The Last Tomorrow (16 page)

‘Hi, Seymour.’

‘We’re not friends, whore. Do you two have the pictures?’

Leland Jones leans in, smile gone. ‘You best watch the way you talk to my wife.’

‘Is your wife not a whore?’

‘My wife is a beautiful woman, and you’ll respect her. What she does for work don’t have nothin to do with who she is.’

Seymour knows suddenly where he’s seen this man before. He remembers him from
Fort Apache
, and is almost certain he’s seen him in other Western movies as well. He didn’t
have any lines that Seymour can recall, he was just human background, but yes, that’s why he seemed familiar.

‘Do you have them?’

‘What’s that?’

‘The pictures.’

Leland Jones reaches into his back pocket and removes an envelope that’s been folded in half. He tosses it onto the table. It lands between the salt shaker and a bottle of hot sauce.
Seymour blinks. Then reaches out and picks up the envelope, pulls it open, looks inside. Three Polaroid pictures. He flips through them twice, frowns.

Looks up at Vivian and says, ‘The first picture you showed me isn’t here.’

Vivian looks confused. ‘It’s . . . what?’

‘Yeah,’ Leland Jones says, looking at him with blue eyes, his relaxed way of speaking stretching the word like verbal taffy, ‘I wanted to talk to you about that.’

‘Leland, what are you doing?’

‘Yes, Leland,’ Seymour says, ‘what are you doing? We had an agreement.’

‘You and the ladies had an agreement. But these pitchers don’t really belong to the ladies. They belong to me.’

‘We talked about this, Leland.’

‘All right, darlin, I get you’re mad, but let Leland take care of business.’

‘I held up my end of this agreement,’ Seymour says.

‘I appreciate that. Candice is a hell of a woman and she don’t deserve to have no pain in her life. That’s why I’m willing to give you that last pitcher for a mere
hundred dollars. A bargain when you think about it.’

Vivian stares at her husband, clearly furious, her face white but for hot pink blotches on her cheeks, but she says nothing.

‘How do I know,’ Seymour says, ‘that once I pay for this last photo, another one won’t turn up? And another after that?’

‘I don’t mean to insult you, Mr Markley, but I don’t think Vivian had your pants down more’n five minutes before you was putting em back on. There just wasn’t no
time to take a lotta pitchers.’

‘That’s not good enough.’

‘Then you’ll have to trust me.’

‘Trust a man who makes an agreement and then changes his mind when the other party has fulfilled his end of said agreement? I don’t think so.’

‘“Fulfilled his end of said agreement.”’ Leland laughs. ‘You
are
a lawyer, aren’t you? But last I heard Candice’s boy was still locked
up.’

‘These things take time. The point is this: that last photograph has been paid for and I’m not willing to pay for it twice.’

‘I don’t see that you got a choice. I ain’t givin it back till you do.’

Seymour simply stares at him.

‘Tell you what, think it over. I’ll call your office at five o’clock and we’ll have us a little chat. Till then, I’ll bid you adieu.’

Seymour watches them stand up from the booth and walk toward the exit.

He doesn’t move for a long time.

2

Leland sits on the couch at home, staring at the television’s blank gray screen. Ever since they left their meeting with Seymour Markley Vivian’s been telling him
what a goddamned idiot he is. You know the rule, Leland. You don’t put your fucking hand in the same till twice. Well, it isn’t
his
rule. He’ll grab as much as he can, and
if that means two fistfuls instead of one, all the better.

He looks at his watch.

It’s time to call Markley. He knows what the man’s decision will be – he knew before he stepped through the diner’s front door and out into the sunlight – but he
wanted to let him think it over. He wanted the man to realize on his own that he really doesn’t have a choice in the matter. He wanted to let it sink in.

Better to simply pay and be done with it. Better to put the situation behind him.

He knows what Markley’s decision will be, but he might as well hear it.

He gets to his feet and walks to the kitchen. He pulls the phone from the wall and puts it to his ear. He dials Markley’s office.

3

Seymour knocks on the blue door in front of him. A moment later a Negro woman pulls it open. She’s about thirty-five, and pretty, with broad cheekbones and a heart-shaped
face. Her skin is very dark and smooth. Her hair’s been ironed straight and pulled into a tight ponytail. She’s wearing night clothes.

