The Last Tomorrow

TWENTY-SEVEN

1

Carl drives through the rain while his windshield wipers cut water off the glass, squeaking with each swipe of their thin rubber blades, clearing his view of the empty street before him. He thinks about Eugene Dahl, the milkman, and the evidence against him. He was at the scene with the murder weapon in his possession. They searched his apartment and found bloody shoes that matched shoeprints tracked all over the room in which Stuart and that cop were killed. They also found a box of bullets and a blackmail note. Cases don’t get much tighter than that.

During their brief encounter he didn’t strike Carl as the kind of man who’d be able to cold-bloodedly sever a man’s spinal cord with a knife, but in this situation that’s less important than where the evidence points. People, everyday people, can be surprising in their brutality.

Carl would like it better if they knew who tipped off the police, and he’d like to get his hands on the typewriter used to bang out the blackmail note, but those are insignificant pieces in this otherwise finished puzzle, corner pieces that won’t change the overall image even if he finds them. Maybe the milkman told someone his plans while drunk and that someone called the police before the murders even happened. Maybe the accountant had an accomplice who typed up the blackmail note and delivered it. Those things don’t matter. There’s simply no way the milkman didn’t do the murders. Not a chance. The pieces fit together too well for them to go any other way.

He parks the car in front of Friedman’s house and gives the horn two quick taps. He lights a cigarette and takes a deep drag. He rubs at his eyes with the heels of his hands. They’re dry and they sting.

Friedman steps into the car and slams the door closed behind him.

‘Ready?’

‘Ready.’

Carl puts the car into gear.

2

They step from the vehicle. Carl flicks his cigarette butt into the gutter. He squints up at the gray clouds overhead, bulbous and seemingly solid as mountains. Rain splashes against his face. It feels good on his hot skin. He takes off his fedora and combs his fingers through his oily but brittle gray hair. He turns to the door and finds his partner already pushing his way through to the interior. He follows.

As soon as the door closes behind them the outside world ceases to matter. The bar feels like its own dimly lit pocket universe. The world outside could be crumbling in a great earthquake, streets opening up, fires blazing — but here that would mean nothing. Grab a stool and get yourself a drink, friend.

Several patrons sit at tables nursing their cocktails, several more sit at the bar. Mostly they’re old men of retirement age or older in moth-eaten cardigan sweaters and clip-on ties, men with rheumy red eyes and sagging faces like overloaded trash bags, filled with regrets. There are also a couple younger men in rags present, men spending their unemployment insurance on drink. And a woman in her late thirties, a redhead with a flushed face that would be beautiful if not for the damage years of hard drinking and heavy smoking have done to it, sitting at a table with a man in a blue mechanic’s jumpsuit and a greased duck-butt hairstyle.

They all make a point of not looking at the two newcomers.

Carl puts his hands in his pockets, pushing open his jacket so the barkeep is sure to see the badge clipped to his belt, and walks to the bar. Friedman walks beside him.

The barkeep, a heavy-set fellow with a white shirt stretched over his substantial belly, nods at them while drying off a glass and setting it on a metal drainer.

‘You guys drinking?’

Friedman shakes his head. ‘I don’t drink.’

‘And I’m on the clock.’

‘Then what can I do for you?’

‘You can tell us about Eugene Dahl.’

‘Never heard of him.’

‘He’s a regular here.’

‘News to me.’

Friedman pulls a sketch from his pocket and unfolds it.

‘You know him.’

‘I might’ve seen him a time or two.’

‘According to his neighbors he’s a regular.’

‘Could be.’

‘Was he here yesterday?’

‘I don’t remember.’

‘What about today? Have you seen him today?’

‘No.’

‘When’s the last time you remember seeing him?’

‘Days all blend together. Why you looking for him, anyway?’

‘What do you care?’ Carl says. ‘You don’t even know the guy.’

‘Curiosity.’

‘Look how that turned out for the cat.’

‘What cat?’

‘He killed someone,’ Friedman says.

‘I don’t believe it.’

‘That’s the thing about reality,’ Carl says. ‘It’s there even if you shut your eyes.’

‘Who’d he kill?’

Carl lights a cigarette.

‘Maybe you answer our questions.’

‘When’s the last time you saw Dahl?’

The barkeep exhales through his nostrils, looks away. After a while he speaks: ‘Few days ago. Thursday I think.’

‘Notice anything unusual about him?’

‘Like horns growing out his head or something?’

‘Did he seem wound up?’ Carl says.

‘Wound up?’

‘Nervous.’

‘No, he seemed himself. Met a dolly. Been meaning to ask him how it went.’

‘This girl anyone you knew?’

The barkeep shakes his head. ‘She was from out of town.’

‘How far out of town?’

‘East Coast. Did Gene really murder someone?’

‘We aren’t here cause of his tickling habit,’ Carl says.

‘Does he meet a lot of women?’

‘Women like him,’ the barkeep says, ‘then they hate him.’

‘That’s how it goes.’

‘Do you have any idea where he might be?’

‘No.’

‘Friends? Relatives?’

‘Gene drank alone. Like I said, he sometimes left with a girl on his arm, but he always arrived by himself.’

‘And he never talked about anything?’

‘Never about anything personal.’

‘What did you talk about?’

‘Impersonal stuff.’

‘And he never mentioned any friends?’

‘No.’

Carl pulls out a card and slides it across the bar.

‘If you see him, call.’

The barkeep looks at the card but doesn’t reach for it. Simply lets it lie there.

‘If he’s on the run I don’t think he’ll be stopping in for a drink.’

‘Nobody asked for your thoughts.’

‘If you see him, pick up the phone.’

Carl butts out his smoke on the bar and turns toward the door.

3

They step from the bar and make their way through the rain to the car. Carl lights another smoke, already beginning to feel the itch. He thinks about the syringe in his pocket, but knows it’s too early to use it, knows he needs to wait. Except that an itch needs to be scratched before it’ll stop. The more you try to ignore it, the less you can focus on anything else, and he needs to be able to focus on work. He thinks about heading to the toilet, but tells himself no. It’s only been a few hours and the day stretches before him long and gray; if he uses now he’ll have nothing for later. He only brought enough for one shot.

A knocking sound pulls him from his thoughts. He looks up to see the redheaded woman from the bar standing just outside the car.

Friedman rolls down his window. ‘Get in back.’

She steps into the backseat and pulls the door closed behind her.

‘Either of you got a cigarette?’

Carl taps a cigarette out of his packet, lights it using the cherry from his own, and hands it back to her.

‘Thanks.’

‘Is that all?’

‘It’s a cigarette. You want me to give you head?’

‘That’s not what I meant.’

‘Do you have something to tell us about Eugene?’

‘I might. You got five dollars?’

‘What’s your name?’

‘Trish. You got five dollars or not?’

‘I might. Trish what?’

The redhead takes a drag from her cigarette. She looks out the window.

‘Forget it,’ she says.

Friedman pulls a leather wallet from his inside coat pocket, removes a five-dollar bill. He holds it out to her but when she reaches for it pulls it back.

‘Now you know I have the five dollars,’ he says. ‘Let me know you have something worth it.’

‘I used to date him.’

‘Did you? Candlelight, all that?’

‘Fine, I used to fuck him.’

‘And?’

‘And he took me to this nigger bar down on 57th Street where his friend was playing in a bebop band.’

‘And?’

‘And give me five dollars or I go back to drink my drink.’

Friedman hands her the five-dollar bill.