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

meds should get me through it. He also told me that his mother would pick up any additional expenses that my insurance wouldn’t cover, and I didn’t say no.

After he left, I did feel a little embarrassed that I hadn’t offered any kind of protest to this offer of financial assistance, but my pride was as thin as my bank account. I had no savings and my only asset was my house, and the only reason it was paid off was because it was willed to me in 2011 by a client, Mrs. Rubenstein, after she died.

I had come to know her because for a long time most of my work as a private investigator had been for the elderly. When I first hung out my shingle, I got hooked up with a gerontologist, a Dr. Schine, who sent me a lot of his patients. Senior citizens are ripe for all sorts of scams and it became kind of a niche market for me, albeit a small one.

Then in 2017, Dr. Schine, sadly and ironically, got hit with early-onset dementia, retired, and closed his practice. Overnight he went from caring for old people to being one—it was strange karma—and without him feeding me work, I slowly went broke and ended up at the Miracle.

But long before all that happened, Dr. Schine sent me Mrs. Fanny Rubenstein, a ninety-year-old Austrian émigré, a retired violin teacher who had been married to a violin maker, Irving Rubenstein.

Irving was from a long line of Viennese violin makers, and when Hitler annexed Austria, in ’38, Mr. Rubenstein—they were living in Vienna at the time—took a big risk and mailed a precious violin that had been in the family for several generations to a cousin in America for safekeeping. The cousin, a costume designer, was in the movie business in Los Angeles.

So they sent their violin to California, and they sent their little girl, six years old, to relatives in France who lived in Lyon. They didn’t want their child too far away, and no one thought then that France would fall so easily, or fall at all.

In 1940, Mr. and Mrs. Rubenstein got carted off to Buchenwald but somehow survived. Their daughter and their relatives in Lyon didn’t.

Then in 1950, after a few years in Israel, the Rubensteins came to Los Angeles, got the violin, and made a new life on Glen Alder Street, where they bought, on the side of the hill, my little bungalow, which they named after their daughter, Frimma, the little girl they had sent to France and never saw again.

They had forty years together on Glen Alder—he made and repaired violins, and she taught—and then Irving died in the early ’90s. After he passed, Mrs. Rubenstein withdrew from the world, stopped teaching, and became a recluse. Then in 2011, her home health aide figured out that the old violin, hidden in a special humidor in the linen closet, was worth something, and so she quit her job, took the thing, and tried to sell it.

Mrs. Rubenstein told Dr. Schine what had happened and then he told me, and without too much effort, I was able to get the violin back. Then Mrs. Rubenstein gave it to the LA Phil—it was called a Guarneri and the Phil sold it to the Louvre for four million. All of which, Mrs. Rubenstein said, would have pleased her husband very much. They had gone to the LA Phil for decades, and it was Irving’s passion.

A few months after the sale to the Louvre, Mrs. Rubenstein died and left me the house on Glen Alder—left me Frimma—as a way to thank me.

7.

Around two p.m., a nurse—a sweet gal named Nancy—came to take more blood. I looked away because I’m squeamish, and then I had a eureka moment of sorts.

“What’s my blood type?” I asked her, excited. That is, as excited as you can get when you’re on Dilaudid, just got thirty stitches in your face, and have killed a man.

Florence told me it was O positive, and when she was done drawing my blood I asked for my phone. She found it in the closet—where they were also keeping my blood-soaked clothes in a plastic bag—and it had only 3 percent battery. I realized that something must be draining the phone more than usual, some app or something, when I wasn’t using the damn thing, but I didn’t have the slightest idea how to go about fixing it.

There were several texts and missed calls from Monica. She wanted to know if she could come see me and was I okay? There was also a voice mail from my analyst, Dr. Lavich, wondering where I was that morning. I certainly had a reasonable excuse, but I had completely forgotten about our morning session and it had never occurred to me to call her. This would have to be discussed in our next session, along with other pressing headlines, like what had happened last night at the spa.

In the meantime, I left her a brief message on her answering machine: “Dr. Lavich, it’s Hank—Happy—Doll. I’m so sorry I missed today’s session. Something unexpected happened. Will fill you in when I see you. I also can’t make it tomorrow morning, but I’ll be there Friday.” I had analysis four times a week, Tuesday through Friday, at nine a.m.

Then I texted Monica that I was fine and that today I needed to rest, but that maybe tomorrow, when they let me out, she could come get me with some clothes. I didn’t mention that all my clothes in the plastic bag in the closet were covered in blood. And most of it not mine.

There were no missed calls or voice mails from Lou, and before the phone died I tried his number and got the answering machine again. I left another message: “Lou, it’s Hank. Where are you? Listen—ran into some trouble at the spa. Got cut bad. And the other guy…well, I’ll tell you when I see