The Golem of Paris

Chapter fifty-one

The French name for intensive care unit was service de réanimation, which Jacob found good for a cheap laugh.

In addition to the lacerations on his legs, he had a grade-three concussion and a perforated right eardrum. His skull was an unholy gob of pain. The doctor declared him ineligible to leave the hospital for at least two weeks, possibly three. Flying was out of the question.

That was fine. He wasn’t going anywhere. Vallot, standing at the bedside, sounded sheepish as he asked Jacob to remain in Paris until they’d sorted everything out.

Jacob understood: a crooked dead cop was still a dead cop, and he was last man standing.

The account he provided Vallot was literally true — if inadequate.

Pelletier had killed Tremsin.

Molchanov had intervened and killed Pelletier.

Though hurt, Jacob had managed to escape in the chaos and phone for help.

He stressed certain details — the needle in Pelletier’s bracelet — and hoped that the forensic mess would sufficiently plug the gaps.

Listening to himself talk, he wasn’t very convinced.

Vallot patted him on the shoulder and said he’d come back later.

“The fob?” Jacob said. “Did you get prints off it?”

Vallot smiled sadly. “I can’t discuss.”

Jacob smiled back and said he understood. Then he asked to borrow Vallot’s phone: Molchanov had thrown Jacob’s in the pool.

“I need to get in touch with my boss.”

Vallot went outside to give him privacy. Jacob kept the conversation short, relaying a heavily abridged version of the story.

Mike Mallick said, “I’ll be there as soon as I can.”

The following day, Vallot returned with a detective named Sibony and a laptop. They’d pulled the mansion’s security system footage and had been going through it for hours. The movements of people within and without squared with Jacob’s account.

There were, however, no cameras inside the spa, making it impossible to verify the final, crucial minutes. One thing in particular they couldn’t puzzle out.

They showed Jacob a time-stamped clip, soundless but in sharp, glorious color.

Molchanov, accompanied by two guards, riding up in the elevator.

A few minutes later, the guards rode back down.

Molchanov hadn’t left via the elevator.

He hadn’t left via the stairs.

The detectives had recovered his greatcoat, sopping wet.

But where was he?

Jacob said, “I don’t know.”

An uncomfortable silence.

Sibony commandeered the laptop and opened up a second clip.

An agitated Paul Schott paced in a cramped room, held at bay by a horde of guards.

“Fuck,” Jacob said.

He now knew what had drawn Molchanov in such a hurry; what had called the lone remaining guard off the floor. It was all hands to contain Schott, who snarled and stomped like an enraged steer, flushed, shaking, heedless of the forest of machine guns waving at him. Nude except for a pair of socks because they had strip-searched him.

Very brave.

Also very stupid.

Schott ran at them.

For a man of his size, he moved incredibly quickly — so fast, in fact, that none of the guards got a shot off. They piled on him instead, bodies merging to become a single frenzied ball of aggression, all fists and feet and errant muzzle flashes. Knowing the ending, Jacob found it hard to watch. At one point, Schott appeared to get the upper hand. He grabbed a weapon and took one of the guards as a human shield. He was yelling, attempting to muscle his way forward. He appeared to be making progress. The other men began to back off.

Jacob wanted to look away.

Dmitri Molchanov launched into the frame, firing without hesitation, emptying a clip through the guard and into Schott.

A bright flare bleached the screen, wrecking the camera’s focus before everything went black.

Vallot paused the video and opened a new window, showing a photo of the room, evidently taken later.

A bluish haze dusted on the walls.

Jacob sagged, sick with pride and loss.

The French detectives waited for his response.

What could he say?

Test the dust? Run it for DNA? Compare it to the stuff upstairs?

He let the silence drag.

Sibony sounded disturbed to admit that they’d been unable to locate his friend.

They weren’t finished searching the house, Vallot added.

Mallick arrived that afternoon. The bags under his eyes were larger than ever. He shut the door, dragged over a chair, fell into it, and said, “Talk.”

Jacob complied, editing out his night over Paris with Mai, reducing her role in the spa to a cameo.

The Commander didn’t react until Jacob described the video of Schott’s final moments. Then his cheek twitched. “They have it on tape?”

“It’s inconclusive,” Jacob said. “They’re operating under the assumption that his body was moved somewhere.”

Mallick stared at him.

“I’m sorry, sir.”

“For what part, precisely?”

“For what happened to Paul, sir. Truly sorry.”

If Jacob had ever expected a show of emotion, it was then. But Mallick just gave a curt nod. “Well,” he said. “This is a lot to unfuck. Even for us.”

Jacob said nothing.

Mallick said, “How close did you get to her?”

“Not close.”

“I’m not sure I believe you.”

“I don’t know what to tell you, sir.”

“The truth would be my preference.”

Jacob said, “Does Moscow have its own branch of Special Projects?”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Molchanov was trying to get to Mai. Same as you.”

“Not the same,” Mallick said. “Not at all.”

“Then who was he?”

