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.