Tears Are for Angels

by Paul Connolly

  "You bastard," he said. "You sonofabitch."

  I grinned at him.

  "So now you're going to play blackmail. Is that is?"

  I shrugged. "Look at it this way. At the very least your wife would divorce you if that letter were made public. You'd be out. Of course, I might go to the chair. And you might go to jail. But what she's interested in is the money, not you and me. I'd rather just kill you and the hell with the money. But she's not interested in that. So you see I've got to play along with her, to save my own skin."

  His fingers fumbled at a cigarette.

  "The fair thing for you to do is to pay out a little money," I said. "Not much. Not compared to what it would cost you if your wife decided to boot you out."

  His sneer was an evil scar under his nose.

  "The great Major London," he said. "The old Southern gentleman. A common blackmailer."

  My good arm swept out in a short, flat arc and my open palm cracked across his cheek, then back, and his head bobbed and the cigarette dropped from his fingers. I took a handful of his shirt and pulled him out of the chair and yanked him up close to me.

  "I could have killed you, Stewart. A hundred times. I might do it yet. Slow and pretty. But I need money now, I have a reason to need money again, and you look like the Chase National Bank. You've got to pay up to save my neck as well as your own. But don't call me nasty names, lover boy. I have a lot of reason to want to see you making worm food, too. Don't ever forget that."

  "Take your hands off me," he said, and I pushed him in the chest, not gently, and he slumped back in the chair. He looked at the gun and my face dared him to pick it up.

  He licked at his lips and I didn't laugh this time. I just looked at him some more. A horn blew furiously on the street outside and I heard the faraway sound of the store door opening and slamming shut and then the scrape of old foe's chair as he got up to wait on the customer.

  "Twenty-five thousand dollars," I said. "That's dirt cheap, even for both of our necks."

  "When?" His voice was strangely quiet.

  "Not all at once. We don't want to kill the goose that lays the golden eggs. You ought to be able to scrape up about five thousand in loose small bills here and there without your wife knowing."

  He nodded. Suddenly there was no fear in his eyes, or hate, or anger. There was an intense nothingness there that I found vaguely disturbing. My voice dropped and I hitched closer to him.

  "Friday night," I said. "You can get that much by then."

  He nodded again.

  "That'll do for a starter. Six months from then we'll need five more. And so on till we get the whole shebang."

  "I don't have any choice," he said. "Where do I pay off Friday?"

  "At my place." He convinced damned easy, I thought. He folded up the minute I swung a hand in his face. Contempt for him curled ray insides and for a moment I took all the old pleasure in the thought of how it was going to be for him.

  Just for a moment.

  "All right. When do I get the letter?"

  "When we get all the twenty-five thousand." A shadow creased across his face. "But we're giving you some insurance. When you make the first payment we skip out of this burg. We're going to sell her car and you can drive us from my place over to Belleview to catch a train, just so you'll know we've left. Then we'll get in touch with you about the rest of the money."

  "All right. Now get out."

  "I'm going. Listen, what was that crap you were giving me about Jean when I came in? Has she been putting the make on you?"

  He flinched. "You keep her out of here," he said. "She ought to have better sense."

  I laughed. "If you don't beat all. Good thing I'm not in love with this one. I'd have to call this deal off and blow a hole in you. Like I ought to do anyway."

  "I haven't touched her. She just hangs around all the time."

  "I bet you haven't. That girl wouldn't be hanging around here for nothing, and I've had a sample of your attitude toward other people's wives. I wondered what she spent so much time in town for. Like I said, it's a good thing she isn't Lucy."

  I walked over to the corner, picked up my gun. and put it in my pocket. Then I started out the door.

  "Harry," he said.

  I stopped and looked over my shoulder at him.

  "Suppose I don't pay. If you use that letter everybody will know about me and Lucy."

  "That's right."

  "You never had the guts to risk that before. Maybe you don't now. Maybe I ought to tell you to go to hell."

  I threw back my head and laughed.

  "I'm in it because I have to be," I said. "I told you that. That girl's got us both over a barrel, Stewart. And she wouldn't mind kicking hell out of us both, if she doesn't get the money. You might remember that, if you get tempted to try some funny business."

  I studied him carefully. He had grown calm, too calm. It wasn't like him. Maybe you get to the point, I thought, where you can't, be anything else but calm. Maybe there just isn't any use in being anything else.

  "All right," I said. "Better make it about nine Friday night, so we can catch that train in Belleview."

  "I'll be there," he said. "I'll pay. But there's one thing you won't get from me, Harry. You won't ever get it."

  "What?"

  "What you'd really like to know. Whether what happened between Lucy and me was my fault or hers. How I really came to be there that night. You won't ever get that from me."

  "Just bring the money," I said. "That's all I want from you now."

  I opened the door and went on out, past old Joe, back at his desk now, and out of the store and into the old Chevrolet. I drove slowly out of St. Johns and then I hit open country and mashed harder on the pedal.

  He was right. He was the only person alive who knew what had really happened between him and Lucy. I would never know. The secret would die with him.

  Friday night.

  And I wanted to know. I needed to know.

