by Garry Disher
In the morning he walked. He did this after every job. He tramped around his boundary fence as though defining and measuring his fifty hectares, his cottage and reedy creek, his trees, waterfowl, leaning gates and view of Phillip Island across the bay. The farm was his. He owed no money on it and his name did not appear on any documents or electoral rolls, but, for the first time, it was all he had-apart from $1000 and $2000 emergency caches in Sydney, Adelaide, Brisbane, cities where he had pulled jobs and might again.
Only one person who counted knew he lived here, a retired hold-up man named Rossiter who passed on messages. Anyone looking for Wyatt knew to contact Rossiter first. The word was Wyatt was the best, he was available, but these days Rossiter rarely called with anything worthwhile.
The neighbours and the townspeople believed that Wyatt was a stockbroker named Warner who had got out at the top of the market but still dabbled in it between periods travelling overseas. They mostly ignored him. He wasn’t one of the loathed January holiday makers, but nor was he exactly a local. Whenever Wyatt travelled he paid Craig good money to keep an eye on his place. He was also quiet, courteous and reclusive, and that suited everybody.
At one o’clock he ate lunch sparingly and restlessly, then sat and brooded at his window. Sometimes, after a job, he brought a woman here for a few days, women who didn’t know who he was or what he did. They found him to be wary and emotionally invisible. When he tired of them he drove them to Hastings and put them on the train. He always took confusing back roads, and there was no number on his telephone dial, making it impossible for them to find him again. He had encountered one of these women once, in Bourke Street, and had responded so coldly that she flushed and drew back in anger. It seemed to Wyatt that he was only ever in intimate situations with strangers-a woman sometimes, a safe-cracker in a darkened room, a getaway driver after a job-and then only for short periods. He hid his past, from others and from himself. No photographs, diaries or letters; nothing kept for memory’s sake; no reminiscing.
The wind dropped in mid-afternoon and he went out in his boat, a five-metre aluminium dinghy with a Johnson outboard. He took with him fishing gear and a Nikon with a telephoto lens and puttered along the shoreline for several kilometres, stopping occasionally to fish or photograph the sea birds. But the dissatisfaction wouldn’t leave him.
At four o’clock he turned back. There would be a storm later. The sky was grey, heaving. He beat through the short, choppy whitecaps to the beach and hauled the dinghy onto the boat trailer. Fat drops of rain began to dimple the sand. An open fire tonight, he thought. Grilled fish and baked potatoes, salad, one of his dwindling dry whites. But then he felt cold, and thought again of his six months in the sun somewhere. This was a life of waiting, and he might wait forever.
The weekend passed. He gardened, gathered pine cones in the pine tree plantation, spoke to Craig, and started to clear the thicket of blackberry bushes on his southern boundary. But a sense of lucklessness seemed to wash around him. He was forty and felt that he’d lost the old easy pattern, become unrelaxed, caught up in complications and uncertainty. Nothing he touched seemed worthy of him anymore. He needed money. He needed luck.
The call came on Sunday evening. The telephone rang once and stopped. Wyatt stiffened, waiting for it to sound again, then fall silent, then sound a third time, the signal he’d worked out with Rossiter. Once, a year ago, the telephone had rung at length and at intervals all through the day and into the evening, leaving him edgy and alert, his gun at hand, the safety catch off. But nothing happened. He supposed it was a wrong number. Only Rossiter knew his address and telephone number.
The telephone rang again. Wyatt waited, and when it rang a third time he picked it up but did not speak. Rossiter said, without preamble, ‘Rob Hobba wants you to ring him,’ and read off a Melbourne number. Wyatt dialled, let it ring twice, hung up, and dialled again.
Hobba answered immediately. ‘Yes?’
‘I’m calling about your advertisement in the Trading Post,’ Wyatt said. ‘I need more details.’
‘It’s a Westinghouse,’ Hobba said, ‘very clean, large capacity but easy to shift. However, I have to sell within the next few days. Any chance you can come and see it?’
Wyatt thought about it. He’d worked with Hobba twice, a bank hold-up and an armoured-car hijack, and both had gone like a dream. Hobba was good; he wouldn’t be making contact unless he thought the job had possibilities. And it was an easy job he was talking about, a safe, but it had to be done soon.
