“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.”
Chapter Six
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?”