The Last Tomorrow (26 page)

As he approaches Wilshire he sees a large truck, a barn-red Mack wrecker, parked on the street waiting for him. The right front fender is dented up, and there are great gouges running along the
length of the door, and the right half of the split windshield is spider-webbed with cracks, but at least his man is on time. If he’d had to stand in the rain he might have gotten
irritable.

He pulls open the passenger’s-side door and steps up into the truck, shaking off the umbrella and pulling it in behind him. The truck’s seat and floorboard are littered with food
wrappers, greasy pieces of cloth, coffee mugs, washers, nuts, and bolts. The upholstery is gouged and torn. The stink is incredible, an old human stink whose fumes hit the back of your sinuses like
horseradish.

The stink is coming off the man behind the wheel, a fat man in a greasy T-shirt and a pair of Levis. He has a dirt-tanned round face in need of soap and a razor. It glistens oily in the gray
light. His hands rest on his thighs, grime under the fingernails, fingers wrapped in filthy band-aids. The right thumbnail is black, and a hole has been drilled into its center to release the
pressure. There’s a bead of blood there like a jewel.

The rain on the metal roof is cacophonous.

‘Got a cigarette?’

‘I didn’t bring them out with me,’ Lou says.

‘Shit.’

The man reaches to the ashtray and picks through the butts till he finds one of decent length. He lights it with a match, inhales deeply, then casually blows a series of smoke rings.

He cracks the window.

‘You got the money?’

‘I’ve got it. Are we clear on the job?’

‘It ain’t exactly complicated.’

‘Even so.’

‘We’re clear.’

‘Good. Then you know that part of what you’re being paid for is silence. No matter how tough the police get, you keep your mouth shut.’

‘How would the police know it was anything but
—’

‘Irrelevant. The point is, your silence has been purchased and paid for, yeah?’

‘Yeah.’

‘Good.’

Lou removes the package from his pocket and hands it to the man.

‘Tomorrow morning at eight o’clock.’

‘Consider it done.’

‘I’ll consider it done when it’s done,’ Lou says.

With that, he pushes his way back out into the rain.

After the stink of the truck, it’s a relief.

3

Eugene walks out of the rain and into the lobby of the Fairmont Hotel. He looks around. No one looks back. Last time he was here he was anticipating a date, an evening out with
the beautiful-ugly woman he’d met the night before. Now he’s back to meet the same woman but has no idea what to expect. He has no plan at all except to point his gun and get answers.
Will she provide them? He doesn’t know. He doesn’t think he could shoot her if she refused to talk. If she calls his bluff it’s over. He thinks it is. But then you don’t
have to shoot someone to prove you mean business. He could hit her. Could he hit her? After what she did to him he thinks maybe he could. Punch her square in the nose and watch her bleed. Part of
him is repulsed by the idea, one does not hit a lady, but another part knows that civilized behavior doesn’t apply to situations such as these. Besides, she’s no lady, and you
don’t sip tea with a serpent.

The pistol feels cold against his stomach.

He walks across the lobby to the elevator and takes the elevator up to the third floor. He isn’t sure how he’s going to get into her room.

He stands in the corridor feeling strange, disoriented, lost in a dream, as he felt when he was a child with high fever. He could simply walk to the door and knock, see what happens. And if she
doesn’t answer? He doesn’t know. But he doesn’t know what else to do either.

He walks to her room, pulls the pistol from his waistband.

He raises his left hand to knock.

But before he can he hears the sound of the chain being pulled away from the door, then the sound of the deadbolt being snapped out of place. He takes several quick steps away from the door,
backing around a corner.

Paranoid thoughts run through his mind. He’s suddenly convinced the lobby was being watched. When he entered the hotel a call was made. Now a gunman will emerge from Evelyn’s room
and end his life.

The door swings open.

Evelyn pushes through. She walks to the hotel room next to her own and knocks, a newspaper gripped in her left hand. The knock is answered.

‘Have you seen this?’

4

‘Evelyn.’

‘Eugene.’

‘We need to talk.’

‘Okay.’

‘Let’s head into your room.’

‘I’m not going in there with you.’

‘Then you’ll die out here.’

‘I could scream.’

