THE GOLEM

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A recent wave of anti-Semitic violence in New York resulted in one of the most frightening series of murders in the city’s history. And I was there to cover it.

Allow me to introduce myself. Name’s Carl Kolchak. I’m a reporter, formerly with the Chicago office of the Independent News Service. During my time in the Windy City, I wanted nothing more than to move to New York. But when I finally got here, it wasn’t under the best of circumstances. Following my in-depth investigation of a series of murders at the Merrymount Archives, Lieutenant Irene Lamont of the Chicago P.D. had a talk with my higher-ups, who transferred me to the Big Apple.

So I’ve been here for a few years now, the last two with Tony Vincenzo, my old editor from Chicago (and Seattle and Las Vegas before that). In this age of corporate downsizing, INS offered Tony a choice—early retirement or a transfer to Manhattan. He chose the latter option, somehow forgetting that I, too, was in New York.

Our reunion was a tearful one. Well, it was Vincenzo who cried.



July 20th, 9:30 p.m. Having put in a long day at work, Attorney Sarah Feinstein of Brooklyn Heights turned in early but was soon awakened by the front doorbell. She did not get out of bed, assuming that her husband Morris would answer it. But when he didn’t, the bell rang again. Wondering who it could be, Mrs. Feinstein slipped on her bathrobe and opened the door. No one was there, but whoever rang the Feinsteins’ bell had left a gruesome calling card.

I was at the office and had just handed in my latest assignment to Vincenzo. Moments later, he bellowed my name, causing Leslie, our new intern, to jump in her chair and gasp. I made my way to Tony’s office or, as I called it, the Lion’s Den.

"What’s up, chief?"

"What the hell is this?"

"The TV listings."

"Is it now? Does this sound like any TV listing you’ve ever read? Quote: ‘Rather than waste another evening of your worthless life rotting your brain in front of the television, why not go to the library, check out a book, and read it?’" Vincenzo crumpled up the article. "I’m already in a bad mood because we’re short-handed while Brenda’s on vacation. All I asked you to do in her absence was to help out with the TV listings. But would you do even that much for me? No. You’re pushing it, Kolchak!"

"Sorry, dad."

"Now get your ass back out there and write the TV listings correctly!"

I left his office toot suite, just as Tony’s phone rang. As I returned to my desk, Leslie asked, "Why do you always annoy Mr. Vincenzo?"

"Kid, Tony and I go back a long way. His day isn’t complete unless he yells at me. But he can’t just do it at random. He needs what he considers a legitimate reason."

Leslie grinned. "And you’re always happy to give him one, right?"

"Now you’re catching on."

"Kolchak!"

"I’m working on it!"

"Forget the TV listings. I need you on something else."

I clicked my heels. "A reprieve!"

In Tony’s office, I again asked what was up.

"I need you in Brooklyn Heights. There’s been a murder."

"Is that all?"

"Is that all? Carl, a human being was just killed!"

"We’re in New York, Tony. What’s another murder?"

"This guy was nailed to a cross."

I retrieved my jaw from the floor.



When I got to the Feinstein residence, EMTs were carting the victim away on a stretcher. At my request, they let me lift the sheet. The deceased was naked, had nail holes in his ankles and wrists, and a thick slab of electrical tape was affixed to his mouth. I snapped some photos of the mutilated corpse and proceeded up the front walk.

The first thing I noticed was a series of two-by-fours on the front lawn. They had been fastened together into a makeshift cross, which was covered with blood, as was the surrounding grass. An hysterical Sarah Feinstein sat on the front porch while two police officers tried to calm her down enough to give her statement.

A young cop approached me. "Excuse me, who are you?"

"Press." I showed him my I.D. card. "So, what happened?"

"See that cross over there? Somebody nailed Attorney Feinstein to it! Poor guy bled to death."

I shook my head. "Just when you think you’ve seen everything.... Any idea who did it?"

"We found this around his neck." The officer showed me a hand-printed sign that read, JEWS, YOUR DAY IS COMING!

"White supremacists?"

"Safe bet."

"So, who was this Attorney Feinstein, anyway?"

"Civil rights lawyer, full name Morris Feinstein. Big on fighting for immigrants’ rights, that sort of thing. Recently won a sizable judgment for a high school teacher in the Bronx who was fired for being a lesbian. Also started a group called HateWatch that’s been helping us monitor white supremacist and militia groups in the city. Not hard to see why a bunch of racist lunatics might want him dead."

"But nailing him to a cross?"

"Pretty fuckin’ brutal, I’ll grant you. But they used to castrate black men for looking at white women."

"Yeah," I muttered. "My generation calls it the Good Old Days."



I had trouble sleeping that night. The next morning, I dragged my tired ass into the INS and gave Tony my story. I stayed in his office as he read it.

