District Attorney Seymour Markley believed that Mr Stuart’s testimony would prove there were ties between James Manning, long suspected of being a major figure in organized crime, and a comic book called Down City, which is believed to have inspired a recent Bunker Hill murder. The purpose of the grand-jury investigation was to determine whether there might be enough evidence to charge James Manning and others involved in the creation of the comic book with negligent homicide. It would be the first such case in American history.
We reached Markley at his home yesterday evening, and he said that despite this set-back, the investigation would continue.
‘But our focus right now should be on the tragic loss of two lives. A man with courage and a willingness to testify against dangerous criminals was murdered, and along with him, one of our city’s finest officers.’
Despite Theodore Stuart’s ties to organized crime, and the nature of his stay at the Shenefield Hotel, police do not currently believe James Manning was responsible for his murder. Markley said that the LAPD’s lead investigator on the case, Detective Carl Bachman, had reason to believe a local man, who may have been involved in the creation of the comic book himself, was responsible. ‘We believe he was worried about being implicated during Mr Stuart’s grand-jury testimony.’ He said, however, that police are currently unwilling to release the suspect’s name. For the time being, they are ‘gathering evidence and chasing down every possible lead’.
The rain outside is now pouring down. He can hear it drumming on the roof like ten thousand nervous fingers. He walks to the window and pulls back the curtains. Sheets of rain fall from the sky. Within twenty minutes the streets will be flooded. Tomorrow great chunks of asphalt will have been washed away, leaving enormous potholes.
He turns away from the window, looks around the room.
Decides to venture once more into the rain.
2
Eugene walks to his motorcycle, kick-starts the engine. It rumbles grumpily. He straddles the large leather seat, throttles some gas into the engine, revving it up. A moment later he pulls out into the street, tires sliding against the rain-wet asphalt, rear end fishtailing momentarily before regaining traction and control.
He didn’t bring a jacket. In his rush to get out of the apartment he neglected to consider that he might need one. He merely stuffed his suitcase with what his hands grabbed. He wears only a thin cotton sweater to protect him from the elements, and it merely serves to soak up the rain.
By the time he gets where he’s going he’s wet to the bone. A quick but violent shiver works its way through his body. He steps from the bike and toes down the kickstand. He takes his glasses from his face and shakes them off, then sets them once more on the bridge of his nose. He looks through them to a smudged and water-spotted world beyond. A rectangular block of apartments stands across the street. The building is pink stucco guarded by a pair of palm trees like wind-tattered umbrellas which bend toward the southwest. He’s only been here once before.
He hopes Fingers is home. His shift is midnight to eight, but if he’s warming a barstool somewhere Eugene could be waiting for hours.
He walks to the front door and gives it a knock.
For a long time there’s no answer, then there is. The door creaks open and his friend looks out at him bleary-eyed, the skin beneath his eyes swollen and pink.
‘Eugene,’ he says. ‘What happened to you today, man?’
‘I need your help. Can I come in?’
Fingers stares at him a moment, silent, then nods and steps aside.
Eugene steps into the tiled entrance. His clothes are soaked through, couldn’t get any wetter if he were dunked in a tub of water. He’s very cold. The apartment is warm. He can feel the gas heater and smell the pleasant scent of heated ducts and the dust and spiders within them. Eugene’s glasses fog up in the warmth. He wipes them off on his undershirt.
Fingers shuts the door.
‘Don’t move.’
Then he’s gone, disappeared into the hallway.
The living room has brown carpet and brown furniture and the walls are tacky and yellow with wallpaper paste, though the wallpaper itself has been steamed away. A few pictures hang on the walls, mostly of musicians playing their instruments.
When Fingers returns he has a towel in his hand. He tosses it to Eugene, who catches it and wipes himself down with it.
‘Thanks.’
‘What’s going on, man? You okay? You haven’t missed more than a handful of days in almost three years, and never without calling. Boss is mad, says the police were asking about you yesterday.’
