The Wrong Quarry E-Book

Max Allan Collins

• Herausgeber: Hard Case Crime
• Kategorie: Krimi
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2014

Seitenzahl: 292

Beschreibung

A HIT. AND A MISS. Quarry doesn't kill just anybody these days. He restricts himself to targeting other hitmen, availing his marked-for-death clients of two services: eliminating the killers sent after them, and finding out who hired them...and then removing that problem as well. So far he's rid of the world of nobody who would be missed. But this time he finds himself zeroing in on the grieving family of a missing cheerleader. Does the hitman's hitman have the wrong quarry in his sights? The Critics Love QUARRY "Violent and volatile and packed with sexuality...classic pulp fiction." -- USA Today "Collins' witty, hard-boiled prose would make Raymond Chandler proud." -- Entertainment Weekly

Leseprobe

Raves For the Work of of MAX ALLAN COLLINS!

“Crime fiction aficionados are in for a treat...a neo-pulp noir classic.”

— Chicago Tribune

“No one can twist you through a maze with as much intensity and suspense as Max Allan Collins.”

— Clive Cussler

“Collins never misses a beat...All the stand-up pleasures of dime-store pulp with a beguiling level of complexity.”

— Booklist

“Collins has an outwardly artless style that conceals a great deal of art.”

— New York Times Book Review

“Max Allan Collins is the closest thing we have to a 21st century Mickey Spillane and...will please any fan of oldschool, hardboiled crime fiction.”

— This Week

“Few people alive today can tell a story better than Max Allan Collins.”

— Book Reporter

“This book is about as perfect a page turner as you’ll find.”

— Library Journal

“Bristling with suspense and sexuality, this book is a welcome addition to the Hard Case Crime library.”

— Publisher Weekly

“A total delight...fast, surprising, and well-told.”

—Deadly Pleasures

“Strong and compelling reading”

—Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine

“Max Allan Collins [is] like no other writer.”

—Andrew Vachss

“Collins breaks out a really good one, knocking over the hard-boiled competition (Parker and Leonard for sure, maybe even Puzo) with a one-two punch: a feisty storyline told bittersweet and wry...nice and taut...the book is unputdownable. Never done better.”

— Kirkus Reviews

“Rippling with brutal violence and surprising sexuality... I savored every turn.”

—Bookgasm

“Masterful.”

—Jeffery Deaver

“Collins has a gift for creating low-life believable characters ... a sharply focused action story that keeps the reader guessing till the slam-bang ending. A consummate thriller from one of the new masters of the genre.”

—Atlanta Journal Constitution

“Fantastic.”

— Fear.net

“For fans of the hardboiled crime novel...this is powerful and highly enjoyable reading, fast moving and very, very tough.”

— Cleveland Plain Dealer

“Entertaining... full of colorful characters ...a stirring conclusion.”

— Detroit Free Press

“Collins makes it sound as though it really happened.”

—New York Daily News

“A great fast-paced read.”

— Books and Writers

“Collins tells his cynical little tale with plenty of tough wit [and] a knack for capturing period with a few succinct details; he also has a pithy way with violence...it’s every bit as mean as you want it to be.”

— Seattle Post Intelligencer

“Crisp and brisk, with an economy that doesn’t sacrifice creating an evocative world...fast, sharp and brutal.”

— IndieWire

“An exceptional storyteller.”

— San Diego Union Tribune

“Nobody does it better than Max Allan Collins.”

—John Lutz

What kind of makeup, I thought, requires a girl taking off her panties?

She was naked as she walked over to the shelves with the sound system and picked out a homemade cassette tape and inserted it into the machine. “Smoke on the Water” by Deep Purple burst out of the speakers like the thunder had returned.

Then she cranked it some more.

She asked, almost shouting, “Could you switch off the bedside lamp?”

I said I could, and did.

“Can you watch me from there?” she yelled sweetly. “Does it hurt? I’m gonna work it over here.”

