The Last Tomorrow

FIFTY-TWO

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.

Next thing he knows Evelyn Manning’s been kidnapped, and rumor has it the Man has flown to the West Coast to get her back. He thinks Lou is trying to lure his boss to the warehouse in order to kill him. He thinks Evelyn Manning might already be dead. He thinks it’s all happening today.

And he thinks Eugene is walking into the middle of it.

He met with Eugene yesterday morning, just before getting picked up by the cops, tried once more to give him money and talk him into leaving the country, but he refused. He said he had to find evidence that would prove his innocence. He said he couldn’t live the rest of his life on the lam. The last couple days had been the worst days of his life and he couldn’t live this way for years. He’d rather died than live this way.

The desperation in Eugene’s voice got to him. He told his friend about the warehouse. He told him he might find evidence there. He also told him not to go, told him it was far too dangerous. But first he told him where it was.

And he’s afraid he sent him to his death.

He shakes his head and looks down at his hands. He hopes he’s done the right thing, but is almost certain he hasn’t.

The detective leans forward and asks him, where’s this warehouse at?

Fingers tells him.

11

The police search Louis Lynch’s hotel room.

12

Eugene takes one last swig from his bottle of whiskey, wipes it down with a rag, sets it on a stack of pallets. He slips his hands into a pair of gloves and picks up Evelyn’s Berretta, wiping his prints from that as well before gripping it for use in his gloved fist. He looks at the trailer parked at dock number three.

He works himself up, breathing heavily, rocking back and forth on the balls of his feet. He can do this. He can do this. He has to do this, so he can.

He tries to envision the scene the police must come upon. He plays it out in his mind. He nods. There are holes. It isn’t perfect. But it’s all he’s got, so it’ll have to do. If the police don’t buy it immediately, he’s finished. If they do buy it, he might be okay. They can’t look too close, that’s all.

It’s the small details that kill an illusion.

Don’t worry about that. It’s too late to worry about that. It’s time to get on with it. The time for thinking is finished, the time for doing has arrived. Time to get on with it.

He walks to the trailer and grabs the handle.

13

Lou stands in the trailer with his hands raised. He faces the open doors, looking to the milkman on the other side. The milkman stands with a gun in his hand, stands as if rooted to the ground. The gun is aimed at Lou’s face and his eyes are alive with terror and determination. He means to kill Lou. Whether he’ll be able to do it is an open question, but it’s clear from his eyes that he means to do it and no maybes.

He tells Lou to step from the trailer. His voice is shaky with emotion.

Lou walks slowly toward him, thinking about the Colt Vest Pocket in its custom holster. Nothing up my sleeve but six doses of death. He thinks about punching a hole in the milkman’s forehead. He steps from the forgiving wood-paneled floor of the trailer, which bows with each step, to the hard concrete floor of the warehouse. He swallows.

‘Turn around.’

He turns around. He looks at Evelyn, who stands at the other end of the trailer with her hands raised. He smiles at her and winks; don’t worry, I’ll get us out of this.

‘Shut the trailer. Lock the doors.’

This is his opportunity, probably his only opportunity, so he’d better use it wisely. He’d better be fast and sure and do what needs to be done.

He reaches left and right, grabbing the trailer doors. He brings them together, closing Evelyn inside. He reaches up and swings the handle down, locking the doors. Then with his right hand he grabs for his left wrist, feels cool metal against his palm, thumbs away the holster’s snap.

A quick turn and he should have a shot. Hopefully he can get it off before the milkman even realizes he has a gun in his hand.

He pivots left.

14

Eugene watches Louis Lynch close the trailer doors and thinks about putting a bullet in his head. He needs it to look like Evelyn pulled the trigger. For this to work, it must look like Evelyn shot him from the trailer, where she was being held. Which means Eugene must shoot him from that direction. Which means he and Louis Lynch must trade positions.

He can’t believe he has to do this, can’t believe he’s been put in this position. When he finds spiders in his apartment he carries them outside rather than kill them, but he’s going to kill a man, and not in self-defense. He’s simply going to aim and pull his trigger. He’s going to shoot an unarmed man in the head. First he’ll shoot him in the leg, then he’ll shoot him in the head.

It has to look right.

Louis Lynch reaches up and grabs the handle and pulls it down, locking the trailer doors into place. Then he pauses and pivots left, turning quickly with something in his right hand. Light reflects off it. He has a gun in his hand. Eugene doesn’t know where it came from, but he has a gun in his hand.

Eugene drops to the concrete and pulls his trigger.

