The Golem of Hollywood

Chapter thirty-nine

The flight to London lasted two brutish hours. He spent the first downing airline booze and the second eating peanuts to mask his breath — successfully, because the fellow behind the Gatwick rental counter handed him the keys to a bare-bones English Ford.

Driving on the left side of the road, sheeting rain, and a pervasive sense of dread that made every other vehicle appear hell-bent on a head-on turned the ride to Clegchurch into a nerve-corroding ordeal.

The outskirts of town had been given over to sad blocks of council housing, and while the high street retained its architectural charm, plastic bottles and Mylar snack wrappers lined the rushing gutters. The two establishments doing a midday trade were the off-track-betting facility and the adjacent pub, called the Dog’s Neck.

He pulled over, cut the engine. Rain thumped the roof.

Perhaps the adrenaline had cleansed his system, because his days in Prague had already begun to acquire the quality of a dream, the smooth flow of time calving into chunks that drifted away from each other, softening at the edges, so that no event or sensation bore any causal relationship to any other.

He listed off the reasons not to trust himself.

Stress.

Jet lag.

Genetics.

The poison he’d pumped into himself for the last twelve years.

The city of Prague itself, a four-dimensional fever dream.

Happened every day; you saw someone who looked like someone else. Function of statistics: seven billion — plus people in the world. Had to happen. Not happening would be more remarkable. Why else would the idea of a doppelgänger exist?

Atop that argument he piled a layer of generalized language. Stuff had happened to him; weird stuff, but not impossible stuff. Stuff he would process at a more convenient later date, long after it had begun to break itself down and digest itself into a warm heap of forgetfulness. Cross your eyes hard enough, you could always find a rational explanation.

And on some level, he had been waiting for this moment — looking forward to it, even — his unconscious counting down, clicking away like prayer beads. He had gotten away too long with simple depression. He felt he should send himself a bouquet of flowers. Congratulations on finally losing your mind! It was something of a relief to realize that he no longer had to pretend he was the master of his own fate. He would go home, surrender to expertise, find himself a doctor, tell the story, have a cry, climb the wagon.

Start jogging. Eat organic. Take pills. Get right.

For the moment, he had a job to do. A blessedly concrete job, in drab, sensible England.

And if that job entailed going into a bar, he wasn’t about to argue.

The dog’s neck shared some of the Czech beer hall’s decorative features. It did not, however, share its convivial vibe. A group of mouth-breathing layabouts watched a televised soccer match, their apathy thrown into high relief by the histrionics of the play-by-play man. A woman with teased hair mashed the smeared screen of a video poker machine. The air reeked of bleach and burnt cooking oil.

Jacob shook the water off his sleeves, sat at the bar, and ordered a pint of stout.

The bartender vacillated between several glasses before selecting one of average filth.

Jacob slid him a ten-pound note. “Keep it.”

“Cheers.”

He drank it quickly and ordered a second, again paying with a ten and telling the bartender to keep the change. The injection of alcohol diminished his road jitters but exposed a deeper, rawer current of anxiety. The clock above the bar read eleven a.m. Three a.m. in California. He was tempted to call his father. Ordinarily Sam wouldn’t answer the phone on Shabbat, but the late hour might lead him to assume an emergency, justifying desecration of the holy day.

Jacob wasn’t sure what he’d say.

You know that dead rabbi you admire so much?

Well, he’s you.

By the way, before I forget: I’m being pursued by a beetle.

The bartender came to collect his empty glass.

“One more,” Jacob said.

“Commin right oop.”

It came right oop.

Jacob dropped a third ten and said, “I’m looking for someone.”

The bartender grinned. He had enormous teeth. “Are you, now?”

“Edwyn Heap.”

The grin disappeared.

“You know him?”

The bartender developed an interest in polishing a spot at the other end of the bar.

The soccer commentator was saying I can’t believe it, I simply can’t.

Jacob addressed the room. “Anyone?”

No one looked at him.

“I’ve got a twenty for whoever can tell me where Edwyn Heap is.”

No answer.

“Thirty,” he said.

The poker machine blooped a downward-spirally losing noise.

“Or his son,” Jacob said. “Reggie.”

One of the TV watchers told him to fuck off.

“Nice,” Jacob said. “That’s the way to welcome a tourist.”

The man stood up, as did another, and they began making their way toward him.

A fantastic shot!

They were drunk and unshaven, badly but abundantly fed. The guy on the left wore a yellow Oxford United jersey; the guy on the right, a shabby crewneck.

They flanked him at the bar.

