He’s not going to die now. He can’t die. He doesn’t deserve to die.
He wants more, and he needs it.
He throws the toilet tank’s heavy lid at the man standing across from him. It flips end over end once. The killer puts up his arm to block the object. It hits the arm and he grunts, ugh, and falls backwards to the floor, and the porcelain lid lands beside him.
Teddy looks from the killer on the floor to the hotel room’s door. It’s only ten steps away and it isn’t latched. Loose splinters of wood hang from the doorframe. He can make it. If he can get to the door and through it he might actually live.
He can make it.
He takes a single step.
5
Lou pulls the trigger. The revolver explodes in his hand. A small dot appears on Teddy Stuart’s forehead, dead-center, like a birdhouse door, tweet, and his brains and small flecks of bone splatter the white wall behind him. The scent of cordite and the coppery odor of blood fill the room. He shoots again, hitting the already dead man in the shoulder as he falls to the floor. One clean shot in the head would look too much like a professional hit. Two shots, though, one in the shoulder and one in the head, well, maybe the shooter got lucky.
He tosses the revolver to the floor.
He pulls a sheet of paper from his back pocket, one of the milkman’s H.H. White Creamery Company stock-request forms. It includes the milkman’s name, truck number, and how much product he needed for his route three days ago.
Lou drops it.
It falls to the carpet, looking like planted evidence.
He picks it up, crumples it up a bit, walks to the armoire. He drops it to the floor. With his toe he pushes it till it’s half hidden beneath the large piece of furniture, more than half hidden, just a corner of paper poking out of the shadows. That’s better. Looks less obvious and therefore more real.
His job is now finished. He glances at his watch. He needs to get out of here. The police will be arriving soon. The milkman will be arriving soon.
He steps from the hotel room and into the corridor, turns left and walks toward the elevator. As he does he sees a man stepping off said elevator. The man’s about five-ten, an inch shorter than Lou himself. He’s wearing well-ironed white slacks, a white shirt, a black bowtie, and a pair of tortoiseshell glasses.
Eugene Dahl, right on time.
Lou strolls toward him casually, not a care in the world. They nod at one another the way strangers sometimes do when passing, giving simple courteous acknowledgments, and then Lou steps onto the elevator. Before the doors close he watches Eugene Dahl continue his walk down the corridor, toward the murder scene.
TWENTY-ONE
1
Seymour watches Leland Jones push in through the fingerprinted glass door. He stands in the doorway and scans the room, squinting and turning his head slowly like a lighthouse lamp. Then catches sight of Seymour and smiles. He holds up a hand like an Indian in a Western picture. Big Mustache say How. Seymour nods a cool greeting without, he’s certain, so much as a hint of smile. There’s no humor in him, nor kindness toward this blackmailing hillbilly peckerwood (as the southern Negroes Seymour’s put in prison would rightly call him). He looks past Leland, expecting Vivian to walk through the door behind him. But he appears to be alone.
He walks to the table and slides into the booth saying, ‘You need to relax, sugar. You look more nervous that a pussycat in a roomful of rockin chairs.’
‘Don’t worry about me,’ Seymour says. ‘Where’s Vivian?’
‘You miss her purty face, eh?’
‘I just want this finished.’
‘Fair enough. You got the money?’
‘I have it. Where is she?’
‘She’s at home. What’s it to you?’
‘At home?’
‘Yup.’
A hot lead ball drops into Seymour’s gut with a heavy plunk, like a fishing weight, splashing bile up into his throat and the back of his mouth. He tries to swallow but cannot. He removes a white cloth from his coat’s inside pocket. He snaps it to remove any lint and cleans his glasses. He rubs at the sore spots on his nose where his glasses usually rest. He puts his glasses back on. He folds the cloth into quarters and slides it back into his pocket. He swallows. He wonders if Vivian called the police when Barry broke into the place. He wonders if Barry might talk to get himself out of trouble. He wonders what kind of investigation that might lead to.
