A Man Named Doll

by Jonathan Ames

  He was having a massive stroke, and his good eye was staring at me with all it had, and I dug frantically into the pockets of his blazer and found his nitro bottle. I hastily got a pill out and tried to put it in his mouth, but his lips were squeezed tight, and I shouted, “Come on, swallow this!”

  But the mouth stayed closed—either he didn’t trust me or he couldn’t open it—and his one good eye just kept staring at me, like an eye in a keyhole in a prison cell, and I said, panicked: “I gotta call 911.”

  I stood up and didn’t see a landline—this was the Lou situation all over again—and I took the place in with a quick scan: it was frozen in time in the ’80s, with a white leather couch, glass tables, mirrors, the color red, the color black, sculptures of Greek torsos.

  But no fucking phone!

  I knelt back down quick. “Where’s your cell phone?!”

  He couldn’t answer, and he was making little sucking noises through his lips, and I patted his body, but his cell phone wasn’t in any of his pockets, and like a fool I tried to get the pill in his mouth again, but he still wouldn’t open up, and the eye kept staring at me, with hate and terror, and then all of a sudden his jaw slid out of place, like a typewriter carriage, and half his face went to one side, it was grotesque, and then his jaw slid back into place, and it was his face again, but then his whole body went slack and the lights went off in his good eye—no more terror, no more hate—and I was sure he was dead.

  But I started CPR on his chest, and it was like pushing down on a bag of hangers.

  Then I got his mouth open—finally—and pinched his nose and put my mouth on his and gave him the kiss of life, but got nothing. After that, I pounded on his chest some more and then I stood up and ran down the hall to 5H. I pressed the buzzer and the redhead came to the door.

  “Mr. Maurais in 5F had a stroke. Call 911!”

  She looked at me, confused. “What are you doing here?” she said.

  “Fucking call 911!” I shouted. “In 5F. The man’s dying!”

  “I don’t understand what you’re saying.”

  Fear had made her stupid, and she couldn’t get past the idea that a stranger coming to her door must have something to do with her. I slammed my hand against the wall, scaring her more, and shouted: “Call 911! Maurais in 5F is dying!”

  She got it then and ran back into her apartment, and I ran back to Maurais and he hadn’t moved and I checked his pulse, just to be sure, and he was gone. No more real estate deals. No more bread and butter. No more looking at that Hockney poster and having secret thoughts.

  So I ran out of there like I was on fire. I certainly didn’t want to stick around for the cops, and having no patience for the elevator—I didn’t want to be stuck in a box—I took the staircase at the end of the hall and ran down all five flights, which was one flight for each dead man I had seen in the past three days: Carl Lusk, Lou, the two blondes, and now Maurais.

  I hit the lobby and went calmly across it and didn’t encounter any more residents. I walked to the Caprice like I was an innocent man, and it was fully dark out now.

  I got in the car and drove us out of there.

  In my rearview mirror, I saw flashing police lights. A squad car must have been nearby. I had gotten away just in time. But poor Maurais. My face was the last thing he ever saw. I had scared him to death.

  19.

  George and I went up the steps of my house, and I was counting on him barking in case anyone was inside. In the past, when we came home from a walk and the gas man or somebody else was there, George would know it right away and sound the alarm. But he was silent as he trotted up the stairs and so most likely the coast was clear. Still, I got Lou’s gun out just in case.

  But the front door hadn’t been tampered with, and nobody was inside.

  I hid the money in the linen closet—it was too big for the ironing board—and I plugged my phone in by the socket over the kitchen counter. It was almost seven—traffic had been bad from West Hollywood—and I was exhausted and hungry and my face wanted to die.

  I gave George some food, finally took a Dilaudid, and spooned some yogurt into my mouth. Then my phone came alive and the thing was loaded.

  Text messages. Missed calls. Voice mails. The ones I cared about were from: Monica, Dr. Lavich, Thode and Mullen, Aram (Lou’s boss), and Rick Alvarez.