Then Louis Lynch’s gun fires.

Eugene doesn’t know if he’s been hit, he doesn’t feel any pain, but he knows Louis Lynch has been. Blood spreads on his shirt.

Eugene fires again, aiming for the face. A black dot appears above the right eyebrow and a door opens in the back-left side of his head, a flap of skin and hair hinging the bone as it dangles there, and the contents of his head splatter the white trailer doors behind him. He falls to his knees, then onto his side, and slowly rolls supine, his right arm flopping out. Then he stops moving and is completely still.

Eugene gets to his feet and examines himself. He’s not been shot.

He looks to the corpse on the concrete floor across from him. He killed a man. Louis Lynch did him a favor and made it self-defense but still he wants to be sick. He tells himself he can’t be sick, can’t vomit, because he doesn’t have time to clean it up, and it can’t be here when the police arrive. He leans down and rests his hands on his knees and stares at his feet. He tells himself he cannot be sick, goddamn it, get your shit together, Eugene.

The nausea passes.

He stands up and again looks to the corpse and feels a second wave of nausea, not because he’s killed a man but because the scene he wanted the police to stumble upon has been ruined. Louis Lynch was not supposed to die there, and Eugene can’t move the body. He knows he can’t. The police would easily be able to see it had been moved, and that would ruin the illusion. He needs to work with what’s happened. He can do that.

Jesus Christ, he killed a man.

A wave of dizziness envelopes him and all at once he sits down on the concrete. He sits down hard. He thinks of nothing for a long time. His face feels numb.

He looks at his watch.

He needs to figure out what he’s going to do. He doesn’t have much time.

15

Carl drives south with his gas-foot heavy on the pedal and the pedal pushed to the floorboard. If there’s an itch at the back of his brain he isn’t aware of it. All he’s thinking of as he drives is the situation at hand. He spoke with Captain Ellis who spoke with someone else, and now the Newton Division is providing half a dozen six- and eight-dollar shooters for the warehouse raid. If what Darryl Castor told him is true, it’s going to get ugly in there. James Manning won’t walk into such a situation alone, and chances are Louis Lynch knows that, which means he probably isn’t working on his own either. There could be eight or ten armed men in there, not counting cops. Add to that situation a kidnapped woman and a milkman in the wrong place at the wrong time (based on what Friedman found in Louis Lynch’s hotel room — a switchblade knife like the one used to murder the police officer, a shirt with blood on it, a locket containing a picture of James Manning and his daughter, a typewriter that may have been used to type up a blackmail note — that’s all Eugene Dahl is: one unlucky son of a bitch), and you’ve got yourself a recipe for chaos.

He leans into the steering wheel, telling the car to go faster, you piece of shit.

But it doesn’t go faster.

He hopes he isn’t too late. He’s afraid he is.

16

Evelyn sits in darkness. She heard three gunshots several minutes ago and has heard nothing since. One of them is dead, she’s certain of it, and she thinks it must be Lou or he would have let her out of here by now.

The doors swing open, letting light in.

She squints, unable at first to see who’s on the other side. Then her eyes adjust, slowly and by degrees. Eugene stands at the opposite end of the trailer with a pistol — with what looks like Lou’s Colt Vest Pocket — hanging from his fist. Behind him she can see one of Lou’s arms stretched across the concrete. The fingers are curled around nothing.

‘Stand up.’

Evelyn gets to her feet.

‘You don’t have to do this, Gene.’

‘I wish that were true.’

‘It is true. You don’t have to do this.’

‘Come on out of the trailer, Evelyn.’

For a moment she doesn’t move. She can stay in here. If she doesn’t leave the trailer, she can stop time. Time will stop right here and nothing more will happen. She should have hit him harder when she had the chance. She should have bashed his fucking brains out. Why does she still feel love for him — or something like it? Maybe he won’t do it. He didn’t do it in the motel room. He had every reason to shoot her then, and he had the opportunity, but he didn’t do it, so maybe he won’t do it now.

‘Evelyn.’

She nods. ‘Okay.’

She walks toward the light. Her feet are bare and the cool wood feels good against them — rough and organic and good. A breeze blows through the warehouse and into the trailer. It cools the sticky sweat on her skin. These could be her last moments. She tells herself that’s impossible, it’s impossible for her to die, she’s only twenty-seven, but she knows it is possible. Maybe she even has it coming. In the last six years she’s brought death to others, and she’s done it without remorse, so maybe she has it coming.

