A Man Named Doll

by Jonathan Ames

  As we turned back to shuffle toward the bed, my legs were a little shaky but not as bad as I thought they’d be, and I was able for the first time to look out the window.

  My view was of a driveway, bordered on the left by dark-green grass and on the right by wild grass leading to a cliff edge, and beyond that was the Pacific. Since the bed kept me from getting too close to the window, my line of sight was limited, but I prayed that I’d see Thode and Mullen coming up the driveway at any moment.

  After a few minutes of shuffling in the room, with no arrival from the cavalry, Ben got bored and said: “Want to walk around the house?”

  “Sure,” I said. “It’s good to move my legs.”

  And this wasn’t a lie. I had been in that bed since sometime Friday night and I needed to move. I needed to get strong. That was another angle: regain my strength.

  Out of the room, he led me down a long hallway of maroon Spanish tile. We passed two rooms with closed doors—could Monica be in one of them?—and the third door we passed was partially open. I glanced over and could see part of a long metal desk, a boxy white machine of some kind, and a tray of glass tubes filled with blood. I stopped shuffling and said: “What’s in there?”

  “That’s our lab, where we do the blood work.”

  “Who does it? You?”

  “No,” he said, like my question was ridiculous. “John handles hematology and anesthesiology. The doc does the cutting, and I do the nursing.” This was the division of labor.

  “And you do the cooking, too. You do a lot,” I said, trying to flatter him, get him on my side.

  “Yeah. I like to stay busy. Keep moving.”

  I started shuffling again. “What did the other boys do?”

  “They made the runs to Mexico for the transplant drugs and all the other meds. We’re like a pharmacy. We offer full service.”

  He was proud of what they did and had no hesitation about telling me anything. He didn’t seem to have a low IQ, but he was guileless and almost innocent. I didn’t know how to classify him—simple but not simple?

  So maybe there was a way to exploit his nature, to manipulate him, but I couldn’t forget, even if he came across as a gentle giant, that he was also violent. He had killed that boy at the motel, and when he came to my house following Lou, he would have killed me. And he had poisoned George.

  With his hand heavy on my neck, I shuffled some more, and then the hallway emptied out into the kitchen, which was no longer a kitchen.

  It had been transformed into a makeshift nursing station with everything you might find in a hospital, and beyond the kitchen—and even more disturbing—was a large high-ceilinged dining room that had been tented off and remade as a surgical triage unit. This nightmare was much too real, and I knew the answer, but I asked Ben: “What goes on in there?”

  “That’s where the doctor uses his gift,” he said with great reverence, and to the left of the tented room were two French doors, which seemed to lead to an outdoor area.

  “His gift?” I said.

  “Oh, yeah, he likes money, like anybody, but really all this is because he loves the work. They never should have taken his license away.”

  He clearly worshipped Madvig, an utter sociopath, and careful to keep the disgust out of my voice, I said: “How did you meet him?”

  “In a halfway house,” he said. “I’d just finished ten years at Lancaster for armed robbery, and he’d had his little vacation at the rich man’s country club, but they put us in the same house in Ventura, and when we got out he took me in and sent me to nursing school, and the rest is history.”

  All this pleased him very much, this story of their friendship, and then he shuffled me around some more and on the other side of the kitchen was a large living room minimally furnished with a few chairs, a couch, a dining-room table, and two wheelchairs lined up against the wall.

  There was also a fireplace and a wide staircase to a second floor, with a sophisticated chairlift, and I had a feeling Monica was up there. I was tempted to call out, but now was not the time; Ben and I were getting along; this had to be to my advantage. But I did say, “Is that where you’re keeping Monica?” and with my arms locked in the straitjacket, I indicated, with a nod of my head, the upstairs.

  “Yeah,” he said. “She’s got a nice room. Nice view.”

  “Is she okay?” I asked, my voice unintentionally quavering.

  “She’s doing good. She’s a good girl. But let’s not talk about it.”

