by Garry Disher
Loman swallowed beer from his glass. When he put the glass down again it was fair and square on a coaster with an Aborigine painted on it. ‘Actually,’ he said, ‘I don’t think Wyatt knows.’
‘We come to the crux of the matter. You could’ve told him when he rang last night, but you didn’t.’
Loman looked up. ‘Wyatt knows how to look after himself.’
‘Cut it out, Eddie. You were going to charge him a finder’s fee for lining me up for this job of his, then dob him in for the twenty thousand. Am I right? Bit of a cunt act.’
Snyder was enjoying himself. He didn’t care much for Loman. Loman supplied experts and equipment to people who had big jobs on, and Snyder had got some work that way sometimes, but you couldn’t actually like the bloke. That grey face and smoker’s cough, the sense of decay on the inside. Plus, Snyder didn’t like being cheated. He didn’t like it that Loman was intending to earn himself an extra twenty thousand without cutting anyone else in on it.
‘Eh? Bit of a shitty thing to do to the old Wyatt? Not to mention the danger to yours truly. What if this hired gun comes after Wyatt when I’m in the firing line, eh? Answer me that.’
Loman’s face worked in worry. ‘I would’ve told him. I thought, you know, this job of his is out in the bush somewhere, he’ll be safe there till it’s over. Then I’d give him the word, kind of thing.’
Snyder nodded. ‘Oh, right, I’m with you now. You’re not after the twenty grand reward.’
‘Not me. Wyatt’s-’ Loman struggled ‘-well you don’t exactly call Wyatt a mate, do you, but he’s a good client, kind of thing.’
Snyder’s loose face seemed to tighten and he leaned forward. ‘How much?’
‘Pardon?’
‘What’s he paying you? What am I worth?’
Loman rubbed at his leg. ‘Fifteen hundred.’
‘What’s the job?’
‘He didn’t say, except it’s big.’
‘And there’s a radio he wants jammed. Did he say what I get paid?’
‘A percentage. Not a fee, a percentage of the take.’
Snyder grinned then. ‘Correct me if I’m wrong-you only get fifteen hundred bucks, I stand to get tens of thousands. I can see how a bloke might feel a bit put out about that. He might want to grab a bit more. Not you, though.’
A flush showed under Loman’s grey skin. ‘I didn’t know you and Wyatt were such good mates.’
‘We’re not. I’m a professional, he’s a professional. We just do our jobs. We don’t get greedy, rock the boat, work behind another bloke’s back.’
‘You’ve made your fucking point,’ Loman said, leaning back in his chair. The fabric was slippery brown vinyl and it seemed to fart under him. He shifted again as if to demonstrate that it was the chair, not him.
‘I mean,’ Snyder went on, ‘Wyatt’s good value. He does the right thing by blokes like you and me. You’d have to be a real bastard to shop him to some hired gun down from Sydney.’
‘All right, okay?’ Loman said. ‘You’ve made your point.’
‘That would be a cunt act,’ Snyder said.
****
ELEVEN
Letterman did contract work for the Sydney Outfit now but he still looked like a cop. There was no need for him to wear grey suits any more, but he felt wrong in anything else. He was tall, solid and punchy-looking, an effect that was ruined if he put on jeans or corduroys and a casual shirt. He felt he looked soft in clothes like that-like a suburban bank manager on a Saturday morning.
He threaded a navy blue tie under his collar and leaned toward the mirror to knot it. He was indifferent to the hairs in his ears and nostrils. They were indicators of his vigour and perpetual anger. So, somehow, was his balding skull. He remained close to the mirror. He was in a motel room in Melbourne that might have been designed for midgets. The mirror was too low, the bed too short, and he always had to duck his head to get it wet in the shower stall.
Although he felt relaxed, his face looked tired and unimpressed. When he was working, it looked alert and unimpressed. He was forty-six, doing what he did best, and had never felt better. The Outfit paid him a retainer that equalled his old detective inspector’s salary, plus a flat fee for each contracted hit. There was $50,000 coming his way when he found Wyatt and knocked him off. The Outfit wanted Wyatt bad. Wyatt had hit them where it hurt, killing their Melbourne head and destroying their biggest Melbourne operation.
