The Golem of Hollywood

Chapter forty-five

“One wonders,” Norton said, dabbing soup from her lips, “how a personality as sterling as Reggie’s was lost on a man of MacIldowney’s intelligence.”

“I don’t think intelligence has anything to do with it.”

“It so rarely does.”

“You think he was being honest about not recognizing Mr. Head?”

“Des said he’s a bad liar. They appeared candid enough.”

“I agree. Too bad he didn’t recognize my guy.”

“Cheer up. He gave you a name: Perry-Bernie.”

“That’s a third guy.”

“The mysterious American.” Her smile made a sweet little bulge under her chin. Her eyes were blue, on the cusp of purple — what the crayon makers called cornflower.

“How about this,” he said. “Mr. Head and Reggie travel to L.A. For whatever reason.”

“Sunshine and self-reinvention,” Norton said. “Or Perry-Bernie invites them.”

He nodded. “They do their thing. Twenty-month reign of terror, then the band breaks up, and Reggie, at least, leaves town. Mr. Head decides he likes it in L.A., and stays. That accounts for the fact that someone, the same person, takes them both out: Perry-Bernie.”

“You’re pinning a lot on this fellow,” she said. “For all we know he’s simply another Charles MacIldowney, a nice chap trying to help out the hapless Reggie Heap.”

He brooded, stirring his cold peanut noodles. He had no appetite; he felt like he could go without food for several days, and he was anxious to get back to work. He was also dimly aware of Norton watching him curiously. It wasn’t right, the way he felt.

She said, “Do you want to go somewhere else? Aren’t you hungry?”

“I’m okay.”

“Of the three bites taken of your lunch, all have been taken by me. Can I offer you some tom yum? It’s gorgeous.”

“No, thanks. I don’t like cilantro. It tastes like soap to me. Lemongrass, either.”

“Who doesn’t like lemongrass?”

“Be a lemon,” Jacob said. “Be grass. Choose.”

“If you don’t like lemongrass, and you don’t like cilantro, then why are we having Thai?”

“You wanted it.”

“Gallant of you.”

He raised his beer to her.

She said, “There can’t have been that many Americans enrolled in a given year. You could check with Student Records. Although they won’t be open today.”

“What about a yearbook?” Jacob said. “They have those?”

“I’m sure they do, or something like it. I can ask Jimmy.”

“What’s the deal with him?”

“Friend of my father’s. I’ve known him since I was a girl.”

“You grew up around here.”

She nodded.

“What’s that like?”

“Loads of fun. Get pissed and beat up students. Huzzah.”

Jacob smiled. “Was your dad a cop?”

“Schoolteacher,” she said. “He taught Latin. A real grammarian, you know, the kind who’s singing along to the radio and Eric Clapton comes on, and he starts to yell, ‘Lie down Sally, lie down.’ My mother would say, ‘That’s all very well and good, John, but can we state with certainty that he’s not in fact pleading with her to smother him in goose feathers?’ And he would say, ‘Well, Emmaline, that’s hardly the point,’ and she would say, ‘Indeed,’ and then she would turn the volume up.” She smiled. “There you have it, my childhood in a nutshell. You?”

Her pleasant memories brought home what he hadn’t been privileged to know.

“Los Angeles. Born and raised. My mom’s dead. She was an artist. My dad’s a rabbi, although he wouldn’t call himself that.”

“Ooh, that’s a rather fancy pedigree.”

For a moment he came close to spilling everything to her. She was the first normal person he’d spoken to in weeks. In her presence, he’d managed to focus. She was smart and pretty and she wasn’t tall.

She was sitting back, happy to listen.

He said, “I was taught from an early age to chase the money.”

“Joke if you must, but we don’t get a travel stipend.”

“My boss is good at twisting arms.”

“Is there a special fund for wooing the local constabulary?”

He raised his beer again. “To international relations.”

They returned to her office to use the computer.

