Wyatt - 03 - Death Deal (14 page)

Know where I can find her?

Rice regarded him carefully. Whats
on your mind, Lovell?

I just want to talk.

Sure you do.

On the way out, Rice slapped the
tape into the palm of the security manager and was full of apologies. Sorry,
pal, false alarm.

Wayland looked unhappily after them.
But who are we supposed to look out for?

Two blokes, youngish, tanned, Rice
called, describing half of the men in the casino. The other half were oldish
and tanned. They plunged down the stairs and out of the building.

On the footpath outside, Rice
scribbled an address on a piece of paper. Youre on your own now, pal.
Remember there are things I cant turn a blind eye to.

No worries.

Lovell watched him go. The detectives
suit was too small, the fabric sweat-stained and caught tight in his armpits
and groin. Girls in singlet tops were leaning on an open MG. Lovell saw Rice
stop to eyeball them. The mans tumescent heat was almost palpable.

Lovell clapped his arm around Nurses
shoulder. Right, Chuckles, time you went home.

Is that it?

Lovells eyes were fierce and deep
like coals and ice. I dont think so, do you? This is just the beginning.

He watched Nurse walk away. The
address Rice had given him proved to be a block of townhouse apartments on a
canal. The area was new, transported palms set in manicured lawns, private
jetties and massive yellow-brick houses straight out of Boys Town raffle
brochures. Lovell pulled in behind a hot-pink VW Superbug and drew on a pair of
latex gloves.

The woman who had doped Nurse and
stolen seventy-five grands worth of heroin from him seemed to know why he was
there. In Lovells experience, people who know theyre going to die will either
go berserk or collapse into a kind of sleep, limp and fatalistic. This one
collapsed. She opened the door and the light left her eyes and the elasticity
drained from her neck and shoulders.

Carol, Lovell said. Youve got
something of mine.

She muttered softly. Lovell tilted
her chin. Say again?

Not any more.

The silly cow had kept enough for
her own stash and sold the rest on the street for five grand. Lovell pocketed
the money. A measly five grand, meaning he had another seventy grand to find.

When he left Carol she was ODing on
the stuff shed kept for herself. He liked the neatness of that. He could have
used a knife on her, or a pair of her tights, but that would have spoilt Rices
day.

* * * *

Twenty-two

Wyatt
leaned over her, scarcely brushed her forehead with his mouth, but she woke
instantly and dragged him down. Stay.

No.

She sighed. Just testing.

He couldnt stay because this was an
inside job and the police would look hard at anyone who knew about the bank
transfer. They would look hardest at the branch staff and the security firm but
when they drew a blank there they would look at other people in the know. They
could conceivably question friends and neighbours and Anna Reid might find
herself accounting for the strange man she was seen kissing goodbye in her
dressing gown on a Sunday morning one week before the hit on the TrustBank in
Logan City.

So Wyatt was leaving at 3 am. He
leaned over, let her plant kisses around his neck, his ears. He tingled with
it.

He caught a cruising taxi on
Coronation Drive in Auchenflower and took it to a street corner four blocks
from the Victoria Hotel. He walked the rest of the way. The lobby was deserted.
He slept until 10 am, awoken by cleaning staff in the corridor outside his
room. He felt a curious kind of peace and realised what it was. Tension like a
second skin had bound him for too long but now hed torn through it. Hunted,
crossed, destitute, he had been living a young punks version of viciousness
and instinctive cunning. But his hours with Anna Reid, the promise of the job,
had released him and now he felt compact and alert.

There was an express bus to Logan
City at eleven oclock. Wyatt would have preferred a car but he didnt want to
risk stealing one, he didnt want to squander Anna Reids five thousand on
buying one that proved to be unreliable, and hed long ago lost all his fake ID
so he couldnt hire one. There were six people on the bus: two men and a woman
bleary-eyed from an all-night bender; an elderly couple dressed for church; a
man in a tracksuit carrying an Adidas bag. Wyatt sat at the rear, under the
push-out window where he could watch his back and his front.

The shopping centre had the
blighted, end-of-the-world atmosphere of a cheap studio set. Someone had thrown
a rock at a jewellers window, cracking but not breaking the glass. A pair of
womens underpants cringed next to a half-consumed apple in the gutter outside
the milk bar opposite the main TrustBank branch. The milk bar was open but the
streets were long, broad, windswept and empty. Wyatt went in and bought coffee
and a Sunday paper. He sat at a round plastic garden table by the window and
drank his coffee.

Using the newspaper propped as
cover, he scanned the bank on the other side of the street. It was constructed of
plate glass, aluminium and prefabricated blocks of concrete, like any new bank
anywhere. There was one front entrance, glass, next to an automatic teller
machine set in windows screened by a broad-slatted vertical blind on the inside
of the glass.

If he were a cowboy hed ram a truck
through the glass and bring all hell down on his head.

Or go in with guns and watch
futilely as security screens slammed downproviding there were security screens.
But even if he were able to get behind the counter there was no guarantee hed
have easy access to the strongroom. It would take time and patience to get
cooperation or understanding from the frightened bank staff, and even then
someone might trip an alarm. If the safe were on a time lock and the manager
shut it at the first sign of trouble, it was all over, no access to the money
inside unless he blasted or drilled through, or waited twenty-four hours for
the locks to release again.

Still using the newspaper as cover,
Wyatt left the milk bar and ambled across the street. An empty bus bellowed
away from a bus-stop in the distance. A church bell rang out somewhere; it
sounded electronic. He could smell toast and supposed that people lived in
flats behind or above the shopfronts.

