The Golem of Paris (16 page)

L
eaving his father’s apartment, Jacob felt as though he had been poured full of poison, then punctured all over and drained hollow.

At home he turned on the television, staying in front of it through Sunday and most of Monday, arising only to get a new bottle or to pee. Finally, to answer the doorbell.

A courier handed him a binder stamped with the logo of the A
2
agency.

You can’t grapple with it every waking moment.

You block it out, because you need to buy groceries.

Jacob tossed the binder on the couch and went to take a shower.

•   •   •

M
AYBE
A
LON
A
RT
ZI FELT GUILTY
, or maybe he was just a decent guy. Either way, he’d overdelivered: Jacob had asked for info on the half year before Marquessa’s death and gotten her entire booking history, along with a portfolio and several sets of headshots.

He began laying the material out on his living room carpet.

The first headshots were blurry and amateurish, probably
homemade. Marquessa perched on the edge of a park fountain in jeans, platform shoes, and a white tube top that contrasted brilliantly with her glowing brown shoulders.

She’d attached a résumé listing work experience at Burger King. Cashier.

Her pluck impressed Jacob, as did the conviction shown by the agency in taking a chance on her. While she was a nice-looking girl, L.A. was full unto sickness with physical beauty.

Her first pro gig was a shoot for
Ventura Blvd
magazine. It paid two hundred dollars, of which the agency took a twenty percent cut.

A hundred sixty take-home.

Better than seven bucks an hour for flipping burgers. And how validating, to get paid for being pretty—for being herself.

For a while, jobs came in dribs and drabs, never paying more than five hundred, typically far less. Then her luck changed. She landed a swimwear catalog, and more lucrative offers began rolling in. At her peak she’d been netting around a grand a week.

Good enough to move out of the house.

Some of the income stream came from photo shoots, but an increasingly sizable chunk came from what A
2
’s filing system referred to as “personal appearances”: charity galas, red carpets. She had served as ring card girl at a boxing match.

Mostly she worked trade show booths, repping ceiling fans, industrial lubricants, network servers, skin cream, high-efficiency washer-dryers. For interacting with attendees “in a friendly and informed manner,” she earned between thirty and fifty dollars an hour.

“Mood modeling” for VIP parties paid three times as much.

The dry language of the contracts was mute on what she did once the party ended.

Her final six months were comparatively jam-packed. It took Jacob several days to winnow the leads down. Remembering Farrah Duvall’s words—
all of a sudden, she’s got bank—
he homed in on elite jobs, ending up with four strong candidates.

Annual conference for financial managers.

Launch party for a “new-generation” fragrance.

Luxury car premiere.

Movie producer’s seventieth-birthday party.

He began with the perfume, finding plenty of PR-firm flackery archived on the Web. The brand name was SPF, which stood for “So Phreakin Fun.” The celebutard who had allegedly cooked it up claimed to be inspired by “corn dogs and suntan lotion—you know, everything that makes summer awesome.”

Jacob scrolled through images. A platoon of models in cleavagey orange satin cocktail dresses used oversized atomizers to spritz partygoers.

Marquessa stood near the end of the bar, the only black girl.

She seemed to be having the time of her life.

He poured himself a drink in her honor, then e-mailed the distributor, asking for the guest list. He doubted it would bear fruit, but it was a start.

The producer’s birthday party had warranted a smattering of gossip mag reportage. On a blog Jacob found mention of the A-listers in attendance: an actor couple, a rap star.

Caught canoodling! Hannah Hollowskull and Trent Numbnuts!

Referring back to the contracts, he saw that both gigs had been booked by Chiq Party Design and Catering.

He looked them up.

Defunct: your basic L.A. story.

Searching the state business directory, he came up with an expired LLC registered to a Marlee Watchorn, phone number and an address in Silver Lake.

Jacob called her. She was cheerful enough at first but turned bitter when he asked if she still had the guest list.

“I don’t have anything,” she said. “Roberto took it all.”

“Roberto being . . .”

“My ex-husband. Ex–business partner. Ex-you-name-it.”

“Do you think he might have held on to it?”

“I don’t think about him,” she said, “ever.”

“Can I get a current phone number for him?”

“Is he in trouble?”

“I wouldn’t assume that,” Jacob said.

“I’m not assuming,” she said. “I’m hoping.”

•   •   •

R
OBERTO NOW RAN
a party planning business of his own. He confirmed that the feeling was mutual.

“Under normal circumstances I wouldn’t release a guest list. To you or anyone. We cater to clients who cherish their privacy. However. Seeing as it’s Marlee who made the deal, and she’s the one responsible and who would suffer if that information should happen to get out, I would love to give it to you, and in fact I’m going to encourage you to share it with every single person you meet on the street. I’m out of the office for the rest of the week but I’ll e-mail it to you first thing Monday.”

“Thanks.”

“It’s my complete pleasure.”

Gathering intel on the other two events proved trickier. The financial managers’ conference was a massive, four-day affair attended by
representatives from scores of banks. He wrote to the organizer, hoping for a response while praying he wouldn’t need it.

