The Last Tomorrow (31 page)

Then it did make sense.

She was mad at him. She’d told him you don’t put your hand in the same till twice if you don’t want to lose your fingers when the drawer slams shut. She’d told him that,
but he’d ignored her, and now he was sitting on the couch with a broken nose and a gash in the back of his head.

The son-of-a-bitch district attorney had sent someone to do this to him as punishment for the blackmail. That’s what had happened. That’s what he thought had happened. But two hours
later, when Vivian returned, he learned he was wrong. The district attorney hadn’t sent someone here to beat him up. The district attorney had sent someone here to get any pictures Leland
might not have handed over, and that someone had left with all the pictures, his retirement.

His first thought was to go after Markley, but Vivian talked him out of it. They’d pushed him and he pushed back – it was the way of the world, downright Newtonian even – and
Leland shouldn’t have expected any different. If he pushed again, Markley would push back again, and that wouldn’t be good for anyone. Anyway, they could take more pictures. She still
had a pussy, after all, and he still had a camera.

He agreed to let it go. He was angry and he wanted to do something but in the part of his mind where emotions didn’t rule he knew she was right.

And he knows it still.

3

He blinks at his reflection and wonders briefly if he might be able to use Vivian’s makeup to cover the bruises on his face. He has a meeting with a producer at Monocle
Pictures about a speaking part in a Western movie. His character would have a duel with the film’s hero and get shot down. The guy’s given him background work before. Leland had
pictures that ensured at least twelve weeks of work every year, that’s the agreement they came to, but a speaking role is a different matter.

He walks to the bedroom and looks at Vivian in bed with her eyes closed.

‘You asleep?’

She opens her eyes to slits. ‘Not anymore.’

‘Can I ask you something?’

‘What?’

‘Think I should try to use some of your makeup to cover up these bruises?’

‘What for?’

‘I got a meeting with a producer.’

‘What kind of part?’

‘I have a duel with the hero and get shot down.’

‘No, keep the bruises. They make you look like a ruffian, which is probably what they want. Now shut up and let me sleep.’

‘You don’t think—’

‘Shut up and let me sleep. I worked last night, in case you forgot.’

He puts on a pearl-button shirt and a bolo tie. He slips into socks and black alligator-skin boots. He perches a Stetson on his head, grimacing as it slides over a bruise. When all that’s
done he walks back to the bathroom and looks at his reflection once more. He decides Vivian’s right. The bruises make him took tough. He scowls at himself, squinting and looking mean, then
the scowl breaks into a toothy grin.

He grabs his keys and walks toward the front door.

4

Leland parks his powder-blue Ford pickup truck on the south side of Sunset Boulevard, glances into the side-view mirror, sees the street’s clear, and swings open the
door. He steps out into the morning air, boots thudding on asphalt, inhales the lingering scent of yesterday’s rain, and slams the truck’s door shut. He heads inside, feeling good.

He slaps his hand on the counter and smiles at the pretty little secretary sitting behind it. She was painting her fingernails fire-engine red as he approached but now she looks up and smiles
back at him coolly, no trace of the smile in her eyes. She screws the top back onto her bottle of nail polish.

‘Good morning, sir.’

‘It’s Leland Jones, darlin, and good mornin to you.’

‘How can I help you?’

‘You can pick up that phone and let Woodrow Selby know that Leland Jones has arrived and is ready to speak with him about a part. I’m an actor.’ He gives her his most winning
smile.

‘You and everyone else in this town.’

She picks up the phone, says a few words, and hangs up again.

‘You can have a seat,’ she says. ‘Mr Selby will call down when he’s ready.’

‘Is it gonna be long?’

‘Do I look like Nostradamus to you?’

‘Don’t know, I never met him.’

‘He’ll call when he’s ready.’

Leland’s first instinct is to snap at the woman, but he knows that’ll get him nowhere. They’ll have an argument, he’ll get angry, and his day will be ruined. He
doesn’t want that. He wants today to be a good one. He needs it to be.

‘Yes, ma’am,’ he says, touching the edge of his hat.

