Authors: Ryan David Jahn
Tags: #Thrillers, #Psychological, #Literary, #Mystery & Detective, #Suspense
The Last Tomorrow (15 page)
He looks at the wall across from the toilet and sees a framed Norman Rockwell picture. It shows a little girl holding a doll out to a doctor. The doctor holds his stethoscope to the doll and
pretends to listen to its heartbeat. He’s never noticed it before. He idly wonders how long it’s been there, but doesn’t really care.
He grunts, trying to get something out. He looks down at the tile floor between his knees and curses. After a while he gives up. He wipes anyway and pulls up his pants.
He walks to his room and closes the door behind him and locks it.
He pulls open his dresser’s top drawer and there he finds a crumpled paper bag. He grabs it and holds it tight, as if someone might try to take it from him, and walks to his bed. He opens
it and pulls out a blackened piece of foil, a pen casing, a pocket knife, and a small paper bindle.
The first time Carl smoked this stuff, in the weeks following his wife’s death, he can’t remember exactly how soon after, it’s all a fog to him now, he overdosed himself,
smoked far too much, and vomited. Next thing he knew he was lying on the floor beside his own sick feeling nothing at all but quiet calm. There was no feeling of elevation. There was just conscious
nothingness. Which, to him, was better than bliss. He understood what Heaven must feel like, and he knew his wife was there, and he was glad, because he was there too. They were together even
though they were apart. They were together in feeling. The feeling was not-feeling, and it was perfect.
Everything was perfect.
With shaking hands he unfolds the paper bindle and knifes a bit of the brown powder from the bindle into the foil, which he has creased into a canoe shape. He puts the pen casing into his mouth
like a straw, holds the foil under his chin, and with a lighter slowly cooks the brown powder. It forms a bead and runs along the length of the foil, leaving a trail of black behind it. He inhales
the vapors through the straw, chasing the bead across the foil, the taste like rotten tomatoes and vinegar, and it burns the back of his throat harsh and strong, and he closes his eyes, and tears
stream down his cheeks. He feels slightly sick, but he doesn’t care. He smokes another hit, and sets the foil and lighter down on the table beside his bed. He falls back on his mattress and
looks up at the ceiling. At first there’s nothing but anticipation and mild nausea. Then the anticipation fades. For some time he thinks he’s simply stopped waiting for the drug to take
hold, stopped caring, then he realizes it has.
6
Sandy lies asleep in bed, a small boy in a big world.
7
Teddy Stuart stands at a window and looks to the night street six floors down. He’s alone in a small hotel room. Below him the hotel’s sign hangs from the corner of
the gray stone building, giving it a name:
THE SHENEFIELD HOTEL
He wonders, not for the first time, if he’s made the right decision.
He’s afraid he hasn’t.
Two days ago, on the eighth, the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department turned him over to the LAPD and the LAPD brought him here, to this downtown hotel where they keep a block of rooms.
A series of uniformed police officers have been standing outside his door since, working in shifts. They don’t speak to him except to tell him it’s time for a shift change, or to tell
him room service has arrived.
Teddy doesn’t think they’ll be able to do anything to stop the Man if he decides he wants to silence him, but worrying about such things does no good.
He pulls the curtains closed and walks toward the bed. He pulls off his coat and tosses it onto a chair in the corner. He slips out of his suspenders, unclips his cufflinks and sets them on a
table, unbuttons his shirt and tosses it on top of his coat, sits on the bed and kicks off his shoes.
He wonders if part of him doesn’t
want
the Man to come after him, if part of him, that small biblical corner of his mind, doesn’t view that as the necessary next step in the
righting of the world. His sins absolved in blood. He thinks maybe part of him does want that. A very small part of him. Some pure ancient part uncorrupted by everything else that surrounds it, by
everything else that he is.
But he can’t worry about that either. He can only do what he’s agreed to do.
Whatever else happens happens.