‘Yes?’

‘I’m not sure I have the right address.’

‘Well, who you looking for?’

‘Barry Carlyle.’

‘Oh, you’re Seymour. Barry said you might be stopping by tonight. Come on in.’

She steps aside and he walks into the apartment. The walls are covered in striped green wallpaper. The couch is green corduroy. An oak coffee table sits in front of it, glowing with candles. A
large oak record player sits against the wall. Bebop music plays, a trumpet screeching wildly while brushes slide against a snare drum.

‘Thank you,’ Seymour says as the woman closes the door behind him.

Barry, drying his hands off with a dish towel, walks into the room from the kitchen. ‘Seymour, I see you found the place. This is Maxine, in case you haven’t gotten to the
introductions yet. She helps out around the place. I apologize for the delay but I was peeling shrimps. Maxine gets squeamish about that part of the process. Pulling the heads off, you know. All
that orange head fat. Anyway, have a seat.’

Seymour’s never seen Barry like this – no coat, no tie, shirtsleeves rolled up, top button undone, suspenders hanging loose around his hips. He almost seems a completely different
person.

‘Have a . . . yes, of course.’ He sits down on the corduroy couch.

‘Would you get Seymour a – what would you like to drink?’

‘Water’s fine.’

‘Would you get Seymour a glass of water, hon?’

‘Sure,’ Maxine says.

Barry sits on the couch beside Seymour and tosses the dish towel onto the table.

‘She helps out around the house?’

‘That’s right.’

Seymour clears his throat. ‘That’s all?’

‘If I’m not mistaken, Seymour, you’re here to ask a favor.’

‘Of course. You’re right.’

‘What is it you need?’

‘I have an appointment tomorrow with Leland Jones. I’m to give him money, he’s to give me the last, uh, compromising photograph he has. I’d like – and I know this
is a big favor – I’d like you to search his place while he’s out with me, make sure he doesn’t have any other photographs. I want this to be the end of it.’

‘Seymour, this goes well beyond—’

‘I know that, Barry. I wouldn’t ask if I didn’t think it was important. And, of course, if my career moves forward I’ll bring you along with me.’

‘Can’t it be someone who
—’

‘I need it to be someone I trust. You’re someone I trust, Barry.’

Barry sighs, scrapes a bit of shrimp out from under his fingernail, wipes it on the dishrag. He stares thoughtfully at nothing. Finally: ‘Okay.’

‘Thank you.’

‘Just give me the address, Seymour.’

‘Of course.’

Maxine returns with a glass of water.

1

Candice has the evening off and wishes she didn’t, but the funeral’s tomorrow and she couldn’t imagine trying to sit through it on four hours’ sleep, so
here she is, sitting in the corner of the room, looking at the place where her couch used to be, wishing she was somewhere else. The couch is now curbside and will be until someone who
doesn’t know its history makes off with it. She hopes it happens soon. She’d like to look out the window and see the damned thing has vanished.

Tomorrow she’ll go to Sears & Roebuck to look for a new one, because right now it’s the mental equivalent of a missing tooth. Her eye keeps going to the spot where it should be,
looking, looking, looking, while her mind plays over the reason it’s gone.

She doesn’t want to be here.

She gets to her feet and walks to the telephone on the wall. On the counter below it, a telephone book. Stacked on top of the telephone book, business cards and scraps of paper. She picks up the
paper with Detective Bachman’s phone number on it. She knows she shouldn’t call. She hit him and screamed at him and told him she would never forgive him for taking her son away. She
called him a bastard and a motherfucker. But he told her he understood what she was going through, understood her loss, and there was something in his eyes that made her believe him. And she can
think of no one else who might know what she’s thinking and feeling.

Vivian’s her friend, has done more than anyone to help her, but she’s probably at work, and wouldn’t understand anyway. And even if she did understand, there’s something
about talking to a stranger that appeals to her, that feels safer. A stranger can’t judge you, and if he does judge you it doesn’t matter. You can simply walk away.

She picks up the telephone and makes the call.

A woman picks up.

‘Hoffman Boarding.’

‘Is Detective Bachman in?’