I swung my body around, ribs complaining just a little, but the hell with them. Though darkness had returned, I could tell she was moving the coffee table to one side and making a little performance area out of the throw rug.

Then she went over to a nearby wall switch and a click announced overhead black-light tubing coming on to make Jimi and the Fudge and Janis glow. Also her lips and her finger- and toenails and the tips of her breasts and the petals of flesh between her legs—all glowing red as she did a swaying dance to the thumping music, arms waving, feet shifting weight from leg to leg, the mirrored wall behind me echoing and multiplying her. Then she began to twist and grind in rhythm with the pounding guitar riff, a native dance that grew in intensity, lifting right fist and left knee, then left fist and right knee, swinging her arms, her torso, awkward, graceful, until finally she tossed herself on the couch on her back and spread her legs, summoning me...

OTHER HARD CASE CRIME BOOKS FROM MAX ALLAN COLLINS:

THE FIRST QUARRY

THE LAST QUARRY

QUARRY IN THE MIDDLE

QUARRY’S EX

DEADLY BELOVED

SEDUCTION OF THE INNOCENT

TWO FOR THE MONEY

THE CONSUMMATA (with Mickey Spillane)

SOME OTHER HARD CASE CRIME BOOKS YOU WILL ENJOY:

MEMORY by Donald E. Westlake

NOBODY’S ANGEL by Jack Clark

MURDER IS MY BUSINESS by Brett Halliday

GETTING OFF by Lawrence Block

CHOKE HOLD by Christa Faust

THE COMEDY IS FINISHED by Donald E. Westlake

BLOOD ON THE MINK by Robert Silverberg

FALSE NEGATIVE by Joseph Koenig

THE TWENTY-YEAR DEATH by Ariel S. Winter

THE COCKTAIL WAITRESS by James M. Cain

WEB OF THE CITY by Harlan Ellison

JOYLAND by Stephen King

THE SECRET LIVES OF MARRIED WOMEN by Elissa Wald

The WrongQUARRY

by Max Allan Collins

A HARD CASE CRIME BOOK

(HCC-114)

First Hard Case Crime edition: January 2014

Published by

Titan Books

A division of Titan Publishing Group Ltd

144 Southwark Street

London SE1 OUP

in collaboration with Winterfall LLC

Copyright © 2014 by Max Allan Collins

Cover painting copyright © 2014 by Tyler Jacobson

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without the written permission of the publisher, except where permitted by law.

This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

Print Edition ISBN 978-1-78116-266-8

E-book ISBN 978-1-78116-267-5

Design direction by Max Phillips

www.maxphillips.net

Typeset by Swordsmith Productions

The name “Hard Case Crime” and the Hard Case Crime logo are trademarks of Winterfall LLC. Hard Case Crime books are selected and edited by Charles Ardai.

Visit us on the web at www.HardCaseCrime.com

Contents

One

Two

Three

Four

Five

Six

Seven

Eight

Nine

Ten

Eleven

Twelve

Thirteen

Fourteen

For John Mull

who likes ’em down and dirty

THE WRONG QUARRY

“It’s frightening how easy it is to commit murder in America.”

W. H. AUDEN

“Someone once told me that every minute, a murder occurs. So I don’t want to waste your time. I know you want to go back to work.”

ALFRED HITCHCOCK

ONE

For a guy who killed people for a living, he was just about the most boring bastard I ever saw.

I had been tailing him for two days, as he made his way from Woodstock, Illinois, where he owned an antiques shop on the quaint town square, to...well, I didn’t know where yet.

So far it had been every little town—on a circuitous route taking us finally to Highway 218—with an antiques shop, where he would go in and poke around and come out with a few finds to stow in the trunk of his shit-brown Pontiac Bonneville.

If it hadn’t been for the explosion of red hair with matching beard that made his head seem bigger than it was, he would have been a human bowling pin, five-foot-eight of flab in a gray quilted ski jacket. He wore big-frame orange-lensed glasses both indoors and out, his nose a potato with nostrils and zits, his lips thick and purple. That this creature sometimes sat surveillance himself seemed like a joke.

