Ed McBain - Tricks

"When I feel like doing it. And stop shouting!"

"I'm not shouting , Elise! When do you want to do it? Do you ever 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 goddamn movies if I'd let you."

"I'd have done it in the bar, too, if you hadn't started arguing 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.

"Where do you want to do it, Elise? When do you want to do it, Elise?"

"Later."

"When later?"

"When Johnny Carson goes off."

"If we were on television," he said, "and Johnny Carson was watching us ," he said, "and he had a big hard-on hellip;"

"We happen to live here, Roger."

" hellip; do you think Johnny Carson would wait till we 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 even like 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's just what happened," Peaches said. "I didn't realize what was going on. I mean, he gave me his name 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?"

"Of course 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."

"What do you mean?"

"He'd tell them how important it was in their line of work to guard against their own tendencies, everybody has such tendencies mdash;this is him talking mdash;and child abuse is an insidious thing. And he'd have them interested and listening, and he'd say, 'I know you yourself must have been tempted on many an occasion to slap the little kid you're sitting, especially when he's acting up,' and the fifteen-year-old sitter goes, 'Oh, boy, you said it,' and he goes, 'For example, haven't you been tempted at least once tonight to smack him around?' and she goes, 'Well hellip;' and he goes, 'Come on, tell me the truth, I'm a trained child psychologist,' and before you know it, he's got her convinced that the best way to curb these tendencies is to release them, you know, in a therapeutic manner, slap the kid gently, why don't you go get the kid now? And she runs to get the kid and he tells her to give the kid a gentle slap, and before you know it he's got her beating the daylights out of the kid while he's listening and getting his kicks. That was this one case I had, I may write a book about it one day."

"That's fascinating," Peaches said.

"Another case I had, this guy would look in the paper for ads where people were selling furniture. He was looking for somebody selling a kid's bedroom set, you know? Getting rid of the kiddy furniture, replacing it with more mature stuff. He knew he'd get either a youngish mother or a teenage girl on the phone mdash;usually the girls who want their furniture changed when they get into their teens. And he'd start talking to them about the furniture, either the mother if she was home, or the teenage girl if the mother was out, and while he was talking to them, because it would be a long conversation, you know, what kind of bed is it, and how's the mattress, and how many drawers in the dresser, like that, while he was on the phone he'd be hellip; well hellip;"

"He'd be masturbating," Peaches said.

"Well, yes."

"Do you think the man who called me tonight was masturbating while he talked to me?"

"That's difficult to say. From what you told me, he either was already, or was leading up to it. He was trying to get you to talk about your body, you see. Which is still very nice, by the way."

"Well, thank you," Peaches said, and smiled.

"Sounds to me like that's what would've set him off. Getting you to strip in front of the mirror there. You'd be surprised how many women go along with something like that. He hooks them into thinking they've got a shot at modeling mdash;there isn't a woman alive who wouldn't like to be a model mdash;and then he gets them looking at themselves while he does his number."