"This is very good, Carl. But did you have to inject your personal opinion?"

"What personal opinion?"

"’Last night’s grisly murder in Brooklyn Heights’.... Come on, Carl. You’ve been doing this long enough to know that a news story has to be objective."

"It’s hard to be objective about what I saw last night! It was right up there with the maternity ward full of mangled babies that I covered last year. What the hell has this world come to, anyway?"

Vincenzo regarded me. "You’re really shaken up over this, aren’t you?"

"I’d be worried if I weren’t! Maybe I ought to take some of that vacation time I’ve got coming."

"Good idea, Carl. But can it wait until Brenda gets back?"

"Sure, Tony. So, what’s on the agenda for today?"

He said nothing.

"Well?"

"I’m sorry to spring this on you...."

"Come on, I’m a grown-up. What do you have for me?"

"Staten Island. Temple Beth Shalom was burned down this morning."

"Arson?"

"Possibly."

"Any connection with last night’s murder?"

"That’s for you to tell me, Carl. I had Dickerson do the preliminaries, but I’d like you to handle the rest."

"Does it have to be me?"

"You’re the best I’ve got."

I chuckled. "Boy, you really are in deep shit, aren’t you?"

I put on my hat and headed for Dickerson’s desk. He looked at me resentfully and forked over what he had.

"Dunno why the hell Tony won’t just keep me on it."

"He knows how busy your schedule is. After all, you’ve got a full day of drinking ahead of you."

"Ahh, blow me, Kolchak!"

Rather than accept Dickerson’s tempting offer, I drove to Staten Island. When I arrived, the temple, or what was left of it, was still smoldering. I pulled out my camera and snapped pictures of the aftermath. (Dickerson, despite being on call the night before, had gotten drunk and arrived at the locus so hung over that he forgot his camera. Precluding enrollment in a twelve-step program, Dickerson was well on his way to replacing me as the office fuck-up.)

Perched on the front lawn were the remnants of what a fireman told me had been a flaming cross. I also noticed that several swastikas had been painted on the sidewalk that led up to the temple, along with the now-familiar slogan, JEWS, YOUR DAY IS COMING! Luckily, the temple was empty and no one died in the blaze.



July 21st, noontime. Rabbis Evelyn Weintraub and Isaac Aronson were engaged in a heated discussion about how to handle the new outbreak of anti-Semitic violence in their town. When Aronson offered his suggestion, Rabbi Weintraub’s face became an ashen mask of horror.

"How can you even suggest such a thing?" she gasped.

"What else can we do? Wait for the cops to corral those animals? How many more of our people will be killed in the meantime? How many more of our temples will be destroyed?"

"But Sefer Yetzirah forbids the ritual for all but the noblest purpose!"

"This is a noble purpose."

Eventually, Rabbi Aronson wore his assistant down. They locked themselves in the temple’s attic and conducted their forbidden ritual. The end result was, to put it mildly, explosive.



Astoria, Queens, 11:30 p.m. A white supremacist rock concert put on at a local dance hall was in full swing. On stage, a quintet of guitar- and drum-playing young racists who called themselves White Makes Right belted out a loud, crunching anthem titled "You Are The Diamonds In The Mud." Several dozen skinheads, both male and female, tattooed with pro-white, anti-everything-else invective, and decked out in combat boots, black leather, army fatigues, or simple bluejeans and T-shirts (also adorned with slogans that would have made Hitler proud), slam-danced, or "moshed," in front of the stage.

But an uninvited guest ended their revelry. Uninvited—and terrifying.

I was doubling as night editor when the call came in over the police scanner. I was out the door before the cop finished her report. When I arrived at the dance hall, I saw the same young officer I had seen at the Feinstein house the night before. He waved me inside.

Most of the racists who survived the onslaught had fled the scene in terror. Numerous others lay on the floor, some with sheets over their faces. Doctors and EMTs tended to those who had been injured, while the cops attempted to take statements from the others, who mostly huddled in the corners, shaking and sobbing.

"So much for White Power," I muttered.

I sat on the stage next to a young skinhead with her left arm in a sling. She cried softly and wiped away the tears with the right sleeve of her combat fatigues.

"Excuse me, what happened here?"

She looked at me, rivers of black mascara running down what looked like an otherwise pretty face. "Who the fuck are you?"

"Press."

"Fuck off. I don’t talk to Jews."

"What makes you think I’m Jewish?"

"You work for the Jewish-owned media, don’t you? That makes you a Jew."

"Nice talking to you, kid."

Next, I tried a man of about sixty who wore a bartender’s apron.

"Buddy," he said, "you wouldn’t believe me if I told you."

"Try me."

"You’ll think I’m crazy."

"Come on, what happened here? Was it a battalion?"

"No, it was one man. At least, it kind of looked like a man."

