The Last Tomorrow (11 page)

But the important thing is that Fingers, one of Daddy’s west-coast peddlers, came through on the information. He didn’t seem too happy about it, but he came through.

And on short notice.

As recently as yesterday morning Evelyn didn’t even know she was taking this trip to the West Coast. She was called into Daddy’s office in lower Manhattan and, as usual, asked to
wait in his outer office, so she walked—

3

Evelyn walked to Daddy’s bar and poured herself two fingers of scotch from a crystal decanter. She held the tumbler up to the light, swirled the liquid in the glass,
looked at its honey color. She brought it to her nose and smelled peat and leather.

She downed it in a single draught and set the empty glass on the counter. She walked to the window, looked down at the street below, watched people walk by. They looked small from up here, like
they were barely people at all. Amazing how a little distance could change your perspective. Seeing the world from this height she thought she could understand how good wholesome boys – like
her brother, George, before the Japs shot him down over Tokyo – could fly over cities and drop explosives on them without feeling remorse, without feeling anything.

But of course, unlike those good wholesome boys who dropped bombs on cities, she did not have the luxury of distance.

She turned away from the window, walked to a couch, sat down. She crossed her legs at the knees and settled in, waiting for her turn to speak to Daddy.

She was obviously called here for a job. She wondered what it was.

4

It was six years ago, when she turned twenty-one, that she demanded her first meeting with Daddy, and two days later she was summoned from their Shrewsbury house to his office
in lower Manhattan. She’d never before seen him in that context. He had forever been Daddy and that was how she perceived him. Daddy took her to Coney Island and bought her Foster Grant
sunglasses, cotton candy, and hotdogs from Nathan’s Famous. Daddy watched her ride the Ferris wheel and waved at her. Daddy brought home presents from his trips to Chicago and Las Vegas.

But in his office he was no longer Daddy.

He was the Man.

She realized it as soon as she pushed through the door. The weather was different here. It was colder.

‘What is it you want, Ev?’

‘I want a job.’

He nodded but for a long time said nothing. His bulbous face like over-yeasted bread dough was still and expressionless, his eyes vacant. Finally he blinked once and said, ‘A
job.’

She nodded.

He simply stared, and after some time she realized he wanted her to make her case. She cleared her throat and sat up nervously. She looked down at her skirt and flattened it against her legs
with the palms of her hands, pushing it down to make certain her knees were covered.

‘Well, see,’ she said, ‘you don’t have a son and I thought—’

‘I have a son.’

‘George is dead, Daddy.’

He nodded once, minutely. ‘I have a dead son.’

‘Someday you’ll want to retire. Even if George was alive he couldn’t take over the business. He was too innocent, like Mom. I’m like you.’

‘And you think you can take over my business?’

She nodded. ‘Yes, sir.’

A smile shone behind Daddy’s eyes but did not reach his wide, moist mouth.

‘You have no idea what happens here.’

‘I have some idea,’ she said. ‘I hear talk. But I know I don’t know enough. That’s why I want a job. To learn.’

‘If I give you a job there’s three conditions.’

‘Okay.’

‘First, I might ask you to do some unpleasant things. You do what I say as an employee and don’t question it. When it comes to work, I’m not your daddy. You get no special
treatment. You’re told to do a job, you do it and that’s it. You got that?’

She nodded. ‘Of course, Daddy. Sir. Of course.’

‘Good. Second, you talk about business to no one on the outside. Not even your mother. Especially not your mother. You might do some things weigh on you. You might think about confessing
to Father Byrne or someone else. Don’t. You can have God in your personal life – in fact, I insist on it – but there’s no room for Him in this business. He’s too big,
He’d crowd us out. The business is what it is and it won’t be soft on you because you’re a girl. This ain’t the typing pool. It’s a man’s business and a tough
one, and you’re starting out at a disadvantage, which means you gotta be even tougher than the men you’re working with. You’re gonna have to prove yourself. You got
that?’

She nodded.

‘Third, you ain’t gonna play the moll. I know you’re a woman now, I see it clear as Waterford, and the boys will too. Not one of them is to touch you. That’s part of
being respected. You want a man in your life, you find that man outside the business. None of these sons of bitches is good enough for you, anyways. Scoundrels all.’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘All right,’ he said. ‘You start tomorrow.’