‘Tomorrow morning would suit me,’ Wyatt said. ‘I’ll come up to Melbourne and ring you again when I get there.’
They rang off and Wyatt poured away the scotch he’d been drinking. He would not drink again until after the job. Already he felt calmer and more compact. He did not prefigure the job but went to bed and slept dreamlessly.
****
Six
This time Wyatt took the train to Melbourne. He didn’t want to be burdened with a car. If the job looked like taking a while, he’d rent himself one.
He got out at Flinders Street, walked through to the Gatehouse on Little Collins, and registered under the name Lake. The room they gave him looked out onto an airshaft, but it was comfortable. Wyatt liked the Gatehouse. It was central, cheap and old-fashioned, a hotel for bemused farmers and their families visiting Melbourne from the country. You didn’t get cops checking faces in the lobby or bars at the Gatehouse.
Now he was leaning his long frame against the window, regarding Robert Hobba with cold interest. ‘Three hundred thousand dollars?’ he said.
Hobba nodded. ‘In cash.’
‘Where?’
‘An office safe.’
Wyatt frowned. ‘Lifts, doors, cameras, security patrols, nightwatchmen… ‘
‘That’s just it,’ Hobba said. ‘It’s in a house.’
Wyatt watched him, wondering if this job was like all the others, no more than someone with an itch and a way in. At first sight, Hobba didn’t inspire confidence. He sat on the edge of the bed, narrow shoulders sloping to a bulky stomach and massive thighs. He had prominent lips in a grey, puffy face. When he was nervous he licked them.
He licked them now. ‘A converted house in South Yarra,’ he said. ‘Quiller Place. Went by it yesterday. Single storey, quiet street. A lawyer’s office. Easy’
Wyatt said nothing, deliberately putting pressure on Hobba. Then he said, ‘Tell me what a suburban law firm is doing with three hundred thou in the safe.’
Hobba wet his lips again and looked at the ceiling. ‘Let’s see if I’ve got this straight. When you want to build a shopping centre, whatever, you apply for a planning permit. If you’re out of luck, some neighbour comes along and lodges an objection. If you go through a tribunal it can take a few months. Then when you’re about to lay the foundations some other geezer objects. Your costs go up, everyone’s being fucked around, so to save hassles you buy off the objectors.’
He frowned, then looked at Wyatt and smiled in satisfaction.
‘So?’ Wyatt said.
‘So this lawyer, Finn, negotiates these things.’
‘Negotiates himself three hundred thousand dollars? That’s some fee,’ Wyatt said.
‘He only gets a percentage,’ Hobba said. ‘There’s a deal going through on Friday and he’s the banker for a few hours. We’ll only have one shot at it.’
Wyatt had not moved from the window. He leaned against the frame, arms folded now, assessing Hobba and his story. He said, ‘How come you know all this?’
It was eleven-thirty. Hobba had arrived at eleven-fifteen and already had smoked three cigarettes. After each one he took a mint from a rattling tin and tossed it into his mouth. Now he shuddered and coughed, and Wyatt, recognising a delaying tactic, said sharply: ‘Where did you hear it?’
Hobba sighed. ‘The horse’s mouth.’
‘Finn?’
‘Not him,’ Hobba said. ‘The partner. A bird called Anna Reid.’
‘
Don’t like it,’ Wyatt said. Then, ‘How close are they?’
‘Not close at all. Just partners.’
Hobba wet his lips again, drew violently on his cigarette, and knocked off the ash with three dainty taps of his forefinger. He wore glasses, looked crumpled and gave an impression of incompetence, but Wyatt had worked with him before, had seen the excessive gestures disappear and the shapeless body grow still and efficient.
Wyatt continued to watch him. He waited, saying nothing. Sometimes people found him to be patient beyond reason. Finally Hobba shifted restlessly and said, ‘You know Maxie Pedersen?’
Wyatt remembered a hard, sandy man who specialised in safes when he wasn’t dealing dope on a small scale. ‘Last I heard he was doing five for blowing a TAB safe. He also deals, so no thanks.’
Hobba shook his head. ‘He’s given that away. Strictly safes now. Anyhow, he got out a year ago on parole. The Reid woman is his lawyer, Legal Aid. She told him about Finn’s safe.’
