Wyatt - 03 - Death Deal (9 page)

Stolle swung around at his approach.
This had better be on the level. I didnt come here to be thumped and robbed
again.

Shut up, Wyatt said. I hope you
didnt bring those two clowns along with you.

Mostyns off the case and Whitney cleared
out on me.

Wyatt said, Good, and walked off
without waiting. Stolle caught up with him next to the van. Where to?

Your place.

Stolle said nothing to that. He
unlocked the van, got in, opened the passenger door for Wyatt. He drove in
silence back along the Nepean toward the city. At St Kilda Junction he headed
north along Punt Road and right into the cramped streets of renovated workers
cottages in Prahran. A minute later he picked up a small electronic device,
pushed a button, and light spilled onto the cobblestones from a garage door in
an alley ahead of them. Stolle drove in, pushed the button again. The garage
door clanged, sealing them off from the night.

Stolle had a little pistol in his
fist. Get out.

You wont need that.

Get out.

Wyatt waited for him at the door
that led to the house. He let Stolle prod him with the gun into the kitchen and
then through to a room at the front. Stolle had spent some time and money on
the place: thick woollen carpets, central heating, expensive fabrics on the
chairs and over the windows.

Stolles front room had the look of
an underused office. The furniture smelt new; there was dust on the screen of
his Apple. He shoved Wyatt in the back. Have a seat.

There was an armchair and an
ergonomic desk chair. Wyatt collapsed into the armchair. He realised how tired
he was and a series of tendon-stretching yawns broke out in him suddenly.
Stolle grinned at him, swivelling back and forth on the rotating seat of the
desk chair.

God knows what she sees in you.

Who?

The client. On the run, fresh out
of luck and friends, you dont exactly inspire confidence.

Wyatt yawned again. I want to see
the five thousand.

Stolle lost his grin. After a while
he nodded and reached his right hand into his left sleeve. Wyatt heard a snap
of elastic on flesh and then Stolle was throwing him a small packet.

He caught it with both hands. He
knew at once that it contained less than five thousand dollars. He riffled the
notes with his thumb: ten one-hundred dollar notes, torn cleanly in half.

This was stupid. He felt too weary
to fight it. He shook his head, dropped the half notes on the floor.

Stolle reached into an inside pocket
of his jacket. This time it was an envelope with a key in it. Brisbane bus station
locker key. Theres four thousand dollars waiting for you. The other half of
the money on the floor youll get when were on the plane tomorrow morning.

Wyatt stared fixedly at Stolle and
weighed it up. He could thump Stolle for the other half and walk out of here
with a thousand dollars now, but be arrested or shot tomorrow. He could let
Stolle take him to Brisbane and still find trouble, whether or not the promised
five thousand was attached to it. He didnt think this deal came free of
trouble. It was trouble in the sun, though, a place where his face meant
nothing to anyone, and those things were more important than anything else
right now.

What does this woman want?

She said there was something in it
for you. Maybe your parents died?

Wyatt said nothing to that.

A rich uncle maybe?

Did she give you a name?

No name.

Describe her.

Stolle swivelled unconcernedly in
the chair. He shook his head. Youve come this far. By lunchtime tomorrow youll
have answers, plus five thousand bucks in your pocket.

What about you?

Me? Stolle grinned. I pick up my
dough and go and play in the sun. He rattled imaginary dice in his palm and
tossed them across his desk.

Wyatt shrugged. He didnt gamble and
didnt understand the compulsion. Chance came into his workthe bystander in
the wrong place at the wrong time, an unaccountable switch in routinebut
mostly he worked from verifiable information and he controlled all the factors.
He got up. Youve got the tickets?

We pick them up at the airport.
Stolle looked at his watch. The flight leaves at ten. Im getting some
shut-eye. Id advise you to do the same.

He disappeared. It was 4 am. Wyatt
stretched out on a sofa in the sitting room. When a board creaked in the hall
three and a half hours later, he came awake all at once, his eyes open and
staring upward into curtained daylight. He heard an extractor fan rattle into
life and then water gushed in the bathroom.

They left Stolles house an hour
later. Wyatt had had his first shave in five days. He wore an old suit of
Stolles. It fitted badly, looking wrong by itself, so with Stolles help he
made a few additionsa lightweight overcoat to drape over his arm, a scuffed
briefcase, a rolled-up newspaper.

No-one stopped them; no-one looked
twice at them. Stolle sat next to Wyatt on the plane but he didnt communicate
with him beyond indicating a picture of Jupiters Casino in the in-flight
magazine. The flight was direct to Brisbane and took two hours. Five minutes
before it landed, Stolle bent down and reached for something on the floor. It
was an envelope and he said to Wyatt, You dropped this. Wyatt put it in his
pocket. He guessed it was the other half of the torn one thousand.

No-one stopped or noticed them at
the other end. Stolle collected his bag and led the way outside the terminal
building. The air was hot and dry. They took a taxi, riding in silence across
the flatlands near the airport. Dead grass lined the highway and closer to the
city Wyatt saw further signs of drought, patches of bare earth showing in the
parks and gardens. The sky looked brown and he could smell dust above the
traffic fumes. Somewhere in the interior strong winds were stripping the
topsoil, lifting it high and out over the coast.

Then the taxi was plunging into the
canyons of the city. It was a glassy place, brash and fast. The taxi pulled up
in Adelaide Street. The driver pointed. Bus terminals through there, under
street level. He spoke rapidly, strangling his words: a Queensland way of
speaking.

They got out and walked through to
the mall and the stairs that led down to the lockers and the bus stands. All
the while Wyatt felt focused and wary, the back of his neck prickling with the
weight of the hand that might reach out to spin him around. But there were only
out-of-work kids in the mall, bored police watching them, Japanese tourists in
baggy cotton shorts.

