Free Don't Look Behind You by Mickey Spillane Page B

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.
    Now I sat with Pat, only I took one couch and he took the other, facing each other over the low-slung coffee table.
    “So what do you make of this, Mike?”
    “Looks like a robbery. My client was afraid somebody might try something. That’s why Velda and I were here, you know.”
    He gave me half a smile. “I don’t want to tax your memory, chum, but this is the third time this week somebody tried to kill you.”
    “This prick didn’t try to kill me. He came in that door with a gun in his hand, with all that swag in mind, and I just happened to be in the room he entered into.
I
didn’t shoot him, remember.”
    “Velda shot him.” He sucked in breath. “It stinks.”
    “Why, what do
you
think this is?”
    “It’s the third damn time somebody’s targeted you. And this is getting out of hand. What I should do is take you into