He was bored. He didn't like his assignment. But the captain thought that sooner or later Deke was going to try to contact her, or she him, and he was taking every precaution. The telephone was bugged and the operators alerted to trace all incoming calls; and there was a police cruiser with a radio-telephone parked within thirty seconds' distance down the street, manned by four detectives.
The captain wanted Deke as bad as people in hell want ice water.
Iris threw down the magazine and sat up. She was wearing a silk print dress and the skirt hiked up, showing smooth yellow thighs above tan nylon stockings.
The book fell from the detective's hands.
'Why the hell don't you just arrest me and have it done with?' she flared in her vulgar husky voice.
Her voice grated on the detective's nerves. And her vulgar sensuality bothered him. He was a home-loving man with a wife and three children, and her perfumed voluptuous body with its effluvium of sex outraged his sensibilities. His puritanical soul felt affronted by this aura of sex and his perverse imagination filled him with a sense of guilt. But he had himself well under control.
'I just take orders, ma'am,' he said mildly. 'Any time you want to go to the station of your own accord I'll take you.'
'Shit,' she said, looking at him with disgust.
He was a tall, balding, redheaded, middle-aged man with a slight stoop. A small dried face between huge red ears gave him a monkeyish look and his white skin was blotched with large brown freckles. He was a plain-clothes precinct detective and he looked underpaid.
Iris examined him appraisingly. 'If you weren't such an ugly mother-raper at least we could pass time making love,' she said.
He was beginning to suspect that was the reason the captain had chosen him for the assignment and he felt slightly piqued. But he just grinned and said, jokingly, 'I'll put a sack over my head.'
She started to grin and then looked suddenly caught. Her face mirrored her thoughts. 'All right,' she said, getting up.
He looked alarmed. 'I was just joking,' he said foolishly.
'I'll go undress and you come in with nothing showing but your eyes and mouth.'
He grinned shamefacedly. 'You know I couldn't do that.'
'Why not?' she said. 'You ain't never had nobody like me.'
Red came out in his face as though it had caught fire. He looked like a small boy caught in a guilty act. 'Now, ma'am, you got to be sensible; this surveillance ain't going to last for ever — '
She turned quickly on her high heels and started towards the kitchen. Her walk was exaggerated, like that of a prostitute soliciting trade. But he had to follow her, cursing his instincts which kept defying his will.
She searched in the pantry, paying him no attention. He felt a slight trace of trepidation, fearing she might come out with a gun. But she found what she wanted, a brown paper sack. She turned and tried to put it over his head, but he jumped back and warded her off as though she held a live rattlesnake.
'I just wanted to try it for size,' she said, trying it on her own head instead. 'What are you anyway, a pansy?'
He was incensed by her allusion to his masculinity, but he consoled himself with the thought that in different circumstances he'd ride that yellow bitch until she yelled quits.
She switched past him, looking at him through the corners of her eyes and brushing him lightly with her hips. Then she deliberately shook her buttocks and waved the sack over her head like a dare and went into the bedroom.
He debated whether to follow her. This bitch was getting on his nerves, he told himself. She wasn't the only one who could make love, hell, his wife — He stopped that thought; that wasn't going to get him anywhere. Finally he gave in and followed her. Orders were orders, he told himself.
He found her with a pair of nail scissors in her hand, cutting eyeholes in the paper sack. He felt his ears burning. He looked about the room for a telephone extension, but didn't see any. Against his will he watched her cut out a place for his mouth. Unconsciously his vision strayed to her wide luscious mouth. She licked her lips and stuck out the tip of her tongue.
'Now, ma'am, this has gone far enough,' he protested.
She acted as though she hadn't heard, measuring his head with her eyes. Then she cut out a place for his ears, saying, 'Big ears, big you-know-what.' His ears burned as though on fire. For a moment she stood looking at her handiwork. He looked too.
'You've got to breathe, haven't you, baby?' she cooed and cut out a place for his nose.
'Now you come out of here and sit down and behave yourself,' he said, trying to sound stern, but his voice was thick with tongue.
She went over to the small record player against the wall and put on a slow sexy blues number and stood for a moment weaving her body tantalizingly, snapping her fingers.
'I'll have to use force,' he warned.
She swung around and threw open her arms and advanced on him. 'Come on and force me, daddy,' she said.
He turned his back and stood in the doorway. She stood before the mirror and took off her ear-rings and necklace and ran her fingers through her hair, whistling a low accompaniment to the music, seemingly paying him no attention. Then she took off her dress.
He turned around to see what she was doing and damn near jumped out of his skin. 'Don't do that!' he shouted.
'You can't stop me from undressing in my own bedroom,' she said.
He went over and snatched up the dressing-table chair and planted it in the doorway and plopped himself down with an air of determination. 'All right, go ahead,' he said, turning his profile towards her so he could watch her for mischief through the corners of his eyes.
She tilted the dressing-table mirror so he could see her reflection, then pulled up her slip over her head. Now her creamy yellow body was clad only in a thin black strapless bra and tiny black pants trimmed with lace, over a garter belt.
'If you're scared, go home,' she taunted.
He gritted his teeth and continued to look away.
She took off her bra and pants and stood facing the mirror, cupping her breasts in her hands and gently caressing her teaties. With only the garter belt and nylon stockings and high-heeled shoes, she looked more nude than were she stark-naked. She saw him peeping at her reflection in the mirror, and began doing things with her stomach and hips.
He swallowed. From the neck up he was blindly furious; but from the neck down he was on a live wire edge. His insides were a battleground for his will and his lust, with his organs suffering the consequences. Whole areas of his body seemed on fire. The fire seemed breaking through his skin. Centipedes were crawling over his testicles and ants were attacking his phallus. He squirmed in his seat as it became more and more unbearable; his pants were too tight; his coat was too small; his head was too hot; his mouth was too dry.
With a flourish like a stripteaser removing her G-string, she took off one shoe and tossed it into his lap. He knocked it violently aside. She took off the other shoe and tossed it into his lap. He caught himself just in time to keep from grabbing it and biting it. She stripped off her stockings and garter belt and approached him to drape them about his neck.
He came to his feet like a Jack-in-the-box, saying in a squeaky voice, 'This has gone far enough.'
'No, it hasn't,' she said and moved into him.
He tried to push her away but she clung to him with all strength, pushing her stomach into him and wrapping her legs about his body. The odor of hot-bodied woman, wet cunt and perfume came up from her and drowned him.
'Goddamned whore!' he grated, and backed her to the bed. He tore off his coat, mouthing, 'I'll show you who's a pansy, you hot-ass slut.'
But at the last moment he regained enough composure to go hang his holstered pistol on the outside doorknob out of her reach, then he turned back towards her.
'Come and get it, pansy,' she taunted, lying on the bed with her legs open and her brown-nippled teats
