Джонатан Келлерман - The Golem of Paris

Vanity and bullshit.

The man leaning against Jacob’s front door was muscular, the back of his thermal shirt straining as he fiddled with a phone. Its blue glow limned a black scalp shaved clean.

Nathaniel, one of Mallick’s, sometimes took the late-night surveillance shift on Jacob’s block, parked in a fake plumber’s van.

Nathaniel had never come to his door. No watcher had.

Transferring the bottle to his dominant left hand, Jacob stopped halfway up the steps and barked, with as much macho hostility as he could muster, “Can I help you?”

The man jerked and gasped and spun around, and Jacob found himself looking up at a familiar face: Nigel Bellamy, his father’s caretaker.

Terrified.

Jacob realized he was inches away, hefting the bottle like a weapon.

“Crap.” He lowered it. “I’m sorry, man. I didn’t realize it was you.”

“Who’d you think it was?” Nigel had his hand pressed to his chest and was breathing hoarsely and rapidly.

“I don’t know. I wasn’t thinking. I’m really sorry.” Jacob unlocked the door to the apartment, then ran back to the driveway to collect the other bottles.

In the interim, Nigel had sunk to the living room sofa, still huffing, massaging his sternum, rubbing a small gold cross. His lips were dry, his color worrisome.

“You can’t sneak up on a man like that,” he said. “I’m no kid.”

Jacob apologized again. The adrenaline was wearing off, and it disturbed him that his perception had gotten so out of whack, nearly leading him to clobber a good man. Nigel was as close to saintly as anyone Jacob knew. He’d been tending to Sam since Bina’s death—

Jacob caught himself. He made that mistake a lot.

Tending to Sam; leave it at that.

Since banishing his father from his life, Jacob had been out of contact with Nigel, as well, and he noted changes: the thickness was there in the trunk, but the arms had shrunk a degree or two, the crow’s-feet grown entrenched.

“You didn’t tell me you were coming,” Jacob said.

“That’s right, Yakov Meir,” Nigel said. “Blame the victim.”

Jacob went to the kitchen, snuck a quick bolt of liquor, filled a glass with water, and returned to the living room, hurrying to clean up the blizzard of crime scene photos and police reports.

“Long time no see,” he said.

“Your dad asked me to drop in.”

The phrasing was telling: not sent me but asked me. Sam never could get comfortable in the role of ward. The fact that Nigel’s salary was paid by a wealthy friend, Abe Teitelbaum, didn’t help matters. Abe took great pains to reframe his charity, employing Sam as the superintendent for one of his rental properties and calling Nigel Sam’s assistant. The act grew less and less convincing as Sam’s weakening eyesight demanded greater and greater maintenance.

Jacob wondered how bad it had gotten since they’d last talked.

He wanted to ask.

He kept his mouth shut.

Nigel said, “He’s been trying to reach you for a while.”

He finished his water, set it down, sat up straight and tall.

Jacob felt a nervous flutter. Could he be one of them, too? In his most paranoid moments, anyone over six feet tall fell under suspicion of working for Special Projects.

He’d have to suspect himself, then.

Where did it end?

Nigel said, “Would it kill you to talk to him?”

“That’s a lousy standard for decision-making.”

Nigel opened a palm. “‘Bear with one another and if anyone has a complaint against another, forgive each other; just as the Lord has forgiven you, so you also must forgive.’”

“Sounds New Testament.”

“Colossians.”

“Lucky me,” Jacob said. “Not my book.”

“Good advice is good advice, no matter who’s giving it.”

Jacob shrugged.

Nigel said, “You two got your differences, it’s not my business. But I do know—”

“Hang on a minute,” Jacob said.

“He’s suffering, and you know he’s had enough suffering in his life. That’s something you ought to be able to appreciate. He’s a good man, one of the finest I know. You get a little older, you realize how rare that is.”

Jacob pressed the heel of his hand to his forehead. “You have no idea, do you.”

“I told you, not my business.”

“What did he tell you happened? He must’ve told you something.”

“I asked why you haven’t come around, he said you won’t talk to him.”

“He didn’t tell you why.”

“No, and I didn’t ask.”

Jacob hated himself for what he was about to do. It had to be done, though.

“Every week,” he said, “you drive him to Alhambra. To a long-term care facility.”

“Wednesday.”

“You don’t go in with him.”

“I drop him off,” Nigel said. “Pick him up in a couple hours.”

“You’ve never been inside.”

Nigel shook his head.

“Who does he say he’s going to visit?”

“A friend.”

“What friend?”

“He never saw fit to mention it,” Nigel said. “It’s his business.”

“It’s my mother,” Jacob said.

Nigel seemed to short-circuit. His head jerked, his forehead clumped into wrinkles. “Your mother’s dead.”

“Not as of six o’clock yesterday, she wasn’t. I talked to her myself. In person.”

“... I don’t—”

“He buried a box,” Jacob said. He didn’t have the energy to raise his voice. “Then he lied about it. He lied to you. More important, he lied to me, for close to half my life.”

Nigel grimaced, felt for his cross, squeezing it as though to draw strength. “I know your father. He doesn’t do things without a reason.”

“Can you come up with one?”

“I haven’t had a chance to ask him.”

“Start there,” Jacob said. “Then you can feel free to lecture me.”

Nigel’s lips shook. He rose, stooping as he walked to the door. Turning the knob, he looked back at Jacob, then left without a word.

BROOKLYN, NEW YORK

APRIL 3, 1969

Barbara stops on the fifth-floor landing to remove her shoes, climbing the last flight on the balls of her feet. Outside her parents’ apartment she pauses again. The crack at the bottom of the door is dark, the silence beyond sleepy and settled. Above her, a fluorescent tube buzzes; insects hurl themselves against it in worship.

She slides her key into the lock, one ridge at a time.

Her father’s voice, in Czech, harsh: “You are late.”

Both her parents are up, occupying opposite ends of the sofa, like counterweights. Lights doused. Very clever. What in the world made her think she could fool them? For God’s sake, they survived the Holocaust.

Jozef says, “Sit.”

Barbara obeys, cursing her own stupidity. She got careless, telling them she had to study three, four, sometimes five nights a week. Or maybe Cindy sold her out, annoyed because she never gets to meet “the boyfriend,” fed up with Barbara’s excuses.

He’s shy... under the weather... it’s his birthday, he wants to spend it with me...

Dumb, dumb, dumb.

“Do you know the time?”

“About three-thirty,” she says in English.

He replies in Czech: “Three. Forty. Three.”

She hadn’t realized. Enjoying herself, she’d lost track of time.

“Why are you coming home so late?”

“I’m sorry.”

Jozef grunts. “I did not ask you to apologize. I asked why you are so late.”

“It took a while for the train to come.”

He switches on the floor lamp, causing her to flinch. He’s wearing his coveralls and cap, a bath towel beneath him to protect the sofa from grease. His name patch blackened: JOE. A blunt Americanism no one uses. Věra wears a prim dress, faultlessly smooth, as though she has ironed it to mark the occasion.