A Man Named Doll by Jonathan Ames (popular books to read TXT) 📗

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