Eugene rubs his hair dry with the towel and combs his fingers through it. He looks toward his friend. His friend looks back. Finally he says, ‘I need a gun.’
‘What?’
‘A gun. I’m sorry to ask, but I need one.’
Fingers sighs and scrapes at the corners of his mouth with index finger and thumbnail, rolls up what he finds there between his fingers, flicks it away.
‘I got some guns,’ he says, ‘but they’re bought and paid for and not by the kind of people I want to be fucking with. What kind of trouble you in, Gene?’
‘The serious kind.’
‘You really need a gun?’
Eugene nods.
‘Okay.’
He once more disappears into the hallway. When he returns this time he’s carrying a green canvas duffel bag. He sets it on the floor in front of Eugene.
‘Take your pick.’
‘Are these guys gonna go ape on you?’
‘They’ll box my ears a little, but I’ll live.’
‘You don’t have anything else? I don’t wanna put you out.’
‘I got a Baby Browning used to belong to a girlfriend of mine. But you can’t walk into a situation with a lady’s gun as your primary.’
‘It’s fine. I don’t want you in a spot.’
‘You sure?’
‘Yeah.’
Fingers gets him the small gun from a kitchen drawer and a box of rounds as well.
‘Thank you.’
Fingers nods. ‘You frail? I got some money stashed away.’
‘I have a little money.’
‘Is there anything else I can do?’
‘I don’t think so. I’m on my own on this one.’
‘Okay,’ Fingers says. ‘Good luck.’
TWENTY-SIX
1
Sandy sits at the desk in his room. He looks out at the rain. There are great puddles in the recreation yard, reflecting clouds and looking like small pools of sky, though the rain continually breaks apart the images, and the storm is slanting down diagonally, and the light seems somehow ill.
He doesn’t like it here.
The other boys with whom he shares this room are playing a card game, he can hear them behind him talking and laughing, but he wasn’t invited to participate. He’s still not made any friends. He thought he might make friends with his roommates at first, they talked to him and tried to include him in things, but within the first couple days they decided they didn’t like him. They flicked his ears. They wiped boogers on his shirt just to see how he’d react. Now he avoids them. There’s something about the way he speaks, or his posture, or something, that people simply don’t want to be around. During recess, which they call recreation period here, he plays alone. If there’s a free basketball court he shoots baskets, despite the fact that he’s not very good. If there isn’t a free court, and usually there isn’t, he bounces the ball against a brick wall and catches it, until someone takes it away from him, as someone inevitably does. He doesn’t know why people pick on him. He hasn’t done anything to anybody. He wouldn’t care that they don’t like him if they would just leave him alone. If everybody would leave him alone he’d be fine.
So far it hasn’t been that bad, but even so he feels something vicious inside him, something he’s afraid of, some terrible black liquid filling him up again. He poured some of that violence out when he shot h
is stepfather but a week later he’s once more near to overflowing.
He gets to his feet and walks to the door and steps through it. He looks to his right. The hall monitor sits in his chair. He seems bored.
‘Permission to use the bathroom.’
‘Go ahead.’
He turns left and walks to the end of the hallway.
Once in the bathroom he stands in front of a urinal and unbuttons his fly and pulls out his penis. He’s glad no one else is here. When other boys are in here they make fun of the way he stands. Why you stand with your legs apart? You squirting from a little pussy and don’t want it to dribble down your leg? Why don’t you sit down to pee like all the other girls? Have you started your period yet?
He has to wait a long time. He didn’t really have to go. He just wanted to leave his room. He was tired of sitting at the desk, tired of staring out the window, tired of listening to his roommates play behind him. He wanted to be alone, even if only for a couple minutes. Finally he begins to urinate. It’s just a trickle.
He stares down at his penis and wonders if it will always be so small. He’s seen some of the other boys in the shower. It makes him embarrassed. He hates to be naked in front of them. Some of them are beginning to look like men, but his body looks the same as it did last year, and the year before that.
