The Wrong Quarry (3 page)

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.”

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.

A week of this, and I had not yet seen Vale himself. He had not stuck his head out once. At least I didn’t think so. I couldn’t be sure since I didn’t know what he looked like. Mateski knew, but I couldn’t exactly ask him, could I?

On the other hand, I had seen that little blonde in the blue Mustang plenty of times, and got several nice looks at her, in fact. She was petite but curvy, the kind of cheerleader they reserve for the top of the pyramid. From a distance, I couldn’t make her age—she looked like she could have been as young as fourteen—but the way she seemed always on her own, tooling around in that sporty little rod, I figured her for a senior or at least a junior.

She was also the only indication—other than Vale’s apparent reluctance to leave his castle—that anything funny was going on. Not funny ha ha, but funny business, as in a dance instructor maybe banging one of his teenage charges. I wondered what the legal age of consent was in Missouri. Always good to know.

Did I mention she had a vanity license plate? Well, she did, and you are going to love this:
SALLY
. Yes, the dance instructor’s favorite student was Mustang Sally.

And it was fair to say she was his favorite—she stayed for half an hour to an hour after class, and on two occasions slipped inside after private lessons, staying till ten once, and eleven-something twice. Her parents obviously did not have her on a short leash. More like no leash at all.

The kicker was Sunday. Mateski had started his stakeout around eleven
A.M.
, apparently anticipating that our reclusive dance instructor might poke his head out of his cave on what was after all a sunny, less chilly morning, and actually enjoy a day off.

Vale enjoyed his day off, all right, but like the pizza and Chinese, he took home delivery. Little Mustang Sally showed around noon, at the front entrance, with a big bag of Colonel Sanders in one hand and a plump bag labeled
STOCKWELL HOME VIDEO
in the other. Chicken breast and movies, right at your door. There’s a franchise worth investing in.

During that week, nothing much else of import occurred. I remained flirty and friendly with that big-hair blonde desk clerk, when she was on duty, but stayed away off duty. I had come to my senses. No fooling around on the job. Focus, man, focus. That was something smart that I did.

Something smart that Mateski did was, on the fourth day of surveillance, go and get a haircut. He had the wild red fright wig trimmed to businessman length, got rid of the matching beard, and sported a spare pair of glasses minus the rust-color lenses. Maybe he wasn’t an imbecile. He had effectively become a different person by mid-week—including clothes conservative enough for a Mormon going door to door—and halved the possibility of being spotted.

I’d have to remember that one.

Now it was exactly a week since I’d first arrived in Stockwell. Mateski and I were both parked very nearly where we’d been that first night, as a few parents waited with engines running to pick up their girls out front. Suddenly Mateski, who for four hours had been at his post—albeit in several different spots, moving the Bonneville as before—started up his engine and pulled out and appeared to drive away.

I waited a few beats, then swung out after him. It took not long at all to determine that he was heading to a bar downtown that he liked to frequent—the Golden Spike. It was a shitkicker dive that sat on its own half a block with a big parking lot that was frequently pretty full. Tonight was no exception.

From across the street where I’d pulled in at a mini-mart, I watched as Mateski left the Bonneville in that lot and headed inside to reward himself, leaving his suit coat in the car and loosening his tie. Miller Time.

So I drove back to the big black bunker perched on that hilltop like a fortress guarding the surrounding residential neighborhood. Following Mateski to his favorite local watering hole and returning had taken all of seven minutes. I made the sharp turn into the Vale Dance Studio parking lot, where again twenty-some expensive rides were waiting for their dancing daughters.