Eugene can’t kill her. She knows he can’t. She can see in his eyes as she walks toward him that he still has feelings for her, and you don’t kill something you love.

She steps from the trailer.

17

Eugene looks at Evelyn. Her red hair’s a tangled mess. She has mascara smeared around her eyes and running down her cheeks. The skin around her mouth is red and raw from the duct tape which covered it. There’s a bruise on her left shoulder, purple in the middle but fading to yellow-green around the edges. Her blue eyes are bloodshot. She swallows and frowns and looks at him pleadingly. Once more he feels the urge to take her in his arms and tell her he’s sorry. He’s sorry for everything. The urge is great, but he knows he can’t do it. Her eyes can’t be trusted. She’s a serpent; she’ll only tempt him with doom disguised as something lovely.

He motions with the pistol in his hand.

‘Over there.’

‘I can get you money.’

‘Move, Evelyn.’

‘I can-’

‘Move.’

She walks slowly.

He watches her, following her with the gun.

‘Stop.’

She stops, stands there, looks at him. Her arms hang limp at her sides. Her shoulders are slumped. She looks sad and defeated. He tells himself it’s an act. He tells himself she’s trying to get him to drop his guard so she can attack. He tells himself she’d kill him if she had the chance, if she had even the slightest opportunity. He even believes most of those things. But he looks at her and he wants to be near her. There was a time when he believed they could have a life together, a quiet life in the suburbs somewhere, and he wants that still. Looking at her he wants that more than he’s ever wanted anything.

But he’s awake now, and there’s no time for dreaming.

He takes several steps back toward the trailer and raises the gun in his hand. He looks across the sights to Evelyn’s sad face and tells himself he has to do this. He doesn’t have a choice. He simply doesn’t have a choice. He’ll never be safe until they’re dead. These people eat people like him for lunch; they’re cannibals. Evelyn would kill him without hesitation and her father would kill him quicker still. If he’s to get his life back he has to end theirs. That’s all there is to it. Otherwise the threat will always be there. Every time he turns a corner he’ll know death might be waiting on the other side. He couldn’t live like that. There’s simply no way he-

‘Gene.’

‘No.’

He pulls the trigger. The gun explodes in his hand, kicking his arm back.

A moment later, Evelyn collapses to the floor.

18

At one twenty-five a black car pulls to a stop across the street from a dilapidated warehouse which once, long ago, was occupied by a construction-supply company. 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 sits in the back of the car with a black briefcase resting on his knees. Two men sit in the back seat with him while another occupies the spot behind the steering wheel. The heavy-set man looks through a tinted window to the warehouse in which his daughter’s being held.

‘Whatever else happens, Evelyn’s kidnapper dies in there. That warehouse is his fucking coffin, right? So ready yourselves.’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘And if you hear any gunfire while I’m inside, don’t wait. Something’s gone wrong. I intend to get Evelyn out of there quietly.’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘What time is it?’

‘One twenty-eight.’

The heavy-set man nods to himself, then pushes out of the car.

19

Eugene walks to Evelyn and looks down at her. She lies on her back with her legs folded under her body, her right arm bent over her chest, her left arm extended across the smooth concrete, as if she’d been reaching for something. Her eyes stare blank at the tin-roof sky.

His chest feels tight when he looks at her. He can’t believe what he’s done. He planned to do it, he knows he had to do it, but still he looks at her inanimate and can’t believe it. This isn’t what’s supposed to happen when you meet a woman you could love; this simply isn’t the way it’s supposed to go.

He closes his eyes. He tells himself to be calm, to be focused. He’s almost at the end of this. It’s almost over.

He opens his eyes.

He pushes up her dress, revealing her sex, her red pubic hair, and straps her holster around the inside of her thigh, then pulls the dress back down, covering her once more. She deserves that at least. He tapes her ankles and wrists, being careful not to step in the puddle of blood forming beneath her body. He removes Evelyn’s gun from his pocket and puts it into her hands. With her hands wrapped around it, he fires the gun toward Lou so that if the police check her for gunpowder residue they’ll find it. He gets to his feet. He looks down at her yet again. He looks at her mouth. He wants to kiss it and say goodbye, but he doesn’t. He doesn’t deserve it. And, anyway, he’s already told her goodbye in the most definitive way possible.

Kissing her would be a lie; he did this and must own it.

He takes a step back, away from the body, and tries to think about what to do next. It’s difficult to think at all, let alone clearly.

He glances at his watch to see how much time he has before the Man arrives.

The second hand glides past the twelve. The minute hand moves forward a notch.

He has no time at all.

