‘No.’
The curtness of the one-word response marks it as punctuation: a period at the end of a conversation. The car pulls away from the curb.
They drive in silence for what feels like a long time, and every moment he’s in the back of this silent car Fingers grows more tense. He tells himself to be cool. He tells himself not to let these guys shake him up. That’s clearly what they’re after, they want to get him fizzy, but he needs to remain calm. He’s determined to remain calm.
You got this, man. You know what you have to do.
They stop in front of the Shenefield Hotel, rolling up to the rear bumper of an LAPD radio car. Two uniformed cops stand on the street beside it, smoking. Then one of them glances over, flicks his cigarette out to the street, and walks over.
3
Carl stands by the open door of his car and watches the two uniformed cops escort Darryl Castor into the Shenefield Hotel. One of the hotel rooms on the sixth floor has been converted into an interrogation room, which they’ll be using later. For the next couple hours, however, they’ll let him sit. Let him think over every reason they might be holding him. In Carl’s experience, both personal and professional, the best way to get to a man is to let his mind turn on itself.
Darryl Castor steps out of sight.
Carl falls into the car and pulls the door shut behind him.
4
The hotel room is nothing like a hotel room. The bed has been removed, as has the dresser. Any painting which might once have hung on the wall is now in a storage closet somewhere. A square metal table sits in the middle of the room, four chairs surrounding it. A reel-to-reel recording device sits on the table. The windows are covered in dark curtains which allow no light to enter from outside. All clocks are absent, making it impossible to tell what time of day or night it might be.
Fingers enters the room, escorted by two uniformed officers. One of the uniformed officers pushes the door closed and locks it.
Fingers turns in a slow circle, taking in his surroundings, then looks toward the police officers, both of whom are standing silent by the door.
‘What now?’ he says.
‘Wait.’
5
Carl looks at the twelve young detectives sitting before him. His eyes sting. His legs feel cramped. His stomach aches. He tries to ignore all of this. He needs his mind clear. He needs to be able to think.
He closes his eyes and exhales in a long sigh. He tries to think about nothing but the case at hand. He needs to get these guys on the street. There’s someone in this city doing James Manning’s bidding and they need to find him.
He opens his eyes.
‘All right,’ he says. ‘Let me tell you why you’re here.’
FORTY-EIGHT
1
Eugene stands in the lobby of the Fairmont Hotel with a ringing telephone pressed against his ear. With each ring he dreads the answer more. From now on everything will have to line up or he’s dead. Yet he knows if he does nothing he’s also dead, so he must try. He doesn’t feel up to this. He isn’t the type of person who does what he’ll have to do if he’s to make it out of this alive. He isn’t the type of person who does much. He likes simplicity in his life, calm, which is perhaps the reason he was never in a serious relationship, and the reason he was happy working as a milkman. He had a simple life and a simple job with a simple routine. He liked the job and he liked the routine. And he liked having a dream — a perpetually unrealized dream. But now all that’s gone and he’s being forced to make decisions a man like him was never meant to make.
‘Hello?’
He swallows. This is it.
‘I have Evelyn Manning.’
‘Who is this?’
‘The person who has Evelyn Manning.’
A long pause, then: ‘I don’t believe you.’
Eugene swallows. His mouth is dry.
‘Open your hotel-room door,’ he says. ‘I’ll wait.’
2
Lou sets the telephone down on the table and walks to the door. He unchains the door and retracts the deadbolt. He wraps his hand around the knob and turns it and pulls. He looks out into the corridor. It’s empty. He’s about to close the door and tell the man on the phone to go screw when he sees something hanging from the outside doorknob. He looks down and sees a small locket. He pulls the locket from the doorknob and clicks it open. He finds himself looking at a picture of the Man with his arm wrapped around the shoulders of his smiling teenage daughter. He steps back into his hotel room and closes the door. He walks to the telephone and picks it up.
‘Who is this?’
‘I’ve already given you the only answer you’re gonna get.’
‘What do you want?’
‘I want the Man on a plane. He leaves for Los Angeles today with ten thousand dollars in cash. I’ve made a reservation for him at the same hotel you’re staying in. The reservation is in the name of Humphrey Smith. When he checks in, there will be a note at the front desk for him. It will contain further instructions. This isn’t a negotiation. This isn’t even a conversation. This is me telling you how it’s gonna be. I hope you have a good memory because I’m not repeating myself. I suggest you call him as soon as I hang up and tell him what I’ve told you.’
Click.
Lou pulls the phone away from his ear and looks at it for a moment before setting it into its cradle.
He’s been wondering all morning what happened to Evelyn. Now he knows.