‘Thank you, Daddy. Sir.’

5

He wasn’t lying when he told her the business got ugly. In the years since she first began working for Daddy she has gone from an innocent-if-spoiled Jersey girl to . . .
to something else altogether.

Good wholesome boys might be able to drop bombs from a thousand feet above the human suffering, but she can’t afford to be good or wholesome.

She doesn’t have the luxury of distance.

Before you do certain things you think you have mental boundaries, places you would never go, but those boundaries are like smoke, only thinner, and as you approach them they vanish on the
air.

When she began working for Daddy his boys considered her something of a joke. They thought she was a little girl playing at being grown-up. They thought she would dip her toe into the waters of
this business and find them much too cold. They don’t think that any longer. They know now she’s colder still than the waters in which she’s expected to swim. When she has to be
she’s much colder.

6

She picked up a newspaper from the table and flipped through it, looking for something of interest. On page three she found a piece on Alvin M. Johnston, a pilot for Boeing
who, according to the paper, was preparing for his first test flight of a new bomber called the Stratofortress. It was designed to carry 70,000 pounds of nuclear weapons, nine times what was
dropped on Hiroshima. According to the article, it would take only one round trip to Moscow to turn the city into a mere divot.

After reading that piece, she flipped the page again and came across a news item out of Los Angeles. Her brow furrowed as she read and a frown touched the corners of her mouth. But before she
could finish the article, Daddy’s office door swung open, and she looked up. Louis Lynch stepped out. He wore a black pinstriped suit that accentuated his thinness and stood with his back
very straight. To Evelyn he always looked like he should be standing near a casket.

‘The Man will see you now.’

Evelyn got to her feet.

‘Will I be taking a trip to the West Coast?’

Lou cocked an eyebrow at her.

‘Something in the paper.’

‘We have to be at Idlewild Airport in two hours.’

‘We’re flying?’

‘Time is of the essence,’ Daddy said from the office. ‘Come in.’

She walked past Lou into Daddy’s office.

‘Close the door behind you.’

She did.

7

‘You have an accent yourself,’ she says.

‘I do.’

‘Where’s it from?’

‘Kentucky.’

‘I like it,’ she says, ‘you sound kind of like a cowboy.’

They talk for another hour and half, and throughout it all Eugene can see she’s trouble. It’s in the sensual way she touches herself when speaking – her own earlobe, her neck,
her thigh – and in the way she purses her lips, and in the way she looks at you with eyes behind which there are no nos. But mostly it’s in her beautiful-ugly reptilian features. He
wouldn’t be surprised by a forked tongue. And she’s not the kind that’ll shake her rattle before striking either. One minute she’ll be coiled up beside you, the next her
teeth will be gum-deep in your throat.

Yet Eugene finds that attractive. There’s something in him drawn to trouble, always has been. He likes fire in the eyes and a knowing smile. He wants to grab onto something wild and hold
on as long as possible.

He finishes his seventh or eighth drink, more than he’d planned on having tonight, and sets his tumbler on the bar. He smiles at Evelyn.

‘How’d you like a dinner companion tomorrow night?’

‘Why, do you know someone less annoying than yourself?’

‘Ouch.’

She laughs and says, ‘That sounded meaner than I thought it would. I’d love dinner.’

‘There’s a place on 8th Street I think you’ll like,’ he says. ‘Where are you staying?’

‘At the Fairmont across the street.’

‘And you didn’t go to the Palm Frond?’

‘Too cheery for me. Like sex, drinking should be done in the dark. It adds mystery to the whole experience.’

‘God,’ he says, ‘are you sure you don’t just wanna get hitched?’

‘Do I look like a horse to you?’

‘All right,’ he says. ‘I’ll settle for dinner. Pick you up around seven?’

‘Are you leaving already?’

He taps his empty glass. ‘One more drink and I’ll be crawling home.’

‘Hey, Jerry,’ Evelyn says, ‘pour one more for Gene. He’s promised a show.’

Jerry glances toward them, but Eugene waves him away.

He gets to his feet, bowing slightly. ‘It was lovely meeting you.’

