by Garry Disher
Cross Kill
( Wyatt - 4 )
Garry Disher
Garry Disher
Cross Kill
One
The stranger appeared just after lunch on day one of Wyatt’s operation against the Mesics. He was driving a red Capri, soft top down, and Wyatt watched him park it against the kerb, unfold from the car, stride to the compound gates and bend his face to the intercom grille in the brick pillar. MESIC was spelled out in shiny red tiles above the intercom and Wyatt saw the stranger touch the name as though to draw luck from it. Then the gates jerked, swung open, and the man stepped through the gap. He was about thirty, and he had the raw-nerved, hole-and-corner look of a man who exists on coffee and whispers. Wyatt put that together with the car, the costly jacket and jeans, and speculated that here was someone who made a profit for the Mesics and profited by them.
The Mesics were small-scale racketeers with ambitions, and Wyatt was watching their place through the rear window of a rented Volvo. The Volvo was a good touch. He’d faced it away from the compound gates and was sitting in the back seat so this wouldn’t look like a stakeout to casual eyes. But the car looked right anyway, so he wasn’t expecting trouble. The citizens of Templestowe, crooked and otherwise, ran to Volvos, Saabs, cars like that.
This was Wyatt’s second stakeout of the Mesics. Ten months ago he’d sat outside the compound gates like this, burning to hit the place, but he’d been a marked man at the time, with every gun-happy hoon and policeman in Victoria after him, so he’d fled the state. Then, in Queensland, he’d robbed a bank and killed a man and given up a small fortune to help someone run for her life, and it had all added up to ten months of hand-to-mouth waiting.
But now the heat was off and he was back in Melbourne again, watching the Mesics. The place still looked brash and new, a hectare of land that had been stripped bare and turned into a family compound: raw landscaped terraces, young trees, shiny lockup garages and a couple of blockish cream-brick houses that could have featured in a travel brochure from some sunny, dusty spot on the Mediterranean coast, the whole lot protected by a wire and girder perimeter fence three metres high.
Wyatt saw a door open in the first house. A young woman appeared at the top of the steps. She looked expensive and dissatisfied, restlessly touching herself- hips, thighs, chest, sleeves, collar, the hem of her dress. Thick auburn hair was piled over her head and shoulders, catching the sun as she explored her body. As the visitor approached her up the steps, she seemed to relax. She touched his arm and led him into the house.
There was no one else around. A contract cleaning service called Dustbusters had come and gone before lunch, but so far Wyatt had not seen any guards, children or servants who might get in his way. He didn’t want to have to send in an army against an army.
So the place looked easy-not that it had ever been a question of whether or not Wyatt would pull this job. He was only interested in the how and when. After all, the Mesics had his money in there. They didn’t know they had his money, but that was no consideration of Wyatt’s. A little over ten months earlier he’d been putting together an easy payroll snatch in the red dirt country of South Australia, only to be cheated of the take by a man who owed a lot of money to the Mesics. There had been a few deaths and a lot of aggravation because of it and Wyatt wanted his money back. It was big money. Over three hundred thousand. It would set him up again, enable him to buy a place, live in comfort while he concentrated once more on the big jobs, the way it had been for him before it all went sour.
Wyatt rolled his head a few times to ease his knotted muscles, then reassessed the Mesic place. The advantages were clear. First, it had more than one exit. He never hit places where he ran the risk of boxing himself in. Second, the big houses of Templestowe sprawled behind hedges and trees, meaning a lower risk of snooping neighbours. Third, the streets were broad and fast, and the freeway was easy to get to. He could be well clear of the area before the local law showed. That’s if they did show. It wasn’t likely. The Mesics were crooked. They didn’t want the law poking around. Their security system wouldn’t be wired to the local cop shop.
Wyatt went still. Something was happening. The electronic gates were swinging open again. Just then a shadow passed across the Volvo’s side windows and he sank in his seat as a black Saab turned into the Mesic place.