"What do you mean, looked like? It was either a man or it wasn’t."

"That’s the crazy part. He was about six feet tall, very husky-looking."

"Yeah?"

"But he was all gray."

"You mean, he was elderly?"

"No, I don’t mean just gray hair. He was gray from head to toe, like he was made of Play-Doh or something."

"Play-Doh?"

"You know, that clay stuff you put in your grandkid’s Christmas stocking."

"I know what Play-Doh is. But you’re telling me....?"

"Buddy, I got within four feet of that guy. As god is my witness, he was made of clay!"

I was too shocked to reply.

"And another thing-—he didn’t have any sex organs."

"What?!"

"The guy was naked as a jaybird, and I’m telling you—-he had no dick and no balls!"

In charge of the investigation was Lieutenant Manny Hernandez, one of my oldest and dearest enemies on the NYPD. When Vincenzo was unavailable, I could always count on the good lieutenant to scream at me in his absence.

"Kolchak! You keep the hell out of the way. I don’t want you screwing up my investigation."

"Wouldn’t dream of it, Hernandez. You’re quite capable of screwing up your own investigation."

"Why don’t you just go home? There’s nothing here for you."

"Oh, yeah, nothing at all! Why would a dance hall full of dead and injured neo-Nazis possibly interest a reporter?"

"All right, you can stay. But I’m warning you: don’t harass my officers and witnesses!"

"All right, all right. So, did you talk to the bartender?"

"Yes, I talked to the bartender."

"Did he tell you what he told me?"

"How would I know what he told you?"

"Did he happen to say anything about this massacre being caused by a single killer who had no genitals and was made of clay?"

"You’re not even thinking of taking that to Vincenzo? He’d ship you right off to Bellevue."

"Wouldn’t be the first time."

"Look, when people are hysterical, they imagine all sorts of weird things. Christ, Kolchak, if you aren’t living proof of that...."

I waved my arm around. "So the bartender imagined all this? Then we must be imagining it, too. Come on, Hernandez, how the hell do you explain this carnage?"

"Maybe there’s a weird new religious cult in the city. Maybe it practices a bizarre ritual that involves covering yourself with clay before you go out on a murder rampage."

"Does it also involve the removal of the sex organs?"

Hernandez shrugged. "Remember the Heaven’s Gate cult in San Diego? A lot of those guys were surgically castrated."

"Come on, you don’t believe for a second this guy belongs to some weird religious cult."

"Well, it makes a lot more sense than your claim that we’re dealing with a homicidal Gumby!"



"No genitals and made of clay?" Vincenzo crumpled up the story. "You know, between you and Dickerson, I truly regret not having taken early retirement."

"I only wrote what a witness told me."

"Who, exactly, was this witness? Why didn’t you include his name in your story?"

"He was the bartender at the dance hall. And he asked me not to mention his name."

"I can’t say I blame him. And where did you get this part about there being a connection between the dance hall, the temple torching, and the Feinstein murder?"

"Isn’t it obvious? The MO in the temple torching matches that of the Feinstein murder to a tee. And why else would that dance hall have been trashed if not in retaliation?"

"Is that what the cops told you?"

"No, it’s what the cops didn’t tell me. I call it reporter’s intuition."

"And I call it yellow journalism! Kolchak, a reporter gathers the facts and presents them in a way his readers can understand. He does not simply fill in the blanks when the facts are unavailable. Now you rewrite that story, and you base it on what you know, not on what you think the cops aren’t telling you!"

My eyes narrowed. "You feel sorry for the killer, is that it? Because you know exactly how it feels to have no balls!"

"Out!"

As I stormed back to my desk, Leslie giggled. "Sounds like you made his day again."



July 22nd, 7:30 p.m. I received a call from an always reliable source that a meeting would be held that night at the Brooklyn estate of Andrew Larson, one of the biggest names in the East Coast white supremacist movement. The 47-year-old Larson had hastily called the summit following the previous night’s attack on the dance hall. Present at the meeting were to be numerous top-ranking figures in what Larson and his cronies liked to call The Resistance.

I grabbed a camera with a telephoto lens, and a cassette recorder with a headset and long-distance microphone, and made my way to Brooklyn. I parked down the street from Larson’s sizable house. Two husky blond-haired men in their twenties stood guard at the gate that led to the front walk. They checked the IDs of those who wished to attend the meeting. When all was said and done, I had seen twenty-eight people enter the house—and had gotten photos of them all. Plus, with the long-distance microphone and my headset, I could eavesdrop on the meeting with little difficulty.

I heard a voice that I recognized as Larson’s (from my having interviewed him the year before). "Ladies and gentlemen, we have a problem. Somehow, the Jews have managed to kill and maim several members of our Youth Corps. They obviously did this in retaliation for the death of that Jew attorney and the torching of that den of iniquity they call the Temple Beth Shalom."

