Don't Look Behind You (8 page)

I counted ten of them—five male, five female, attractive, slender, all in black trousers, ruffled white shirts and bow ties—and two more, a woman and a man, unattractive, heavy-set, in cook’s whites. The latter pair worked the little kitchen, prepping platters of hors d’oeuvres and trays of martinis.

A few of these staffers nodded to Merle, seeing him at my side. The well-dressed house dick scanned the room slowly, gave me a nod that they were all legit, and took his leave.

I gave them their special instructions. I explained that I would be in the living room where I could keep an eye on the door while Velda would watch the gift table.

One young man had already been assigned to greeter duty, which included taking coats and depositing them on the bed in the bedroom, as if this high-society bridal shower were a suburban house party.

“As far as any attendee is to know,” I told them, “Miss Sterling is just another guest, an out-of-town friend of Miss Foster’s.”

A kid in back raised a hand as if in class.

“Yeah?” I said.

“Mr. Hammer, is there anything we should be doing differently? How seriously do you take the threat of a robbery?”

“Unless you see something really suspicious, just do your job. Miss Sterling and I will take care of the rest.”

“What would you consider ‘really suspicious?’”

“A guest, after the gifts are opened, slipping something into a purse. One of you trusted hotel employees turning out to have pickpocket skills, helping yourself to a nice diamond bracelet, would be another.”

Some of them smiled at that, others looked alarmed.

“Anything like that you might see,” I said, “report to me.”

Nods all around.

“And while it’s not likely,” I said, “if armed robbers should burst in here—and Miss Sterling and I don’t nip it in the bud—just do as they ask. And encourage our guests to do the same.”

A young woman, her voice quavering, asked, “Mr. Hammer, we aren’t in danger of being in the middle of… of some kind of…
shoot-out
, are we?”

“We won’t endanger anyone,” I said.

“That’s a promise,” Velda said.

No one had any further questions.

With the conclusion of my spiel, they rose from their chairs at the guest tables and lined up at the back of the room, a little army ready for further orders. It was three-thirty now.

A few minutes later, Gwen Foster showed up on the arm of Leif Borensen. She was in a bright yellow cocktail dress with a simple strand of pearls, very chic, but looking too young for her own party. Borensen was in a light yellow sweater and tan slacks, expensively casual. He looked too old for the party. Also the wrong sex.

As they came in—Gwen had a key—Borensen grinned at me and held up his hands in surrender.

“I know I’m not supposed to be here,” the big Viking said, “but I just wanted a quick look at the place… So many flowers, honey!”

She was holding his hand tight, her big blue eyes wide, dominating her delicate, pretty features. “I know! So wonderful. Doesn’t it smell like a garden? I hope none of my girl friends has hay fever.”

They took a quick tour, still hand-in-hand, and stopped to take in the table of gifts.

“What a
haul
you’re making, honey!” he said to her.

Velda had slipped up at my side. “She really is,” she whispered to me.

“Yeah, I saw the Tiffany boxes.”

“The rest won’t be too shabby, either. Know where her bridal registry was? Saks.”

Borensen ducked out, and soon the guests started arriving. The guy working the door looked out his peep hole, then collected coats, and I nodded to the members of the high-class chorus line that gradually came in. Like the wait staff, they were in their twenties and early thirties, beauties who seemed to be walking right out of the society pages.

Not that every doll was of the wealthy class—some were showbiz friends of Gwen’s,
real
chorus-line members. And it was a snap to tell which category a girl belonged to because Gwen greeted every one of them, making each feel special, and all I had to do was pay attention to the chatter. I did that in part because if any one of this pulchritudinous parade was a sneak thief, it’d most likely be one of the struggling actresses or chorines.

On the other hand, a lot of rich people are nuts, so it wasn’t out of the question a former debutante might be suffering so much in her wealth-riddled despair that she’d turned klepto.

As the guests formed pairs or little groups, there was some pointing and giggling at me, school girls discussing the new kid. Of course I was anything but a new kid. More like an old teacher. But my media fame/infamy made me a topic of conversation. For fifteen hundred bucks, I did not give a shit.