‘Hold on.’

The telephone is set down. This is followed by a knocking sound, the woman saying call for you, Bachman, are you there? Open the door. And then silence.

After a while the woman’s voice in her ear: ‘He isn’t in.’

‘Can I leave a message?’

‘Okay.’

‘Can you tell him Candice Richardson called?’

‘Candice Richardson?’

‘Sandy’s mother.’

‘Does he have your phone number?’

‘Trinity nine five one fifty.’

‘Would you like to say what it’s regarding?’

‘No,’ she says, ‘thank
you.’ She sets the phone down.

She wonders if he’ll call back. Part of her hopes he doesn’t.

2

Evelyn steps into her dress and pulls it up over her shoulders. The fabric is smooth and delicate and feels good brushing across her skin. She zips up the back of the dress,
feeling inexplicably nervous. She tells herself it’s not going to be a real date; it’s work. Speaking of which: she walks to her suitcase and in one of the side pockets finds a
black-handled switchblade knife. She presses a button. The spring-loaded blade flips out, and she examines it a moment, looking at her distorted reflection in its steel. Then she folds the blade
into the handle and slips the knife into her purse.

Lou has a second knife, identical to this one, which he’ll use elsewhere when the time is right.

She walks to the bathroom, picks up a lipstick from the bathroom counter, smears it on her lips. She rubs her lips against one another, liking the slightly grainy feel of the lubrication the
lipstick supplies. She blows herself a kiss.

She’s ready.

Eugene isn’t due for half an hour, and when he arrives she’ll still make him wait ten minutes, simply sit up here flipping through a magazine, but she wants to look good, needs to
look good.

Needs him to fall for her.

3

Carl steps from his car, slams the door shut, and walks toward the boarding house. He’s covered in oily sweat and disgusted by his own stink, a sour smell like curdled
milk. He spent his last two hours at work doing nothing but watching the clock, refusing to let himself leave early. If he left early that would mean he was no longer in control. Things have been
slipping lately. He found a way to use at work every day this week – once while locked in a toilet stall, hoping against hope that no one would walk in and smell that distinctive smell and
know. Every day this week he’s used at work. Every day but today. He realized he was losing control. He needed to prove to himself that he could regain control of the situation, of himself.
And he did. He made it. He made it through the work day without using. True, the last two hours it was all he thought about, getting into his room at the boarding house and unfolding his bindle,
but thoughts are not actions. Only actions are actions.

And he acted like a man in control.

He
was
a man in control. Barely in control, perhaps, but in control.

He pushes through the front door and hurries up the stairs, tripping on his way, hurting his wrist and cursing under his breath, but not stopping, scrambling on all fours up the last few steps,
and then into his room. He locks the door behind him. He walks to the dresser sitting against the back wall and pulls open the top drawer. He removes the brown paper bag, walks to the bed with it,
sits down. Then his eye catches something on the floor, a white piece of paper. Mrs Hoffman must have slipped it under the door. He wonders for a moment if he’s late on rent, but rent is due
on Mondays and he knows he already paid this week. He should pick it up and see what it says. If he’s in control of himself he’ll pick it up and see what it says. A normal person would
do that, and he’s a normal person. Things have been slipping lately, but they’re under control. He’s under control. He wills his fingers to let go the bag and sets it on the bed.
He picks up the slip of paper and looks at it. Someone named Candice Richardson called for him.

Who the fuck is Candice Richardson?

He closes his eyes and tries to think. First he thinks of nothing, just the itch at the back of his brain, then her face appears in his mind, and then other images float forward, as if emerging
through a fog. A 1948 Chevrolet with a man lying beside it. A zip gun made from a car antenna. A comic book. The mother of the boy who killed his stepfather. He should call her. He told her to call
him if she needed anything and she did, despite the fact she told him she never would, despite the fact she told him she would never forgive him for taking her boy away from her. She called because
she saw it on him, or smelled it on him: death. He’s someone who understands.

He should call her back.

But not now. After. He made it through the day. He deserves this.

He picks up the paper bag and one by one removes the items from within it, setting them out on the bed in a neat row, in a tidy line, almost enjoying the discomfort of his need now that
it’s about to be satisfied, enjoying the ritual.