Too Late for Tears

by Roy Huggins

  She found a place where the road widened and there was deep shadow from a two-story building, dark and deserted. About two hundred yards down, stairs went up the cliff onto the boulevard, where she would be able to find a cab. This was it. She stopped and took the paper bag from her pocket. The pen she kept. She could simply leave that in another of his suits. The papers she put in the glove compartment. The wallet she took in her hand and left the car. She walked down to the beach as far as the shadow of the building would let her. She threw the wallet and saw it drop into the churning breakers. Perhaps it would wash up again later, perhaps not. It didn’t matter.

  It was five a.m. when she walked back into the Château Michel. She used the same door she had used earlier, and no one saw her. She walked up the stairs. She was tired. She had had the taxi let her off ten blocks away. At her own floor she walked quietly and quickly to her door and unlocked it. As she was going in, she heard a door down the hall being unlocked. She went in hurriedly, closing the door quietly and turning the bolt. She ran to the bedroom. She didn’t know, but the other door could have been Kathy’s. She began to tear off the clothes and throw them under the bed.

  The knock came lightly, timidly. Jane finished undressing and got into the nightgown she had been wearing when Kathy left. The knock came again. Jane mussed up her hair and wiped off her lipstick. The knock came again, louder.

  Jane opened the door and Kathy came in, a blue robe wrapped around her. Jane turned on the light, and Kathy looked around the room expectantly.

  She said, “Alan came in, didn’t he.”

  “Why, no.”

  “But I heard the door open.”

  Jane glanced about the room. “But you couldn’t have.”

  Kathy’s face suddenly lost all trace of expression. Jane could find nothing in it but dark and neutral eyes that somehow, incongruously, revealed a latent courage. Kathy turned to the door and opened it.

  She looked over her shoulder and said, “Your hair is misty, Jane. Better dry it before you go to bed.”

  She closed the door behind her.

  Jane turned off the light and stood in the dark and wondered what Kathy might imagine, what she might do when it became clear that Alan was never coming back. She felt chilled suddenly, and realized that she was standing in the cold room in her bare feet and a nightgown. She went to bed. But she didn’t sleep. And the chill would not go away.

  AT eight o’clock the next morning Jane was at police headquarters to make her report in person. At eight-twenty she was in a drugstore phone booth calling the number Danny Fuller had given her. She counted the rings. On the eighth she decided to let it ring four more times and hang up.

  On the tenth ring, the circuit suddenly opened and a loose and raucous voice shouted, “Yah? Who ya want?”

  Jane put a lilt in her voice and said, “Who am I talking to?”

  “Nobuddy. This is a pay phone, and I answered it ta shut it up.”

  “Nobody? You sound like somebody I’d like to know.”

  “Huh?”

  “In fact, your voice is familiar.”

  “Ya don’t say.”

  “Maybe I should come out and see if you look like you sound. How do you get out there from downtown?”

  “Hah! How do I know I wants see you?” His laughter stabbed at Jane’s eardrum, and she jerked the receiver away.

  “How do I sound?” she said.

  “So-so. How do I sound?”

  “Swe-ell-l-l.”

  “Hah! Hey, my eggs is getting cold!”

  “Let’s see, that restaurant is on . . .”

  “Beverly and La Brea, babe. Ya comin’ out?”

  Jane hung up. Beverly and La Brea. She took a streetcar to a used-car lot on Figueroa, where she bought a scarred and unhappy sedan, dark blue in color, and not too noisy. It took a while, checking Jane’s account and preparing papers. It was almost ten when Jane arrived at Beverly and La Brea. There was a drugstore on one corner, a drive-in on another and a small white lunchroom on a third. The fourth was a service station. They probably served eggs in the drugstore, so it could be any one of the three places.

  She parked and went into the drugstore, got some nickels from a clerk and went into one of the booths. There were three booths. How could she look at all three without attracting attention? The first one wasn’t the right number, and she went out immediately, as if there had been something wrong with the phone, and went into the second. That wasn’t right either. She stayed in there for a while, then came out and walked around impatiently, like someone being harassed by too many busy signals. Then she went into the third. It wasn’t the drugstore.

