by Garry Disher
No thanks. Whenever Wyatt needed to fence anything, there were good men he could go to, independent operators who valued the work he did and paid top dollar.
‘You’re making a mistake,’ Kepler said.
Wyatt shook his head.
‘Okay then,’ Kepler said, pushing the covers down to his waist, ‘finish me off here and now.’
‘Shut up, Kepler. You asked for something substantial. I can give it to you. You’re expanding into Victoria, correct?’
Slowly the scorn and irony disappeared from Kepler’s heavy face. He laughed harshly. ‘We would’ve had a toehold there by now if you hadn’t stuffed us around.’
‘Forget that,’ Wyatt said. ‘Have you heard of the Mesics?’
Kepler eyed him, looking for the trap. ‘Stolen cars.’
‘Karl Mesic died recently. The oldest son intends to move them into more ambitious rackets, but meanwhile they’re vulnerable. Already a lot of small operators are sniffing around ready to snap up the bits and pieces.’
Wyatt paused. Then he smiled. There was no warmth in it, only a hard certainty. ‘I can give them to you.’
‘You can give me the Mesics?’
‘Lock, stock and barrel, so long as we hit them now while everything’s still in place, still operational.’
Kepler regarded him sceptically. ‘What’s in it for you?’
‘The Mesics have got some money that’s rightly mine. Last year one of their agents ripped me off. I don’t expect to get everything back, but every Thursday night there’s a lot of cash in the safe. I’ll take whatever’s there. That’s all I want.’
Kepler was suspicious suddenly. ‘Who else have you approached with this idea?’
‘No one. Why?’
Kepler’s face cleared. ‘I want to be sure there’s no competition. You say you only want cash? Not an operating percentage?’
‘I want whatever I can carry with me out of the door,’ Wyatt said. ‘Everything else is yours.’
‘Such as?’
‘One, you get to talk to the Mesics face to face. Two, you get their records-everything you need to know about their current operations and what they have in mind for the future. Armed with that kind of information you could take over without a hitch.’
‘So that’s the deal, your trump card? You give me the Mesics, I put the word out that the contract’s cancelled?’
‘That’s it.’
Kepler seemed to lean back and size him up. ‘I don’t doubt you could knock them off, if you had the right sort of team.’
Wyatt had written this script in his head and so far none of the players had missed a beat. ‘Yes,’ he said.
‘And you can’t put a team together if there’s a contract out and every second hoon’s got the hots for you.’
Kepler was still keeping to the script. Kepler was a survivor. He tested everything for the profit margin and the risk factor before he committed himself. Wyatt leaned forward. ‘Believe it or not, I’ve got friends, people who would rather work for me than against me, despite the forty grand you’ve got on my head. All I’ll need from you at the start is some operating cash.’
Kepler thought about it. ‘I don’t think I can do that.’
‘Why not?’
‘A man likes to keep an eye on his investment. I mean, your pals could rip you off, you could fuck up, I could be throwing away good money and earning myself a lot of pain if the Mesics hear about this.’
Wyatt frowned, stringing this along. ‘What have you got in mind?’
‘My people work with you. They don’t get their hands dirty, they don’t put their lives at risk, but they’ll be in the know and they’ll provide whatever resources you need.’
Wyatt waited for a few seconds. He worked on the principle that self interest was the driving motive in human affairs. He didn’t trust Kepler. He didn’t trust anyone. Unfortunately, however, to do the work he did he had to trust some people part of the way. The jobs where he could operate solo were rare. He had to work with others. The best he could do was watch his back, minimise the risks, cancel the forces acting against him before they could take effect. ‘As long as they know who’s the boss,’ he said finally.
‘Maybe,’ Kepler shrugged. ‘It all sounds pretty dicey to me.’
Wyatt looked directly at the fat man and it was a look of hard, tired wisdom. ‘Kepler, make up your mind now-do you want me out of the way, or do you want me to hand you the Mesics?’
Kepler probably wanted both things. Certainly Kepler might order him killed after the Mesics had been hit. Wyatt had worked that factor into his thinking.
