Ryan Jahn - The Last Tomorrow

She steps into the room.

He crawls backwards, away from her, until he’s pressed against the bed and can crawl no further.

Then pulls the pistol from his waistband, aims it at her, gets to his feet.

‘Don’t take another step, Evelyn.’

She takes another step.

‘You’re not gonna shoot me.’

She raises the stone over her head and takes yet another step toward him.

He wills himself to shoot her. If he can’t do it now he’s never going to be able to do it, and it has to be done eventually. He has to do it now. If he doesn’t, she’ll kill him. And she won’t hesitate. He can think of a new plan, a new story that makes it all make sense. The point is living, and if he’s to live she must die.

The gun shakes in his hand. He looks past it to her face. He aims over her head. He pulls the trigger.

The stone splits into two big chunks, one in each hand, and rock shards and bits of lead scatter outward. Evelyn gasps and takes a staggering step backwards.

Eugene moves on her, raises the gun, and brings it down onto the side of her head.

She collapses to the floor.

He steps forward and looks out into the parking lot, sees a couple people wandering out of their rooms to find out what that noise was. Someone asks him did he hear that, too. He says, yeah, think it was only a car backfiring, and pushes the door closed. He looks down at Evelyn. She’s unconscious. Blood trickles into her hair. He swallows, then reaches down to pick her up.

7

Evelyn awakens in bed. She feels slightly disoriented. She blinks at Eugene. He’s once more sitting at the table. He looks at her for a long time. Then nods his head toward a paper bag sitting beside him.

‘I got us some breakfast,’ he says.

1

Carl sits in a chair in the corner of the room and stares at the wall, disoriented. He must have nodded off there for a minute. He blinks and looks down at his arm. A bead of blood rests in the crease on the inside of his elbow. He imagines a small green stem growing from it, from some subcutaneous seed, and thorns emerging from the stem, and leaves, and then a red flower, a red rose, and the red rose opening like a fist unclenching. It would be beautiful. He lazily reaches over with an arm that weighs twice what it should and smears the blood away with an index finger. He looks at the red on his fingertip and unthinkingly licks it off.

Okay. Time to get to work.

He pushes himself from the chair. He unrolls his shirtsleeve and buttons his cuff. A dot of blood appears on his shirt. Apparently he didn’t wipe all of it away. It doesn’t matter. No one will see it. He slips into his coat. He picks up his fedora from the bed and sets it upon his shower-wet hair after combing his fingers through it. If his hair’s still wet, thin as it is, he didn’t nod off for too long. That’s good.

And that’s it. That’s what he gets for the daylight hours. He’s using no more till he gets off work. He’s taking nothing with him. He doesn’t want to be tempted. And he will not call his man in the hop squad because his man in the hop squad doesn’t know how to keep his goddamn mouth shut. He’ll be a little shaky toward the end of the day, a little sweaty, but he thinks he can make it. He made a promise.

Just enough to get him through. No more.

He steps out of his room, making sure the door is locked behind him, then walks downstairs and into the cool morning air, which wraps itself around him. He stands still on the front porch and inhales its scent.

If his wife were alive, this moment, even without her in it, would be perfect. The simple knowledge that she was alive would make it perfect.

But she isn’t. And it isn’t.

Still, it’s pretty nice, and he stands there a moment before walking to his car.

2

He sits in a chair beside Friedman and looks across a cluttered desk to Captain Ellis. He thought he and his partner had an understanding. He thought they’d worked it out yesterday evening. They would finish this case, they’d get Eugene Dahl into custody, and then he’d take time off from work to get clean. None of the brass would have to find out about his problem. He’d get clean on his own, come back to work, and everything could go back to the way it had been before he started using.

He thought he and Friedman had an understanding, but if so why did Captain Ellis call them into his office and shut the door?

He closes his eyes a moment, preparing himself for what he fears is coming. He knows he deserves to lose his job, but he knows too it’s the only thing he has left. It’s an ineffective distraction, but it’s something. He wants to continue this investigation. He has ideas. He has thoughts. Instead of focusing on himself, he’s begun to focus on this case again. He’s begun to focus on it like he used to focus on cases before Naomi died. He doesn’t want to lose that now. He has a tenuous grasp on reality and he wants to use it to pull himself out of the nightmare he’s been living in. Maybe he could even fix things with Candice eventually — once he gets cleaned up.

If he gets fired he doesn’t know what he’ll do.

‘The district attorney was murdered last night,’ Ellis says.

Carl opens his eyes. ‘What?’

‘He was beat to death in front of the Pink Flamingo.’

‘Beat to death — with what?’

‘Fists,’ Ellis says. ‘Things have really turned to shit lately.’

Friedman nods. ‘Ever since that grand-jury investigation of James Manning was announced.’

‘That was my thinking. But you two like Eugene Dahl as your killer.’

‘We do,’ Carl says, pushing thoughts of everything else out of his mind — he’s not getting fired, Friedman hasn’t said anything — forcing himself to focus only on the investigation. ‘But I’ve also come to believe James Manning is involved somehow. I’m almost certain of it.’

‘In what way?’

‘I don’t know exactly. But I was up last night thinking about it, and it seems to me he almost has to be involved. There’s someone I want to talk to about it, someone in town, but I’m not sure he’ll spill, so I also want to visit hotels, check hotel registries, see if any of James Manning’s known associates have recently arrived in town. If we had more men at our disposal we could even check passenger lists — see who’s come into town through Los Angeles Airport, Lockheed Air Terminal in Burbank, and Union Station. If we’re thorough I’m almost certain we’ll get something.’

‘I’ll get you your men. Be here at one o’clock to get them going. I’d also like you to keep Detectives Pagana and Schwartz apprised of your progress. They’re investigating the district attorney’s murder out of the Rampart division, and if you find a connection between your case and theirs they need to know about it.’

‘Yes, sir. In the meantime is there any chance we can take the unit off Eugene Dahl’s apartment?’

‘Why’s that?’

‘I don’t think he’s going back and I want them to keep an eye on someone else for a little while.’

Captain Ellis nods. ‘You got it.’

3

They step out of Captain Ellis’s office. Carl pulls the door closed behind them, puts his back against the wall, closes his eyes. He feels a bit sick. It took all the concentration he had to carry out that conversation, to keep focused, to keep his mind from wandering. He feels sweaty and cold. He wants to lie down somewhere and sleep.

His partner puts a hand on his shoulder. ‘You okay?’

‘Let’s go for a drive. I need some fresh air.’

1

Fingers steps through his front door and squints at the bright morning. His head throbs with pain. He took some aspirin after he got off the phone with Eugene, but it hasn’t done any good. At least not yet. This is some bad shit he’s got himself stuck in, and he has no idea how to pull himself out of it.