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

I parked in the spot right in front of his glass doors, I realized that what I had just executed was more of a swerve than a direct line. The Dilaudid I had taken earlier was circulating freely now, impairing my driving, and my legs felt heavy.

I then cracked the window, got out of the Caprice, and told George to stay.

Rafi had a cat hidden somewhere in the store, and George would sniff him out in a second and tear the place apart.

He looked heartbroken to be left behind, and I said, trying to be firm, “You’ll be all right, George. I won’t be too long—I promise.” But I wasn’t able to maintain eye contact, and I closed the door, locking him in.

As I entered the pawnshop, I dared to look back and George was standing with his paws on the dashboard, staring at me intently.

“I love you! I won’t be long,” I said loudly, trying to reassure him.

Then I walked into the Vault—it was just a little before 9:30—and it was empty except for Rafi, behind the glass counter.

“Oh, my God, Hank,” he said. “What happened to your face? Skin cancer?”

There was a mirror behind the counter—behind Rafi—and I could see that my bandage was turning a little pink with seepage. “It’s a long story, but I got cut bad,” I said. “You didn’t see the paper?”

“I never look at it anymore; too depressing,” he said.

Rafi’s in his early sixties, gray-haired, cherub-faced, and all of five four, which makes the sapphires and gold rings on his hands look even bigger. His large brown eyes hide behind orange-framed women’s glasses, and he’s in possession of a perfectly round little belly, which he’s always cupping with his bejeweled hands.

He also has beautiful white teeth, which he puts in a cup at night, and he’s been with the same man, Manuel, for forty years, but his mother is still alive so they haven’t gotten married. Though they do live with her, in her house, and she gives them dinner in front of the television every night.

“So who cut you?” he asked. “It was in the paper?”

“You know I’ve been working over at that spa, and a client went berserk,” I said. “But to be honest, it’s too much to go into, and there’s something I really need you to look at.”

“Have you been drinking? You sound funny.”

“Sorry—it’s the pill for my face,” I said. “It’s as strong as heroin, but you take it like Motrin.” Then, with thick fingers, I took the folded blue piece of paper out of my pocket—the bloodstains had turned brown—and he said: “What’s on the paper? Mud?”

“Yeah,” I said, and showed him the diamond. His eyes widened, and I said, “What do you think of it?”

“If it’s real—and it looks real—it’s worth a lot of money,” he said in awe. “Let’s go to my office.”

He locked his front door, and we went to the back, past the long glass cases of jewelry and watches—that’s primarily what Rafi trades in—and we settled ourselves in his cluttered little work space, him behind the desk, me in front of it. An old oil painting of Jesus, dim with age, was on the wall behind Rafi, watching over us.

He took some tweezers and put the diamond in a small metal cup on a scale. He peered closely at the instrument and said: “This is a very big and beautiful girl. Seven carats. And if she weighs this much, she’s real.”

“How much would that go for?”

“On weight alone we’re talking fifty, sixty thousand dollars,” he said, which was the amount that Lou had been tossing around when he came to see me. “But this diamond has other qualities. Let’s take a closer look.”

Rafi then swiveled in his chair. To his left, on a wing of his desk, was a large microscope. He put the diamond where it needed to go and bent over the lens and fiddled with the thing. He was still a moment. Then he said: “Magnificent. Come see.”

I came around the desk, feeling a little wobbly, like a drunk, and I peered through the microscope at the diamond, and it was like looking into the Hall of Mirrors in Versailles.

“So beautiful,” I said, and it was moving to look at, this glimpse of nature from deep in the earth. I had never seen a diamond under a microscope before, and then I noticed that at the edge of the Hall of Mirrors there seemed to be lettering of some kind. “What’s that marking on the side?”

We switched places, and Rafi, his eye still on the microscope, said: “I didn’t see it before, but you’re right. It’s been lasered. On what you call the girdle. Lasered by GIA.” He said each letter like you’d say CIA. “That’s the highest standard there is. This diamond’s been certified.”

I went back to my chair, and Rafi, with great respect, returned the diamond to the middle of the blue piece of paper, which lay on the center of his desk between us. I said: “I also have this,” and I took out the brochure with the letters GIA on the front.

“Yeah, that’s the cert,” he said, looking at the brochure. “GIA grades diamonds, jewels, everything, and what they say goes, and the laser marks it, like a cattle brand. They just started doing that a few years ago.”

“It doesn’t lessen the value?”

“No. It increases it.”

“And this place is down in Carlsbad?” He said it was, and I asked him: “Does GIA stand for something?”

“Gemological Institute of America,” he said. “They’re like the Fort Knox of jewels. Where did you get this diamond? The cert says Louis Shelton.”

“That’s my friend. He died last night and gave it to me.”

Rafi looked at me. “Gave it to you?”

“He asked me to sell it for his daughter. Kind of a deathbed request. So does that report say how much it’s worth? I didn’t see a price.”

“GIA doesn’t estimate prices. They just grade the diamond, based on industry standards,