Before long the shower was in full sway, the young women in cocktail dresses, bright colors mostly and nicely short, spread out over both rooms, having a wonderful time chatting and sipping martinis. The waiters and waitresses threading through didn’t get many takers on the hors d’oeuvres—this was a group watching its collective figure.

And, brother, I was watching them, too.

A stereo was playing the latest rock ’n’ roll, which seemed slightly incongruous to me, but at least it was soft. Maybe a third of the girls were smoking but the ventilation was good, and anyway cigarettes were props to them, rarely puffed.

Velda drifted in to check up on me. She saw me standing there with a silly grin on my face and got a smirk going.

“They sure hired a fox to guard the chicken house,” she said.

“Some pretty foxy chickens, if you ask me.”

“I didn’t ask you.”

I pointed. “You need to get back to your post, soldier.”

“That rates an elbow, but the trouble is… you’re right, Mike. Have you
seen
the rocks on display?”

I had. The cocktail dresses were simple, not a patterned print in the place, strictly solid colors, all very pop art. Maybe half the wenches wore hats, all at least as crazy as the puffy red number Gwen sported the other day. But the jewelry on necks and wrists was very old-fashioned—diamonds and emeralds and rubies, oh my.

“I can see why Borensen wanted armed security,” I said to Velda. “His two-hundred grand estimate might be low.”

She nodded toward that bedroom door in the corner of the fireplace wall. “There’s a way in through the bedroom, you know.”

“Yeah. I scoped that out. Probably too much activity for anybody to risk it.”

“All it would take is a passkey or an accomplice. Do it when the living room is full and you could just slip in.”

“If you were a female in a cocktail dress, maybe.”

“Or a young male or female in black slacks, white shirt and bow tie.”

She wasn’t wrong. But I said, “It’s still risky. That’s where the facilities are.”

“Well, you’re right about that. Even the rich and famous have to tinkle and poo.”

“You are such a classy broad.”

That made her laugh, and she went back to assume her post. Watching her go, with those long, mostly exposed legs, made all these other dolls look like also-rans.

For about an hour, the cocktail-party vibe held sway, but then the girls assembled in the dining room for the entertainment. Bobby Short, a young colored cabaret singer and pianist making a name for himself, had arrived around four-thirty, and had done some mingling. But now, with that stereo silenced, it was time for him to do his thing, which was jazzy takes on Rodgers and Hart and Cole Porter and other real songwriters.

The living room emptied out for his performance, and I was left alone to watch the door. But it was unlikely anybody invited would show up this late. Even the young man taking coats had bailed for martini duty. At least I could hear the smoky-voiced song stylings from the other room.

Around six o’clock, I let the cabaret singer out, while in the other room the jewel-clad cuties were watching Gwen open presents, with Velda handing each one to her, the hostess thanking each gift giver to applause while Velda wrote down the name of the gift and the giver in a book.

That left me alone in the living room with only the occasional babe cutting through to use the bedroom john. Most of them flicked me a smile that said they were a little embarrassed I’d discovered they were human.

The detective stuff people read about is exciting, even thrilling. But what we mostly actually do is dishwater dull. This had been boring duty, nicely mitigated by all the female goodies on show. I strolled to the open French doors where I had a view on Gwen and Velda doing the presents routine.

Man, all that swag was something—if there were any fondue sets or blenders in there, they must be sterling silver, because it seemed like everything else was. The girls at their tables were laughing and clapping and doing more ooohing and aaahing, getting loud about it—frankly they were all probably at least a little tipsy. That’s probably why I didn’t hear him.

But I heard Velda, all right, and saw her wide-eyed alarm as she said, “
Mike! Down!
”

I didn’t argue, and as I hit the deck, I caught Velda whipping her little automatic out from the thigh holster under that full skirt and three shots were flying over my head, cracks that
one-two-three
turned the hen party into a screaming, all-out zoo.

