The Golem of Paris

Chapter sixteen

Marquessa Duvall’s former modeling agency occupied a suite in a mid-rise on Wilshire and Gale, a few blocks west of the Beverly Hills city limits. Scanning the lobby directory, Jacob counted no fewer than three plastic surgeons, which had to be extremely convenient for the models.

He rode up and badged the receptionist, an unimpressed, emaciated redhead sucking Diet Coke through a straw. “And this is about?”

“I’ve left several messages.”

She told him to feel free to have a seat.

Beside the agency logo, a flat-screen scrolled through glamour shots and magazine covers of the female clientele. The sole recurring male presence was a tan, handsome man with a three-day beard, posing with celebrities: courtside with Jack, bro-hugging Kanye. He had one or more women on his arm at all times.

The receptionist hadn’t bothered to pick up the phone. Jacob walked back to her desk and waited for an image of the tan man to cycle up. “Who’s that?”

“Uhhhh. That’s Alon.”

“The boss?”

“Uh, yeah.”

“Tell him I want to talk to him, please.”

“He’s in a meeting.”

“When will he be free?”

“It’s tough to say.”

“Now, when you say that,” Jacob said, “do you mean it’s literally tough for you to say? As in, he’ll be free at six, but you have a speech impediment — a lisp, say — and pronouncing ‘six’ is difficult for you? Or maybe you don’t actually know. In which case, it’s not tough to say. It’s impossible to say. Right?”

She stared at him.

“Or — I’m thinking out loud here — maybe you have the capacity to tell me, but you’re not supposed to tell me, so in that sense it’s tough for you, because while it’s physically possible for you to articulate that information, it entails overcoming a certain amount of apprehension.”

He smiled. “Which one is it?”

She said, “It’s tough to say.”

“Okay,” he said, and strode past the desk.

“Excuse me. Excuse me. Sir.”

He walked directly to a door at the end of the hall, which — while standing at the desk — he had pegged as the leading candidate for the biggest office, with the best view.

Jacob did him the courtesy of knocking once.

Handsome and tan, Alon Artzi stood beside an expansive glass desk, his jeans down around his ankles, getting head from another, equally handsome man. For one spellbinding instant they both sort of levitated, leaving the carpet before settling into decidedly more prosaic and awkward postures: Artzi rocking back on his bare ass on the bare glass, his fellator springing backward into a minimalist floor lamp, entangling himself in the cord that yanked out of the wall with an audible crackle of voltage.

“Shit,” the receptionist was saying. “Shit shit shit shit shit shit shit—”

Jacob said, “Bad time?”

Artzi had managed to plant his feet and was hopping around, trying to get his pants on, bellowing in a thick Israeli accent.

“Am-berr, what the fuck.”

“I’m so so so sorry, I told him to wait, he just came like running in.”

“Call to the security. Go. Go.”

The receptionist hustled out, the second man close behind.

Artzi zipped up his fly and assumed a martial arts posture. “Fuck you, you shitfuck, who the fuck are you think you are?”

Jacob showed his badge. “Mishtara,” he said.

Artzi sagged, rubbed one scruffy cheek. He pushed the intercom button.

“They’re on their way,” the receptionist’s voice said.

“Call them back,” Artzi said. “Never mind.”

A fully clothed Alon Artzi glanced at the blowup of Marquessa Duvall’s DMV photo. “Of course I know her. The police come to interview me.”

“There’s no record of it in the file,” Jacob said.

“This is not my problem.”

“What did you tell them?”

“I say it’s sad.” Artzi turned the photo facedown on the desk and leaned back in his Herman Miller chair. “But I don’t know nothing.”

“Who did she work with?”

“Lot of people. She was very beautiful girl.”

“What type of gigs did you get her?”

“All type. Photo shoot, magazine, parties, everything.”

“Anyone who stands out? Repeat customers?”

“I don’t remember.”

“Can I get copies of her contracts?”

“There is nothing you can learn from this. What can you learn? Tell me.”

Jacob mentioned the limousine that had come to pick Marquessa up.

“One week,” Artzi said, “you know how many limousines I am going in?”

“I’m not saying it was you,” Jacob said, although it then occurred to him that he hadn’t bothered to evaluate Artzi himself as a suspect. “Somebody out there liked her.”

“Yes, okay, so what?”

“And maybe she didn’t like him back.”

“This is the world,” Artzi said.

“You must’ve been asked to make arrangements.”

Artzi feigned incomprehension.

“Sex,” Jacob said.

Artzi scoffed. “I am running a talent agency, not... eh. How you say? Beit zonot.”

