Free The Golem of Paris by Jonathan Kellerman, Jesse Kellerman Page A

vitals normal, not a peep in the last twenty-four hours.
    He’d never expected to feel relieved to hear that Bina was nonresponsive.
    “Can you please tell her I’ll swing by tomorrow?”
    “Sure.”
    “And if she does anything unusual, you’ll let me know?”
    “Unusual like what?”
    He hesitated. “I’ll be by tomorrow.”
    For form’s sake, he checked the fridge. One-third of a six-pack. He pretended to feel disappointed in himself, then set out for his daily dose of nitrates.
    The guy working the 7-Eleven register was the owner’s son, a tubby Asian-American named Henry who greeted Jacob, as always, with a listless fist-bump.
    “What’s the good word?” Jacob asked.
    “Not much,” Henry said. He seemed distracted.
    Jacob let him be. He knew about tough days; he was having one.
    He got his hot dogs, piled on toppings, couple bottles of Beam to wash it down.
    Usually Henry cracked wise about Jacob’s drinking, knowing it wouldn’t make a difference: an addict is an addict. Tonight he rang up the bourbon without comment.
    “D’you see that car?” he asked.
    “Which one?”
    “Green Nissan. There.”
    A patchy sedan, black in shadow, sat parked along Airdrome on the far side of Robertson.
    “It’s been there for two hours,” Henry said.
    “Maybe he’s picking up someone at the rec center.”
    “It was here yesterday, too.”
    “Sitting there, doing nothing?”
    Henry nodded.
    Jacob squinted, unable to make out the driver. “Did you call the cops?”
    “They said no law against parking.”
    Jacob used his cell to zoom in and snap a picture of the license plate. It came out too blurry to read, the driver’s face obscured.
    He left Henry his card. “Anything more, call me right away. Don’t be shy.”
    The clerk nodded skeptically. “Thanks.”
    Jacob took his dinner and his clanking plastic bag of booze and exited the convenience store. Crossing Robertson, he saw that the car was indeed dark green, a Mazda rather than a Nissan. The driver hunched behind tinted windows and a hoodie.
    Jacob strolled by, eating a dog, noting the shape of a second person in the backseat. He memorized the tag number, jotting it down once he’d rounded onto Wooster.
    Henry was right. A parked car, no matter how sketchy, would elicit no serious response. Even in this relatively quiet stretch of West L.A., the cops had more pressing matters to deal with. All the same, Jacob felt on edge as he walked home.
    His tension ratcheted up fast at a hulking, dark shape lurking on the landing outside his apartment door.
    He set his bags down in the driveway, gripping a bottle of Beam by its stubby neck and quietly mounting the steps.
    The bulb on the landing had been dead since April. Again and again Jacob had mentioned it to his landlord and gotten the same response:
right away
. He could’ve dealt with it himself, but the issue had hardened to a matter of principle.
    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 stoppedhalfway 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