The Last Tomorrow (41 page)

Evelyn is sitting on the floor against the far wall, exactly where she’s supposed to be. She must have either heard him or noticed the bright spot in the door go dark because she looks up.
She makes a sound through the gag in her mouth.

Eugene doesn’t answer. He drops his cigarette to the floor and smears it out with the ball of his foot.

Louis Lynch will be arriving soon. He’d better be ready for him.

6

Lou parks on the street in front of an old warehouse. The stucco siding is crumbling, revealing rusted wire beneath. Several of the narrow ventilation windows have been
shattered. Weeds grow thick around the base of the building and from cracks in the asphalt parking lot. It looks to have been abandoned some time ago.

This is the place, no question.

He steps from the car and removes his automatic pistol from its holster. He walks toward the building slowly, deliberately, his eyes taking in everything: the ancient piles of weathered gray
wood, the birds nesting in the rusted tin roof, the three abandoned trailers parked at the docks, the motorcycle sitting near the back door.

He walks the perimeter of the building, hoping he might be able to see inside, but ends up circling the entire place without learning anything. Then he sees that one of the roll-up doors is
opened. There’s a trailer parked in front of it, but even so he should be able to see something. He walks to it. There’s a six-inch gap between the edge of the door and the trailer. He
looks through the gap. The place appears to be empty of life. He sees neither Evelyn nor the milkman, just the dusty interior of an out-of-use warehouse. He knows they must both be here, but he
can’t see them.

He doesn’t want to go into the place blind, but supposes he has no choice.

He walks up a set of concrete steps which lead to the back door. On the landing at the top of the steps he kicks off his shoes, revealing plaid socks. He grabs the doorknob and turns it slowly.
He pulls open the door, hoping for silence and getting it. He steps into the place and eases the door shut behind him. It latches quietly. He looks left, then right. He sees no one. He thumbs back
his revolver’s hammer and pads in stocking feet around the edge of the large warehouse, keeping his back to the wall. He can smell cigarette smoke on the air. It’s a large space and
mostly empty. There aren’t many places to hide.

So where are they?

He walks along a wall of mostly empty shelves, keeping his back to them, eyes looking for movement in the room spread out before him. He reaches the front wall and continues along it. The only
sound he hears is the sound of his own breathing. He reaches the next corner, where a table saw sits beside a pile of throw-away lumber.

He carefully looks behind the lumber but finds no one and nothing.

He glances toward the docks, toward the rolled-up door at dock number three. He wonders if Evelyn is inside the trailer parked there.

She might be, but Eugene Dahl isn’t.

So where is he?

The motorcycle outside means he must be here, but he isn’t here.

Lou licks his lips.

Maybe he stepped out for a few minutes. He could have walked somewhere to get a packet of cigarettes or a bite to eat.

Lou walks to the trailer, holsters his pistol, and pulls the padlock from the staple. Someone within the trailer begins to moan loudly. He yanks up on the large metal handle, which causes two
bolts attached to it to retract, sliding out of their slots in the floor and ceiling of the trailer. The doors swing open, revealing Evelyn. She sits on the rotting wood floor of the trailer in a
puddle of liquid. The liquid runs down the slant of the floor and splashes to the ground below. The smell of urine is strong. Her mouth is gagged but she tries to speak anyway, and shakes her head
violently.

He walks to her and pulls the duct tape from her face and the wadded fabric from her mouth. Her lips are red and raw.

‘Where is he?’

But before Evelyn can speak he has his answer.

7

Eugene lies prone on the filthy roof of the tractor trailer parked at dock number three. He doesn’t move. His head is turned to the right, to the two other trailers
parked at the docks and past them to the street. The street is empty. He breathes in through his nose and out through his mouth. When he exhales he sees the dust on the white roof of the trailer
blow away on the wave of his breath. He tries to listen to what Lou’s doing inside the warehouse but hears nothing. The man moves in silence.

