A Man Named Doll

by Jonathan Ames

  I went back inside and looked at the blood trail some more. Someone had dragged blondie from the table to the elevator and up to the sixth floor, and then for some reason had left him there and taken off.

  Or, alternatively, that person was somewhere inside, hiding, and not making themselves known.

  So I had a dilemma: Should I search the whole house? Or should I go home immediately and call the cops and tell them everything? Every stupid thing I had done?

  I decided to search the house.

  On the first level, in addition to the denlike room with the table, there were three other empty rooms and an empty bathroom, and I got out the Maglite and nobody was hiding in the closets.

  I went back to the elevator and this time I noticed that on the far wall of the compartment there was a bullet hole, but not that big. Like a .22. The hole in Lou’s belly hadn’t been that big, either. And Dodgers Hat had been carrying what looked like a .22. Did he kill Lou? But Lou said he got the one who got him, so it was probably blondie who had shot him. And maybe Dodgers Hat was carrying blondie’s gun when he came to my house.

  Then I went to the second floor, and as I searched around—more empty rooms and closets—I started seeing in my stoned mind how it might have gone down:

  Lou’s in the elevator and blondie is on the other side of the table.

  For some reason, blondie shoots at Lou twice and hits him once before Lou can get a shot off. And blondie would’ve had to fire first since Lou’s shot was a kill shot and blondie wouldn’t have been snapping off any rounds after taking one in the head.

  So blondie fires twice, and then Lou, in the elevator, fires back and kills blondie. Then the elevator door closes, and Lou is gone, and then Dodgers Hat and whoever else was at that meeting—and there were probably three others, judging by the water glasses—would have had to run up six flights to catch up to Lou, which gives him a head start.

  But not enough of a head start, not with the winding roads, and so Dodgers Hat follows him straight to my place, but Lou doesn’t know it. He’s taken a gut shot and not thinking good.

  But who was I to judge about not thinking good?

  I searched the rest of the house but found no one and nothing of interest: the place was empty and hadn’t been lived in for a long time.

  The whole thing took me about fifteen minutes, and back on the sixth floor, I looked again at the corpse: he was a good-size boy, maybe six feet, 180, an athlete, and he was wearing a nice leather jacket and good shoes. He looked rich, well fed. Was he there to buy Lou’s diamond? Was that the purpose of the meeting?

  Then I went out to the balcony to think a second, to formulate the story I was going to tell the cops to explain my behavior, and I leaned against the railing and looked out at the view. Directly to the east was the Griffith Observatory, and at night, lit from within, it looked like a skull with a candle inside, and I was high above Los Angeles, like a king or a hawk, and then there was a metal screeching sound behind me, and I started to turn and something slammed into me hard, tackling me.

  It was a man trying to drive me over the railing, and his head was buried in my shoulder, and all I could do was wrap my arms around him and pull him in close to negate his leverage, and I was fighting, instinctively, not to go over—to not let the railing be a fulcrum in the middle of my back—and the stitches in my arm and in my face felt like they were going to burst from the strain.

  Then the man lifted his head from my shoulder and we looked at each other and it was blondie, and my adrenaline spiked, fueled by terror, and I had the greatest surge of strength in my life, and I lifted blondie, all six feet of him, all 180 pounds of him, and tossed him off the balcony, and he didn’t have time to scream, and he hit one of the pieces of metal furniture, bounced off it in the moonlight, seemed to shudder, and then went still. Heaving, I stared down at him, and there was a roar in my head that lasted awhile and then there was silence, like when Lou had died.

  Then, moving very slowly, in shock, I turned and went back into the house, and blondie was still on the floor with a bullet hole still in his head.

  My legs buckled, but I quickly righted myself and ran down the six flights and went out to the patio, and the thing that had been a man had landed on its belly, and his head was on its side. The neck was at a disturbing angle, but the face somehow hadn’t been damaged on the metal lounge chair.

