Too Late for Tears

by Roy Huggins

  Kathy fell silent, her eyes pulled back unwillingly to the water, and she tried to see the boats on it. She found that she couldn’t. Beyond the rim of light from the pavilion the lake was a great dark shadow.

  The boy came back over to them and Blake put a dollar bill into his pocket and said, “Thanks for the help. You said you didn’t talk to the man after they got through boating. That’s right, isn’t it?”

  The boy took the bill from his pocket, looked at it and put it in the side pocket of his gabardine slacks. “I don’t think so. I think he just said good night or something and went on up the stairs.”

  Blake grinned. “You’re not really sure of that, are you?”

  He looked up at Blake then with a slow frown, and said, “Say, maybe you’d better talk to Mr. Hoxey. He’s the boss.”

  “Why? That seems like a simple question.”

  “It sounds kind of hairy to me. I’d lay odds the blonde ain’t missing. Right?”

  “This is just between us. I’m not the law. Did he say anything to you when he got out of the boat?”

  “I think he did. I was right there when he got out.”

  “See his face?”

  “Yeah.”

  “How many hours do you have toward that license?”

  “Sixteen. And do I love it!”

  “Stick with it. I think the airplane’s here to stay.”

  They both grinned, and Blake went on standing and saying nothing. And after a while the boy reddened slightly and said, “Okay, so I didn’t grab his arm and do a slow take, no. But forget it, chum.” The grin was weak now. “Nobody would pull anything as corny as that.”

  “I guess you’re right. There’s a boat docking.”

  They said very little driving back to the Château Michel. They rolled down the cold gray ramp and along the double row of cars to the place at the far end that had been assigned to Blake. It was dark there when he cut the lights, and Kathy felt suddenly tired. She made no move to open the door. She told herself that she didn’t want to go upstairs and close her door behind her and go to bed with the loneliness and the gray and formless thoughts that waited for her there.

  “We’d better say good night here,” Blake said. “Things will be easier if we aren’t seen together too much right now.”

  “All right,” she whispered, wondering what he meant by “say good night.” She would wait and see.

  They were quiet for a while, and Blake smiled suddenly and said, “I made that sound like quite a project—saying good night—didn’t I?”

  “I thought so.”

  From somewhere near the ramp, a motor roared and the echoes gathered and resounded and died away. And Kathy was still waiting.

  “Ten days in town,” Blake said. “I don’t think you’d go for that kind of a deal, would you?”

  Kathy smiled. “I probably would. But I see what you mean.”

  She thought Blake flushed a little when she said that, but he studied her with a kind of puzzled assurance, then leaned forward and kissed her softly, lightly, on the mouth and said, “You haven’t anything to worry about, Kathy. But be careful after you get upstairs, will you?”

  “You’re very helpful, Donald. With one hand you give me something to shoo the blues, and with the other you take it away. I’m afraid you’ll have to give it back.”

  “Who’s this guy Donald?”

  “After that kiss, ‘Mr. Blake’ would seem a trifle stilted. But I don’t think it quite called for ‘Don’.”

  “Your attitude’s a little too wholesome, angel. It disturbs me. I’m thirty-one, and the women I grew up with come equipped with a full set of coy guilt complexes.”

  “Would you like me to develop some? They sound like fun.”

  “Never mind. And don’t get the idea I’m bashful,” he grinned. “As a usual thing, I have all the subtlety and suave assurance of a rock crusher. It’s just that when I kissed you then I saw a pair of carpet slippers as clear as day.”

  “How charming! And did a neon light flash on and off with the words: ‘From this day forward’ ?”

  “No, the words were: ‘This is it, chum. Think fast.’ ”

  Kathy stopped smiling quite suddenly.

  “Don?”

  “Yes.”

  “I—I don’t think I get it.”

  “I don’t want you to, baby. We . . . have a few bad days ahead of us, I’m afraid. In the morning you should go by police headquarters——”

  “All right. Shall I go upstairs first?”

