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

already, Lou. You’re done. You’re dead. And you did it to yourself.”

But who was I to deprive him—in my mind—of one more cup of coffee, one more good feeling, one more bit of happiness?

So I pulled on my joint and said, “You could at least try it. Maybe it’s easier than you think. And what choice do you have?”

“No way. Remember MacKenzie from Homicide? He’s on it. Too much booze. Pickled himself. I went to see him. He’s bent over like a shrimp cocktail. Can’t lift his head. And nobody was tougher.”

“I should give him a call,” I said. But I probably wouldn’t. I always put those calls off, and then the person dies. Someday somebody won’t call me.

“He asked me to shoot him in the head,” Lou said. “He knows I still carry. He said, ‘Come on, Lou, you remember how I was. End this for me. Or just give me the piece and I’ll do it myself.’ I got out of there fast, and so now I’m telling everybody: I need a new kidney. I’m looking for volunteers. I’ll go off these—”

He stubbed out his cigarette and lit another. His troubled eyes were a watery, cataract blue—his nicest feature—and the smoke from the new cigarette plumed out of his nose, two wispy trails, not long for this world.

“What do the doctors at the VA say?” I asked. “Can you get a transplant?”

Shelton had been in Vietnam. Got a Purple Heart. But never talked about it. Like most people, he was a mix of things. Heroic and selfish. Insightful and blind. Sane and insane.

“I asked, but they won’t put me on the list,” he said. “I’m not a good candidate. It’d be a waste of a kidney…but not to me.”

“I’m sorry, Lou. This is rough. Real rough.”

“Anyway, even if I got on the list, by the time they called my number, I’d be dead. So I gotta buy one,” he said, and then added real fast, “I’ll give you fifty thousand, Hank. Maybe even seventy-five, maybe more—I’m working on an angle—and I’ll pay all your medical expenses. We just have to see if you’re the right blood type.”

Then he looked down, ashamed. I hadn’t caught his meaning when he said he was looking for volunteers. “Lou, jeez. Come on,” I pleaded.

“I’m serious,” he said, and he lifted his head and looked at me dead-on, not scared or ashamed anymore. He’d made his ask. “I know you could use the money. I’m O positive. What are you?”

“I don’t know,” I said. “But who’s gonna do the surgery? You can’t buy an organ and then find some doctor to put it in you.”

“No—I’d take you to the VA. They’ll check your blood and you say you’re doing it because you love me or because of God—there’s a whole process—but as long as nobody knows about the money, it’s totally legit. And they’d believe you, because we go way back. And because…you know.”

Now it was my turn to look down.

Lou Shelton had saved my life back in ’94. I was a rookie cop and he was a desk sergeant. But this one time, during a mini riot down in Inglewood, he was on the street with us. We needed extra bodies, and we were going around the alley side of a strip mall to get at some looters from behind, but they chose that moment to slip out the back, and there was a gunfight. Lou pushed me out of the way and took a bullet. Lost his spleen. The one thing not cut out of him because of the cigarettes.

But because of me.

Now he wanted one of my kidneys. Almost like a trade. I sucked on the joint. Could I do it? Should I do it? I didn’t know what to say. So he bailed me out. “Just think about it,” he said. “I know it’s asking a lot.”

“Okay, Lou, I will.”

“And it’s not all on you. Don’t worry. I’m asking everybody, and I’m looking into the black market. I met this kid. A computer whiz. A Pakistani at the motel”—Lou was the night man at the Mirage Suites, a transient motel on Ventura Boulevard in North Hollywood—“knows all about what they call the dark web. You heard of it?”

“Yeah, I’ve heard of it. But black market? Are you crazy?”

“What the fuck you want from me?” he said, angry all of a sudden. “I’m on death row! I gotta try everything. And if you can’t do it, you work that Asian spa. There’s gotta be one of them who’d sell me a kidney. You could ask around.”

“I can’t do that, Lou. You’re not thinking straight.”

“I’d be helping them! You can start a life with fifty grand. They could stop whoring. I’d be doing more for them than you do.”

I looked at Lou and put out my joint. A quiet came over us. The meanness and fire went slowly out of his eyes.

Then he said, “I’m sorry. That was a low blow. I’m not myself. But I’m desperate. I got maybe three months before this thing goes. I can feel it dying.” He nodded toward his abdomen, to the kidney inside him, a water bag gone bad.

“So just think about it,” he said, and stood up. “I had to ask.”

“All right, Lou,” I said.

He nodded and made for the door. On the other side of it was a metal plate that said: H. DOLL, INVESTIGATIONS & SECURITY. Most people call me Hank, but my real name is Happy. Happy Doll. My parents saddled me with that name. They didn’t think it was a joke. They’d been hoping for the best. Can’t say it worked out. Can’t say it didn’t.

At the door, Lou turned and looked at me. “I’m sorry about what I said. I know you take care of those girls the best you can.”

Then he straightened himself—there was still plenty of Marine and good cop left in Lou Shelton, and I caught a glimpse of it, his true self. He’d always