Ryan Jahn - The Last Tomorrow

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.