Too Late for Tears

by Roy Huggins

“Well, hold the fort.”

  He went out and closed the door. Jane leaned against it for a moment, then ran in and threw herself on the bed and buried her face in a pillow and cried. She cried because somewhere—at the lake or in the sleepless night—there had been cast up a cold resolve that frightened her. She lay there until the morning sun rose high and warmed the room, and the commonplace sounds from the street had reassured her.

  She bathed quickly and began to clean the apartment. She knew that she could not think of the thing that was pressing itself upon her unless a part of her mind was occupied with the problem of dust on the coffee table, unless the thinking was accompanied by the complacent drone of a vacuum cleaner. By noon she was hungry, and in the midst of her eating she realized that the important thing was done, and that it was somehow right. Whatever followed now was a matter of incident. The decision had been made. She did not know when or how. It had been taken without thought, rising out of a need that was beyond thought. She’d done nothing. But it was too late to turn back. She felt a calm and a peace that she had felt only once before. When she had walked away from the bridge in Tulsa.

  The knock came at two o’clock—a heavy knock that was repeated impatiently before Jane got to the door and opened it. He was a young man, probably not yet thirty, neither tall nor short, and he was lean. He looked at Jane for a while out of sharp gray eyes set in a pale face. He had a thin dark mustache riding an even thinner smile, and he was holding a wallet. He flipped the wallet open, held it out for a few seconds and put it into a hip pocket.

  “Fuller,” he said, “detective bureau.” His voice was also thin, pitched high, as if it had adapted itself to his Kean body and his quick, birdlike movements.

  Jane felt the blood begin to pound, and she knew that It would show in a moment in a column of color rising in her throat. She fought it down and felt her face grow cold, and she said, “What is it?”

  “Does Mr. Alan Palmer live here?”

  “I am Mrs. Palmer. My husband is at work.” She managed to get a note of righteousness into her voice. She felt better. The money was hidden, the ticket was with Alan in his topcoat. She could carry it off.

  “We’re making a routine check, Mrs. Palmer, on the owners of new convertibles painted cream or yellow.”

  “We have one. It’s yellow.”

  “Might I come in, Mrs. Palmer?” She hesitated a moment and said, Of course.” She stepped aside and closed the door behind him. He walked into the living room and looked around slowly, taking in the place with a casual eye. Jane walked to the chesterfield and sat down.

  He said, “Mrs. Palmer, would you mind if I looked your place over a bit?”

  Jane crossed her legs and let the dress pull up over her knee. She said, “Why?”

  He smiled. It was wider now, and it was taking things for granted that Jane didn’t like having taken for granted. She wondered if the smile, the dark mustache, the lean body, were what women would consider a nice combination. He wasn’t an ugly man. He was even possibly handsome. She smiled back at him and tried to make it warm. She knew it looked pale and a little feck.

  He said, “I’m sure you haven’t anything to hide, have you?”

  “Yea, an untidy bedroom.” Mr. Fuller let the smile relax slowly. “I’d like to look around a little. Do you let me or no?”

  Jane lowered her eyes and wet her lips and let them part just a little. “Don’t you usually have warrants or something for this kind of thing?” She made it sound polite and friendly, and she followed it with the smile, warmer now.

  “No. But I’d be happy to go and get you one.”

  “If I let you look around, will you tell me what it’s all about? It’ll give me something to make small talk with at bridge tonight.”

  “Sure, Mrs. Palmer, sure. Want to go around with me or do you trust me alone?”

  “That’s the only way I would trust you, Mr. Fuller—alone.”

  He grinned and went into the bedroom. She heard the sound of the porcelain lid in the bathroom being lifted, then dropped; the echoing sound of the shower door being slammed shut; the almost indistinct noise of springs, as if the mattress had been raised and lowered carefully. Then he was in the kitchen opening doors and drawers, lifting the lid on the Dutch oven, looking into boxes with their crisp paper wrappings.

  He came back in and sat down on the chesterfield beside her and looked at her with a pale, fixed stare for a long while. He said, “Where’d you hide it, gorgeous?”

