Tears Are for Angels (17 page)

    "That gun keeps popping up between us, doesn't it?" I said.

    He didn't answer. He went around the corner of the desk and sat down in the big leather-covered chair and laid the pistol down on the dusty, paper-strewn desk. His hand hovered near it and the sweat was running freely on his face now.

    "What trouble have I got?" he said.

    I felt my teeth pull bark in a grin I couldn't stop. "This wife of mine," I said. "She's quite a bitch."

    He just looked at me. "She used to know Lucy."

    His hands, twisting nervously in his lap, stopped, still and motionless, and his head jerked visibly, as if he had been slapped.

    "Real well," I said. "They were old chums, you might say."

    "All right," he choked. "So what?"

    "So there were letters," I said. "A lot of letters. Like this one."

    I reached inside my coat and pulled it out and tossed it on his desk. His hand reached for it, darting, and stopped just short of it. He licked his lips and suddenly his shoulders squared slightly and he picked it up and opened it and began to read.

    I had worked so long to get it just right that I almost knew it from memory. I let the words of it run through my mind as I watched him read it. The first page was just routine stuff I had copied from one of the other letters. The real juice was in the last two paragraphs:

    

    
You know I told you about this Dick Stewart in my last letter. I haven't told Harry anything about it yet. He would kill Stewart, I know he would, he has such an awful temper. Anyway, Stewart is coining out here tonight, or says he is, since Harry's away.

    
I don't know what I'll do. I'm in a jam, Jean, and I don't know how to get out of it. All I can do is just hope and pray Harry never finds out.

    

    It was a chance we had to take. But it stood to reason, from what we knew of Lucy and of Stewart, that she must have known he was coming that night, that it was possible she would have written such a letter. If she hadn't known he was coming-well, it was a gamble.

    I sat there and watched him while he read it. Then he began to sag in the chair and I watched his face break up and grow old under my eyes and I laughed out loud.

    "You see the date on that letter, don't you?" I said.

    "Yes."

    "The day she died."

    "Yes." He made an effort to get hold of himself. "I don't believe she ever wrote this thing."

    "That's all right. I don't care whether you believe it or not. A jury probably would. By the way, that's only a copy there. The real thing is safe out at my place."

    And then the gun was in his hand like lightning and I looked at death in his eyes and in the shaking hand.

    "You shut up," he said. "I'm not going to take any more. I'll kill you first."

    I didn't say anything. There is a point beyond which it is not safe to push even a rabbit. And he was no rabbit. He was desperate, harried, dangerous. I just sat there and watched him and pretty soon the light went out of his eves and he put the gun down and I started to breathe again.

    "All right," he said. "What are you going to do?"

    I leaned forward slightly.

    "I fixed it up that night," I said, "after you left it all lying in my lap. I got us both off all right. Except for a little matter of me being out one wife and one arm. But that letter could screw the works if the right people saw it."

    He took another pull at the bottle.

    "That's how she suckered me. I didn't know anything about her knowing Lucy until after she came out there and wiggled those hips at me and got me to marry her."

    I stood up and walked around the desk and deliberately shoved the gun aside and sat down on the corner where it had been.

    "She didn't know I didn't have any more money. She knew the farm was gone, but she thought I still had all the money I got for it and all the money I used to have, hid out somewhere. That was what she was interested in. She figured when she had me hitched up, fair and square, she'd spring the letter on me. There's enough in it to persuade the sheriff to open up the case again."

    He listened as impassively as if I had been one of his customers, begging him to extend a little more credit.

    "You see, she had it figured that I had found out somebody had been playing around with Lucy, but that I didn't know who. And that I had killed Lucy because of it, and then arranged the suicide. She thought the letter would force me to sign over all the money she thought I had to her. And she was pretty close to the truth, at that."

    His face was a little puzzled now. He could feel it coming but he didn't know yet quite what shape it would take.

    "She was real disappointed about my money," I said, "until I told her how it really happened that night, and about how much money your wife has."

    "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.

    

    

    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."