Another voice said, "But we didn’t have anything to do with that! It was the work of rogues."

"Fine," said Larson, "but will that bring our slain brothers and sisters back to life? We need to show those Jew bastards that we aren’t going to sit still and do nothing while they pick off their white superiors. We need to strike back at those sons of bitches a thousand times worse than they’ve hit us! Are there any suggestions on how we can do that?"

The suggestions I heard were horrifying, but not quite as horrifying as what happened at 11:20 that night. I heard a loud noise in my headphones that suggested a wrecking ball at work. Next I heard the sounds of screaming, followed by gunfire and what I somehow knew was breaking bones.

The two guards abandoned the front gate and rushed into the house. I took advantage of the situation to enter the premises myself.

What I saw was unreal. Numerous men and women lay dead in the living room, some with the arms and legs torn out of their sockets. Several others had been decapitated. Puddles of blood and entrails covered the white carpeting. The sound of gunfire filled the house, as did a thick cloud of grayish-white smoke from the weapons being fired.

Standing in the middle of the room was the cause of the pandemonium. It was a man, or at least it was shaped like one. But it looked like no man I had ever seen. The intruder matched the bartender’s description to a tee—six feet tall, completely naked, and solid gray. His eyes and mouth appeared to have been carved into his face. And he had no genitals.

I also noticed what appeared to be a foreign word etched into his forehead. It looked like "emet."

I snapped several pictures of the killer, who noticed my flashbulb and started toward me. I yelped and ran for the front door. Behind me, I heard additional gunfire as the white supremacists tried in vain to fell their attacker. As I reached the doorway, curiosity caused me to turn around. The killer had stopped pursuing me in favor of those who had just pumped several dozen rounds of ammunition into his back. He picked up one man by the neck and slammed him into the ceiling—so hard that the racist’s head disappeared through the plaster. The killer let go of his victim, who twitched violently and died of strangulation. The corpse hanged from the ceiling for several seconds before it dropped to the floor with a sickening thud.

I heard sirens. Within seconds, the cops had the Larson house surrounded and stormed in through every available entrance. An officer pointed his gun at the killer and yelled, "Freeze!" When he did not stop, the policeman emptied his gun into the killer, who punched the officer in the stomach—so hard that his fist popped out of the cop’s back. The killer shook the dead policeman off his arm with a sucking sound that almost made me puke. The uniformed corpse flew across the room and knocked down two other cops.

In the wall at the far end of the living room was a hole the height and width of a husky six-foot man. Taking bullets by the dozen and pushing the cops out of his way like so many oversized bowling pins, the killer walked across the room and exited through the makeshift doorway. Several officers pursued him, but to no avail. I decided to leave before the cops had a chance to notice me.

It was a smart decision. Just as I pulled away from the curb, I saw Hernandez drive past me toward the Larson house.



I got Vincenzo out of bed and down to the INS office. At first, he was pissed off that I had awakened him, but when he saw the photos and heard the tapes, his attitude changed.

"My god, Carl, this is incredible. Write that story and send it out over the wire now!"

I smiled and shot him a salute. "Yes, sir!"

But our excitement was short-lived. As I worked on the story, Vincenzo’s phone rang. Moments later, he came out of his office.

"Carl, stop typing."

I did. "What’s the matter?"

"That was the home office. They want the story killed."

"What?!"

"And I’ll need those cassettes and photos."

"Why? As an early birthday present for Hernandez?"

"I’m sorry, Carl. He’s an influential cop and you’re on his shit list. If we want to keep our jobs, we kill the story."

I slammed my fist against the metal desktop. "You know, I’m sorely tempted to look for work with Mother Jones or The Nation. At least they let you write the goddamned truth!"



July 23rd, 9:00 a.m. With several police officers among the previous night’s casualties, Rabbis Weintraub and Aronson realized that they had overstepped their authority. It was time to fix their mistake. Unfortunately, things did not go as planned.

The rabbis knew something was wrong when it grabbed Aronson by the throat. When Rabbi Weintraub screamed, it used its other arm to punch her in the face. She fell backward and was rendered unconscious when her head struck the floor.

She awakened with the taste of blood in her mouth. Her eyes still closed, Rabbi Weintraub ran her tongue along her teeth and found three of them loosened. The rabbi gasped as she remembered how she was knocked out in the first place. She opened her eyes and jumped to her feet.

The first thing she noticed was Rabbi Aronson on the floor. A horrified Weintraub ran to her friend and mentor, but he was dead. Sobbing, she put her arms around Aronson’s corpse. Then it occurred to the rabbi that she was alone in the attic. Gulping in horror, she dropped Aronson’s corpse and looked about feverishly.