  “Are you treating her all right?”

  “Don’t worry about it,” he said, showing some annoyance, and it was involuntary, but I fought back tears at that moment. Monica was just up those stairs, beyond my reach. She had to be terrified. How could I have done this to her? Then I thought: I’ve got to stay focused; don’t give over to despair; take everything in; there’s got to be something I can use…

  And as we crossed the living room, I got a good look out the big picture window directly in front of me: there was an expanse of lawn and a long, rectangular pool, and on the other side of the pool was the back of another Spanish-style house, even bigger, which must have been their living quarters, and so this must be the guest house. A very large guest house.

  I could also see more of the driveway than I was able to from my room—it ran between the two houses, with flagstones along its edge, and on the driveway, near this house, was the Land Rover. Seeing it sparked a meager bit of hope: I just had to get out of this straitjacket, take care of Ben, free Monica, get the keys to that car, and…

  He shuffled me back to the room, gagged me, and strapped me to the bed.

  Then he got the bedpan between my legs and threw the thin blanket over me. “Try to rest,” he said, tucking the blanket under my chin. “You’ve been through a lot.”

  4.

  He left me alone in the room, and I lay there, staring at the ceiling, and I figured there were two ways to go: the slow game or try something now.

  It was Monday morning and Madvig said the surgery would be Wednesday morning. That gave me roughly forty-eight hours if I were to play the slow game, which was to work on Ben and wait for an opening that may or may not come.

  The one time his good mood seemed to crack was when I brought up Monica and so maybe that was his weak spot—he felt guilty about her, pitied her.

  So how should I play him? Keep humanizing her, talking about her, until I could persuade him to let her go?

  And if I saw him every meal before the surgery, which seemed to be the most likely schedule, that gave me five more times with him over the next two days.

  Or maybe less, because they would probably have me start fasting at some point before the surgery. Which meant I might only see him four more times.

  And he was a talker, which was to my advantage, but was I even capable of manipulating him?

  He was clearly loyal to Madvig, and to free Monica or free both of us was to cut his own neck. He wasn’t that simple and I wasn’t that skilled at manipulation, which meant, I decided, I had to try something now. Which was for the best: locked down on that bed I didn’t have the patience—or the sanity—to wait.

  And it was too risky to wait.

  I only had forty-eight hours, maybe less, and once they cut my kidney out, I’d be too weak to do anything and at some point they’d start cutting into Monica.

  So now was the time, and for the rest of the morning, I kept thinking about how Ben had unfurled the straitjacket before bathing me. He had started with my right side and my right hand, my stronger hand. Maybe that was my opening. And I started visualizing how it could happen.

  Next time he bathed me, he’d probably follow the same order—unfurl the right side of the jacket and take hold of my right wrist. My head would be secured to the bed, and I would have almost no leverage, but as he grabbed my wrist, I’d break free of his grip and grab his wrist. This would surprise him: he’d be caught off guard, and I’d yank him down to my chest with everything I had. The strength o
f my whole life.

  Then I’d get my arm around his neck and choke him out. He was strong, but so was I. And I was desperate. I had thrown Madvig’s son off a balcony. There were resources in me that were untapped, and once he was unconscious, I’d be able to free myself with my right hand from the straitjacket and undo the straps that secured me to the bed.

  All this required him to bathe me again, and to that end, I was able to squirm just enough to get the bedpan off to the side a little. Then I did feel my stomach activating after he’d given me that breakfast, and I tried to force a bowel movement and I wasn’t successful at first, but then one happened. It felt like a lot of it got on the bed and between my legs, and it was disgusting lying there, but it was the least of my problems.

  At least three hours passed as I lay there in my filth, but I practiced in my mind over and over again what I would do. What I had to do. I couldn’t count on Thode and Mullen, though I was still praying they’d find us.

  But until they showed up—if they showed up—I had to try something.

