Джонатан Келлерман - The Golem of Hollywood

For his part, his father gave no indication of being burdened. Jacob reckoned that had to be true. If you thought you were a lamed-vavnik , you couldn’t be a lamed-vavnik . The reason for that went beyond a lack of the requisite humility. A lamed-vavnik could never recognize the immensity of his obligation, because the instant he did, the crush of worldly sorrow he was required to bear would paralyze him.

Jacob glanced back at the girl, her pigtails streaming. “Who was that, anyway?”

“How should I know? I’m blind.”

They turned down Airdrome street.

Jacob said, “Do you remember we used to have our Sunday morning study sessions?”

“Certainly I remember,” Sam said.

“I have no idea what you were thinking, exposing me to some of that stuff.”

“What did I expose you to?”

“You taught me about capital punishment when I was six.”

“In a purely legalistic sense.”

“I’m not sure a first grader can reliably make that distinction.”

“Is this where you tell me how I’ve ruined your life?”

“You haven’t ruined my life,” Jacob said. “I take sole credit for that.”

At Robertson Boulevard, the orange and green 7-Eleven sign loomed in the twilight, firing up Jacob’s cravings for bourbon and nitrates.

“Can we turn around?” he asked. “It’s too noisy here.”

“Of course. Are you getting tired?”

“Another couple blocks,” Jacob said.

They walked east.

“Abba? Can I ask you something else?”

Sam nodded.

“Did you know Ema was sick when you married her?”

Sam said nothing.

“I’m sorry,” Jacob said. “You don’t have to answer that.”

“It’s all right. I’m not angry. I’m thinking about it, because I want to say it right.”

They walked in silence a moment.

“Let’s consider the question from another perspective. If I could go back, would I do it again? And the answer to that is, yes, without a doubt.”

“Even knowing what happened to her?”

“You marry someone for who they are, not who they could become.”

In the silence, Jacob’s crutches scraped the pavement.

You can live inside your experiences or outside of them.

He was having trouble choosing.

He was having trouble deciding if that was an authentic choice, or an illusion.

“I worry that it’s going to happen to me,” he said. “I worry that it’s happening already.”

“You’re a different person, Jacob.”

“That doesn’t make me exempt.”

“No. It doesn’t.”

“So what makes you so sure?”

“Because I know you,” Sam said. “And I know what you’re made of.”

It had begun to get dark.

Jacob said, “I was thinking, maybe, we could try it again sometime, learning together.”

“What did you have in mind?”

“I don’t know. Pick something interesting. I’m sure as soon as I get back they’re going to slam me with a bunch of busywork, so, I can’t promise my attendance will be perfect. But I’m up for it if you are.”

“I’d like that,” Sam said. “Very much.”

At La Cienega, traffic reared up. They retreated westward. It took them twenty minutes to make it back to the house. Sam didn’t seem too put out; for the moment, at least, they’d found a mutually agreeable pace.

It felt wrong to tell Phil Ludwig over the phone. On a Sunday morning, Nigel picked Jacob up and they drove down to San Diego, where they found the good D crouched in his front yard, optimistically installing geraniums beneath the inland heat.

Ludwig stood, blinking sweat out of his eyes. “This is either gonna be a real great day or a real fucking bad one.”

Over lemonade, Jacob recapped the events and the evidence, lapsing into generalities in describing Richard Pernath’s final moments. Ludwig listened stonily. In his curt verdict — “Good” — Jacob saw an honorable effort to conceal disappointment. His success made Ludwig’s failure official.

“I haven’t talked to any of the families yet. I was hoping you’d be able to help me out with that. Not the Steins. Them, I’d like to speak to myself.”

Ludwig said, “Let me think about it.” Then, perking up, he said, “I got something for you, too. When you e-mailed, it reminded me I never gave you an answer about that bug.”

“Don’t worry about it.”

“Fuck don’t worry about it. I was up half the night. You’re gonna pretend to be interested.”

Out in the garage, Ludwig cleared the tabletop of the work in progress, a pristine tiger moth mounted on a bright white mat. He took down a crumbling, acid-ravaged reference book.

“I forgot I even had this,” he said, stroking the warped cover, red cloth stamped in black.

“I picked it up years ago, at a library sale. I don’t think I bothered checking it before cause it’s Old World species.”

He had bookmarked the entry with a color printout of one of Jacob’s photos. He aligned it with a pen-and-ink illustration of Nicrophorus bohemicus , the Bohemian burying beetle.

Jacob crowded the table to read.

Found along the riverbanks of central and eastern Europe, N. bohemicus , like other burying beetles, displayed a behavior unusual in the insect world: mates remained together to rear their young. In the Bohemian, the tendency was pronounced, with couples pairing for life.

“Here’s the thing,” Ludwig said. “This book’s from 1909. I looked online for a color photo and Wikipedia comes back that the species went extinct in the mid-1920s.”

Jacob continued to stare at the images — to his eyes, identical creatures.

“You’ve got to remember,” Ludwig said, “insects, it’s hard to say that definitively. They’re small, they live underground, and most people see em and just want to smash em. There’s this beetle from the Mediterranean nobody’s seen in a hundred years, and last year it turned up in the south of England. So, it happens. My thought was we pass this along to my friend. If he agrees, maybe then we go to one of the journals.”

“Go for it,” said Jacob. “No need to include me.”

Ludwig frowned. “They’ll want to know who’s making the claim.”

“Tell them you took the picture yourself.”

“I shouldn’t do that.”

“You’re the one figured it out,” Jacob said. “I never would’ve known.”

After mulling over whether there was condescension in this offer, Ludwig nodded. “Fair enough. You’re sure?”

“Couldn’t be surer.”

The Steins welcomed him at their mansion. Jacob was concerned they would react badly to the news that the men who had murdered their daughter would never face trial. Rhoda sprang up and ran from the room, and Eddie tottered toward Jacob with his hands up. Jacob braced to block an uppercut, but Eddie wrapped him in a bear hug, and Rhoda returned carrying a bottle of champagne and three flutes.

“You see?” Eddie told her, shaking him. “I said all along he wasn’t such a schmuck.”

Buying gifts for Sam, a man with zero material lust, had never been easy, and it had gotten more challenging as Jacob grew up and realized that his father never wore ties. To thank him for the extended stay, Jacob settled on making him a Sabbath meal, the last before he returned to work.

Making his way through a slice of store-bought chocolate cake, Sam said, “Delicious.”

“Thanks, Abba.”

“I’m sure you’re ready to be back in your own bed. Don’t be a stranger, though.”

“I can’t,” Jacob said. “Believe me, I’ve tried.”

When he got home, the curtain installer’s van was there; the same man sat behind the wheel, reading.