  “Yes.”

  Kathy got out of the car and closed the door. She said good night. Blake was lighting a cigarette, and he nodded and Kathy walked away.

  THE morning sun was warm, and it lay heavily on the still air of the room. Jane was asleep. She had searched the apartment for the ticket until she had fallen, fully clothed, on the bed, exhausted. And now she was dreaming. She was standing in a magnificent room and people were coming through a great arched door in evening dress. They came in one by one and shook Jane’s hand and walked on. They were all women, and although neither they nor Jane seemed to notice it, they were all about twice Jane’s height. Jane would look up at them and smile faintly, and they would touch her hand distantly and walk on. And somehow she would never quite hear their names.

  She woke suddenly and sat up. “Sharber,” she whispered. “That was his name. Sharber.” She looked at her watch. Nine-thirty. She ran into the living room to the phone and dialed information and asked if there was a number listed for a service station on West Adams owned by a man named Sharber. There was. Jane called the number and a heavy voice answered.

  “Mr. Sharber?”

  “Yes?”

  She told him who she was and that Alan was missing, and Mr. Sharber said that was bad.

  “Mr. Sharber, you were at Ipswich in England, weren’t you?”

  “For the duration. Longer than Al was, even.”

  “Did you ever know a pilot named Don Blake? A friend of Alan’s.”

  “Don Blake? Was he at Ipswich?”

  “He says he was.”

  “I sure didn’t know him. Of course, a lot of good men went through there. But if he came out alive I ought to——”

  “Mr. Sharber, can you come up here this evening?”

  “Where?”

  “To my apartment.”

  “Wh——”

  “I want you to meet this man. You would know in five minutes if he isn’t telling the truth.”

  “Sure, Mrs. Palmer. I’ll be there. What time and how do I go?”

  Jane answered his questions and hung up and stood motionless at the phone for a long while.

  She was washing shaving cream from her fingers. She had finished the search. And now, desperately, she was going about the house looking into things she had missed the first time. She had just, pushed her hand down into Alan’s jar of shaving cream to find nothing there, as there had been nothing everywhere else she had looked. There were things he kept at the bank—an extra coat, a humidor, some books.

  Jane brightened. The humidor. Full of tobacco, it would make a fine place to hide it. Or in one of the books. It was all right. She would find the ticket. And there were other things to think of now. There was Kathy. And Don Blake.

  At three-thirty someone tried to open the door. The knob rattled and a knock sounded sharply, but not loudly. Jane opened the door and let Danny in. Danny looked had.

  Jane said, “Did you get it?”

  “The best, duchess. Nothing but the best for you, duchess,” he said thickly. “I say let’s kill these people in style.” He reached into his pocket and brought out a small brown bottle. It was almost full of a white polished powder. “Cyanide,” he announced. “The poison preferred by nine out of ten suicides! Ask your doctor.”

  Jane took the bottle from him and held it tightly. “How do I use it?”

  Danny bleared up at her and said, “The best way is to get them to write a note saying they are tired of it all, and then
have them agree to spike their coffee with it while you’re visiting the bird farm at Catalina.”

  “How much do I use, Danny? Or would you rather we’d take it ourselves?”

  Danny was a long time answering. Finally he said, “If you have to spike something while it’s in a bottle, that’s bad, the man tells me. Yeah, we got a bargain. He not only sold it to me, he told me how to kill people without getting caught. He says, ‘Don’t spike a bottle if you can help it.’ That way the cops know it ain’t suicide, see? You’ve got enough there to spike a whole pint, though, and they don’t have to drink much of it to get a nice result.” He stood up. “Let me hold that little bottle for a minute, tiger, while you go fix me a drink. All this talk has made me thirsty. And I like it neat, sweet.”

  Jane brought him some whisky in a wineglass, and some water. She gave him the two glasses and he drank the whisky down and ignored the chaser, and leered up at Jane through eyes that were watery now, and bright.

