Ryan Jahn - The Last Tomorrow

These are powerful people. He’s done.

He should have known this was coming. What did he think would happen once the district attorney got his hands on those photographs? He can’t believe he let himself get talked out of going after that son of a bitch.

He stomps to his truck and flings the door open and slides inside. He pounds his steering wheel, cursing, every foul word he can think of flying from his mouth and spittle as well. If he’d done what he wanted to do this wouldn’t have happened. If he’d done what he wanted to do on Saturday the district attorney wouldn’t have had time to do this. He’d have kicked the shit out of him and taken the pictures back.

Now he’s going to kill him: kill him dead.

He digs through his pocket till he finds his keys.

A moment later the engine rumbles to life.

6

The truck comes to a screeching halt in front of City Hall. He hopes like hell the district attorney’s in his office. He doesn’t care who sees him, he doesn’t care what the man can do to him. He’s already ruined. If the district attorney had stopped when he got the pictures, stopped there, this wouldn’t be happening. But he didn’t do that. He had to rub Leland’s face in his own defeat. He’ll not be anybody’s bad dog. He’ll not be treated like he shit the rug. He gets out of his truck, walks around it, steps up onto the sidewalk.

‘Leland?’

He stops, looks to his left.

Candice stands on the sidewalk. Her blonde hair is pulled back into a bun. Her face is free of makeup or nearly so. A thin man in a dark suit stands beside her.

‘Candice.’

‘What are you doing here?’

‘I was just- Shit. Nothin. What about you, darlin?’

‘Meeting with Sandy and the district attorney.’

‘How’s Sandy doin?’

‘He was okay last time I saw him.’

‘What about you? I didn’t make it to the funeral like I planned.’

‘That’s all right.’

‘But how you doin?’

She looks away, blinking, then swallows.

‘I better head in, Leland. Tell Vivian I said hi.’

‘Will do. You take care of yourself.’

‘I will.’

Leland watches Candice and her lawyer walk up the path toward the building, watches her walk up the steps and disappear inside. He heads back to his truck and steps into it. He stares through the windshield to the street. He needs to get himself a drink.

1

Seymour Markley pulls a white cloth from his pocket, snaps it, and cleans his glasses, wiping the lenses in a circular motion one after the other. Without them, the men sitting across from him are mere flesh-colored smudges without eyes or noses or mouths, like someone smeared out their oil-paint faces with the swipe of a thumb. Once the glasses are clean he puts them back on and blinks at Barry and the man sitting beside him, Peter Burton, the deputy district attorney charged with providing the grand jury with legal advice on this investigation once the indictment is presented. They have once more been made human, features having grown from their faces as he placed the glasses upon his nose. He folds the cloth into quarters and puts it back into his pocket.

He has but one question on his mind. What are they going to do about this investigation now that Theodore Stuart is dead? The police haven’t yet apprehended the man who killed him, despite their confidence two nights ago, so he can’t question him about a possible connection to James Manning, and even if he could it doesn’t look like there is one. And he needs one.

He’d planned on presenting the indictment to the grand jury tomorrow morning, once he’d finished lining everything up. He wanted to hand them most of a case. But just as it was coming together, fate knocked it apart. He’s postponed till Friday. He needs at least fourteen members of the twenty-three member grand jury to return an affirmative vote if they’re going to indict, and this is unprecedented legal ground.

When he had Stuart in custody he was sure he’d get the votes, and with a true bill from the grand jury he wouldn’t be standing alone behind a shaky case. Their vote for indictment would protect him, to some degree, from allegations of recklessness. He’d still have to work hard to convince his supporters in the movie industry that this case wouldn’t end up hurting them — he’s gotten more pushback than he expected there, but then the threat those whores made against him clouded his thinking — but at least he wouldn’t be standing alone. Now he’s not so sure the jury will come back with the votes, and if he doesn’t get the votes, it’s over. And his career is irreparably damaged.

Seymour looks at the two men sitting across from him.

Barry, with his elbows on the arms of his chair and his fingertips pressed together, looks like a man preparing for prayer.

Peter Burton, all nerves, with a head of curly blond hair in need of a trim, sits peeling the paper off a cigarette while bits of tobacco fall into his lap.

‘Okay,’ Seymour says. ‘The way I see it, the investigation must to do three things if there’s to be a case. One, it must result in evidence that James Manning is the money behind E.M. Comics. We had testimony to that effect until Theodore Stuart was killed, now we don’t, but I’m confident we can get there. You can’t run a business without leaving a paper trail somewhere. We just need to uncover it. Two, it will need to result in evidence that Down City compelled the boy to commit a murder he would not otherwise have committed. We’ll have the testimony of the boy himself for that, as well as the testimony of Frederic Wertham, an expert in the field. With the way people feel about comics these days, this is the least of our worries. Mothers are already throwing them into trash bins and church groups are burning them. Half of the grand jury will be convinced before any evidence is presented to them. Three, it must result in evidence that James Manning was criminally negligent in allowing the comic to go to press. We need evidence that he knew of the dangers and let the comic end up on newsstands anyway. That’s the tough part, and that’s what might stall the case before it’s even begun. We’re out on a limb here, and to be perfectly frank, it has me worried. Any thoughts?’

Seymour’s telephone rings.

He looks down at it. It rings a second time. He told his girl not to put any calls through, so why is his telephone ringing? It had better be important. He holds up a finger to the two men sitting across from him, picks up the receiver midway through the third ring.

2

Barry watches his boss pick up the telephone, put it to his ear.

‘Yes?’

He looks down at his hands, at his fingertips touching, pushes them hard against each other so the skin goes white beneath the fingernails. He thinks of the discussions he’s been having with Maxine.

‘Put him through.’

He’s been talking with her about quitting. They discussed it over dinner last night and the night before. Maxine always asks the same thing. What will we do about money? It’s a good question, an important one, and his answer now is the same as it was then. I don’t know. But he knows this. He’s been compromised by his work here. He wanted this job because of his respect for the idea that he lived in a nation governed by laws, and that breaking them meant you faced consequences, and that those consequences were meted out to the guilty without regard to who they were or what their social status might be. The problem is, it’s bullshit. It’s a lie. And he’s been actively participating in that lie.

‘What bad news?’

He doesn’t know what he’s going to do, but he doesn’t think he can continue doing this. He knows he can’t. Maybe he’ll bang on the ivories in a piano bar somewhere. At least he’ll be able to look himself in the mirror.