THE PLOT: Ballard has to talk Myra Nichols, a distraught woman, out of jumping from the widow ledge of his office. She has just accused him of foolishly closing the case on her husband, whom he thought to be dead. A local tabloid is attacking him for incompetence and bullying tactics. His staff disputes this, but Ballard, whom his wife wants to quit a pressurized job that has him gobbling pills, sleepless, and constantly pissed off at City Hall, resigns. He relished the decision: “it would be a showdown and it would be thick, black pudding [revenge]. It would taste wonderful. All the guff he had taken, … thrown back in their faces.” He is tired of being a “walking Gibraltar” while dealing with insurance companies, newspapers, lawyers, and social service workers—let alone frightened loved ones of people gone missing.
Then, Myra turns up dead, and a woman named Mrs Jean Landis tells Ballard that Mr Nichols, still alive, is enamored of her. Ballard is rough on her—for a reason. He suspects Nichols has raped her, but (in 1952), no woman would admit that to anyone unless she feared that if she did not, she would be tried for murder (in this case, of Myra Nichols) so Jean and Mr Nichols could marry. Jean uses the phrase "he attacked me." It’s an example of how language itself imprisons a person by preventing a “decent woman” from uttering (in 1950) such an "indecent" word as “rape.” Too bad that Goodis, as Gallagher stress, did not develop other characters except the hero, Ballard. What did Jean think of being bound by an obligation to be “decent” even if it could have put her in the electric chair? |
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