The Last Tomorrow (27 page)

That might be fine.

Except he’ll lose friends. He might lose his job. People he’s worked with for years will stop talking to him. He’s built a life, a good life, and he doesn’t want it
reduced to rubble. He doesn’t want to have to start over, and at a disadvantage.

‘Eugene came by earlier today,’ he says. He stares at his own reflection in the television when he says it, can’t bring himself to look at these men as he betrays his friend.
‘About an hour ago.’

‘Why’d he come by?’ the older cop asks.

‘He wanted a gun.’

‘What for?’

‘He didn’t say and I didn’t inquire.’

‘Have any theories?’

He shakes his head.

‘Did you give him one?’

‘One what?’

‘A gun.’

‘I did.’

‘Do you know where he’s staying?’

‘No.’

‘I think you do.’

‘I don’t.’

‘Okay,’ the older cop says. ‘I want you to do what you can to find out, and if he gets in touch with you again you let us know.’ He pulls out a card, walks to the coffee
table, sets it down.

‘Thanks for your time.’

Fingers doesn’t respond. He continues to stare at his reflection in the television screen as the two police detectives let themselves out of the apartment, as the door latches shut behind
them.

He hopes to God Eugene stays as far away from him as possible.

3

Carl sits in his car with both hands gripping the steering wheel. His palms are sweaty. The seat rumbles beneath him as the car idles. His head is turned to the right. He
watches through the rain-spotted passenger’s-side window as his partner walks into his house to greet his wife and his two children, and disappears behind the door.

Sometimes Carl feels as though he’s spent his entire life watching people walk away.

He thinks of using the syringe now, but it’s only a thought. A junkie might not care about being cautious, but he isn’t a junkie.

He has a job he cares about, responsibilities.

He can’t shoot up in broad daylight while parked in front of his partner’s house.

He puts the car into gear. He looks into the mirror and sees a rain-spattered rear window, exhaust pipe emitting a steady cloud of white smoke which the rain then hammers out of existence.
Behind the exhaust fumes the street is clear of vehicles. Rivers of water rush along the gutters. He pulls his foot from the clutch while gassing the engine and rolls his vehicle into the street.
He’ll wait till he gets home. It’s only a fifteen-minute drive. He’s waited all day, he can wait another fifteen minutes. Of course he can. He isn’t a monkey. He’s in
control of his own actions.

He isn’t a goddamn monkey.

He feels sick and sweaty and cramped. His stomach is boiling. His sphincter is twitching, and he thinks he might have to be careful he doesn’t involuntarily shit. He feels weak and heavy,
as though his limbs have been drained of blood and the blood replaced by lead. His eyes are dry and it’s difficult to focus.

The windshield wipers squeal across the glass. The sound is maddening. Someone needs to invent a windshield wiper that doesn’t make such an irritating fucking sound. He wants to park and
step outside and rip the wipers off the car. He wants the throw them into the street and run over them.

He wonders if Darryl Castor will help them get to Eugene Dahl. He thinks there’s a good chance he will, but feels rotten about the way they broke him. He tells himself he shouldn’t
feel bad, he was just doing his job, but that doesn’t make the feeling go away.

The trick is to keep your soul winter-numb.

He pulls into an empty parking lot. He kills the engine. He peers through the rain-spattered windshield at the building he’s parked in front of. All the lights are off, doors locked. But
for his car, the parking lot is empty.

He pulls the syringe box from his pocket and puts it into his lap. He slides out of his jacket, shrugging it off his shoulders and tossing it aside. He rolls up his shirtsleeve, revealing the
black dot on his arm where last he used the needle, and a pink dot like a pimple where he used before that. Beneath the skin, they’ve become hard little knots. He whips his belt from his
pants and puts it over his shoulder so it’s handy. Looks down at the box in his lap. Reads the lid:

BD YALE

Becton, Dickinson and Company

Rutherford, N.J.