"Oh my god, it’s gone." The reality of the situation having hit her, Rabbi Weintraub fell to her knees and sobbed, "Isaac, what have we done?"



I was still in bed when my beeper went off. I muttered a few swear words and dragged myself to the phone to call Vincenzo. My head quickly cleared when he told me that a rabbi had been murdered in Upper Manhattan.

When I got to the temple, two teams of EMTs each exited the building with a stretcher. The dead rabbi was on one, a sheet covering his face. On the other stretcher was a raven-haired woman in her fifties. Walking with the EMTs was the young cop I had seen twice before.

I ran up to the second stretcher. "Rabbi Weintraub?"

"Yes?" she said.

"What happened?"

"Isaac’s dead."

"Isaac who?"

The young cop replied, "Rabbi Isaac Aronson. He was strangled to death."

"Any idea who did it?"

Rabbi Weintraub looked up at me, her face was awash with horror. "The golem."

"Golem? What’s a golem?"

The cop shrugged. "She keeps saying that. Nobody knows what it means."

"Rabbi, what’s a golem?"

Before she could answer, Lieutenant Hernandez intervened. "I wouldn’t talk to the press, Rabbi."

"Oh," she exclaimed. "I thought he was one of yours."

Hernandez laughed. "Yeah, right."

None of us noticed the figure that lurked in the alley across the street from the temple. When it found out that Rabbi Weintraub was still alive, the figure knew it had unfinished business to complete.



I followed the ambulance to the hospital, but never got near Rabbi Weintraub. All I got from Hernandez was that after the rabbi was examined, assuming she was determined to be OK, they would move her to a safe house to protect her from the killer. And, of course, from the press.

Back at the office, I contacted one of my few allies on the NYPD, Detective Heather Fontayne, to ask for some help in determining Rabbi Weintraub’s new digs.

"Carl, what the hell do you want from me? It’s not even my case."

"Yeah, but you can do a little sniffing around for me, can’t you?"

"And why would I do that?"

"Heather, are you sitting down?"

She sighed. "Oh, Christ, another Kolchak special."

"I think those two rabbis have built a creature called a golem."

"A golem? What the hell is that?"

"I haven’t quite figured that out yet, but I’ll do some research. Whatever it is, though, that golem is what killed those white supermacists, not to mention several police officers."

Pausing, Fontayne said, "Are you asking me to believe that two human beings created life without a sperm, an egg, and a nine-month gestation period?"

"You know as well as I do, some things defy rational explanation. Remember that little nature walk we took along the East River a few months ago?"

"All right, I’ll make a few calls. But I can’t guarantee anything."

"Bless your sweet little soul!"

Fontayne, who was six feet tall, laughed. "You’re the first one who’s ever called me ‘little’!"

I then got on the phone to Margaret Haber, a Professor of Hebrew Studies at Columbia University. I had spoken with her the year before as part of my feature on "Anti-Semitism in the New Millennium," the same feature for which I had interviewed the now-deceased Andrew Larson.

When I asked about the golem, Professor Haber chuckled. "Carl Kolchak, you’re just full of surprises!"

"Talk to my editor. He’ll tell you I’m full of something else."

"So, what do you need to know about the golem?"

"Whatever you’d like to share."

"Tell you what: give me your fax number. I’ll send you an essay that should tell you whatever you want to know. And if you have any questions, just call me back."

Professor Haber was as good as her word. Within twenty minutes, the fax arrived. It was a piece from the Journal of the Fantastic in the Arts. Since the article was over 3,000 words long, I’ll summarize its contents:

It began with an explanation of the Sefer Yetzirah and how its teachings were used in ancient times to create a humanoid Golem. The Sefer Yetzirah was perhaps the most important work of Jewish mysticism. This text was said to contain the secrets of the creative processes by which God brought the universe into being.

Within the mystical texts relating to the creation of golems, two themes consistently reappeared. The first was that two or more practitioners, working together, were needed to create a golem, and there were many instances of this occurring. For example, every Friday, Rabbis Hanina and Hoshia studied Sefer Yetzirah to create a prime calf, which they ate as their Sabbath dinner.

In many cases, the completion of the study of Sefer Yetzirah was marked by the ritual of creating a golem. The golem was not used for any purpose other than to demonstrate that the Sefer Yetzirah had been mastered, and the golem was de-constructed upon its completion. By contrast, Rabbi Loew, the Maharal of Prague, along with his son-in-law, created a golem and successfully saved the Jews of Prague from blood libel. This is a rare instance of a golem being created with a specific purpose other than proof of mastery of the Sefer Yetzirah.

Many schools, such as the Hasidim, held that the Hebrew word "emet" (truth) should be inscribed upon the golem’s forehead. Among a number of methods used in de-constructing a golem, a common one was the erasure of aleph, the first letter of "emet." This leaves the word "met" (dead), which destroys the golem.