Skinny and hairless and pale.
Behind him, out in the hallway, the sound of a door creaking open and swinging shut. Two voices: request, response. Footsteps echo in the hallway, growing louder.
He finishes with a final spurt, shivers, shakes off, tucks his penis away. He should have gone into a toilet stall. He could have been alone for a little while. Now someone else is coming and will see him and he’ll have to leave. He can’t just stand around doing nothing while someone else is in here peeing. That would be weird. People already don’t like him, already think he’s strange.
He doesn’t want anyone to think he’s a pansy.
He walks to the sink and turns on the water. He washes his hands. In the mirror he sees another boy walk into the bathroom, and recognizes him. A couple days ago he came up to Sandy and took the basketball he was playing with and threw it across the recreation yard. Sandy wanted to punch him in his stupid face, but the boy’s much bigger than he is, and already has a mustache.
His name is Raymond.
They make eye contact in the mirror.
‘What are you looking at, germ?’
Sandy drops his gaze to his hands, rinsing the soap away. ‘Nothing.’
He turns off the water. He grabs a few paper towels and dries his hands and throws the towels into the bin. He turns around.
Raymond stands inside the bathroom door, leaning against the tile wall, arms crossed. He stares at Sandy.
Sandy tries not to look back, tries to pretend he doesn’t notice him at all, and walks toward the bathroom door. I don’t see you, please don’t see me, please don’t see me, please don’t see me.
Raymond puts out his arm, blocking Sandy’s path.
‘What’s wrong with you?’
‘What?’
‘You retarded or something? You a retard?’
Sandy blinks, feeling something terrible inside. ‘No.’
‘I think you are.’
‘Just leave me alone.’
‘Just leave me alone.’
‘Please.’
‘Please.’
Sandy tries to push past Raymond’s arm, to get out of the bathroom, but Raymond pushes back hard. He sends Sandy backwards. His legs can’t keep up with the force of the shove, and after a couple scrambling steps he loses his footing and falls onto the tile floor. He bites his tongue as his backside hits, bites the left side of his tongue between molars, and tastes blood.
Tears of pain sting his eyes.
‘Such a retard you can’t even walk.’
‘I didn’t do anything to you.’
‘I didn’t do anything to you. Drop dead, germ.’
He kicks Sandy in the thigh, sending an immense pain through his leg. Sandy rolls onto his side and clutches himself. From the corner of his eye he sees Raymond pulling back to kick again. He scrambles out of the way quickly. Raymond’s leg continues past the spot he expected Sandy to be, and Sandy, with tears still stinging his eyes and with fury in his heart, moves in and takes the other leg out from under him, rushing forward and knocking it away. Raymond falls sideways, tries to catch himself on the wall, and instead hits his head on it before continuing to the floor.
Sandy leans over him and punches him in the nose. It sends a sharp pain up his arm from his hand, from the backs of his fingers. It hurts terribly, but the pain feels good too. He punches again. Raymond holds out his hands to block the blows, but Sandy shoves them aside with the swipe of an arm and swings again. He can see blood on Raymond’s face now, and he’s glad of it. He doesn’t feel guilt or remorse or anything like empathy. He feels mad glee. His fist is simply screaming with pain, and he’s glad of that too. The pain in his hands is pain inflicted as well.
‘I told you to leave me alone,’ he says, and swings again, and again, and again, until the hall monitor comes rushing in and pulls him off the other boy, and even then he continues swinging at the empty air in front of him.
2
He sits in a chair just outside an office, Raymond beside him with wads of blood-slicked tissue shoved into nostrils and a bruise swelling around his left eye.
His hands are clasped in his lap, the right one throbbing with pain. He likes the sensation. It reminds him that he’s done something. He pulls his hands apart and looks at his knuckles, his middle finger swollen and blue, so swollen he can barely bend it. He likes that too.
It felt good to do what he did to Raymond. It felt good to give something back.
