The Golem of Hollywood

Chapter forty-two

He arrived in Oxford too late for anything but a chip shop dinner. Outside, roving packs of townies warbled football anthems and amiably chucked bottles at undergraduates.

The Black Swan hostel had no private rooms. Jacob opted to share a triple, taking care not to wake his roommates, a pair of backpackers, asleep with their arms around their bags, proxy lovers made of ripstop nylon.

He stashed his own bag under his bed, removing first his passport and the drawings of Mr. Head.

Downstairs in the common room, smelly, dented beanbag chairs surrounded an abandoned game of Scrabble. A German neo-hippie covered “Touch of Grey” on a pawnshop guitar while his inamorata attempted to retighten her electric-blue cornrows, a hand mirror clamped between her knees.

In an act of divine benevolence, the front desk adjoined a fully stocked bar.

Armed with his seventh pint of the day and an Internet passcode, Jacob swung by the wire rack to take a street map, then sat down at the computer kiosk.

There were fewer than a dozen local architects. Of those, four were women. Of the men, two had vaguely kingly names: Charles MacIldowney and John Russell Nance. He clicked on Nance’s CV first, assuming John was more readily confused with James. But it was Mac-Ildowney — BArch (Manc.), DPhil (Oxon.), RIBA — who had lectured in the history of architecture at Oxford. Jacob marked the location of his office on the map.

The song ended.

Jacob applauded.

The hippie smiled drowsily and raised a V.

After mapping a few more stops, Jacob set aside the mouse pad and spread out the drawings.

Mr. Head, in the prime of life. A fellow artist. A fellow traveler.

Meeting Reggie Heap.

Discovering a common interest.

Really. You don’t say.

Okay, okay, but:

Tell me:

Rape.

Front?

Back?

Which do you prefer?

Back?

Really.

How convenient.

Because it just so happens that I am, one hundred percent, a front man.

Heap and Head!

World’s worst buddy sitcom. He could picture the logo, the p and d spinning, a delirious visual pun.

The timeline fit. Reggie, born in 1966, would’ve graduated in 1987 or 1988.

What brought a pair of Englishmen to L.A.?

Had they been all around this great big world and seen all kinds of girls?

Did they wish they all could be California girls?

Or: Mr. Head wasn’t English. A visiting student; an exchange program.

Cream of our crop in return for yours. Reinforce the Special Relationship.

Inviting Reggie back to the States to continue their collaboration.

You’re gonna love the weather.

Reggie, appealing to his generous mother for a graduation present.

There’s this amazing program...

The unique synergy of two lesser malignancies — each man validating and goading the other, twisting him into something exponentially worse.

The Lennon and McCartney of evil.

The long hiatus — what accounted for it? Jacob could not connect either man, either directly or implicitly, to any crimes between 1988 and 2005, when Dani Forrester bled out in her overfinanced condo.

And there was a wider world to wonder about. What mischief had Heap the Younger wrought while out broadening his horizons?

What about New York? Miami? New Orleans?

How long had they been at it?

Like artists, psychopaths were temperamental.

Collaborations of either kind rarely lasted a lifetime or spanned the globe.

Heap and Head could’ve started out as partners before venturing into side projects.

Side projects that had blossomed into full-fledged solo careers?

Then: once a year, a hop across the pond, get the band back together?

Heap and Head: the U.S. Reunion Tour!

The Las Vegas Strip... Bourbon Street...

And coming soon to a ground-floor apartment near you!

He shuddered to think of the shower of red tape triggered by requesting a copy of Reggie’s passport.

It felt wonderful to have facts, however few, at his disposal. He quashed his excitement, as concerned with controlling the fluctuations in his mood as he was with making a mistake.

Let’s not get a Head of ourselves, mmmmmmmm?

Even if he did definitively ID H&H as the Creeper, that still left open the question of who’d killed them. They couldn’t very well have decapitated each other, separated by twelve months and six thousand miles.

Psychopath vs. Psychopath was out.

Vengeful party looking better by the minute.

But: how did VP know?

How did he (she) find them?

Whose voice on the tape?

How did it fit with Special Projects?

It was 2:13 a.m. The hippies had passed out and were sawing wood. Jacob went upstairs. For the first time in a long time, his dreams were in full color.