  Monica and Dr. Lavich were worried about me, and Monica had tried me multiple times. Aram had called early in the afternoon, wanted to know if I had heard about Lou.

  Thode and Mullen needed to talk to me right away, and that was three hours ago.

  And Rick Alvarez had done some more digging and had come through, after all, with some very interesting dirt. He had texted me several links—some old newspaper articles about a murder and an old obituary—but I cut to the chase and called him to make sense of it all.

  “Where you been?” he said.

  “My phone died.”

  “Did you see the links I sent you? Heard my voice mail?”

  “Was too much. Spell it out for me.”

  What he told me was this: He followed a hunch and looked into the previous owner of 2803 Belden, which the records showed was a woman named Caroline Hagen. Then he did a little research on her and discovered that she was from an old oil family, with plenty of money. He also learned, more importantly, that she had died twelve years ago and that her husband, Eric Madvig, a well-respected doctor at USC, had been arrested for her murder. He overdosed her on fentanyl and claimed it was an accident. His presumed motive: money.

  At the time of her death, it had been a front-page story, which I vaguely recalled, but the trial of Madvig, two years later, had been overshadowed, in Rick’s opinion, by the second Phil Spector trial.

  Spector was convicted of murder, whereas Madvig’s high-priced lawyers got his charges reduced to manslaughter. Madvig then did sixteen months at a rich man’s jail, an easy sentence, but lost his license and his position at USC, and his reputation was destroyed.

  What came next from Rick was the kicker: the law firm that repped Madvig at his murder trial was the same firm in charge of the private trust that owned 2803 Belden.

  But that wasn’t all he had dug up: Caroline Hagen had owned another property, which was part of the same private trust, and I wasn’t surprised to learn that its address was 1479 Encinal Canyon Road, in Malibu.

  “So what I figure,” Rick said toward the end of his rundown, “is that this Dr. Madvig owns the house on Belden. He must have inherited it from his wife, but because he also killed her, it’s in a trust of some kind. Hope this is helpful.” He said that last bit with false humility. He knew he had given me good stuff.

  “Extremely helpful,” I said.

  “Wild, the whole murder thing, right?” Now he could let out his enthusiasm.

  I was silent, thinking. Then I saw that Monica was trying to call me, but I let it go to voice mail. I was going to have to get back to her, but not yet.

  “What’s this all about, Hank?” Rick asked, breaking the silence.

  “I can’t explain it all, but I will. I promise. I’m still putting it together.”

  “Okay. I understand. And like I told you, we’re headed to Costa Rica tomorrow morning. I’ll check in with you when we’re back.”

  “Right,” I said, “thanks,” and Rick started to say something but I hung up. I held on to the phone, still plugged into the wall, charging, and studied the obituary and the news articles Rick had sent about the trial. Some other very important details came out:

  Madvig and Hagen had three boys: Paul, Andy, and John. The boys had their father’s name. The blonde I threw off the balcony had a money clip engraved with the initials PM. Paul Madvig.

  In one of the articles, there was a picture taken in front of the courthouse downtown, showing the doctor with his three sons, who had stood by his side during the trial. It wasn’t the best picture, but I could make out that two of the boys were tall and blonde, and they looked an awful lot like
they could have grown up, ten years later, to be the two dead men I had met the night before.

  The other son, John, also tall, was dark-haired and a little older, and the doctor himself was short and had a large head. Like a vulture. Like the man who had been driving the Land Rover.

  And there was one more very important detail: Madvig was a transplant surgeon. World-renowned.

  So then I was thinking that the meeting at Belden hadn’t been about the diamond at all. The diamond was secondary. It was to be used as payment or proof of funds. For a kidney. For surgery.

  That’s what the meeting was about.

  Lou wasn’t raising cash with a fence so he could buy a kidney.

  He already had a kidney lined up and it came with a doctor.

