Hi,
Shrinking the partition within the virtual disk has not the desired effect, in fact it means that the "clean up" function within vmware can no longer reclaim disk space as it can only reclaim disk space from supported file systems such as NTFS.
So the first step would be to undo that partition resize.
Then you are correct in that you cannot resize the virtual disk in Fusion to something smaller. There are ways to do that via other means, but perhaps it isn't needed.
Since your writing suggests that you are short on disk space, my first recommendation would be to make a backup to an external disk of the VM with the VM shut down (not suspended) before trying to reclaim disk space.
Then after the backup, with the VM shut down still
Go to the Fusion menu -> Virtual Machine -> Settings -> General
There's a button there "Clean up Virtual Machine"
This allows you to reclaim back any space used within the virtual machine of files that have been deleted and gives that space back to the host system.
Also note that if you have snapshots open or are using the auto protect feature that those also can use quite a bit of disk space at the host system and that the clean up works most effective (as in reclaims most disk space) with all snapshots committed and auto protect set to off.
Any disk space not used should then be reclaimed and give just as much space back to the host as a fully resized virtual disk could possibly do.
The only disadvantage over a resized smaller virtual disk is that it can grow out of proportions again.
Hope this helps,
--
Wil