Wyatt - 04 - Cross Kill (5 page)

What happens to the cash?

Once a week, on a Friday, everyone
gets paid and the rest gets laundered.

Wyatt liked that. The strictly cash
heists had been drying up for him. It seemed no one used cash anymore. So I
need to hit on a Thursday night.

Better make it soon, or it could
all be gone, Rossiter said. Thursday week should give you time to set it up.
I wish you luck.

Wyatt didnt believe in luck, good
or bad. He believed in people who had skills and nerve. He wandered to the
window again, mentally putting a team together.

Behind him Rossiter said, Anything
else you want to know?

You ever hear from Frank Jardine?

He lives in Sydney now. I can give
you the address.

Wyatt waited while Rossiter
scribbled on the back of an envelope. Ill be in touch later with a shopping
list. Plastic explosive, drills, radios, stuff like that.

Easier said than done, Rossiter
said sharply. Last time I helped you I almost got killed.

Wyatt turned around. He focused on
Rossiter without blinking, unemotional and remote: How much?

Rossiter met his look for as long as
he could, then glanced away. Another thousand?

Wyatt counted out ten one-hundred
dollar notes. There could be more later.

Call it a retainer.

There could be more later, Wyatt
said, still hard and dispassionate, so long as no one gets wind of what Im
doing.

Reading you loud and clear,
Rossiter said, buttoning the notes into his shirt pocket.

Wyatt was still standing. Otherwise
he might not have noticed the Laser parked beyond the pub. In the daylight it
was blue, last night it had looked black. There was a dent on the rear panel,
three registration stickers on the windscreen.

He didnt say anything. He turned
away from the window and left the room. He passed through the kitchen, ignoring
Eileen, who was dipping a wet finger into a packet of crisps. He couldnt see
Niall anywhere. He kicked a wheel-less fire engine out of his path, and paused
at the screen door. In front of him was the grey yard, guarded by a high paling
fence. The stiff clothes creaked in the breeze. Apparently the dog was asleep.

Wyatt slipped outside, ran lightly
to the kennel, used it as a step, and vaulted over the side fence into the
truck drivers backyard. In his wake the dog growled, the door opened in the
granny flat, and Niall said, What the fuck . . .?

Wyatt waited, crouched behind a
thicket of staked tomato plants. The garden was empty. He couldnt see anyone
inside the glass windows that extended along the back of the truck drivers
house.

But things wouldnt stay that way.
He chinned the alley fence and looked both ways along it. Worn cobblestones, a
filthy drainage channel, abandoned mattresses. A torn-eared cat, spooked by
him, crouched belly-down on the cobbles. Wyatt swung his legs up, rolled his
trunk along the top of the fence and dropped into the alley. No one saw him do
it. No one cried out.

Wyatt considered his options. To the
left the alley formed a T-junction with a brick wall. To the right it opened on
to a broad street next to a playground. Not that waytoo open, too enticing. He
loped toward the T-junction.

The gunman was young and he was
snatching a quick leak against an open drum of sump oil when Wyatt came around
the corner. He splashed his jeans as he tucked himself back in and went for the
pistol in his belt holster.

Wyatt stopped, eyeing the man and
the gun warily.

Come any closer and Ill call in
the others, the gunman said.

He had an acned face and hair the
colour of his pasty skin. He licked his lips. I mean it, he said. He lifted
his head to shout.

Wyatt knew he had nothing to fear
from a man whod prefer to call for help rather than use his gun. He advanced,
taking out his own gun, chilling and deliberate. He dug the barrel under the
scarred chin and let the gunman hear him thumb back the hammer. That oil
drumI want you to drop your gun in it.

A soft splash and the mans pistol
slipped under the scummy surface. Wyatt thought about questioning him, but
changed his mind. The man was only a soldier, following orders; he wouldnt
have answers to the questions Wyatt wanted to ask him. Wyatt smacked him to the
ground with the flat edge of his .38 and got out of there.

