The Last Tomorrow (36 page)

But there’s still a problem, and not a small one. Even if Louis Lynch takes the fall for his own murders, the Man will never let Eugene live.

He needs to think of a way to finish this once and for all, but his mind is blank. There was a time when he was good at creating stories, but that time is gone.

Then something does come. It isn’t a full story, but it might be enough to get him started. If it goes wrong it might end in his death, and there’s a good chance it will go wrong.
Unlike Evelyn’s plan, this one is no hammer. But it’s the only thing he can think of that might also end with him walking away free and clear, neither wanted by the police for murder
nor wanted murdered by the Man.

And doesn’t he deserve that?

He’ll have to do some ugly things. Merely thinking about what he’ll have to do makes his stomach ache. But the only people he’ll be hurting are those responsible for putting
him in this situation in the first place, and if anybody deserves to face harsh consequences for what’s happened, it’s them.

He pulls the paper from the typewriter and folds it up and puts it into his pocket. He’ll burn it later. He puts the lid on the typewriter case, latching it, and pushes it back into place.
He’ll need to use it again, but not yet. He’ll have to return once he knows more about how he’s going to approach this. For now he has other things to take care of, the first of
which is getting out of here.

He looks around the room, making certain everything is back the way it was when he arrived, then steps into the corridor and latches the door behind him. He walks to the elevator, takes it down
to the lobby, leaves his address at the front desk with the message that Evelyn should come see him as soon as she gets in.

He heads out into the night.

He wishes he could think of another way out of this, but he has no choice. He’s been put in a corner and this is his way out.

He kicks his motorcycle to life and pulls out into the street. He heads toward his motel room, where he will await Evelyn’s arrival.

1

In the dream, they finally catch up with him. He isn’t sure how. He’s been walking down and down constantly for months – years, decades – and no one
went past him, but one of the cannibals managed to get below him anyway, managed to get in front of him and block his downward journey. This lone cannibal now stands in rags before Eugene,
slump-shouldered but full of vitality and madness. His skin jaundiced, the color of a fading bruise. His eyes bloodshot, the eyelids red-rimmed and raw. His hands are black. His beard thick with
filth and glistening with oily moisture around the mouth. He grins, revealing yellow teeth from which the white gums are receding bloody and swollen. He reaches into a leather satchel and removes a
human heart. It throbs in his hand. He holds it out to Eugene. Thick strands of blood run off it, dripping from ragged meat-hoses, splashing to the concrete floor.

‘It’s the boy’s,’ the cannibal says. ‘We saved it for you.’

‘No,’ Eugene says, shaking his head. ‘Thank you, but . . . but no . . . no.’

He turns around, heading back up the stairs. He doesn’t know where he’ll go. He simply knows he must get away. The cannibal doesn’t follow him, but as he reaches the next
landing he hears the others only a floor above, and they’re heading down.

They’ve pinned him in. Somehow they managed to pin him in. He looks to his right and sees a door. He can’t go up and he can’t go down, but he can go through the door. He pushes
into a corridor, the door slamming shut behind him. He walks down the corridor despite the fact he knows there’s nowhere to go.

The overhead lights flicker.

The door behind him opens and closes, followed by the shuffling of feet.

He looks over his shoulder.

The cannibals walk slowly after him, the one with the heart in his hand leading the way.

He looks forward once more and continues his retreat. He walks to the end of the corridor and steps into the last door on the left, the only place to go. It’s an office like all the other
offices. There’s a desk against the wall with a typewriter and a telephone on it. A chair pushed up to the desk. A sheet of blank paper rolled into the typewriter.

He walks to the window and looks out.

The sky is gray. Lightning flashes in the distance. Sheets of clouds block his view of the ground below. He still has no idea how close he is to the bottom, no idea what floor he might be on. He
wonders if he’s any nearer escape than when he began. He supposes he must be. The ground is down there somewhere and he’s been steadily heading toward it.

A voice behind him: ‘There’s only one way out.’

He turns around.

The cannibals stand in the doorway.

The one with the heart in his hand holds it out toward him. Behind the beating heart he grins with yellow teeth.

