Ryan Jahn - The Last Tomorrow

Eugene watches their exchange, and waits.

4

Lou hangs up the telephone, walks to his bed, sits down. He puts his hands on his knees and stares straight ahead, thinking about his conversation with the Man. It didn’t go well. It didn’t go well at all. There was never any chance that it would, but it went worse even than he’d expected.

How could you let this happen? How in the name of an ever-loving Christ could you let this happen, Lou? I swear to you here and now if her fingernail polish is so much as chipped you’re a dead man. You think I don’t mean it you just wait and see. I don’t care how long you’ve worked for me. If she’s hurt in any way I will nail you to the floor, pour gasoline down your throat, and let you dehydrate until you’re dead. I will dance to the tune of your screams. I’m on my way.

Lou asks himself who might have done this and thinks only one name. But is it really possible that the frightened-looking man he saw in the corridor at the Shenefield Hotel did this? He thinks it is possible. He thinks it must have been him. Nobody else would be desperate enough to do something like this.

Nobody else would be stupid enough.

Lou gets to his feet. He has to do something. He can’t simply sit here and wait. He can’t. He has to do something. But at first he doesn’t know what, knows only that he can’t sit still, so he paces the floor. He thinks better when he’s moving anyway. When he sits still too long his blood turns to sludge and his brain stops functioning.

What is he going to do?

What the fuck is he going to do?

Eugene Dahl might have already left the note for the Man at the front desk. If he did, and if there’s an address on the note, maybe he can take care of this himself. He can’t imagine the milkman being much trouble. The guy’s got fight in him, and Lou can respect him for that if nothing else, but he’s still in over his head, and this is the kind of thing Lou handles for a living.

Lou steps out into the corridor, closing the door behind him.

He takes the elevator down to the lobby.

He walks to the front desk.

A gentleman in a crisp uniform says, ‘How can I help you, sir?’

‘Someone left a letter for my boss. He’s asked me to retrieve it for him.’

5

Eugene doesn’t follow Lou’s car for long. He knows where it’s going and wants to get there first, which he can’t do from behind, so after a few blocks he passes it on the left and twists the throttle, glancing in his mirror to see it shrinking into the background. The wind blows through his hair, and the sun shines down on him from a cloudless blue sky hot against the bare skin on his arms and face, and he could almost enjoy the moment but for a single nagging question.

What exactly is going to happen in that warehouse? He doesn’t know. He knows what needs to happen, but he doesn’t know that it will. Now that he’s in the midst of this it feels very messy. It’s too complicated. When he thought about it last night, before it was something he had to implement, when he thought of it in the abstract, it seemed like something that might work. But no sane person could have conjured this plan. Now that he’s in the middle of it he sees it for what it is, madness, because what will happen in that warehouse is only one uncertainty of many, the first of many, and if any of them goes badly it’s finished. He’s finished.

And even if everything goes the way he needs it to, he will walk away from this a murderer. He’s asked himself more than once if he could kill a person. He believes he could do it in self-defense, but for this to work he’ll have to murder in cold blood. He must be careful about how and when he does it. It needs to look a certain way. The question is, can cold-blooded murder also be self-defense? And is he capable of it?

He doesn’t know. He thinks of killing Evelyn and his chest feels tight and still, his lungs breathless; she’s the only woman he’s ever come close to loving; but he’ll try all the same, because either he can do this or he’s dead, and he doesn’t want to die.

He brings the motorcycle to a stop in the parking lot behind the warehouse. He steps off it and lights a cigarette. He takes a drag. His exhalation is nervous and shaky. He walks up a set of concrete steps, into the warehouse, to dock number three. The roll-up door is opened, revealing a tractor trailer which is parked against the rubber bumper bolted to the concrete edge of the dock. The trailer’s back doors are closed and latched. A padlock hangs from the staple but isn’t fastened. There’s a triangular hole in the left door. It looks to have been made by the corner of something heavy falling against it. Eugene picks the splinters away from the hole and puts his eye to it. The inside of the trailer is very dark, only a small amount of light splashing into it through a rot-hole in the roof.

Evelyn is sitting on the floor against the far wall, exactly where she’s supposed to be. She must have either heard him or noticed the bright spot in the door go dark because she looks up. She makes a sound through the gag in her mouth.

Eugene doesn’t answer. He drops his cigarette to the floor and smears it out with the ball of his foot.

Louis Lynch will be arriving soon. He’d better be ready for him.

6

Lou parks on the street in front of an old warehouse. The stucco siding is crumbling, revealing rusted wire beneath. Several of the narrow ventilation windows have been shattered. Weeds grow thick around the base of the building and from cracks in the asphalt parking lot. It looks to have been abandoned some time ago.

This is the place, no question.

He steps from the car and removes his automatic pistol from its holster. He walks toward the building slowly, deliberately, his eyes taking in everything: the ancient piles of weathered gray wood, the birds nesting in the rusted tin roof, the three abandoned trailers parked at the docks, the motorcycle sitting near the back door.

He walks the perimeter of the building, hoping he might be able to see inside, but ends up circling the entire place without learning anything. Then he sees that one of the roll-up doors is opened. There’s a trailer parked in front of it, but even so he should be able to see something. He walks to it. There’s a six-inch gap between the edge of the door and the trailer. He looks through the gap. The place appears to be empty of life. He sees neither Evelyn nor the milkman, just the dusty interior of an out-of-use warehouse. He knows they must both be here, but he can’t see them.

He doesn’t want to go into the place blind, but supposes he has no choice.

He walks up a set of concrete steps which lead to the back door. On the landing at the top of the steps he kicks off his shoes, revealing plaid socks. He grabs the doorknob and turns it slowly. He pulls open the door, hoping for silence and getting it. He steps into the place and eases the door shut behind him. It latches quietly. He looks left, then right. He sees no one. He thumbs back his revolver’s hammer and pads in stocking feet around the edge of the large warehouse, keeping his back to the wall. He can smell cigarette smoke on the air. It’s a large space and mostly empty. There aren’t many places to hide.

So where are they?

He walks along a wall of mostly empty shelves, keeping his back to them, eyes looking for movement in the room spread out before him. He reaches the front wall and continues along it. The only sound he hears is the sound of his own breathing. He reaches the next corner, where a table saw sits beside a pile of throw-away lumber.

He carefully looks behind the lumber but finds no one and nothing.

He glances toward the docks, toward the rolled-up door at dock number three. He wonders if Evelyn is inside the trailer parked there.