The Golem of Hollywood

Chapter fifty-four

The last milestone before the road deteriorated was Claire Mason’s driveway. Jacob pulled over fifty feet beyond, cut the engine, braved switching on his phone. The screen flooded with texts and voicemails from Mallick, demanding to know where he was, what was happening, why he wasn’t responding.

Strictly for ass-cover, he texted back four words.

on suspect stand by

He assumed they knew where he was; he assumed they’d been tracking him all along. If they wanted to show up and stampede in and trample his work to dust, so be it.

He restarted the car.

Headlights off, the Honda lurched over moonscape. Jacob felt his senses heightened, attuned to every wind-wicked twig, every crenellated shadow, every granule of soil.

A quarter mile out, he cut the engine again and assembled his gear on the passenger seat. Flashlight. Taser. Flex-cuffs. Binocs.

He rechecked the Glock, stuffed the extra magazine in his back pocket, got out of the car.

Bent low, he advanced over cackling gravel, reached the final crest, and lay on his belly, worming forward till the death house came into view.

Windows dark.

Parking pad empty.

No human movement. No human sound.

No BMW.

He panned the acreage.

To his left, a rolling wave of hilltop, studded with stone.

To his right, the crescent canyon, slanting toward the house and curving around its back.

No growth over knee height. No place to hide a car.

He’d seen the lights, though; he’d followed Pernath halfway across the city. He was here, had to be, no other destination made sense.

Nowhere else possessed the same lethal sanctity.

Had he, somehow, missed him? Pernath driving up here to enact his ritual and leaving?

Impossible. Insufficient time, one way in and out.

Where was he?

They.

Jacob felt sick, remembering Pernath’s approach down the alley, the second of eye contact.

The architect had made him. Strung him along. Doused his own lights; taken an earlier turnoff, Eagle’s Point or Falconfuck or whatever; coasted off, leaving Jacob to sniff a false trail.

Dance, monkey, dance.

And now the motherfucker was free to do his thing with whomever he’d picked up in Century City.

A woman, held down as she choked on her own blood, praying for a savior never to arrive.

Because here he was, her savior, prostrate in the dirt, a line of ants trickling over his hand.

But how would Pernath have recognized him? They’d never met before.

But then where was the BMW?

It wasn’t a car made for off-roading. Pernath could have stashed it downhill and ascended on foot, as Jacob had.

But if reason dictated leaving the car behind, it also dictated taking it as far as it would go: the end of the asphalt, near Claire Mason’s house. Nowhere to hide a car there, either. Jacob would have spotted it on his way up.

He stayed there for another twenty minutes, agonizing.

A slash of bats dirtied the clouds.

The death house lay in cold repose.

Drawing up to a crouch, Jacob broke across the open ground; steadied himself against the front door for a two count and twisted the loose knob and swept in, gun drawn, clearing room to room, his hope withering in square-foot increments.

Nothing.

Nobody.

A second sweep ended in the kitchen, where he paused, pinching the bridge of his nose disgustedly as adrenaline flushed from his system and his lungs began to burn.

He’d had him, and lost him.

Or he’d never had him. He’d gotten overconfident. Made assumptions.

Fucked up.

He hammered the countertop in frustration, received the rebuke of a sparse echo.

Massaging his hand, he stared at the spot where the Hebrew lettering had been. The smooth wood bore no sign of it.

He thought about the missing brick from the Alt-Neu.

Thought about Mai running from him, gone in an instant.

Women he tried to make love to, recoiling in agony.

Bugs.

If all that could happen, why not a magically vanishing BMW?

Straight down the rabbit hole.

Since his return to L.A., he had been singularly focused on making the arrest. He’d allotted no time or space for dwelling on his mental state, and that had kept him from experiencing the full extent of his wretched confusion.

Now it rushed out of him, spurting from every raw orifice, dissolving the surface of reality. His heart wouldn’t shut up. He held his splitting head together between his forearms, walking around the kitchen in circles. He’d fucked up, and because of that, more people were going to die. Tonight, or if not tonight, soon.

He tottered from the house and clicked on the flashlight and wandered over the property in the rising wind. Knees popping, he traversed the eastern slope, chasing every feral whine that escaped the canyon’s lonesome depth. He went as far as the horizon and felt the seduction of gravity and imagined letting himself fall. He remembered Peter Wichs’s hand on his arm and scrambled back to higher ground.

He was wasting his time.

Covered in scrapes and sweat, he straggled back to the Honda and collapsed in the driver’s seat. The phone flashed. Nine more attempts at communication by the Commander.

report progress ASAP

never mind Jacob wrote back they arent here will revisit tomorrow

He pounded through the return trip as fast as he could without snapping the chassis, composing a mental list.

Pernath’s father’s house.

The office in Santa Monica.

The office in Century City: source security footage and determine who Pernath’s passenger was.

Piss-poor list, reeking of failure and futility. No item on it appealed to him as much as the default retreat to home and alcohol.

