The Last Tomorrow (42 page)

Besides, she needs to eat.

‘I got you food.’

Neither Evelyn nor Louis Lynch says anything.

‘Stand up.’

They both get to their feet.

Louis Lynch glances toward him. ‘Do you really think you have any chance of walking away from this?’

‘Toss your gun toward the door.’

He removes a revolver from its holster and throws it toward Eugene. It thuds against the wood paneling and slides to the door, which brings it to a stop.

‘You’re already dead,’ Louis Lynch says, ‘you just don’t know it yet.’

‘Turn around and put your hands to the wall, both of you.’

They both turn their backs to him. They both walk to the opposite end of the trailer. They press their palms against the wall.

‘Don’t move.’

Eugene pulls up on the handle, the bolts retract, and the doors swing open. He removes two burgers wrapped in greasy white paper, then tosses the bag containing the four remaining hamburgers
into the trailer. It lands with a heavy thud against the floor. He picks up Louis Lynch’s revolver and tucks it into the back of his pants. He shuts the trailer doors and brings the handle
down, sliding the bolts back into their holds. He puts the padlock into place.

Then he walks to a stack of pallets in the middle of the floor and sits down. He takes off his gloves. He unwraps one of his burgers. The smell makes his stomach turn. He knows he should eat,
but he isn’t at all hungry. He feels sick. He brings the burger to his mouth and takes a bite. It’s very salty. He chews slowly and forces himself to swallow.

This is it, then.

There’s nothing left to do until tomorrow – when it all happens.

At nine twenty, with the Lazarus sun drowned once more in the western sea, a heavy-set man in a gray suit with a blue silk tie wrapped around his neck and a matching
handkerchief poking from his breast pocket steps from a DC-6, descends a set of rolling steps, and, trailed by three men, makes his way across the tarmac, through Los Angeles Airport, and out the
front doors. Crowds, without realizing they’re doing it, part for him as he walks. People simply glance in his direction as he cuts through space with the ease of a sharp knife and step out
of his way. They do it as a unit, a group of people suddenly moving as one, like a sheet of paper unfolding.

He carries in his right hand a black leather briefcase.

1

Next morning, the sixteenth of April, the sun breaks past the horizon at five twenty-one. The temperature is fifty-two degrees Fahrenheit, though it will increase to
sixty-eight before the day is finished. The air is clear enough to see Mount Wilson to the north through the morning haze and to the northwest the Santa Monica Mountains. The wind speed is a little
over five miles per hour. The sky is cloudless and when the sun rises fully will be a one-color canvas – solid blue. In other words, it’s a beautiful spring day, last weekend’s
rainstorm nothing but a distant memory.

2

At seven thirty Carl steps into the cool spring morning.

He hopes they catch a break on this investigation today. They need to catch a break on this investigation. They have
too many man-hours put into it to come up with nothing. And Carl feels they’re close.

He can sense it. They’re close.

To what, though, he doesn’t know.

3

Eugene opens his eyes at seven fourty-five to find himself looking at pin-dots of morning light shining through holes in the corrugated tin roof overhead like stars in a
makeshift sky. His night was long and restless and cold, and what little sleep he had was unpleasant. His head aches and he feels sick to his stomach.

The best outcome today is still something to dread.

Today will be a day filled with ugliness and horror.

He wishes it were otherwise, but it isn’t.

He wishes he could take Evelyn out of that trailer and scrub her body clean and give her a fresh set of clothes. He wishes he could apologize and wrap her in his arms and forget any of this ever
happened. But he can’t do any of that. He can’t even allow himself to
feel
any of that.

Much worse is yet to come.

4

They didn’t let Fingers leave last night. They led him instead to a hotel room with a bed and told him to get comfortable, we’re not letting you leave till you
talk. He thinks they’re getting desperate, or else they sense something approaching. He certainly does.

But then he knows Eugene has summoned the Man.

He gets to his feet and walks to the window. He pulls open the curtains and looks out at the day. Cars roll by on the street six floors below. People walk on the sidewalk.

Someone knocks.

He turns around. A uniformed officer pushes open the door and says, ‘Get dressed. They want you in the interrogation room.’

