The Wrong Quarry Read Free Page B

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