The Golem of Paris

Chapter twenty-two

The restaurant was dark, crowded with endomorphs in skinny jeans. Among them, Adler constituted a different species: motorhead meets egghead. He took off a Bugatti baseball cap to reveal a shaven scalp; a wide jaw widened out to a muscular neck, widened further to massive shoulders, his chest busting out of a blue sport shirt with a Porsche logo on the breast pocket. He adjusted tiny rimless eyeglasses, fiddled with a bow tie as he contemplated the menu for three and a half seconds.

“Protein Power,” he said. “Over easy. Side of sausage. Triple espresso.”

The waitress looked at Jacob.

“I’m good, thanks.”

“You’re paying,” Adler confirmed.

“I said I would.”

“Okay.” The journalist reached into a battered messenger bag (LEXUS) and took out a stack of glossy Gerhardt pamphlets. “Which model?”

“Eh — it came out in 2004, so—”

“The Falke S,” Adler said, and he began shuffling through the pile for the correct document. Even before he’d found it, he was rattling off stats: 9.0 liter W16 engine (pointing to the cap on the table: “that’s one liter bigger than the Veyron”), five turbochargers, 1,100 horsepower at 8,300 RPM with a redline at 8,500, giving you a zero-to-60 of 2.34 seconds and a top speed of 253 MPH.

“That’s assuming you wouldn’t achieve liftoff or have your DNA recombine, so officially they limit it to two twenty-five.”

“Awesome,” Jacob said. “What I wanted to ask you was—”

“Pre-preg carbon fiber Kevlar hybrid body, shaving a solid five kilos off the Model G, which is like performing lipo on an Ethiopian child. They had to use solid-state electronics throughout because during the initial testing it shook so fucking much the soldering broke apart. I sat in one, once. I thought I was going to come.”

“Did you?” Jacob said.

“Custom boar-skin interior,” Adler said. “Hand-stitched. I restrained myself.”

Jacob asked about the premiere event. Adler recalled it without hesitation:

“I wasn’t invited.”

Jacob’s heart sank.

Adler went on, cheerily peeved. “Assholes. I’m free publicity. I’m not ashamed to admit it. That’s why I’m there. They allow me to live out a fantasy and I give them a write-up. Everybody wins. Gerhardt, they make a great car, but they’re a bunch of pricks. I think they wanted to up the cachet factor by being hush-hush.”

“That’s not standard practice.”

“Hell no. Most manufacturers will rent out the Petersen, bring in a band, girls, food, champagne. Not this time. I had to drive way the hell out to an industrial park in East L.A. Unmarked building, security.”

“You weren’t invited and you went anyway,” Jacob said.

“Crissake, I’m still a reporter. I got a master’s from USC Journalism. First time in my career I can actually get a scoop. There was chatter on the message boards about when and where it was going to go down, so I took my chances.”

“Did you get in?”

“They wouldn’t even give me a T-shirt. Buncha Nazis.”

Jacob decided that the dinner comp wasn’t that unreasonable a request after all: the guy had gotten used to not paying.

Adler was shaking his head. “It was gonna be my Pulitzer moment.”

The waitress brought his espresso. He threw it back and asked for another.

“Anyway,” he said, “I found the whole thing incredibly obnoxious. You buy a million-dollar car, that’s cachet aplenty, stop pussying around.”

“Who’s the clientele for something like that?”

“The Gulfstream — megayacht — private island crowd. Toss in a few more billion for petty cash. There’s this Saudi who has four hundred cars, every single one has a gold-plated bidet.”

Jacob said, “Not for use while driving.”

Adler laughed. “Nobody drives these things. The point is to own a toy nobody else has and then say, ‘Look at me, I don’t give a shit.’ The Falke S, they made eighty, to celebrate old man Gerhardt’s eightieth birthday. Snapped up in preproduction.”

“What’s the point of the party, if not to promote?”

“Mutual congratulation,” Adler said. Contemplatively: “It’s a circle jerk, really.”

“Where’re the cars going?”

“A lot of them end up in the Middle East. Wouldn’t surprise me if bidet guy was there that night. Or one of his cousins. China, once upon a time, although they don’t have the cash for it these days. Here in the States? Anywhere there’s that level of dough — Beverly Hills, New York, Greenwich, Florida. And Russians. Oh my God, Russians can’t get enough of that shit. They armor-plate them, which if you ask me is a fucking travesty.”

“The company’s based in Stuttgart,” Jacob said. “Why have the party here?”

“There were rumors about them building a more affordable ‘green’ car — think seven-figure plug-in. They changed their mind later, but it was a live topic back then, so they timed the party to coincide with the L.A. Auto Show. Everyone who counts was in town.”

Jacob pictured it: dozens of alpha males, paddling in a tank of pure testosterone.

“Tell me about the women at these events,” he said.

“There are no women.”

“You said—”

“I said girls. What do you want to know?”

“They hang out and talk to the buyers.”

“Sure.”

“Go home with them?”

Adler pitched forward, alert. “That’s who got killed? One of the honeys?”

“Can’t get into that.”

“I’m still looking for that scoop.”

“I’ll do my best. You think you’d be able to find out who owns a Falke S?”

“Doubtful. I’ll give it a shot, though. And you’d only be talking original buyers, right? Which could get complicated. Stuff at that level changes hands all the time.”

“Where?”

“Sometimes at auction. I read the catalogs from Gooding and RM regularly and can’t remember one coming up. So I’d have to say private sales. No record. No taxes.”

“Once the car was registered, they’d have to pay—”

“No no no no. You don’t get it. Why spend the extra hundred fifty bucks to register something that never leaves your private museum?”

Dinner arrived: a grilled chicken breast, two quivering eggs, a scoop of cottage cheese, the sausage on a separate plate.

Jacob said, “So you’ll try to find out? About the buyers.”

“Why the hell not? Nice to apply my talents to a mission of substance.” Adler stabbed a sausage, grinning as he chewed. “Eat the rich, right?”

Around two a.m., Jacob felt his eyes drying out and decided to call it quits. He’d thrown as much as he could at the wall; now it was a matter of seeing what stuck.

He opened a kitchen cabinet, alarmed to discover himself fresh out of liquor.

He checked the recycling bin. Four empties.

How long since you went to a meeting?

Talked to your sponsor?

He put on sneakers and a lightweight jacket.

Outside he paused to admire the insects mobbing the street lamp.

“Evening, ladies.”

As he walked, he thought about Marquessa, a human objet, circled by men unaccustomed to hearing no. Her brief life a line that shot up optimistically, only to plummet to zero.

There were gaps, too. TJ the biggest of all.

Why the boy?

I can’t imagine anyone who’d want to hurt that woman.

Jorge Alvarez had said that in an offhand way. Turning the corner onto Airdrome, it occurred to Jacob that the words might contain a deeper truth.

Maybe nobody wanted to hurt the woman.

So far, he’d understood Marquessa as the target, TJ as collateral damage.

The opposite was equally possible.

In a certain way, it made more sense. Anyone who’d slaughter a child, mutilate him, and prop him across from his mother — that wasn’t the tantrum of a guy denied game, even if that guy was an egomaniac. Jacob had studied enough homicides to recognize the patience underscoring the depravity, the disquieting overlap of rage and devotion.

He was nearing 7-Eleven when a loud report broke his train of thought, the telltale skinny pop of a Saturday night special.

He took off toward Robertson in a sprint.