The Wrong Quarry (Hard Case Crime)

by Collins, Max Allan

  Ronald Mateski was a good example.

  Once I had determined Mateski was an antiques dealer, I began to call his Woodstock shop once a week from a series of pay phones in the Geneva area. If I got Mateski, I would ask for the business hours, or mutter wrong number. If I got a clerk, usually a female, I would say that I had an item I wanted to bring into the shop for Mr. Mateski to appraise—would he be around next week?

  And when at last I’d been told Mr. Mateski would be gone for two weeks on a buying trip, going to estate auctions and the like, I thanked the girl, hung up, and smiled to myself...knowing that Mr. Mateski was heading out on a job.

  And the length of time he’d be away meant that he was, as usual, taking the passive role.

  That had meant a comparatively painless (if still painful) two days of tailing Ronald Boring Mateski to wherever the fuck he was heading—Iowa? Arkansas, God help me?—and determining his target: the person he would be gathering information on for the active half of the team, the killer who would be arriving at some indeterminate time in the near future.

  Indeterminate because these killing teams—particularly now that the Broker was out of the picture—sometimes maintained surveillance for several weeks, and other times for as little as a few days.

  My prep for this trip had been minimal. Select an I.D., pack clothes including a couple of nondescript sport coats and suits and white shirts and ties and the sweatshirts and polos and jeans I preferred, a few guns (my nine millimeter, a noise suppressor, and a back-up .38 snubnose revolver), a hunting knife in sheath, switchblade, lock picks, canister of chloroform, rags, several pairs of surgical gloves, some duct tape, a coil of clothesline. The usual.

  And of course I’d driven a good distance from my home area to buy the 1980 Pinto, which cost a grand cash, the kind of nothing car that helps nobody notice you.

  Around four o’clock, Mateski pulled off and drove twenty miles—longer than any previous antiques-buying detour—into Stockwell, Missouri, whose WELCOME TO sign included all the requisite lodges and an interesting designation: “Little Vacationland of Missouri.”

  We’d barely got past the city limits before he pulled into a row-of-cabins-style motel called the Rest Haven Court. It looked clean and well-maintained, and even had a small tarp-covered swimming pool. But it obviously dated back to Bonnie and Clyde days. Mateski stopped at the slightly larger cabin near the neon sign to check in.

  Directly across the street was a modest-size Holiday Inn and that’s where I pulled in, but for now I just sat in the lot, watching across the way in my rear-view mirror. Mateski must have had a reservation, because it took him under three minutes to register. Then he was back in the Bonneville to drive over to the farthest of twelve cabins, where he parked. Only three other cars were in the spaces at cabins. From his trunk, out from under the crap paintings he’d bought, he withdrew a small suitcase, and went over to the door marked 12 and let himself in.

  I got out, stretched, yawned, making something of a show of it. Got my fleece-lined leather bomber jacket out of the back seat and slipped it on; I was otherwise in a sweatshirt, jeans and running shoes.

  Was he in for the night?

  Surely he would have to get settled. He might not even start surveillance till tomorrow. I decided to risk it.

  At the desk, I asked for a second-floor room facing the street. The female clerk, a pleasant, permed platinum blonde in her twenties wearing big-frame glasses (much nicer than Mateski’s and minus the rust-color lenses), informed me that I could have just about any room in the place.

  “This is the start of off-season,” she said chirpily. She had big brown eyes and a Judy Holliday voice—well, it was the Holiday Inn, wasn’t it?

  “An off-season for what?”

  Very nice, very white smile. She might be worth cultivating as a source and, well...cultivating.

  “Stockwell Park is the nicest fun spot this side of the Ozarks,” she said. “People come from all over.”

  “Oh?”

  She nodded and that mane of frizzy hair bounced. “Trails, trees, all kinds of greenery, so much space. Tennis courts, volleyball, playgrounds, swimming pool. Duck pond, too. Also, Stockwell Field is near there—we have a triple-A ball club, you know.”

  “In a town of twenty thousand?”