‘You must be hungry.’

‘No,’ Eugene says, backing away. ‘No.’

But then he’s against the wall and can back away no further.

‘You haven’t eaten for months,’ the cannibal says, pushing the beating heart toward his face.

It smells of iron; it smells of blood.

He turns his head away.

‘It’s the only way out,’ the cannibal says. ‘You’ll see. Eat.’

Then: a strange knocking sound from within the walls. The floor drops out from under him and he’s swept into a brief blackness before sitting up in bed.

Someone is knocking on the hotel-room door. It must be Evelyn.

What time is it? He picks up his glasses and puts them on. He looks at his watch to see it’s just past midnight.

He hadn’t planned on falling asleep. He was only going to lie down a moment, exhale some of this tension he feels. But he did fall asleep, and he’s now disoriented. He feels lost,
detached from everything that’s happening. He isn’t ready for this. He isn’t at all ready for this.

Doesn’t matter what he’s ready for. Evelyn is here. It’s time.

He inhales, exhales.

It’s time.

He gets to his feet, turns on the lamp. As well as the rest of the room it illuminates a roll of duct tape, a pair of leather gloves, and his Baby Browning. They sit beside one another on the
room’s rickety dining table.

How’s he going to do this?

He doesn’t want to hurt Evelyn but needs her immobile, and the only way he can think to get her that way is with a fight. She won’t simply sit still while he tapes her up, and he
can’t hold a gun on her to force her to, because if he’s close enough to tape her up he’s close enough for her to take the gun away and turn it around on him, and she would. This
is the business she’s in. He’s a mere tourist.

She knocks again and says his name.

‘I’ll be right there.’

He picks up the pistol and tucks it into his pants.

He walks to the door, pulls it open.

Evelyn stands on the other side, the black night behind her. Her red hair frames her pale, slender, reptilian face. Her blue eyes are large and glossy with alcohol. Her red lips are moist. She
smiles when she sees him.

‘How’d it go?’

‘Why don’t you come on in?’

‘You’re starting to trust me.’

She steps into the room and walks to the bed and sits down. She kicks off her heels and rubs her feet against one another and splays her toes as much as her pantyhose will allow. He closes the
door and puts his back to it. He stands looking at her and she looks back smiling her beautiful-ugly smile.

She pats the bed beside her with a slender-fingered hand.

‘Let’s talk,’ she says.

He thinks of the pistol tucked into his pants.

Pull it out, Eugene, use it to smash her nose to smithereens. Tape her up while she’s incapacitated. It’s going to get ugly eventually, you might as well start it ugly. Do it now
before she suspects anything. This is your best chance and you know it.

He walks to the bed and sits down.

She puts a hand on his thigh, rubs the flat of her palm against his leg. Even through the thick fabric of his pants her touch brings goosebumps out on his flesh.

‘How’d it go?’

‘He has a shirt with blood on it in his suitcase. He also still has the typewriter he typed the blackmail note on. Typewriters have distinctive prints, same as people. And the police
must’ve picked up the note from my table when they searched my apartment, so they’re sure to put them together. And I put the knife in a drawer.’

‘You wore gloves?’

Eugene nods.

‘Good. Then it’s all set up.’

‘It is.’

‘We can call the police tomorrow and end it.’

Just do it, Eugene. If you don’t want to hurt her face, take the gun out and hit her in the back of the head. Hit the soft spot at the back of her skull and knock her out. Do it and get it
over with. There’s no sense in prolonging any of this.

He nods. ‘Tomorrow.’

‘Then tonight is ours,’ she says. She rubs her hand up the inside of his thigh to his groin. He pulls away.

‘You’re drunk.’

‘I want to feel close to you, Gene. We’re almost on the other side of this and I want to feel close to you.’

She leans in, puts her mouth against his mouth. He can taste the whiskey she’s been drinking, both sharp and earthy. At first he doesn’t respond to her kiss, tells himself this
can’t happen, but it does happen, and he finds himself pushing his mouth against hers, biting her lip. He loves her taste and her scent. She smells of that flowery perfume of hers and beneath
that sweat and salt and sex. He reaches to her neck and strokes her smooth skin. Then moves his hand down her chest, across her breasts, feeling them through the fine thin fabric of her
clothes.