Not that he’d be easy to find. Letterman was approaching this as if he were still a cop. For a start, the trail was cold. Most breaks in a case come in the first twenty-four hours, but Wyatt had dropped out of sight six weeks ago. Apparently he was a pro, so he’d avoid his usual haunts; in fact, he was probably interstate somewhere, keeping his head down. But he’d caused so much heat, done so much damage, aroused so much media and police attention, that the Outfit hadn’t dared send Letterman to Melbourne before now.
Other factors were working against him. First, Wyatt didn’t want to be found, meaning he’d cover his tracks, use forged ID or alter his appearance. He wouldn’t be found wandering the streets like some old pensioner who’d lost his marbles. Second, Letterman couldn’t call in favours from other cops any more. Third, the Outfit wasn’t very popular here in Melbourne. In the four days since his arrival, Letterman had been spreading the word around, $20,000 to the one who fingers Wyatt, but so far not a whisper. Wyatt was a Melbourne boy too, so that probably had something to do with it.
But the twenty thousand dollars would work eventually. Letterman knew how it was with police work-ten per cent detection, ninety per cent fluke. He’d arrested crack dealers who’d traded in the VW for a Mercedes sports, wife murderers who’d given themselves up, burglars at the scene, holdup men who’d been dobbed in for the reward. Letterman was patient. Twenty thousand was a lot of bread.
Other things were in his favour. Unless they were incredibly loyal in Melbourne, Wyatt wouldn’t be aware that the Outfit was after him. He’d be expecting cops, not contract hitmen. And crims don’t change their spots. Wyatt would surface sooner or later. He’d want to pull another job. He would need money soon, and he was a big-score crim, the kind who puts together a gang, and you can’t stay out of sight when you do that. Until then Letterman would take it step by step, like a cop. The usual routine: where was Wyatt last seen? Who saw him last? Who are his known associates?
He put on his suit coat and left the motel. The other thing about a suit is, you can hide a gun under the coat and get at it easily, where you can’t if you’re wearing a shirt or a jumper.
His Avis Fairmont was parked outside the motel room, its long snout overhanging the tyre-stop. He made the usual checks before getting in. He noted that there was no one in the space behind the front seats, then opened the boot lid gingerly, checking for wires before opening it fully and searching for a mercury electrode. Finally he examined the driver’s seat for pressure bombs and checked for wires under the bonnet. The car was clean. He put on the black horn-rims he wore for driving, got in and backed the Fairmont out of the motel carpark.
He left St Kilda and drove down the Nepean Highway to Frankston. There he cut across to Shoreham and found the post office. It was attended by an elderly, watery-eyed man. ‘I work for the Courier Mail in Brisbane,’ Letterman said. ‘I’m doing a story on the gangster who lived near here.’
‘You mean Warner?’ the postmaster asked.
Letterman nodded. He’d been reading back issues of the Melbourne newspapers and knew Wyatt had used that name. He’d also obtained photocopies of the police identikit picture. He pulled one out and showed it to the postmaster. ‘This him?’
They both examined it. According to the police artist, Warner had a thin face, loose shortish hair and bleak features.
‘Not a bad likeness,’ the postmaster said. ‘I tell you what, we were flabbergasted. Seemed a nice sort of a bloke, kept to himself, kind of thing. No one here had a clue.’
Letterman put the picture away.
Everyone had a clue now, though. It was quite a story, front-page stuff. Gang warfare, the headlines said. Organised crime elements from Sydney battling it out with local criminals, several of whom had been shot dead. Police were looking for a man who called himself variously Warner, Lake and Wyatt, last seen at his farm on the Mornington Peninsula.
‘I’m putting together a story about the hidden lives of people like him,’ Letterman said.
The postmaster pursed his lips and looked out of the window. Letterman wasn’t perturbed. The guy was trying to say he was canny, you couldn’t put anything over on him. ‘A Brisbane paper, you say?’