One 10cc Syringe

He opens it and within finds a syringe, a needle, and a paper bindle. He removes his lighter, his spoon, and his foldaway knife from the right-hip pocket of his slacks. He sets the
objects, but for the syringe, on his left leg, a nice row of his favorite things. He removes the syringe from its box, as well as the Yale reusable needle, and puts them together.

His mouth, which was dry, is now watering. He swallows.

He’s supposed to meet Candice for dinner tonight. He made a date. He should go back to the boarding house and get showered and changed.

He looks at his watch. He has two hours. Two hours is plenty of time. He’ll do this first and then finish his drive home and get cleaned up. This first, then that. She’ll understand
if he’s a few minutes late. He’ll tell her it was work. That’s how it goes sometimes, nature of the job.

He flips open the knife and with the tip of it scoops a small bit of brown powder from his paper bindle into the spoon, then he realizes he has no clean water.

He closes his eyes, tells himself it’s okay. Tells himself it’s for the best.

This isn’t something he should do in his car anyway, not when there’s still daylight outside. He lost control for a moment, but this isn’t something he should be doing. Of
course it isn’t. He’s only minutes from home.

He picks up the spoon telling himself he’ll just pour the powder back into the stash and fold his bindle up, telling himself he’ll pack everything else up and drive home.

Instead he brings the spoon to his mouth and spits into it, gently. He lets a bead of liquid form on his lips and eases it into the spoon. It doesn’t seem like enough to cook the heroin in
so he does it a second time, and then a third.

He already has everything out, after all. It would be silly to pack it all up at this point.

He loops the belt and puts his arm through it.

He picks up his lighter.

1

Eugene watches Evelyn walk to her hotel room and key open the door, following closely as she slips through so that she can’t shut the door in his face. Once they’re
both in her room, he slides the deadbolt into place.

‘Sit down.’

She sits on the bed. He looks at her and she looks back. He hates to admit it, but seeing her again, even after what she did, stirs something within him. They’ve spent only hours together,
but those hours were somehow both comfortable and exciting, and the way she’s looking at him, not with fear but with sadness, makes him believe that despite what she did afterward, she felt
the same as he did.

But that’s over now. That’s a faucet he needs to shut off.

‘I’m sorry for what I did.’

‘I don’t care.’

‘Just the same, I’m sorry.’

‘I thought . . . I thought we had—’

‘We did. We do.’

‘You framed me for murder.’

‘It was my job.’

‘I know.’

‘That doesn’t mean I don’t care for you, Gene.’

‘Shut your fucking mouth, I’m not here to work this out with you. You can go to hell, and the sooner the better. I’m here to find out how to clear my name. I‘m here to
find out how to get out of this mess you got me into.’

‘You can’t. It’s too late for that.’

‘I’m innocent.’

‘You’re wanted for murder. I can’t make that go away. I’m sorry for my part in it, but it’s done. The best I can do is help you get to Mexico, and get you some
money, enough to live on for a long time down there.’

‘I don’t want your money. I want my fucking life back.’

‘But can’t you see that that’s over?’

‘Don’t you try to tell me what’s over. You don’t get to make that decision. You don’t get to make any—’

A knock at the door, three quick taps. Eugene’s first thought is that he was too loud, that the man in the next room heard him in here, heard him and is now just outside the door, waiting
to make sure everything is okay.

Then he speaks: ‘I’m stepping out. You might want to make sure your door is chained. Don’t want the milkman to get you.’

Then silence stretches out for a full minute.

‘Don’t move,’ Eugene says.

Keeping an eye on Evelyn he walks to the door and unlatches the deadbolt. He pulls open the door. He glances left, then right. The corridor is empty. He closes the door and locks it once more,
the deadbolt clacking into place.

He turns his attention back to Evelyn.

‘Where were we?’

2

Evelyn sits on the bed, looking across the hotel room to the man who only a couple nights ago was inside her. The flesh on her chin is still a bit raw from his beard stubble
scratching her as they kissed, and she’s still a bit sore. She should have trusted her first instinct. She could see from the beginning, from the night she met him in the bar, that he was not
a man to run from trouble but rather to grab onto it and try to bring it to its knees. Not that there was time for her to do anything; she only found out he slipped away from the police thirty
minutes ago, and even now, while he’s here in the room with her, while he’s threatening her with a gun, part of her is glad he did. If he’d not had this sort of thing in him she
wouldn’t have been attracted to him in the first place.