Wyatt was liking this less and less. ‘If Pedersen’s fucking her, that’s it, I’m out.’
‘Nothing like that.’
‘But she’s got him excited about three hundred thou that isn’t hers.’
Hobba shrugged. ‘All I’m saying is, according to Max she’s not pulling his dick. The money’s there.’
There was a silence. Wyatt turned on the electric kettle. He tried to go behind Hobba’s story. He wondered about the woman: maybe she was bored, kidding herself she was living on the edge, flirting with hard men and risks.
He made tea with the hotel’s tea bags, waiting for the water to turn a deep reddish-brown. He threw away the bags and handed a cup to Hobba, who sipped from it cautiously and then reached for the sugar.
Wyatt blew on the surface of his tea. ‘Let’s suppose Pedersen’s right. The woman bothers me. She’s got too much to lose. Her share of three hundred thousand dollars isn’t going to be all that much. How do we know she’s not after thrills? Maybe she’s setting us up. “Your Honour, I was helping Mr Pedersen rehabilitate himself-I had no idea he’d fallen in with thieves again”.’
Hobba was losing heart. ‘Talk to her, mate. She convinced Max Pedersen, who’s no mug, and he convinced me.’
Wyatt said, ‘She approached Pedersen because he knows safes?’
Hobba nodded. ‘She defended him on the TAB job. Anyhow, he told her he couldn’t do it alone. She doesn’t like it but she said she’d meet us.’
He looked up. ‘Remember that armoured car? Or that bank in that shopping centre? You’d spend a few days checking out car parking, front and rear access, then strike quickly when it was quiet. This job could be like that, nice and simple.’
‘I’ll check it out,’ Wyatt said.
‘I mean, me and Max need this one, Wyatt, really need it. You know how it’s been lately. No decent jobs around, no cash anymore, everything’s plastic cards or electronic transfer’
Wyatt watched him toss another mint into his mouth. Hobba was broke. He spent it, lost it, forgot it, gave it away to hangers-on and ex-wives. But he’d put his finger on the general malaise.
‘I’m not promising anything,’ Wyatt said, ‘but I want you to tell Pedersen and the woman to keep this evening free for a meeting.’
‘You going to check out Quiller Place?’
Wyatt nodded.
Hobba sighed. His jaws closed on the mint.
****
Seven
At two-thirty Wyatt alighted from a tram outside a strip of salons, bookshops and designer-wear showrooms on Toorak Road and walked through to Quiller Place. He wore an overcoat over a casual brown- and grey-flecked woollen suit, white shirt and plain tie. His shoes were brown. It was a suit for any purpose. He might be a professional punter, a businessman, a client keeping an appointment with his lawyer.
He had altered the contours of his face. His hair, normally fine and straw-coloured and pushed indifferently to one side, was now oil-darkened and drawn back close and gleaming against his skull. He had applied a small smudge of soot to the edge of his bony jaw. He wore steel-framed glasses with chipped lenses. The frame was crooked. It was a face of false but compelling and contradictory surfaces.
He walked once down to Quiller Place. It was one block long, ending in a T-junction at each end. There were houses along the northern side, one of them converted into the offices of Finn and the Reid woman. Opposite them were the rear entrances, courtyards and customer-parking areas of the shops on Toorak Road. That was good; the street was a backwater, meaning few potential witnesses. Then Wyatt explored one block north and one block south of Quiller Place, checking for laneway access and dead-end or one-way streets.
At five minutes to three he stopped outside number 5. It was a restored Edwardian house like those on either side of it. The stonework was soft and clean, the woodwork painted in period colours. A cobblestone driveway curved round at the front of the house and there was room for two cars at the side. A car was parked there, a pastel-green Mercedes bearing the plates FINN. The words ‘Finn and Reid, Barristers and Solicitors’ were engraved on a brass plate next to the front door. Anna Reid, Wyatt thought. He didn’t know Finn’s first name.
A smaller sign read ‘Please Enter’. He pushed open the heavy, glossy black door and found himself in a long hallway. The air, centrally heated, smelt of new carpets, paint and furniture polish. A recent injection of money, he thought. Floorboards and heating vents gleamed in the hallway. A telephone chirruped in an end room. He heard expert fingers pause on a computer keyboard. A voice said, ‘Can I help you?’
