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

said yes right away, if my first instinct had been generosity, he probably wouldn’t have gotten killed, and one of the men I killed was strangling a girl at work and then he nearly killed me, he cut me with a very large knife, and I shot him, though I didn’t mean to kill him, I just wanted to slow him down, and then his father beat me, and I have a prescription for Dilaudid, and I know you think I still drink too much and smoke too much, but I really like this Dilaudid, it puts two inches of gauzy curtain between me and the world, and, oh, one good thing is Monica, you know my friend from the bar, the last woman I slept with, four years ago, well, maybe she loves me or maybe, which is more likely, she pities me…but I think I love her, which I didn’t think I could feel again…I put my face in her neck, and it felt so good…but I have to get to these men, the ones who killed my friend, before they get to me, but maybe what I’m trying to do is kill myself and I’m utterly deluded…deluded on Dilaudid…maybe that’s why they call it Dilaudid, because it makes you deluded…though it hasn’t occurred to me, until just now, that I could take these pills to Malibu and swallow all of them, like my old plan, and swim out into the ocean and…but I don’t want to do that; I want to hunt these men down, and I didn’t tell you but the second man I killed I threw off a balcony and his neck broke at the most hideous angle, and there was another man in the house, with a bullet in his head, fired by the gun in my pocket…I’m sorry I brought a gun into your office…

But I didn’t say any of that to her, though that’s what was unspooling in my crazy mind.

Finally, she spoke: “Hank, tell me what’s going on. Why did you bring your dog, and what happened to your face?”

I touched the bandage. Could feel the raised, long pucker of the stitches beneath the cotton. I said: “I can’t tell you anything. You’ll have to trust me on this. So I’m going to sit up in a second and leave. My analysis, unfortunately, has to stop.”

She waited a moment. Then she said: “You can tell me what’s going on.”

“I can’t. I have to stop seeing you.”

“I’m very concerned for you right now, Hank. Please tell me—”

I stood up abruptly with George and walked to the door without looking at her.

“Hank!” she said with urgency, standing.

I couldn’t look her in the eye and said, without turning, keeping my back to her: “Please; you have to trust me. Thank you for all you’ve done for me. I have to go now,” and then I said, in a whisper she couldn’t hear, “I love you,” and then I quickly opened the door and walked rapidly to my car, George trailing after me. What a fool I must have looked like. A scared little man—at six two, 190—running away from a tiny analyst. A Freudian with gold-colored hair.

She followed me as far as her driveway and called out: “Hank, please, let me help you!”

But I didn’t turn. I got into the car and drove away without looking back.

11.

It was twenty minutes north on the 101 to Tarzana and the Vault Pawn Shop, which had a big glittery sign in its window: WE WILL BUY YOUR GOLD.

The owner of the shop, Rafael Mendes, who goes by Rafi, likes to tell people that his last name is spelled with an s and not a z. It’s a real sore spot for him—we all have our areas of frustration—but, regardless, he’s a good friend of mine and always behind the counter.

I met him in 2001 when his niece, Dolores, ran away, and he came to Hollywood looking for her—a family friend had spotted her on a bus. My partner and I were assigned the case—I was still a cop then—and we found her working in a strip club off Hollywood Boulevard. She was fifteen years old.

Rafi and his sister, the girl’s mother, collected her at the station, and Rafi and I had stayed in touch all these years, initially bonding over an old Rolex I was wearing back then. I had won the watch at a poker game with a bunch of other cops during my Texas Hold’em phase, and Rafi had given me his card and told me if I ever wanted to sell it to come see him. He collects and repairs Rolexes, as a hobby and a business, and holds on to them, selling one off every once in a while, like playing the stock market, when the timing—no pun intended—seems right.

So a few months after finding his niece, Dolores, I had started to bottom out on my little gambling phase, racking up some nice debt, and I remembered his card in my wallet. I drove out to Tarzana and sold him the watch for two grand. Ten years later, he sold it for $4K. Which is why he’s a Rolex man. They age well.

Anyway, I got a kick out of him from the very first time he came into the station: he’s eccentric and pint-size, but the way he carries himself, he seems a lot bigger, and I like eccentrics, people with style, always have, and over the years, I’ve pawned a few things with him and we’ve had a few meals together, and every now and then he’s assisted me on a case. A pawnbroker, like a real estate agent but in different ways, can be helpful in the detective business. Rafi knows where to get things, and he understands people: their vulnerability, their corruption, and if they have any good in them. He takes their confessions—and their possessions—like a pawnshop priest.

His store is in a little strip mall on Reseda Boulevard, and as