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

and kissed them in case I was on camera, which I imagined I was.

A friend told me once that you first touch the mezuzah to remind you of God, and then you kiss your fingers to show your love for God, and I thought it might be good, if anyone was watching, to exhibit familiarity with this custom, and on the other side of the door George and I found ourselves in a small vestibule with a bulletproof glass window, and next to that was a connecting door to the interior of the office.

I stood in front of the window, which had a thin opening at the bottom for passing thin items. An accented voice spoke to me out of a speaker, which I couldn’t locate, and the voice said: “What do you want? Do you have an appointment?”

I fished the diamond out of my pocket, found a camera lens in the corner of the vestibule, and held up the glinting piece of carbon to the camera’s glass eye. I became aware that I was starting to grind my teeth and swivel my jaw from the Adderall, and I said: “I’m looking to sell this diamond.”

There was no response from the Wizard of Oz, and then a man, early thirties, dark-haired and trim, appeared on the other side of the glass and said, with an Israeli accent: “We don’t see people without appointments.”

“Lou Shelton told me to come here,” I offered by way of explanation, and then took a risk and said, even though I couldn’t be sure it was true: “He came here yesterday, with this,” and I held up the big diamond again, like $289,000 worth of bait.

The diamond intrigued him for sure, and he looked me over, taking in the stained bandage on my face and the attractive dog on the leash.

And while he looked at me, I looked at him.

He was wearing an expensive tailored white shirt, and he wasn’t tall, but he was built like a knife. I figured that not too long ago he would have been a soldier in the IDF, and he still looked like a soldier: his hair was cut close to his head; his dark features were handsome and severe.

After a few seconds of our staring contest, he nodded, which was his way of saying he trusted me enough to let me in, and his hand reached down below my line of sight, and he must have pushed a button, because the lock on the connecting door clicked loudly.

George and I went through the door, and the dark-haired man was already walking down the hallway ahead of us and said over his shoulder: “Come into my office.” To go with his crisp white shirt, he wore tailored blue pants and Italian loafers the color of raw steak. He moved catlike and easy.

We passed two closed doors, and then at the end of the corridor was his office, which had a view overlooking Pershing Square and all of downtown, but that was it for frills. The carpet was old and thin, and the walls were bare and scuffed and needed painting. One got the sense that the goal here was to make money, not spend it.

The only thing in the room was a large black desk, with an office chair on each side, and even the desk was mostly barren. The only things on it were a lamp, a scale, and in the corner of the desk—angled so that I could just about see the whole thing—was a very small CCTV monitor, which was split into four live feeds: the vestibule, the interior hallway, and two offices, which were probably behind the doors we passed.

In the two offices, men sat at desks, looking at computer monitors. The dark man in front of me could watch his colleagues, and they could probably watch him, and if he had been looking he had probably seen me kiss my fingers when I entered the vestibule.

He sat down and I sat down and he looked me over again. He liked to do a lot of looking. It was a power move, and it came to him naturally. Then he said: “What’s your name?” He spoke with a kind of hoarseness in his voice.

“Hank Doll,” I said.

“Doll?”

“Yeah. It’s Irish. But my mother was Jewish.”

He said, noncommittal: “That’s nice.”

“And you’re Israeli?” I said. “Ex-military?”

“Yes. We’re all ex-military.”

“You’ve got a military bearing.”

He shrugged that off and said: “Your name is really Doll?”

“Yes. It really is.”

A smile, which he then tried to suppress, cracked his facade. To a foreigner the name Doll can be especially funny, but he had seen the diamond, and while my showing up unannounced had made him wary, he also didn’t want to offend me. It was a very big diamond.

So he covered the smile by reaching his hand across the desk and saying: “I’m Yair. Yair Raz.”

“The Raz of Raz Diamonds?”

“No. That’s my father. But he lives in Antwerp. I run the Los Angeles office.”

We shook—he had a strong grip—and then he leaned back in his chair and did some more appraising. When he tired himself out with that, he said: “What happened to your face?”

“Skin cancer,” I said.

He nodded as if he understood, and then he said, still wondering if he should trust me: “And why is your mouth moving like that? Are you on drugs?”

“No. Nothing like that. It’s Adderall for the pain. My skin cancer.”

“For the pain?”

“You’re right. I’m taking something else for the pain and the Adderall is so that I’m not sleepy from the pain pill. See what I mean? They work together. On the pain. But it’s got me a little speedy.”

Then George jumped on my lap, and Yair said: “What’s your dog’s name?”

“George,” I said, and I put him back down on the floor.

“He has beautiful eyes.”

“Yeah,” I said. “But no flirting. I get jealous.” The Adderall was really enjoying itself, had me flapping my mouth, had me feeling blithe and clever.

But Yair didn’t understand my joke