A receptionist was looking at him from a small carpeted office to the right of the front door. This was the designer-punk end of South Yarra: the receptionist had elaborately untidy black hair and wore black tights and skirt, a striped waistcoat over a scarlet lycra top, silver bracelets, and four silver rings in the cartilage of one ear. She wore plum eyeshadow like a bruising around each eye. She was happily chewing gum and the smile was genuine.
Then, as Wyatt approached her desk, she frowned. She was disconcerted by his crooked glasses and smudged cheek. Her fingers itched to make adjustments. Wyatt said, ‘You were able to squeeze me in for a three o’clock appointment with Mr Finn.’
She snapped her fingers, remembering. ‘Mr Lake?’
‘That’s right.’
An embarrassed half-smile as she looked at a point next to his ear. ‘If you’ll just take a seat in the waiting room? I’ll tell Mr Finn you’re here.’
Wyatt removed his overcoat and stood at the waiting room window, ignoring the Scandinavian-look leather armchairs in the room. He automatically studied the window and ceiling. As he expected, there was an alarm system. In a room somewhere along the corridor, a vigorous male voice talked and laughed. Finn? Was the safe in his office? Would he interview Wyatt there or take him to a consulting room? Whatever, this was all part of filling in the background. Wyatt wanted firsthand knowledge of the layout, an impression of Finn, a feeling about the job itself. If everything seemed right he would call a meeting. It was not a big job, but it was the best he’d been offered in months. If it fell through it wouldn’t be for want of solid groundwork.
He studied the rest of the room. Pale wallpaper, mass-produced prints hanging from an old-style picture rail, empty fireplace, business magazines on a glass-topped table. He returned to the window. A minute later he saw a black Volkswagen slow in the street outside, its turning indicator flashing. It gave way to a passing taxi and pulled into the driveway next to Finn’s Mercedes. A young woman got out, dressed in dark, expensive winter clothes. Wyatt stood at the window’s edge, watching her approach the front door. When he heard her footsteps in the hall he stepped back and began idly flicking through a magazine. The footsteps paused at the waiting-room door. Wyatt looked up, as anyone might. He saw solitary, complicated good looks, curious green eyes, an impression of impatience. Then she was gone and he heard her enter a room somewhere along the corridor. Hobba was right. She was too classy
for Max Pedersen.
The receptionist appeared, staring this time at Wyatt’s shoulder. ‘This way, Mr Lake. Mr Finn will see you now.’
Wyatt followed her along the corridor. More evidence of the alarm system. Anna Reid had closed her door. The receptionist stopped at the end office, smiled, extended an arm, and Wyatt entered.
The man behind the massive leather-topped antique desk pushed back and half turned in his swivel chair and got up, his hand outstretched. ‘Mr Lake,’ he said. ‘David Finn. Have a seat.’
Finn was an inch taller than Wyatt, at least six-two, solid, not heavy. He was about fifty and had the blunt look of a man who gets timid clients to the point quickly. He wore an expensive suit, striped cotton shirt and a floppy, hand-tied silk bow tie. A camel hair overcoat hung on a chrome coat rack in one corner. Two stiff modern chairs faced the desk, and a bench under the window supported a fax, a telex, a paging device and two mobile phones. Leather-bound law books sat neatly in white bookshelves. Well-known Boyd and Nolan prints were on the walls. The safe was there, a squat black Chubb set on tiles in the unused fireplace. On the mantelpiece above it were sporting trophies and two small team photographs. No comfortable chairs, no ashtrays, no clutter. It was an odd room, as though furnished absent-mindedly from antique shops and designer showrooms.
Finn shook hands and abruptly sat down. ‘What can I do for you, Mr Lake?’
Wyatt hovered, then sat, hesitant, nervous, on the edge of a stiff chair opposite Finn. If Finn wanted him intimidated, he would be intimidated. In a rush of words he said, ‘I was told you’re the best person to see about problems with building permits.’
Finn straightened invisible papers on his desk. ‘Depends. What sort of problems?’
‘I’m speaking on behalf of others,’ Wyatt said. ‘If what we think is going to happen happens, we’ll be ruined.’