* * * *

Eight

He
walked back to wait at the bus-stop under the railway overpass near Hoddle
Street. Two minutes later, he saw the blue Laser again, edging out of a side
street a few blocks away. It pulled into the kerb. No one got out.

If they were going to take him they
wouldnt do it here. Too open, too many witnesses. Obviously theyd picked him
up in Lygon Street and tailed him to Abbotsford, but it could have started
earlier than that, at the motel.

A bus pulled in and he climbed
aboard. He wanted access to an exit and a line of sight along the length of the
bus, so he sat on a side-facing seat near the drivers door. He didnt know how
well prepared this mob was. If they had a radio or a car phone they could call
ahead and put someone on the bus.

The minutes passed and the bus
belched its way along Johnston Street. Not many people boarded and none of them
looked like trouble. They were pensioners, deadend teenagers, women with
shopping trolleys and small children. The Laser stayed four car lengths behind
the bus through Collingwood and Fitzroy and up into Carlton.

Several people got ready to alight
at the stop on Lygon Street. Wyatt let them get off first. He didnt want them behind
him but on the street where they could shield him. The Laser had closed in on
the bus. Wyatt walked for a hundred metres along Lygon Street toward the city,
and paused outside Readings bookshop. He gazed without taking in the details at
a poster advertising the latest Claire McNab, then switched direction and
darted across to the other side of the street. Lets see how good you are on
foot, he thought. Lets see if youve got any backup.

He jogged along Faraday to Genevieves,
where people were drinking coffee under sidewalk umbrellas, and ducked left
into a narrow side street. Halfway down he paused and looked back. The street
was clear.

But he knew he hadnt lost them. By
running hed announced himself. They were out there, regrouping, setting up the
next stage. He had to nip this in the bud, and the only way to do that was to
let himself be the bait.

On Lygon Street again he headed
south, keeping pace with the crowd. Half of the people were fashion plates, the
other half wore Reeboks and tracksuits the colour of poster paints. Once Wyatt
would have despised them but he didnt have the energy for that anymore. The
mass of the population was vulgar and herd-like and some of them had money.
That was enough.

He edged through the students
huddled outside the room-to-let notices in Readings window. There are ways of
tailing people so you cant be spotted and ways of spotting a tail. Wyatt used
reflective surfacescar chrome and duco, shop windows, peoples sunglassesto
check movement behind him. He double-backed twice, and occasionally lingered
outside shop windows, glancing casually along the stretch hed just come.
Careless tails always gave themselves away, breaking rhythm with the crowd,
pausing outside an unlikely shop window, diving into a phone box. Nothing. He
entered a vast, noisy pasta restaurant by one door, read the chalked menu for a
while, then left by a side door. At the Grattan Street intersection he saw a
taxi pull over and discharge a passenger. He got in, told the driver to U-turn,
and watched to see the response. Nothing. They were good. He didnt see a thing
that looked wrong.

He got out again near Jimmy Watsons
wine bar, gave the complaining driver twenty dollars, and retraced his
movements along Lygon Street. Wyatt was prepared to do this for two or three
hours if necessary. He assumed theyd have more than one man on him. There
might even be a tail in front of him. Wyatt didnt care who or whenhe wanted
to flush out just one man, disable him, ask him some hard questions.

But they were good. Wyatt went
through the shopping precinct a second time, crossed Grattan Street and was
opposite the Argyle Square park before he spotted the tail. It was a face he
remembered from a shop window, more easily identifiable now where there were
fewer pedestrians. Wyatt stiffened, then absently scratched his backside: he
didnt want the tail to see tension in him. He kept walking. The street was
broad and open. He couldnt see where or how hed be able to take out the man
behind him.

Then he did go tense. The man hed
disarmed in the alley behind Rossiters house was keeping pace with him on the
other side of the street. Wyatt knew instantly what the plan was. Neither man
was bothering to conceal himself now, meaning they had backup nearby. They were
hunting him as a team, prepared to hand him over to one another until they had
him boxed in.