  Not because I was still carrying the torch for her, not because I did not already know that it hadn't been a betrayal of me. Both of those reasons had gone with Jean, in the way I had come to feel for her and in the tilings she had told me of Lucy, in the letters she had shown me.

  No. It was because, and I did not deny it even to myself, I needed to hear him admit it. I needed to hear the words come through his lips, saying:

  "She loved you. She only went with me, not to betray you, but to save you, save you from hurt and disillusionment. Lucy never betrayed you."

  I already knew it. But I needed to hear him admit it. And I never would.

  I put the gas pedal to the floorboard and the old car leaped and sped on down the road.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  She was standing in the door of the cabin, her thumbs hooked in the waistband of the same slacks she had worn that first day. I got out of the car and walked across the sand toward her.

  "When?" she asked. I could see her jaws tighten when I said:

  "Friday."

  "Good."

  She stood aside and I went on in the house and sat down on the bunk. She didn't take her eyes from me. Her hands moved nervously at her waist.

  "You want it to be over too," I said. "You're jumpy as a cat."

  "Yes. I want it to be over. Who wouldn't?"

  "You went in with your eyes open, didn't you?"

  Her voice flared at me. "You don't look so happy yourself."

  I looked at her steadily and I meant every word I said.

  "I wish I'd never laid eyes on you, Jean."

  She didn't say anything to that. I do, I thought, I wish I'd never seen you. But if I hadn't, if I hadn't found you, I would still be just a cadaver, just a breathing corpse, aimless, gutless, lifeless. I don't know.

  "I should have just shot him," I said, "right out in the open. I should have had the guts. That's what I ought to have done."

  "Nerves," she said. "Just nerves. That's your whole trouble."

  "You're a
fine one to talk."

  We didn't say anything for a long time. Then I began to tell her about Stewart, and the talk we had had, leaving out what he had said about Lucy.

  "And now he's hooked," I said. "Everything is all set up."

  She came over and sat on the bunk by me and suddenly I was very conscious of the scent of her and the warmth of her leg along mine. I felt her hands on the muscle of my arm.

  "You're strong again," she said.

  I didn't look at her.

  "Your face has filled out and your eyes are clear. I can feel the strength in you. All the strength of two arms in this one."

  "I feel a lot better," I said.

  "You haven't had a drink since we were married and you're clean again."

  I laughed. "As the driven snow," I said. "Just like a baby's breath."

  "When we do it you'll be all whole again. You'll be the man you used to lie again. You'll get it all out of you."

  I felt her hands moving on my chest now, and then they fumbled at the buttons of my shirt. Her lingers were cool and tingling on the skin of my chest and stomach. I felt her breath against my ear and her lips were hot on the back of my neck.

  I didn't move. All my shirt buttons were open now, and I heard her whisper: "Don't think about it, Harry. Think about me."

  I stood up then and pushed her hands roughly away and walked to the other side of the room. I stood there buttoning my shirt, and I could hear her breathe a little harder.

  "You don't have to throw me any more bones," I said. "I'm going to do it. It was my idea, remember?"

  I wasn't…

  I spun around and almost yelled at her.

  "All that nonsense!" I said. "About how strong I am. You were afraid I'd back out on you. So you thought you had to nerve me up a little, give me another little piece to urge me on. As if you hadn't given me enough already. Well, you can keep it, sister, from now on. I don't want it, not that way! Not any more."

  "You're wrong," she said. "You're all wrong."

  "Maybe I am. Maybe not. But don't worry about my backing out."

  There was a sick hurt in me for her to have been so obvious and raw about it. Somehow in the harsh daylight it seemed obscene and incredibly evil that she should sway her body against me to ensure that I would kill a man. It had not seemed so in the moonlight, in the soft and sighing night.

  Why did I have to fall in love with the bitch? I thought. Why couldn't it have been some simple uncomplicated girl with a home and babies on her mind, no thought of killing anybody or even hating anybody? What did she do to me that made me forget the ugly cancer between us and the reason behind her kisses and the thing she wanted from me all along?

  "I'm sorry you feel like that about me, Harry."

  "All right," I said. "Just let it go, will you?"

  She got up and walked steadily past me, out the door and on across the sand, and then she disappeared beyond the big dune. I went to the door and stood looking after her, and I never loved her so much as then. Because the lonely slump of her shoulders and the defeated way she walked told me what it was that made me love her. Not the nights, not the bodies entwined in passion, but the deep hurt and loneliness in her, the complete absence of hope, not bitterness, not anger, just final and irrevocable hopelessness.

  That was the thing in her that something in me answered, could not forget or ignore. That was the thing Dick Stewart had brought to her, and that was the thing-she thought I alone, and what I would do, could case.

  You poor kid, I thought. You haven't got a chance.

  ***

  My trip to see Stewart finished my part of it, except for one more little thing. I dreaded it. because after the talk we had had the other day, it was going to be hard to face Brax Jordan.

  But it had to be done. I had been in to see Stewart on Tuesday and set up the works for Friday night. So on Thursday morning, bright and early, I hopped in the old Chevrolet again and headed back to St. Johns.