Then finally Eugene hears something at the back of the trailer, metal sliding against metal. Evelyn starts to make noises through the gag in her mouth. Eugene’s certain she’s trying
to warn Lou of his presence. The trailer doors swing open. Eugene slides across the roof as quietly as possible and peers down through the space between the top of the trailer and the bottom of the
roll-up door. He can see Lou’s head, his greasy slicked-back hair. Then the man disappears into the trailer.

Eugene pushes up on the roll-up door, creating another six inches of space. He reaches out, grabbing the doors, and swings them closed. They slam into place and the handle falls about six
inches, ejecting the bolts into their holds.

Lou curses and bangs against the doors. They want to give and almost do, must be hanging onto their holds only by mere millimeters.

Eugene drops to the concrete, spraining his ankle, and slams the handle down into place, sending the bolts fully into their holds.

A gunshot goes off and a black dot appears in one of the doors, surrounded by splinters and a star of fresh wood revealed where the splinters once held.

Eugene drops to the concrete. A second shot goes off.

‘If you kill me,’ he says, ‘you’ll die in there.’

Fingers sits in silence. The uniformed officers stand by the door. He’s tried to speak with them two or three times now, empty chatter to fill the empty minutes, but they
responded only with one-word answers to his queries, which filled no time at all. He’s been here at least two hours. Even without a clock or a watch available he knows he’s been here
that long, and maybe longer. He briefly wishes he’d remembered to put on his watch when he left the apartment this morning, but supposes the cops probably would have taken it, anyway.

He wonders if Eugene’s still alive. He might already have gotten himself killed. Lou might have already put a bullet into him – or six. He wishes Eugene hadn’t told him what he
was attempting. It’s insane, will never work. He’s tempted to tell the police everything, the truth beginning to end, simply to save his friend’s life, but he won’t. He
tells himself he won’t. He’ll tell them the story he’s supposed to tell them and no other. That may mean he’s helping to kill Eugene, he’s almost certain that’s
exactly what it means, but he’ll not betray his friend’s trust a third time. And maybe Eugene will even pull it off. Maybe he’ll manage it and walk away unscathed.

Don’t kid yourself, man, you know better than that.

He supposes the chances are small.

The chances are nonexistent. Eugene might come across as cool, but he’s square and you know it. He can’t kill nobody. Man gets nervous in the presence of a few reefers. You let your
friend surround himself with criminals and cops, you’re letting him kill himself. He don’t have it in him to do what he’s planning to do, and when the time comes, he’ll find
he’s nothing but a mouse in a snake pit. They’ll eat him alive and you’ll be the one who let it happen, because you’re the only one in a position to stop it.

So ask yourself this. Is it a betrayal to save your friend’s life?

Three knocks at the door. One of the uniformed cops pulls it open. The older detective steps into the room. His face is beaded with sweat. A uniformed cop pushes the door closed and locks it.
The detective carries in his hand a white paper bag. He walks to the table and sets it in front of Fingers. The bottom is translucent with grease.

‘Got you some food. Eat up, then we’ll talk.’

The detective pulls out a chair and sits across from him.

1

Eugene carries Evelyn’s purse to Louis Lynch’s rented car, opens the door with a gloved hand, tosses the purse into the back seat. It falls to the floorboard, where
its contents spill out across the carpet.

He slams shut the door.

2

He grabs his motorcycle by the handlebars and pushes it out to the street and along the sun-faded asphalt, rolling it away from the building silently. Once he’s put some
distance between himself and the warehouse, he kicks the machine to life and rides north, feeling shaky now that the adrenalin within him has been spent. The front of his shirt is filthy from lying
on top of the trailer. His face is grimy. He feels sticky with nervous sweat now dried. He doesn’t care. He managed to make it through the first part of this madness, and that’s
something. He wasn’t sure he would, but he did, and without any trouble at all. It gives him hope he might actually pull it off. He’ll know for certain by tomorrow afternoon – if
he’s still alive to know anything.

There’s more than a small chance it’ll turn out to be his last tomorrow.

For now, though, he must finish with today.