He nods.

‘Okay.’

5

Louis Lynch paces the floor of this tiny fucking prison while Evelyn sits expressionless with her knees drawn up to her chest. He wants to yell at her, to shout in her face,
where’s your fucking heart? We need to get out of here! We need to
do
something! But he doesn’t shout at her. This is at least partly his fault. He should have listened to her
worries day before yesterday. If he’d listened to her worries this never would have happened. She knew it was coming and he ignored her.

He can’t believe he allowed himself to walk into a trap.

It was a big mistake, but the milkman made a mistake of his own.

Because Lou isn’t someone who walks through strange doors with only one weapon. Even now he can feel the weight of the small six-shot Colt Vest Pocket fitted snugly into its custom holster
on the inside of his left wrist.

Even now he has plans for it.

6

Carl and Friedman step into the interrogation room at ten to nine.

Darryl Castor is already inside, facing the reel-to-reel magnetic tape recorder on the table before him. He looks bored, his shoulders slumped, his eyes distant.

Carl hands him a cup of hot coffee.

‘Thanks.’

He nods, then takes a seat. Friedman takes another.

‘Sleep all right?’

‘I don’t like being held captive.’

‘You can walk out that door as soon as you tell us what we need to know.’

He lights a cigarette and inhales deeply. The dry tobacco crackles as it burns. He looks toward the ceiling and exhales. He thinks for a moment about his house. He thinks about his front door
and walking through it. He thinks about the years stolen from Naomi and what they might have been like if she were allowed to live them. He thinks about her laugh, wonderful and loud and
infectious. He misses sitting on the couch with her. He misses holding her hand while they watched television. He misses the way she would lean over and kiss the corner of his mouth for no reason
at all. He misses her scent.

He glances toward Darryl Castor.

‘Cigarette?’

‘No, thanks.’

‘Then let’s get started.’

‘Like I said yesterday, I don’t have anything to tell you.’

‘I’m hoping to change your mind.’

‘It’s not a decision, man. I’d cooperate if I knew anything, but I don’t.’

‘You know plenty.’

7

Eugene opens his bottle of Old Grand-Dad at half past ten. He holds it to his nose and inhales its scent. He takes a swallow. It burns going down. He doesn’t know if he
can bring himself to do what he needs to do. He doesn’t want to do it. He can’t do it. He feels sick when he thinks about it. But he has to do it. He takes a second swallow of whiskey
and looks at the day-old hamburger on the pallet beside him. He should eat it. He doesn’t want to. He’s both hungry and sick to his stomach simultaneously. He should try to eat. He
picks up the hamburger and unwraps it. He brings it to his mouth and takes a bite. It’s cold and the fat in the burger has congealed. The tomato is grainy and flavorless. He chews slowly,
tasting nothing. He wants to be sick. He swallows. It goes down like a lump of lead. He washes the bite down with yet another swig of whiskey. He tells himself he needs to be careful about the
drinking. He tells himself he can’t get drunk. He takes another bite of hamburger. He wonders how he ended up in this mess. He’s always tried to be a decent human being. He’s
always minded his own business. He had his simple life and his small ambitions unfulfilled, his small dreams, and the occasional woman to keep him warm on the occasional cold night, but
that’s all, and that’s all he needed, all he wanted if he’s honest with himself. So how did he end up here?

Stop it, Eugene. How you ended up here is irrelevant. You’re here. You’re in the situation you’re in. You have to deal with it. Bellyaching accomplishes nothing. You know it
accomplishes nothing. Just eat your goddamn hamburger and wait. At one o’clock you get up and you walk to that trailer and you begin. Don’t get drunk. Have enough whiskey that you can
do what you need to and not a drop more. You can get through this. In three hours it’ll be over. You can handle that. Three hours is no time at all. So no more feeling sorry for yourself. No
more bellyaching. You wait till one o’clock and you do what you need to do. Okay?

He nods to himself.

Okay.

He takes another swallow from his bottle.

