Garry Disher - Cross Kill

Keeping back so mat he wouldn’t be noticed by the woman at the desk, Wyatt edged around to the public telephones in the far corner. There were three of them, in roomy, old-fashioned booths with pneumatic-operated wood and glass doors. He stepped into the first cubicle, checked the Dorset’s number and dialled it.

He saw the woman pick up the phone and then he heard her voice. ‘Dorset Hotel. Can I help you?’

‘I’ve got a message for Frank Jardine,’ Wyatt said. ‘Could you tell him the car will be waiting out the front in about five minutes?’

‘I’ll check if he’s in,’ the woman said. Wyatt saw her turn around and check the pigeon holes.

‘Yes, he’s in. Who shall I say is calling?’

‘He’s expecting me,’ Wyatt said, and hung up.

He settled back to watch what the woman would do. If she made any phone calls or otherwise indicated that Jardine was marked in some way, he’d be out of there. The woman wrote the message on a small pad then lifted her head and shouted something. An elderly man came through a swing door on the other side of the staircase. Wyatt watched him take the note and labour upstairs with it. Two minutes later he came down again, spoke to the woman and disappeared through the swing doors. Nothing else happened. Wyatt imagined Jardine scratching his head over the note, perhaps warily checking his gun, but he’d get over it. Meanwhile Wyatt wanted to make sure the place was safe before he spoke to him.

After five minutes he stepped out of the telephone booth. Keeping the columns between himself and the woman at the desk, he began to edge around to the staircase.

The gun barrel tickled his spine before he was halfway there. He froze. ‘You haven’t lost your touch,’ he said.

‘No, but you have. Jesus, chum, don’t you know there’s a contract out on you?’

Wyatt turned slowly and faced a man who years ago had been his friend. ‘That’s partly why I’m here,’ he said.

‘There’s a back way out,’ Jardine explained. ‘I cut through the alley to Broadway, watched the front for a while, then came in looking.’

‘Haven’t lost your touch,’ Wyatt said again.

Jardine leaned back. ‘A bloke might start to wonder why you’re so interested in my touch.’

They were upstairs. Jardine had two rooms, a lounge with a tiny balcony attached and an adjoining bedroom. Wyatt bet that Jardine used the bathroom at the end of the hall, washed his clothes in the basement laundry and ate all his meals in the cafe across the street. That had been Jardine’s style twelve years earlier, when he’d lived in a hotel just like this one in North Melbourne. In those days Jardine and Wyatt had worked together a few times-a gold bullion hijack, three suburban banks, and a plum job where they’d stripped all the exhibits at a jewellery convention and negotiated a reward from the insurance company. Wyatt’s own private life had been limited and so he’d not been interested in Jardine’s. When Jardine had left Melbourne suddenly, saying he needed a change, Wyatt had shrugged it off. Later he discovered that Jardine had had a fiancйe in Melbourne, and the fiancйe had been killed by a kid driving a stolen car.

Now Wyatt accepted a glass of Scotch and avoided Jardine’s question. ‘Cheers,’ he said.

Jardine nodded and both men took small sips. Wyatt was not a heavy drinker and he hoped that Jardine had not become one. It didn’t seem likely. The grey eyes were cautious and lonely, but not desperate, and some thought had gone into making the suite of rooms a place to live in. A bookcase stretched to the ceiling along one wall of the main room. Apparently Jardine liked to read biographies, modern history, explorers’ tales. There were no novels.

Another set of shelves held a stereo system, VCR and small television set. A few compact discs were scattered nearby: some classical, some folk, some jazz. A thick Persian rug covered the worn carpet. The armchairs were cloth-covered and the one Wyatt was sitting in was firm and comfortable. An Ansel Adams photograph hung on one wall and early Sydney lithographs on another. A stiff chair was angled against a small roll-top desk that stood open in the corner. The interior was cluttered with envelopes, sheets of paper and pens stuffed in a jam jar. There was a framed head-and-shoulders shot of a hesitantly smiling young woman next to the desk lamp.

But the focal point of the room was a small Apple computer on a card table. Wyatt turned back to Jardine. ‘Writing your memoirs?’

The sad-looking face had been staring at him attentively, as if charting his thoughts and understanding them. It relaxed into a grin that was natural and unforced and had never failed to charm people. ‘I follow the ponies. That box of tricks helps me shorten the odds.’

Wyatt didn’t try to feign interest. He said, ‘Is Kepler still running the Outfit?’

The smile left Jardine’s face. ‘Alive and well.’

‘I need to talk to him.’

Jardine had a seamed, fleshless face like a weathered knot of wood. It didn’t change expression. ‘I don’t think a talk is what he’s got in mind for you, pal.’

Wyatt’s mouth twisted briefly without humour. ‘It will be.’

Jardine continued to watch him. Jardine was clear, solid and grave, useful qualities in a man who cracked safes and held up banks. When he spoke, the words emerged softly from his chest. ‘I’m pretty much a backroom operator these days.’ He meant that he blueprinted heists for people who knew how to pull them but not how to plan them. ‘That could be useful,’ Wyatt said.

‘You’re going to hit him a few times first?’

‘Yes.’

‘Meanwhile you’re pleased to know I haven’t lost my touch.’

‘Right again,’ Wyatt said.

Jardine sipped his Scotch once more, put the half-full glass down and pushed it away. ‘I have to live in this town.’

‘Maybe just information will be enough.’

‘On the other hand,’ Jardine went on, ‘sometimes I miss the old days.’

There was something approaching a gleam in his eye. Wyatt remembered it from twelve years ago, a look that said Jardine knew a sweet job when he saw one. He didn’t follow it up-he’d let Jardine declare if and how he’d be involved. ‘Tell me more about the Outfit.’

‘This is Sydney, mate. Things are organised here, not like down south. The cops are paid and you don’t have bunches of amateurs muscling in on each other’s territory or expertise. One arm of the Outfit controls bent cars in the western suburbs, another sells coke to street dealers. They’ve also got something going with diamonds.’

‘Tell me about Kepler.’

‘He’s a north shore darling,’ Jardine said. He started counting on his fingers. ‘He’s got his own law firm, a big house right on the water, a society wife. He belongs to the night clubs, knows the right people-including the attorney-general, the police commissioner and a few headkickers on the ALP Right-and he generally behaves like old money. He’s charming, he’s clever, he knows what knife and fork to use, and over on the north shore they go all weak-kneed about this refined gangster in their midst.’

‘I’m not interested in all that. I want to know what’s underneath.’

‘Underneath, he’s a thug. He bumps people off if they get in the way or maybe just because he’s got a sinus headache that day. He knocks his wife around so it doesn’t show on the surface and spends most of his time running the Outfit from the penthouse suite of a Darling Harbour apartment building.’

‘How old is he?’

Jardine thought about it. ‘Sixty odd. He’ll be around for a while yet. He’s ambitious, he’s trying to move his people into Victoria.’