  I took out the Maglite and looked closely at the man on the ground. It wasn’t blondie but another blonde. Only darker blonde and older. The drugs and fear had made me see things, and I leaned over, put my hands on my knees, and took some deep breaths.

  Get your shit together, Hapless, I said to myself.

  Hapless was what my father had called me for the first eighteen years of my life, and it only stopped when he died. And the way I had said Hapless in my mind was exactly how he used to say it, full of contempt, and hearing his voice in my head sobered me up a little—just a little—and I took another look at the corpse:

  This blonde was dressed in expensive jeans and a light ski jacket. He was as big as the other one—at least that part I hadn’t hallucinated—and he had the same aura of richness and privilege. The quality of the skin, the haircut. The handsomeness, even in death.

  I searched the body and found house keys and a fob to a BMW, a silver money clip with about five hundred in cash and the initials PM embossed on it, and what looked like a burner phone with a security code. I couldn’t get in the phone.

  Then I pocketed all of this for my powwow with the cops. I had all sorts of things to show them now. Like three dead bodies.

  2.

  I took the elevator back up, and on the top floor, I went out to the balcony to try to figure out where the second blonde had come from.

  In the far left-hand corner, opposite from where I had been standing, was the old rusted cooking grill, and it was mostly flush with the railing, but the end had been pushed out, and it hadn’t been like that before.

  Earlier it had appeared to be even with the railing, but there actually had been just enough space for the second blonde to squeeze behind it and be completely hidden, and that screeching sound I’d heard was him moving the grill out of the way when he decided to make his move. He probably had been hiding there the whole time I was in the house. I’d gotten lucky.

  I left the front door open as I had found it, moved quickly through the hedges, and walked back up the desolate road to the Maverick, rehearsing my speech to the cops: “I was all fucked up on pain pills and marijuana and then my friend shows up and dies, and I can’t explain it—I lost my head and went after this guy in a Dodgers hat with a gun. I guess I was trying to play the hero…”

  It sounded bad, and I got in Lou’s car and noticed something I hadn’t before. On the passenger seat, along with a lot of newspapers and sandwich wrappers and empty coffee cups—Lou wasn’t a neat person—was a brochure of some kind with a picture of a diamond on the front and the letters GIA in caps.

  Inside the brochure, on the first page, was Lou’s name and address at the top, and below that was a diagram of a diamond, which was rectangular, like the one in the folded square of blue paper. And below the diagram was a heading—DIAMOND GRADING REPORT—and down a line was a series of words like carat weight, color, clarity, depth, girdle, shape, and fluorescence, all followed by letters and numbers, grades or codes of some kind.

  There were also numeric measurements and other verbiage that was specific, I imagined, to the world of jewels. The diamond’s “shape” was listed as an “emerald cut,” and the one thing I could understand clearly was that Lou’s diamond was a big one: seven carats.

  And this brochure/grading report listed a Carlsbad address, 5345 Armada Drive, and Lou had that train ticket from Carlsbad. Maybe that’s where he had been when he didn’t show up for work, and so however it tied into everything, this report was more evidence, and I shoved it in my jacket pocket, got the car started, and began to drive back down the hill.

  A mi
nute later there was a ding: it was a text message on the burner phone. I had left my phone charging at the house. I put my foot on the brake just before a curve and pulled the cell phone out of my pocket. Even though the phone was locked, it showed the text on the screen. It had come in at 2:51 a.m., the current time, and was from a number without a name, 818-678-5564, and it said, in all caps:

  ALL DONE. ALMOST BACK. BE READY TO GO.

  I then eased my foot off the brake, thinking I should turn around. The text seemed to indicate that someone—Dodgers Hat?—was coming back to the house. But the road was too curvy and narrow. Wasn’t a good spot for a U-turn.