  Brax kept an office on the second floor of a ramshackle building that housed a barbershop and a poolroom. It wasn't much of a building, but it was right in the center of town and Brax had always loved pool. He was the local champion.

  I closed the door behind me and leaned back against it and looked at him. He paused in his work, then took the spectacles from his nose and leaned back in the leather swivel chair. His face and eyes were quite blank and the cigar stub in his mouth was dead and unburning.

  "You were right," I said.

  He said nothing. He took the cigar stub from his mouth and tossed it across the desk to the floor. I almost grinned, it was such a familiar gesture. He kept no ash tray in his office, and the floor was burned and scarred in hundreds of spots where he had thrown still burning butts.

  But I kept the grin off my face. I was playing a part and my neck and hers could depend on it. Brax Jordan was my friend, but he was smart too, and he was honest, and he would be the first to turn us in if he found out what the game was.

  We would need him, the best lawyer in the eastern part of the state, after Friday night. I was gambling that he would do it, that he would go along with us, but I knew that if he knew the real scheme, including her part of it, he would never touch it.

  "I'm going to kill the bastard," I said.

  He grunted.

  "And you want me to get you off for it," he said.

  I moved away from the door and sat down in his visitor's chair.

  "You got me to thinking," I said. "I kept an eye on her. And I found out it's true."

  "When are you going to do it?"

  "The next time I catch them together."

  He snorted. "You ought not to have told me. That makes it premeditation."

  "They won't convict me for doing it. Not if I catch him with her."

  No. And not if I defend you. I could get you off, all right. The unwritten law hasn't ever been repealed in these parts. But premeditation makes it different."

  "The hell with premeditation. You can forget I was here."

  He nodded and put the glasses back on his nose.

  "I could. If I was going to defend you."

  That stopped me. I hadn't expected that from him.

  He leaned farther back in the chair and put his hands behind his head and his owl eyes bored into me.

  "I stood by," he said, "and let you sell off the best farm in this county and the house you and your dad were born in and your mother died in. I even helped you do it. I was a big enough damn fool to give away all your money for you. And all of that for a Yankee girl who killed herself and tried to kill you too. Sometimes I wish she hadn't been such a lousy shot."

  I sat forward in my chair and opened my mouth to speak, but his upraised hand stopped me.

  "I've been too lenient with you for too long now. After all that I just mentioned, I let you make an ass out of yourself and a drunken bum to boot for two solid damn years, and when some chippie comes along and grabs you off, for some ungodly reason the Lord Himself couldn't figure out, I even tried to overlook that too."

  "You better shut up," I said. The little bastard, I thought, I never saw him so mad before. If I lifted a hand he'd come flying over that desk at me like a fighting cock.

  "And now you have the colossal gall-and after I warned you what was coming and you ran me off what you call your place-to walk in here and tell me you're deliberately planning to murder a man for seducing this chippie and ask me to get you off from the electric chair, which is the best place I can think of for a bird-brain like you."

  "All right," I said, standing up. "If that's the way you feel about it, I can't help it." How can I get him to come around? I wondered. I never figured this, that premeditation angle. If he wants to, he can get me fried now. He's got to come around.

  "Sit down," he said. "I'm not through with you yet."

  I stood looking at him, my arm hanging motionless at my side, my empty left sleeve neatly tucked in my coat pocket.

  "I never broke the law in my life," he
said. "I have too much respect for it. At least I had, up until you went haywire."

  He swung himself forward and his short legs dangled and then his feet touched the floor and he got up and went over to the big old safe standing open in the corner. He knelt down and took out a big envelope, bound with a rubber band.

  "That's the worst thing I let you do to me," he said. "I broke the law for you."

  He had me genuinely puzzled now. "I don't get it, Brax."

  "I disposed of your holdings," he said, "and I gave all the money to the polio foundation. Only I juggled the books around a little bit and held out this. Ten thousand dollars."

  He tossed the envelope at me and I caught it and looked inside. I didn't count it, but I knew there was at least that much there.

  "I could have gone to jail for that, because I knew if I asked your permission you'd say no, and so I had to fix it up so there wasn't any record of it. That's why it's in cash. You don't even have to pay tax on it."

  "I still don't understand."

  "You wouldn't. But maybe I can spell it out for you. There's enough there for you to catch the first train out of here and go about a thousand miles away from here and settle down somewhere and forget all this and get started again. Buy one of those artificial arms. There's nothing here to hold you."

  "Except Stewart."

  "Not even him. Because all he's done is grab that girl away from you and you never had her long enough to worry about that, if you use a little common sense about it. Which is, I suppose, asking a lot of you."

  "I could just take the money," I said. "It's mine."

  "No. Because I've got those bills numbered and I can prove you stole them from me if I want to. If I juggled them out of your accounts I can sure-God juggle them right into mine, any time I feel like it. You couldn't, but I could."

  "All right. I believe you." I tossed the envelope back across the desk to him. "That's your lee. For defending me for shooting Dick Stewart."

  "I'll be goddamned," he said, and flopped back in the chair again.