The Wrong Quarry Read Online Free Page A

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.
    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,