Too Late for Tears Page 2

  “Who’s scared?” Alan croaked.

  “You are. Didn’t you ever get a ticket before?”

  “Sure.”

  The man’s eyes were small and dark. Jane saw them move and look into the back seat.

  Jane’s hand reached up and opened the glove compartment. He leaned over a little and flashed his light down onto the bag. He held it there.

  Jane laughed and said, “We might as well tell him. He certainly doesn’t care.” She made her voice high and put a giddy note in it and said, “We’re on our way to Las Vegas, officer. We’re old-fashioned. We’re eloping.”

  The man grinned. He turned off the flash and put it away and said, “Could be. You’re still going to get a ticket. Next time you make a turn, signal. Think you can remember that?”

  Alan smiled weakly and said, “I’m afraid my mind wasn’t on the driving.” The officer said, “Mac, you’re nervous. It’s the girl that’s supposed to be jittery. Get going. We’ll forget about it this time.”

  The man handed the license back to Alan, slapped his thigh with a metal-covered book he held in his hand and walked to his motorcycle. The motor blasted angrily into the night and the man rode away. Alan turned his head slowly and looked at Jane. His eyes dropped to her right hand and his shoulders stiffened.

  He stared at the thing in Jane’s hand and whispered slowly. “What are you doing with that?”

  Jane looked down. Her hand was tightly gripping a heavy wrench. She looked at it blankly and said nothing.

  There was a stridence now, and the whisper was harsh “What did you intend to do with that?”

  Jane looked up slowly. She could feel the cold wetness of her forehead, and she knew that was white and colorless as the high moon. She said, “I didn’t know I had it, Alan. I—I didn’t intend to do anything with it.”

  Alan shuddered and raised bin hands to the wheel. “Put it away,” he said.

  Jane put it in the compartment, Alan touched the starter and the car began to move. Jane said, “Why didn’t you tell him the money was there?”

  “I don’t know,” he murmured. “I was just asking myself the same thing.”

  “You’ll have to make up your mind. We’ll be home in a minute. We can’t leave it in the car.”

  He didn’t answer until they were almost there. “We’ll take it upstairs,” he said evenly. “I want to look at it.”

  THE Château Michel was on Farrel below Franklin, eight stories of heavy stone with cast-stone finials, an elaborate balustrade around a steep roof, and narrow vertical windows. The windows were of amber leaded glass that effectively eliminated light and air. It was what is known in Hollywood as an apartment hotel, an apartment house with extras, one of the extras being a huge basement parking area where tenants could have their care serviced with everything except a paint job while they slept. The night man’s name was Pete, and Jane was watching for him as they pulled into their assigned space. It was about twelve feet from the stairs that led to the elevator. She didn’t see Pete and they jumped out of the car and Alan put the bag on the front seat and tightened the straps. They started toward the stairs, and Pete stepped out of the line of cars ahead of them. He had a wet chamois in one hand.

  He said. “You folks been away?” Jane smiled and said, “No, Some things Mr. Palmer had in storage.” Alan walked on in silence and Jane said good night to Pete and gave him a warm smile. The two elevators were automatic after six p.m. Jane pushed the button and stood waiting. Alan pushed the button again and cursed quietly, and Jane found that she was having difficulty with her breathing. Alan was pale and his eyes were blank.

  The elevator came and took them in and grumbled upward to the seventh floor. In the hall, Jane said, “Kathy! You said she was coming in for coffee.”

  “She’s probably in bed.”

  They walked down the hall, and hot little fingers jabbed at Jane, and her scalp felt tight. Kathy was Alan’s younger sister, and her apartment was only two doors down from theirs. How did Alan know whether she was in bed or not? Or if she was asleep? He could be indifferent about it. Jane couldn’t. She hurried down and unlocked the door and held it open until Alan was through. She closed it and locked it again and leaned against the door. Alan went on into the bedroom. She waited, but he didn’t come out again and there was no sound.