8
Outside, the stars shine. The moon, nearly full, moves across the sky. The drunks leave bars and head toward home, some of them losing control of their vehicles, running them
into streetlamps, into the sides of buildings, into other people; some of them making it home and passing out; some of them furiously beating their wives or their children with clenched fists or
open hands. The streets empty of people but for the homeless, covered in newspapers and rags. The city goes quiet. The world turns on its axis, grinding away the hours like a great stone. The
dark night turns gray as morning approaches. A light touches the horizon. Tomorrow becomes today.
Eugene, showered and dressed but not yet fully awake, stumbles from his bathroom and walks down his narrow hallway. He has the day off, but finds it impossible to sleep past
four o’clock even when he has nowhere to be, even when he’s a bit hung over, as he is today. His time as a milkman has ruined him for sleeping in.
As he walks toward the kitchen his shower-fogged glasses clear in the cool morning air. Coffee should be done percolating and he needs a cup. He grabs a mug from the cupboard and pours thin
brown liquid into it. He checks the fridge, but is out of fresh milk. An empty bottle sits in the door beside a jar of mustard. His mind’s working just well enough that he finds the empty
milk bottle amusing. He shuts the fridge and starts looking through his cupboards for an alternative. After shoving several cans of peas and green beans and Spam aside he finds a can of condensed
milk. He can’t find his can opener, so he punches a couple holes into the lid with a screwdriver and pours the thick syrup into his coffee.
Then, with mug in hand, he walks to the dining table and sits. He intends to drink his coffee in silence and stare blank-eyed at the wall thinking nothing at all, but instead his eyes fall upon
the envelope he found nailed to his front door last night.
He’d forgotten about it until now. Drunken memories seem to remain drunk long after you yourself have sobered up. Pulling the note from the door, walking inside, trying to write:
it’s all a blur.
He picks up the envelope and looks at it. It’s blank, white. He holds it up to the sunlight but can’t see what’s inside. He tears open the top and finds within the envelope a
newspaper clipping. At first he’s staring at an advertisement. Think of it! A new cylinder-type vacuum cleaner! Only $13.95 complete with attachments! He flips over the thin sheet of paper
and reads this headline:
D.A. SEYMOUR MARKLEY SAYS COMICS CAUSE MURDER!
Beside the article is a picture of a rather prim-looking man in his late forties or early fifties. He wears wire-framed glasses. His thin-lipped mouth is open in angry speech.
He’s holding up a copy of
Down City
, which Eugene recognizes immediately. It’s one of the dozen or so issues for which he drew the cover. Below the headline, the story:
LOS ANGELES – District Attorney Seymour Markley announced yesterday that he would be launching a grand-jury investigation into whether it might be possible to charge
those involved with the creation and production of a comic book with criminally negligent homicide. The grand-jury investigation comes on the heels of a Bunker Hill killing in which a
thirteen-year-old boy allegedly used a so-called ‘zip gun’ to shoot his stepfather before, in imitation of a crime comic book called
Down City
, carving a star into the dead
man’s forehead with a straight razor.
Markley said that the boy’s testimony to LAPD detectives indicated to him that he was not fully culpable for his actions. ‘Anybody familiar with the work of psychologist Frederic
Wertham,’ Markley said, ‘can tell you that comic books are a terrible influence on the youth of today. There’s a reason church groups across America are calling for this trash
to be burned, to be incinerated. These small boys are susceptible to the morally corrosive influence of entertainments filled with sex and violence, and the inevitable result is tragic deaths
like the one we saw a few days ago, a death which has not only ended the life of a man, but which could destroy the life of a small boy before it is even fairly begun. When the boy testifies
before the grand jury, I believe the influence, the guilt, of this gruesome comic book and its creators will be clear. And I hope this investigation causes other comics publishers to think
twice about what they’re printing – what they’re filling the minds of impressionable youths with.’
According to Markley, his office has evidence that E.M. Comics, a subsidiary of E.M. Publications, which also publishes adult magazines such as
Nude Sunbathing and Hygiene
, is run
behind-the-scenes by James Douglas Manning – also known as New Jersey Jim and the Man – and used as a means of laundering ill-gotten money through overpayment for printing
services.
A source within the D.A.’s office has also said, on condition of anonymity, that Mr Manning’s accountant, Theodore Stuart, has agreed to testify against his employer during the
grand-jury investigation, though he did not know the extent of the information Mr Stuart might be willing to divulge.