  Her face was suddenly cold and stiff, and she heard herself saying, “Hide? Hide what?”

  “The money, Mrs. Palmer. You shouldn’t have let me go through your place. If you were an innocent little housewife with nothing to hide but the iceman, you wouldn’t have let me have a peep. You’d have been screaming for a warrant and a lawyer, and sending wires to your congressman.” Jane stared at him blankly, gaining time, knowing that the blank stare could mean anything. She was trying to work it out. The man had dropped out of character. He seemed more like someone working for himself than a city employee on a routine check.

  She said, “Aren’t your methods a little unorthodox, Mr. Fuller?”

  “We have to use angles to get results. It worked fine in your case, for instance.”

  “How was that?”

  “You’re about to tell me what you did with the dough, as soon as you get through being wise. When I asked you where the money was, your eyes gave you away like a pair of goads.”

  “Goads? What’s a goad?”

  “Crooked dice, honey.”

  Jane laughed.

  He said, “There’s nothing funny about this. I hope I don’t have to prove it to you.”

  There wasn’t any doubt about it now. Jane said, “What did you say your name was?” He repeated the name, and she stood up and walked to the phone. He sat and watched her. She dialed information and asked for the number of the city detective bureau. She waited, hung up and began to dial again. He stood up then and came over to the phone and pushed the bar down. She put the receiver down over his fingers and he drew them away.

  “You’ve got quite a flair, beautiful. I like you. Too bad you’re a chiseler.”

  Jane walked back to the chesterfield. Without Alan on her side, and only two days more. She couldn’t fight this man. Not now. She needed him. He knew where the money came from. And also—At the lake last night she had looked down at the dark water, and a swift thought had slipped past her mind with a chill insinuation. It was still a vague shadow, but it was taking form, and there was excitement in it.

  She waved at the chair across from her and said, “Sit down. I want to talk to you.”

  “I don’t mind if I do.” He sat down beside her, and Jane moved over to the end, so that she could turn and look at him.

  She said, “You were too good-looking to be a detective.”

  “Thanks,” he said dryly. “After I was sure you had the dough, I stopped trying. I knew I’d get it out of you.”

  “I don’t have it.”

  “Please, gorgeous, let us not haggle.”

  “We’re not going to. My husband has the money and he hasn’t told me where he put it . . . yet.” She smiled and dropped her eyes to his mouth and let her lips fall open again.

  “Nice story. I like that trick with your eyes and mouth too. It does things for me,” He moved closer and put a hand on her knee. She took the hand away. He said, “Tut, tut. That look was for a reason. I’m just taking my cue like a gentleman.”

  “You’re taking it a little too fast.” She wrinkled her nose at him.

  “Isn’t that what you wanted?”

  “Why should I?”

  “You probably think you’ve got reasons. You don’t have. I’m just a small-time grifter, honey. Everything I’ve got in the world is wherever you put it.”

  “That’s not small time.”

  “I was just graduating when you spoiled it.”

  “How much money is there in that bag?”

&n
bsp; “Don’t you know?”

  “Did you see where the liquor was when you were in the kitchen?”

  “Sure.”

  “Go make us a drink.”

  “You’re not stalling, are you?” He grinned. “Hubby won’t be home until later. I made an appointment to see him at the bank . . . about opening an account. I wanted to be sure to be alone with you.”

  Jane leaned forward quickly and put her head against the back of the chesterfield about three inches from his face, “Please,” she said. “I don’t have the money. I want it, and to get it, I need help. Go make us a drink and we’ll talk about it.”

  He didn’t move away. He looked down, at her across his nose, and she could feel hi3 warm breath on her lips. He didn’t say anything, and after a while he stood up and went into the kitchen, and Jane forced her mind to turn, coldly filling in the outline of the idea, checking the details, looking for error. She shuddered because there was hazard in it, and a need for courage. But there was also perfection, because there was simplicity, and because error could mean disaster. And there was no time! No time to find a better way.