  He said, “You know what that guy says to me after we finish our business? He says, ‘Say, you don’t look like the type of guy I’m used to dealing with. What d’you want this stuff for?’ And I says, ‘You mean you don’t think I look like a killer?’ And he says, ‘No, I don’t.’ And I ups and pulls out my gun, see?” Danny jumped up and pulled a sawed-off, ancient Browning from his pocket and pointed it at Jane. “And I says, ‘Why, man, I’d as soon kill you as spit.’ And he backs up and turns six shades of blue-green and says, ‘Okay, I didn’t mean anything by it, brother. You’re a killer. I can see that now. You’re a real killer.’” Danny laughed flatly and without mirth, and Jane stood cold and terrified, clutching the bottle of cyanide in her hand and letting Danny’s laughter slap at her like a vicious hand. He stopped laughing suddenly and said, wonderingly, “I wonder what he’d of said if you had bought the stuff?” Then he put his gun away and left without asking if Jane had found the ticket.

  THE table was set for two. No one was having dinner with Kathy. She was eating alone, as usual, but she didn’t like to look at a table set for one. There was something about it that offended her, like a picture hanging at an angle. So Kathy always set the table for two, except at breakfast, when she just didn’t have the time. The chop was lying on its stiff paper on the drain-board and she was taking the dish of peas and the milk carton from the refrigerator. She poured milk into one of the glasses on the table, and the carton was empty before the glass was quite full. That puzzled her. She had had only one glassful at breakfast, so there should have been more than two left. She opened the refrigerator again to see if the milk had leaked. The refrigerator was bright and dry and clean. She shook her head and threw the carton into the box under the sink. She put the chop into the skillet and turned the heat to medium. She was slicing a tomato onto her plate, and over the sound of the frying meat she heard the phone. She turned the electricity off and ran in. She stopped at the phone for a moment and waited, then picked it up.

  It was Don Blake. He said, “Had dinner yet?”

  “No, I haven’t.”

  “You probably don’t like to make your engagements this far in advance, but how about having dinner with me?”

  “Where?”

  “That sounds like looking the gift horse in the mouth.”

  “I just wondered what to wear, that’s all.”

  “Oh. Well, I’ve been eating at Larson’s. You can probably come just as you are. How are you?”

  “Fine, thanks. I think I can find us a little better place to eat than that. Okay?”

  “I was hoping you’d say that. I don’t want to come up on the seventh floor. How about meeting me in front in——”

  “Twenty minutes.”

  Kathy hurried in and undressed, put her hair up in a rubber cap and stepped into the shower. Twenty minutes later she was dressed and applying the last touches of make-up and feeling only slightly as if she had worked eight hours that day and had had nothing to eat but two doughnuts and coffee since breakfast. She studied herself critically in the full-length mirror on the bathroom door, and finally let herself admit that she was happy with the way the dress heightened the warm apricot color of her skin. She looked eighteen again. Maybe that was what was bothering Mr. Blake. Maybe she ought to tell him she was twenty-three last December. Then again—She suddenly realized she was hungry. She really ought to drink that milk. It would probably go sour if she didn’t.

  A large fly was hovering over the glass and Kathy waved her hand at him and he rose resentfully and settled on the light over the range. She picked up the glass. The phone rang. She hesitated a moment, opened the refrigerator door and put the milk inside. It was Blake on the phone, reminding her that in one minute she would be ten minutes late. “Be right down.” She ran into the bathroom and took the claim check from the jar of bath salts and ran back to the door and pulled it open. She started out and stopped short, almost stumbling into Jane Palmer. Something dropped from Jane’s hand and glinted brightly for a moment. Jane leaned down and scooped it up.

  She said, “My. I was about to knock. I—I wondered if you’d have dinner with me.”

  “Thanks, but I can’t. Got to run; I’m late.” Kathy hurried to the elevator and stood there, white and trembling. Jane hadn’t intended to ask her for dinner. Kathy knew that. And the thing she had knocked from Jane’s hand was a key. But Jane must have known she was home! It made no sense. The elevator settled to a stop and Kathy opened the door and stepped inside.

