The Last Tomorrow

TWENTY-TWO

1

Eugene steps into the hotel room, feeling a strange vibration within him, a sort of dissonant internal buzz. He can hear it as well as feel it, this discord within, echoing in his skull. He looks to his right. A cop on the floor, dead. He lies on his side, head tilted down, arms limp in front of him, one hand turned up, the other turned down, a pool of black blood beneath him. His uniform shirt is bunched up under his armpits, untucked, revealing a bleached undershirt and beneath that bare white stomach. His eyes are open. They’re blue. The bare stomach is somehow the worst part. You never see a man naked in that way, with his clothes pulled away and rumpled, unless he’s been assaulted, and it’s usually drunk fellows who’ve been rolled by hoodlums. It reveals a vulnerability that, somehow, is both terrifying and embarrassing. You see your own vulnerability in it and must look away.

Two instincts war within him. The first and most basic is the instinct to flee. Blood, death: they make him slightly dizzy. The shock makes him feel as though he’s stuck within a nightmare. His heart is pounding in his chest despite his stillness; it’s telling him to get ready to move, and fast. But something else pulls him further into the room, a deeper survival instinct perhaps, hiding behind simple curiosity. What’s going on here and what does it have to do with him? It must have something to do with him, he was brought here, and if he leaves now he won’t get any answers.

A man can warm himself even beneath the blanket of certain doom.

He walks further into the room, looks to his left, and sees a gun on the carpet. A revolver. Then beyond it, and beyond an open door, another corpse lying on the white-tiled bathroom floor. Blood and brains are splattered on the back wall, running down it, sliding down it, thick and gelatinous as cold chicken fat. More blood running along the grout lines on the floor as if the areas between the tiles were a maze and the blood possessed some sort of primitive intelligence.

No one in the room is living but for Eugene.

Everything about this is wrong. There’s nothing to discover here but death. But running is not the thing to do. He needs to call the police. He needs to call the police and tell them what happened, every last detail, even if it means the district attorney becomes aware of him. This is obviously bigger than anything he can handle on his own.

He turns around, looking for a telephone.

But a piece of paper on the floor catches his eye. A crumpled piece of paper mostly hidden beneath an armoire. He walks to it, not sure what he’s doing, why he’s walking to it — you need to call the police, Eugene; stop fucking around and call them already — and leans down to pick it up. He flattens it out and looks at it, an H.H. White Creamery Company stock-request form. His name is written on it, in his handwriting. He turns back around to look at the gun on the floor, a.38 Smith amp; Wesson revolver with a six-and-a-half-inch barrel. He’s not a gun person, doesn’t give a tin shit about guns, but he recognizes it all the same. Recognizes it because he has one just like it. He set it on his dining table next to his typewriter case early this morning before the sun had even touched the horizon. He set it down and tore open an envelope. Within the envelope was a typed note, the typed note that told him to be here, to be here now. Is it possible Evelyn took it, picked it up from where he left it and stowed it away in her purse? He knows that it is. From the moment he got the note his mind was on only that and what it meant. She could have grabbed a freight dolly and wheeled out his refrigerator without his noticing.

He thinks of meeting Evelyn. He thinks of her evasive responses when he asked why she was in town, what kind of business her father was in.

He doesn’t want to believe what he’s beginning to believe. He likes Evelyn, or once did. Her liked her a lot. He thought they shared something. He knows they shared something. You can’t fake moments like the moments they had, moments where electricity seemed to spark between them. He hopes such moments can’t be faked, anyway, and knows he never experienced anything like that before. Part of him believed such experiences were mythological, simply the stuff of bad poetry. But since he met her his idle fantasies of the future have had her in them. And yet he knows he’s been framed and believes he knows by whom.

He needs to collect the evidence against him and get out of here.

He needs to do it now.

Outside: sirens wail.

He walks to the window and looks out, looks down to the street to see two LAPD radio cars screeching to a stop in front of the hotel, doors swinging open, uniformed officers stepping from their vehicles.

He shoves the paper into his pocket. Then grabs the gun and stuffs it down the front of his pants, untucking his shirt to hide it, hoping no one notices the shape of the gun under its fabric. If he stays calm, calm and collected, he might be able to walk out of here. Walk out of here and get rid of this evidence. Then he can find out why this was done to him. He knows Evelyn was part of it, he’s sure of it, and the more he thinks about it the more certain he becomes, but he’s also sure she didn’t do this on her own. There were others involved. He needs to find out who, who and why, and he needs to find out how to fix it.

But now isn’t the time to be thinking about such things.

Now is the time to be getting the fuck out of here.