This is turning into a nightmare job.
He walks to his suitcase and pulls out a bottle of whiskey. He uncorks it, takes a swallow. It’s harsh and warm. As soon as he swallows he can feel acid boiling at the back of his throat and taste bile. He replaces the cork and tosses the bottle into the suitcase. He finds a calcium antacid and chews it. He walks to the telephone. He picks it up. He doesn’t want to make this phone call but knows he must.
An operator answers.
He tells her, ‘I’d like to place a long-distance phone call.’
3
Eugene sits on a couch in the lobby, the same couch on which he sat while waiting for Evelyn on the night of their date. He hides his face behind a newspaper and watches the elevator. He tries not to think about Evelyn. There never could have been anything serious between them. He was deluding himself. He knows that.
He tries to read the paper but can’t process even so much as a single sentence. His mind won’t let him focus. Each word sits on the page alone, unconnected to any other by either logic or grammar.
The elevator doors open. A pale, thin man with slicked-back black hair steps from within. He wears a pin-striped suit. His back is very straight. He walks to the front desk and speaks with the gentleman there.
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 someth
ing. 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.
She might be, but Eugene Dahl isn’t.
So where is he?
The motorcycle outside means he must be here, but he isn’t here.
Lou licks his lips.
Maybe he stepped out for a few minutes. He could have walked somewhere to get a packet of cigarettes or a bite to eat.
Lou walks to the trailer, holsters his pistol, and pulls the padlock from the staple. Someone within the trailer begins to moan loudly. He yanks up on the large metal handle, which causes two bolts attached to it to retract, sliding out of their slots in the floor and ceiling of the trailer. The doors swing open, revealing Evelyn. She sits on the rotting wood floor of the trailer in a puddle of liquid. The liquid runs down the slant of the floor and splashes to the ground below. The smell of urine is strong. Her mouth is gagged but she tries to speak anyway, and shakes her head violently.
He walks to her and pulls the duct tape from her face and the wadded fabric from her mouth. Her lips are red and raw.
‘Where is he?’
But before Evelyn can speak he has his answer.
7
Eugene lies prone on the filthy roof of the tractor trailer parked at dock number three. He doesn’t move. His head is turned to the right, to the two other trailers parked at the docks and past them to the street. The street is empty. He breathes in through his nose and out through his mouth. When he exhales he sees the dust on the white roof of the trailer blow away on the wave of his breath. He tries to listen to what Lou’s doing inside the warehouse but hears nothing. The man moves in silence.
Then finally Eugene hears something at the back of the trailer, metal sliding against metal. Evelyn starts to make noises through the
gag in her mouth. Eugene’s certain she’s trying to warn Lou of his presence. The trailer doors swing open. Eugene slides across the roof as quietly as possible and peers down through the space between the top of the trailer and the bottom of the roll-up door. He can see Lou’s head, his greasy slicked-back hair. Then the man disappears into the trailer.
Eugene pushes up on the roll-up door, creating another six inches of space. He reaches out, grabbing the doors, and swings them closed. They slam into place and the handle falls about six inches, ejecting the bolts into their holds.
Lou curses and bangs against the doors. They want to give and almost do, must be hanging onto their holds only by mere millimeters.
Eugene drops to the concrete, spraining his ankle, and slams the handle down into place, sending the bolts fully into their holds.
A gunshot goes off and a black dot appears in one of the doors, surrounded by splinters and a star of fresh wood revealed where the splinters once held.
Eugene drops to the concrete. A second shot goes off.
‘If you kill me,’ he says, ‘you’ll die in there.’
FORTY-NINE
Fingers sits in silence. The uniformed officers stand by the door. He’s tried to speak with them two or three times now, empty chatter to fill the empty minutes, but they responded only with one-word answers to his queries, which filled no time at all. He’s been here at least two hours. Even without a clock or a watch available he knows he’s been here that long, and maybe longer. He briefly wishes he’d remembered to put on his watch when he left the apartment this morning, but supposes the cops probably would have taken it, anyway.
He wonders if Eugene’s still alive. He might already have gotten himself killed. Lou might have already put a bullet into him — or six. He wishes Eugene hadn’t told him what he was attempting. It’s insane, will never work. He’s tempted to tell the police everything, the truth beginning to end, simply to save his friend’s life, but he won’t. He tells himself he won’t. He’ll tell them the story he’s supposed to tell them and no other. That may mean he’s helping to kill Eugene, he’s almost certain that’s exactly what it means, but he’ll not betray his friend’s trust a third time. And maybe Eugene will even pull it off. Maybe he’ll manage it and walk away unscathed.
The Last Tomorrow Page 32