Meanwhile he was tired of going around in circles. ‘Do you understand me, Kepler? I hand you the Mesics. You cancel the contract. We have to agree at that basic level. Otherwise I’ll kill you. Even if it means I have to look over my shoulder for the rest of my life, you’ll still be dead.’
‘We could hit the Mesics ourselves.’
‘Then why haven’t you done it? The truth is you’re still weak in Melbourne. I know the city. I know the Mesic set-up. I know how to hit them. It’s what I’m good at. It’s my job.’
The script ended here. The only step left to Wyatt was to kill Kepler now, in the bed. Towns and Rose sensed that and seemed to wait with him while Kepler thought it through.
‘You’ve got a deal,’ Kepler said.
Saying it, making the decision, had the effect of giving Kepler back some of the control he’d lost. He straightened in the bed. ‘Work out the details with Towns and Rose. They’ll go with you to Melbourne, but understand this-they will not be put at risk.’
Wyatt shook his head. ‘You understand that Rose stays here with you.’
****
Twenty-five
Wyatt knew it was no good dangling big bucks under Jardine’s nose, or appealing to old times, or promising anything at all. Jardine didn’t need to work at his old trade again. He did all right, his computer beating the bookies’ odds most of the time and there was always someone who wanted to buy the heists he planned. He had books to read, music, memories, a life of stylish quietness and solitude. Still, a sharkish look of hunger had appeared on Jardine’s face in the past few days, sharpening as he’d helped Wyatt hit the Outfit operations one after the other. There was only one way of approaching Jardine. Wyatt said simply, ‘I’ll need your help in Melbourne.’
There might have been a grin on Jardine’s face. ‘Uh huh.’
It was Sunday morning. They were in Jardine’s rooms at the Dorset and the balcony window was open, letting in a morning breeze. Wyatt had slept on the couch. He felt stiff and cranky, impatient to start work.
Just then a trick of the atmosphere brought a voice clearly into the room from the street below: ‘Oppose the third runway. Sign this petition now.’
Jardine jerked his head at the window and this time he did smile. ‘I donated twenty bucks to the cause yesterday.’
Wyatt suddenly felt an unease close to melancholy. Now and then he glimpsed inside a normal life, a normal person’s engagement with the wider world. Certainly there were things in the world that he hated-stupidity, viciousness, ostentation-but he’d never voted, joined a cause, had a pub debate with anyone about anything. If forced to think about it he might argue that life muddled along only because people compromised, but he rarely gave a thought to what made the world tick. It was as though the things other people did had nothing to do with him. And while he was perceptive enough to understand what some people in some situations were thinking- other crims, for example, or hostages and holdup victims-he realised he knew very little about the inner lives of ordinary people. He said helplessly, ‘What third runway?’
Jardine laughed. ‘Next time you read the paper, check out the news for a change.’ He knew Wyatt. He knew that Wyatt read newspapers solely for the purpose of the tingle in his nerve endings that told him here was a sweet job: a payroll, a bank, a ticket office.
Wyatt hadn’t sat around like this with a friend for
a long time. He hadn’t felt embarrassed for a long time. But this was small talk and he wasn’t comfortable with it. ‘I can offer you a fee, or a percentage.’
Jardine was drinking coffee. He’d gone down for croissants earlier and he dabbed at the pastry flakes on his chest with a wet forefinger. ‘Are you trusting your instincts, or do the facts fit?’
‘Both. The place feels right, there’s no security to speak of, and internally the Mesics are in a mess. I need to hit them this coming Thursday, when the money’s there, before someone else moves in on them.’
‘And Kepler’s agreed to bankroll you?’
Wyatt nodded. ‘We meet his people in Melbourne tomorrow morning to work out the details.’
‘We do the hit, they come in after us and mop up?’
Wyatt nodded again.
‘Are you sure the Mesics will be at home when we hit the place?’
‘They feel vulnerable at present. Some cowboys have hit a couple of their operations. Also, they’re not likely to go out and leave the money unattended.’
‘Will two of us be enough? Can’t Kepler send in his hard boys as well?’
