Джеймс Чейз - Goldfish Have No Hiding Place

On this hot Sunday afternoon, as I had the house to myself, I decided it would be an opportunity to take a close look at myself, to consider if there was anything I could do to bridge the widening gap between Linda and myself, and to examine my financial position which was far from healthy.

Linda was with the Mitchells. I had begged off, explaining I had work to do. Linda had shrugged, taken her swimsuit and had driven over to the Mitchells’ house with my vague promise I would join them later. I knew she wouldn’t care if I showed up or not.

Because of a defective filter in my pool, this was one of the very rare Sundays when I could be on my own: an opportunity I wasn’t going to miss.

So I sat in the sun and looked at myself. I am thirty-eight years of age, physically fit and blessed with a creative brain. Some three years ago, I had been a successful columnist for the Los Angeles Herald . The work had bored me, but it was a way to earn a decent living, and as I had just married Linda who had extravagant tastes, earning a decent living was important.

One evening, in San Francisco, I attended one of those dreary cocktail parties where the Big-wheels meet and talk business while their wives yak in the background. There was little in it for me, but if I hadn’t shown up I might have missed something and I made a point of never missing anything if I could help it. I was propping up a wall, cuddling a whisky on the rocks, wondering when I could slip away when Henry Chandler came up to me.

Henry Chandler was alleged to be worth two hundred million dollars. His kingdom comprised computers, kitchen equipment and frozen foods. As a sideline, he owned the California Times and a successful Vogue- like glossy, selling fashions to the wealthy. He was the city’s leading Quaker, his money had built the local, vast Quaker church and he was the least liked, most generous do-gooder of the city’s rich citizens.

‘Manson,’ he said, staring at me with his dark, hooded eyes, ‘I have been following your column. I like it. You have talent. Come and see me tomorrow at ten o’clock.’

I went to see him and listened to his offer. He wanted to start a monthly magazine to be called The Voice of the People which would circulate throughout California: its purpose was to criticise and protest.

‘This state,’ he said, ‘is riddled with corruption, dishonesty and crooked politics. I have an organisation that will supply all the information you will need so long as you feed them ideas. I’m offering you the job as editor because I believe you can handle this. I have had you investigated and I am satisfied with the report. You can choose your own staff. It can be small as the production and so on can be handled by my people working on my newspaper. You needn’t worry about expenses. If the magazine flops, you will get two years’ salary, but it won’t flop. I have a brief here which I want you to examine. You will see you will have every support. Your job is to look for trouble. I’ll take care of the libel suits. I have a top-class detective agency to work with you. We are not muck raking. I want you to be quite sure of that. There is no need to muck rake. We attack the administration, we attack police corruption and we go after the bribery and corruption boys. Does this interest you?’

I took his brief away and studied it. This was the most exciting thing that had ever happened to me. I talked it over with Linda and she was as excited as I. She kept saying, ‘Thirty thousand!’ Her lovely face alight. ‘We can at last move out of this godforsaken apartment!’

I had met Linda at a cocktail party thrown by an ambitious politician and had fallen in love with her. As I sat in the sun, I thought back to that moment when I first saw her. She was the most marvellous looking woman I had ever seen: she was blonde, beautiful, with big, marvellous eyes and a body that could only be the exact model of the perfect woman: heavy breasted, slim waist, solid hips and long tapering legs: a sex symbol de luxe. The fact that I was a society columnist and mixed with the best people appealed to her. She told me she thought I was heavenly romantic. She made a tiny living acting as one of the various hostesses who looked after an ambitious politician: mixing with his friends, supplying glamour to his background, filling them with whisky, but, so she assured me, strictly paws off.

We married within a week of our meeting. Our wedding night should have warned me. There was no passion, no nothing. She just gave herself, but I was hopeful to think that I could rouse her if I were patient enough: but I never did. I then discovered that her obsession was money. I was so crazy about her, I let her spend what I hadn’t got. She was always buying things: handbags, clothes, costume jewellery, junk and because I wanted to keep her happy, I let her spend. She grumbled. She hated the small apartment in which we lived. She wanted a car. Why should she have to take a bus when I used the car for business? I loved her. I tried hard to jolly her along. I even showed her figures to prove we just couldn’t afford the things she wanted. She wasn’t interested. ‘You are famous,’ she said. ‘People always talk about you: you must be successful.’

Just when I was really getting worried, this offer from Chandler arrived.

‘I know just where we are going to live!’ Linda told me. ‘Eastlake! It’s marvellous! It has everything! Let’s go tomorrow and pick a house.’

I pointed out to her I hadn’t got the job, hadn’t made up my mind and beside, Eastlake was an expensive estate which could eat a hell of a hole in a thirty thousand dollar income.

This was our first real quarrel. I was startled by her violence. She screamed at me and threw things. I was so shocked, I gave way. As soon as I promised I would take the job and would go with her to look at Eastlake, she came into my arms and apologised for being ‘so naughty.’

So I went to Chandler and told him I would be his editor.

He sat behind his desk, looking like a vast blow-up of what a two hundred million dollar executive had to look like, a big cigar rolling between his thick lips.

‘Fine, Manson, the contract is all ready.’ He paused and regarded me, his hooded eyes probing. ‘Now, one thing: you will be attacking the corrupt and the dishonest. Remember you will be a goldfish in a glass bowl. Be careful: don’t give anyone any chance to hit back at you. Goldfish have no hiding place. Remember that. Take me: I am a Quaker and proud of it. I believe in God. My private life can’t be criticised. No one can point a finger at me and no one must be able to point a finger at you. Do you understand? No drinking when driving: no fooling with women. You are respectably married so keep that way. No debts. No nothing the opposition can pin on you. You step out of turn and every newspaper in this state will come after you. You now have a mission to attack the corrupt and the dishonest and you are going to have a lot of enemies who will crucify you if they can.’

Because I needed his thirty thousand dollars a year, I said I understood, but after signing the contract, after shaking his hand and when I left his opulent office and went down to my car, I had misgivings. I was already in debt: I had a bank overdraft. I had Linda who spent and spent.

But for all that, I stupidly let her talk me into buying a house at Eastlake.

Eastlake is a housing estate built for the upper income bracket people. The comfortable, de luxe houses sold for around $75,000 and they are equipped with fitted carpets, dish washers, air conditioners; you name it it’s there, even to a lawn sprinkler. These houses are built around an artificial lake of some two hundred acres. There is a Club house, riding, tennis, swimming, a golf course (floodlit at night) and a vast de luxe Self-service store that supplies anything from caviar to a pin.