“You expect me to believe that not one of your customers has ever tried to put a move on a girl?”

“My customers, if you knowed who they are, they’re not need to beg. They get anything they like. There is girl who says no? Okay, fine, b’seder, they take different girl.”

“It’s the things people can’t get that they want the most,” Jacob said.

Artzi smiled. “Yes, okay. But still I don’t know nothing.”

From the file, Jacob took a picture of TJ and set it on the desk. “Her son. He was murdered with her.”

He watched the tan bleed from Artzi’s face.

“You didn’t know she had a son.”

Artzi shook his head.

“He was five. His name was TJ.”

A picture window showed a gull-gray sky, tatty clouds migrating across the glassy surface of the Flynt Publications tower, an umber oval outthrust like a disembodied thigh. Traffic throttled the streets. For some reason, Jacob found the view sad, and his thoughts slid toward his mother.

He’d forgotten to pick up challah and wine. The kosher markets closed early on Fridays; he’d have to scrounge.

“Why someone does this?” Artzi asked.

Jacob shook his head.

“The other cops, they didn’t say nothing about this boy.” Artzi turned TJ’s photo facedown, as well. “I am tell you the truth. She work for many, many people.”

“Let’s focus on six months before she died. I need your records from then.”

“I don’t have them here. They go to storage.”

“How soon can you get them out?”

“I don’t know, I’m busy.”

“Send your secretary. She’s not.”

Artzi slid both photos right up to the edge of the desk, getting them as far away as possible. “I try, okay? Now, please.”

Jacob thanked him. He put the photos away and headed for the door.

“Hey, but — where you’re learn to speak Hebrew?”

Jacob shrugged. “Where’d you learn to speak English?”

“The movies,” Artzi said.

En route to the care facility, he stopped to pick up a bag of onion rolls and a bottle of Welch’s, the closest substitute for traditional Shabbat fare that the Alhambra Vons had to offer. As he stepped into the lobby, Rosario intercepted him.

“We need to talk.”

She led him to an unoccupied office, locked the door.

“Your mother was talking in her sleep. I recorded it.”

She took out her phone, hesitated. “It’s not easy to listen to.”

Jacob made an impatient noise. She pressed PLAY.

The file began abruptly — in the middle of a shriek that tightened Jacob’s scalp.

The sound died, replaced by faint moaning and recording hiss.

“I heard her from the hall,” Rosario said. “I went in to check on her.”

New sounds: footsteps, an unoiled doorknob; the moans growing louder and more distinct, his mother’s voice, ropy with dread, evolving into a chant, low and frantic.

“What’s she saying?” Rosario asked.

Jacob shook his head. It sounded like Michael, or Micah.

He could hear the bed’s steel feet stamping, limbs whipping against sheets.

A second voice joined the mix: Bina’s roommate, yelling at her to shut up. And then Rosario’s soothing contralto, close to the microphone.

It’s okay, Mrs. Abelson.

At first Jacob thought she was comforting the roommate. Then he remembered that was the name the staff knew Bina by. Another piece of his father’s deceit.

Be quiet, you stupid bat.

Go back to bed, please, Mrs. Delaney.

Tell her to be quiet.

Micah Bina moaned.

Shutupshutupshutup.

Mrs. Delaney, please.

She woke me up.

I know she did, but—

Micah.

I can’t sleep with her squawking like that.

I — one second, please. Mrs. Abelson. Listen to me. You’re okay. Shh. Shh.

Micah. Micah. Micah. Micah.

Shh. Shh...

A final shriek, the speaker distorting and crackling, and then the sound cut off.

Jacob was bent over, palms pressed to thighs, sweat-soaked from the waist up.

“I’m sorry,” Rosario said. “I shouldn’t have — I’m sorry.”

“... no. I needed to hear it.”

She nodded doubtfully.

“Does anyone else know? Besides Mrs. Delaney.”

“No. I didn’t tell the MD.”

“Good. Let’s leave it like that for now, okay?”

Rosario nodded. She blotted her eyes on her sleeve. “I couldn’t help her.”

He managed to find a smile for her. “You did what you could.”

Outside, Bina was on her bench, her dinner tray clean. Jacob sat beside her.

“Ready?”

Same ritual. It felt more futile than usual, which was saying something: he sang in a low voice, raced through the blessings, watched her pick at the onion rolls.

He refilled her cup with grape juice. “I understand you’ve been having some trouble sleeping.”

Bina slurped, reached for the roll.

“Ima? Who’s Micah?”

