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

next to me and deposited on my chest, as an offering, a toy, a furry, saliva-drenched skunk, and I said, “Thank you, Georgie-boy,” and I dropped it off the side of the bed in such a way that he wouldn’t notice, and he put his head on my chest with a sigh, and I felt like he wanted to say: “You shouldn’t have lied to the police. You’re acting crazy. You’re high on Dilaudid and the marijuana you ate.”

So then I started thinking that George was right: I was acting crazy and this had gone far enough. When the detectives arrived I had better come totally clean: the diamond, Dodgers Hat, 2803 Belden, and the two dead blondes.

That’s what I’m gonna do, I thought. It’s the right thing to do. Tell them everything.

Then I fell asleep, just passed out completely, and when I woke up, Thode and Mullen were standing above me. Thode still had purple lips and Mullen was still fat. They were the homicide detectives assigned to this murder—Hollywood is a small town, after all—and Thode was leering at me.

So I stuck to my story.

The one filled with lies.

5.

They didn’t like it and they still didn’t like me.

“He shows up here, says nothing, and just dies?” said Thode, and he blinked twice. Twitchy.

“That’s right,” I said.

We were still in my bedroom. I was sitting up now, my feet on the floor, and Mullen had sat his big, wide self on the corner of my bed. Thode was in the doorway, two feet away.

I didn’t like Mullen touching my comforter with his pants, being anywhere near my bed, and to make things worse George was in his lap, showing no discretion.

“Can we go downstairs?” I said. I wanted to get George off of him.

“Too noisy,” said Mullen. “Let’s keep chatting here. You got a nice dog. His ears are like velvet. I had a dog but he died.”

“Don’t say that. George, come here,” I demanded. But he just looked at me. He liked the big man. Mullen was probably giving off a lot of good yeasty odors.

Thode said: “So Shelton makes all that effort, climbs your fucking stairs with a bullet having perforated his gut, and then tells you nothing?”

“That’s right. Nothing.”

“Why does he come to you?”

“I don’t know. We were close. He was a cop, you know.”

“Good. You were close,” said Mullen, and his thick fingers were in George’s fur, making love to him. “So any idea who might want Shelton—might want your friend—dead?”

“No idea,” I said. “George, come here.”

“Leave the dog alone,” said Mullen. “He’s content.”

Thode said: “Okay, let’s review. Shelton gets here a little after two. Your phone has died and you plug it in and try to stop his bleeding.”

“That’s right.”

“And he says nothing, but then dies, like, two minutes later.”

“Right.”

“And you don’t call for almost an hour.”

“I was just sitting with him. He was my friend for twenty-five years. I don’t know…I lost track of time. I’m on these pills. I’m a little screwed up. I’m not right.”

Mullen looked at me and smiled. “That’s the first honest thing you’ve said.”

I didn’t have a response to that, and then Thode started in on me again: “You can’t think of anybody who would want to take Shelton out? Somebody he owes money to? Somebody with an old beef?”

“I’m telling you, he didn’t have enemies.”

“So why does he come to you? Why doesn’t he drive to a hospital? Are you his best friend?”

“I’m a good friend. But it’s not like we were writing love letters every week.”

“What kind of guy was he?” asked Mullen.

“Stand-up. Loyal. Smoked too much.”

“How’d he keep himself occupied?” Thode asked. “He was retired, and his address is a motel.” He produced Lou’s driver’s license, looked at it: “Mirage Suites, in North Hollywood. What’s that about?”

“He worked the desk there at night. He liked working a desk. It’s what he did at the Seventy-Seventh. It’s how we met.”

“Jeez, a real success story like you. A motel clerk.”

“Show some respect,” I said.

Then Thode, twitch-blinking, looked at his phone, read something. Then he said:

“They sent his file over from the station. Does look like he was a good cop. Put in thirty years. Two citations for bravery. A Medal of Valor in ’94 for taking a bullet during a riot”—that would be the bullet he took for me, but I didn’t say anything—“and a Police Star in ’75, for breaking up a diamond heist downtown and saving his partner, who got shot. Not bad.”

Lou had never mentioned anything about this diamond heist and I got a chill down my spine and thought about the bloodstained blue square in my freezer. Then my face must have given something away because Mullen jumped on me:

“What are you thinking? You look scared all of a sudden.”

“Not thinking anything except my friend is dead.”

But I was thinking that Lou had grabbed a diamond back in 1975 and had been sitting on it for forty-four years. Then, trying to sell the diamond, he’d met with the wrong people. At least four wrong people. The two blondes. And the two in the car: Dodgers Hat and the one with the gray hair.

“Fucking work with us,” said Mullen. “You know the guy. He must have been into something. Drugs? Whores? Gambling?”

“Nothing. He had one vice: cigarettes.”

6.

And it went on like that for a while, the two of them asking me the same questions in different ways, and then they cuffed me—just to be tough—and drove me to Hollywood station. They said the commander wanted to talk to me. In the car, from the front seat, Mullen half joked: “You been keeping us busy this week. A one-man shit show. Got any other homicides you want to tell us about?”

He didn’t know how close to the truth he was, and I said: “I got a lead on the Lindbergh baby.”

“Who’s that?” said Thode.

“Never mind,” I said, and we lapsed into silence. I knew they didn’t think I had killed Lou or anything like