  So I was going to have to go farther down the road to turn around, but then there were headlights coming at me, from the blind side of the curve, and I had to pull over to let the car pass—there was only room for one car—and it was the Land Rover coming out of the turn! Dodgers Hat was in the passenger seat and lit by my headlights, I got more of his features: a jutting, protruding chin and a grotesque underbite. And the driver was an older gray-haired man with a large head craned forward like a vulture.

  They were a hideous pair, and as the Land Rover squeezed past me, slowly, intimately, Dodgers Hat looked over and saw me, and there was recognition. He had seen me clearly in the window at my house, and here I was again. How many people have big white bandages on their faces?

  He said something to the driver, and the gray-haired man looked at me with eyes that were calm and dead, and Dodgers Hat pointed his finger at me, like it was a gun, and I screamed, “Fuck you!” like a fool, and started reaching for Lou’s gun, and then the Land Rover accelerated and climbed out of view around the next curve.

  I quickly went down the hill, found a spot for a U-turn, which only took about eight back-and-forths, and then I climbed back up the hill, passed 2803, and on a distant ridge I saw a car’s headlights, probably the Land Rover’s, and I went after it but couldn’t catch it. The Land Rover was gone.

  3.

  At the 76 station on Beachwood and Franklin, I used a pay phone—a relic from the past—and called the number on the burner phone that had sent the text. I didn’t want to use my cell phone back at the house and leave any record of a call. I planned to tell the cops everything, but I also had the instinct, at the same time, to cover my tracks. After two rings, a deep, cautious voice said: “Who is this?”

  “I think you can figure it out,” I said.

  Silence. But he was still there.

  “Let’s meet. Talk things over,” I said. “I like your Dodgers hat. I’m a big Kershaw fan, despite his problems.” I was full of bravado and stupidity, and there was more silence. Then I asked: “Why’d you kill my friend?”

  That got something out of him. “You’re already dead,” he said.

  I started to blurt out, “Don’t you fucking come near my house—”

  But he hung up on me, and I didn’t think that number would be active much longer. Probably also a burner phone. I tried calling again, but he didn’t pick up.

  I went back to the house, and George hadn’t disturbed Lou’s body, but he knew that something bad had happened: he was subdued and looked at me anxiously. I went into the kitchen and unplugged my phone and called 911. A woman operator answered and I told her that my friend Lou Shelton, an ex-cop, had come to my front door, bleeding from a bullet wound, and had died, and she asked me if the shooter was on the premises and I said no.

  Then she asked me if I was the shooter and I said no, and when I gave her my name and address, as it was on my driver’s license, she wanted to know if “Happy Doll” was a prank, and I said it wasn’t a prank, and to please send the cops, my friend was dead in the other room, and then she asked me to stay on the line, but then I lost the connection—fucking cell phones—and I didn’t call back.

  Then the phone rang—it was 911 trying me back—but now that I had made my call, which I should have done immediately, over an hour ago, I was suddenly very nervous and paranoid about everything, and I didn’t answer and turned the ringer off. I needed to think and started to pace up and down. My face and my arm were throbbing, trying to knit back together, but it didn’t seem wise to take another Dilaudid.

  George, sitting still, was watching my every move, like the Mona Lisa, and then he began to trot along with me, and I was really starting to think that it wasn’t such a good idea to let the cops know I had gone to 2803 Belden, where I had killed a man.

  If I hadn’t killed anybody, I could have maybe gotten away with everything I pulled—my friend had just died; I wasn’t in my right mind—but throwing that second blonde off the balcony changed everything. I shot Carl Lusk late Tuesday night, and it was now early Friday morning. Could I possibly get away with two self-defense killings in forty-eight hours? I didn’t think so.

  Plus, I had messed with two crime scenes—my house and Belden—touching everything. More or less framing myself. Who was to say I hadn’t shot blondie with Lou’s gun? Who was to say I hadn’t shot Lou? I could have gotten rid of the .22. The cops would say I was on a spree. Lou and the two blondes. Lusk had just been an appetizer. I could be charged with four murders.

  I decided to hide all the evidence.