The creation of a golem is magic of the highest sort. Magical practices are forbidden in the Hebrew Bible, but the Talmud allows "activities like those of Rabbi Hanina and Rabbi Hoshia." It is because the magic involved is of a holy nature (there being nothing holier than the name of God) that the issue of purity repeatedly arises. Those who participate must be ritually clean, the robes they wear must be pure white, the clay and the water used must be pure, and the room clean.

The purity of the materials is important, but not as critical as the purity of purpose of those who would explore the secrets of the Sefer Yetzirah. This is because the creation of a golem can be dangerous to the creators. Therefore, the second theme that is stressed is the purity of purpose with which the task must be approached. A golem cannot be created for the purpose of evil—having no human soul, any sin the golem commits is a sin of the creators, not the creation.

When I finished reading, I called Professor Haber again. "Is there any way to keep a golem at bay?"

"What do you mean?"

"You know how a cross keeps a vampire at bay? Is there any sort of equivalent for a golem?"

"No."

"I was afraid of that."

As I re-read the article, my phone rang. It was Fontayne.

"Rabbi Weintraub was just released from the hospital. The cops are taking her to a safe house."

"Do you know where it is?"

"Yeah."

"Well?"

"I can’t just tell you, Carl. That defeats the purpose of a safe house!"

"Come on, Heather, this is important!"

"Tell you what—I’ll drive you there. But only under certain conditions."

The "certain conditions" boiled down to my allowing Fontayne to blindfold me so as to keep Rabbi Weintraub’s whereabouts a secret. Having little choice, I agreed.



Fontayne got off duty at 6:00 p.m. and met me in front of the INS building soon after. In the front seat of her car, she produced a navy blue handkerchief and tied it over my eyes. When she finished, Fontayne said, "You know, you look kind of cute, all blindfolded like that. Makes me want to handcuff and gag you, too."

"Oh, stop it, mistress! You’re turning me on."

Fontayne giggled and pulled out into traffic.

My internal compass told me that we were heading east, which could only mean the Long Island Expressway. We were on it for a good, long time—so long, in fact, that my face began to sweat under the blindfold. But I left it on, knowing that if I removed the damned thing, Fontayne would immediately turn around and head back to Manhattan.

During the drive, I told Fontayne what I had learned about the golem. She listened in silence. Had I been able to use my eyes, I would have seen Fontayne’s beautiful face looking very grim indeed. Unlike most of the cops I had dealt with, she knew from personal experience that I was neither paranoid nor delusional. As a result, Fontayne was willing not only to listen to my stories, but to give me the benefit of the doubt when it came to assessing their believability.

Eventually, we got off the freeway and pulled into a parking lot. Fontayne walked me into a building and into an elevator. It was only after the elevator stopped and we had gotten out that she allowed me to remove the blindfold. Breathing a sigh of relief, I blinked and rubbed my eyes to get them accustomed to the light.

We were in a middle-income apartment building. Fontayne led me down a long corridor until we came to a door with a uniformed police officer standing in front of it.

"Can I help you?" he asked.

Fontayne produced her I.D. "Relax, we’re on your side."

"OK, detective, just a moment." He produced a key and slowly opened the door. "Rabbi?"

"Yes?"

"I’ve got a couple of detectives to see you."

Fontayne and I both tried not to laugh at his assumption that I was a detective.

In the apartment, Rabbi Weintraub invited us to sit on the couch. Her eyes were blood red from all the crying she had done. The rabbi sat across from us in an armchair and dabbed at her eyes with a handkerchief.

"Wait a minute." She pointed at me. "You’re not a detective. Aren’t you a reporter?"

"Yes, ma’am. Carl Kolchak, INS."

"Lieutenant Hernandez advised me not to talk to the press."

"Listen, I know you and Rabbi Aronson created a golem to protect your people from the white supremacists."

"Who told you that?"

"In a way, you did. Plus, I did some additional research." I mentioned the article Professor Haber had faxed to me.

"Oh, yes, I remember that piece. Margaret gave copies to everyone she knew."

"Was the piece accurate?"

"Oh, very much so. The author obviously did his research. But why, Mr. Kolchak? Why do you believe in the golem?"

"Because I was eavesdropping at Andrew Larson’s house last night. I saw the golem. I even photographed it."

Rabbi Weintraub regarded me. "You saw the golem?"

"Yes, I did."

That convinced her to confide in me. "Isaac never told me how he came into possession of the Sefer Yetzirah. But he trusted me enough to take me under his wing. Together, we studied the book. It took us well over a decade, but four years ago, we finally mastered it.