If the investigation goes the way the D.A.’s office intends, and the grand jury returns a ‘true bill,’ James Manning and others involved in the production of
Down
City
could be the first individuals in American history charged with homicide for the creation of an entertainment.
For a long time Eugene only sits and stares unthinking at the gray newsprint, coffee on the table beside him forgotten. He sets down the news item and gets to his feet. He walks to
his porch and lights a cigarette. He takes a drag and exhales in a sigh. He looks out at the dark, empty street. The air is cool. He tries to consider what this might mean for him.
Worst case: he’s convicted of a crime he had nothing to do with and he spends years in San Quentin. Best case: nobody ever finds out he was involved in any way. He never signed his work
with more than an offhand E., and usually he didn’t sign it at all. There are people who could easily point to him, of course, but not one of them, so far as he knows, lives in Los Angeles.
Yet someone nailed this news item to his front door. Somebody knows who he is and where he is. And the implication is clear. A threat is implied.
He can’t imagine that a grand jury would agree that he should be charged with homicide, even criminally negligent homicide, for the creation of a comic book . . . except for one thing: it
would be a way to nail James Manning, who has been a known criminal for thirty years. Authorities have never managed to put him in jail, despite what everyone knows he is, and this could be a way
to do it. A jury could be convinced. And if Eugene ends up a casualty of a witch-hunt, so what, that’s nobody’s problem but his own. He has no friends in high places. He has few friends
in low places.
And nobody will defend comics.
Everybody agrees they’re wretched. Everybody agrees they’re trash. Everybody agrees they corrupt children. Books have been banned, and bookstore owners arrested for carrying them.
Aren’t criminal charges such as these the next step? If books can be too dangerous to read, they can certainly be dangerous enough to rot the minds of impressionable children.
He takes a drag from his cigarette. He needs to remain calm.
Whoever left the article nailed to his front door was making an obvious threat. I know who you are. I know where you are. I know what you did. I will tell. But the only reason to say all that
rather than simply to do it is if there’s an unless. I will tell unless.
Unless what?
Eugene doesn’t know. And the only way to find out is to wait.
1
Seymour Markley sits alone in a booth. He looks out the grease-spotted window to the street but doesn’t see them. He looks around the diner for the second time, scanning
the faces of the other patrons, but none of them are familiar. They didn’t inadvertently cross paths. They aren’t waiting for him at some other table. They simply haven’t yet
arrived.
He takes a sip of orange juice, straightens his tie. Though he doesn’t plan to eat, couldn’t eat if he tried, he wipes the water-spotted flatware off with a napkin and sets each
piece down parallel to the others, fork, knife, spoon.
He can’t stand that these people have turned this around on him. Despite the fact that he might be able to advance his career because of it, it bothers him. He’s an important man.
He’s an important man and he’s being made to wait by unimportant people: by scum: by a whore and her cuckold husband. It’s almost too much to take.
The door swings open and he looks toward it.
A fellow in a cowboy hat walks into the diner wearing dark pants, a checkered shirt with pearl buttons, and a bolo tie. On the pinky finger of his right hand he wears a blue topaz ring. His
mustache is thick and long, hiding his mouth, and the ends are waxed to ice-pick points. Seymour feels like he knows him from somewhere, but can’t imagine where, unless he’s put him in
prison before.
But he doesn’t think that’s it.
Behind the cowboy walks Vivian in heels and a brief dress.
The cowboy scans the room. Then, tipping two fingers toward Seymour, he says in an oddly cheery voice, ‘That him, darlin?’
‘That’s him.’
The cowboy walks over and drops his hand like an axe in front of Seymour’s face. Seymour blinks at it.
‘Leland Jones. Wasn’t sure I recognized you with your clothes on.’ He smiles.
Seymour lets the hand hang for a long time, then says, ‘You can put that away. I’m not going to shake.’
‘Well, shit, that’s all right, sugar. I wasn’t dying to wring out your sweaty dishrag paw anyways.’
He slides into the booth. Vivian sits down beside him.