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

that process in place, I took her out for an intimate dinner at a little French restaurant downtown, Mignon, and I said, as we drank our first glass of wine: “I have to say it again: I’m so sorry for all I put you through.”

She shook her head and said: “Stop saying you’re sorry, Hap. You’ve said it enough. I mean it.”

I nodded and sipped my wine, and then I blurted out, because I’m a fool: “Then there’s something else I want to tell you. I’m crazy about you. Could I…could I court you?”

That came out all stilted and weird when I had been aiming for chivalrous and respectful, but she rolled with it. She looked down, thought about it a second, and then, looking up, she told me that everything that had happened was what her girlfriends would call “a big red flag.” Probably the biggest of all time. What with nearly getting her harvested for organs being the tip of the iceberg.

“So for now all I can handle is being friends,” she said. “I’m just so glad we’re both alive.”

I nodded my understanding and, of course, she was right.

And what she was offering—friendship—was much more than I deserved and plenty to be grateful for, and I said: “I completely understand. And just so you know, I’m going to keep on working on myself…and if it’s all right with you, I’ll leave the porch light on. Just in case.”

“Leave it on,” she said, and there was something in the tone of her voice and the way she looked at me that gave me a flicker of hope.

Then a few days later something else special happened. An elegant handwritten letter arrived from the old actor, thanking me for saving his life. It couldn’t have been more lovely and gracious, and we subsequently spoke on the phone and hit it off, and when he’s no longer under house arrest we plan to meet. I always did like him in that sitcom when I was a kid.

And the biggest, craziest, unexpected Ace in my lucky streak was that George wasn’t dead. He had been badly poisoned and his whole body had shut down, but later he had managed to crawl through his doggie door out to the chicken coop and was discovered by a neighbor, who heard him crying.

She then rushed him to an animal hospital and, thankfully, after just a few months of vitamin K therapy to clean his blood, he’s made a complete recovery, is as full of joie de vivre as ever, and still seems to love me despite everything I put him through. In fact, we’ve never been more in love with each other. It’s like a second honeymoon.

I’ve also started up my analysis again with Dr. Lavich, which we’re both happy about, and I’ve even gone back to work, calling myself a Security Specialist. You don’t need a license for such a thing, but it can be a way to help people, just like a PI, and because of my notoriety, business has never been better. I do have a nasty scar on my face, but in my line of work that’s not such a bad thing.

So, like I said, in the end, I made out all right.

All it cost me was a kidney.

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 Don’t miss Happy’s return, next year, inThe Wheel of Doll.Following is an excerpt from the novel’s opening pages.

One of my flaws is that I’m a great one for asking questions, but I’m mediocre-to-poor at answers. Which isn’t the best trait for a detective.

Though it may be why, of late, I’ve become an armchair Buddhist.

In Buddhism, you’re meant to question everything, including the idea of questioning everything.

And really there are no answers, anyway.

But that’s in nirvana. Which is where you get to go when you become enlightened. I hear it’s very peaceful there.

But in this messy realm—the realm of women and men and all their myriad problems—there are some answers to some questions.

You can figure some things out.

Which is why you need detectives. Even mediocre-to-poor ones like me.

Because finding a killer can be like finding an answer.

But I’m getting ahead of myself.

The afternoon when all this began, it seemed like just another nice, cold Los Angeles day—and by cold I mean sixty-five degrees—early in 2020. January third, 2020, to be exact, a Friday.

It was around 4:40 and I had just left my house and gotten into my car, a 1985 royal-blue Chevy Caprice Classic, once the preferred vehicle for police forces around the country. In the twentieth century. Which was a long time ago now and not just in years.

I started the Caprice and let it warm up a second, since it’s an old car like an old man, and it always needs a moment to gather itself and get its pants on. But despite its age and three hundred thousand miles, it’s not ready to die. Very few of us are.

To pass the time, I lit a joint.

Then I took a sip of coffee from my thermos. I’m one of those people—maybe the only one—that lives on coffee and pot and small fish: pickled herring, sardines, and kippers.

As I took a second sip, I put the radio on, which was already tuned to 88.9—a strange college station, my favorite—and then I took another hit of my joint and another sip of my coffee, and feeling that wonderful alchemy of the cannabis and the caffeine—you’re ready to go somewhere but don’t care too much if you make it—I backed out of the garage and rolled down my dead-end street, Glen Alder.

I was on my way to my office to meet a potential new client—we had a 5:30 appointment—and I needed the business.

From Glen Alder, I turned right onto Beachwood Canyon Drive, and a black Challenger with tinted windows, parked on the corner, swung in behind me, reckless-like and urgent, and