8

Fingers scratches his cheek and looks down at the older detective’s left wrist, but the man’s watch is covered by the cuff of his shirt. He thinks it might be time
to start talking, but he’s not certain. He could be kidding himself, but it feels right, and he has nothing else to go on. He exhales in a sigh and looks toward the reels of magnetic tape
waiting to record. Then he looks from one detective to the other. He hopes to God he isn’t making a mistake.

‘Okay.’

‘Okay what?’

‘I’m tired of being locked in this fucking room.’

‘You and me both.’

‘Then let’s get this over with.’

But before they can even begin the telephone rings.

The younger detective gets to his feet and picks it up.

‘Hello?’ He listens for a moment, then says, ‘Okay. We’re on our way.’

He hangs up.

‘What is it?’

‘We got a match at The Fairmont on Wilshire.’

‘Who?’

‘Louis Lynch.’

‘We sure?’

‘It’s an also-known-as, could be someone who really is named Leopold Jones, but the check-in date is right.’

‘Okay.’ The older detective gets to his feet.

Fingers
looks up at him and says, ‘He’s not there.’

‘How do you know?’

‘Because I know where he is.’

The older detective looks to his partner. ‘You
go.’

‘You sure?’

He nods.

‘Okay.’

The younger detective heads out the door.

‘You better start talking.’

9

At a little past noon a heavy-set man in a gray suit with a red silk tie wrapped around his neck and a matching handkerchief poking from his breast pocket steps from the
elevator at the Fairmont Hotel and, trailed by three men, heads through the lobby toward the bright midday sunshine, and then into it, breathing in the fresh Pacific air. He pauses a moment and
puts his face toward the sun before continuing toward a black rental car parked on the street. First he needs to pick up a few weapons, then he’ll head to an important appointment – at
which he fully intends to kill a motherfucker.

10

Fingers watches the reels spin as he speaks, watches the magnetic tape transfer from one to the other. There’s something hypnotic about it. The tape rolls while he thinks
of nothing at all, and the words come easily, as if the tape were simply pulling them from his mouth. If he were to look at the detective instead he might start wondering whether the man could see
his lies; he’d stumble mid-sentence, forget what he was saying, and contradict himself. It’s best to simply watch the reels spin. So that’s what he does.

He watches them spin and tells the detective he got a call from Louis Lynch last week, during which he was asked several questions about Eugene Dahl. He thought it odd, Eugene isn’t part
of that world, but he answered the questions all the same. Lou was asking for the Man and when the Man wants to know something you tell him. It’s just that simple. Or it was until he learned
he’d inadvertently helped to frame his friend for the murder of Theodore Stuart. It made him sick. He doesn’t get involved in that ugly sort of business even when it means sinking a
stranger. It fucks with his sleep, and he’s a man who likes his sleep. To mitigate his guilt he tried to help Eugene. He gave him a gun, offered him money. He didn’t want to put himself
at risk, but he wanted to do something.

Unfortunately, he believes he made it worse for Eugene rather than better. He believes he might even have sent him to his death.

That is, unless someone stops it, and he doesn’t even know if that’s possible at this point. The situation’s a mess.

In addition to everything else that’s happening, maybe even because of everything else that’s happening – there’s no better time than in the midst of confusion to attempt
such a thing – Louis Lynch is planning to eliminate the Man and take over his organization. He believes so, anyway.

Up until six years ago everybody with an opinion on the matter believed Lou would end up running it anyway, but when Evelyn Manning turned twenty-one she began working for her father, learning
how things operated, preparing to take over herself once her father retired. That didn’t sit well with Lou. He wasn’t going to take orders from a woman. He wasn’t going to take
orders from anybody. He’d worked for the Man for twenty years, helped to build an underground empire, and he was its rightful inheritor. For six years he’s been growing increasingly
unhappy, and now it looks like he’s using this time on the West Coast to seize the organization and bury anyone who might stand in his way.

Two days ago Lou came to him and asked if he had access to a warehouse. He needed an isolated place where loud noises wouldn’t raise any eyebrows. He said he knew about a place in Vernon
that a real-estate investor used as a tax loss. He said he could have the keys in Lou’s hand within an hour. Lou said that sounded fine, so he took care of it.