He raised his head to watch, thankful that the creeper being trained along the security fence was still sparse and patchy. He saw the gate close and heard a faint snarl as the Saab rounded the curving gravel drive and stopped outside the first house. As if on cue, the front door opened and the woman and her visitor started down the steps.
Two men got out of the Saab. Wyatt could see a facial resemblance between them and guessed that they were brothers. Other than that, they were not alike. The passenger, dressed in jeans and running shoes, was a tall, solid, slow-moving man of about thirty who hung back as the driver walked fast toward the house.
The driver was about forty, and slighter, shorter and sharper than his heavy younger brother. Draped in a double-breasted bone-coloured suit over a tieless black shirt buttoned at the neck, he was a Hollywood version of a new-wave Mafia hood. His hair was thick and black, curling to his shoulders, and Wyatt saw it toss as the man began a dance of anger, pointing, shaking his fist and apparently yelling at the woman. Her visitor seemed to laugh in his face. The woman scowled.
Wyatt turned away. Who ran the Mesic operation? Who would give him the most trouble? Where were the weaknesses? He couldn’t plan this job until he had that kind of information.
Rossiter would have the answers-that’s if Rossiter felt inclined to help him. Rossiter had once been his go-between, but now there were good reasons why Rossiter might wish him dead. When everything had gone wrong for Wyatt the year before, others had been affected too, including Rossiter.
Wyatt peered out at the Mesic place again and what he saw made him duck in his seat. He messed his hair with his fingers, tugged his shirt out of his waistband and pulled down the zipper at the front of his trousers. He reached for the Scotch bottle on the floor and drank deeply from it. He splashed a little around the inside of the car and down his chest. Finally he rubbed his face hard with his hands, reddening the skin, and sprawled out along the back seat.
Even with his eyes closed he sensed that someone had come to stand next to the Volvo, blocking the light. The door by his head opened. A hand smacked him hard on the cheek.
‘Get out.’
Wyatt blinked his eyes, grunted, tried to turn over on his side. He recognised the solid character from the passenger seat of the Saab.
The hand smacked him again. ‘Come on, pal, move it.’
Wyatt opened his eyes and kept them open. He sat up by degrees, exhaling over the big man.
The man jerked back. ‘Jesus Christ. Come on, out.’
‘I’m over point-oh-five,’ Wyatt slurred. ‘Let me sleep it off.’
‘Bullshit,’ the man said, reaching in a massive arm.
Wyatt let a drunken look of cunning grow on his face. ‘They can’t book you if you’re sleeping it off in the back seat and you’ve got the keys in your pocket.’
‘Don’t fuck with me. I don’t know who you’re working for but you can tell them the Mesics are not for sale.’
Wyatt blinked and frowned. ‘What?’
The big man’s face twisted. He had short hair that kinked like wood shavings on his overheated scalp and Wyatt could smell fury and perspiration on him. Spittle sprayed onto Wyatt’s face as the man said, ‘Tell your boss the Mesics are reorganising. We’re not rolling onto our backs for anybody.’
Wyatt muttered that he didn’t know what the man was on about and got out of the car. He was rocky on his feet, bleary and
unappealing, someone who didn’t belong in Templestowe.
A furrow of doubt appeared on the big man’s face. ‘If I see you here again you’ll find yourself in the Yarra.’
Muttering, ‘Keep your shirt on,’ Wyatt got into the driver’s seat of the Volvo. He ground the starter. The engine caught. He crunched the gear lever into first and pulled away from the kerb, the engine howling. He steered along the centre of the road, loudly, inexpertly, like a drunk, and all the while he was thinking that if there was trouble in the Mesic camp he should hit them as soon as possible.
****
Two
They stood there silently, watching Leo Mesic send the Volvo away. They saw him stand by the gates until it was out of sight, then labour up the gravel driveway toward them. Bax waited tensely. He’d noticed the Volvo on the other side of the street when he’d parked the Capri earlier, but hadn’t thought to check it out, and that was the kind of mistake he couldn’t afford to make. If the dogs from Internal Affairs were snooping around him, he was finished as a copper. ‘Who was it?’ he said.