He’s done being picked on. Done being a receptacle for other people’s violence.
He thinks of how he felt the night he killed his stepfather, the night he put two bullets into his stepfather’s head, how he wanted to take it back. He no longer wants to take it back. He’s glad his stepfather’s dead. He still wishes he could have kept what he did from his mother. It still hurts him to see that anger, and that small hatred, in her eyes. But he’s glad his stepfather’s dead. Even on that night he only wanted to take it back because he was afraid of getting caught. Even then he didn’t regret the loss of life.
He hated the man. He hated him and is glad he’s dead.
From now on he’ll only pour violence out.
When he goes into the principal’s office he’ll say he’s sorry. He’ll say it won’t happen again. He’ll say those things, but he’ll be lying.
There was a time when he was confused, but things in the last week have helped him to understand the world in a way he didn’t before. He feels like he’s been given a glimpse at the machinery of the world, all the gears and pulleys and levers and belts.
There was a time when he saw everything as a threat, as potential pain, and tried to avoid it at all cost. He would ditch school so he wouldn’t have to face a teacher who hated him, or a classmate who had been picking on him. He hid from his stepfather, cowering in fear.
Even when he came here he was thinking only about how to avoid being noticed, how to avoid being picked on. He was thinking only of how to become and remain invisible. But that doesn’t work, he sees that now.
If you try to disappear the world sees a hole where you should be and pours its rage into you, pours its violence into you, in order to fill that hole.
He glances to his left, to where Raymond is sitting. The boy is staring down at his lap. His eyes are red from crying.
Sandy’s glad.
A door opens and a heavy-set man in a wrinkled suit stands on the other side of it. He has thin, finger-combed white hair, a cowlick at the back of his head. His eyes are turned down at the corners. His nose is red and bulbous. His fly is open, his wrinkled blue shirt hanging from it, and there are ink stains on his slacks.
‘Mr Duncan,’
the man says.
Sandy gets to his feet and walks toward the office, preparing to lie. For here’s a fact: you can say you’re sorry and feel nothing at all.
TWENTY-SEVEN
1
Carl drives through the rain while his windshield wipers cut water off the glass, squeaking with each swipe of their thin rubber blades, clearing his view of the empty street before him. He thinks about Eugene Dahl, the milkman, and the evidence against him. He was at the scene with the murder weapon in his possession. They searched his apartment and found bloody shoes that matched shoeprints tracked all over the room in which Stuart and that cop were killed. They also found a box of bullets and a blackmail note. Cases don’t get much tighter than that.
During their brief encounter he didn’t strike Carl as the kind of man who’d be able to cold-bloodedly sever a man’s spinal cord with a knife, but in this situation that’s less important than where the evidence points. People, everyday people, can be surprising in their brutality.
Carl would like it better if they knew who tipped off the police, and he’d like to get his hands on the typewriter used to bang out the blackmail note, but those are insignificant pieces in this otherwise finished puzzle, corner pieces that won’t change the overall image even if he finds them. Maybe the milkman told someone his plans while drunk and that someone called the police before the murders even happened. Maybe the accountant had an accomplice who typed up the blackmail note and delivered it. Those things don’t matter. There’s simply no way the milkman didn’t do the murders. Not a chance. The pieces fit together too well for them to go any other way.
He parks the car in front of Friedman’s house and gives the horn two quick taps. He lights a cigarette and takes a deep drag. He rubs at his eyes with the heels of his hands. They’re dry and they sting.
Friedman steps into the car and slams the door closed behind him.
‘Ready?’
‘Ready.’
Carl puts the car into gear.
2
They step from the vehicle. Carl flicks his cigarette butt into the gutter. He squints up at the gray clouds overhead, bulbous and seemingly solid as mountains. Rain splashes against his face. It feels good on his hot skin. He takes off his fedora and combs his fingers through his oily but brittle gray hair. He turns to the door and finds his partner already pushing his way through to the interior. He follows.
The Last Tomorrow Page 19