That left the luxury car premiere, where he ran smack into the opposite problem.

No photos. No press releases. No blogs.

No coverage whatsoever.

The name on the contract, Seta Event Management, maintained a far slicker profile than the flaming mess that had been Marlee and Roberto. The home page drew itself in black and magenta curlicues, framing a rotating gallery of glittering stills. Lusty electronica slithered through the miniature speakers on Jacob’s computer.

He muted it, moused over the menu bar, clicked
CLIENT LIST
.

As Southern California’s leading event management and luxury lifestyle firm . . .

He scrolled down.

Some of Our Clients Have Included:

LVMH M
OËT
H
ENNESSY
• L
OUIS
V
UITTON
SE

R
OLEX

NBC

B
VLGARI

A
PPLE

V
AN
C
LEEF
& A
RPELS

Rarefied company for a girl from Watts.

According to the contract, Marquessa had worked an event for Gerhardt Technologie AG. They made high-performance sports cars, more akin to low-flying rocket ships than anything earthbound. A
video clip on their home page showed a blood-red blur screaming around a racetrack; Jacob had to watch it three times before he managed to spot the car. The company motto was
Geschwindigkeit—ohne Kompromisse
, which Google translated as
Speed—without compromise.

Anyone who could afford a Gerhardt probably didn’t have to do a lot of compromising. The base price was $1,345,000. “Options” kicked that up rapidly.

He called Seta Event Management. Predictably, they stonewalled him.

“All I’m asking for is an idea of who was invited,” he said. “You don’t have to give me names, just a general sense.”

“I can’t give that information out.”

“This is for a murder investigation.”

The woman sighed. “Like I’ve never heard that before.”

Click.

•   •   •

W
ITH LITTLE TO LOSE
, he wrote directly to Gerhardt. Then he had another idea. He went to the website for the LA
Times
.

The automotive columnist was named Neil Adler. Jacob e-mailed him asking for a phone interview and got up to take a leak. Thirty seconds later he ran out with his pants unbuckled, snatching his cell phone before it buzzed off the edge of his coffee table.

“Hello?”

“This is Neil.” Boyish, excitable voice.

“Hey. Thanks. Wow. That was fast.”

“You’re a cop.”

“Yeah. I—”

“Buy me dinner.”

“Pardon?”

“Kings Road Café, twenty minutes. What do you drive?”

“An Accord,” Jacob said.

“What year?”

“Two thousand two.”

“Make it thirty minutes, then,” Adler said, and hung up.

T
he restaurant was dark, crowded with endomorphs in skinny jeans. Among them, Adler constituted a different species: motorhead meets egghead. He took off a Bugatti baseball cap to reveal a shaven scalp; a wide jaw widened out to a muscular neck, widened further to massive shoulders, his chest busting out of a blue sport shirt with a Porsche logo on the breast pocket. He adjusted tiny rimless eyeglasses, fiddled with a bow tie as he contemplated the menu for three and a half seconds.

“Protein Power,” he said. “Over easy. Side of sausage. Triple espresso.”

The waitress looked at Jacob.

“I’m good, thanks.”

“You’re paying,” Adler confirmed.

“I said I would.”

“Okay.” The journalist reached into a battered messenger bag (
LEXUS
) and took out a stack of glossy Gerhardt pamphlets. “Which model?”

“Eh—it came out in 2004, so—”

“The Falke S,” Adler said, and he began shuffling through the
pile for the correct document. Even before he’d found it, he was rattling off stats: 9.0 liter W16 engine (pointing to the cap on the table: “that’s one liter bigger than the Veyron”), five turbochargers, 1,100 horsepower at 8,300 RPM with a redline at 8,500, giving you a zero-to-60 of 2.34 seconds and a top speed of 253 MPH.

“That’s assuming you wouldn’t achieve liftoff or have your DNA recombine, so officially they limit it to two twenty-five.”

“Awesome,” Jacob said. “What I wanted to ask you was—”

“Pre-preg carbon fiber Kevlar hybrid body, shaving a solid five kilos off the Model G, which is like performing lipo on an Ethiopian child. They had to use solid-state electronics throughout because during the initial testing it shook so fucking much the soldering broke apart. I sat in one, once. I thought I was going to come.”

“Did you?” Jacob said.

“Custom boar-skin interior,” Adler said. “Hand-stitched. I restrained myself.”

Jacob asked about the premiere event. Adler recalled it without hesitation:

“I wasn’t invited.”

Jacob’s heart sank.

Adler went on, cheerily peeved. “Assholes. I’m free publicity. I’m not ashamed to admit it. That’s why I’m there. They allow me to live out a fantasy and I give them a write-up. Everybody wins. Gerhardt, they make a great car, but they’re a bunch of pricks. I think they wanted to up the cachet factor by being hush-hush.”

“That’s not standard practice.”

“Hell no. Most manufacturers will rent out the Petersen, bring in a band, girls, food, champagne. Not this time. I had to drive way the hell out to an industrial park in East L.A. Unmarked building, security.”