  “Oh, Stockwell really hops in the summer. If we hadn’t had this cold snap...and, uh, you know, the recession...we’d be doing land-office business, even now.”

  “Must get a little dull around here, then.”

  “It can be. We have live music in the lounge, on the weekend, if you’re planning to stay that long.”

  This was Thursday.

  “I might be here a week or more,” I said. “Is there a reduced rate for that?”

  “There is, if you pay a week in advance.”

  So we did the strictly business thing, and I got all checked in as John Quarry, but our eyes and mouths were being friendly. Maybe I could get laid on this trip. I already felt like I deserved it, after two days of Ronald Mateski. She seemed like a nice girl, and with her working here, so convenient.

  I went up to the room, which I will not insult your intelligence by describing, and placed my suitcase on the stand, got my toiletries distributed on the counter in the john. Shower, no tub. The TV was a 21” Sony, which was nice, and they had a satellite dish, so I’d get a lot of stations. The double bed’s mattress seemed a little soft, but I’d live. I went to the window, drew back the curtain, and shit, Mateski’s car was gone.

  I’d managed to fuck up already, making goo-goo eyes at the desk clerk. Someday maybe I would learn to think with the big head.

  Not panicking, I took time to throw some water on my face, toweled off, brushed my teeth, decided on the luxury of taking a shit, during which I thought about my options.

  Mateski was not here in an active capacity. He would undoubtedly watch the target for at least a week. Certainly nothing less than four days—the bare minimum to get patterns down. So I had no reason to lose my cool. I could wait till tomorrow and pick him up then, or I could drive around small-town Stockwell and see if I could spot his Bonneville. I decided on the latter.

  It was a nice little city, well-off—the older homes well-maintained with big yards; numerous housing additions expanded the town’s edges, with only one small trailer park to indicate anybody here would feel hard times. The downtown had a rustic look not unlike Mateski’s Woodstock, but without a town square—four blocks of businesses faced each other across four lanes. Many businesses included the Stockwell name— STOCKWELL BANK AND TRUST, STOCKWELL INSURANCE, STOCKWELL TRAVEL, and so on. I spotted a large newish high school, tan brick with architecture that said late sixties, a smaller, older Catholic high school, a late fifties/early sixties grade school. A grand-looking county courthouse dated to the late 1800s, as did the similar city hall, just off the main drag.

  The park area the desk clerk had extolled was on the west side of town, and I drove through it, winding around a vast expanse of green with the promised sports facilities, though at the far side there was an unexpectedly rocky and hilly area with a stream running through it. This section was mostly inaccessible by car.

  This was the kind of all-American town President Reagan mistakenly thought was typical for the nation, the kind of nearfantasy that Norman Rockwell painted for the Saturday Evening Post and that the Jewish moguls at MGM cooked up for Andy Hardy and his Christian audience during the Depression.

  Also on the west side was a hilly area of mostly older homes, perhaps not quite as well-maintained but nothing to give the city fathers fits. I cruised this neighborhood and that’s when I spotted him.

  He was, as is good surveillance practice, sitting in the back seat of the Bonneville. That was wise a couple of ways—people who saw Mateski would assume he was waiting for somebody, and those who glanced at the vehicle, seeing no one in front, particularly after dark (which it was), would not notice him at all.

  He was almost directly acro
ss from a big black cement-block building that sat on the corner atop the hill with two terraced levels that cement stairs with railing climbed. Across the front of the building, above windows and doors, in very white bold letters, were the words VALE DANCE STUDIO. Lights were on in the building, glowing yellow like a jack-o’-lantern’s eyes.

  I drove around the block, which required going down the hill, and came up behind the building, where a cement drive taking a sharp turn to enter was labeled VALE DANCE STUDIO PARKING — PRIVATE. What the hell. I pulled in.

  Maybe twenty-five cars were waiting there, most with motors running—an interesting mix that included a good share of high-end numbers, Lincolns and Caddies. Men and women, sometimes couples but mostly not, were sitting in the vehicles, a few standing in the cold, smoking.