The roll stopped moving, hovered a few inches from her lips.

“You said it in your sleep. ‘Micah.’ Is that someone you know? Who is he?”

Bina’s lips pursed in and out and in and out.

“Does he have something to do with the bird you made?”

Her nostrils flared. Would he kill her if he didn’t stop? In a sense, she was already dead. He wouldn’t be a murderer; he’d be a reviver. Like a last-chance emergency surgeon. Win some, lose some.

Or he was simply a bastard.

Bina’s head turned, her eyes crossing as she stared at the roll in front of her face.

She crammed it into her mouth.

“Ima,” he said.

Her cheeks bulged, crumbs spilled down her sweater. Her chewing was almost comically loud, her face purpling, the vein in her forehead beginning to writhe. She had turned to stare straight at him, her expression ripe with purpose, and he could hear her banging at the walls of her mind, demanding his attention through the luminous, vibrating air. Her ferocity terrified him and he groped for the water bottle.

“You’re going to choke,” he said, uncapping it and raising it to her lips.

She swatted the bottle from his hands, sending it skipping across the concrete.

With a sickening grunt, she swallowed.

Stared at him.

Waiting.

He said, “Take it easy—”

She snatched up the second roll and tore into it like an animal.

The vein stood out like scar tissue. The muscles in her jaw swelled and hardened, determination and pain in every bite.

“Ima—”

A wet gag trickled out of her.

She began clawing at her throat.

“Shit,” he said. “Oh, shit.”

He ran behind her, fought to get his arms around her midsection. Her head lolled, and she stared up at him, never losing eye contact even as drool streamed from her mouth and over her chin and down her neck.

He shouted for help, and a pair of nurses burst from the dayroom.

“She’s choking,” he yelled.

They were all over Bina in an instant, wrestling her upright. But she pried herself free and lunged forward off the bench, stumbling to the center of the patio, where she turned and faced them, bending at the waist like a ham actor and bearing down. From ten feet away, Jacob heard a series of moist pops, the cartilage in her throat buckling and unfolding, moving the huge mass of dough down, like she was giving birth in reverse.

She stood up, sucking air. Looked Jacob in the eye.

Opened her mouth.

Stuck out her tongue.

She’d swallowed.

One of the nurses said, “Are you okay, honey?”

“She doesn’t talk,” the other nurse said.

“Are you okay? Nod if you’re okay.”

Bina could breathe, that much was clear; she was heaving, eyes pegged to Jacob.

“She bit off more than she could chew,” the second nurse said, giggling tensely.

Jacob took a step forward. “I don’t understand, Ima.”

The first nurse said, “We’re going to need to write this up.”

Rosario came hustling out. “What’s going on?”

“She’s fine,” the second nurse said. “She got it down.”

“Jacob?” Rosario asked.

The first nurse said, “I need to go write it up.”

Jacob said, “Can I have a minute alone with my mother, please?”

Rosario frowned.

He faced her. “One minute. Please.”

“Yeah. Yeah, okay, come on, let’s go,” Rosario said, and she ushered the other two nurses inside, leaving Jacob and Bina standing together.

“I don’t understand,” he said. “Please help me.”

She was swallowing saliva, head craning forward and retracting, like a pigeon.

“Do you still have something stuck?”

Her face fell. Wrong answer.

She began shuffling back to the bench.

“Hang on,” he said. “Don’t — wait.”

She plopped down. Jacob hurried, knelt before her, snapping his fingers. “Ima. Hello? Clay? Do you want some clay? I can get it for you.”

But the ebb was nearly complete, her back rounding, her shoulders soft; and he felt a stab of panic. Abandoning the clay idea, he grabbed his backpack instead.

“You know what, here. Here’s a pen. Write it down. Write what you’re thinking.”

He clutched her right hand, zigzagging spastically.

“Look. Look. ‘Micah.’ I’m writing it for you. M—”

The pen was dead; he tossed it aside and tore through the bag for another.

“M-I–C-A-H. See? What’s his last name? Wri — take the pen, please. Ima. Would you please take the pen? Take it. Take — Ima. Take the fucking pen.”

She dropped it.

Silence.

“Shit,” he said quietly.

He picked up the pen and winged it into the fence.

“Shit.”

Rosario stuck her head out.

He held up a hand. “We’re fine.”

He hoisted his backpack, stooping to whisper into Bina’s ear. “I’m going. I don’t know when I’ll be back.”

Bina’s dull eyes aimed at the sky, her hands danced without rhythm, the skin on her neck undulating as she swallowed nothing, over and over again.