‘That’s right,’ Letterman said.
‘You heard about it up there?’
The way to this bloke’s heart was pride. ‘I’ll say,’ Letterman said. ‘It was a bloody big story.’
The postmaster beamed, then looked regretful. ‘There’s not much I can tell you, though.’
‘For starters, did he get any mail? Readers like to know about that kind of thing. You know, letters from girlfriends, letters from overseas, letters from interstate, stuff like that.’
The postmaster shook his head. ‘Like I told the police, he might’ve posted letters, but he never received any. People don’t write like they used to. They use the phone these days.’
Letterman thanked him and got directions to Wyatt’s farm. The house was sealed up. All the grass needed cutting. The dirt track showed no sign that vehicles had been along it recently. Wyatt is long gone, Letterman thought, and he won’t be coming back. Letterman said as much to a neighbour, an angry-looking farmer. ‘You’d be mad, wouldn’t you,’ the man demanded, ‘to try coming back? We were pretty upset about the whole thing. If he did show himself now, no one would give him the time of day.’
Letterman got back into the Fairmont. It had been a wasted trip, a long shot that hadn’t paid off, and he’d stepped in cow shit and pulled a thread of his suit on a barbed wire fence. He hated the bush, didn’t know why anyone would want to live there.
Frustration brought on his indigestion, and during the long drive back to Melbourne he let himself reflect upon the past couple of years. They’d said he could make Commissioner one day. He’d come up through the ranks, and he’d done law and accounting part-time in his younger days. He’d had his own detail in the vice squad, and been second in command in the drug squad.
But you don’t get anywhere waiting for information, so he’d built himself a good network of snouts, turned a blind eye where necessary, picked up the odd suitcase from a station locker.
Then came the whispers; that he’d corrupted junior officers, made deals with underworld figures, assaulted witnesses. He faced them all down. Then he was charged: conspiracy to murder, conspiracy to pervert the course of justice, attempted bribery. They didn’t have a shred of evidence, their witnesses suddenly got cold feet or went on holiday, and Letterman had walked, but eighteen months ago the police tribunal had sustained five out of eight misconduct charges against him and he was given the boot.
He’d cleaned out his desk and gone home. That evening the phone had rung. It was the Outfit. You scratched our back in the past, they said, so we scratched yours, dropped a few quiet words in a few ears. So how about it? Want to continue doing what you’re good at?
As he drove through Moorabbin Letterman pictured again the hate on the faces of the cops who’d tried to put him away. He fished a Quick-eze out of his pocket and chewed on it. His belly rumbled and the pain eased. What he most liked about this job, apart from being his own boss, was there were no more logbooks, no more manuals, no more working by the book.
St Kilda Junction was coming up. Letterman crossed into the left lane, ready to turn into Barkly Street and his motel. Change his suit, clean the shit off his shoes, then back on the streets.
Known associates. When everything had blown up in Melbourne six weeks ago, three names surfaced: Wyatt, Hobba, Pedersen. Hobba was dead. Wyatt was the reason for all this in the first place. That left Pedersen.
****
TWELVE
‘A woman is good cover, Wyatt. Think about it.’
Wyatt thought about it. Leah had a sharp mind and she liked to use it. He’d noticed that five years ago, when she’d done some background work for two jobs he’d pulled in Adelaide. And now she was bombarding him with ideas for the Steel-gard hit. Most of them made sense. All the same, he didn’t want her to be involved at an active level.
‘I’ve got a stake in this, Wyatt.’
He stared at her face. Intelligence and a kind of fury were animating it. Her eyes were alive. Her fists, clenched on her dining room table as she leaned toward him, looked impatient and ready for action.
Then her eyes narrowed. ‘You don’t think I can do it.’
Wyatt gestured irritably. He didn’t speak.
‘What, then?’ she demanded.
Wyatt wasn’t going to tell her that the job had become messier, costlier and more difficult than he liked. It had started off as an uncomplicated snatch, but the federal police raid had changed all that. He forced a smile. ‘We need someone useful here on the outside.’
