Wyatt - 03 - Death Deal (6 page)

But he needed that Colt first and he
needed that two thousand.

Thats if they were still there.

Thats if the cops hadnt stripped
the place. He had no reason to suppose they hadnt.

Wyatt took side roads back to
Frankston and checked into an on-site caravan. Twenty-five bucks, grimy toilet
and shower block, cars coming and going from the red-light van two doors down.
He lay on the bunk, tuned everything out. He guessed thered be a big crowd at
the sale and theyd stay on for the auction. It was almost November and thered
be buyers there wanting a summer place close to the sea, thered be gawkers
attracted to the blood spilt and the mystery, thered be neighbours curious to
know how much their own places might fetch.

There could also be cops, wondering
if sentiment would bring him back there.

The cops didnt really know what he
looked like. They shouldnt be a problem.

It was the neighbours, kids like
Craig from the next farm. Wyatt would have to work on his face, work on his
body language, move around unnoticed and check both hiding places. Hed know at
once if theyd been disturbed. If they had, hed slip away.

If they hadnt, hed return when the
fuss was over and retrieve his gun, and the money that would buy him some time
until a big job came along.

* * * *

Nine

Wyatt
worked on three thingshe had to look as though he belonged; he had to draw
eyes away from his face and body; he had to baffle those eyes that did look
twice at him.

The first was easy enough. He was
brown from the sunforearms, hands, face and neckand his hands were worn and
roughened from weeks on the run. Added to that were faded khaki trousers, a
worn army surplus shirt with a frayed collar, old, sturdy, highly polished
brown shoes, a sweat-stained felt hat. Eighteen dollars at a Salvation Army op-shop
and Wyatt resembled a smalltime Peninsula farmer, a man who slashed the
blackberries and cleaned the horse troughs and weaned the cattle for barristers
who spent the week on Queen Street making three hundred thousand a year and
drove their teenage daughters to gymkhanas on the weekends.

The hat concealed his face but his
height was a problem, the way he moved when he walked. He added a walking
stick, a gammy leg.

That left his features, the thin,
unsmiling, hooked configuration of eyes, nose and mouth, the dark, unimpressed
cast of a face that someone there might know and recognise. Wyatt did two
things. He shaved badly on the morning of the auction, leaving stubble patches
on his neck and high on his cheeks, and he trained himself to mouth-breathe, resting
his upper teeth on his lower lip so that he looked mild and slow and faintly
stupid.

He checked out of the caravan park
at eleven. Shirt, trousers, hat and walking stick were in the car; hed been
wearing jeans and a T-shirt for the past two days and he didnt want to attract
attention to himself now. When he was away from Frankston and on a back road,
he pulled over and changed.

At the farm, parked cars, utilities
and 4WDs choked the approach roads and were angled among the golden cypresses
in the driveway. Wyatt had to drive several hundred metres past the entrance
before he could slot the Datsun into a gap at the side of the road. He walked
back, leaning on his stick, licking road dust from his upper teeth, and limped
up the track to the house that had once been his. Eleven-forty. He had twenty
minutes before the knots of people formed themselves into a crowd and followed
the auctioneer around from one sale lot to the next.

He edged past them. No-one looked
twice at him. Those who looked once were indifferent, maybe slightly
sympathetic. He had some nice stuff, a woman said, resting her hand on a
walnut sideboard. She looked puzzled, as though she thought a killer couldnt
have a taste for fine things. Wyatt moved on. Hed once known every chip and
scratch and loose thread in the furniture around him, but out here on the lawn
it all looked dispossessed, running to seed.

He walked around the side of the
house. The people were avid and suddenly he hated them. They were standing
where a mystery man had lived and committed murder and something about it
seemed to quicken their senses, make their lips wet, their eyes hungry. Wyatt
scanned them as he limped past, searching for the face that didnt belong, the
face that might blow his cover. But there was no-one.