You’re being stupid, Eugene. You need to get on with this. You let her seduce you you’ll fall in love with her all over again and won’t be able to follow through with it. Then
where will you be? Prison, that’s where. Or dead.

She reaches her hand into his pants and stops, pulls back from the kiss blinking at him in surprise. She removes her hand from his pants. In it, his pistol. She looks down at it for a time with
an unreadable expression on her face, then smiles.

‘You won’t be needing this anymore.’

She leans over and sets it on the nightstand.

‘Now where were we? Oh, that’s right.’

She pushes Eugene so that he falls back on the bed. He picks up his head as he lies there and looks toward her. She gets to her feet, reaches up under her dress, and pulls down her pantyhose.
She almost falls as she pulls them around her left heel and kicks them away while hopping on her right foot, but manages to catch herself on the edge of the bed before going down, and laughs at her
own clumsiness. Once she regains her balance she stands and looks at him smiling.

Her eyes full of knowledge she’s ready to impart.

2

Evelyn steps forward, looking at this man lying before her. He’s beautiful and intelligent and mean enough that she might not destroy him as she’s destroyed others
who came before. She can be a hard woman and cold, has long suspected her heart dead or absent, but he’s brought feeling to that previously numb part of her. She can imagine a future with
him, backyard cookouts, angry fights over trivial matters, makeup sex. She can imagine bearing his children. Their boys will be hellraisers and their girl will be a heart-breaker. Like she was.

Now that this is almost finished she allows herself to believe in the possibility of that future. She knows things can still go wrong. She knows the future is unpredictable. But it seems to her
things very well might work out.

She allows herself to believe in the possibility.

Her biggest concern is Daddy. If Eugene isn’t wanted for those two murders, or convicted of them, Daddy will consider him a problem; he knows too much, and people who know too much about
Daddy’s business tend to die.

They’ll have to leave before that can happen. They’ll have to pack their bags and go away, take a ship across the Atlantic, live in Paris or London.

They’ll think of something together.

But first they get through this. First they clear Eugene’s name.

They can worry about what comes after once there is an after.

She leans forward and puts her hands on his knees and runs them up the inside of his thighs. She unbuttons his pants and pulls them down to his knees, smiling to herself as he gasps. She leans
forward and kisses his slightly protruding stomach, runs her tongue along the line of hair leading to his belly button. The stink of his sweat is strong, but she likes it. He smells like man. She
strokes his penis and feels it stiffen and grow in her hand and likes that feeling of power. She did that with her mere touch. She puts her mouth around him and tastes salt and teases him with her
tongue.

He reaches down and runs his fingers through her hair and brushes them along the back of her neck, pushing himself deeper into her mouth. She likes his touch, and the strength of his desire, but
she pushes his hand away and holds it down against the mattress. She’s in charge of this and will not be led. She takes her mouth off of him. She strokes his penis slowly. Then stops. She
runs her fingernails along the inside of his thighs. She smiles and crawls on top of him.

‘I want you inside.’

3

Eugene lies in bed, staring at the ceiling, Evelyn asleep on her stomach beside him. His hand rests comfortably on her naked bottom. His penis lies limp and sticky against his
leg. Now’s the time to do this. He can take her by surprise. If he doesn’t do it now he’ll never do it, and he’ll end up dead.

That’s how he needs to think about it. He must get to Manning before Manning gets to him, and the only way he’s certain he can do that is through his daughter. Otherwise he must
accept that people like him, little people of no importance, are mere pawns to be moved about and sacrificed as needed, and he refuses to be a pawn. He refuses to be sacrificed. Which means he
needs to stop bellyaching about what must be done and do it.

He slips out of bed and picks up his pants from the floor. He puts his legs into them, pulls them up, buttons them. He walks to the table and puts on the leather gloves. He picks up the duct
tape. He looks over to the bed where Evelyn lies asleep, her face calm, a smile on her lips. Her pale back is smooth and beautiful. He’d much rather kiss the freckles down the length of her
spine than do what he’s about to do.