"We demonstrated our mastery by creating a golem. We did it exactly as we were supposed to—we made it out of pure clay and water, in a sterilized room, while dressed in freshly laundered white robes. We also made sure the golem could never be mistaken for a human—because after all, it’s not. To be human requires both a conscience and a soul. A golem has neither. For that reason, we made it mute and did not give it sex organs. That way, no one could possibly have mistaken our golem for a human being.

"Mr. Kolchak, I can’t begin to tell you how it felt to see that golem open its eyes, sit up, and look around the room. At that moment, I think I knew how God himself must feel!

"Once we finished the creation, Issac and I again did exactly what we were supposed to do—we dismantled the golem and never spoke of it to anyone." Rabbi Weintraub paused to sip some iced tea.

I said, "But that was four years ago. What about the events of this week?"

The rabbi sighed, rested her elbows on her knees, and buried her face in her hands. "Oh, god! Isaac, what have we done?"

"Rabbi, please. This is very important."

She began to cry. Fontayne produced the handkerchief with which she had blindfolded me earlier, and presented it to the rabbi. She thanked Fontayne and wiped away her tears. We gave her a couple of minutes to recover her composure.

Finally, I said, "Rabbi?"

"Oh, yes. This past week, the week from hell. Literally." She grinned without humor. "All right, Mr. Kolchak. You and Detective Fontayne have already cut me a lot more slack than Lieutenant Hernandez did. He wanted to ship me off to Bellevue."

"Yeah," I said, "that sounds like him."

Fontayne said nothing but I could tell she agreed.

"If you read that part in the article about Rabbi Loew of Prague, you can probably guess what Isaac and I did. When those animals killed Attorney Feinstein and burned down the Temple Beth Shalom, Isaac suggested that we create a golem to scare them into leaving us be.

"The mere suggestion horrified me! After all, to make a golem for any purpose other than to understand how God creates is a sacrilege. And with an imperfect purpose, it’s possible the golem will develop a mind of its own and turn on its creators."

"And that’s exactly what happened," I said.

"Yes. That’s why I initially refused to help Issac. I even threatened to go over his head to make sure it didn’t happen. But he insisted that since Rabbi Loew had created a golem to protect the Jewish people of Prague, God might just approve of our creating a golem to protect the Jewish people of New York.

"The entire time we assembled the golem, I never said a word. I couldn’t. My throat was too constricted. I knew we shouldn’t be doing it."

"Then why didn’t you stop?"

"I guess because Isaac and I went back so far and had been through so much together.... I just couldn’t believe that he’d have me do something that could lead to harm.

"I was ready to kill the golem after it attacked the dance hall. OK, so the only ones who died were the white supermacists. But they were all so young! It was just possible that some of them might eventually have renounced their racist ways. But we’ll never know now, will we?

"When I told Isaac that I wanted to destroy the golem, he refused. He said that he’d stand guard over it twenty-four hours a day if he had to, just to keep me from destroying it. Mr. Kolchak, I honestly believe that those anti-Semitic attacks caused something in Isaac to snap. After all, he was a Holocaust survivor whose father died in Auschwitz.

"Whatever the case, after the attack on Andrew Larson’s house, it became obvious that the golem was developing a mind of its own. I mean, we never gave it permission to kill police officers! By then, even Isaac understood that we had made a mistake and that the golem had to be destroyed."

"And that’s when it killed Rabbi Aronson?" I said.

"Yes."

"Why didn’t it kill you, too?"

"I don’t know. Perhaps it saw me unconscious and assumed I was dead. But it knows now, Mr. Kolchak. The golem knows I’m alive, and it’s waiting for me. I can sense it, the way a mother knows something is wrong with her child."

"Where would it be waiting for you?"

"At the place of its creation—the temple. If it hasn’t already gone back there, it will. And when it sees me again, it’ll kill me for sure!"

"And what happens after that?"

"After it kills me?"

"Yes."

"Anything could happen! Remember, the golem has superhuman strength, a mind of its own, and no conscience. It might decide just to kill anybody who crosses its path."

For the first time, Fontayne spoke up. "That would put the entire city at risk."

"Yes, it would," said the rabbi.

"And we can stop this thing by erasing the first letter of the word written on its forehead?"

"Yes," Rabbi Weintaub said.

Fontayne looked at me. "Want to go to temple?"

"I’ll bring the yarmulkes."



It was at least ninety minutes back to the city from wherever the hell we were on Long Island. (Remember, I was blindfolded both ways.) By the time Fontayne pulled up to the temple, it was after 11:00 p.m. A uniformed cop stood guard at the front entrance.

"Hold it," he said. "Where you folks think you’re going?"

Fontayne flashed her I.D.

"Oh! Sorry, detective."

"It’s OK. Quiet night?"

"Yeah, not a damned thing going on."

"Let’s hope it stays that way."

"Right."

