Ryan Jahn - The Last Tomorrow

Beside the article is a picture of a rather prim-looking man in his late forties or early fifties. He wears wire-framed glasses. His thin-lipped mouth is open in angry speech. He’s holding up a copy of Down City , which Eugene recognizes immediately. It’s one of the dozen or so issues for which he drew the cover. Below the headline, the story:

LOS ANGELES — District Attorney Seymour Markley announced yesterday that he would be launching a grand-jury investigation into whether it might be possible to charge those involved with the creation and production of a comic book with criminally negligent homicide. The grand-jury investigation comes on the heels of a Bunker Hill killing in which a thirteen-year-old boy allegedly used a so-called ‘zip gun’ to shoot his stepfather before, in imitation of a crime comic book called Down City , carving a star into the dead man’s forehead with a straight razor.

Markley said that the boy’s testimony to LAPD detectives indicated to him that he was not fully culpable for his actions. ‘Anybody familiar with the work of psychologist Frederic Wertham,’ Markley said, ‘can tell you that comic books are a terrible influence on the youth of today. There’s a reason church groups across America are calling for this trash to be burned, to be incinerated. These small boys are susceptible to the morally corrosive influence of entertainments filled with sex and violence, and the inevitable result is tragic deaths like the one we saw a few days ago, a death which has not only ended the life of a man, but which could destroy the life of a small boy before it is even fairly begun. When the boy testifies before the grand jury, I believe the influence, the guilt, of this gruesome comic book and its creators will be clear. And I hope this investigation causes other comics publishers to think twice about what they’re printing — what they’re filling the minds of impressionable youths with.’

According to Markley, his office has evidence that E.M. Comics, a subsidiary of E.M. Publications, which also publishes adult magazines such as Nude Sunbathing and Hygiene , is run behind-the-scenes by James Douglas Manning — also known as New Jersey Jim and the Man — and used as a means of laundering ill-gotten money through overpayment for printing services.

A source within the D.A.’s office has also said, on condition of anonymity, that Mr Manning’s accountant, Theodore Stuart, has agreed to testify against his employer during the grand-jury investigation, though he did not know the extent of the information Mr Stuart might be willing to divulge.

If the investigation goes the way the D.A.’s office intends, and the grand jury returns a ‘true bill,’ James Manning and others involved in the production of Down City could be the first individuals in American history charged with homicide for the creation of an entertainment.

For a long time Eugene only sits and stares unthinking at the gray newsprint, coffee on the table beside him forgotten. He sets down the news item and gets to his feet. He walks to his porch and lights a cigarette. He takes a drag and exhales in a sigh. He looks out at the dark, empty street. The air is cool. He tries to consider what this might mean for him.

Worst case: he’s convicted of a crime he had nothing to do with and he spends years in San Quentin. Best case: nobody ever finds out he was involved in any way. He never signed his work with more than an offhand E., and usually he didn’t sign it at all. There are people who could easily point to him, of course, but not one of them, so far as he knows, lives in Los Angeles. Yet someone nailed this news item to his front door. Somebody knows who he is and where he is. And the implication is clear. A threat is implied.

He can’t imagine that a grand jury would agree that he should be charged with homicide, even criminally negligent homicide, for the creation of a comic book. . except for one thing: it would be a way to nail James Manning, who has been a known criminal for thirty years. Authorities have never managed to put him in jail, despite what everyone knows he is, and this could be a way to do it. A jury could be convinced. And if Eugene ends up a casualty of a witch-hunt, so what, that’s nobody’s problem but his own. He has no friends in high places. He has few friends in low places.

And nobody will defend comics.

Everybody agrees they’re wretched. Everybody agrees they’re trash. Everybody agrees they corrupt children. Books have been banned, and bookstore owners arrested for carrying them. Aren’t criminal charges such as these the next step? If books can be too dangerous to read, they can certainly be dangerous enough to rot the minds of impressionable children.

He takes a drag from his cigarette. He needs to remain calm.

Whoever left the article nailed to his front door was making an obvious threat. I know who you are. I know where you are. I know what you did. I will tell. But the only reason to say all that rather than simply to do it is if there’s an unless. I will tell unless.

Unless what?

Eugene doesn’t know. And the only way to find out is to wait.

1

Seymour Markley sits alone in a booth. He looks out the grease-spotted window to the street but doesn’t see them. He looks around the diner for the second time, scanning the faces of the other patrons, but none of them are familiar. They didn’t inadvertently cross paths. They aren’t waiting for him at some other table. They simply haven’t yet arrived.

He takes a sip of orange juice, straightens his tie. Though he doesn’t plan to eat, couldn’t eat if he tried, he wipes the water-spotted flatware off with a napkin and sets each piece down parallel to the others, fork, knife, spoon.

He can’t stand that these people have turned this around on him. Despite the fact that he might be able to advance his career because of it, it bothers him. He’s an important man. He’s an important man and he’s being made to wait by unimportant people: by scum: by a whore and her cuckold husband. It’s almost too much to take.

The door swings open and he looks toward it.

A fellow in a cowboy hat walks into the diner wearing dark pants, a checkered shirt with pearl buttons, and a bolo tie. On the pinky finger of his right hand he wears a blue topaz ring. His mustache is thick and long, hiding his mouth, and the ends are waxed to ice-pick points. Seymour feels like he knows him from somewhere, but can’t imagine where, unless he’s put him in prison before.

But he doesn’t think that’s it.

Behind the cowboy walks Vivian in heels and a brief dress.

The cowboy scans the room. Then, tipping two fingers toward Seymour, he says in an oddly cheery voice, ‘That him, darlin?’

‘That’s him.’

The cowboy walks over and drops his hand like an axe in front of Seymour’s face. Seymour blinks at it.

‘Leland Jones. Wasn’t sure I recognized you with your clothes on.’ He smiles.

Seymour lets the hand hang for a long time, then says, ‘You can put that away. I’m not going to shake.’

‘Well, shit, that’s all right, sugar. I wasn’t dying to wring out your sweaty dishrag paw anyways.’

He slides into the booth. Vivian sits down beside him.

‘Hi, Seymour.’

‘We’re not friends, whore. Do you two have the pictures?’

Leland Jones leans in, smile gone. ‘You best watch the way you talk to my wife.’

‘Is your wife not a whore?’

‘My wife is a beautiful woman, and you’ll respect her. What she does for work don’t have nothin to do with who she is.’

Seymour knows suddenly where he’s seen this man before. He remembers him from Fort Apache , and is almost certain he’s seen him in other Western movies as well. He didn’t have any lines that Seymour can recall, he was just human background, but yes, that’s why he seemed familiar.