‘I’m sorry, Gene,’ she says, ‘but there just isn’t—’

Then something occurs to her, something both terrible and great. She thinks there might be a way to
do what he wants. It’ll take planning and forethought, and he’ll have to trust her when trusting her is likely the last thing he wants to do, but it might be possible to clear his name.
If it’s something she really wants to do.

After a moment’s consideration she knows that it is. She even lets herself believe that once Eugene’s name is cleared they might be able to pick up their relationship where it left
off. They might be able to have something together.

‘What?’ Eugene says.

‘I think there might be a way.’

Hope flickers in his eyes, but the shadow of suspicion quickly clouds over it.

‘Do you?’

‘I do,’ she says, ‘but you’re gonna have to trust me.’

‘After what you did?’

Evelyn knows convincing him will be difficult, but she has to try. She closes her eyes a moment to think. She opens them again and looks at Eugene. Looks at him and allows herself to feel what
she feels. She prepares herself to speak, and when she does the words that leave her mouth are honest ones.

‘I like you, Gene. We have something. I did what I did because it’s what I came here to do. It was my job. But when I came here I hadn’t met you. I’ve felt crummy ever
since I last walked out of your apartment, and that isn’t like me. You have to understand, I’m not a soft woman. I’ve done worse to men than I did to you and lost no sleep. I know
that doesn’t speak well of me, but there it is. Whatever Daddy has in him that makes him who he is, I have it in me too. But it was different with you. I’ve felt rotten. I haven’t
slept. When I read that you’d escaped the police, part of me was glad, despite the fact that I knew you might come after me. That’s the truth. Now I’m telling you another truth. I
think I know a way to get you your life back. All I’m asking you to do is listen to what I have to say, listen to my proposal. If it sounds like something you’re willing to do, if it
sounds like something you’re capable of, I want to help you. I want to help you because I still think we might have something between us, and I’ve never felt like this about anyone
before.’

As difficult as it was to allow herself to be vulnerable, it felt good too. It feels good. She looks at Eugene, searching his face for something other than suspicion, for something other than
complete mistrust.

Finally, she thinks she sees it.

‘Okay,’ he says after a while. ‘What do you have in mind?’

3

Eugene steps out into the rain. The sky overhead is dark with clouds, only diffused gray light seeping through the cover. He walks toward the street wondering if Evelyn’s
plan could possibly work. He believes it could. He believes that, like a hammer, it’s so simple it almost has to work. But there’s no reason to believe she has any intention of
following through on it, no reason to believe she’d be willing to bring heat down on her father to save him, some guy she met less than a week ago. No reason to believe it beyond her saying
so. And there’s plenty of reason to doubt what she says. He wants to believe her, more than anything he wants to believe her, but he’d be a goddamned fool if he let himself take her at
her word.

She betrayed him, planned to betray him before they even met, walked into that bar on the evening he first saw her with a sensuous smile on her lips and fluttering eyelids, with the knowledge
that she was going to do things that all but guaranteed he’d end up sitting in a chair wired for death.

Yet standing in her hotel room only minutes ago pointing a gun at her, looking at her as she looked back, he wanted to believe every word she said, and some innocent part of his heart did
believe, and wanted to embrace her, and feel close to her again.

But his mind is not so stupid as his heart.

After three attempts he manages to kick-start the motorcycle, then straddles the leather seat and gives it some gas.

No, his mind is not nearly as stupid as his heart. Maybe Evelyn’s being straight with him, anything’s possible, but he can neither believe it nor act as if that’s the case.
Until he knows better, he’ll have to operate under the assumption that every word she spoke to him was a lie. He’ll use her if he can, and it seems to him he may be able to, but
he’ll not trust her.

Only a fool would do that, and in this situation he refuses to play the fool. It happened once. It won’t happen again.