Mallick shook his head. “He isn’t the main problem.”

“Not to argue, sir, but he was a hell of a problem for me.”

“You’re missing the big picture,” Mallick said. “He’s one individual. What matters to me, Detective — and it should matter to you, too — is that there are others like him out there, waiting for their chance. Looking for her. Hunting her.”

Pale fingers clutched the bedrail. “Do you understand now, why it’s so urgent that we get her under control? If we don’t, someone else will. Believe me when I say you don’t want that.”

Jacob said, “How many others?”

The Commander’s brief look of bewilderment turned to dismay. “I don’t know. Frankly, I don’t even want to think about it. However many there were before, you can bet there’s going to be a lot more now, given how this went down. There’s no possible way I can stop the flow of information. With Pernath, we had corpses. But this... How many people were in that house? Fifty? A hundred?”

“They didn’t see anything,” Jacob said.

“At least a few of them did,” Mallick said. “They saw what happened to Paul. Forget them. A video? I don’t want to begin to think about it.”

His long legs shifted restlessly. “I’m not designed to operate in today’s world. None of us are. Media. YouTube... We’re forever scrambling to play catch-up.”

Jacob said, “Adapt or die.”

A hollow laugh. “The Internet is full of noise,” Mallick said. “Nobody believes anything anymore. That’s what I tell myself. But who can say?”

He looked at Jacob. “Now you know what keeps me up at night.”

“If it does get out,” Jacob said, “they’ll be hunting for me, too.”

Mallick said, “I think that’s a fair assumption.”

Silence.

“This is why we need to trust each other,” Mallick said.

The policeman’s promise: help me help you.

“I appreciate the offer, sir.”

“That doesn’t sound like yes.”

“I need to think about it.”

“What’s there to think about?”

“It’s a limited sample size,” Jacob said. “But when it comes to keeping me safe, sir, your track record sucks balls.”

A beat.

“Well, Lev,” Mallick said. “I appreciate the candor.”

The two of them sat for a while, a mutually respectful stalemate. A nurse came in to take Jacob’s vitals. When she’d gone, Mallick stood up.

“I’ll need the knife back,” he said.

“What knife, sir?”

Mallick smiled faintly. “Have it your way.”

“Can I ask a favor, sir?”

“I don’t need to define ‘chutzpah’ for you, do I, Lev?”

“Call my father. Tell him I’m all right.”

Mallick nodded. “I’m at the Bristol for a couple of days. Room six thirteen if you need me. Otherwise someone will be in touch as soon as feasible.”

“I appreciate it, sir.”

Mallick said, “See you on the other side, Detective.”

Jacob paged the nurse, asking her to check if his tall friend was still on the floor.

She came back reporting that he’d signed out.

Jacob thanked her, and she smiled and left, shutting the door quietly.

He counted to thirty, peeled back the blanket, and hobbled to the bureau.

In the bottom drawer was a plastic hospital bag containing his crusty, bloody socks and soiled shoes — the only clothing salvageable after the ER staff cut his shirt and pants to ribbons.

He pulled the sock out of the left shoe and fished out the two items he had taken from Tremsin’s house, smuggled out in one of those crusty, bloody socks.

Tremsin’s ring. The potter’s knife.

Jacob set the ring on the bureau.

Taking care not to tangle or yank his lines, knelt down, bending the blade of the knife against the linoleum.

The metal was thin but surprisingly tough. He grunted, his blood pressure monitor letting out a concerned bleep.

Jacob waited for it to level off, then resumed bending, bringing the blade to a ninety-degree angle before it snapped free of the handle and shot off like shrapnel, skittering under the bed.

He retrieved it and deposited it in the biohazard bin. The wooden knife handle he placed in the trash. He dropped the ring in the sock, rolled the sock up, stuffed it in the shoe. He rolled the shoes in the bag and put the bag back in the bottom drawer.

His heart rate monitor was alarming again.

He got into bed and groped around for the morphine button. He pushed it and earned an instant frisson of don’t care. Rough edges smoothed and he thought about Divya Das, back in L.A., wondering if he would get to sleep with her again.

He pushed the button again. Now he really didn’t care. He was the happiest, most carefree motherfucker in Paris.

He thought about Mai, frail and reduced, but sheltering, growing strong again.

He thought about his father. He wasn’t ready to forgive, but he wanted to be ready, he wanted to get there, and to encourage himself, he pushed the button a third time.

The machine beeped. It wouldn’t give him any more. He didn’t mind. He didn’t feel let down. The machine cared about him, and how nice to be cared about. He pushed the button anyway, and listened to the machine beep its refusal, and he thought about his mother, and he kept pushing the button, because it felt so satisfying to make a simple request, a simple chemical request. Even if the answer was no, there was reward in the asking. In some sense the asking was the reward, and so he kept pushing the button, long after the curtain had come down on consciousness and his head ran amok with images strung along the line that separated dreams from nightmares, long after the nurse had returned to find out what the racket was about.