Free Don't Look Behind You by Mickey Spillane

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