He steps into the corridor, his foot sinking into the bloody puddle. He looks left. The cops will be coming up in the elevator. He needs to find the stairs. He turns right and walks, hoping he isn’t actively working to pin himself in. He feels sweaty and nervous and though he’s innocent he’s certain guilt is written across his face.

Innocent or not, he feels guilty.

At the end of the corridor he finds a white door. He thumbs a paddle and pulls, revealing a stairwell. He steps into it and starts down, gravity making it easy. And the worry pressing upon him.

The stairwell has a damp, dusty smell to it, like the smell of impending rain.

He trudges down, wondering what he’s going to find when he reaches the bottom and pushes through the last door, but he doesn’t have to wonder long, because soon enough he’s pushing through it.

He’s at the end of a corridor very much like the one on the sixth floor. At the other end, the hotel lobby. It looks calm. The uniformed police are probably upstairs now, about to discover the bodies he just left behind. He might be able to get out of here with no trouble, get out of here and get to his milk truck and drive away. He can worry about what happens after that once he gets there, because if he doesn’t get there, there won’t be any after that to worry about.

He walks down the corridor, hoping there are no cops at the front.

Nervousness and fear begin to take him over. He was not made for this sort of thing. There are born soldiers, and their home is the battlefield. There are born spies, and their home is Moscow. He’s a born dreamer, and his home is nowhere in this world. He doesn’t know how to tolerate this sort of stress, and though he tries very hard to maintain a placid expression he can feel small muscle twitches on his face and throughout his body. He imagines he must look like a man being electrocuted while simultaneously trying to walk.

He steps into the lobby, barely maintaining control, and looks left to the front door. He can see sunshine. A bellhop standing just inside the door, hand on a rolling cart. A doorman outside. But no cops.

He heads toward sunlight telling himself to just act normal despite the fact he feels jerky and stupid and unnatural. Just stay calm and wear a blank expression. Blank faces are forgettable as unmarked paper.

He’s halfway there. Then he cuts the distance in half again.

He thinks of something he heard once, about a philosopher who supposedly proved it was actually impossible to reach a destination because to do so you must cut the distance there in half, and in half again, and in half again, infinitely, and since there’s no limit to how small the distances can be cut, you arrive nowhere. You end up forever cutting distances in half. He’s always before thought it a bit of ridiculousness, but now he wonders if there isn’t some truth to it. He certainly feels now that he will never reach the door. He must have been walking for several minutes now, for hours, days. It must have been days. The sun must have set and risen again many times by now. His mouth is incredibly dry. How long has it been since he’s had a glass of water? It was only fifty feet from the start, how is he not out yet? How is he not escaped?

How is the door still ten feet away?

Now it’s five.

He’s nearly upon it when the doorman opens the door and a man in a gray suit and a fedora walks in. He’s in his fifties and sweaty but walks with purpose, his glassy eyes on something in the distance, the elevator perhaps. He bumps Eugene’s shoulder, sending Eugene spinning around.

The man stops and catches Eugene by the arm. The gun falls from Eugene’s waistband. He watches it flip end over end on its way down and swipes for it with a sweaty hand but misses.

The man says, ‘Sorry about that, buddy, I-’

The gun hits the floor with a thud and a rattle.

Eugene looks down at it, can’t I catch a single fucking break, and then looks up at the face of the man in the fedora.

His grip tightens on Eugene’s arm.

‘What’s with the weapon, son?’

Eugene pulls away from the man in the fedora, pulls hard, gets his arm out of the grip, though it feels bruised and sore, and rushes the front door. He bangs through it, tripping over the doorman. He falls forward, peeling skin off the palms of his hands as he catches himself on asphalt. Doesn’t even feel it. Doesn’t feel anything. Simply struggles to his feet, glancing over his shoulder to see the man in the fedora pull a revolver of his own from a holster. Sees a police badge clipped to the man’s belt. Then he’s looking forward again, stumbling along, looking for escape, a way to get away.

That’s all he wants in this moment: away.

2

Carl Bachman, in wrinkled gray suit, lies in bed and stares at the ceiling. The ceiling doesn’t stare back. He thinks of his wife and smiles and doesn’t long for her but simply enjoys the mental images. She was so beautiful. Her face was effervescent. When she scrubbed herself free of makeup at night and her skin was pink and clean she was at her most beautiful. She was the most beautiful creature he’d ever known.

The mattress beneath him is very comfortable.

The telephone in the hallway rings. It’s probably for Langer.

