"When I feel like doing it. And stop shouting!"
"I'm notshouting , Elise! When do you want to do it? Do youever want to do it, Elise?"
"Yes!" she shouted.
"When?"
"Right now, Roger, okay? Right here, okay? Let's do it right here on the sidewalk, okay?"
"Fine by me!"
"You'd do it, too, wouldn't you?"
"Yes! Right here!Anywhere !"
"Well, I wouldn't! You'd have done it at the goddamnmovies if I'd let you."
"I'd have done it in the bar, too, if you hadn't startedarguing about that dumb movie!"
"You'd do it in church!" she said. "You're a maniac, is what you are.
"That's right, I'm a maniac! You're driving me crazy is why I'm a maniac!"
They were entering their building now. He lowered his voice.
"Let's do it in the elevator, okay?" he said. "You want to do it in the elevator?"
"No, Roger, I don't want to do it in the goddamn elevator."
"Then let's take the elevator up to the roof, we'll do it on the roof."
"I don't want to do it on the goddamn roof, either."
He stabbed angrily at the elevator button.
"Wheredo you want to do it, Elise?When do you want to do it, Elise?"
"Later."
"When later?"
"When Johnny Carson goes off."
"Ifwe were on television," he said, "and Johnny Carson was watchingus ," he said, "and he had a big hard-on hellip;"
"We happen tolive here, Roger."
" hellip; do you think Johnny Carson would wait tillwe were off to do it? Or would Johnny Carson hellip; ?"
"I don't care what Johnny Carson would do or wouldn't do. I don't evenlike Johnny Carson."
"Then why do you want to wait till he's off?"
The elevator doors opened.
At first they thought it was a stuffed dummy. The lower half of a scarecrow or something. Blue pants, blue socks, black shoes, black belt through the trouser loops. A Halloween prank. Some kids had tossed half a stuffed dummy into the elevator.
And then they realized that a jagged, bloody edge of torn flesh showed just above the dummy's waist, and they realized that they were looking at the lower torso of a human being and Elise screamed and they both ran out of the lobby and out of the building and up to the pay phone on the corner, where Roger breathlessly dialed 911.
The cruising cops in Boy Two responded within three minutes.
One of the cops got on the walkie-talkie to the Eight-Seven.
The other cop, although he should have known better, went through the stiff's trousers and found a wallet in the right hip pocket.
Inside the wallet, which he also shouldn't have touched, he found a driver's license with a name and an address on it.
"Well, here's who he is, anyway," he said to his partner.
CHAPTER 5
"What this is," Parker said, "you had an obscene phone call, is what this is."
"That's what I figured it was," Peaches said.
She still looked pretty good. Maybe like a woman in her early fifties. Good legs mdash;well, the legs never changed mdash;breasts still firm, hair as red as he remembered it, maybe with a little help from Clairol. Wearing a simple skirt and blouse, high-heeled shoes. Legs tucked up under her on the couch. He was glad he'd shaved.
"They're not all of them what you think they're gonna be," Parker said. "I mean, they don't get on the phone and start talking dirty right away mdash;well, some of them do mdash;but a lot of them have a whole bagful of tricks, you don't realize what's happening till they already got you doing things."
"That'sjust what happened," Peaches said. "I didn't realize what was going on. I mean, he gave me hisname and hellip;"
"Phil Hendricks, right?" Parker said. "Camera Works."
"Right. And his address and his phone number hellip;"
"Did you try calling that number he gave you?"
"Ofcourse not!"
"Well, I'll give it a try if you like, but I'm sure all that was phony. I had a case once, this guy would call numbers at random, hoping to get a baby-sitter. He'd finally get a sitter on the phone, tell her he was doing research on child abuse, smooth-talked these fifteen-, sixteen-year-old girls into slapping around the babies they were sitting."