According to its website, the Oxford Undergraduate Art Society served those students not majoring in fine art but who wished nonetheless for opportunities to exhibit their work.

Jacob read between the lines: art school being the cliquey affair that it was, the club functioned as a cocoon within the larger cocoon of the university, a venue for second-string aesthetes to gather and feel a sense of belonging.

“Heap’s father told me Reggie wanted to transfer to fine art, then backed off.”

“He couldn’t hack it,” Norton said.

“I saw his stuff. He could draw.”

“I was under the impression that that was no longer relevant to obtaining an art degree.”

He laughed. “Either way, the club would be the wrong place for someone with serious artistic aspirations. Maybe Reggie was hanging out there for social reasons. Do they have a roster of past members?”

She scrolled down. “Not online.”

“A headquarters?”

“They meet once a month in the Christ Church junior common room.”

“When’s the next meeting?”

“Three weeks.”

“Shit.”

“Hang on, though, there’s an archive of past competition winners in the Bod. Should we have a look?”

The guard at the entrance to the Bodleian’s main stacks referred them to the admissions office in the Clarendon Building. There, a clerk made photocopies of Norton’s badge, along with Jacob’s passport.

“Fill these out, please.”

Please tell us why you need to use our resources.

Norton said, “Oooh, let me.”

She wrote To solve a murder.

Jacob sighed and asked for another form, writing Dissertation research.

“You’re deadly boring, you know that?”

Ninety minutes and three bureaucrats later, they stepped out of an ancient elevator, a temporary access card and a call number tucked in Jacob’s shirt pocket.

Since the award categories included sculpture and painting, they expected a storage room or a cage and crates. Instead they found themselves crabbing down a tight aisle, matching the call number to four oversized archival albums.

They carried them to an abandoned carrel and squeezed in, shoulders touching. Norton wasn’t wearing perfume, but the aroma of soap and water was pleasant at close range.

Polaroids tucked into cloudy plastic sleeves featured the winning entries in each category. Most were unlovely in the extreme. A turgid statement of purpose accompanied each.

“Edwyn Heap said Reggie had to forfeit his piece,” Jacob said. “No one else seems to have.”

“Maybe he lied. He’s got it hidden away somewhere.”

“He showed me Reggie’s other drawings. Why would he care if I saw that one?”

He shut the first album and opened the second, Awardees 1985–1995, flipping ahead to the 1986 competition.

“That’s why,” Norton said.

To Be Brasher was a female nude. That wasn’t remarkable in itself. Jacob knew from examining the portfolio boxes at the Heap house that Reggie had drawn his fair share of nudes. Every artist did. There was a long and proud tradition of becoming an artist simply for the excuse.

Every artist had his favorite body part. Reggie’s were breasts: heavy, and detailed, every crease and birthmark lovingly rendered. No alarm bells, there. Breasts symbolized motherhood, nourishment, comfort.

She was spread-eagled. But the Schiele poster in Reggie’s boyhood room showed a woman similarly posed and that was considered a masterpiece. Jacob wondered if in fact Reggie had been making reference to that image.

Whereas Schiele’s hand was erratic and jagged, Reggie’s was direct to the point of being clinical. An abundance of ornamentation was rendered in strong, swooping lines, a marked contrast with his previous nudes. The Reggie Heap who had drawn To Be Brasher was a realist, masquerading as a sensualist.

Here, he had found his muse.

Sinuously curved, the woman lay among undulant vines. They twined her limbs, bound her wrists and ankles. A draftsman more technically skilled or more imaginative might’ve left room for interpretive ambiguity. Reggie was both accurate and limited: he knew just what he wanted to draw, and he’d drawn it.

His muse was headless.

Energy radiated from her open neck, wavy lines that fanned out toward a rising sun.

They stared at the drawing for a long time. Finally, Jacob turned the page over, revealing Reggie’s artistic statement of purpose.

To examine the causes of life, we must first have recourse to death.