Then a hand-held bell clanged and
the auctioneer called the crowds attention to lot one, five dozen bottles of
fine Mornington Peninsula wine. Wyatt hung back, then slipped away among the
outbuildings like a farmer who had his eye on the tools and equipment, not the
fancy stuff.

He stopped at the old dairy, a
cobwebby log and corrugated iron structure as old as the farmhouse itself. The
walls leaned to the left; the roofing iron was fringed with rust. Wyatt stepped
inside. He was ready for an amiable, half-embarrassed exchange with any
stranger he might encounter, but the dairy was empty. He crossed to the milking
stalls against the far wall. It was clear from the floors unevenness that the
police had prised up the flagstones. They had even torn parts of the inner
walls away, revealing red-back spiders and decades of dirt and insect husks.
What they hadnt done was check the upright bail posts. Wyatt reached up,
hooked his fingers over the edge, felt the plastic sandwich bag with its wad of
banknotes resting in the hollow.

Footsteps and someone whistling.
Wyatt swung around and crossed to the opening. A shape blocked the sunlight.
Wyatt nodded pleasantly, Good day for it, and limped past the man in the
doorway. Youngish, about twenty-five, jeans, baseball cap, black Nike runners
with a yellow stripe, an expression on his face of boredom and restlessness out
here away from the city streets. He could be anyone, Wyatt thought, and made
his way along the path to the pump shed. Behind him the man was idly stamping
around inside the dairy.

The incident confirmed one thing:
Wyatt would have to come back for his stuff when all this was over.

There was no-one in the pump shed.
It was a small building, fibro, with a tin roof, cement floor, shelves and an
electric water pump connected to an underground rainwater tank. When water
pressure dropped in the house, the pump would cut in automatically. Wyatt
leaned on his stick, regarding the pump carefully. It was bolted to an alloy
support that was in turn bolted to the cement floor. His pistol was under the
support itself, a gap five centimetres high sealed with a flap at each end. The
area looked just as dusty and untouched as it always had.

Then the pump motor whirred,
building quickly to its rattly full speed. It didnt die away, so Wyatt guessed
someone somewhere had turned a tap on. Maybe the auctioneer was making himself
a cup of tea, maybe a child was fiddling in the laundry. The noise seemed to
fill the little shed, and Wyatts first indication that he wasnt alone was a
sharp pain in the flesh high under his right arm. He stiffened. The pain
increased a little, the cotton parted before the blade, and Wyatt looked down
and around at the Nike running shoes.

Saves me the trouble of tearing the
place apart, eh, Wyatt?

* * * *

Ten

If
it had been a gun, Wyatt might have moved against it. No-one would risk a
gunshot with eighty witnesses around. But it was a blade and a kind of fear
paralysed him. Hed been cut when he was barely a teenager, trapped by the
Comets, neighbourhood kids in a gang driven to rage and hate by his lone-wolf
air. He had weaved too late and a knife blade had scored his stomachshallow,
barely raising a blood ribbon, but the pain had been like a hot wire and his
mind had done the rest, spilling his guts into his hands. In Vietnam it was
bamboo, one misstep on patrol and a panjee stake had punctured his calf. So
Wyatt stood stock-still in the pump house and thought about the razor edge
slicing through his chest if he moved against it, slipping between the bones of
his ribcage.

Cat got your tongue?

What do you want?

What do I want? What do you
think
I want? Same thing you came back for.

Wyatt said nothing. It had happened
before, some punk convinced that he had a fortune stashed away somewhere.

Youre wasting your time. Theres
nothing here.

Yeah, right, you just came back out
of sentiment.

I mean, Wyatt said, theres
hardly any money, not worth your while.

Dont hand me that caper. Every
bastards after you. You wouldnt chance it if it wasnt worth it. Turn around.

Wyatt turned cautiously, thinking
the man wanted him face to face, but the black runners edged around with him,
the knife tip maintaining its pressure.

Where are we going?

To hide till everyones gone home.
Then you can show me where the stuff is.