He takes her hand in his and kisses the back of it. It’s cool and dry and soft and he can smell perfume on the inside of her wrists, something light and flowery and unlike the woman
herself.

‘I look forward to tomorrow night, Evelyn.’

‘Room three twenty-three,’ she says.

‘Room three twenty-three.’

He turns and heads for the door, pushes through it, staggers into the night. He blinks at his milk truck parked by the curb and feels a moment of internal conflict. He knows he’s had a few
too many, probably shouldn’t drive, but he knows too that he doesn’t feel like walking despite the fact it’s only a few blocks.

He lights an Old Gold, inhales deeply, exhales through his nostrils. He spits tobacco from the end of his tongue. He pulls his keys from his pockets and looks at them in his open palm.

‘Fuck it.’

Five minutes later he’s parking the milk truck in front of his building. He steps from his vehicle and tosses what remains of his cigarette into the street. A car passes by. He waves at it
for no good reason and when the man behind the wheel doesn’t return his wave he wishes him an early death, or at least a sprained ankle. He walks into his building, up the stairs that lead to
his front door, and as he walks up the steps he sees that something has been nailed there. A white envelope. The nail pierces its center, making it look to Eugene – perhaps because he’s
drunk – a bit like an insect specimen.

‘And here,’ he says to nobody, ‘is the rare paper moth of Peru.’

He walks the rest of the way up the stairs and stands facing his door. He looks at the envelope nailed to it. There’s nothing written on the outside; it is just an envelope. It could
contain anything.

After a moment he grabs the nail between the pad of his thumb and the side of his index finger and wiggles it back and forth and, once he has it loose enough to pull it from the door, does so.
He turns the envelope over in his hand, but doesn’t open it. Instead he unlocks his front door and steps into his small apartment.

The kitchen is just inside the front door, tiled in blue. Cabinets hang over the counters. To the right of the kitchen is the living room, with only a counter between them. Next to the counter,
a small table with two chairs sitting in front of it. On top of the table, a black case containing a portable typewriter. Beside the typewriter, a stack of blank paper beginning to yellow with
age.

Eugene shuts the door behind him, looks at the typewriter, and thinks maybe he should try to get some writing done. He walks to the table and sits down, setting the envelope aside unopened. He
pulls the typewriter toward him, unlatches the case. He looks at the typewriter, a green Remington with white keys. He bought it for five dollars when he moved to New York. The keys look like
grinning teeth to him. He doesn’t like the grin at all. It’s full of contempt.

You’re really gonna do this again, eh?

‘Shut up.’

If you wanna pretend you’re a writer, go ahead. No skin off my nose.

‘I said shut up.’

He rolls a piece of paper into the machine.

He stares at it, blank.

The machine stares back, but says nothing more.

He’s just drunk enough to write the first sentence of his novel. He will dream this doorway into existence and he will walk through it. He’s done it before. He puts his fingers on
the keys. They’re cold to the touch. He types.

He stops. He stares at the sentence for a long time. He blinks. He tears the paper from the machine, crumples it up, tosses it onto the table.

I knew you couldn’t do it.

He closes the typewriter case to shut the thing up. It only speaks when he doesn’t want it to, when he wishes it wouldn’t.

He pushes it away. He gets to his feet. He looks to the envelope on his table.

It can wait till tomorrow.

He walks to the back of his apartment and falls into bed, still clothed. He imagines he can hear the typewriter’s muffled voice mocking him from within its case. Eventually, though, he
hears nothing at all.

Soon after the typewriter goes silent he’s snoring low rhythmic snores.

On the table, the envelope waits.

1

A dark hardwood desk sits near the back of Seymour Markley’s large office, and Seymour himself sits behind it in a brown leather chair, his back straight, his hands
clasped before him. He faces three chairs, one of them occupied.

He pulls a white rag from his pocket and gives it a quick snap to remove all lint, then takes off his glasses and cleans them methodically. He thinks about this situation, this bleeding of his
personal life into his professional; he doesn’t like it one bit. He sets the glasses back on his nose, folds the rag into quarters, and slips it out of sight. He looks across his desk to
Barry Carlyle, his chief investigator.