  She found Don Blake in the great, dust-hoarding sitting room that nobody ever used. He was lighting a cigarette from the butt end of one he had just finished, and he didn’t smile when he looked up and saw her. He came over to her and they started out. He said, “Cigarette?”

  Kathy shook her head and said, “You’re supposed to tell me you don’t like my being late, but I’m worth it.”

  “I don’t mind your being late. And you’re worth it.”

  Kathy thought that over. They were outside in the evening dark now, and they walked up to Farrel, where his car was parked under a magnolia tree.

  They drove up to Franklin, and Kathy said, “Excuse me, hut was that a nasty remark?”

  Blake laughed. “Sure.” He turned left and got into the right lane. He was driving slowly and looking in the rearview mirror.

  “Don’t you think I’m beautiful?”

  “Sure.” He turned right, up a dark oak-bordered street, that led nowhere. At the end of the block he turned left into an even darker and narrower street.

  Kathy said, “Why don’t we eat first and find a dark street after?” She was looking up at him with a puzzled frown, and half smiling at the same time.

  “We’ve had company ever since we left the hotel. I was just making sure. I’m going to turn at the corner where that hedge is and pull up. See if you know the car as it goes by.” He picked up speed, made a tight, hard turn at the next intersection, cut his lights and rolled alongside the dark curb. Seconds later, a dark sedan took the corner on two wheels, skidded, seemed to hesitate, then tore on up the street in hot pursuit of nothing at all.

  “Know it?”

  “No. But . . . wasn’t it a woman at the wheel?”

  “I couldn’t be sure.”

  “I’d swear it was! And I’d swear it was Jane!”

  “Why?”

  “She’s . . . I know it sounds crazy, but she’s watching me! When I came out of my apartment tonight—just before I came down to meet you—she was just standing there in front of my door. And she had a key in her hand. I—I think a key to my apartment.”

  Don Blake didn’t say anything, and Kathy knew he was waiting for her to explain why she thought it was a key to her apartment.

  “We roomed together while Alan was overseas—right where I am now. As far as I know, she never bothered to turn in her key,” Her voice was tight, the words thin and sharp.

  “Relax, angel. She knew you were home, didn’t she?”

  “Yes,” she breathed, “that’s what ma
kes it so——” The sentence trailed off and she reached into her purse and brought out the claim check and showed it to Blake. “She may have been after this. I found it in Alan’s drawer yesterday.”

  Blake took it from her and held it down to the dash light. “What makes you think this is important?”

  “It was hidden. Where Alan kept his gun.”

  “I’d like to check on this tonight. May I keep it?”

  Kathy caught her breath and held it. The street had a distant silence as if the great city a few blocks away were a fiction. The echo o£ Blake’s words hung quietly. They had seemed such casual words, but they had been strained through an ill-concealed excitement, and Kathy experienced again the sudden doubt that she had felt the night before when she had seen the picture of Alan. But Blake had explained the picture. Perhaps—And abruptly the curtain fell away from the thing she had known since yesterday: that Blake had not explained the picture at all! She had been with him until almost five o’clock. He could not have gone by the bank as he had claimed. There’d have been no one there.

  “That . . . car has upset me. I’d like to go back home.”

  There was a hard silence, and then movement. She looked up quickly, and he was turning the key and the switch for the Lights. He glanced down at her and said, “I’m on your side, angel. Remember that, will you?”

  “I’ll do my best.”

  “Would it be all right if I stopped by the drive-in for a hamburger?”

  She nodded almost imperceptibly. He had dropped the claim check into a pocket.

  At the drive-in, Blake asked her if she had gone down to see the police, and Kathy said that she had.

  “Do you think it helped?”

  “No. They hinted that Alan had left Jane for another woman.”

  “Anything else?”

  “A man was seen leaving the car in San Diego. They said it was Alan, and that if I wanted to find him, I should try Mexico.”