  Finally, Ben came back to the room to feed me lunch and when he got near me, he knew what happened. “Smells like somebody went,” he said happily. “That’s good. Got you back on real food.”

  Then he put my lunch tray down and pulled back my blanket to remove the bedpan. He saw the mess I had made and said, “Damn,” and I moved my chin as much as I could and tried to talk behind the ball gag, indicating I wanted him to remove it, which he did.

  “Can you bathe me again?” I asked. “I’m sorry that happened; the bedpan shifted or something.”

  “It’s all right,” he said, and then he took the blanket all the way off me and threw it to the floor. Then he took the bedpan to the bathroom, ran some water in there, and came back with the bucket and the sponge. The mess was all over my paper gown, which stuck out the bottom of the straitjacket, and so he was definitely going to have to take the jacket off. This was my chance.

  He released my chest strap and then unfurled the right side of the straitjacket, just like before, and grabbed my wrist, which is when I pulled it away hard, with everything I had, and it did surprise him, did catch him off guard, and my hand was free and then I grabbed his wrist—it was going just as I had visualized it—and I tried to pull him down, and that’s where it all fell apart.

  He simply grabbed my wrist with his left hand—he was standing and he was powerful and had all the leverage—and he yanked my hand away, got it in the cuff, and locked it. “Everybody starts off a fighter,” he said, not really annoyed. “But then they learn.”

  I was out of breath. But then I said: “Who’s everybody?”

  He unfurled the left side, grabbed my wrist violently, and got it cuffed. I asked him again: “Who’s everybody?”

  “The donors. People like you. In the beginning, they fight and then they get tame, become good patients.”

  I felt sick and I said: “Is that why you have this straitjacket?”

  “Yeah. At first we thought we’d pay people—you know, illegals; whores if they had good blood work.” He threw the straitjacket on the floor and ripped the gown off me. “But then we realized pretty quick that paying them was too dangerous. They’d talk if we let ’em go. So we had to trick ’em.”

  He took off all my straps, spread-eagled my legs, and cuffed my ankles to the railing at the end of the bed. I was naked and cuffed to the bed like the letter x. “How’d you trick them?”

  “We’d show ’em the cash, make them feel secure.” He yanked the sheet out from under me and threw that to the floor. “But then when we got ’em here, we’d hold on to them. Harvest them, like you. And then when they realized what was going on, they’d all fight.” He squeezed the sponge in the bucket and started cleaning me between the legs. “So we got the straitjacket and the restraints so you don’t hurt yourselves. But everybody learns. Better not to fight and I’ll take good care of you.”

  “How many donors have you had here?” I asked, and what I meant was: How many other people have been in this jacket and never gotten away?

  “Only twenty-three,” he said as he sponged me. “But they saved a lot of people. The doc says that if it was mandatory for every motorcyclist to be an organ donor there’d be enough to go around, but there isn’t enough. Not even for rich people. Which is where we come in. With us they don’t have to wait on line, but everything’s fucked now. Things are too hot. But I can’t complain. We’ve made plenty.”

  He straightened up from his work and rubbed his thumb and forefinger together and gave me a gruesome smile.

  “You’ve killed twenty-three people?” I asked.

  He nodded and resumed cleaning me.

  “You’re sick,” I said, craning my head to look at him.

  “Don’t be mean. You’re hurting my feelings,” he said. His little eyes were merry on top of his flattened nose, and he pushed his jaw out even farther, pretending to pout.

  I looked at him and a terrible hopelessness pushed down on me, and I said, a weak man: “Just don’t do this to Monica. Please.”

  He didn’t say anything to that, but he put the gag back in my mouth—suddenly he was tired of talking—and he continued to bathe me, as gently and as patiently as he had before.

  5.

  When he fed me lunch a little while later, we didn’t speak. I was fully restrained again and I forced the food down—tomato soup and a grilled cheese sandwich—to keep alive my illusion that I had to maintain my strength to stay ready…but ready for what? How could I possibly get out of this?