The precarious nature of his situation makes him feel sick. He hopes none of what he’s feeling is visible on his face, but believes it must be. His face feels numb and for a moment he can’t seem to move it.
‘Well,’ he says once he again has some control of himself, once he thinks he can speak with a voice that isn’t shaking, ‘let’s get this over with, then.’
‘Let’s,’ Leland says.
Seymour puts five twenty-dollar bills on the table.
Leland smiles and scoops the money up and counts it before shoving it into the breast pocket of his pearl-button cowboy shirt.
‘Thanks, sugar,’ he says. ‘Vivian said you might be a problem, but I think you handled the situation real good. You didn’t act scared. Business had to be done and you done it. I appreciate that.’ He slides out of the booth and gets to his feet. ‘Oh. Here’s your pitcher. It really is the last one, you know. I don’t believe in prolongin unpleasant business.’ He reaches into the back pocket of his pants, pulls out a Polaroid, tosses it onto the table top. He touches the brim of his Stetson cowboy hat, makes a clicking noise with the corner of his mouth, the way a man will sometimes do to call a horse, and turns away.
Seymour picks up the photo, gets to his feet, walks across the checkered vinyl floor to a payphone in the corner.
He slips a dime into the coin-slot and dials a phone number.
After three rings a woman picks up. ‘Carlyle residence.’
‘Hello,’ he says, ‘this is Seymour Markley. May I speak with Barry, please?’
‘Barry isn’t in.’
‘He’s not back yet?’
‘No.’
‘Okay,’ Seymour says, ‘thank you.’
‘You’re-’
He drops the phone into its cradle.
2
Keeping one eye on the woman standing wet in a nightgown, holding the weapon in his left hand, ready to swing if necessary, Barry reaches to the top shelf of the closet with his free hand and pulls down a hat box. He knocks the lid away and looks inside. No hat, but dozens of Polaroid pictures. They’re rubber banded into small stacks of two, three, or four. Most of the pictures are labeled, names written across them in black marker. Barry recognizes several of the names, and the faces within them as well. Men in the movie industry, men in politics. The same room appears in every photograph, a dingy room with peeling wallpaper lining the walls, with a couch and a sink and a rolling clothes rack with a few dresses hanging from it. The photographs were all taken from the same strange angle, the photographer undoubtedly hiding from his primary subject.
‘My God.’
‘You never had sex before?’
‘How long have you been doing this?’
‘What do you care?’
‘I’m taking the pictures.’
‘I figured.’
‘You’re not going to try to stop me?’
‘No.’
‘Okay then. I apologize for threatening you. It seemed necessary. In fact, it still does. Don’t move till I’m out the front door. Please.’
Barry backs out of the bedroom, walking slowly, keeping an eye on the woman standing across the room from him. He backs his way across the living room, the wood floors creaking beneath his feet. It’ll be okay if he can just get out of here. These people can hardly call the police about the missing photographs. As soon as he’s out the door everything will be fine. He can stop sweating.
He’s at the front door, ready to throw down the pole and leave, ready to grab the doorknob and make his exit, when he hears the sound of
a vehicle pulling into the driveway. The engine rumbles and the brakes squeal, and then the engine stops rumbling. A door squeaks open, a door slams shut. Boot heels thud against the concrete walkway, coming ever nearer.
And the woman’s now standing in the bedroom doorway, looking at him, despite the fact he told her not to move.
‘Who is that?’
‘It’s Leland.’
‘Okay,’ Barry says, backing away from the door. ‘Okay.’ He leans down slowly and sets the box on the floor. He raises the pipe over his head. He looks again to the woman. ‘Don’t you make a sound.’
The doorknob turns. The door swings open.