  The drive-in across the street had a phone inside and a booth outside. The number she was looking for wasn’t on either phone. That left the white lunchroom. It was called Bill’s Beanery. She crossed over to it and went in. It was warm inside and there was an odor of raw-fried potatoes and good coffee. The counter ran the entire length of the place, with about twelve stools. There was a juke box, a cigarette machine and very little else. At the left end, attached to the wall, was a telephone. Jane sat at the left end and ordered fried potatoes and eggs. She was hungry.

  The man behind the counter was long and bent, carrying his forty or forty-five years with a weary patience. He brought Jane some coffee in a cup an inch thick, and she sat and waited for it to cool. Four stools up from her there was a short wide man with dark and gleaming skin and a mass of hair like an owl’s neat. He wore a dark-blue pin-stripe suit and a yellow tie. And he was staring at Jane.

  Jane looked up and away again quickly, and she saw the tall man behind the counter shake his head and scowl at the man with the hair.

  The man said, “But, Harry, strike me dead if I’m lyin’ to ya! It happened!”

  Harry wiped the counter and smiled knowingly. Harry was a skeptic. “Okay, George. It happened.”

  “So help me. She says, ‘Say, you sound like somebuddy I’d like ta know.’ And what a voice, Harry. Then she tells me I’ve really got her going and she wants to know where I am.”

  “Then she hung up,” Harry commented.

  “Maybe she was anxious.”

  “Sure.”

  Jane took out a nickel and stepped to the phone. She didn’t really have to look. George had told her all she wanted to know. But she looked anyway. It was the right place. She dialed the number that was on the phone, got a busy signal, hung up and got her nickel back.

  Harry brought her the eggs and potatoes. She thought of asking him if he knew Danny. If he did, he might know where Danny lived. But it wasn’t the thing to do. As things were now, there was no connection between her and Danny. She felt she should leave it that way. When she finished, George was still there, glancing anxiously out the window.

  Jane drove into the service station across the street from Bill’s Beanery and bought some gas. When the attendant was all through checking things and had taken her money, she said, “Look, this is terribly embarrassing, but my husband has . . . well, disappeared.” Never tell a lie if the truth will do the trick. “He used to go over there to that place a lot, and I’m sort of hoping he’ll show up, I wonder if I could park over there by your air thing. That way I’ll be facing the place and can see him without being conspicuous about it.”

  The attendant flushed a deep red and said, “Sure. Sure you can park there. It’s okay.”

  Jane parked. In front of her was a driveway. She could drive out of here and take the car in any direction necessary. Now it was a matter of waiting for Danny to appear. Perhaps he never would, but Jane didn’t believe that. He had known the phone number of the place without looking it up. That meant he knew the place well. He probably lived close by and ate his meals there.

  At ten-thirty Jane left the car and walked into the station office and called police headquarters. She was connected with the Missing Persons Detail, Sergeant Flanner speaking.

  “This is Mrs. Palmer. Is there any news of my husband?”

 
; “One moment, Mrs. Palmer.” Distant sounds like echoes in a great barrel, then Sergeant Flanner saying, “One of our men left here to report to you personally, Mrs. Palmer. Isn’t he there? Name’s Breach.”

  “I’m not at home right now. I—I was looking in a few places where I thought Mr., Palmer might be.”

  “Well, Breach has information for you, Mrs. Palmer. He may be waiting there for you.”

  “What sort of information?”

  “I’m afraid I can’t tell you that.”

  “Oh. Well, thank you.” She hung up, thinking that it would be all right to stay where she was for a while. Kathy would have gone to work, and all that Breach had to tell her was that their car had been found. But why should they be so mysterious about that? And why in person? She went back to the car. The conversation with Sergeant Flanner kept repeating itself, unwanted, in her mind. At noon, the little eating place across the street filled with customers. She noticed that the clerk from the drugstore ate at Bill’s Beanery. The short, wide man with the pin-stripe suit and the yellow tie walked out when the crowd began to gather and wandered down Beverly toward Highland.