‘Then you’ll die screaming. I’m already wanted for murder, Evelyn. I have no problem becoming what the police already think I am.’

She licks her lips. After a long time she nods.

‘Okay.’

1

Carl stands in the rain. He looks at the door in front of him and waits for the slow bastard on the other side to pull the thing open so he can put a roof between himself and
the pissing gray clouds overhead. Friedman stands beside him. Neither man says a word. After a while Carl raises his hand and knocks again. The crease at the top of his fedora catches rain while he
stands and waits. The water pools there till the crease can no longer hold it, then it pours down the front of his head in a stream, splashing on the brim of his fedora and down to his scuffed
shoes.

Finally someone pulls open the door. That someone is Darryl Castor, known to most people as Fingers. His eyes are red and he looks tired. He blinks to clear his vision and glances from their
faces to their badges and back again.

‘Detectives.’

‘Mind if we come in?’

He steps aside.

Carl enters the small first-floor apartment. Friedman follows.

The curtains are drawn, giving the place a claustrophobic feel, making it seem smaller even than it is, darkness crowding the corners.

Darryl Castor scratches his head and sniffles. ‘Excuse the place. I work nights and I was trying to catch a little shut-eye.’

‘We’ll just be a minute,’ Carl says. ‘We’re here about Eugene Dahl.’

‘Thought you might be.’

‘Why’s that?’

‘He hasn’t come into work last couple days, boss said the police called and asked after him, and next thing I know two detectives are banging on my door. I ain’t a genius, but
I can do a little arithmetic.’

‘That’s all?’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Has he been in touch with you?’

‘Why would he be in touch with me?’

‘You’re friends,’ Carl says.

‘We work together.’

‘You never associate except on the job?’ Friedman says.

‘We might.’

‘You either do or you don’t.’

‘Then I guess we don’t.’

‘I hear different,’ Carl says.

‘What did you hear?’

‘I hear you’re a horn player.’

‘Trumpet.’

‘And I hear you play bebop music in a Negro bar.’

‘Okay.’

‘And I hear Eugene Dahl’s gone down to see you play. Rumor has it he even took a dolly once or twice.’

‘So what?’

‘So that makes him your friend,’ Friedman says.

‘Lots of people come to see me play.’

‘Lots of white people?’

‘I don’t see how that has anything to do with anything, man.’

‘Fellow drives down to 57th Street to see me blow my horn in a Negro bar, I’d call him a friend.’

‘Fine, he’s my friend. So what?’

‘So you admit to lying?’

‘About what?’

‘You said you didn’t see him outside of work.’

‘I don’t see him outside of work. Every once in a while.’

‘Was one of those times in the last two days?’

A slight pause, then: ‘No.’

‘I think you’re lying,’ Carl says.

‘I think you’re ugly.’

An open hand whips out and slaps his mouth.

‘Enough bullshit,’ Friedman says.

Darryl Castor touches the corner of his mouth, fingertips coming away red. He absently rubs the blood between his fingers.

‘Look,’ he says finally, ‘I can’t help you.’

‘We know your reputation. Even if you don’t have anything to tell us now, you know people. You can get information.’

‘I got no reason to stick my neck out for a couple cops never did nothin for me. Especially not to help you get to Eugene.’

‘He’s a murderer.’

‘Murderer. Man sends back steak if it’s bloody. He’s a good guy, but square all the way down.’

‘People are surprising.’

‘Not in my experience. And like I said, I’m not in a position to help you.’

Carl scratches his cheek, thinking. He didn’t want to have to do what he’s about to do, but it looks like the only way to get the information they need.

‘You know,’ he says, ‘I’ve heard your name more than once in the last couple years. You’re smart enough not get mixed up in murder, so I never paid much attention,
but when I heard it again today I called a friend of mine in the hop squad. He’s been watching you, even dug into your history some.’

‘I’ve never been arrested for anything, man.’

‘Not your arrest record I was interested in.’

‘Then what?’

‘Your mother.’

‘What?’

Carl pulls a notepad from his inside pocket, ignoring the syringe tucked in beside it, and flips past several pages of unrelated case notes. Finally he reaches the correct page and scans his own
handwriting, telling himself to only think about what’s happening right now in this dimly lit room.

