Ryan Jahn - The Last Tomorrow

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.