  By one-thirty the place was almost empty again, and despair was a cold seed within her, and she began to tremble. She told herself to go back. The man from the police is there waiting, and by now he knows you called and were told that he was there. Don’t get them wondering about you. Go back. Now. But Jane sat, because freedom and a magic world waited for her too. They were in the coat that Danny would destroy soon, or had destroyed, or had hidden. She couldn’t perform a simple act as a part of a larger scheme and then become a slave of the act, lose sight of the goal, abandon the dream. She would wait.

  He was wearing the same suit. He stepped out of a car he had driven up onto the hard dirt of the lot behind the lunchroom. It was an old car, with only a remnant of blue paint and a battered grille. He wore no hat or coat. He hurried into the place, and Jane could see him taking a place near the phone. She waited. It seemed an eternity of time. But Danny came out again in twenty minutes and walked back to the car. He backed out onto Beverly, rolled the few feet up to La Brea and turned right, toward Hollywood. Jane had started the car when she saw him stand up. She was behind him now, about half a block. He was driving in the center lane, but not fast. Cars passed them, and after a few blocks two cars filled the space between them. Jane found it easy to follow him. At Eversham he turned left, and Jane speeded up and turned. There was no car in sight. Jane gave an involuntary cry and pushed her foot hard against the accelerator. The next street was Detroit, and to the right in about the center of the block Danny’s traffic-racked coupé was parked and Danny was crossing the street. Jane turned and drove up slowly. He took something from his pocket and stepped up onto the walk, Jane increased her speed slightly. Danny had disappeared from view. Then she was alongside his car, and she could see him walking a little tiredly down a broken path between a row of court apartments. They were painted a washed gray down to the windows, and below that was tan stucco with a dark stain rising into it from the ground. There had once been a lawn. He stopped at the third bungalow on the left and opened the door with a key and went in.

  Jane drove home. She had to see the man named Breach. And she had to have a gun.

  KATHY ran to her as Jane stepped from the elevator, and took her arm. Kathy’s face was drawn, and the warm olive of her skin was faded now and almost gray. She said, “Where have you been, Jane? I’ve been so worried.”

  Jane walked on down the carpeted hall and said quietly, “I’ve been looking for Alan, of course. Why aren’t you at work?”

  “Work!” A little of Kathy’s warm color returned suddenly and she said, “With Alan just . . . swallowed up somewhere? Jane, there’s a man here from the police with news, and he wouldn’t tell me what it was. I—I’m just——”

  Jane stopped and took her arm from Kathy’s grasp and said, “He’s in your apartment?”

  “Yes. He was going to leave. I kept telling him you’d be right back.”

  “And what else did you keep telling him?”

  Kathy stared at her in surprise. She said quietly and with slow deliberation, “What is there to tell, Jane?”

  “I couldn’t say,” Jane answered, “I haven’t your vivid imagination.”

  “Jane, this is no time for us to be bickering. Are you coming?”

  “No. Bring him into my place, will you?”

  Kathy hesitated for a moment and ran down to her apartment, Jane opened her door and left it open, and went on into her bedroom and closed the door. She brushed her hair carefully, bringing a few loosely curling strands casually around onto her shoulders. She freshened her make-up and brushed the dark arch of her brows. Then she opened her door and walked into the living room, where there was a man leaning back on the chesterfield, talking across to Kathy.

  He stood, and Jane walked toward him slowly, holding out a timid hand and carrying an air of reserve and dignity. Her sorrows, her manner said, were not for exhibition. She said simply, deliberately avoiding an explanation, “I’m terribly sorry you’ve had to wait so long. I’m Mrs. Palmer.”

  And the man did what Jane had expected of him. He looked at her. Not the simple exchange of glances that is a part of social intercourse, but the look that is a sudden, subtle arresting of movement and attention, a fleeting moment of interaction stripped raw of inhibition and amenity. Jane was used to this. She noted another thing. The man’s eyes, which seemed to be without lashes, had been hard when he stood up. They were not hard now. Now there was nothing about him that was hard.