‘Kepler’s people are there for backup before the job. I don’t like the idea of too many guns on the ground, especially Outfit guns. Also, Kepler’s not keen on his people getting hurt, or being there if the cops come in. If there is any flack, we cop it. I can live with that.’
Jardine looked across the room at his computer. The face of the monitor was milky grey under the dust sheet. ‘Of course, it would help if the bloke you took with you on this job had worked with you before.’
Wyatt said, ‘Yes.’
‘And he knew Melbourne.’
‘That too.’
‘Plus he hadn’t forgotten his old skills and wouldn’t rob you.’
Wyatt stood up. ‘Come on, Jardine. Yes or no?’
‘I want a flat fee.’
‘I’ll pay you fifty thousand. If there’s nothing in the house, if it all goes wrong, I’ll have to owe you.’
‘Coming from anyone else,’ Jardine said, ‘that wouldn’t bring me any comfort.’
Wyatt put ticket wallets on the coffee table. ‘Ansett at four o’clock.’
****
Twenty-six
The phone rang just as Bax was knocking off for the day. He picked it up and heard Stella Mesic say, ‘Is Mack there?’
This was a signal and Bax felt himself go tight inside. ‘There’s no Mack here, sorry. You must have the wrong number.’
‘Sorry about that,’ Stella said. The line went dead and after a few minutes of paper shuffling, Bax rang through to reserve an unmarked Falcon from the motor pool. It was waiting for him in the garage and Bax cringed as he strapped on the seatbelt: the interior smelt of men who lived on cigarettes and nerves and doner kebabs. Bax had also read somewhere about the vinyl in modern cars, how it secreted toxins into the air you breathed.
He cranked down the window a little and headed across to the Doncaster Freeway, where he took the Bulleen Road exit. Stella Mesic’s blue XJ6 was waiting in the Heidi Gallery car park. Bax skirted the stained grey flank of the gallery, dodged sculptures and trees, and found Stella at the river’s edge.
She didn’t smile, didn’t touch him, just stood there clasping her upper arms, and that was hard for Bax. She’d snatched some time with him on the weekend, and Bax was playing it through his head like a film: her legs, her flat brown stomach, the smattering of fine hairs around her navel.
Now it was as if none of that had ever happened when she said flatly, ‘We’ve got a problem.’
He swallowed. ‘A problem?’
‘A cop came by the house last night.’
In a rush, Bax said, ‘Internal affairs? Asking about me?’
A grimace showed on her face. ‘Calm down, nothing to do with you. This was an overweight individual called Napper, cunning but not very sharp. An ordinary station cop, a sergeant, only he wasn’t wearing his uniform.’
‘Local?’
‘No. Some inner suburban nick.’
Bax couldn’t work it out. ‘What did he want?’
‘He said he had reliable information. He said the family was going to be hit soon. He said they’d be pros, and they’d be armed. He said he thought we’d like to know.’
Bax ran his mind through the names of men he’d put away over the years and men who’d ever worked with or for the Mesics or set up in opposition to them. He said, thinking aloud, ‘The guy in the Volvo last week.’
‘Therefore we have to treat what this cop says seriously; it supports what we already know.’
‘Did this Napper character say where he got his information from? I mean, how come he approached you first and not the local boys or D24? Did he name names?’
Bax was losing control a little. He knew it from the way Stella was watching him, head cocked at an angle, waiting for the bluster to pass.
‘Well, we come to the crux of the matter, don’t we?’ she said. ‘One, our Mr Napper thought we might prefer to deal with the problem ourselves, avoid having cops hiding in the shrubbery. Two, he said he knew who and when and how, but at this stage he wasn’t at liberty to divulge that sort of information.’
Bax nodded. ‘He thought you might like to think it over, come to some sort of arrangement with him.’
‘Exactly. A ten thousand dollar arrangement.’
‘And once this crisis is over,’ Bax said, ‘he’ll be on the doorstep again, wondering if some more permanent sort of arrangement mightn’t be possible.’
‘Yeah, well, you’d know all about that,’ Stella said, and the way she said it was like a knife slicing through Bax’s heart.
He coughed. ‘Who did he speak to? All three of you?’