I looked back fast enough, still on my belly, to see a bland-faced guy in a white shirt, bow tie and black trousers take all three of Velda’s shots in his chest, with immediate blossoms of red soaking the white, not going with the bride’s colors at all. He slid down the bedroom door, leaving smeary snail trails of scarlet and sat there with his chin on his chest and dead eyes staring at nothing, the nine-millimeter automatic clunking to the floor from lifeless fingers.

The girls weren’t screaming now, but they were talking, loud and upset, those who weren’t shocked into a stunned silence, anyway.

Velda was at my side, helping me up. “You all right, Mike?”

“Just wounded pride,” I said, on my feet. “And you know what? I’m starting to feel unpopular.”

I called headquarters from the suite’s bedroom and Pat said he’d be over with a team straightaway. Then I phoned down to Merle Allison’s office. The line was busy and I had to try the front desk to have them send somebody over to the security office and tell Merle there had been a shooting in Suite 2757.

When the well-dressed stocky house dick arrived, not quite five minutes later, he told me he’d missed my call because he was on the phone dealing with guests on the twenty-seventh floor asking about gunshots.

“Velda has rounded up the guests and the hostess in the dining room,” I said. “The wait staff and the two cooks, too. Would you keep an eye on them till Captain Chambers gets here?”

Merle was feeling territorial again. “Who put you in charge, Hammer?”

“The guy who came here to shoot me.”

“I thought it was a heist.”

Maybe Merle
was
a detective—he’d put his finger on the crux of it, hadn’t he?

“Would you rather stand guard over a corpse,” I asked him, “or ride herd on a bunch of young lookers?”

The round face thought about that for about half a second, then spelled Velda in the dining room.

She joined me where I was kneeling over the dead fake waiter.

“He’s in his thirties, I’d say,” she said, crouching down in her cocktail dress, its full skirt making that easy. “Very average-looking. I don’t suppose he’s got a wallet on him.”

“I checked. No, and of course that’s no surprise. The gun is a Browning nine millimeter. What do you make of that?”

I pointed to a square of folded white cloth stuffed in his waistband, like a big hanky.

“Laundry bag,” she said. “For the take.”

I got to my feet. She did the same. We went over and took one of the coral couches in front of the marble fireplace. The murmur of the girls in the next room was like an engine purring.

I said, “He figured to stuff all that sterling silver from the other room in a
laundry
bag?”

“Maybe he was just after the jewels.”

I grinned at her. “Is that what you really think, doll?”

Her smile was more subtle. “Of course not. He was here to kill you. The robbery is just a cover. He may have gone ahead and carried it out… but taking you down was the idea.”

I tossed an upraised palm. “But why bother? Did Woodcock bother with a cover when he invaded our office? Did the guy who killed that poor cabbie do anything but start blasting in broad daylight from a city park?”

She was slowly shaking her head. “Doesn’t make a bit of sense to me, Mike.”

But I was thinking. “It might to me, only it’ll take some digging.”

“Well, that’s what we do.”

“Right. Let me handle Pat.”

She clutched my sleeve. “Mike… you didn’t kill that intruder.
I
did.”

I patted her hand. “I know. So give him a brief statement and then say you’re way too upset over killing a guy to do any more talking.”

The brown eyes narrowed. “And Pat will buy that?”

“Sure. You’re his weakness. You
are
okay?”

A smirk. “What do you think?”

Pat arrived with a small army of plainclothes men and lab guys including a photographer. He never took off his fedora and trenchcoat the whole time he was there, maybe to remind everybody he was a cop. I gave him a quick rundown, and, skirting the corpse, showed him the hall door in the bedroom that the guy had come in. The bed was still piled with the coats of the female attendees, lots of dead minks trying to mate.

Back in the living room, I kept my distance as he sat with Velda on the coral couch and got a preliminary statement out of her.

Then she said, “Is that enough for now? I’m really beside myself about this.”

Pat’s gray-blue eyes studied her like a forensics exhibit. Then, finally, he said, “Did Mike tell you to say that?”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, Velda—you’ve killed guys before.”

“Not as many as Mike.”

“Who has?”

But he just waved a hand, dismissing her, and she found a chair in a quiet corner of the living room, where she pretended to be freaked out while she kept an eye on what the team of technicians were up to, and what they were finding.