The Last Tomorrow (25 page)

‘Mr Duncan,’ the man says.

Sandy gets to his feet and walks toward the office, preparing to lie. For here’s a fact: you can say you’re sorry and feel nothing at all.

1

Carl drives through the rain while his windshield wipers cut water off the glass, squeaking with each swipe of their thin rubber blades, clearing his view of the empty street
before him. He thinks about Eugene Dahl, the milkman, and the evidence against him. He was at the scene with the murder weapon in his possession. They searched his apartment and found bloody shoes
that matched shoeprints tracked all over the room in which Stuart and that cop were killed. They also found a box of bullets and a blackmail note. Cases don’t get much tighter than that.

During their brief encounter he didn’t strike Carl as the kind of man who’d be able to cold-bloodedly sever a man’s spinal cord with a knife, but in this situation that’s
less important than where the evidence points. People, everyday people, can be surprising in their brutality.

Carl would like it better if they knew who tipped off the police, and he’d like to get his hands on the typewriter used to bang out the blackmail note, but those are insignificant pieces
in this otherwise finished puzzle, corner pieces that won’t change the overall image even if he finds them. Maybe the milkman told someone his plans while drunk and that someone called the
police before the murders even happened. Maybe the accountant had an accomplice who typed up the blackmail note and delivered it. Those things don’t matter. There’s simply no way the
milkman didn’t do the murders. Not a chance. The pieces fit together too well for them to go any other way.

He parks the car in front of Friedman’s house and gives the horn two quick taps. He lights a cigarette and takes a deep drag. He rubs at his eyes with the heels of his hands. They’re
dry and they sting.

Friedman steps into the car and slams the door closed behind him.

‘Ready?’

‘Ready.’

Carl puts the car into gear.

2

They step from the vehicle. Carl flicks his cigarette butt into the gutter. He squints up at the gray clouds overhead, bulbous and seemingly solid as mountains. Rain splashes
against his face. It feels good on his hot skin. He takes off his fedora and combs his fingers through his oily but brittle gray hair. He turns to the door and finds his partner already pushing his
way through to the interior. He follows.

As soon as the door closes behind them the outside world ceases to matter. The bar feels like its own dimly lit pocket universe. The world outside could be crumbling in a great earthquake,
streets opening up, fires blazing – but here that would mean nothing. Grab a stool and get yourself a drink, friend.

Several patrons sit at tables nursing their cocktails, several more sit at the bar. Mostly they’re old men of retirement age or older in moth-eaten cardigan sweaters and clip-on ties, men
with rheumy red eyes and sagging faces like overloaded trash bags, filled with regrets. There are also a couple younger men in rags present, men spending their unemployment insurance on drink. And
a woman in her late thirties, a redhead with a flushed face that would be beautiful if not for the damage years of hard drinking and heavy smoking have done to it, sitting at a table with a man in
a blue mechanic’s jumpsuit and a greased duck-butt hairstyle.

They all make a point of not looking at the two newcomers.

Carl puts his hands in his pockets, pushing open his jacket so the barkeep is sure to see the badge clipped to his belt, and walks to the bar. Friedman walks beside him.

The barkeep, a heavy-set fellow with a white shirt stretched over his substantial belly, nods at them while drying off a glass and setting it on a metal drainer.

‘You guys drinking?’

Friedman shakes his head. ‘I don’t drink.’

‘And I’m on the clock.’

‘Then what can I do for you?’

‘You can tell us about Eugene Dahl.’

‘Never heard of him.’

‘He’s a regular here.’

‘News to me.’

Friedman pulls a sketch from his pocket and unfolds it.

‘You know him.’

‘I might’ve seen him a time or two.’

‘According to his neighbors he’s a regular.’

‘Could be.’

‘Was he here yesterday?’

‘I don’t remember.’

‘What about today? Have you seen him today?’

‘No.’

‘When’s the last time you remember seeing him?’

‘Days all blend together. Why you looking for him, anyway?’

‘What do you care?’ Carl says. ‘You don’t even know the guy.’

‘Curiosity.’

‘Look how that turned out for the cat.’

‘What cat?’

‘He killed someone,’ Friedman says.

‘I don’t believe it.’