‘Good, your mind’s working. He spoke to Leo and me. Victor was at the gym and we haven’t told him yet. I thought we might leave him out of things at this stage.’
‘How did Leo take it?’
‘How do you expect? He’s in a stew, now he’s had time to think about it. He wants to bring in some of his hood friends to guard the place.’
Bax sighed, visualising the carnage. ‘Think he’ll tell Victor?’
‘I talked long and hard and persuaded him not to. I said we’d deal with it. But he’s unreliable, easily swayed by Victor.’
‘Ten thousand bucks,’ Bax mused. ‘When does Napper want to meet you again?’
‘Wednesday. Neutral ground, he said. He’ll let us know.’
‘I’ll check him out for you.’
Stella stood close to him, touched his arm. Sunlight spangled her hair, her dress, the water in the river. ‘I was counting on you to warn him off, beat him up or something. Tell him this is an undercover operation he’s walked in on. At least come to the meeting and help us negotiate.’
Bax put plenty of expression into his face and voice. He held her arms, leaned forward, kissed her briefly. ‘Sweetheart, I can’t. I can’t risk upsetting another cop, or revealing that I’m linked in any way. All he has to do is drop a quiet word in the right ears and I’m done for, {and you with me.’
Stella jerked free and stepped away, her shoes tearing a clump of onionweed. He could smell it, and the river’s staleness. He was back at the beginning with her. She was sharp and angry when she said, ‘So we fork out ten thousand dollars and he gets away with it, leaving me with a lot of hassles and you in the clear. Is that what you’re saying?’
Putting his mind to it, keeping his voice low, his hands to himself, Bax said softly, ‘There’s a way around this. I know how we can beat this cop.’
She watched him, her head cocked.
He went on, turning the force of his eyes on her: ‘Trust me, Stel.’
Bax had been told that he had liquid eyes. Her shoulders shifted uncertainly. He reached for her hand. ‘You know I’m good at this sort of thing. Trust me.’
It was win or lose. In a moment she sighed and Bax saw that he had won again.
****
Twe
nty-seven
The first planning session in Melbourne was set for five o’clock on Monday afternoon. The Outfit had a town-house on permanent lease in a building on the fringe of the city. To get to it Wyatt and Jardine walked across Treasury Gardens from the Parliament underground railway station. The walk across the park was Jardine’s idea. ‘It’s been years,’ he said, turning his face to take in leaf canopies and shafts of sunlight. He pointed to trees and named them. Wyatt went along with it, making assenting noises in the right places, automatically watching for a tail.
‘Florida,’ Jardine said, as they waited to cross the road. He meant the Outfit building, its low lines, jagged roof-line, green facade, blue doors and window frames. Blue U-shaped pipes had been bolted to various parts of the walls; larger blue pipes were ranged along the footpath like candy hitching rails. They served no useful purpose. ‘Like something out of “Miami Vice”,’ Jardine said. Wyatt had no idea what he was talking about.
They paused outside the front door of the building. It was the sort of place that employed doormen between 7 am and midnight. Wyatt pressed a buzzer and watched a man in an ill-fitting uniform put his face to a microphone. A speaker scratched into life near the buzzer. ‘Help you gents?’
‘We’re here to see Mr Towns,’ Wyatt said. ‘Second floor.’
The doorman ran his finger down a page. Wyatt saw the man’s lips move, saw him nod, and a second later the electric lock disengaged and they were in.
They took the elevator. It opened on to a short hallway. There was only one door. Wyatt knocked and Towns showed them into a long, low room thickly carpeted and painted in shades of yellow. There were black leather armchairs and two other men unfolded from them as Wyatt and Jardine stepped into the room.
Wyatt knew Towns, knew how the man thought, so he ignored him. He didn’t know the other two. He gauged each one carefully. The younger man, introduced by Towns as Drew, wore a black, grey-flecked suit, grey shirt and red bow tie. He was about thirty, almost bald, and Wyatt thought he had the soft hands and hungry face of a man used to working white-collar scams. ‘Drew is our accountant,’ Towns said, as if to confirm Wyatt’s guess.