Leo was red faced, breathing audibly. ‘Either a drunk or some geezer playing drunk. Ten to one he was playing drunk.’
Stella Mesic said bitterly, ‘It’s started. The hyenas and the vultures are moving in on us.’
Bax watched as she touched her hair, her breasts, ran her hand down the front of her binding skirt. She was Leo’s wife and she was the hot core of Bax’s erotic imagination. He wondered how calculated it was, all that narcissistic touching. He wondered if Leo ever noticed it. And he wondered if the big man ever thought twice about the fact that Bax was there when he came home sometimes, like today. ‘We’ll do some damage control, Stel,’ he said.
He smiled as he said it. He could feel his tension draining away. It made sense that the Mesics were the target, not him. It made sense that hyenas and vultures would start sniffing around now that the old man was dead and the Mesic empire was up for grabs.
Then the third member of the family spoke. Victor Mesic was quivering inside his fancy suit. ‘You still here, Bax? You’ve been paid off. Get on your bike.’
Bax wanted to smack the overdressed little prick in the mouth. ‘Shut up, Vic’
Victor fronted up to him. ‘I come home from the States and find the organisation splintering, guys going solo, the firm disappearing down the gurgler, and you three nerds talk damage control!’ He smacked his forehead with his open palm, an American gesture that Bax assumed he’d picked up along with his accent.
Victor’s voice began to rise. ‘Forget about damage control. I told you, we’re moving out of the car rackets, out of Mickey Mouse crap.’ He lifted a hand. ‘So long, Bax, we don’t need a cop on the payroll anymore.’
Bax looked at the ugly twin houses, the struggling shrubs and lawns, and thought about the five hundred bucks a week he’d become accustomed to. He turned back to Victor. ‘You want my advice? Stay with what the firm has always done best. You’re treading on dangerous toes, the direction you’re headed.’
‘What would you know?’
Bax knew. He glanced at Stella and Leo and wondered if they would give in to this creep. Victor Mesic had been in the States for the past three years, shipping stolen Mustangs, Thunderbirds, Cadillacs and other classics to Melbourne. More recently though, he’d put in some time with mob connections in Las Vegas, and he’d come back for his father’s funeral full of big talk about the future of the Mesic family.
Stella Mesic moved in then. She touched her brother-in-law’s arm. ‘Listen to him, Vic’
Bax liked watching her in action. She could run hot and cold, she had her husband bluffed, and he waited to see how Victor would take it.
Victor Mesic jerked back as though he’d been scorched. ‘I don’t listen to cops on the take. Piss off, Bax. Do your exams, make senior sergeant, get yourself a legitimate pay rise. Things are going to change around here.’
Bax stared at him. Old fears began to creep inside his skull, his stomach. He had coke and gambling habits worth more than five hundred dollars a week and he also had an Inspector who expected him to clean up the stolen car rackets now that the Mesics were in tatters after the old man’s death. The way Bax saw it, if he helped Leo and Stella regroup, not only was his five hundred bucks secure, so was his power base. They would continue to feed him the names of small-time operators, bent panelbeaters and car thieves, and that would be enough to keep the Inspector off his back. It had been ticking over like that for five years now, since old man Mesic had recruited him, and he didn’t want to give any of it away. He couldn’t afford to. There was money in stolen cars, stolen parts. But if Victor tried to move the family’s operations into casinos and poker machines, not only would Bax be left out in the cold, the Mesics wouldn’t last six months. Law enforcement was going to be tough for a start, briefed to keep the new Melbourne casinos clean, the Mesics would go broke making the changeover, and Victor’s Las Vegas wiseguy mates would rake off all the profits.
‘Your father would turn in his grave,’ Bax said.
‘My father was out of date.’
Leo had been standing apart from this, the younger brother trying to find an edge. Now he had one. ‘What do you mean, out of date? Who built all this up? Who groomed you, sent you to the States?’ Old grievances worked on his face. ‘Me, I’m just a manager or something, I do all the hard work and I get fuck-all for it.’
‘I’ll make us rich, Leo,’ Victor said.