  On Tuesday, in my office, he had said he was looking into the black market, and he mentioned a computer whiz at the motel, a young Pakistani man, who could access the dark web. Then on Thursday, when Lou left me a message, he said that it was all working out, and what this meant to me, as I put it together, was that Madvig was still in business, if you knew how to find him. And had enough money. Or a very big diamond.

  But something had gone wrong at the meeting. Very wrong.

  So I needed to speak to the computer whiz. The one who must have made the connection. I wanted to find out what he knew and to warn him that Lou was dead. I called the Mirage, and Aram answered in a weak voice: “Mirage Suites.”

  “Aram, it’s Hank.”

  “Oh, my God, Hank.”

  “I know. Lou.”

  “It’s even worse than that.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “There was a murder here and a robbery. The police just left. They were asking about you.”

  “A skinny cop and a fat cop?”

  “Yes.”

  Thode and Mullen. They got around. “Who was killed?” I had to ask the question, but I was pretty sure I knew the answer.

  “A young kid. Pakistani,” said Aram. “His girlfriend found him this afternoon. Everybody’s checking out. Nobody wants to stay here.”

  “When did this happen?”

  “Last night.”

  “Do you know roughly what time?”

  “I watched the security tape with the cops—2:32 is when a man came out of his room. You can’t see his face, but he’s got the boy’s computer under his arm.”

  “Why can’t you see his face?”

  “Had a baseball hat pulled down. And I told the cops I didn’t know who it was.”

  “Was it a Dodgers hat?”

  “Yeah. Everyone wears Dodgers hats. Even killers…and poor Lou. What happened, Hank? This has been a terrible day. First they came this morning, telling me about Lou, and I could barely breathe, and then this afternoon they find the kid.”

  “Aram, I gotta go.”

  “Is there going to be a funeral for Lou?”

  “I don’t know. I gotta go.”

  I hung up. Dodgers Hat had been at my house around 2:05, when George and I chased him away. Then he’d gone straight to the motel, about a fifteen-, twenty-minute drive. The kid was a loose thread. Could connect them to Lou.

  So Dodgers Hat gets to the motel around 2:25, probably looks things over, but doesn’t waste much time. He kills the kid, grabs the computer, and leaves the room at 2:32. Then he drives back, another fifteen, twenty minutes, and texts the blonde—Paul Madvig—at 2:51: All done. Almost back. Be ready to go.

  “All done” must have referred to the Pakistani boy.

  Then I realized George had slipped through the doggie door into his chicken coop off the kitchen and had been barking for a while. I had been so focused I hadn’t noticed. Then there was a banging at the front door. I took Lou’s gun out of my pocket and moved fast to the kitchen window and peeked out.

  It was Monica.

  20.

  “Jesus Christ, Hap, your face! It must have gotten worse overnight.”

  “It did,” I said and let Monica into the house. George came back through his doggie door and started jumping all over her, but she didn’t care.

  “I’ve been trying you all day,” she said. “Why didn’t you get back to me? I’ve been really worried.”

  Her face was drawn with concern and anxiety, and it made her scar more livid.

  “George!” I said. He wouldn’t stop jumping on her. “I’m sorry. I…I had problems with my phone…I should have called.”

  “I thought maybe you had died or something on the pills. That’s why I came over.”

  “I’m sorry,” I said, and feeling the weight of everything, I slumped into my reading chair and George got on my lap.

  “Are you all right?” Monica asked.

  “I’m okay,” I said. “I’m really sorry I didn’t call,” and even though she was upset, she looked, as she always did, so easy in her body, at home in her body, like all the parts were connected, not fighting each other. She was wearing faded brown corduroy pants and a green corduroy jacket, and she looked beautiful. Her soft brown hair was pulled back tight, showing her cheekbones, and her green eyes were clear, letting you all the way in, hiding nothing.

  “You don’t look okay,” she said. “Did the doctor say your face would get this bad? All swollen and sticking out?”

  “It’s not supposed to look like this, but I got reinjured.”

  “What? How’d that happen?”

  “I’ll try to explain…it’s complicated…but let’s take George for a walk. He hasn’t had a real walk all day.”