Jersey said, “So it’s the Heaps you’re wanting?”

“Yeah.”

“And why’s that?”

“I’m trying to get in touch with them,” Jacob said.

“That’s a bit of circular reasoning, that,” Jersey said. “Wanting to see them because you want to get in touch with them.”

The woman at the poker machine had upended her purse in search of money.

“I heard they lived around here.”

“Did you?”

Jacob nodded.

“Hate to break it to you, mate, but you heard wrong. Ages since Reggie Heap’s been seen in these parts.”

“Ages,” Crewneck confirmed.

Ooooooh, that’s a vicious maneuver.

“What about his father?”

“He’s not like to show his face.”

“Why’s that?”

“What’s it you want with him, aside from to see him?”

“I want to talk to him.”

“He’d be a friend of yours, then.” Jersey spoke to the bartender. “Imagine that, Ray. Here’s a friend of old Ed’s.”

“Imagine that,” the bartender said.

“Imagine that, Vic.”

“Can’t,” Crewneck said.

“I didn’t know Ed had any friends left,” Jersey said. “Reggie neither.”

The remaining men had begun to approach the bar.

The woman at the machine tied on a rain bonnet, gathered her possessions, and exited.

“It’s just a question,” Jacob said.

“You got your answer, mate,” Jersey said. “Shove off.”

“I’m not finished with my beer,” Jacob said.

Crewneck took Jacob’s glass and handed it to the bartender, who diligently poured it out.

“You’re finished,” Jersey said.

Jacob eyed the three other men. They were the same as Jersey and Crewneck, except bigger and drunker. One of them actually had a streamer of drool resting on his chin.

“Can I get my change, please?” Jacob said to the bartender.

“What?” the bartender said.

“My change.”

“You said to keep it.”

“That was before you revoked my drink. Five’ll do.”

After a beat, the bartender put a wadded note on the bar and flicked it toward Jacob.

“Thanks,” Jacob said. “Have a great day.”

Jersey followed him to the door, stood there watching as he hustled through the downpour and climbed into his pathetic little rental car. He felt like a schmuck, doubly so as he stalled out. Finally he got the car in gear, driving half a block and glancing in the rearview.

A blue car was behind him.

He tried and failed to make out the driver, taking his eyes off the road long enough to nearly run down an old man in a plastic poncho, creeping along the muddy shoulder on a bicycle.

Jacob laid on as much speed as he dared, taking turns without signaling. At each, the blue car stayed behind. He tried to work the GPS on his phone but it was impossible to do while steering and shifting.

Fuck it, he thought, and pulled over.

The blue car followed suit.

The road he was on cut like piano wire through two vast muddy fields. A farmhouse on the horizon. An idle tractor. No people.

The driver of the blue car got out.

It was the poker-playing woman. Wind billowed her rain bonnet. She pinched it tight and hurried to Jacob’s passenger-side window and began tapping.

“Open the bloody door.”

He leaned over and pried up the lock.

She heaved herself into the passenger seat, flecking him with droplets. He smelled lipstick, tobacco, PVC.

“Some manners, leaving a lady in the rain.”

“Can I help you?”

“No, but I can help you.”

“Okay.”

Her mouth twitched. “I’ll have that forty first.”

“It was thirty.”

Fault lines appeared in her makeup as she smiled. “Inflation, what.”

He gave her half. “The rest when you’re done.”

“Right,” she said, tucking the money in her brassiere, “you’re not like to make anyone happy, mentioning the Heaps.”

“I noticed.”

“Reggie, he kilt that girl.”

Jacob said, “What girl?”

“They found her in the wood, back behind old Heap’s.”

“When was this?”

“Twenty-five years ago, like. Poor girl. Bloody awful. The animals had gotten to her.”

“Reggie Heap murdered a girl,” Jacob said.

“Hit her with a shovel. She worked for the family. Everyone knows. But old Ed’s old Ed, and they never could prove nothing, so la-dee-da-dee. Danny, the bloke what was back at the pub, it was his cousin, Peg.”

Twenty-five years ago was 1986, the year Reggie had won his drawing prize.

“Poor Mrs. Heap, her heart gave out. She was a nice lady. I don’t think she could stand living with those two bad ones.”

She gave him directions to Edwyn Heap’s house, using landmarks rather than street names.

“Any suggestions on how to approach him?”

The woman was pleased at being consulted. “I’ve heard it said he likes toffee.”

Jacob handed her another twenty. “Good luck at the table.”

“No need, love,” she said, tucking the money in her bra. “Britain’s got talent.”