Harold Langer is a college student who stays in the next room. He’s studying mathematics. Carl’s talked to him some but they don’t have many overlapping interests so their conversations are short and halting things. Still, seems like a good kid. But he’s been seeing a high school girl, a little paper shaker who calls him at least five times a day, and the ringing phone sometimes gets on Carl’s nerves. Now, however, isn’t one of those times. He likes the sound. Like singing. He listens to it ring and ring.

Until Mrs Hoffman picks it up, choking off the sound. He can hear her voice but cannot make out what she’s saying. Then she stops saying anything. A moment later, a knocking sound. It’s very loud in his ears. She must really be pounding on Langer’s door. The pounding goes on and on, nothing like song. He wants to yell, answer the door, Langer, but he also wants not to yell it, and he guesses he wants that more because he says nothing. The ceiling is stained yellow from cigarette smoke.

The banging continues.

Then: ‘Mr Bachman, are you in there?’

The name sounds familiar.

After a while he sits up. ‘Yeah.’

‘Telephone.’

‘Oh. Okay.’

He gets to his feet and looks around the room. He picks up various items — foil, bindle, pen casing — and shoves them into a brown paper bag. He shoves the brown paper bag into his dresser’s top drawer and slides the drawer closed. He walks to the door, unlocks it, and pulls it open. Mrs Hoffman stands on the other side, hands on hips. Looks at him with disapproval.

‘What took you so long to answer?’

‘I was taking a nap.’

‘It’s the middle of the day.’

‘That’s when naps happen. If it’s nighttime you’re just sleeping.’

He walks past her to the telephone stand.

‘Hello?’

Captain Ellis tells him there’s been a report of a murder. A man under LAPD protection might have been killed. No answer in the room, no word from the protecting officer at the scene. Two radio units are already on the way and hotel staff have been told to stay clear. By the way, do you know where Friedman is? We can’t get hold of him.

Carl says it’s Saturday, he’s probably at synagogue, keep trying till you get him. Then he requests the address. Ellis gives him a number on South Grand Avenue and he scribbles it down, hangs up the telephone, tears the paper off the notepad. He walks to the bathroom and splashes water onto his face and looks at himself in the mirror. Some sad-eyed old man with a face like melted wax looks back. He touches the bag under his right eye. It’s tender and hurts when he touches it, stings with pain. He wonders if he accidentally did something to it to make it hurt.

He turns away from the glass, steps into his room and grabs his fedora from the bed, trudges downstairs, walks to his car.

He drives beneath an overcast sky, wondering if there isn’t going to be rain today.

Less than fifteen minutes later he’s stepping from his vehicle, walking past two radio cars toward the Shenefield Hotel, a gray block building on the corner of 5th and Grand, in the heart of the city.

A doorman sees him coming and pulls open the glass door. He gives the guy a nod and makes his way into the lobby. A couch, two chairs, a table with today’s paper on it and an ashtray. At the back of the room, a desk with a bell on it, and a desk clerk flipping through a magazine.

As he walks he bumps into someone, a young man in a white shirt and a black bowtie with tortoiseshell glasses on his face, and sends the poor fellow spinning. He reaches out and grabs the guy by the arm to help steady him.

‘Sorry about that, buddy, I-’

But the sound of something heavy thudding to the floor cuts him off. He looks down at the carpet and there sees a revolver, a black revolver with a long barrel and a wooden grip. He looks from the revolver to the man standing beside him, the man whose arm is gripped in his fist.

Fear is written across the man’s pale face and guilt flickers in his eyes.

‘What’s with the weapon, son?’

The man yanks away from Carl and runs for the door, pushes through it. He trips over the doorman, hits the ground hard, scrambles back to his feet without slowing down, looks over his shoulder as he runs.

Carl pulls his service revolver, feeling detached from this moment but having some sense that he needs to act, and runs after the guy. He gives chase, shouting stop, goddamn it, and only caring because then he could stop running himself. But the man in the bowtie doesn’t stop. He makes a sharp right turn, pivoting off his left foot, and cuts down an alleyway instead, vanishing behind the brick corner of a building.

About halfway to the alleyway Carl gives up running. He holds his hand to his side and walks quickly, as quickly as he can, breathing hard, feeling dizzy, hating himself. By the time he arrives at the alleyway it’s empty. Of course it is. Murderer isn’t simply going wait for him, oh, I see you’re out of breath, I’ll give you to the count of thirty before I continue.

Trash bins line the alley, giving off the stink of old garbage. At the other end of the alley, an empty street. Then a car rolls by.

‘Fuck,’ he says, and leans for a moment on the brick wall to his left.