  I pulled the Pinto into a space and got out and walked over in the cold to a woman in a full-length mink coat; her oval face was pretty, with bright red lipstick and jeweled glasses. She was my age, maybe a little older. She was smoking, her hands in leather gloves.

  “I’m lost,” I lied, my breath making as much smoke as her cigarette. “Can you point me to the Holiday Inn?”

  She gave me directions that I didn’t need with a smile that I didn’t mind. Then I made a move like I was heading back to my car, only to stop and give her my own smile, curiosity-tinged.

  I asked, “What is this place?”

  “Can’t you read?” she said, blowing smoke, not bitchy, just teasing.

  Big letters saying VALE DANCE STUDIO were across the back of the black cement-block building as well. It was an odd squatlooking building, like a hut got way out of hand, not quite two stories with all the windows fairly low-slung.

  “I’m gonna take a wild swing and say it’s a dance studio,” I said, grinning, my breathing pluming, my hands tucked in the pockets of my fleece-lined jacket. Wouldn’t she be surprised to know my right hand was gripping a nine millimeter Browning.

  “Yeah,” she said, breathing smoke, nodding, clearly chilly, “I used to go come here all the time as a kid.”

  “You’re a dancer, huh?”

  “Not really. It was a skating rink when I was in school. We came here all through elementary and junior high.”

  “Sure. All skate. Ladies’ choice. The ol’ mirrored disco ball, before they even called it that.”

  She smiled and laughed and it was smoky in a bunch of ways. “Skating’s gone the way of the dodo bird, I guess.”

  “Except for roller derby.”

  “Ha!” She nodded toward the building. “It’s a dance studio, as you’ve gathered. Students are junior high and high school girls.”

  “Oh, you’re here to pick up your daughter?”

  “Two of them. One I think has a real chance.”

  “Chance for what?”

  “Mr. Roger is working with both my girls, the younger for Miss Teenage Missouri, the older for Miss Missouri. But it’s my young one who has a real chance.”

  “Beauty pageants, huh?”

  “They’re mostly just called pageants now. You know.” She shrugged shoulders thick with mink. “Times change.”

  “Sure do. They fired Bert Parks, didn’t they? So, did you say Mr. Rogers? Like on TV?” I knew she hadn’t, but I was milking it.

  “No, Mr. Roger. Roger Vale. It’s his studio. He is so gifted. And I don’t care what anybody says. We stand behind him. Look at all these cars.”

  “What do you mean?”

  She waved at the air and her cigarette made white trails. “You know how it is. People always talk. It’s because he’s different. That’s all I’ll say about the matter Oh, there’s Julie and Bobbi!”

  She dropped her cigarette, toed it out, and waved. Out the back of the building’s two rear glass doors, teenage girls in fall and winter coats were emerging, chattering, smiling, laughing. They had a small flight of cement stairs to come down, about a third of what was in front of the building.

  “Nice meeting you,” I said to the mother, though neither of us had exchanged names.

  “You, too,” she said, and beamed.

  Maybe I should have got her name. That desk clerk wasn’t a lock, you know.

  I got in the Pinto.

  Soon I was heading through the intersection of this otherwise residential neighborhood and could see the brown Bonneville parked in the same place. A few daughters were coming down those front steps with parents picking them up on this side. But not many.

  I drove on through and took a left down the other side of the hill, and came around the adjacent block to park on the opposite side of the street, down a ways but with a good view of the Bonneville, its engine off, just another parked vehicle. Me, too. I sat there in the cold, the Pinto’s engine off too, wishing I’d grabbed something to eat, but unlike Mateski, I remained in the front seat. I wanted to be able to take off quickly, if need be.

  Was he shadowing one of these wealthy parents?

  That seemed a good bet. This was a money town, and these were money moms and dads, for the most part.

  For whatever reason—maybe some parents had gone inside to have a word with the dance instructor—it was a good hour before the lights in the big black building went out. All the daughters, all the parents, were long gone by now. I started the car up, drove slowly past the parked Bonneville, and again went around the block, down the hill, and came up around and into the parking lot.