  He came back with two drinks, ill-made and raw, and they sat with them for a while, saying nothing. Finally he whispered, “The dough is mine. Maybe you need help to get it. I don’t.”

  “What do I call you besides Stupid, Mr. Fuller?”

  “Stupid will do. If you get tired of that, you can try Danny.” He took an untidy drink. “But you aren’t subtle, gorgeous. I turn up, and you decide I’ve got to be stalled. So you give me a quickie about not knowing where the dough is, and needing my help to get it. Tsk-tsk.”

  Jane looked at him admiringly and whispered, “All right, I lied to you about that. I do know where the money is, but I haven’t it, and I want it. And we have precious little time. husband will turn the money over to the police at the drop of a hat. He intends to do it in two days in any case. He promised me he’d keep it that long.”

  Danny Fuller was listening now, “So don’t you see?” she went on, “You can’t possibly get it without my help, and I need yours.”

  “It’s just a two-day drag, huh?”

  She shook her head. “We’ll get it tomorrow.”

  “How?”

  “I don’t know yet, I’ll work something out. I’ve got to.”

  Danny Fuller looked at her wistfully. “You know,” he said, “I think you will.”

  Jane nodded distantly. “I don’t intend to let it get away from me.”

  “From us, you mean,” Danny said, then whispered, “You know, I’ve never got half this close to anything as beautiful as you. How come? How come you don’t exploit that face and that figure? Like the man says, you oughta be in the movies.”

  Jane flushed, and wondered why, and decided it was because it had been just the right thing to do. She raised her eyes to Danny’s face, and his eyes were bright and he reached out and pulled her against him and put his Ups hard against hers. She yielded for a moment, and Danny brought his hand up across her slender waist. She stiffened and pushed away.

  “What’s your name, gorgeous?”

  “Jane.”

  “Well, Jane, I’m going to need some incentive to give you half of what happens to be all mine.”

  “We divide it even, h’m?”

  “Yuh, that’s the way us denizens do these things, you know.”

  “Do I get any guaranty that I actually get my half?”

  He frowned suddenly and pushed her aside. He stood up and walked toward the door, Jane followed him, and he turned and said, “Sorry, gorgeous, but the small talk all of a sudden got under my skin. I keep remembering you’re a chissler. Where do I see you tomorrow?”

  “I’ll have to be able to call you.”

  He thought about that for a while, took out a card and wrote a telephone number on it. “Call that number between five and five-thirty tomorrow. And for your sake, beautiful, I hope you’re not trying to soft-song me.” He opened the door and walked away.

  THE next day Jane went shopping. She left early, a few moments after Alan had gone, because there were things to do, and all of them demanded perfection and care and thought. At no time during this day must she be hurried or pressed for time or touched by doubt.

  She shopped in downtown Los Angeles, wearing an old dark coat and a turban. In a ten-cent store she bought some horn-rimmed glasses and put them on. She couldn’t see too well with them, but she could get along. In another store she bought a small flashlight. She could have found a flashlight in the first store, but Jane wasn’t doing that on this day. In a sporting-goods store she bought some heavy line for deep-sea fishing. The man who waited on her was tanned and handsome and infinitely bored. He looked at her in the absent way that she could remember—the way men had looked at her when she had had a bump in her nose. She felt flushed and angry when he was counting out her change. She thought wildly of going out and taking of the hideous turban and the glasses, and coming back and telling him she had forgotten something. But she could come back some other time with a mink coat on.

  She found a hardware store and asked for some sash weights. The girl behind the counter wanted to know what she meant. Jane explained that they were heavy, six or seven pounds, about ten inches long, an inch or so thick. The girl didn’t think they had any, and Jane tried two other stores and finally found some in a junk shop on Third Street. She bought four. Outside the shop she took them out of the sack and put them in her handbag. She tucked it under her arm and walked the seven blocks to the bus station on Hill Street.