A man in a Stetson cowboy hat is on the other side, smiling beneath a thick mustache and saying, ‘I told you everything would be fine. It went smooth as-’
Barry swings the pole down with all his might, hitting the man on the side of the head, hitting him so hard the shock of the blow makes his palms ache. The pole bends at the contact point, forming an elbow. The large man collapses to the floor, knees first, then forward, but he’s not knocked unconscious. He immediately starts picking himself up, glancing back toward the door with a confused look on his face, like he somehow tripped over his own feet and simply can’t figure how it could have happened.
Barry swings again, against the back of his head, the soft part, and when the man hits the floor this time he doesn’t try to pick himself back up.
Barry looks to the woman. She hasn’t moved.
‘I’m sorry.’
‘I told him this would happen.’
There’s resignation in her tone. Barry’s glad to hear it. It means this is over.
He picks up the box of pictures.
‘Even so, I apologize,’ he says, and heads out, stepping over the unconscious gentleman blocking the doorway.
3
Seymour’s sitting on the green corduroy couch in Barry’s living room, rocking nervously and gripping a cup of water in both hands. Maxine, who helps out around the house, is sitting in an easy chair, her legs crossed, looking at him. Neither of them speaks. The door swings open. Seymour gets to his feet. Barry walks through, his bald head beaded with sweat, a pink knob on his forehead, a box under his arm. He closes the door behind him, looks at Seymour, and says, ‘You assured me the place would be empty.’
‘I know. I’m sorry. Is everything okay?’
‘The place wasn’t empty.’
‘What happened?’
‘I don’t want to talk about it,’ he says. Then: ‘Look at this.’ He tosses a hat box onto his coffee table. It lands with a clap.
‘What is it?’
‘Take a look. I need a drink.’
Maxine says, ‘Are you okay, Bear?’
‘I need a drink,’ Barry says again, and heads into the kitchen.
The refrigerator opens and closes. There’s a pop, a small hiss, silence. Barry returns with a small bottle of Blatz gripped in his fist.
Seymour sits down and pulls the box toward him. He looks down into it and sees dozens of photographs, and at first thinks these are all pictures of him with whores, and feels shame and disgust and terror. How long have they been following him? How long have they been photographing him? Has he really had this many transgressions? Then the faces in the pictures reveal themselves to him and he realizes they’re not of him. He picks up several rubber-banded batches, reading the names on them, flipping through the pictures. Some of the pictures are of nobodies. Most of those are unlabeled. But many more of the pictures are of important people in Los Angeles. An ex-mayor, a police captain, two different state senators, a clean-cut actor with a spotless reputation.
‘My God.’
Barry takes a swallow of his beer. ‘That’s what I said.’
TWENTY-TWO
1
Eugene steps into the hotel room, feeling a strange vibration within him, a sort of dissonant internal buzz. He can hear it as well as feel it, this discord within, echoing in his skull. He looks to his right. A cop on the floor, dead. He lies on his side, head tilted down, arms limp in front of him, one hand turned up, the other turned down, a pool of black blood beneath him. His uniform shirt is bunched up under his armpits, untucked, revealing a bleached undershirt and beneath that bare white stomach. His eyes are open. They’re blue. The bare stomach is somehow the worst part. You never see a man naked in that way, with his clothes pulled away and rumpled, unless he’s been assaulted, and it’s usually drunk fellows who’ve been rolled by hoodlums. It reveals a vulnerability that, somehow, is both terrifying and embarrassing. You see your own vulnerability in it and must look away.
Two instincts war within him. The first and most basic is the instinct to flee. Blood, death: they make him slightly dizzy. The shock makes him feel as though he’s stuck within a nightmare. His heart is pounding in his chest despite his stillness; it’s telling him to get ready to move, and fast. But something else pulls him further into the room, a deeper survival instinct perhaps, hiding behind simple curiosity. What’s going on here and what does it have to do with him? It must have something to do with him, he was brought here, and if he leaves now he won’t get any answers.
A man can warm himself even beneath the blanket of certain doom.