I was fairly certain he was on his way to kill somebody— possibly somebody in Iowa, because that was the state we’d been cutting down on the vertical line of Highway 218. Right now we were running out of Iowa and the flat dreary landscape was threatening to turn into Missouri.

Soon there would be fireworks stands—even though it was crisp November and the Fourth of the July a moot point—and people would suddenly speak in the lazy musical tones of the South, as if the invisible line on the map between these Midwestern states was the Mason-Dixon.

Some people find this accent charming. So do I, if it’s a buxom wench with blonde pigtails getting out of her bandana blouse and cut-off jeans in a hayloft. Otherwise, you can have it.

Right now my guy was making a stop that looked like a problem. Turning off and driving into some little town to check out an antiques shop was manageable. No matter how small that town was, there was always somewhere I could park inconspicuously and keep an eye on Mateski (which was his name— Mateski, Ronald Mateski...not exactly Bond, James Bond).

But when he pulled off and then into the gravel lot of an antiques mini-mall on the edge of a town, I had few options. Pulling into the lot myself wasn’t one of them, unless I was prepared to get out and go browsing with Mateski.

Not that there was any chance he’d make me. I had stayed well back from him on the busy two-lane, and when he would stop to eat at a truck stop, I would either sit in my car in the parking lot, if that lot were crowded enough for me to blend in, or take a seat in the trucker’s section away from the inevitable booth where Mateski had set down his big ass.

This time I had no choice but to go in and browse. Had there been a gas station and mini-mart across the way, I could have pulled in there. But this was a tin-shed antiques mall that sat near a cornfield like a twister had plopped it down.

Mateski’s penchant was primitive art and furniture—apparently it was what sold well for him back in rustic Woodstock. He didn’t have his truck with him (a tell that he wasn’t really out on a buying trip), so any furniture would have to be prime enough to spend shipping on; but he did find a framed oil that he snatched up like he’d found a hundred-dollar bill on the pavement—depicting a winter sunset that looked like your half-blind grandmother painted it.

I stopped at stalls with used books and at one I picked up a few Louis L’Amour paperbacks I hadn’t read yet, making sure I was still browsing when he left. Picking him up again would be no problem. He’d be getting back on Highway 218 and heading for somewhere, probably in Missouri. Hannibal maybe. Or St. Louis.

But when I got back on the road, I thought I’d lost him. Then I spotted his mud-spattered Bonneville at a Standard pump, said, “Fuck,” and took the next out-of-sight illegal U-turn I could to go back.

When I got there, he was inside paying. I could use some gas myself, so I turned my dark green Ford Pinto over to the attendant and went into the restaurant side of the small truck stop and took a piss. Mateski was gone when I got out, which was fine. I paid for my gas, bought gum and a Coke, and hit the road again, picking him up soon, always keeping a couple cars between us.

This is just how exciting yesterday and today had been. Not the Steve McQueen chase in Bullitt. But despite his fat ass and his thing for lousy art, Mateski was a dangerous guy. That he usually worked the passive side of a two-man contract team didn’t mean he hadn’t killed his share himself. The Broker had always insisted that the passive side of a duo had to take the active role once out of every four jobs. Keep your hand in. Use it or lose it.

The Broker had been the middleman through whom I used to get my assignments. I much preferred the active role, coming in for a day or two and handling the wet work, rather than sitting for a couple of weeks in cars and at surveillance posts taking detailed notes as to habits and patterns of a target.

Don’t get me wrong. I don’t enjoy killing. I just don’t mind. It’s something I learned to do overseas, as a sniper, where I developed the kind of dispassionate attitude needed for that kind of work. Killing is a necessary evil, as they say, although I don’t know that it’s all that evil in a lot of cases. War and selfdefense, for instance.