The blue door squeaks open.

He looks up to see a heavy-set man in a gray suit walk into the warehouse. He carries in his right hand a black briefcase.

Eugene looks at him across the empty room. There he is, James ‘the Man’ Manning, that mythological figure he’s heard about for as long as he can remember. If you were to judge only by outward appearances you’d think he might be a bank manager in a small town somewhere; an unhappy bank manager with a drinking problem. But there’s something within him which belies that outward appearance, some cold black malevolence. Eugene knows the exterior is a lie, a facade which means nothing.

He stands fifty feet from Eugene and looks at him while Eugene looks back.

‘Where’s my daughter?’

His voice echoes in the empty room.

Eugene glances briefly to his left.

‘Your daughter’s dead. So are you.’

Eugene raises Louis Lynch’s pistol while taking several running steps to his right, toward the back of the trailer at dock number three.

The Man drops his briefcase and reaches into his coat. The briefcase hits concrete and breaks open, revealing thousands of dollars in twenties. A breeze blows through the warehouse. Paper money flutters through the room.

The Man comes out with a rifle of some kind, swings it up, pumps it, and fires. The muzzle flashes and the gun kicks, but Eugene feels no pain. The round flies instead through the air where he once stood and slaps into the wall behind him. The echo of the report bounces around the warehouse, sounding like a series of hands clapping — softer, softer.

Eugene gets off three shots himself but because he’s running to the right while firing he misses with all three.

The Man pumps the rifle, sending an empty brass shell arcing through the air, clinking to the concrete floor. He walks slowly toward Eugene, cool and calm. His daughter’s dead, he’s in the middle of a shootout, and but for the rifle jutting from his right hip he looks as though he’s simply gone for an evening stroll, his face placid and emotionless.

Eugene slides to a stop, hunching behind one of the trailer’s doors at dock number three, his heart pounding in his chest. If he panics he’ll miss and he can’t miss. This is his last round. He glances toward the pallets where he set Louis Lynch’s revolver last night and wishes he’d thought to pick it up; but he didn’t, so this is his situation. He empties his lungs, blowing out a long stream of air. Then he inhales, gets to his feet, and steps from behind the trailer door.

The Man continues toward him, face stoic, gun raised.

Both men aim as the distance between them shrinks.

They fire simultaneously.

20

Three men in suits push out of a black car and step into daylight. They walk to the trunk, on the floor of which lie three Thompson submachine guns with fifty-round drum magazines already locked in place. They pick them up, each man yanking back the bolt on his machine, readying it for fire.

They walk across the street, moving in on the warehouse.

21

The police come screeching around the corner, a radio car with its lights flashing followed by a black van. They slide along the asphalt, leaving dark trails of burned rubber as they come to a stop in the street one in front of the other. The van’s back doors swing open and several uniformed cops, half a dozen armed six- and eight-dollar shooters, step from within, rifles gripped in their fists.

Carl follows them out, frantic-eyed and sweat-drenched. He blinks, pulls off his fedora, wipes his forehead with an arm.

Then looks toward the warehouse on the south side of the street. There he sees three men standing on the sidewalk with submachine guns hanging from their arms. The three men are looking in his direction.

For a moment nobody moves. Then the three gangsters lift their Tommy guns.

‘Oh, shit.’

22

Eugene stands motionless, smoke wafting from the pistol in his gloved fist as smoke also wafts from the barrel of his enemy’s rifle only ten feet away. He looks across those ten feet to a heavy-set man in an impeccable gray suit, his white shirt bright and starched crisp, his tie in place, the corner of his handkerchief poking neatly from his breast pocket. His hair is parted razor-straight on the left and combed into place but for a single gray strand hanging over his brow. He doesn’t move. When the guns went off he stopped, wobbled a moment, and now he simply stands there, the barrel of his rifle slowly dropping toward the floor. Eugene sees no wound.

But behind him, a long smear of blood on the concrete floor. He opens his mouth to speak to Eugene, but no words pass his lips. Only a low groan and bits of bloody teeth which fall to the concrete like shattered porcelain.

Eugene watches as he falls sidewise, and it’s a strange thing to see. He goes down stiff and doesn’t try to catch himself, simply falls to his side like a felled tree and rolls prostrate, bloody drool and bits of teeth leaking from his mouth to the concrete floor. The back of his head is an inverted cone and his suit coat is dotted with gray pieces of brain and flecks of skull.

For a moment Eugene just stares.

Then he blinks and his mind begins working once more.

The police could be here at any moment. He doesn’t have time to stand around.