The door creaked as I pushed it open. Fontayne clicked on her flashlight and shone it in the dark.

As we walked through the cavernous building, she said, "Is anything scarier than an empty church at night?"

"Oh, I can think of a few things."

Since nothing was happening on the first floor, we climbed a long staircase to the upper level, which contained several offices and a meeting hall. We found a light switch in the upstairs hallway.

The upper level was quiet, too. That left only the attic, where, per Rabbi Weintraub, she and the late Isaac Aronson had created their golem.

I reached for the attic door. "Shall we?"

"Long as we’re here."

As I turned the knob, Fontayne drew her gun.

"That thing’s not going to do you a damned bit of good. I saw that golem take a hundred rounds last night. Didn’t even phase him."

Looking annoyed, she put the firearm away. "Why did I have to meet you?"

"You’re not the first woman who’s said that to me."

At the bottom of the stairs was another switch. As I flicked it on, the attic was bathed in fluorescent light. I was ready to dash up the stairs, but Fontayne grabbed my arm.

"Not yet," she whispered.

We stood there for what seemed an eternity, awaiting the appearance of a six-foot killer made of clay. But nothing came at us from the top of the stairs.

Fontayne shook her head. "Can’t believe I missed ‘Voyager’ for this. All right, let’s go."

By the time we were halfway up the seemingly endless staircase, my heart pounded and I was saturated with sweat. I had been in maybe two dozen situations like this before, but it never got easier.

At the top of the stairs, I looked around. It was the cleanest attic I had ever seen! Then I remembered: the room in which a golem was created had to be immaculate. But it must have taken Weintraub and Aronson hours to get the attic that spotless.

Fontayne poked me in the posterior with her nightstick. "See anything?"

"We can stop whispering. It’s not up here."

Once in the attic, Fontayne and I collapsed into folding chairs. She lit a Benson & Hedges and smoked it in less than two minutes, at which point she lit a fresh one and re-started the process.

"Those things’ll kill you," I told her.

"So will a pissed-off golem."

We stayed well into the night, but the killer never materialized. Fontayne’s stomach rumbled.

"Goddammit," she grunted. "We should have eaten before coming here."

"Want me to grab some food?"

"That’d be great! But remember, I’m a vegetarian."

"So, whaddaya want? Crabgrass on rye?" I stood up and rubbed my legs to jump-start the circulation. "If that golem appears while I’m gone...hide."

Fontayne smiled. "You’re so sweet."

"Yeah—Mr. Karo, that’s me."

As I exited the temple, I asked the cop on guard duty if he wanted anything to eat. He didn’t.

When I returned twenty-five minutes later, the cop was gone and the front door was wide open. I dropped my bags of food and ran inside. I tripped over something and hit the floor with an "oof." Gulping the air back into my lungs, I turned over and saw what I had tripped on—the dead body of the young officer.

"Heather!" I jumped to my feet and ran toward the stairs. I scaled them two at a time. Seeing nothing on the second floor, I headed for the attic.

Fontayne was at the opposite end. The golem had her by the neck and up against a wall. Her feet dangled a good yard off the floor. I couldn’t tell if she was dead or alive.

"Heather!"

I ran to the golem and pounded my fists against its back. It dropped Fontayne and turned to face me. I yelled in fear and ran in no particular direction. The golem matched me step for step.

By the time I returned to the staircase, it had caught up with me. The golem wrapped its enormous right hand around my neck and lifted me up off the floor. My feet dangled over the stairs as I felt my windpipe being crushed under the golem’s grip.

With my right hand, I reached for the creature’s forehead, but it grabbed my wrist with its left. My line of sight vanishing in a cloud of blackness, I again reached for the golem’s forehead, this time with my free left hand.

But I never got to see if I had successfully erased the letter. I was too busy passing out.



"Carl, wake up!"

I felt a throbbing in the back of my head. When I focused my eyes, I saw Fontayne’s gorgeous face above me.

I smiled. "You’re not dead!"

"It would appear that way."

"Where’s the golem?"

"Take a look."

I sat up. We were at the bottom of the attic staircase. Partway up the stairs, I saw what looked like the lower half of a clay arm. In the hallway just outside the door was the rest of the golem. It had broken into several pieces and lay motionless on the floor.

I had, indeed, erased the letter.



Fontayne slept in my bed that night. After our experience with the golem, neither of us wanted to be alone.

Evelyn Weintraub never returned to her rabbinical duties. No sooner was she released from police custody then she drove to her apartment building, packed a couple of suitcases, and disappeared into the night. She hasn’t been seen or heard from since.

The racist violence in New York has stopped, at least for now. The city has gone back to its proud tradition of muggings, rapes, domestic violence, mob hits, and random, senseless killings.

As for me, once I file this story and Vincenzo tears it up, I’m going on vacation. And I may not come back.