismo. And we gave him a bag of kittens, too! “Yes, sir.”

  “I hope you don’t plan on making a career of it,” Mallick said. “Traffic.”

  “Could do worse,” Jacob said.

  “Actually, you couldn’t. Let’s not kid ourselves, okay? I talked to your superiors. I know who you are.”

  “Who am I, sir?”

  Mallick sighed. “Turn it off, would you? I’m here to do you a favor. You’ve been temporarily reassigned.”

  “Where?”

  “Wrong question. Not where, who. You’ll report directly to me.”

  “I’m flattered, sir.”

  “Don’t be. It’s got nothing to do with your skills. It’s your background I’m interested in.”

  “Which part of it, sir? I’m a pretty complex guy.”

  “Think tribal.”

  Jacob said, “I’m assigned because I’m Jewish.”

  “Not officially. Officially, the Los Angeles Police Department actively and enthusiastically promotes diversity. In matters of case assignment, we maintain a strict policy of race blindness, gender blindness, ethnicity blindness, religion blindness.”

  “Reality blindness,” Jacob said.

  Mallick smiled and offered a scrap of paper.

  Jacob read an address with a Hollywood zip code. “What am I going to find there?”

  “Homicide. As I said, you’ll report to me. This is a sensitive matter.”

  “The Jewish angle,” Jacob said.

  “Call it that.”

  “The vic?”

  “I’ll let you form your own impressions.”

  “Can I ask what’s so special about Special Projects?”

  “Everybody’s special,” Mallick said. “Or hadn’t you heard.”

  “I have,” Jacob said. “I haven’t heard of you.”

  “As a unit, we don’t feel it’s appropriate for us to get overly involved in the day-to-day,” Mallick said. “It enables us to move faster when we’re really needed.”

  “What do I tell Traffic?”

  “Let me handle them.” Mallick walked to the glass door, held it open. The sun turned his white shirt to a mirror. “Enjoy the view.”

  —

  JACOB’S GPS PUT 446 CASTLE COURT at the northernmost reaches of Hollywood Division—north of the reservoir, west of the Sign—and estimated a travel time of fifteen minutes.

  It had lied. Half an hour in, he was still climbing, the temperature gauge on the Honda spasming as he pushed past mid-century boxes, some remodeled, others flaking. Cross streets appeared in thematic spurts, Astra and Andromeda and Ion, followed by Eagle’s Point and Falconrock, then Cloudtop and Skylook and Heavencrest. Evidence of multiple real estate developers, or a single one with ADD.

  The road writhed and forked, civilization thinning along with the oxygen, until the asphalt petered out and the GPS announced that he’d arrived.

  Another lie. No crime scene in sight. Nothing but a continuing ribbon of rocky soil.

  He drove on.

  “Recalculating,” the GPS said.

  “Shut up.”

  Pebbles spat against the undercarriage, and the Honda rattled over buckling earth on rotten shocks. It felt like he was being punched in the kidney by an angry, relentless toddler. He had to take it down to five miles an hour to avoid a blowout. The surrounding land was weedy, desolate, cratered, scrubby; devoid of human structure because there was no place level enough to accommodate any; devoid of life, seemingly, until he spotted a pair of horny squirrels flaunting their sexuality beneath a spiky thicket.

  He wasn’t the only one to notice: in an instant, a bird was circling overhead. Large one, probably a raptor. Ready to turn the amorous couple into brunch.

  The eagle of Eagle’s Point? The falcon come down from its Rock?

  The bird began to bank, and Jacob craned to watch the drama unfolding, his attention drifting. Then a crest raised him up and slammed him down and he beheld a shallow mountaintop depression, a couple of wind-whipped acres of dirt and stone, bounded to the south and east by a steep, curving canyon.

  A stark gray cube cantilevered out over the city like a faceless gargoyle.

  He’d arrived.

  Total travel time: fifty-one minutes.

  “Recalculating,” the GPS said.

  “Eat me,” Jacob said, and turned it off.

  There was none of the postmortem party that took place when agencies converged. No black-and-whites or unmarkeds, no Coroner’s van, no tech crew. Just a necktie of yellow tape fluttering from the doorknob, and a silver Toyota askew on a concrete parking pad. Crypt card on the dash. Woman perched lightly on the hood.

  Mid- to late thirties, she was slim, graceful, nice-looking despite—or perhaps because of—a toucan-beak nose. Wide charcoal eyes shone; long, lush hair the same color; skin like freshly ground nutmeg. She wore jeans and sneakers, a white coat over a flame-orange sweater.

  She stood up when he got out of the car, spoke his name when he was three feet away.

  “In the flesh,” he said.

  Her hand was warm and dry.

  The badge clipped to her breast pocket said DIVYA V. DAS, M.D., PH.D.

  He said it was nice to meet her. She yawed her head skeptically.

  “You might want to reserve judgment,” she said.

  Indian English in her voice: musical, coy.

  “Nasty?” he asked.

  “When aren’t they?” She paused. “You’ve never seen anything like this, though.”

  Like the garage on Odyssey Avenue, the house showed signs of long abandonment: water stains, rodent droppings, close air saturated with filth.

  The light was nice, at least. He could appreciate that. The architect had exploited it to its utmost with sweeping glass panels, at present crying out for a washing, yet clean enough to offer a 270-degree panor
ama of hills and sky.

  Beneath a veil of smog, the city winked and snickered.

  Jacob had long believed that every last square inch of Los Angeles had been fought for and claimed. Not here.

  Perfect place to kill someone.

  Perfect place to leave a body.

  Or, in this case, a head.

  It was in the living room, lying on its side, centered precisely on a faded oak floor.

  Exactly two feet away—a measuring tape had been left in place—was a greenish-beige mound of what looked like a jumbo portion of spoiled oatmeal.

  He looked at Divya Das. She nodded permission, and he came forward slowly, his own head filling with white noise. Some guys could stand around in the aftermath of a massacre, cracking jokes and popping Cheetos. Jacob had seen plenty of bodies, plenty of body parts, and still, the first sight always knocked him sideways. His underarms felt clammy, and his breathing had grown shallow, and he suppressed his rising gorge. Suppressed the thought that a nice Jewish boy with an Ivy League education (or part of one, anyway) lacked the stomach to work homicide. He reduced the scene to shapes, colors, impressions, questions.

  Male, anywhere from thirty to forty-five, ethnicity unclear; dark-haired, beetle-browed, snub-nosed; an inch-long nub of scar tissue on his chin.

  Decapitation had taken place where the throat would have met the shoulders. Aside from the vomit, the floorboards were spotless. No blood, no leaking brain matter; no dangling blood vessels, tendons, or muscle meat. As Jacob made a circuit on his haunches, he saw why: the bottom of the neck had been sealed. Rather than ending in a ragged tube, it pinched together, as though pulled tight with a drawstring. The surrounding tissue was smooth and plasticky, bulging with the pressure of fluid and death-bloat, the domain of higher thought turned to a gore-bag.

  The rats had left it alone.

  He dragged his attention from the head to examine the fetid heap twenty-four inches to the left. It glistened surreally, like a gag item fished from the ninety-nine-cent bin at a novelty shop.

  “The green means bile, indicative of rather severe emesis, explosive. I took samples for analysis and I’ll scoop up all of it when you’re through. But I wanted you to see it as it appeared.”

  He said, “Explosive vomit in one neat pile.”

  She nodded. “You’d expect spatter, speckling, clumps.”