  We took the usual route—up to Glen Holly and back—and I gave Monica a super-abridged version of what had gone down:

  Lou had been shot by an unknown assailant and given me a diamond to sell for his daughter. The same cops who handled the spa case showed up, took me in, and Lusk Sr. worked me over. I got put back together at Presbyterian and then went and retrieved my car. Then I’d spent a good part of the day downtown, selling the diamond, and I apologized for not calling or texting, but I’d been having trouble with my phone. So that’s what I told her, which meant I left out everything else, like dead blondes, dead realtors, black-market organ transplants, and some doctor named Madvig who killed his wife twelve years ago.

  But even the abridged story upset Monica. She wanted me to sue the cops, and she was pissed at me for not spending the day in bed.

  “You’re right,” I said. “I’ve not been smart,” which was as close to honesty as I could get, and when we came back to the house and went through the gate, George darted at something and put it in his mouth. I tried to get it out, but whatever it was he’d already swallowed it. He was always finding little berries and things, and for the most part I trusted him to know what he should eat or not eat, but as we started up the steps, he began to choke and was twisting his head from side to side, violently.

  I picked him up, and he was gasping bad. “George, are you okay?”

  “What’s wrong with him?” Monica asked, scared.

  “I don’t know,” I said, starting to panic. “Let’s get him inside. It’s too dark out here. He’s choking on something!”

  I handed Monica the keys and we ran up the steps, and George was convulsing in my arms, and Monica went in first and I followed her.

  In the living room was Dr. Madvig; a tall young man with dark hair and a .22 in his hand; and Dodgers Hat, who was pointing a very large .38 right at Monica.

  “Close the door, Mr. Doll,” said Madvig, and George went very still in my arms.

  21.

  “What did you do to him?” I shouted at them, enraged. My beautiful boy.

  “No more barking now,” said Dodgers Hat, and he gave me a hideous smile: his underbite jutted out monstrously, like a birth injury that had never been corrected.

  “I’m gonna kill you,” I said to him, impotent, and he just smiled at me some more and then pointed his gun at my head. The .38 scared me, but it was better than having it pointed at Monica.

  “Put the dog on the couch, Mr. Doll,” said Madvig,
all calm. “We just want to talk to you. No one will get hurt.”

  But I didn’t move. I was stubborn and confused, George was dead in my arms, and Monica said, scared, “What’s going on, Happy?”

  “It’s going to be okay, Monica,” I said, and everyone in the room knew I was lying.

  “Put the fucking dog on the couch,” said the dark-haired one, who I figured was Madvig’s oldest son, John; his only living son. Then he swung his gun to Monica’s temple to emphasize his point. They liked pointing their guns at her.

  “Okay, okay…don’t do anything stupid,” I said. This one looked jumpier than Dodgers Hat, more impulsive, and I walked over to the couch—my back was to all of them—and I lay George down right where Lou had died the night before, and nothing felt real, except one thing: because of me, George was dead.

  Then I slowly put my hand on Lou’s gun in my pocket, thinking maybe I could do it. Maybe I could get my gun out fast and shoot them all and not hurt Monica.

  But I knew it was foolish and I hesitated and then something loomed up behind me, and before I could turn fully, Dodgers Hat chopped the back of my head with the handle of his .38 and sent me to the floor.

  Monica screamed and Madvig’s son grabbed her violently, put his hand over her mouth to keep her from screaming more, and I tried to get to my feet, to get him off her, but I couldn’t push myself up—my body wasn’t working; my head was broken—and Madvig kneeled next to me and jabbed a hypodermic into my neck and I went completely prone; my face flat against the floor.

  I could see their feet and I heard Monica scream again, she had somehow gotten loose from the son, and I had to get to her, but I just couldn’t, I couldn’t even lift my head, I was paralyzed, all my strength was gone, and then my eyes stopped working—I was sure they were open but I was blind—and then I slid from this world and the last thing I thought was: Please don’t hurt her.

  Part III

  1.