  Jane ran into the room. It was dark there, but the light from the living room showed her the bag on the floor beside the bed and Alan lying on the blue silk spread with his arm across his eyes. Jane snapped on the bedside lump and lay down beside him gently. She brought her fingers down across his cheek, pushed them up again and gently nudged at the arm across his eyes.

  Alan looked at her then and put his arms around her and pulled her against, him. He whispered, “Janie, Janie. You’re so unbelievably beautiful. The weapons are all on your side. There’s no fight left.”

  “What do you want to do with it, Alan?”

  His face twisted. “I don’t know. I want it. I’d like to keep it. I could make if work for us for the rest of our lives. But it’s a rat race, Jane. A blind alley with a big barred gate at the end!”

  “Darling, we can hide it someplace where no one can connect us with it. And we won’t touch it until we know we can do it, until we know we’re safe and we’ve worked out every tiny detail. If we can’t do it, we’ll just forget it! We could even let the police know where it was in some way, so it wouldn’t be wasted.”

  His face was dark and his eyes were bright. It was a long time before he answered. “All right, Jane. God help us, but we’ll hold it for a while.”

  She raised her shoulders and put her lips against his. They didn’t hear the knock until it had come again with an urgent insistence. They sat up, silent and still.

  Jane whispered, “It’s Kathy.”

  “No. She’d try the door.”

  They waited, the hope palpable between them: Perhaps it wouldn’t come again. But it came again, more loudly. Jane leaped up and pushed the bag far under the bed.

  Alan turned off the light and whispered, “Don’t answer it.”

  “We’ve got to!” She went out of the bedroom and closed the door. She walked to the living-room door and stood there trembling. She told herself that it couldn’t be about the money. It couldn’t be. No one knew they had it. She opened the door.

  Pete was standing there, looking worried and apologetic. He said, “I didn’t figure you’d had time to get to bed yet.” He held out a key. “You folks went off and left your motor running. Here’s the key.”

  “How careless. Thank you, Pete. Thanks very much.” He gave her a puzzled look, nodded and turned away. She closed the door and stood there looking at the key and realizing that she was still trembling. She heard Alan come out of the bedroom. She turned. He was pale now and his mouth was pulled down tight. He walked through to the kitchen without looking at her, and she could hear him mixing drinks. He brought out two highballs, handed her one and asked her to sit down. He waited until she was settled on the chesterfield and sat down across from her.

  “That did it,” he said. “The thing almost had me for a minute—the idea of keeping the money, I mean. But we were scared, Jane. And that’s how it would be. We’d be forever afraid of every knock at the door. When the phone rang, we’d look at each other and wonder. We’d jump at every sound. The money would lie somewhere and we’d think we were nil-fired rich. And we wouldn’t ever be able to spend it. It would knock all our values to hell and we’d live in fear . . . and we’d never be able to touch it!”

  “Don’t, Alan! We were wrong to be afraid. No one in the world knows where that money in but you and me.”

  Alan stared at her and his mouth was twisted “No?” he said quietly. “How about the man who threw the money in? I don’t know what the setup was, but it seems logical he’d take a good look at us.”

  “He couldn’t have. Our lights were off and ho was going too fast.”

  “And there’s the car that followed us. May
be he wasn’t a part of it, but I think he was. He got a good look at us, maybe even the license—and how many new convertibles painted a nice bright yellow are there in this area? They could find us that way. And they will when they discover the mistake they made.”

  “What if they do? We’ll have it hidden. It’s ours, darling. I don’t care if we have to wait a year before we start using it. I’ll wait gladly.”

  “Stop it, Jane! You’re going to dream yourself right into Tehachapi. Wouldn’t it be great if the papers carried a description of that suitcase tomorrow? The cop saw it. Pete had a better look at it. I can see him reading his morning paper and remembering that we acted kind of queer, left our motor running. And we had a battered brown bag!”

  Jane took hold of her lip with her bright straight teeth and bit. She bit hard, because she had to keep from telling Alan that it was true. They had acted queer; he had. They had left the motor running; he had. They had been stopped by a policeman, because he had failed to signal. Alan, Alan! She closed her eyes and felt the pain and thought of the money lying in the brown bag and made herself face it—she had to carry Alan. She couldn’t do it alone. He wouldn’t let her. She had to keep him with her.