He walks to a couch against the wall opposite and falls into it. He leans back, settling in. Tilts his hat down over his eyes. Pictures himself in a dusty one-saloon town, standing in the middle
of a dirt road, facing some dogooding sheriff in a white hat. They stand twenty paces apart, elbows bent, hands at the ready mere inches from the butts of their weapons, fingers twitching.
Leland’s got a smoldering cigarillo in his teeth. He gnaws on it, squinting at the man standing across from him as the man squints at him. Leland’s got the advantage. The sun’s
behind him. A wind kicks up. Something rattles to the left, a pie tin rolling along the boardwalk. White-hat’s eyes shift that direction. Leland takes the chance, draws. Not fast enough. His
barrel hasn’t even cleared his holster when he feels something like a sledgehammer thudding against his chest. He stumbles back two steps, looking down at his blue shirt blossoming red.
It’s all over now. It’s—

The telephone rings.

Leland pushes his hat up, away from his eyes, and looks across the room to the secretary. She picks up the telephone, says yes sir, okay, and hangs up.

‘He’ll see you now.’

Leland gets to his feet.

5

He steps into daylight. He’s been ruined. That son-of-a-bitch district attorney has ruined him. Forget speaking roles in movies. He’ll be lucky if they let him
shovel the horseshit from the dusty streets after a day of shooting. It’s over, he’s over. The district attorney didn’t stop when he had someone bash Leland in the skull, and he
didn’t stop when he got the pictures. He only stopped when he made sure Leland was ruined. The son of a bitch is giving the photographs back to the men pictured in them. Leland has had these
men scared for years, made them feel like nails with a hammer about to fall, and now they will see there is no hammer, no danger, and they’ll resent the threat.

These are powerful people. He’s done.

He should have known this was coming. What did he think would happen once the district attorney got his hands on those photographs? He can’t believe he let himself get talked out of going
after that son of a bitch.

He stomps to his truck and flings the door open and slides inside. He pounds his steering wheel, cursing, every foul word he can think of flying from his mouth and spittle as well. If he’d
done what he wanted to do this wouldn’t have happened. If he’d done what he wanted to do on Saturday the district attorney wouldn’t have had time to do this. He’d have
kicked the shit out of him and taken the pictures back.

Now he’s going to kill him: kill him dead.

He digs through his pocket till he finds his keys.

A moment later the engine rumbles to life.

6

The truck comes to a screeching halt in front of City Hall. He hopes like hell the district attorney’s in his office. He doesn’t care who sees him, he doesn’t
care what the man can do to him. He’s already ruined. If the district attorney had stopped when he got the pictures, stopped there, this wouldn’t be happening. But he didn’t do
that. He had to rub Leland’s face in his own defeat. He’ll not be anybody’s bad dog. He’ll not be treated like he shit the rug. He gets out of his truck, walks around it,
steps up onto the sidewalk.

‘Leland?’

He stops, looks to his left.

Candice stands on the sidewalk. Her blonde hair is pulled back into a bun. Her face is free of makeup or nearly so. A thin man in a dark suit stands beside her.

‘Candice.’

‘What are you doing here?’

‘I was just— Shit. Nothin. What about you, darlin?’

‘Meeting with Sandy and the district attorney.’

‘How’s Sandy doin?’

‘He was okay last time I saw him.’

‘What about you? I didn’t make it to the funeral like I planned.’

‘That’s all right.’

‘But how you doin?’

She looks away, blinking, then swallows.

‘I better head in, Leland. Tell Vivian I said hi.’

‘Will do. You take care of yourself.’

‘I will.’

Leland watches Candice and her lawyer walk up the path toward the building, watches her walk up the steps and disappear inside. He heads back to his truck and steps into it. He stares through
the windshield to the street. He needs to get himself a drink.

1

Seymour Markley pulls a white cloth from his pocket, snaps it, and cleans his glasses, wiping the lenses in a circular motion one after the other. Without them, the men sitting
across from him are mere flesh-colored smudges without eyes or noses or mouths, like someone smeared out their oil-paint faces with the swipe of a thumb. Once the glasses are clean he puts them
back on and blinks at Barry and the man sitting beside him, Peter Burton, the deputy district attorney charged with providing the grand jury with legal advice on this investigation once the
indictment is presented. They have once more been made human, features having grown from their faces as he placed the glasses upon his nose. He folds the cloth into quarters and puts it back into
his pocket.

