Джеймс Чейз: There’s Always A Price Tag

‘I’m in the advertising racket.’

‘Is that right? I’ve often thought of going into that racket myself. I guess there’s plenty of money to be made in commercial television these days. You in that?’

‘I sell space.’

He grimaced.

‘That could be a tough job, couldn’t it?’

I said it was a tough job.

He looked at me then. Maybe the whisky fumes were lifting from his brain. He certainly seemed to be sobering up. I could tell by his expression, he was seeing me for the first time. He was seeing the suit I had been wearing hard for the past three years; the shirt I had intended to wash yesterday, but hadn’t got around to, the shoes that had taken me up and down hundreds of stairs and into hundreds of offices and out again, usually empty handed.

‘You look as if you’re having a rough time, kid; are you, or isn’t it my business?’

I nearly told him it wasn’t his business, but I remembered in time that this might be the opportunity I had been waiting for for three long years.

‘Sure it’s rough, but that’s my funeral,’ I said. I had long learned that the rich boys are always on their guard against the fast touch, and I didn’t want to scare him so early in the game.

He took a small drink, set down the glass and blotted his mouth with a white silk handkerchief. There was a sudden faraway look in his eyes. He could have been going back into a coma or he could have been thinking: it was hard to tell.

‘What do you earn a week if that’s not being too personal?’

‘Twenty bucks if I’m lucky. This is a paid-by-results job. I’ve had a bad week and didn’t earn anything like that, but I’m still trying.’

He stared at me.

‘Can anyone live on twenty bucks?’ He produced a heavy gold cigarette-case, took out a fat cigarette with a tricky monogram on it, lit it and stared at me as if I were something out of a zoo. ‘Look, I’d like to do something for you. After all you did save my life.’

He was coming to it faster than I had hoped.

‘You don’t have to do that. Anyone would have done what I did,’ I said.

‘I’d have been a dead duck by now if it hadn’t been for you,’ he said, frowning. ‘That was a close thing. Besides, I like the look of you. I’m short of a chauffeur: a guy who can make himself useful around the house: throw a meal together, take me around, look after the Rolls. How would you like to help me out? I’ll pay fifty a week and all found. Any good to you?’

I had hoped he was going to slip me some folding money with a nice speech about my bravery. I hadn’t bargained for a job; especially a chauffeur-cum-handyman job where I’d be at his beck and call twenty-four hours of the day. I’ve seen how some rich men handle their chauffeurs. If I had to work I wanted to have set hours, not to be at the beck and call of a guy like Dester.

I opened my mouth to tell him no. I intended to be polite about it in the hope the folding money would come as a consolation prize, when a woman’s voice said from behind me, ‘Don’t be absurd, Erle. We don’t need a chauffeur.’

I turned.

Have you ever fiddled with an electric fitment and got a shock up your arm? Of course you have; you know the kind of jolt it gives you: something you can’t control; a jolt that hurts, but doesn’t bruise; something that hits your muscles and leaves you a little breathless.

She was around twenty-six or seven, tall and slim with copper coloured hair and the cream-white complexion that goes with that coloured hair. Her eyes were large, and as green and as bright and as hard as emeralds. She wasn’t beautiful in the accepted Hollywood standard of beauty. She had too much character, and her mouth was a shade too thin and firm for real beauty, but there was that thing about her that lifted her right out of the usual run of beautiful women and made her sensational.

She had on a simple white negligée that reached from her throat to her feet and covered her arms. Around her slim waist was a gold chain, the only ornament she wore.

‘Helen, my dear, I want you to meet Glyn Nash. You’ll be happy to hear he saved my life. If he hadn’t grabbed me as I was crossing the road, you would have been a widow right now. It was the quickest thing I’ve ever seen. I brought him back because I know you will want to thank him.’

She turned and looked at me. ‘I’m sure my husband is exaggerating,’ she said, her strangely pale face expressionless. ‘Did you really save his life?’

‘Go on, tell her, Nash. She won’t believe me,’ Dester said and laughed.

‘Well, he certainly wasn’t looking where he was going,’ I said, feeling a tight band across my chest as I looked into those big emerald green eyes. ‘I guess he would have been killed if I hadn’t...’ I stopped then because an expression of cold, ferocious hatred jumped into her eyes. It wasn’t something I was imagining. It was there, and it sent a chill up my spine.

Then the green eyes went as expressionless as two bits of glass. She gave me a slow, cool smile.

‘How clever of you,’ she said.

‘Don’t you want to thank him?’ Dester said, a sneer in his voice. ‘Well, never mind. I’m grateful to him. I owe him something. He handles the car beautifully. Simmonds has quit, so he can have his job if he wants it.’

She had moved over to the bar where the light fell directly on her. I caught a glimpse of her shape under the misty folds of the negligée: a shape that sent my blood racing through my veins.

If I took the job, I’d be right next to her: day in, night out, and I wanted to be next to her more than I wanted anything else in the world.

‘I’d like the job,’ I said, pulling my eyes away from her with an effort. ‘I’d be glad of it.’

That’s how it started. That’s how I walked into trouble.

My words seemed to hang in the air.

Helen — I’ll call her that since that’s the way I thought of her as soon as I knew her name — poured herself a brandy, then she turned and leaned her lovely back against the bar so her round, full breasts, under the soft folds of the negligée, pointed at me.

‘But, Erle, although I’m sure he is most suitable, don’t you want to take up his references?’ she said, and a cold little smile hit her mouth just to take the curse off it.

‘Oh, we can go into that later,’ Dester said impatiently. ‘I’m going to do something for this guy: he saved my life. When can you start?’ he went on to me.

‘Whenever you wish... sir.’

I remembered the sir a little late. He didn’t notice it, but she did. She would always notice little things like that.

‘You can start right now by putting the car away.’ He leaned across the bar and unhooked a key. ‘There’s an apartment above the garage. Here’s the key.’ He tossed it to me. ‘Make yourself at home. You’ll find a uniform there. It should fit you. If it doesn’t, take it to Myer on 3rd Street. He’ll fix it for you.’

I caught the key.

‘Yes, sir.’

‘We are right out of staff at the moment,’ he went on. ‘Mrs. Dester has everything to do. I want you to help her — keep the place clean, keep an eye on the garden, clean the windows: that kind of thing. Think you can do it?’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘That’s fine. We don’t eat here. You’ll have to get your meals out or buy the stuff you want and cook it in your apartment. I’ll settle the bills.’ He yawned. ‘Well, I guess I’ll turn in. I’ve had quite a day.’ He gave me a fatuous smile. ‘You’ll be happy with us, kid. We know how to look after our employees: look after us, and we’ll look after you.’

‘Yes, sir. Good night.’ I looked at Helen. ‘Good night, madam.’

She didn’t say anything; her green eyes hated me, but that didn’t bother me: don’t they say hate is cousin to love? I was in and next to her. The rest depended on how I played my cards. I’ve been pretty successful with hostile women: that’s about the only thing I can truthfully say I have been successful with up to now.