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enough for me to throw something at him and run out the door.
He dialed 0 without looking at the address book (his memory for numbers had always been just
short of perfect), and asked for WEstbrook 7-5430. Listened. Said, “Thank you, Operator.”
Then, silence. Somewhere, over a hundred miles north, a telephone was ringing. She must have
wondered how many rings Johnny would allow before hanging up and shooting her in the stomach.
Then his listening expression changed. He brightened, even smiled a little. His teeth were as white
as ever, she observed, and why not? He had always brushed them at least half a dozen times a day.
“Hello, Mr. Amberson. Someone here has something to say to you.”
He got off the hassock and handed Sadie the phone. As she put it to her ear, he slashed out with the
knife, quick as a striking snake, and sliced open the side of her face.
4
“What did you do to her?” I shouted. “What did you do, you bastard?”
“Hush, Mr. Amberson.” He sounded amused. Sadie was no longer screaming, but I could hear her
sobbing. “She’s all right. She’s bleeding pretty heavily, but that will stop.” He paused, then spoke in a
tone of judicious consideration. “Of course, she’s not going to be pretty anymore. Now she looks like
what she is, just a cheap four-dollar whore. My mother said she was, and my mother was right.”
“Let her go, Clayton,” I said. “Please.”
“I want to let her go. Now that I’ve marked her, I want to. But here’s what I already told her, Mr.
Amberson. I am going to kill one of you. She cost me my job, you know; I had to quit and go into an
electrical-treatment hospital or they were going to have me arrested.” He paused. “I pushed a girl
down the stairs. She tried to touch me. All this dirty bitch’s fault, this one right here bleeding into
her lap. I got her blood on my hands, too. I will need disinfectant.” And he laughed.
“Clayton—”
“I’ll give you three and a half hours. Until seven-thirty. Then I’ll put two bullets in her. One in her
stomach and one in her filthy cunt.”
In the background, I heard Sadie scream: “Don’t you do it, Jacob!”
“SHUT UP!” Clayton yelled at her. “SHUT YOUR MOUTH!” Then, to me, chillingly
conversational: “Who’s Jacob?”
“Me,” I said. “It’s my middle name.”
“Does she call you that in bed when she sucks your cock, cockboy?”
“Clayton,” I said. “Johnny. Think what you’re doing.”
“I’ve been thinking about it for over a year. They gave me shock treatments in the electric hospital,
you know. They said they’d stop the dreams, but they didn’t. They made them worse.”
“How bad is she cut? Let me talk to her.”
“No.”
“If you let me talk to her, maybe I’ll do what you’re asking. If you don’t, I most certainly won’t.
Are you too fogged out from your shock treatments to understand that?”
It seemed he wasn’t. There was a shuffling sound in my ear, then Sadie was on. Her voice was thin
and trembling. “It’s bad, but it’s not going to kill me.” Her voice dropped. “He just missed my eye
—”
Then Clayton was back. “See? Your little tramp is fine. Now you just jump in your hotrod
Chevrolet and get out here just as fast as the wheels will roll, how would that be? But listen to me
carefully, Mr. George Jacob Amberson Cockboy: if you call the police, if I see a single blue or red