  Only two cars remained on the gravel—a baby-blue Mustang and a red Corvette, parked very near the foot of the small slope behind the building. Not Lincolns or Caddies, but two very choice automobiles, it seemed to me, especially driving a fucking Pinto.

  But no parents or kids were around those vehicles. Everybody was gone. No mink-coat moms, no dads in Cads. Only one light on in the building now, and that had been around front.

  The dance instructor?

  Did he live on the premises, as well? That seemed unlikely but not impossible.

  I again nosed the Pinto out of the lot, turning left, heading down the hill. I turned around in a drive and came up and parked opposite the dance studio’s parking lot entrance. I had barely done this when another car pulled in just ahead of me and parked.

  The Bonneville.

  Shit fuck hell, as the nun said when she hammered her thumb.

  I just sat there with my nine mil in my hand, draped across my lap, wondering if I’d screwed the pooch already. The Bonneville’s driver’s side door opened and the big red-haired red-bearded quilt-jacketed apparition that was Mateski—still in those tinted glasses!—got out, and my hand tightened on the nine mil grip. Then, once again, he climbed in the back of the Bonneville.

  I waited five minutes, five very long minutes, then pulled out and drove off. When I parked next, after doing another circling-around number, I was just around the corner from Mateski, parked a few spaces beyond where his Bonneville had originally been, where I could just catch a glimpse of the Pontiac’s grillwork.

  Perhaps three minutes later, a car’s bright headlights made me wince—brights in town? What the hell! The vehicle was going fairly fast, probably pushing forty, and as it roared through the residential intersection, I saw two things—a pretty blonde teenager behind the wheel, and that she was driving that baby blue Mustang.

  Would Mateski follow?

  Was the blonde, or maybe one of her parents, the target?

  I started the car, just in case. Anyway, I could use the heat.

  But the Bonneville stayed put.

  So did I, and I left the motor running because I was cold and hungry and tired, and gradually getting to be not cold anymore was about all I could do about any of that.

  He was still parked there at three in the morning when I left, heading to the 24-hour delicacies offered at Denny’s. Like I said, I was hungry, and I would then head to the Holiday Inn, because I was tired. These are the things we settle for when we are hungry and tired.

  Anyway, I’d had a busy day.

  I’d bought some Louis L�
�Amour paperbacks, and I’d flirted with a desk clerk, and had a pleasant and illuminating conversation with a mom in a mink coat.

  I’d also, almost certainly, figured out who Mateski’s target was.

  A dance studio instructor.

  Mr. Roger.

  No “s.”

  TWO

  A week of surveillance followed.

  Mostly it was as boring as shadowing Mateski to and from those antiques shops. Maybe a little more so. I will spare you the details and provide the highlights, since much of it was Mateski in his Bonneville staking out the old skating-rinkturned-dance-studio. This required him moving his car periodically, so that it never sat too long in front of any one house. With VALE DANCE STUDIO on a corner, that gave him—and me, hopscotching similarly in my Pinto—a variety of blocks, streets, and sides of those streets to choose from.

  Trickiest thing for me was trying to make sure Mateski didn’t notice me moving my car each time he did his. But I managed it.

  One person can’t maintain a twenty-four-hour surveillance. So Mateski’s technique, which was standard on two-man hit teams, was to work a couple of three-to-four-hour sessions a day, separated by several hours. As the days passed, by starting and stopping these sessions at various intervals, the entire twenty-four hours got covered, several times. And it also allowed for meals and calls of nature.

  This explains why the passive half of these teams usually spent as much as two weeks nailing down the target’s patterns, and rarely less than one.

  What became apparent within the first several days was that Roger Vale rarely left his studio. Groceries were delivered. An occasional pizza was delivered, too, and once Chinese. He appeared to be a recluse, though your average recluse doesn’t teach dance and have scores of teenage girls entering and leaving his domain for every-other-day after-school classes, with private lessons on the off evenings, a lengthy Saturday morning class, and more private lessons till five.

  Keeping track of all the junior high and high school girls that went in and out of that big black bunker of a dance studio was impossible. Ditto their well-off parents picking them up.