The Golem of Hollywood

Chapter thirty

Jacob shuffled off the jetway in Prague having slept two hours of eighteen. Much of those 120 minutes had been occupied by muddled green dreams: Mai, old tools, his mother babbling manically to his father, his father pretending to understand.

The endings of every dream identical: butchered women, facing east.

Bringing up the rear for a zombie-squad of backpackers and businessmen, he advanced down the terminal amid piped-in Lady Gaga, lining up to confront a beagle-faced bureaucrat who scanned and stamped and waved him on into the City of Legends without a second glance.

Some quick math revealed that the spring breakers sharing his bus to town had been born after the Velvet Revolution. Jacob could therefore excuse their enthusiasm on grounds of naïveté. They had, absurdly, dressed the part of early-nineties pioneers, arrived to prospect among the cultural rubble of the Berlin Wall: carrying rolled copies of The Metamorphosis and sporting vintage Nirvana T-shirts, inherited from uncles who “were there.”

Feeling ancient, he squinted through scratched plexi at flat polygons of gold and green, periodically relieved by wooded breaks and farmhouses. A quaint countryside diorama that curdled into the present day, one billboard at a time.

Piebald Communist-era apartment blocks appeared, arrayed without logic, like partygoers milling around after the stereo cuts out. At the outskirts of the city, he noted a lot of construction, much of it halted midway, offering itself up as a canvas for graffiti.

So far, the only legend he’d seen was the one on the complimentary map he’d swiped at the airport, and its only secret was the location of TGI Fridays.

The road rose, then dipped into a shallow valley. An uneven mosaic of burnt-orange roofs rimmed a glaucous coil of river, sun-dappled and sluggish.

The bus lumbered down over a bridge, depositing him at the central station.

He bought a bottle of mineral water and took a tram schedule; changed his mind and set out on foot, trying to stave off jet lag, his carry-on rumbling over sidewalks patterned from black and white stone and grouted with cigarette butts. It was a glorious bath of an afternoon, mellow and dreamy and warm. High, narrow streets snuck up behind him, jackknifing, warping, fracturing into ghostly echoes the whine of a motor scooter, the disco ringtones of cheap phones.

There was something disconcerting about foreign signage, and Czech, with its sibilants, its unexpected letter combinations barbed with diacriticals, read like the words of a madman hissing condemnation.

Yawning, blinking, he walked Hybernská Street beneath the scowl of roofline gargoyles, encountering living faces just as hard, faces not quite Western, not quite Eastern. Proud mouths, slit eyes, young people with rooty, aged hands. They looked mistrustfully at Jacob; looked through him, as though he did not exist, and he found himself crunching his toes in his shoes in an effort to prove that he did, smiling and failing to have it reciprocated.

He gave up on people and turned to architecture, gazing up at a gorgeous, mischievous rogue’s gallery of styles. Baroque, Art Nouveau, and rococo shouldered together like strangers on an overcrowded bus. Plaster façades were black with soot or so fresh they appeared wet.

In Republic Square, he paused to wipe his sticky neck and admire the verdigris cap of the Municipal House before turning north, toward the portion of Old Town squashed by the river’s jutting thumb.

The Hostel Nozdra lived up to its one-star rating. As a concession to dignity, he’d sprung for a private room rather than the dormitory. He dragged his bag up four flights and unlocked the door to a linoleum cell equipped with chipped wood laminates and a gimpy chair half turned, as though caught red-handed in some shameful act.

He’d wanted to be judicious with his use of department funds, but not this judicious.

Someone had etched a frowny face in the wall, along with an inscription.

Sarah u broke my heart.

Get used to it, dude.

He stripped to the waist and flopped down, drawing weak protest from the mattress.

His phone had picked up a local carrier. He dialed Jan’s number, let it ring ten times. Next he tried the main Prague PD switchboard and got tangled up in a confusing exchange with the wrong guy.

How many Prague cops named Jan?

Roughly as many Johns or Mikes on LAPD.

He called back and asked for Radek.

The switchboard operator began scolding him in Czech.

Jacob ended the call, yawning into the crook of his elbow. If he meant to beat jet lag, a nap was the wrong strategy.

Nobody had ever accused him of excessive discipline. He set an alarm, sank back into a pillowcase redolent of patchouli, and passed out.

Neon orange filtered through window grime.

He pried his phone out from between the bedframe and the wall.

The alarm had gone off hours ago. He’d slept through it.

And he’d just missed a call.

“Shit.”

Mercifully, Jan picked up.

“Ahoj.”

“Hey. Sorry. I couldn’t get to the phone.”

In the background, the kids were screaming, as though the tantrum had been ongoing for a week. “Who is this, please?”

“Jacob Lev, LAPD. I called you recently, about a case?”

“Ah-hah. Yes, okay. I remember.”

“You said to get in touch when I came to Prague.”

“Yes, okay.”

“Well, here I am.”

An interlude of slaps and crying.

Jan coughed, cleared his throat. “You are here?”

“Yeah.”

“In Prague?”

“I got in a couple hours ago. This conversation’s costing me two bucks a minute, so how bout we finish it in person? Tomorrow work for you?”

“Tomorrrrrrow,” Jan said. “No, I’m sorry, it’s very busy. I have many things to do.”

“Saturday, then.”

“This is not good, either.”

“All right, why don’t you pick a day?”

“How long do you plan to remain in Czech Republic?”

“Four days.”

“Four days... I don’t know if it will be possible to meet.”

“Are you kidding me? I flew here to talk to you.”

“This decision was yours, not mine.”

“You said — look, man, please, come on. I know a cop’s schedule. Nothing’s in stone.”

“Perhaps for you this is true.”

“I brought the photos,” Jacob said.

“I don’t know any photos.”

“Yes, you do, I told you. Give me your office address. I’ll drop them off. You can look and then decide.”

“I apologize,” Jan said, sounding genuinely rueful. “This case is private, there is nothing to discuss.”

Jacob said, “Did someone tell you not to speak to me?”

The phone clattered down, and Jan could be heard yelling at the kids. When he returned he was coughing mightily. “I apologize for your inconvenience,” he said. “There are many things to do in Prague. You will enjoy yourself.”

“Hang on—”

The line went dead.

Jacob stared at the phone in astonishment.

He called back. Ring ring ring ring ring. “Pick up, asshole.”

Hanging up, he gazed out the window, blotting his chest with a handful of rough muslin sheet. It was six p.m. and he was alone in a strange city.

What now?

He hadn’t yet made up his mind when the phone shook with a text from an unfamiliar number.

pivnice u rudolfina

křižovnická 10

30 min