  She said, “Alan, my own bag is brown. It’s in good condition and it isn’t quite so large as the other one. But we could do something about its condition, and no one would be able to claim—if it ever came to that—that my bag wasn’t the one they saw.”

  Alan thought about that, and Jane pressed on, “There are a hundred things to think about, darling. But there are answers. We can win, darling. The whole world’s in there, Alan. We’ve just got to be a little smarter than the rest. And we can be. Between us, we’ll beat them all!”

  Alan looked suddenly tired. “Pep talks now,” he said. “Listen, Jane. How do you hide a hundred thousand dollars? And if you solve that one, how do you spend a hundred thousand dollars? Let’s assume we’ve got it all clear. It isn’t counterfeit, it isn’t marked——”

  Jane rose suddenly, turned and ran into the bedroom and pulled the bag from under the bed. She opened it and took out one of the packs and went back into the living room and threw it onto the chesterfield. “Look at it, Alan. Is it . . . counterfeit?”

  Alan didn’t got up. He sat and stared at her and said, “One more step, one more link in the chain. Paper takes fingerprints. You’ve just put yours all over those bills.”

  “I’ll wipe them off. Are they counterfeit, Alan? Are they marked?”

  He came over and sat down and poked at them with the end of his pencil. It was a packet of twenties, and ho turned one over with the pencil and studied it closely. He picked it up gingerly by the corners and carried it over to the light and looked at it from a half dozen angles. Ho brought it back and dropped it, looked at a few more casually, and sat down on the chesterfield.

  He said, “I’m no expert, Jane. But they look like the real thing to me. And the numbers aren’t consecutive. It’s old money, and there aren’t any marks on it that I could see.” Resignation sounded through the level tones, as if he had bowed quietly to some bedeviled and ineluctable logic. He said faintly, “But I work in a bank. I can’t suddenly blossom out a rich man.”

  “We won’t touch the money! Not until we know—until we know that it’s safe and we can use it without risk. Just help me hide it, dearest, and after that we’ll let you decide what’s best.” After a long while, he said, “We’ll keep it. We’ll keep it one week. Then we’ll decide whether we ought to give it up. We’ll hide it tonight.”

  “Where?” Breathlessly.

  “At Union Station. We’ll check it. They handle a million bags and a million faces. They don’t take names. They just hand you a ticket.”

  “How long will they keep it before they——”

  “Indefinitely, I think. They have a warehouse they take it to if you leave it too——”

  He didn’t finish, because Jane had thrown herself down beside him. She pulled his head down and her fingers played softly in his hair. Outside, a horn blasted into the night and someone shouted and the night was silent again.

  THE great station was crowded and people moved urgently in a dozen directions, or stood about with weary patience, or slept in awkward helplessness in the deep leather seats that filled the long waiting room. Two men were on duty at the check stand, working rapidly, handling the baggage as if it contained clothing and toilet articles and souvenirs, looking at a face only now and then to answer a question.

  Jane had taken the bag from the apartment by going down the back stairs and out the side entrance, where Alan had picked her up. Now Alan had the bag and Jane was waiting at the magazine stand, watching him while she nervously riffled the pages of a twenty-five-cent reprint. He was wearing a hat and the brim was turned down all around. It looked strange, absurd. Jane told herself it was because he just never wore a hat, that he wouldn’t look strange to anyone else. It was his turn at the counter now, and he lifted the bag with a stiff movement, and Jane remembered that he was wearing gloves. Fingerprints, he had said. But it was a warm night. And the topcoat, with the collar turned up! She was holding the book. Lightly now, and her face was hot. It was clear to anyone with eyes that Alan was about to check a suitcase containing a hundred thousand dollars!

  The little dark man behind the counter took the bag, and it seemed to Jane that Alan spoke to him. The man looked up and said something, handed Alan a white ticket and turned. Alan walked away, toward the great doors, and Jane put the book into its place on the rack and hurried outside. She found Alan in the car, lighting a cigarette. His hands shook. He had forgotten to take off the gloves. She put her arms around his waist and held tight to him, and after a while the tensions that had been building in her were gone and she began the ascent again.