  Going home she removed the glasses and slipped them between the seat and the side of the bus. But she continued to carry the bag with its twenty-eight pounds of iron. Her shoulder burned and the muscles in her arm were numb, but she had to get used to it. She had to carry it as if it contained a powder puff and a lipstick and an assortment of bobby pins.

  At home she locked the door and took the handbag into the bedroom. She cut the fishing line into four pieces and put it in the bag with the weights, hid it under some slips in the bottom drawer of her chest and went out again. She had to find an alley or a back lot, a place for a yellow car to sit for several hours without attracting attention. Seven blocks up Farrel she found a vacant lot with a great billboard on it set at an angle against a five-story building.

  Between the building and the board there would be just room enough for the convertible, and no one would be able to see it.

  She walked back home. She locked the door again and went into the bedroom and took Alan’s dark suit from the closet. It had been tailored at a small shop in Hollywood. She cut the threads that held the label and pulled the label off. A cleaner’s tag was stapled on the inside pocket of the coat and another on the waistband of the trousers. She pulled them off and looked carefully for more marks or labels. There were none, and she took the pieces of cloth and sent them down the drain and hung the suit back up again. She looked through his shirts and underclothes until she found some that had no laundry marks on them. She laid these out on the bed. At the bottom of his chest of drawers, tucked away at the back, was his service automatic. It was wrapped in flannel, oiled and shiny, the clip full. She put the gun into the pocket of her coat. It was a heavy gun and the barrel was long. It wedged tightly into the pocket and pulled the coat down on one side. She rearranged it on the hanger. It was all right. The gun didn’t show.

  The next two hours were the hardest because there was nothing to do, nothing to think about. She had done all the planning and the thinking, and there was nothing now but simple movement. At one minute after five she called the number Danny had given her. The dull sound of the ring came twice and a high-pitched voice piped, “Hello, Sadie? That you?” Another voice, distant at first, said, “Gimme the phone, Jack . . . Hello.”

  “Danny?”

  “Yeah”

  “Still want that money?”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.” The voice was flat.

  “Is this D
anny Fuller?”

  “Yeah, but take it easy, will you?”

  “Oh. I’m sorry. There’s no one at this end.”

  “I couldn’t be sure.”

  “Danny, it’s all worked out. We’ll get the money tonight. But I’ve got to know something first. If I help you get it, how do I know you’ll give me half?”

  “A very interesting question. Next, please?”

  “Listen. This is terribly serious to me. How do I know?”

  “You don’t. But I’ll tell you something, gorgeous. You’ve got about ten times the chance to get a straight deal from me as I have from you—meaning no offense, ma’am.”

  “You can’t mean that!”

  “Skip it, honey. What’s the layout? You keep me on this phone too long and I’m apt to get nervous.”

  “You’ve got to be at McPhearson Park at nine o’clock tonight. Now listen, at the end of the lake opposite the pavilion there’s a very dark stretch, and there’s a big pine tree there. It’s the only pine tree near the edge of the lake; maybe the only one in the park. Do you know a pine tree when you see one?”

  “Please. Don’t patronize me, I’m sensitive.”

  “Be there. It’s almost in the center of the west shore of the lake. A pine tree. I’ll be in one of the motorboats, and I’ll come along the shore and signal with a small flashlight. I don’t want to have to do it more than once or twice, so be watching!”

  “Will you have the dough with you?”

  “Yes, of course.”

  “Then what’s the idea of all the complications?”

  “Do you wear a topcoat?”

  “I don’t own one.”

  “All right. Remember this: we won’t get another chance. You’ve got to be there.” Jane didn’t hear his answer. Someone knocked lightly at the door. The knob turned. The knock came again, a little louder, and Jane said quietly into the phone, “What?”

  “I asked you a question. Why all the fuss? Why a boat? Why can’t you just meet me somewhere? And what’s wearing a topcoat got to do with it?”

  Her hand was wet and the phone kept slipping around so she had to hold it with both hands. “It’s my husband,” she said quietly. “If it weren’t for him, the thing would be simple. But we’ve got to do it this way. When it’s over I’m . . . leaving him.”