Bax watched the brothers argue. According to Stella, the old man’s will was complicated, more or less giving financial control to Victor, the favoured son. Now Victor was talking asset-stripping so he could raise some big money, the sort of up-front money demanded by his Las Vegas connections before they’d let him invest in the casinos and gambling clubs now opening in Melbourne. Leo and Stella had been fighting with him about it. Everybody knew, and it made the family look vulnerable. The word on the street was that they were finished. If rival operators didn’t walk in and take them over first, they’d tear themselves apart. Already someone had torched one of their crash repairers and one of their car yard managers had been pistol-whipped. Stella complained that she and Leo were scared to go out half the time.
‘Car stealing?’ Victor was saying. ‘Strictly smalltime.’
A point-scoring expression settled over Leo’s heavy face. ‘We don’t steal-we deal. There’s nothing smalltime about that.’
Victor chopped the air with the flat of his hand. ‘That’s ratshit and you know it.’
Bax let them argue. They’d forgotten he was there. It was an old fight, and he had a stake in it, but he’d have to find some other way to assert himself.
He looked past the two brothers at Stella. She stopped smoothing her thighs long enough to shrug a little and smile. It was her way of saying she wanted him and it had better be soon.
****
Three
Wary now after his encounter with the big man outside the Mesic compound, Wyatt dumped the Volvo in Collins Street. He tucked the keys under the front seat and phoned the rental company with a story about a blocked fuel line. Then he walked to a disposals store in Elizabeth Street, stripped off his whisky-sodden clothes and walked out wearing cheap gaberdine trousers and a navy pullover that had set him back forty dollars. Stuffing the unwanted clothing into a rubbish bin, he made his way to a taxi rank outside the State Library. ‘Airport,’ he said, climbing into the first cab.
He settled back. The next ninety minutes would be tedious. It wasn’t likely that the Mesics had the kind of reach that would find him easily, but one of the Mesics had seen his face, and that was enough. Caution and concealment were in the air that Wyatt breathed.
He got out at the international terminal, walked through to Ansett, and caught the Skybus back into the city. There were taxis in Spencer Street but he walked past them and made his way to the Victoria Market where he flagged down a cruising Silver Top. ‘Box Hill,’ he said.
The driver had an oil
ed rocker’s haircut and a face creased from years of glare, smoke and Elvis Presley dreams. He frowned, tapped the wheel, thinking through his route. ‘Whereabouts in Box Hill?’
‘Go along Whitehorse Road.’
‘Got you.’
It took them thirty-five minutes. For the first fifteen they were caught in peak-hour traffic, crawling bunched from light to light. When they were away from the city centre, Wyatt looked out at the high hedges and red tiles, the decent small businesses and family homes, and knew they were a world away from him. At the white horse in the shopping centre he said, ‘The Overlander.’
The taxi took him to a sprawling 1970s hotel-motel a kilometre past the TAFE College on Whitehorse Road. It was built of pastel-brown brick and consisted of a dining room, private function rooms, swimming pool and three blocks of guests’ rooms. Wyatt paid the driver and walked through. His room faced a courtyard car park. The location was good. Wyatt never put a hit together close to where he actually pulled it.
Monday evening, six o’clock. Wyatt rested for an hour then showered and changed and went to the dining room. There was a conference function room to the left of the main doors. A board on an easel said: ‘The Overlander welcomes On-Line Computing’ and Wyatt could hear shouted laughter inside.
He asked for a corner table and sat where he could see the rest of the dining room. There were solitary men like himself there, a married couple, a family celebrating a birthday. Wyatt ate sparingly and nursed a glass of claret. He perplexed the waitress. She was drawn to him but he was grave and courteous and offered her nothing.
At 8.30 he left the dining room. Someone was making a speech in the function room. Wyatt crossed the car park, paused at his door, looked to see that no one was watching him, and crouched to peer at the bottom edge. He had sealed the door to the doorjamb with a strip of scotch tape a centimetre above ground level, but now the tape was sticking only to the door. Wyatt stood, listened, went through the motions of a man fishing a key out of his pocket and fitting it to the lock.