The clearing sale was over. The main
auction had started and there were eighty backs turned to them as Wyatt and the
man with the knife stepped out of the pump house. Wyatt didnt try to run. He
knew that before hed taken a step his body would betray him and hed feel the
knife. He didnt want to call attention to himself. He didnt try to swing
round with the walking stick. He did as he was told, walking ahead of the man
with the knife, down the hill and into the pine plantation at the bottom.

At the edge of the trees he stopped.
The knife nicked him again. Further in.

Wyatt walked on. His skin felt damp:
blood was gathering at his waist. It wasnt a deep cut, barely painful, but the
intention was there, and memories.

Thisll do. Chuck the stick away.

The cane flew end over end toward
some saplings. They were in a small clearing. The air was resinous, blanketed
and still, but snatches of the auctioneers shouts reached them. The pine trees
were old and densely packed. The earth between them was bare, all nourishment
given up to the trees. The pine needles were springy under Wyatts op-shop
shoes. On your stomach, the man said, and Wyatt stretched out on the ground.
A beetle skittered over the ground, paused at Wyatts thumb. Above him a Nike
running shoe pressed against the base of his spine.

Three months earlier, Wyatt had shot
a man dead among these trees, in a clearing like this one. He said, Whats
your name?

He got a harsh laugh. How does Finn
grab you?

Three months earlier Wyatt had also
robbed a lawyer named David Finn, the job set up by Anna Reid, the job that had
precipitated all the trouble he found himself in now. I know the name.

David Finn was my brother, so you
might say theres also a personal element in all this, its not just the money.

They were silent. The auctioneers
shouts ceased. Later they heard cars start up in the yard above them and on the
road at the front of the farm. Still Wyatt and Finn stayed there. Theyll be
signing the papers now, Finn said. Well wait.

Thirty minutes later he kicked
Wyatt. Lets go.

They climbed the hill again,
skirting the boundary unseen. The grounds around the house and sheds revealed
the recent presence of eighty peoplepaper scraps, scuffed dirt, torn
plantsbut all the cars were gone and they were alone. Satisfied, Finn prodded
Wyatt into the dairy.

This is the first place you
checked. Youve got stuff stashed here, right?

All along there had been a vicious
edge to Finns voice. Wyatt knew it would be dangerous to play for time with
Finn. The man would work the knife on him until he talked, and enjoy doing it. There,
he said, pointing.

Get it.

Wyatt reached up, withdrew the
money, turned around cautiously. He got his first good look at Finn: compactly
put together, with a short neck, small hands, skinny forearms, an indistinct,
forgettable face.

Wordlessly Wyatt handed over the
money.

Finn took it and stepped back. He
still held the knife, cutting the air between them rhythmically like a charmer
distracting a cobra. Wyatt saw him risk a look at the money inside the sandwich
bag. It was in hundreds, held together by a paper clip, but there were only
twenty of them, scarcely any thickness at all. Finn looked up in disbelief. And
the rest.

I told you. Thats all there is.

Finn snarled, advancing on Wyatt. Bullshit.
I bet its all like this, a bit here and a bit there all over the place, am I
right? He jerked his head. Come on, smartarse, the pump shed.

Finn had made two mistakes. Hed
allowed Wyatt to turn and face him and hed lost his temper. All his anger was
concentrated in the arm that held the money. He shook it in Wyatts face, the
knife arm temporarily forgotten, and Wyatt lashed out with his right foot,
driving the heavy leather toecap into Finns ankle. Finn screamed, dropped to
the ground. He huddled on the flagstones, rocking himself for comfort,
clutching his foot.

He wouldnt stay like that. He had
youth and the knife on his side. Wyatt headed for the door, leaping as Finn
slashed at him with the knife, and ran toward the pump house. He had about
thirty seconds to remove the plate and retrieve the Colt from its hiding place
under the pump. If the nuts were seized by age and rust, his thirty seconds
could count for nothing at all.