He walks to Louis Lynch’s body and puts the pistol into his hand before searching his pockets for a piece of paper. He finds the paper in a hip pocket: the bait with which Eugene lured him here. He folds it up and pockets it.

He tries to think of what he’s done. Has he forgotten anything? The revolver. He walks to the stack of pallets on which it lies and picks it up. He doesn’t know what to do with it. After a moment’s thought he simply slides it across the concrete floor toward the blue door, as if the Man had told Louis Lynch to lose his weapon before they carried out the trade. Then he glances around the room to see if he missed anything else. He doesn’t think so.

He’s done the best he could.

He looks toward Evelyn.

And he’s done the worst he could.

He hears gunfire from right outside. That’s it. He’s out of time.

He steps into the trailer and pulls the doors shut. He has to slam the second door three times before he gets the outside handle to fall and lock him inside.

Once in darkness, he removes his gloves.

23

Carl dives for cover behind the police van as gunshots ring out. He hits asphalt and draws his weapon. He hears cops shouting all around him, and explosions of gunfire, and bullets hitting metal and glass.

He ignores all of this. He takes aim.

He squeezes his trigger.

A moment later a man collapses to the sidewalk, suddenly vacant of life — an empty nest from which the birds have flown.

The two remaining gangsters continue their retreat.

24

Eugene sits in the trailer. The air is hot and nearly without oxygen. His lungs hurt. He’s covered in sweat. He thinks about how he kept Evelyn in here for hours. He thinks about how he killed her.

Outside the gunfire stops.

The warehouse door opens and closes.

He gets to his feet and walks to the back of the trailer. He looks out to see two men in black suits with Tommy guns hanging from their fists. They look around the warehouse with their weapons ready, but only silence greets them, and the dead, whom they see and approach without speaking. They stand before the carnage like children awed, their faces pale. For a long time they neither move nor say a word.

Then, from outside, tinny through a bullhorn: ‘You have ten seconds to come out with your hands up.’

Without looking away from the dead, the two men speak in soft tones. Eugene is only ten feet away, but cannot hear their words. When the speaking is done they turn toward the blue door and raise their weapons to await the police.

‘Ten,’ through the bullhorn. ‘Nine.’

25

But when the police count their last nobody rushes into the warehouse.

From a rooftop across the street one of the LAPD shooters squeezes his trigger twice. A ventilation window shatters. He looks down to the street.

He gives a thumbs-up.

26

One moment the two men are simply standing there with their weapons raised at the ready; the next their heads are replaced by red mist. They collapse to the warehouse floor, one after the other. Their weapons fall from their hands.

Eugene backs away from the trailer door. The shooting is finished.

He sits down, pulls his knees up to his chest, wraps his arms around them. He closes his eyes. He hears police push into the warehouse. He hears their feet stomping. He hears their talk. He hears their exclamations.

He puts his hands over his ears.

He knows the police will soon discover him. They’ll pull him from this trailer, put him in handcuffs, and haul him away. He knows that, and he knows he deserves it.

But for a few minutes he can have this quiet.

27

Carl stands watching while around him other men work. Bodies are bagged. Evidence is collected and numbered. Flashbulbs explode. The case is wrapping up. It’s almost finished. He wonders if he has it in him to get clean, but he doesn’t want to think about that just yet. He doesn’t want to think about that at all.

Someone says his name. He looks up. One of the men from the crime lab stands by the back of a trailer looking at him.

‘What is it?’

The man points.

He walks over and looks into the trailer. Eugene Dahl sits on the floor inside with his legs pulled up to his chest. He looks at them, his face pale and drawn. Blood drips from his left ear.

‘He was locked inside.’

28

Eugene steps from the trailer. Detective Bachman leads him to a quiet corner of the warehouse, somewhere we can talk for a few minutes, and hands him a handkerchief.

He holds it in his hand and looks at it, confused.

‘Your ear,’ Detective Bachman says, pointing.

He touches it and is surprised by the sharp sting of pain. He hadn’t realized he’d been injured. He felt nothing when it happened, but he feels it now. The last rifle shot must have come within mere inches of killing him.

‘Looks like the lobe is gone. Stray bullet must have gone into the trailer. Lucky you aren’t dead. Need a few stitches but that’s all.’

Eugene nods and puts the handkerchief to his ear. He doesn’t know how much longer he can do this. He needs answers. He needs finality. He doesn’t even care what the answers are so long as he understands what’s happening.

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

He looks at the detective.

‘Are you going to arrest me?’