Crossing from dirt to asphalt, he stomped the accelerator. The Honda’s wheels spun out and he shot forward and he sped toward defeat.

Then he saw Claire Mason’s driveway and her CCTV cameras.

The woman was a gift from the paranoid gods.

Braking, he backed up, pulled to Mason’s talk box, and punched the intercom button.

It rang seven times. Maybe even Claire had a social life.

A scratchy voice filtered through the speaker: “Who is this?”

“Ms. Mason? Detective Jacob Lev from LAPD. I don’t know if you remember, but I was—”

“I remember you.”

“Great. I apologize for disturbing you—”

“What is it, Detective?”

“I was hoping I could come in and have another look at your security footage.”

“Now?”

“If that’s all right.”

“Are you aware of what time it is?”

He had no clue. He glanced at the dash clock — after midnight.

“I’m truly, truly sorry,” he said. “I really hate to have to disturb you like this, but—”

“It can’t wait until tomorrow?”

“I wouldn’t ask if it wasn’t urgent, ma’am.”

Impatient exhalation. “Hang on.”

He glanced at the black camera eye on the intercom box, pictured her shuffling off to consult her monitors. He smoothed his hair and wiped dust from his face and prepared a smile.

The box spoke: “Detective? What did you want to see?”

“The road. From a couple of hours ago. I’ll be quick. Thanks.”

The gate shivered and began to slide.

He released the brake, wound up the same crushed stone path, through the same spotlit xeriscaping, toward the same stern modernist silhouette.

The front door opened. Same tatty green bathrobe in a widening slice of yellow light. Same scowl; same steaming tankard of tea. Except this time she didn’t offer him any.

They walked wordlessly to the security room. He stood behind her, averting his eyes as she typed in her password.

“I’m looking for vehicles en route to 446,” he said.

She clicked. Eight panels, eight blank swathes, bathed in green. The time stamp counted 00:13:15, 00:13:16, 00:13:17...

“How far back?” she asked.

“Three hours. Eight-thirty.”

“That’s three and three-quarters hours,” she said.

“I know.” Strictly speaking, a wider window than he needed. “I’m sorry.”

She sighed and reset the counter to 20:00:00. The screen gave a pixelated flinch.

They sat silently as minutes passed at 8×. Jacob couldn’t decide whether he was rooting for the car to appear or not. Stupid, gullible, or crazy: which title did he prefer?

The counter reached eight-thirty without anything happening. Claire Mason turned and arched an eyebrow at him and increased the playback to 24×. The counter began to reel. Nine. Nine-ten. Nine-twenty. He’d picked up Pernath’s tail at about ten after eight. The drive to Castle Court took about an hour and a half. The counter hit nine-thirty and he tensed up in anticipation.

Nine forty-seven: a square flash.

“Stop,” he barked.

She hit the space bar, pausing at 21:50:51.

“Can you go back a couple minutes?”

She stared at him impatiently.

“I saw something,” he said.

“That was me.”

His heart sank. “You’re sure?”

“I went to dinner,” she said. “I got home at quarter to ten. That was me, pulling in.”

“You’re positive,” he said.

She drew up. “Anything else, Detective?”

“Just a few more minutes, please?”

She let the video run up to real time: nothing.

“Thanks. Sorry.”

She stood up. “Should I be concerned?”

“Not at all. Thanks again. Really appreciate it. Have a good night.”

Her expression said that was unlikely.

She escorted him to the constricted entry hall, where he paused to thank her once more.

Stopped, breathless.

“What,” she said.

He was staring at a gilt-framed pen-and-ink drawing of a woman’s body lying among undulant vines, energy radiating out from her headless neck.

“Where did you get that?” he asked.

She blinked once, then dashed the tea in his eyes.

It had mostly cooled off; he was more startled than hurt, and in the millisecond while his hands went up, he actually thought How rude.

She brained him with the mug. He heard a crack that he hoped was ceramic and not bone and pain trumpeted and his inner ear sloshed and he swung at her warping outline and she hit him again with something else, harder, heavier and he felt himself bowing sideways, sinking to one knee with his palm pressed to the cold concrete. She continued to hit him, breathing hard, emitting strange excited little chirrups. Blood streamed into his eyes. He rolled over into a puddle of tea to protect himself and she brought a picture (he did not know if it was To Be Brasher or another picture) crashing down on his upraised elbow. Glass teeth opened his forearm. She chopped the frame down like an axe, the corner spiking his temple, until the wood splintered; then she tried to stab him in the back with it, but he scissored his legs on the slick wet floor and he caught her ankle and she fell.

Dizzy and half blind, he surged atop her and got his hands around her throat and squeezed. Spit burst from her mouth. Blood jetted from his gashed arm and mixed with the foamy sludge running from the corners of her mouth and ran down her neck. He was trying to find her carotid. He needed four seconds of pressure. She twisted and kicked and clawed. A shadow fell across them.

A man’s voice said, “Enough.”