He walks further into the room, looks to his left, and sees a gun on the carpet. A revolver. Then beyond it, and beyond an open door, another corpse lying on the white-tiled bathroom floor. Blood and brains are splattered on the back wall, running down it, sliding down it, thick and gelatinous as cold chicken fat. More blood running along the grout lines on the floor as if the areas between the tiles were a maze and the blood possessed some sort of primitive intelligence.
No one in the room is living but for Eugene.
Everything about this is wrong. There’s nothing to discover here but death. But running is not the thing to do. He needs to call the police. He needs to call the police and tell them what happened, every last detail, even if it means the district attorney becomes aware of him. This is obviously bigger than anything he can handle on his own.
He turns around, looking for a telephone.
But a piece of paper on the floor catches his eye. A crumpled piece of paper mostly hidden beneath an armoire. He walks to it, not sure what he’s doing, why he’s walking to it — you need to call the police, Eugene; stop fucking around and call them already — and leans down to pick it up. He flattens it out and looks at it, an H.H. White Creamery Company stock-request form. His name is written on it, in his handwriting. He turns back around to look at the gun on the floor, a.38 Smith amp; Wesson revolver with a six-and-a-half-inch barrel. He’s not a gun person, doesn’t give a tin shit about guns, but he recognizes it all the same. Recognizes it because he has one just like it. He set it on his dining table next to his typewriter case early this morning before the sun had even touched the horizon. He set it down and tore open an envelope. Within the envelope was a typed note, the typed note that told him to be here, to be here now. Is it possible Evelyn took it, picked it up from where he left it and stowed it away in her purse? He knows that it is. From the moment he got the note his mind was on only that and what it meant. She could have grabbed a freight dolly and wheeled out his refrigerator without his noticing.
He thinks of meeting Evelyn. He thinks of her evasive responses when he asked why she was in town, what kind of business her father was in.
He doesn’t want to believe what he’s beginning to believe. He likes Evelyn, or once did. Her liked her a lot. He thought they shared something. He knows they shared something. You can’t fake moments like the moments they had, moments where electricity seemed to spark between them. He hopes such moments can’t be faked, anyway, and knows he never experienced anything like that before. Part of him believed such experiences were mythological, simply the stuff of bad poetry. But since he met her his idle fantasies of the future have had her in them. And yet he knows he’s been framed and believes he knows by whom.
He needs to collect the evidence against h
im and get out of here.
He needs to do it now.
Outside: sirens wail.
He walks to the window and looks out, looks down to the street to see two LAPD radio cars screeching to a stop in front of the hotel, doors swinging open, uniformed officers stepping from their vehicles.
He shoves the paper into his pocket. Then grabs the gun and stuffs it down the front of his pants, untucking his shirt to hide it, hoping no one notices the shape of the gun under its fabric. If he stays calm, calm and collected, he might be able to walk out of here. Walk out of here and get rid of this evidence. Then he can find out why this was done to him. He knows Evelyn was part of it, he’s sure of it, and the more he thinks about it the more certain he becomes, but he’s also sure she didn’t do this on her own. There were others involved. He needs to find out who, who and why, and he needs to find out how to fix it.
But now isn’t the time to be thinking about such things.
Now is the time to be getting the fuck out of here.
He steps into the corridor, his foot sinking into the bloody puddle. He looks left. The cops will be coming up in the elevator. He needs to find the stairs. He turns right and walks, hoping he isn’t actively working to pin himself in. He feels sweaty and nervous and though he’s innocent he’s certain guilt is written across his face.
Innocent or not, he feels guilty.
At the end of the corridor he finds a white door. He thumbs a paddle and pulls, revealing a stairwell. He steps into it and starts down, gravity making it easy. And the worry pressing upon him.
The stairwell has a damp, dusty smell to it, like the smell of impending rain.
He trudges down, wondering what he’s going to find when he reaches the bottom and pushes through the last door, but he doesn’t have to wonder long, because soon enough he’s pushing through it.
The Last Tomorrow Page 16