  After lunch, he gagged me, lowered the shade, hooked me to the IV for hydration, and left the room. I lay there and began to play in my mind, on an endless loop, my failed escape attempt, and then I came up with a new plan.

  I’d pull my hand away—I had done it once; I could do it again.

  Then I’d shove my elbow down to the bed, bringing my hand down alongside my chest. I’d extend my fingers out hard, turning my hand into a knife, like I did when I got Carl Lusk in his eye, and then Ben would have to bend over a little to grab my wrist. That would bring him in range, and I’d dart out my hand, my fingers firm, and I’d jab him hard in the throat, collapsing his windpipe and putting him out of commission. I visualized the move over and over. It could work!

  This went on for what must have been hours, this fantasy, but then I began to itch everywhere, uncontrollably; it was most likely psychological, but maybe I was also having withdrawal from the fentanyl, which I hadn’t had since the night before.

  So I started writhing to relieve the itching—tiny movements were all I could manage, wiggling like a worm in the jacket and beneath the straps—and then I started feeling like I was choking on the ball gag; I couldn’t get myself to breathe through my nose, and my tongue was pushing hard against the ball, trying instinctively to get it out of the way, which made things worse and seemed to make my tongue swell, and so it was my own tongue I was choking on.

  And the more I choked, the more panicked I became, and I rocked and rocked trying to get some relief, to get away, to break free, to stop the itching, to breathe, anything, until at some point, worn down, I passed out.

  When I woke up, it was very dark in the room and it seemed that Ben must have decided not to wake me and had skipped my dinner.

  And so I just lay there, but I couldn’t control my mind and the claustrophobia returned, and I began to choke, terrified again of swallowing my own tongue, and so once more I began to shake and thrash, and then I realized that the straitjacket had been loosened.

  I couldn’t believe it, but I was able to pull my right arm out! Then I removed the straps across my head and chest, was able to sit up and get the ball gag out. Ben must have freed me! My talking about Monica had gotten through to him after all!

  I then pulled out the feed from my neck port, but I didn’t know how to remove the port itself without causing a lot of bleeding, and so I left it in my neck.

  Then I undid the other straps, got out of the be
d, and ran to the door. I opened it a crack and listened. Nothing. Then I went out into the hall—it was dark—and I trotted quickly, in my bare feet, down to the kitchen. From there, I went cautiously into the living room and one lamp was on, giving some minimal light, but no one was around.

  I then went up the stairs as quietly as I could.

  To the right of the second-floor landing was an unusually long hallway with a window at the end letting in moonlight.

  I could make out several doors along the hallway and behind one of them had to be Monica.

  I opened the first door and the room was empty.

  I opened the second door and Ben and John were sitting on a bed, smiling at me.

  “I just wanted to fuck with you,” said Ben.

  I stared at them and then I ran down the hall and hurled myself down the stairs.

  “Don’t you fucking run!” screamed Ben after me.

  But I had a head start. I got out the front door and the moonlight was strong, and I ran up the driveway in my bare feet and hospital gown.

  I looked back, and Ben and John, furious, had just emerged from the front door.

  There was no way I could outrun them, and so I went to the cliff’s edge to the right of the driveway and hurled myself down the hillside, my feet ripping, but I had to get away. I had to! Then I’d come back with the police for Monica!

  But the hillside was steep and I began to tumble, losing my balance, and then it became a paved embankment, which didn’t seem possible, and I fell and rolled down it, painfully and out of control, until I landed at the concrete bottom, alongside the edge of the Los Angeles River. The water, black and silver, reflecting the night sky and the moon, was high after all the rains and was moving quickly in its concrete riverbed.

  Then I looked up the hill and Ben and John were scrambling down it, and I had nowhere to go, so I jumped into the river and it was freezing cold, and it began to take me along, and I was fighting not to drown, but then I got control of my body and was able to swim or at least stay afloat while the current hurled me downriver.