Wyatt put his right hand in his
jacket pocket and fitted his keys between his fingers like spines. The .38 was
in the inside pocket, but only a mug would want to shoot it out in the middle
of Lygon Street. He didnt think the other side would want a shooting either.
He kept walking.

It was a classic herding action. The
second tail paced him step for step on the park side of the street. Wyatt took
note of the mans arms: they looked unrelaxed, hanging out from the stocky
trunk, indicating hed rearmed himself. Wyatt looked back over his shoulder.
The first tail was twenty metres behind him now. They were shepherding him to
where he could be ambushed by the rest of the team, presumably farther down the
street.

Wyatt wanted to run but controlled
the urge. He walked. Cars, taxis, a bus, a courier motorcycle, people shopping,
a kid on a skateboardit was an ordinary, moderately busy street, and it was
about to turn chaotic. He felt a bleakness settle in him. Nothing was finished
yet. Nothing was ever finished.

A block closer to the city were two
rows of faded terraces, home to several struggling shops under the rusted
verandahs over the footpath. The terraces were separated by an alley. The Laser
was parked just beyond the alley. Then someone stepped out, blocking Wyatts
path. It was the woman whod tried to kill him ten months ago and again last
night. A fourth figure stood near the car. He had blunt Melanesian features and
the build of a weightlifter. Wyatt saw him rub his hand once over his cropped
black hair then crouch slightly, waiting to see what Wyatt would do.

Wyatt stopped, looking for
leverages. He couldnt find any. The men were keeping well back from him and
the woman posed problems. If shed had long hair or loose clothing there would
be something he could hold, jerk or twist, but she had a short fine down over
her scalp and skintight jeans and top. There was only her body, hard,
quick-looking, like a coiled black spring, and the tiny pistol she let him see
in her gloved palm, a chrome automatic gleaming against black leather. She
jerked her head at the alley, meaning
in there.

Wyatt walked a few metres into the
alley and stopped. He turned around. The woman was following him, and she
stopped when he did. The others were stationed on the footpath behind her. She
didnt speak, just stared flatly at him. The gun was in view now. She gestured
with it. He turned and began to walk again. After a few seconds he heard soft
footfalls as she paced him. If this was a professional hit it would be done in
silenceno arguments, no explanations.

Wyatt stopped. The alley was damp
and narrow, smelling of urine and garbage scattered by rangy cats. Faint grey
light leaked in from the street behind him. In front of him was a wall.

They were not counting on what he
did then. He spun around. He began to shout. At the same time he moved,
zigzagging down the alley toward them, bouncing from wall to wall. The woman
swung her gun, tracking him, but she lacked the time she needed to aim and
decide. One second. Wyatt reached her and raked the keys across her face. Two
seconds. Her eyes filled with blood. She screamed and, her first instinct, put
both hands to her face. Wyatt wheeled, swung his fist, drove the air from her
body.

Three seconds. The men reached for
their pistols. They hadnt expected this. They had thought it would be easy,
four against one. Now they didnt know if they should shoot, or keep Wyatt
trapped, or rescue the woman. Bastard, one of them said. They started toward
him.

Wyatt continued to run, swift, low,
shouting unnervingly. He ran right into the face of their guns. They aimed, but
he was crouched over, weaving rapidly. They jerked, trying to aim, but the
woman was in their line of fire, and they didnt want ricochets, the metal
fragments flying like hornets in that narrow space.

Five seconds. Wyatts shoulder drove
into the weightlifter, who doubled over, his mouth opening and closing. He
dropped his gun, then fell. Wyatt scooped up the gun, a 9mm, and swung it
around on the other two. They backed onto the footpath, shocked at the speed
and fury of the turnaround, then fled, scuttling in panic down the street.
Seven seconds.

A small boy and an elderly woman had
seen everything. The boy began to cry, the old woman was gulping, but they didnt
move. Wyatt walked past them and across the street. They looked wonderingly
after him, then back at the woman in the alley.