On the other hand, there was one notorious asshole in the trade who specialized in torture. I mention him in passing now, but eventually it will have some importance. File it away.

As for me, my name is unimportant, but when I first started killing people for money—not counting Vietnam—I worked through the Broker. This tall, slender, dapper, distinguished-looking man of business, who might have been a banker or a CEO, recruited people like me, who had unwittingly learned a trade in the employ of Uncle Sam. He was something of a pompous ass—for example, he called me Quarry, which was a sort of horseshit code name, derived from my supposed coldness (“Hollow like carved-out rock,” he said once) and also ironic, since the targets were my quarry.

So Broker’s people that I worked with called me “Quarry” and I got used to it. On occasion I even used it as the last name of a cover identity, and as it happens, this was one of those occasions. John R. Quarry, according to my Wyoming driver’s license, Social Security and Mastercard. So for our purpose here, that name will do as well as any.

I should probably clue you in a little about me. I was closer to thirty than forty, five ten, one hundred-sixty-five pounds, short brown hair, but not military short. Kept in shape, mostly through swimming. Handsome enough, I suppose, in a bland, unremarkable way. When was this? Well, Reagan hadn’t been president long enough for his senility to show (much), and everybody was hurting from the recession.

Well, actually, I wasn’t. Hurting. I lived quietly, comfortably and alone in an A-frame cottage on Lake Paradise near Geneva, Wisconsin. I had no one woman, but the resort area nearby meant I was rarely lonely. I had a small circle of friends who thought I sold veterinary medicine, but really I was semi-retired from the killing business.

“Semi” because I still kept my hand in, but not in the old way. After the Broker betrayed me and I got rid of him, I sort of inherited what today would be called a database, but back then was just a small pine file cabinet. Within it was what was essentially a list of over fifty names of guys like me, who had worked for the Broker—detailed info on each, photos, addresses, down to every job they’d gone on.

Since I was out of work, after killing the Broker, I’d had an intriguing idea. I could see how I could use the Broker’s file, and keep going, in a new way, on my own terms. After destroying the information on myself, I would choose a name and travel to where that party lived and stake him or her out (a few females were on the list), then follow said party to their next job.

Through further surveillance, I would determine their target’s identity, approach that target, and offer to eliminate the threat. For a healthy sum, I would discreetly remove the hit team. For a further fee, I might—depending on the circumstances—be able to look into who had hired the hit done, and remove that threat as well.

The risks were considerable. What if a target—approached with a wild story from a stranger claiming to be a sort of contract killer himself—called the authorities, or otherwise freaked out?

But I was well aware that anyone designated for death was somebody who had almost certainly done something worth dying over. Targets of hitmen tend not to be upstanding citizens, unless they are upstanding citizens with down-and-dirty secrets. And weren’t they likely to be aware that they presented a problem to some powerful, merciless adversary? The kind of adversary who would be capable of such an extreme solution...?

From the start, I felt confident that such people would welcome my help. After all, their other option was to take a bullet or get hit by a car or have one of those accidental long drops off a short pier. And the fee I could charge—most people value their own lives highly—would mean I’d only have to take on these risky tasks perhaps a couple of times a year.

On the other hand, those “couple of times” required a huge amount of spec work. First, I always chose from the Broker’s list names whose preference was passive, meaning I was guaranteeing myself a considerable amount of surveillance—but this was necessary, because if I followed the active participant to a kill, the passive half might already be in the wind, leaving a dangerous loose end. Both halves needed removal.

I had been lucky a few times, and staked out parties who within a few weeks had gone out on a job, minimizing my layout of time. But professionals in the killing game—again, because of the risk and the high fees—seldom take more than three or four jobs a year. At least the teams working for the Broker didn’t.

That meant I could sit stakeout—renting a house across from a subject, for example, sitting in car like a damn cop drinking coffee after coffee from paper cups—for literally months. This had happened several times. So I had begun to take measures to limit my expenditure of time.

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 across 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.