  “It’s all right now, isn’t it, darling?”

  Alan said, “Yeh, I guess so.”

  “Where’s the ticket?”

  He handed it to her. It was white, about two inches square, with a paragraph of line writing and a six-digit number. Jane Raid, “You keep it, darling.”

  He took it and put it in the aide pocket of the topcoat. “There’s a hole in the pocket,” he said. “It’ll slide down in the lining and stay there until we want to use it or put it somewhere else.” He threw the cigarette away and started the car.

  “What’s the matter, lover?”

  He didn’t answer. The car turned out onto Aliso and started west toward home.

  Then Alan said, “The money’s there now, and no one will ever know who put it there. Now let’s forget it, Jane, shall we? Let’s just forget it!”

  “What did you say to the man at the counter?”

  “I didn’t say anything to the man at the counter.”

  “But——” Jane stopped, and something touched her coldly. “You did. I saw you.”

  “Oh, yes. I told him I was going to a hospital for a while and wouldn’t be picking up the bag for some time. He said it would be all right.”

  The bright pattern suddenly broke and the quick thought was there, spread out thinly in her mind: Alan was lying.

  KATHERINE PALMER folded the leavened egg whites into the rich batter with the slow care and infinite concentration of one who handles fissionable material. Her full dark brows pulled together and a tiny pink tongue tip protruded uneasily from between her teeth. She looked unhappy. Actually she was not only happy but contented. She enjoyed the simple act of making waffles because Jay had shown her how, including in the recipe a kind of esoterica out of the folklore of America. Jay, who was going to marry her, and who had died in the shallow crimson waters off Normandy. If the pains she was taking now were for Jay, the thought didn’t occur to her. These were for her brother, of whom she was quietly and unobtrusively fond, and for his wife Jane, whom she liked because she thought Jane was beautiful.

  She was young, but not quite so young as she looked. It was not that she was a small girl or that she had flour across her nose. It lay in her
warm olive skin and in an expression of winsome perplexity, which was entirely n matter of the way her eyes were made and the dark brows grew, and had nothing to do with the quality of her psyche.

  She gave the dully mixture in the golden crock a last fold and turned to open the refrigerator door.

  A brief and somewhat systematized rattling sounded from the front door and a voice called, “Hey, Shorty, the Sunday-morning muffins ready yet?”

  “Pretty quick, Alan; sit down . . . Morning, Jane!”

  There was no answer, and she wiped her hands and stepped out into the living room. “Isn’t Jane—Oh, I was afraid you hadn’t come, Janie.”

  Jane had sat down with some newspapers on her lap and was already busy with one of them. “Oh, yes,” she said absently, “on Sundays we have breakfast with Kathy.”

  Kathy caught her breath shortly and then smiled, “There’s an added feature this morning—ham juice by name. It’s cream poured over the ham while it’s cooking. ‘S good.”

  “Bring ’er on,” Alan grinned. “Need any help?”

  “Not allowed.”

  She started back to the kitchen, and Alan said, “Coming to the show with us tonight?”

  The question took Kathy by surprise. She had made it a point to avoid intruding on Alan’s and Jane’s life together, and almost never went with them on their evenings out. She would have liked to go tonight, but she turned to make an excuse, and Jane brought a hand sharply down across the paper in her lap.

  “You and Kathy go,” she said tightly. “I just can’t take any more Sunday movies.”

  “No-o,” Kathy said quietly. “I can’t make it tonight. Excuse me, I have to look at the ham!”

  She fled to the tiny kitchen and stood staring down into the yellow batter, searching for an answer. Had she said something to offend Jane? Then she noticed that the batter was losing its airy lightness, and she forgot Jane in her anxiety to get breakfast under way before it was too late. She began to move quickly, precisely, only vaguely aware of a sibilant sound of voices in the other room. A slammed door put a period to the sounds, and Kathy stopped abruptly, waiting. She looked into the silent living room.