Once he has his breath again he walks back toward the hotel. He’s no longer a young man in uniform and is apparently incapable of doing the things he once did. It doesn’t matter. This was not a hoodlum, thug, or gunsel. This was a guy with a job, an address, and square friends who don’t know better than to talk to cops. That was clear by looking at him. Carl will find him, he’ll track him down to his front door and knock.

That’s what he tells himself, anyway.

He hopes he isn’t lying.

3

Eugene’s shoes pound the sidewalk. He feels scared and upset and absolutely drained. He doesn’t know what to do. He had to abandon his milk truck at the scene, and a single phone call to the H.H. White Creamery Company will tell the police that truck number twenty-seven is his. A police detective saw him in his milkman’s uniform with the murder weapon, which even now lies in the hotel lobby, unless it’s already been collected as evidence. And he ran rather than cooperating with the police. Not that he had a choice. They wouldn’t have believed his story. The obvious answer is often the correct answer, it usually is, and it looked like he killed those men upstairs, so he must have. No amount of protest on his part would have changed their minds. And every action he took only worked to smear more red across his hands. What he did seemed right in the moment but he finds it hard to imagine doing anything that would have incriminated him further. But there was no right thing to do in that situation. There was one wrong choice or another wrong choice. That there’s always a right thing to do is a lie you tell to children.

But now what?

The grand-jury investigation is an irrelevancy. For him it is. He’s now wanted for murder, real murder, actual physical murder, his thumb on the hammer spur, his finger on the trigger, and one of the victims was a cop. If the police don’t have his name yet they soon will. His only hope is that it takes them a couple hours to put it all together and get to his place. He wants to gather some clothes as well as a hundred dollars in cash he has folded into a sock.

He hops onto a streetcar at 6th Street and rides it west to Vermont.

In ten minutes he’s back on foot, and back on foot he lights a cigarette and makes his way to New Hampshire. He keeps his eyes on the street, looking for radio cars, wanting to make sure he sees any cops before they have a chance to see him.

He needs to get out of these clothes; they’re too conspicuous.

He walks up the stairs to his apartment, unlocks the front door. The place is empty but he doesn’t know how long he has so he must hurry.

His revolver, which he’s certain he left lying on the dining table, is absent, as he knew it would be. Evelyn. Goddamn it. He knew she was responsible, at least in part, but even so there was a part of him that hoped he’d walk in here and find the revolver where he left it. That would at least have cast some doubt on her involvement.

Stop bellyaching, Eugene. There’s no time for it.

He walks to the bedroom and pulls a cardboard suitcase out from under his bed, the same suitcase he used when moving here from the East Coast. He also finds a locket lying on the floor, a small gold locket with an intricate design etched into it.

With the suitcase in one hand and the locket in the other he gets to his feet. He tosses the suitcase onto the bed, examines the locket. A thin gold chain is strung through it, the chain’s clasp broken. He thumbs a button on the side of the locket and it opens. Inside, a picture of a teenage girl sitting beside her father. She’s in a dress, he’s in a suit and tie. He recognizes her despite the fact the picture is probably more than ten years old. He also recognizes the man, though he’s never seen him in person. He’s seen his scowling image on the front page of several newspapers over the years. A person of interest. Suspected of bribing public officials. Suspected of murder. Connections to the underworld in several major American cities. Then, months later, a different story on page three. No charges filed. Acquitted. Bad information. Lost evidence. Sloppy police work.

James Manning.

The Man.

Eugene would be willing to bet green money on Evelyn’s last name. When she told him she worked for her father she was telling the truth. She simply neglected to mention who her father was. Who he is. And what he is.

He tosses the locket into the suitcase, then piles clothes on top of it, pants and shirts and underwear. He opens his sock drawer, pulls out several pairs, throws them into the suitcase. At the back of the drawer he finds a lone sock folded over itself. He unfolds it and removes ten ten-dollar bills, all the money he has in the world. He sets the money on top of his dresser. He closes the cardboard suitcase, tries to latch it and finds the latch broken. He wraps a belt around it to keep it closed. He changes into a different set of clothes, a pair of khaki pants and a checkered shirt and a cardigan; fresh socks and a pair of casual two-tone shoes. He grabs the money from the dresser and shoves it into his pocket. He lifts the suitcase.

He has a motorcycle parked in the garage, a Harley-Davidson with a two-cylinder panhead engine. He hasn’t touched it in almost a year. Rode it often last summer, then garaged it and forgot about it. The milk truck is always right out front.

He hopes he can get the bike to start. He’s about to find out.

Without knowing where he might go, without knowing what he might do, having no idea what might be in store for him at all, he heads out the front door.