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

Maurais number—putting in *67 first to set my phone to “private”—and a young-sounding woman answered: “Ken Maurais.”

“May I speak to Mr. Maurais?”

“He’s not in right now, but can I take a message?”

“I was hoping to meet with Mr. Maurais. A friend recommended your agency, said Ken did a great job, and I’m looking for a house in the two to three to four million range, something with a pool.” I wanted to sound like an enticing potential client.

“We can help you with that, definitely. Mr. Maurais can call you. What’s your number—”

“What if I just swing by today? What time will he be in?”

“He can call you first if you like—”

“I’ll just come by. What time will he be in?”

“Well…he should be back around twelve, and he’s here all afternoon—”

“Great. I’ll come by at noon.”

“Are you sure he can’t call you first—”

“I’m sure,” I said firmly.

There was silence. Then, worn down, she said: “Your name, sir?”

I looked at George. “George,” I said, and George perked up his ears. “George Mendes. With an s, not a z. But you know what? My phone is dying, so I better go. Thank you so much; see you at twelve,” I said, and hung up.

It was now 9:50, and I got back on the 101 and pointed the Caprice south to downtown, to Hill Street and Raz Diamonds.

13.

Traffic was light, but I wasn’t happy with the way I was driving.

The accelerator felt like it was made of thick rubber and I had no feel for it. The Dilaudid had me hidden inside myself, far away from my extremities, and the coffee I had drunk earlier had died on me completely.

It was like I was pushing all four thousand pounds of the Caprice myself. Everyone was passing me, and I wanted to go faster but I was also scared to.

Nervous, I stayed in the right-hand lane and tried not to kill anyone.

Then I remembered I had a few Adderall in the glove compartment. A friend had given them to me during the previous tax season when I couldn’t stop procrastinating, but I had never taken any.

Normally, I don’t like speed, but I thought the Adderall and the Dilaudid might balance each other out. The Dilaudid would be for the pain and the Adderall would keep me going, which is all to say that when Carl Lusk had cut me, he must have nicked some of my brain, because I was on a record streak of stupidity.

One hand on the wheel, I reached across George and in doing so nearly drove into the embankment, but then I righted the car, while horns blared, and I fished the bottle out of the glove compartment, wading through a ton of crap I had shoved in there.

The bottle said to take one pill, but that’s if you’re not on Dilaudid, and so I took two, and George looked at me and said, “What are you doing? I’ve never seen you like this,” and then Dr. Lavich called, which was perfect timing.

I felt caught like a child and, of course, I didn’t pick up, but I listened to her voice mail. She sounded upset, in a way I had never heard before: all her training had made her unflappable, but I had rattled her with my dramatics, and in her voice mail she insisted that I check in with her and let her know that I was all right.

I hated upsetting her, but I wasn’t going to call her back. I was officially off the rails, which was the only way I could keep doing what I was doing, which, on a conscious level, was to retrace Lou’s movements until they led me to Dodgers Hat and the gray-haired man and which, on an unconscious level, was to make a very bad situation far worse.

But the act of taking the double dose of Adderall, before it could even kick in, did seem to wake me up in a placebo sort of way, and we made it downtown, thankfully, without killing anyone, in twenty-five minutes. The LA freeway system, when it works, is a marvel, on the order of the Great Wall of China.

At 3rd Street, we exited the 101, and I found an open meter about a block from 550 Hill, which was a large modern glass building across from Pershing Square.

We got out of the car and started walking and George urinated several times where other dogs, like Masons, had left secret messages, and then we got to 550 and sailed across the lobby, where a large sign informed me that this building was the International Jewelry Center.

There was security behind a counter, but you didn’t have to check in; you could go straight to the elevator bank, and no one made a fuss about George, perhaps because he was so elegant looking, though, of course, dogs are everywhere these days. People are so insane and confused that they need them more than ever.

In the crowded elevator, I noticed that the man in front of me had in his hand a thick roll of money, the width of a soup can. He got off at the sixth floor, and George and I got off at the eighth.

The hallway was long and nondescript and wrapped around the building in a gigantic rectangle, which I discovered since we took the long way to suite 834, passing many office doors, including one with a plaque that said: DIAMOND CENTER SYNAGOGUE.

I stopped for a moment in front of the synagogue and touched the mezuzah on the doorframe in honor of my dead Jewish mother, with the selfish intention that maybe she or God might look after me.

Finally, we found 834. The door had no signage, but there was a button to push and another mezuzah. I pushed the button, and the lock clicked.

I opened the door and on my way in I touched this second mezuzah for another dose of good luck and blessing, and then put my fingers to my mouth