“Stay out of this.” He kept his enraged eyes focused on the Cuban and cocked the gun.
“Bene,” Tre yelled. “Are you nuts? Don’t do this.”
“This mus mus almost got us killed.” He hated rats as bad as liars.
His gaze told the Cuban that his time was up. “You said to the Simon the important things were locked away. Where?”
“First door down the hall.”
He wrenched the man to his feet and shoved him forward until they reached the door. “Open it.”
The curator fumbled with keys in his pocket, hands shaking. He noticed that the wooden door opened inward and he needed a release, so he pounded his right foot into the door. Two more kicks and the jamb shattered, the hasp screws freeing themselves, the wooden slab banging open, revealing another windowless room.
Three plastic bins sat on a table.
“Check them out,” he said to Halliburton. “Get what you want from here and back in the other room. We’re leaving.”
“We’re stealing them?”
“No, Tre. I’ll give them a credit card for collateral. Of course we’re stealing them. Now get what you want.”
Halliburton hustled into the room.
He dragged the curator back to the front.
“You’re lucky,” he said, “that you’re a good liar since, one, those police believed you and, two, me shooting you would draw far too much attention.”
“And three, senor.”
Had he heard right? This fool was challenging him?
“You do not want to kill me in front of your amigo.”
He resented the smug way the astute observation was delivered.
“Actually, my third reason would have been different. I want you to tell the Simon that he and I are going to have a serious conversation. Soon.”
Then he swiped the butt of the gun across the man’s head, sending him into unconsciousness.
CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN
“1580 WAS THE YEAR. YES. THAT WAS IT, EXACTLY,” SAKI SAID.
Tom listened. For a ten-year-old, there was nothing better than a good story and he loved the ones his grandfather told.
“It happened in Prague,” the old man said. “Rabbi Loew was chief rabbi of the Jewish quarter. That meant he was in charge. Above his door, engraved in stone, was a lion with a grape to indicate his direct descent from King David himself.”
“M. F.,” his grandmother called out. “Don’t fill the boy’s head with tales.”
Saki’s name was Marc Eden Cross. Tom’s great-grandmother’s maiden name had been Eden, the label added to her only son’s out of respect.
“Tommy here loves my stories,” his grandfather said. “Don’t you, boy?”
He nodded.
“He likes me to tell him about the world.”
The old man was approaching eighty and Tom wondered how much longer he’d be around. Lately the concept of death had become all too real with the passing of two aunts.
“It all happened in Prague,” Saki said again. “Another fanatical priest had decided that we Jews were a threat. Christians feared us since kings relied on us. So, to increase their power, they had to destroy us. They used to say we killed Christian children and used their blood as part of our worship. Can you imagine such lies? Blood libel is what we call that now. But the lie worked. Every few years Christians would form mobs and slaughter Jews. Pogroms, that’s what they’re called, Tommy. Never forget that word. Pogroms. The Nazis instituted the greatest one of all.”
He told himself to never forget the word.
“Rabbi Loew knew he had to protect his people from danger and he found out how to do that in a dream. Ata bra golem dewuk hachomer w’tigzar zedim chewel torfe jisrael.”
He knew some Hebrew and caught a few of the words.
“ ‘You shall create a golem from clay, that the malicious anti-Semitic mob be destroyed.’ That’s what he dreamed. And that’s what he did. He created a living body from clay using fire, water, air, and earth. The first three made the last one come alive.”
Could that be true? How incredible.
“He made his creature real by inserting the shem. A small bit of parchment, upon which he’d written God’s name, into the mouth. Then he said, ‘Lord made a man