  In my kitchen, hidden in the wall, like a Murphy bed, is an old-fashioned ironing board, which I’ve never used. The house hasn’t changed much since the Rubensteins moved in back in 1950, and for that matter it probably hasn’t changed all that much since it was first built in 1923.

  So I dumped everything in a plastic bag, except what had been in Lou’s pockets, and then hid the bag in the compartment with the ironing board, which has a smell from another time, camphor, maybe, and closed the hidden panel back up.

  For no logical reason, I thought the diamond should be hidden somewhere else—like it shouldn’t mix with the riffraff of the other items, which meant my logic was stoned logic; everything I was doing was smart if you were stupid—and so I hid the square blue piece of paper in the freezer, in the ice cube receptacle, and didn’t think of the irony of hiding a diamond under ice until after I had done it.

  Then I put Lou’s gun, keys, notebook, and all his other crap back in his pockets and stood there. Like a dumbass. I was trying to think if I knew my story, but I wasn’t feeling good at this. I was too high and didn’t know what to cover up and what not to cover up. I couldn’t think like a cop or a criminal, but then I realized that Lou’s notebook had the Belden address and that wasn’t good, and so I got the notebook out of Lou’s pockets, got the bag out from the ironing board, put the notebook in the bag, and put the whole thing back into the secret compartment.

  Then I calmed down for a second, like maybe I had covered everything, and I took off my jacket and shoes. This way I’d be in the same state of dress I had been in when Lou first came to the door.

  But then I started thinking I didn’t want them testing Lou’s gun and wondering where he had fired it, all of which could lead them back to the house where I had killed a man.

  So I took the Glock out of Lou’s pocket and put that in the ironing board.

  I was now all set to welcome my guests, which was good because George had just started barking. The cops were here.

  4.

  I handled the first six uniforms pretty good. They came boiling up the stairs, with their guns out, and George, whom I had quickly stashed in my bedroom, was barking his head off.

  I met the cops at the front door and they yelled at me to lie down on the floor.

  They frisked me and asked me if I was armed and I said I was not. They asked me if I shot Lou and I said I did not. They asked me this three times and I gave the same answer every time. They asked for my ID, and I directed them to my wallet, which was in my jacket and held two crucial IDs: one that identified me as a licensed private investigator and the other as an ex-cop.

  They looked at these things and then let me sit up and get in a chair.

  Two of the uniforms took over: a Latina woman, midthirties, named Maria Cole, and her Black male
partner, Bill Randle, also midthirties. Cole was small and quiet but looked tough. The strong and silent type. She was also very beautiful, with eerie blue eyes, and just from her bearing she seemed destined to make detective sooner rather than later. Randle was also detective material and movie-star handsome: flawless dark skin, chiseled features. The two of them would have made a beautiful couple, but I sensed no chemistry, no warmth between them.

  Randle asked me a two-part question: Did I know who shot Lou and was that individual nearby? I said I didn’t know who the shooter was or where it happened; I said Lou showed up at my door, bleeding, out of it, and then he died.

  Then they had me tell it from the beginning.

  Which I did. And I kept my story real simple:

  Lou showed up a little after two a.m., didn’t say anything comprehensible, and died on the couch. I went to call 911 but my phone was dead. I returned to the body and lost track of time. I was stunned and in shock. Then my phone was charged and I called.

  That’s all I told them. I didn’t want to fudge the time of death—coroners can be very precise.

  By now the house was filled with even more cops and firemen and paramedics, and wrapping up my story, I stood up and said to the two cops, “I really need to take my pain pill: it’s been more than six hours, and the face has a lot of nerves,” and I pointed to my bandage and headed for the kitchen before they could say anything.

  Cole and Randle followed me into the kitchen, and I swallowed a pill dry. I held up the bottle for them to see: “Dilaudid,” I said. “They say it’s like heroin.”

  Cole glanced at her partner and then said: “You shouldn’t have done that.”