The number on the key was 226.
Locker 226 was in the centre of several banks of grey-faced lockers. There were
people there, depositing or retrieving luggage, but the one of most interest to
Wyatt stood up from a moulded plastic seat that was bolted to the floor and
intercepted him as he approached the lockers. He didnt say anything, didnt
move. She had nearly killed him three months ago and he wondered if death was
part of this deal.

* * * *

Fifteen

Wyatt
backed away a little. It was a bad place to be plenty of exits but he was
underground, in a city he didnt know, among people who would profit by his
being dead.

Anna Reid seemed to sense this in
him. She stood well clear, her hands where he could see them, and said, Wyatt,
its okay, as if shed backed a risky dog into a corner. He stopped, his eyes
restlessly scanning the crowd thronging the terminal.

Mr Stolle, Anna said. She smiled
and shook Stolles hand.

Wyatt watched them closely. He saw
Anna stand centimetres from Stolle and hand him a buff-coloured business
envelope from the bag over her shoulder. The envelope disappeared somewhere
inside Stolles coat. The transaction was quick and neat. No-one else saw it. Its
all there, she told him.

The grin was wide on Stolles face. I
trust you. Listen, now Im here, how about dinner one night?

He waited. Anna Reid stared at him.
Then she said distinctly, You must be joking.

Stolle flushed. He said, You lousy
cow, and backed away.

Anna watched him go. She wore a
sleeveless cotton dress, olive green, and black sandals. Her hair, black and straight
and fine, was drawn back behind each ear. It gave her a poised, challenging
air. When Stolle was gone, she turned back to Wyatt. Give me the key.

He handed it to her. The number 226
stencilled on the locker door was chipped and faded. She opened it, took out an
Ansett bag, and gave it to him. He slung it over his shoulder wordlessly. It
felt light, but the bag had been padded out to give it bulk, probably with
balled-up newspaper. She said what shed said to Stolle: Its all there.

Wyatt said harshly, Whats this
about?

She ignored him. Have you had
lunch?

Forget it.

He wanted to get away from her, from
this place under the street where no natural light ever penetrated. He turned
to leave, and as he did so she caught his arm. Her grip was strong. Ive got a
job for you.

The low voice, the pressure on his
arm, made him remember her, and at once some of the tension went out of him.
Anna Reid had embroiled him in a chain of disasters but he remembered the heat
of her, the kind of energy that spelt danger and risky rewards. They had
acknowledged one anothers lawlessness and there had been a time when hed
believed they could work together. Then it had all gone wrong. Hed had the
chance to kill her, just as hed killed Harbutt, but he had not done it and,
since then, whenever she had surfaced in his mind, hed been glad that he hadnt.
Hed mostly put her out of his thoughts but sometimes an image of her lurked in
the recesses of his mind. At those times a melancholy would settle over him.

But he didnt trust her. He trusted
only himself, a fact that had kept him alive and on this side of the barred
windows and the razor wire.

Wyatt? She shook his arm. Hear me
out?

He looked at the ground. Someone had
stepped in chewing gum, a streak of it stretching from the heart of the wad. He
wasnt used to her and he wasnt used to this.

Have lunch with me? Listen to what
I have to say?

He nodded. It was the warmest he
could get.

She took him into the mall, turning
right toward the river. A hundred metres down, in the centre of the mall, was
an open-air bistro. Anna led him to an umbrella-shaded table set flush against
the waist-high enclosure that separated the tables from the tourists and the
shoppers. The cover was good for the things they had to say to each other. A
Madonna clip blasted out from an adjacent Just Jeans outlet and a kid with a
squeezebox was busking for coins on the opposite side of the mall. There was
also a catwalk nearby, a man in a tuxedo squawking into a microphone as young
women paraded in bathing suits. Wyatt watched the people watching the parade.
Japanese tour parties, a couple of backpackers with peeling noses, students,
shoppers. Almost everyone wore shorts and sneakers, so he forgot about watching
for the kind of body language that said someone was packing a gun and meant him
harm.

They ordered club sandwiches and a
jug of water. Anna Reid also ordered wine in a small carafe. Wyatt didnt touch
the wine. He said, What are you doing here?

She knew what he meant. I grew up
here, remember?

Yes.

So after the fuck-up in Melbourne I
packed it in down there and came back here to live.

The fuck-up didnt ring true. Shed
forced it, as if she hoped it might establish a common ground between them,
something hard and streetwise. She saw the shutter close over Wyatts face, and
went on quickly: I walked straight into a good job.

She paused and searched his face for
some encouragement. Wyatt didnt help her. There was no expression in his eyes,
no softening, only a kind of hard summary.

You know, she said, that time in
Melbourne ... I didnt mean

She stopped, but Wyatt was still
focused on her, a force complete and silent.

She said rapidly, I slept with you
because I wanted to, not because it would make the job go smoother.

He continued to watch her.

I didnt know in advance what would
happen with you. Surely you can see that?

Wyatt maintained his hard silence.
He didnt eat, didnt touch his glass.

Sometimes I think of you, Anna
said. I didnt mean for things to go wrong.

Wyatt leaned toward her and his
directness was unnerving. You set up a scam that was intended to make you a
lot of money. You put the money ahead of me. Know that about yourself.

She flushed. That pretty well makes
us alike, wouldnt you say?

He didnt answer and he didnt let
his face show anything. The truth was, she would have killed him then if he
hadnt stopped her; hed had the chance to kill her and he hadnt taken it.
That fact lay there between them and he hated it. He said, The past is a waste
of time. Its only good for reminding you that it repeats itself. What do you
want?