The Golem of Hollywood by Jonathan Kellerman

Author:Jonathan Kellerman
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin Publishing Group
Published: 2016-05-10T12:05:28+00:00

CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

Dlouhá veered southward to Old Town Square, silent but for the purr of pigeons foraging between the legs of café tables.

Jan laid a hand on a park bench, one of many ringing a sprawling bronze monument.

“The girl was here,” he said. “She was crying, like very upset. She says there is a man, he tried to rape me outside the synagogue. The patrolman calls for the ambulance to take her to hospital, then he goes to look for the man. Follow me, please.”

They walked over damp cobblestones and onto , toward Josefov.

Jacob should’ve known better than to trust his father’s guidebook. The former Jewish quarter was no longer run-down, but leafy and posh. Designer clothing draped mannequins posed behind boutique windows. A man in a chef’s jacket emerged from a basement door to tip a bucket of sudsy water into the gutter.

Jan said, “The policie cannot investigate murder, they must call us. Usually there are several detectives, crime technics. But when I came, I didn’t find this, only one patrolman. Very soon a technic I don’t know arrived to collect the remains.”

“Was he tall, too?”

Jan had to think. “. . . yes. I didn’t pay attention to this. I was not investigating him, I was investigating the scene. This is what you experienced?”

“Basically.”

“The technic was making me crazy, because I wanted to look carefully, and he says, ‘Hurry, please, we must go quickly.’ I thought he wants to clean up before the tourists arrived.”

He paused his account to snap a picture of a metallic gold Ferrari with Russian plates.

“Lenka wouldn’t approve,” Jacob said.

“She is too angry. I told her, this time is over.”

“Not for her.”

“This is because she was not there. I told her, you can’t be angry, you need to be practical. It’s the same with the police. These guys who were working for—do you know what is ehs-teh-beh?”

Jacob shook his head.

“Státní . Czechoslovak secret police. Most of them, they left after the Revolution. Some were very bad guys, okay, it’s true. But some of them, we said, ‘Stay,’ because they have experience, knowledge.”

“You don’t find that uncomfortable? Working with them?”

Jan shrugged. “The policeman, he’s the hand of the law. Before, our laws were bad, so . . .” He mimed slapping a face. “Now, we have good laws. So it’s okay. Okay, we are here.”

Jacob recognized the shape of the Alt-Neu Shul from the grainy black-and-white guidebook photograph. In real life, it was waist down the color of parchment, its upper half layered in brown, scabby brick, as though the orange roof tiles had bled downhill and clotted. Ten steps led to a cobbled area inset with a central drain, given onto by an embossed metal door.

Trash cans were stacked nearby: this was the service entrance. A cloudy stained-glass rosette cut into the building’s exterior wall revealed its considerable thickness.

A stack of metal rungs rose to a smaller wooden door, three stories up.

Weighty with soot, sunken into the earth, the entire structure seemed nevertheless to hover, its contours uncertain.

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