‘That’s the thing about reality,’ Carl says. ‘It’s there even if you shut your eyes.’

‘Who’d he kill?’

Carl lights a cigarette.

‘Maybe you answer our questions.’

‘When’s the last time you saw Dahl?’

The barkeep exhales through his nostrils, looks away. After a while he speaks: ‘Few days ago. Thursday I think.’

‘Notice anything unusual about him?’

‘Like horns growing out his head or something?’

‘Did he seem wound up?’ Carl says.

‘Wound up?’

‘Nervous.’

‘No, he seemed himself. Met a dolly. Been meaning to ask him how it went.’

‘This girl anyone you knew?’

The barkeep shakes his head. ‘She was from out of town.’

‘How far out of town?’

‘East Coast. Did Gene really murder someone?’

‘We aren’t here cause of his tickling habit,’ Carl says.

‘Does he meet a lot of women?’

‘Women like him,’ the barkeep says, ‘then they hate him.’

‘That’s how it goes.’

‘Do you have any idea where he might be?’

‘No.’

‘Friends? Relatives?’

‘Gene drank alone. Like I said, he sometimes left with a girl on his arm, but he always arrived by himself.’

‘And he never talked about anything?’

‘Never about anything personal.’

‘What did you talk about?’

‘Impersonal stuff.’

‘And he never mentioned any friends?’

‘No.’

Carl pulls out a card and slides it across the bar.

‘If you see him, call.’

The barkeep looks at the card but doesn’t reach for it. Simply lets it lie there.

‘If he’s on the run I don’t think he’ll be stopping in for a drink.’

‘Nobody asked for your thoughts.’

‘If you see him, pick up the phone.’

Carl butts out his smoke on the bar and turns toward the door.

3

They step from the bar and make their way through the rain to the car. Carl lights another smoke, already beginning to feel the itch. He thinks about the syringe in his pocket,
but knows it’s too early to use it, knows he needs to wait. Except that an itch needs to be scratched before it’ll stop. The more you try to ignore it, the less you can focus on
anything else, and he needs to be able to focus on work. He thinks about heading to the toilet, but tells himself no. It’s only been a few hours and the day stretches before him long and
gray; if he uses now he’ll have nothing for later. He only brought enough for one shot.

A knocking sound pulls him from his thoughts. He looks up to see the redheaded woman from the bar standing just outside the car.

Friedman rolls down his window. ‘Get in back.’

She steps into the backseat and pulls the door closed behind her.

‘Either of you got a cigarette?’

Carl taps a cigarette out of his packet, lights it using the cherry from his own, and hands it back to her.

‘Thanks.’

‘Is that all?’

‘It’s a cigarette. You want me to give you head?’

‘That’s not what I meant.’

‘Do you have something to tell us about Eugene?’

‘I might. You got five dollars?’

‘What’s your name?’

‘Trish. You got five dollars or not?’

‘I might. Trish what?’

The redhead takes a drag from her cigarette. She looks out the window.

‘Forget it,’ she says.

Friedman pulls a leather wallet from his inside coat pocket, removes a five-dollar bill. He holds it out to her but when she reaches for it pulls it back.

‘Now you know I have the five dollars,’ he says. ‘Let me know you have something worth it.’

‘I used to date him.’

‘Did you? Candlelight, all that?’

‘Fine, I used to fuck him.’

‘And?’

‘And he took me to this nigger bar down on 57th Street where his friend was playing in a bebop band.’

‘And?’

‘And give me five dollars or I go back to drink my drink.’

Friedman hands her the five-dollar bill.

1

Evelyn, wearing only her silk nightgown and a cotton robe, her hair mussed, her eyes red from lack of sleep, knocks on the door in front of her. After what feels like a long
time Lou pulls it open from the inside. He wears black slacks and an undershirt, his pale feet bare, and small for a man of his height. Greasy strands of pomaded hair hang over his Neanderthal
brow.

‘Have you seen this?’

She thrusts today’s paper forward, holding it out for him to examine.

‘I’ve seen lots like it.’

‘They didn’t catch him.’

‘What?’

‘Eugene. The police didn’t arrest him.’

Lou takes the paper from her and silently reads the news story. When he’s done reading it, he hands the paper back to her and shrugs.

