The Golem of Paris

Chapter twenty-five

He phoned Neil Adler from the road.

“Christ, you’re impatient.”

“I need Russians,” Jacob said. “That narrow it down for you?”

“Lot of Russians in this universe.”

“Do your best.”

“I expect another meal out of this,” Adler said.

“You got it.”

“And an exclusive.”

“No promises,” Jacob said, clicking off.

Fighting his way to Hollywood along side streets, he pulled into the body-dump alley and stopped behind the bakery.

Two slots, filled by a white delivery van and a tan Sentra. He blocked both and entered the bakery through the rear door, walking a hallway crammed with cleaning supplies.

Dry heat radiated from the kitchen, where a pair of Hispanic men in hairnets toiled, one painting a sheet of dumplings with egg wash, the other tilting a fifty-pound sack of flour into a mixer. Neither man looked up as Jacob passed.

The same counterwoman was on duty. She did a double take, quickly returned her attention to the customer at the display case.

Jacob got in line.

While he waited, he scanned the corkboard, covered with bilingual fliers. English and Russian. He read the labels in the case, written in both Latin and Cyrillic characters.

Syrniki. Vatrushka. Bird’s Milk Cake.

The customer was an old woman. She left a smudgy trail on the glass as she indicated various piles of cookies.

“Dva... Pyat...”

The counterwoman dutifully filled a box, her eyes occasionally darting to Jacob.

“Okay,” the old woman said. “Chorosho, dostatochno.”

The counterwoman reached up to tug string from a reel bolted to the wall. The old woman counted coins from a beaded purse. Jacob’s eye snagged on the girl depicted on the box of chocolate bars beside the register.

Like TJ, a child who’d never age.

The old woman finished paying for her cookies. Said, “Spasiba,” and tottered out, activating an electric chime.

The counterwoman said, “Can I help you?”

Unmistakable now, the guttural h.

Ken I chelp you.

He was starting to take out the case file when the door chimed again. A man in a gray suit and no tie got in line behind him, shifting his weight impatiently.

The start of the lunch rush. Jacob ordered a cup of coffee and a couple of mushroom pirozhki and sat on the bench beneath the corkboard, eating. He waited for the gray-suited man to leave with his sandwich, then set his cup down, walked to the front door, flipped the sign around from OPEN to CLOSED, and threw the dead bolt.

“Excuse me please,” the counterwoman said. “What are you doing?”

Jacob took out the file, selected a close-up of TJ with his eyelids cut off, and slapped it on the marble counter.

“Look,” he said.

As she’d done before, she averted her face toward the ceiling. He’d thought then that she was reacting to the brutality of the image.

I have customers.

Now he knew better. She’d looked away because she was afraid.

“Look at him,” Jacob said.

The woman’s lips bunched. “Leave my shop, please.”

“Not until you look.”

“I will call police,” the woman said, loudly.

He held up his badge. “Be my guest.”

She said nothing.

“Look at his face.”

“I do not need to.”

“I think you do.”

“I have nothing to say.”

“I hear that a lot,” Jacob said. “Nobody ever says it unless they have something to say.”

“I want lawyer.”

“You’re not under arrest. We’re talking.”

She said nothing.

“You have kids,” Jacob said.

She blinked, but didn’t answer.

“They’re probably grown up by now. Do they have kids? Are you a grandmother?”

A rattle at the door — a pair of men in work clothes, trying to enter the bakery.

“He has a grandmother,” Jacob said. “You want to meet her? I could bring her by.”

The men began to knock.

“I have business,” the woman said. “Please.”

“You’ll get back to it, soon enough.” Jacob wagged a finger at the men. Pointed to the CLOSED sign.

Consternation, then shrugs. The men left.

One of the bakers poked a floury head out. “Zina? ¿Todo bien?”

“Tell him to get lost,” Jacob said.

There was a small dent in the counterwoman’s jaw, just to the left of her chin. She rubbed at it, as though trying to smooth it out. “Vete fuera,” she said.

The baker didn’t move.

“Rafael, tambien,” the counterwoman said. “Ahora, por favor.”

The baker disappeared; Jacob heard the back door open and shut.

“Ten years ago,” he said. “And you still think about it.”

She was twisting her apron.

“But it wasn’t your fault. Was it? I don’t think it was. I don’t think you had anything to do with it. I think you were afraid, just like you are now.”

“Please,” she said. “I don’t know.”

“Then why won’t you look at him?”

“Because I don’t want to see,” she said shrilly.

“You think I like looking at it?”

She shook her head, disgusted. “You are making problems.”

“For who? Him? He’s dead. His mother’s dead. That’s never going to change. But me? I’m a policeman. It’s my job to make sure the person who did this doesn’t do it again, to anybody, ever. That means I have to ask you questions, again, and again, and again, until you talk to me.”

She began to laugh. “Okay, mister.”

“That’s funny?”

“You are funny,” she said. “You know what’s policeman? He comes to your house in middle of night. He bangs down door. He spits in your face. He breaks your bones,” she said, pointing to the divot in her jaw. “He puts you in cell. You don’t know what you did. You don’t know how long you will be. That is policeman,” she said. “You? You are nothing.”

She crossed her arms and nodded to herself.

Jacob said, “That’s not how it works here. That kind of law doesn’t last.”

Another customer was rapping, hollering through the glass.

The woman said, “I know nothing.”

Jacob picked up the photo of TJ. He tacked it to the corkboard, along with his business card, and left via the back.