3

He pushes into Louis Lynch’s hotel room and closes the door behind him. He walks to the small leatherette hard-case on the dresser and opens it, squeezing the latch with
thumb and index, flipping the body of the case up. He looks down at the black Royal typewriter revealed. Then, after a moment, he rolls a sheet of hotel stationery into the machine. He looks down
at the blank cream-colored paper. His mouth goes dry. He licks his lips. He swallows. Finally he types:

He stops typing, pulls his gloved fingers off the round keys. His hands hover over the typewriter. He reads the note and, satisfied, removes it from the machine. It says everything he needs it
to say, and most of what he needs it to say has nothing to do with the words on the page or what order they’re in. He carefully folds the paper into thirds, making certain the creases are
straight – Louis Lynch seems like a straight-crease kind of guy – then stuffs the folded paper into a hotel envelope and seals it. He types a name on the front of the envelope and with
it in his hand steps out of the hotel room. He takes the elevator down to the lobby, slides the envelope across the front desk, tells the gentleman who picks it up it’s for Humphrey Smith, I
understand he’s expected to check in late tonight or early tomorrow morning. He must receive it as soon as he arrives. The gentleman tells him yes, sir, not a problem. Eugene says thank you,
then turns and walks out of the hotel. As he makes his way toward the street he asks himself what else he needs to do, what else he needs to take care of.

A few things yet.

4

He stops at a liquor store and buys himself a bottle of Old Grand-Dad. He knows there’s a good chance he’ll get sloppy if he works drunk, make mistakes that might
kill him or put him in prison, but he doesn’t think he can remain sober and still do what needs to be done. He knows he can’t. Tomorrow will be a day filled with ugliness and he
can’t face it straight. Every time he thinks about it he feels sick to his stomach. But it has to happen. If he’s going to walk away from this, it simply must happen, and that’s
all there is to it. So he’ll do what he needs to do to make sure it does. He’ll try not to get drunk, he’ll try to consume only enough so he can face the day, but he needs his
medicine.

With the bottle purchased he steps back into the daylight. As he does he throws Louis Lynch’s room key into a trash can by the door.

He won’t be needing it again and doesn’t want it on him.

5

He makes one last stop before heading back to the warehouse. He parks in front of a hamburger joint, steps inside, and walks to the cash register, behind which a pimple-faced
young man in a white hat stands waiting. He orders six hamburgers for take-out. He pays and walks to a red vinyl stool. He sits down and leans forward with his arms on the counter and glances
around the room, checking out the few other patrons. To his right a woman sips an ice-cream soda through a straw, and a teenage boy drags French fries through a smear of ketchup. Then he looks
left. The detective he ran into at the Shenefield Hotel, the one who saw him drop the murder weapon, sits not twenty feet away in a booth in the corner. A greasy white take-out bag sits on the
table to his left, presumably lunch for someone who couldn’t make it to the diner. Eugene turns quickly away, head snapping forward. He looks straight ahead at the wall behind the counter, at
shelves of ketchup and mustard and various flavors of syrup for sodas and fresh fruit in baskets. He wants to glance over his shoulder again, to see if the detective noticed him, but doesn’t.
He must simply sit here and look normal and wait for his food. He wants to leave immediately, but doesn’t do that either. If he leaves the counter boy might call after him, hey, mister, you
forgot your food, and this would bring him attention he doesn’t want. No, he must sit and wait. He must not look around nervously. He must act normal. He closes his eyes and swallows. He
opens his eyes and looks at the clock on the wall.

After what feels like an hour a white paper bag is set in front of him.

He says thanks, picks up the bag, turns around. He doesn’t glance toward the table at which the detective sits. Only an asshole would do that. He walks straight for the door. He feels
stiff and awkward in his movements, as if he were drunk and trying not to reveal the fact. He pushes his way outside. He walks to his motorcycle.

No one tries to stop him. No one says a word.

6

He steps into the warehouse and walks to the tractor trailer parked at dock number three. He looks into it through a hole in one of the doors. Evelyn and Louis Lynch are
sitting across from one another, silent and motionless. Evelyn’s arms and legs have been freed, the gag removed from her mouth. At this point it doesn’t matter. She’ll be locked
in the trailer until it’s finished and it’ll be finished tomorrow afternoon.