“You weren’t invited and you went anyway,” Jacob said.

“Crissake, I’m still a reporter. I got a master’s from USC Journalism. First time in my career I can actually get a
scoop
. There was chatter on the message boards about when and where it was going to go down, so I took my chances.”

“Did you get in?”

“They wouldn’t even give me a T-shirt. Buncha Nazis.”

Jacob decided that the dinner comp wasn’t that unreasonable a request after all: the guy had gotten used to not paying.

Adler was shaking his head. “It was gonna be my Pulitzer moment.”

The waitress brought his espresso. He threw it back and asked for another.

“Anyway,” he said, “I found the whole thing incredibly obnoxious. You buy a million-dollar car, that’s cachet aplenty, stop pussying around.”

“Who’s the clientele for something like that?”

“The Gulfstream–megayacht–private island crowd. Toss in a few more billion for petty cash. There’s this Saudi who has four hundred cars, every single one has a gold-plated bidet.”

Jacob said, “Not for use while driving.”

Adler laughed. “Nobody
drives
these things. The point is to own a toy nobody else has and then say, ‘Look at me, I don’t give a shit.’ The Falke S, they made eighty, to celebrate old man Gerhardt’s eightieth birthday. Snapped up in preproduction.”

“What’s the point of the party, if not to promote?”

“Mutual congratulation,” Adler said. Contemplatively: “It’s a circle jerk, really.”

“Where’re the cars going?”

“A lot of them end up in the Middle East. Wouldn’t surprise me
if bidet guy was there that night. Or one of his cousins. China, once upon a time, although they don’t have the cash for it these days. Here in the States? Anywhere there’s that level of dough—Beverly Hills, New York, Greenwich, Florida. And Russians. Oh my God, Russians can’t get enough of that shit. They armor-plate them, which if you ask me is a fucking travesty.”

“The company’s based in Stuttgart,” Jacob said. “Why have the party here?”

“There were rumors about them building a more affordable ‘green’ car—think seven-figure plug-in. They changed their mind later, but it was a live topic back then, so they timed the party to coincide with the L.A. Auto Show. Everyone who counts was in town.”

Jacob pictured it: dozens of alpha males, paddling in a tank of pure testosterone.

“Tell me about the women at these events,” he said.

“There are no women.”

“You said—”

“I said
girls
. What do you want to know?”

“They hang out and talk to the buyers.”

“Sure.”

“Go home with them?”

Adler pitched forward, alert. “That’s who got killed? One of the honeys?”

“Can’t get into that.”

“I’m still looking for that scoop.”

“I’ll do my best. You think you’d be able to find out who owns a Falke S?”

“Doubtful. I’ll give it a shot, though. And you’d only be talking original buyers, right? Which could get complicated. Stuff at that level changes hands all the time.”

“Where?”

“Sometimes at auction. I read the catalogs from Gooding and RM regularly and can’t remember one coming up. So I’d have to say private sales. No record. No taxes.”

“Once the car was registered, they’d have to pay—”

“No no no no. You don’t get it. Why spend the extra hundred fifty bucks to register something that never leaves your private museum?”

Dinner arrived: a grilled chicken breast, two quivering eggs, a scoop of cottage cheese, the sausage on a separate plate.

Jacob said, “So you’ll try to find out? About the buyers.”

“Why the hell not? Nice to apply my talents to a mission of substance.” Adler stabbed a sausage, grinning as he chewed. “Eat the rich, right?”

•   •   •

A
ROUND TWO A
.
M
., Jacob felt his eyes drying out and decided to call it quits. He’d thrown as much as he could at the wall; now it was a matter of seeing what stuck.

He opened a kitchen cabinet, alarmed to discover himself fresh out of liquor.

He checked the recycling bin. Four empties.

How long since you went to a meeting?

Talked to your sponsor?

He put on sneakers and a lightweight jacket.

Outside he paused to admire the insects mobbing the street lamp.

“Evening, ladies.”

As he walked, he thought about Marquessa, a human
objet
, circled by men unaccustomed to hearing
no
. Her brief life a line that shot up optimistically, only to plummet to zero.

There were gaps, too. TJ the biggest of all.

Why the boy?

I can’t imagine anyone who’d want to hurt that woman.

Jorge Alvarez had said that in an offhand way. Turning the corner onto Airdrome, it occurred to Jacob that the words might contain a deeper truth.

Maybe nobody wanted to hurt the woman.

So far, he’d understood Marquessa as the target, TJ as collateral damage.

The opposite was equally possible.

In a certain way, it made more sense. Anyone who’d slaughter a child, mutilate him, and prop him across from his mother—that wasn’t the tantrum of a guy denied game, even if that guy was an egomaniac. Jacob had studied enough homicides to recognize the patience underscoring the depravity, the disquieting overlap of rage and devotion.

He was nearing 7-Eleven when a loud report broke his train of thought, the telltale skinny pop of a Saturday night special.

He took off toward Robertson in a sprint.