‘Darryl Castor,’ he says, ‘born Darryl Jefferson in Metairie, Louisiana, fourty-two years ago to a widowed Negro cook named Loretta Jefferson, and sent to an out-of-state
boarding school by Herman Castor, the Louisiana businessman your mother worked for. You attended boarding school until you were sixteen, at which point you ran away, disappearing for several years
before turning up in California, where you began passing as white. Does your boss know you’re really an eight ball? What about the people you work as an intermediary for? They have a lot of
colored folks in their organizations? When I talk with them all I hear is nigger this and spade that, so I have my doubts. And what about the people at the Negro club where you blow your horn? You
think they’d look kindly on a man who denies what he is so he can enjoy the benefits of society they’re not entitled to, meanwhile slumming with them when the urge strikes? Seems to me
you could find yourself in some seriously ugly situations if it got out that you’ve been lying about what you are for the last twenty years.’

Darryl Castor stands silent for a long time, expressionless. Then, after the silence has stretched to nearly a minute, he speaks. ‘Herman Castor raped my mother and faced no consequences
for it. Some folks who knew about it even blamed her. She tempted him, right? She must’ve. But I remember when I was six or seven this colored boy whistled at a white lady in town, and two
days later he was found strung up in a tree, beetles feeding on his corpse. Just a boy, thirteen years old. Maybe she smiled at him, or swayed her hips in that way ladies sometimes do when they
know they’re being admired. Don’t matter, though, because it’s always the nigger’s fault. They just can’t control their animal urges, right? A white man rapes my
mother, it’s her fault. A Negro boy whistles at a white lady, gets lynched for it. That’s the way of the world we live in. I’m not ashamed of what I am. I never lied to nobody. I
just let people think what they want to think. I might as well benefit from what my mother had to endure. And I guess I’m as much that man’s son as I am my mother’s. I only look
like this because of it.’

Carl closes his eyes, opens them.

‘That’s a tragic story,’ he says, ‘but it doesn’t have anything to do with what’s happening right now. You have a decision to make. You can continue to be
stubborn, in which case we start fucking with your life, letting people know you’ve been passing, and what happens as a result of that happens. Or you can be sure of things and help us get to
Eugene Dahl, a murderer despite what you may believe, in which case nobody finds out anything. I’m a Johnson myself, a live-and-let-live type guy, and I’d rather not have to meddle in
your business. But like I say, the choice is yours.’

Darryl Castor looks down at the floor for a long time. Finally he says, ‘I’m gonna pour myself a drink. You guys want anything?’

Carl shakes his head and taps a Chesterfield from his packet.

Friedman simply says no.

‘Okay.’

Darryl Castor turns and walks into the kitchen, and when he emerges once more a few minutes later, it’s with a glass of something strong on ice. He walks past them and sits on the couch.
He stares off at nothing. He takes a swallow from his glass.

‘What’s it gonna be?’

2

Fingers stares at his reflection in the gray surface of his television screen, forearms resting on his knees, glass of dark rum gripped in both hands. He looks at his light
skin, his wavy hair. He thinks of his mother, whom he hasn’t seen since he was twelve, thirty years ago now. He wonders if she’s still alive. He can’t imagine she is. He feels
small and impotent, and hates that he’s been made to feel that way. He doesn’t want to betray his friend a second time.

He betrayed him once already.

Louis Lynch called, said he’d been talking to people all day with no luck, asked did he know Eugene Dahl, and he answered without thinking. When Louis Lynch asks a question he’s
asking for the Man, and when the Man wants an answer you provide it. It’s simple as that.

He gave him a gun, offered him money, tried to correct his mistake. But Eugene’s on the run because of what he did, wanted for murder, and he’s being asked once more to betray him,
only this time it’s coming from the cops. He doesn’t want to do it, but he doesn’t want his life to come crashing down around him either. It makes him sick. He’s not ashamed
of where he came from, nor of what he is. He was born of adversity and that makes him strong. Part of him thinks he should tell these cops to go fuck themselves, and every part of him wants to.
They’ll spread the word and he’ll be who he is. He’s already who he is. The only difference will be, everybody’ll know it.