Queenpin Read Online Free PDF Page B

with them. No charge, of course.”
    “Why so generous?” I said, hardly looking at her in the mirror as I reapplied my makeup. “I don’t know you from Eve.” She smiled, lipstick thick and bright. “I’ve seen you around a lot. I know who you are. I got something I want to bend your ear on.”
    “My ears don’t bend,” I said, heading toward the door. Yeah, by now I was head of the class in Gloria Denton’s Charm School. It was like walking around with armor, bulletproof. Nothing could touch me.
    “Listen,” she whispered, rushing up behind me, following me out to the bar.”It’d be worth your while.”
    “How would you know how much my while is worth?”
    “Believe me, I know,” she said eagerly, eyelashes swatting. “Ask
    around about me. People’ll vouch for me. I’ll wait.”
    So I mentioned it to Gloria the next evening, careful to sound neither excited nor too casual.
    “Yeah, I know her,” she said, turning the steering wheel. We were headed to Googie’s Chop House, where we went most Friday nights. She liked to order the London broil, although she never ate much of it or anything else. Anything that didn’t line her pocketbook really wasn’t worth her time.
    “So could she have something?”
    “Light me one, will you?” she said, gesturing toward her cigarettes. I put one in my mouth, lit it, then tucked it in her mouth. She took a deep puff. “She runs with a pretty high-tone pack. Makes pieces for society coin. She might have a hot steer. Open your ear, see what she pours in.”
    I didn’t have to go looking. When I got to the Ascot the next night, Tino, the concierge, said there was a package waiting for me. I opened the rose-scented box and there under the pink tissue was a hat of Black Cross mink, lined with satin the precise crimson of my evening gloves.
    Sure enough, she was upstairs, chewing on a curly-foil toothpick at the bar, practically chomping at the bit.
    “Thanks for the lid,” I said, setting the box down on the bar next to her.
    And she walked me through it, made her case. The setup looked airtight.
    It was like this: There was a family in Highcrest Hills, a few miles out of the city. The Duttons. Their fortune came from Dutton bread and muffin mixes, that cheap stuff you find on grocery store shelves all over the state. The boxes with the freckle-faced kid with his tongue hanging out of his mouth. They were big money and Regina delivered her custom-designed skins to the lady of the manor every season, red beaver coats and blue fox hats in the winter, brocade coats with Chinese leopard trim for spring, ermine wraps for cool summer evenings, ponyskin suit jackets and short chinchilla coats for fall. It was endless.
    But fur was the least of their riches. The big loot was in jewels. Mama Dutton was a jewelry hound and Papa Dutton was built to please her.
    “When she’d look at my furs,” Regina told me, “she’d pull them out and drape them over each piece to see how it looked. Three-, four-, five-carat rocks. Big pendants and stickpins the size of snowglobes. Heavy-banded chokers and thick charm bracelets, chunky brooches, enough rings for a hundred fingers and toes. All prime-cut.
    “So last week I delivered her latest skins in time for her spring passage to Old Europe. Rome, then Capri, don’t you know. She wanted them fast because they were leaving Saturday. Last Saturday. Gone for four weeks with only a skeleton crew of servants holding down the fort, keeping their half-drunk eyes on Bluebeard’s stash. And nobody knows the gold mine that’s up there. Who figures? They sell biscuit flour.”
    I was new to this kind of game, but it looked awfully good to me. I passed the info on to Gloria and Gloria corralled the talent and within four days the Dutton domicile had been hit. They tied up the housekeeper and the groundsman, while the safecracker went to work on the two wall safes Regina had eyeballed. It only took him ten minutes and, in twenty, they were