  He said, with a slow and studied formality, “I’d like to offer the department’s sympathies, Mrs. Palmer. I hope we’ll be able to help. My credentials.” He showed her a sweat-darkened billfold and gave her time to look at it carefully.

  Jane said, “Thank you, Mr. Breach. Please sit down.”

  He sat, and Jane composed herself at the opposite end of the chesterfield and pulled her dress down over her knees. She knew that was the correct approach with Mr. Breach.

  The man said, “Your sister-in-law has been very kind to me, Mrs. Palmer, but I’m afraid I can’t discuss this in her presence without your permission.” Kathy stood up and said,” Of course. I’m sorry. I’ll leave.”

  Breach glanced inquiringly at Jane, who was looking up at Kathy sweetly and saying nothing. Kathy flushed and turned and went out the door without looking back.

  Breach said, “Is there anything you can add to your report of this morning, Mrs. Palmer? Anything at all that might help?”

  Jane appeared to think for a moment, “No, I’m sure I told you everything important.”

  Breach took out a cigar and glanced inquiringly at Jane. She smiled graciously and nodded. He looked critically at the end of the cigar and said, “We have reason to believe that your husband may have met with . . . foul play.” He lit the cigar. Jane said nothing, waiting. “That’s why it’s important that you tell us the whole story, Mrs. Palmer.”

  It was like a sudden wrenching away from reality. The man looked so harmless, spoke so softly. But he was playing with her. Her throat was tight now and she knew that she couldn’t speak. And there was a burning pressure behind her eyes that made them close involuntarily. When she opened them again, he was still there studying her, and Jane noted irrelevantly that she had been right. They were bald eyes, and they seemed naked and evil. Didn’t he ever blink? Why did he stare like that? He couldn’t know anything! And time was piling up against her answer. “Foul play?” she whispered.

  Breach nodded. “I know it’s embarrassing to you, Mrs. Palmer. But if you want our help, we need yours.” The tightness in her throat eased slowly. What was he talking about? “Embarrassing?”

  He knocked off a minute grain of ash and almost leered at her. “The other woman,” he said.

  Confusion pressed in on her, and relief. She knew there had been nothing clandestine in Alan’s life. She knew that she was still safe. And the bald-eye
d leer of the man made her want to laugh. But she didn’t laugh.

  She said, “What—what do you know about her?”

  “I hate to have to bring it out in the open like this, Mrs. Palmer,” Breach droned, “but it’s the only thing we’ve uncovered. A resident of Bel-Air called in this morning about nine o’clock. He’s a vice-president of a furniture plant out in Vernon. He was taking some friends home late last night and a car braked to a stop to keep from hitting him as he pulled out of his driveway. He tells us a man jumped out of the car and started running down the road. He thought of stopping to investigate, but the man turned off the road and disappeared into the bushes.

  “Well, this Bel-Air man decided the thing wasn’t any skin off his nose and he didn’t report it—he’d probably had a few. But when he woke up this morning, he thought he’d better call us. He told us the man was wearing a dark topcoat and hat, and that the car was a light-colored new convertible. And”—he knocked some more ash from the cigar—“there was a woman at the wheel.”

  “Did he . . . say what she looked like?”

  “No, he just remembers realizing it was a woman at the wheel. What can you tell us about her?”

  “Almost nothing, I’m afraid. I—I’ve only seen her once or twice. She’s shorter than I, hair not so blond, brown eyes, I think. But I don’t know where she lives or what her name is!” She put her face in her hands.

  Breach nodded sympathetically. “We had a couple men go through the bushes out there,” he added, “They didn’t turn up anything.”

  Jane nodded without taking her face from the warm guard of her hands.

  Breach said softly, “If there’s no more you can tell me, I’ll be getting back to the city hall.”

  Jane looked up slowly and said, “There’s nothing else? The car hasn’t been found or anything like that?”