There were no doors or windows in the
wall facing the side street. The inside wall was shared with a remainder
bookshop. That left the rear of the bank.

Wyatt walked on. The side wall
stretched for twenty-five metres and he came to a small courtyard carpark. A
sign read KEEP CLEAR AT ALL TIMES. There was one door in the back wall,
solid, made of steel, and one small, barred window set high up in the wall.
Then Wyatt heard a toilet flushing and knew they had a permanent guard on the
premises.

He idled past the little courtyard,
reading the sports pages. A minimum of three men, himself and two others,
preferably with a fourth man to drive them out of there, though Wyatt had been
let down by drivers in the past. They got twitchy and drove into lampposts,
they turned up in vehicles that belonged in a wreckers yard, they didnt turn
up at all. If they could somehow get a reliable vehicle into that courtyard,
they could load the money via the rear entrance to the bank.

Then Wyatt wandered back the way hed
come. He paused outside the parking area and bent to tie his shoelaces. There
were two rubbish bins and a number of empty cartons stacked in one corner.
Otherwise there was space for only one vehicle and it was designated manager
only in white stencilled paint on the wall facing it.

Wyatt knew how they were going to do
it.

* * * *

Twenty-three

He
went back to the city and called Anna Reid. Meet me outside the Gallery in an
hour.

I could have other plans, she said
airily. I might be going out for the afternoon.

There were things about her, about
any sort of involvement with someone, that he didnt understand. Either you
are or you arent. Which is it?

Her voice changed, growing old and
tired. Forget I said it. Just an old teasing habit I should have outgrown by
now. But next time try
asking
instead of telling.

This was baffling to Wyatt. They had
a job to do and nothing about it was geared to a normal life. He was unused to
games and this kind of intrigue anyway. He made an effort: I need to see you,
to discuss the job, but Id also
like
to see you.

She laughed. Fair enough. See you
at three.

An hour to kill. Wyatt walked across
the Victoria Bridge and leaned for a while on the railing at mid-river. A
paddle-steamer passed under him, crammed with people pointing cameras at the
city, the South Bank buildings. One man aimed a video camera up at the bridge;
Wyatt jerked back from the railing, continued down the slope to the State
Gallery. Inside the Gallery he sat on a leather bench and listened to a trio
saw away on a cello and violins. Then he left and made for the museum. He didnt
notice the right whale model suspended by wires, its recorded song, the
displays of historic machines. His head was telling him the story of the hit on
the TrustBank branch and the objects around him had the impermanence of images
and jingles on a television screen.

The woman who found him on the lawn
outside the Gallery was dressed for a Sunday afternoon in a hot country and
Wyatt had begun to back away before her voice claimed him. Hey, its only me.

He had seen Anna Reid unclothed and
clothed in costly dresses. This time she wore sunglasses, shorts, sandals and a
sleeveless shirt, and she looked small and touristy. She sat next to him,
drawing her knees to her chest. In the bright light of day her skin was taut
and luminous, the colour of mild tea. Wyatt wanted to stretch out with her like
lovers anywhere on a riverbank and once again he felt the disjunction between a
normal life and the kind of life that hed made for himself.

She made it easy for him, pushing
him onto his back. She leaned over him on her elbow. Youve seen it?

He nodded.

Can you do it?

There are some things I want you to
find out. One, the managers home address. Two, there will be time locks on the
strongroom: I need to know what time theyll open.

A couple of students sat near them.
They carried pads and had been sketching in the Gallery. Lets walk, Anna
said.

She led him across the pedestrian
bridge to the theatres opposite the Gallery. A banner flapped in the wind,
advertising a Sondheim musical. They walked by the waters edge. In 1988 this
part of the river had been the Expo site. Now bike paths and footpaths crossed
it, isolating islands of trees, fountains, shrubbery, outdoor cafes, a Thai
temple, a manufactured beach with golden sand and palm trees.

They talked. Ill need three extra
men, Wyatt said.

I can get them.

Ill need to meet them, the sooner
the better.

My place, eight oclock. Ill make
sure theyre available.

He stopped her. Not your place. Youre
not thinking it through clearly. Somewhere neutral.

She flushed, her nostrils flaring.

Wyatt clasped her shoulders. Youre
taking it personally. Dont. If were going to work together you have to be as
good as I am. Im teaching you what I know, not criticising you. Do you
understand?

After a while she nodded abruptly.

Okay. Think of a place.

She looked away, then swung back to
face him again. The Londona down-market motel, a place where no-one asks
questions.

Where is it?

Out on the Ipswich Road.

Arrange it with the others. Ill
see you there at eight.

He watched her walk away. He sat in
the sun for a while, then went back across the river and moved his things from
the Victoria Hotel to the YMCA.

At seven oclock that evening he
hailed a cab, getting out several blocks short of the London Motel. He walked
the rest of the way and for the next forty-five minutes watched the place from
a bus-stop on the other side of the street. The three men arrived separately
and alone. Anna let them in.

At ten minutes past eight he crossed
the street. The motel room was square and functional, a double bed dressed in
shades of brown, thick curtains, two cigarette-scorched orange vinyl chairs.

Wyatt shook hands with each man,
assessing them mentally. The man called Phelps was built like a wardrobe but he
moved easily. His size would come in useful for what Wyatt had in mind. Riding
was different: small, sinewy, his eyes wary. He looked quick; hed have good
reflexes, a dangerous heat.

Know anything about guns?

Riding nodded.

Shotgun or handgun?

Riding seemed to understand the
question. Depends what youve got in mind. For crowd control, a shotgun. It
scares people, it makes a loud noise and scatters a lot of damage around if you
do have to use it. For close, fast work Id use a handgun.