She ignored the smile. ‘I’ll be more useful there with you than back here. I can drive, shop, take photos, whatever.’
Wyatt nodded slowly. They were drinking-his last drink before he started work-and he could feel his resistance slipping away. He watched Leah watching him. Her body was still but gave an impression of being charged with energy.
She was frowning faintly, and her eyes were restless.
‘I could keep watch,’ she continued. ‘You’ll need someone on a radio to tell you when the van enters the short cut.’
‘Maybe.’
‘Think about it.’
Wyatt regarded her calmly. He didn’t speak.
She went on. ‘Tell me more about this guy coming from Melbourne.’
‘He knows about locks. He’s also good with radios. The van will be equipped with long-range VHF on a constant band. We’ll need to jam it. With any luck the Steelgard base will think it’s a signal weakness.’
‘But you don’t know yet how you’re going to break through to the money.’
‘There’s always a way. I’ll set up a camp first.’
‘You’ll brainstorm the job first,’ Leah snapped.
Wyatt rarely got angry with other people. He didn’t get close enough to them for that. Their problems and opinions didn’t interest him. The sort of people who angered him were the punks he’d sometimes worked with, whose grievances and ignorance put his life at risk. But he felt angry now. He felt it rising in him.
Something in his face betrayed it. Leah blinked and jerked her forearms back from the table. She picked up her wineglass and drained it.
‘You don’t like working with a woman,’ she said.
But that wasn’t it. He didn’t like to be rushed. The answers always came to him when he was alone, concentrating hard. Just now he didn’t feel like concentrating. He was aching after riding the Suzuki all over the state and the wine made him feel sleepy and he wanted Leah to have her mind on him, not the job. Then he caught himself. He didn’t like that sort of thinking in himself.
‘Okay,’ he said, ‘we’ll brainstorm the job.’
‘Bribe someone on the inside,’ she said promptly.
‘Like who? The driver? The guard? What will you ask them to do? What if they talk? Do you actually know anyone at Steelgard?’
‘No.’
‘No, but if you approach them they’ll soon know you. Next idea.’
‘We put up a roadblock. When they stop we get the keys off them and open the back.’
‘A roadblock may come into it,’ Wyatt said, ‘but it doesn’t mean they’ll give us the keys. First, they don’t ride together in the cab. The guard rides in the back, which is a separate unit sealed off from the driver’s cab. Usually the guard opens from the inside. And I note that you said “we”.’
He said all this coldly and rapidly. Never
theless, Leah grinned. She was enjoying herself. After a while, Wyatt grinned too.
Leah’s smile faded. She was thinking. ‘What’s the company policy when staff lives are in danger?’
‘These firms don’t want anyone getting hurt or killed. It costs them too much in compensation and bad PR. The money’s insured. They tell their employees, if it comes to the crunch, give in.’
‘So we drag the driver out and hold a gun to his head so the guard sees it, or we hold up a stick of dynamite and tell the guard if he doesn’t open we’re blasting the doors.’
‘The driver and the guard are linked by an intercom,’ Wyatt said. ‘We can jam their radio, but we can’t jam that. As soon as something goes wrong, the driver will warn the guard.’
‘So?’
‘So there could be a whole range of emergency shutdown procedures we don’t know about. Steelgard’s employees are slack, we know that, but the vans could be high-tech all the same. They might be fitted with door and brake locks that can only be opened by someone from their base office. They might be fitted with time locks. You never know. We have to expect things like that. Breaking through that sort of gadgetry takes time, effort, equipment.’
Leah was silent. Then she said, ‘So there’s no easy way in.’
‘There might be-we won’t know till the day itself. What I’m saying is, we have to be prepared for good-old fashioned force-cutting gear, blasting with nitro or C4 plastic, whatever. An effective, time-honoured, noisy, time-consuming, attention-grabbing method.’
Her face went rueful and she reached out and touched the back of his hand. ‘Don’t be like that.’
‘Like what? I’m telling it like it is. We sit in the middle of the road for twenty, thirty minutes, an hour, cutting our way in, hoping no roo shooters or local cops come along.’