‘So what? They know who he is and they have evidence against him. That’s all that matters.’

‘What do you mean, that’s all that matters? He’s still out in the city and knows he’s been framed for murder.’

‘They’ll catch him today or tomorrow. He’s a goddamn milkman, Evelyn, in way over his head. It don’t matter if he knows he’s been framed, he’s been framed.
The evidence points to him and he ran, as a guilty person would. When they catch him he can say whatever he wants. Denial won’t mean nothin.’

‘And if they don’t bring him in in the next day or two?’

Lou shrugs again. ‘I don’t care. I got nothing against the guy. Point was to make it look like he was responsible for Teddy Stuart’s murder. That’s been done. What
happens to him now, whether the police catch him or he gets away, that’s got nothing to do with me, and it’s got nothing to do with you.’

‘He knows I framed him.’

‘He knows he was framed. He might not know you’re behind it. But say he does, you really think he’ll come after you?’

‘I think he might.’

‘He’s wanted for murder. He’s on the run. He’s not coming after anybody.’

‘What if he does?’

‘What if he . . . I don’t know, Evelyn. What do you want to do?’

‘Get a room in a different hotel.’

‘If everything goes well we’ll be out of here day after tomorrow anyway.’

‘You’re not the one at risk here.’

‘You’re not either, and if I thought you were you’d know it, because if you’re at risk, I’m at risk. Your dad would kill me dead if I let anything happen to
you.’

Evelyn is silent. What Lou says has the ring of truth to it.

And yet part of her also knows that Lou wouldn’t mind at all if she took two to the back of the head. Until she started working in the business it looked like Lou might take over once
Daddy retired. Now it looks like Lou will be working for her, and a man like Lou doesn’t want to take orders from a woman. She doubts Lou would want to take orders from anybody. He planned on
inheriting the business. He spent years working for Daddy, getting close to him, becoming his most trusted friend, and in she wanders, all of twenty-one, and puts everything he’s worked for
into question. Evelyn thinks he’d be just fine if her blood went still. He might look sad at the funeral, hug Daddy and tell him it’s a great loss for everyone, but in the privacy of
his home he’d celebrate her death with a shot of something strong and a thank you, Jesus.

She’s sure of it.

And yet: what he says has the ring of truth to it.

If he let anything happen to her Daddy would kill him.

And he’s probably right. Her initial fear at hearing Eugene avoided apprehension was the fear of a woman used to dealing with criminals. He isn’t thinking about her, he’s
thinking about how to avoid arrest. Hell, he’s probably at the border by now, about to cross into Tijuana. And that’s a good thing, isn’t it? She felt crummy about what she had to
do to him, about helping to frame him. He deserves to get away.

‘You’re right,’ she says.

‘The police probably have him in custody already.’

‘Maybe.’

But she hopes not. She likes the idea of him living in Mexico, wearing colorful tropical shirts and white canvas shoes, drinking beer by the ocean.

‘Are we done? I have to talk to someone about a job.’

‘Okay,’ Evelyn says.

‘Okay.’ Lou closes the door.

She turns toward her room, and blinks at what she sees.

Eugene stands in the corridor, soaking wet, his hair hanging down around his face in clumps. In his right hand he holds a Baby Browning, a lady’s gun, but lady’s gun or not it shoots
bullets, not flower petals, and it’s aimed at her face.

‘Evelyn.’

‘Eugene.’

‘We need to talk.’

2

Lou unlocks his room safe and pulls from within it a small bundle wrapped in brown paper. It’s the shape of a brick though thinner and considerably less weighty. He tucks
it into his inside coat pocket, grabs an umbrella, and steps from his hotel room.

Once in the corridor he gives Evelyn’s door three quick taps with his knuckles.

‘I’m stepping out,’ he says, a smile on his lips, ‘you might want to make sure your door is chained. Don’t want the milkman to get you.’

Then he heads down the corridor, toward the elevator.

He takes the elevator down to the lobby and walks toward the front door. The doorman pulls it open and steps aside. He walks out into the rain, holding his umbrella overhead. As he makes his way
across the lawn to the street a gust of wind catches the umbrella and nearly tears it from his hands, but he manages to keep his grip on it, and forces his way through the bad weather.