He has but one question on his mind. What are they going to do about this investigation now that Theodore Stuart is dead? The police haven’t yet apprehended the man who killed him, despite
their confidence two nights ago, so he can’t question him about a possible connection to James Manning, and even if he could it doesn’t look like there is one. And he needs one.

He’d planned on presenting the indictment to the grand jury tomorrow morning, once he’d finished lining everything up. He wanted to hand them most of a case. But just as it was
coming together, fate knocked it apart. He’s postponed till Friday. He needs at least fourteen members of the twenty-three member grand jury to return an affirmative vote if they’re
going to indict, and this is unprecedented legal ground.

When he had Stuart in custody he was sure he’d get the votes, and with a true bill from the grand jury he wouldn’t be standing alone behind a shaky case. Their vote for indictment
would protect him, to some degree, from allegations of recklessness. He’d still have to work hard to convince his supporters in the movie industry that this case wouldn’t end up hurting
them – he’s gotten more pushback than he expected there, but then the threat those whores made against him clouded his thinking – but at least he wouldn’t be standing alone.
Now he’s not so sure the jury will come back with the votes, and if he doesn’t get the votes, it’s over. And his career is irreparably damaged.

Seymour looks at the two men sitting across from him.

Barry, with his elbows on the arms of his chair and his fingertips pressed together, looks like a man preparing for prayer.

Peter Burton, all nerves, with a head of curly blond hair in need of a trim, sits peeling the paper off a cigarette while bits of tobacco fall into his lap.

‘Okay,’ Seymour says. ‘The way I see it, the investigation must to do three things if there’s to be a case. One, it must result in evidence that James Manning is the
money behind E.M. Comics. We had testimony to that effect until Theodore Stuart was killed, now we don’t, but I’m confident we can get there. You can’t run a business without
leaving a paper trail somewhere. We just need to uncover it. Two, it will need to result in evidence that
Down City
compelled the boy to commit a murder he would not otherwise have
committed. We’ll have the testimony of the boy himself for that, as well as the testimony of Frederic Wertham, an expert in the field. With the way people feel about comics these days, this
is the least of our worries. Mothers are already throwing them into trash bins and church groups are burning them. Half of the grand jury will be convinced before any evidence is presented to them.
Three, it must result in evidence that James Manning was criminally negligent in allowing the comic to go to press. We need evidence that he knew of the dangers and let the comic end up on
newsstands anyway. That’s the tough part, and that’s what might stall the case before it’s even begun. We’re out on a limb here, and to be perfectly frank, it has me
worried. Any thoughts?’

Seymour’s telephone rings.

He looks down at it. It rings a second time. He told his girl not to put any calls through, so why is his telephone ringing? It had better be important. He holds up a finger to the two men
sitting across from him, picks up the receiver midway through the third ring.

2

Barry watches his boss pick up the telephone, put it to his ear.

‘Yes?’

He looks down at his hands, at his fingertips touching, pushes them hard against each other so the skin goes white beneath the fingernails. He thinks of the discussions he’s been having
with Maxine.

‘Put him through.’

He’s been talking with her about quitting. They discussed it over dinner last night and the night before. Maxine always asks the same thing. What will we do about money? It’s a good
question, an important one, and his answer now is the same as it was then. I don’t know. But he knows this. He’s been compromised by his work here. He wanted this job because of his
respect for the idea that he lived in a nation governed by laws, and that breaking them meant you faced consequences, and that those consequences were meted out to the guilty without regard to who
they were or what their social status might be. The problem is, it’s bullshit. It’s a lie. And he’s been actively participating in that lie.

‘What bad news?’

He doesn’t know what he’s going to do, but he doesn’t think he can continue doing this. He knows he can’t. Maybe he’ll bang on the ivories in a piano bar somewhere.
At least he’ll be able to look himself in the mirror.