Garry Disher - Kick Back

‘Yes,’ Wyatt said. ‘But no shooting.’

‘I got a gun,’ Hobba said. ‘Wyatt, you got guns.’

Wyatt shook his head. ‘I’ve never used my own on a job and I’m not going to start now. We get new ones.’

Wyatt waited, watching him. Hobba liked to play devil’s advocate. It was how they ironed out the wrinkles. ‘Where from?’ Hobba said. ‘They put Payne away last week for shipping M16s to Fiji, and I wouldn’t want to be caught with something that fell off the back of a truck in the saloon bar of the Kings Head.’

‘Max, what have you heard? Who else is supplying?’

Pedersen tugged back and forth on his zip again, thinking. Eventually he said, ‘There’s this guy near Burnley Station. Somebody Flood.’

Wyatt nodded. He knew of Flood.

Hobba got to his feet and stretched, getting the kinks out of his massive back. He lit a cigarette and began to circle the small area between the bed and the door to the corridor. ‘What with?’ he said. ‘I haven’t got any spare cash. Max here hasn’t.’

Wyatt had withdrawn his final cache that afternoon. It would do for the guns and incidentals and his hotel bill, but that was about it. He said, ‘I’ll take care of the guns.’

Hobba looked at him shrewdly but said nothing. Pedersen removed his japara at last. The fawn shirt under it blended with his sandy colouring, making his features even less distinct. He folded the japara over his knee and said, ‘Okay, you buy the guns. But where do we get the cash for a van and the other stuff? I mean, this is pretty central to the whole deal.’

‘We bankroll it,’ Wyatt said. ‘Pull a couple of small jobs.’

Hobba sat down again, his bulk disturbing the surface of the bed. ‘Ivan Younger is good for any of the stuff we need.’

Wyatt grinned. ‘Yeah, well that’s a long story.’ He told them about Sugarfoot and Ivan and the dead housekeeper.

‘Was that you?’ Pedersen said, amazed. He looked troubled, as if Wyatt had come down in the world. ‘Ivan Younger’s someone you buy from. He’s not someone you work for.’

Hobba began to wheeze like an accordion. He was laughing. ‘You got out of it lucky. Young Sugar is going to find himself in a shallow grave one day.’

We could go on like this all night, Wyatt thought. He said, ‘So we can’t use the Youngers. Who else is there?’

He knew the answers to most of these questions, but the scene changed quickly, so it was important to double check. Hobba said, ‘Eddie Loman.’

‘Eddie Loman’s good,’ Wyatt said. ‘You go and see him in the morning and order a van.’

‘He won’t come through unless we pay him up front.’

‘The way to deal with the Eddie Lomans of this world is let them see some cash, say a thousand. He’ll come through then.’

‘A thousand? I bloody haven’t got a thousand.’

Silently Wyatt pulled out his wallet and counted out one thousand dollars. ‘Give him this. I’ll see about the guns. Meanwhile, I want a stake-out on the target over the next few days. Max, you’ll take the first shift tomorrow.’

Pedersen nodded. He seemed pleased to be working again.

Hobba was still looking for hitches. ‘We can’t use our cars for the stake-out. We’ll have to use rentals. That means fake ID.’

Wyatt opened his wallet. ‘This is my passport photo. You get yours taken tonight, use one of those machines, and ask Loman to fix us up with ID. As for the bankroll, there’s one scam I know of, but it won’t bring in enough cash. We need a second scam.’

A slow, wide smile formed on Hobba’s face. ‘Ivan Younger runs a couple of call-girls over in Fitzroy. How would you like to get back the five thousand he owes you?’

Later, when he was alone, Wyatt heard the knock, two soft, confident raps. He opened the door and Anna Reid was there, her low voice saying, ‘I waited in the lobby. I saw them leave.’

She regarded him calmly, her hands resting in the deep pockets of her jacket. Wyatt stared at her, then stepped back wordlessly to let her in.

At the centre of the room she removed the jacket and looked for somewhere to put it. She didn’t speak. No explanations or justifications, no ‘Are you surprised?’ or the other openings he expected.

But as she stepped by him to drape the jacket on a chair, her arm brushed against him. He tensed. In the silence she said, ‘Two things. First, I’ve been stealing from my trust account.’

He nodded.

‘To repay a bookmaker,’ she said. ‘I have to put the money back before I get found out. Second, I could take some polaroid photos of the layout and the alarm system if that would be a help.’

Wyatt ran through the possibilities. Perhaps she wanted him to trust her. Or she wanted to know if she could trust him. Or it was all a game to her. ‘Photos would be useful,’ he said. ‘Take them tomorrow. I’ll be in touch.’

She looked at him ironically. ‘You’ll be in touch.’

He nodded, refusing to smile. ‘About the money you owe,’ he said. ‘You just decided you’d ask Max to rob a safe for you.’

‘It wasn’t quite as blatant as that. I was explaining his parole provisions one day, and he told me I was wasting my time. He said he expected to be back in jail again sooner or later.’

‘That got your mind working.’

She smiled. ‘I didn’t say anything for a few days. He didn’t seem like an idiot, but I couldn’t be sure, so I sort of circled around the topic to see how he’d respond.’

‘What did he say when you finally mentioned it?’

She shrugged. ‘He didn’t seem surprised. I was just another crook; this was just another job.’

They hadn’t wasted time with small talk or hedging, and now they were silent. But Wyatt wanted to know more. After a while he said, ‘How come you’re Finn’s partner?’

‘He knew my father in Brisbane. When I came down here he took me on.’

She looked, briefly troubled, at his face, and he understood that she was unhappy. Beauty attracts the bad offers, he thought, and she’s accepted some of them. He said suddenly, ‘Finn expected you to go to bed with him.’

‘Well, well,’ she said, raising her eyebrows. She went serious again, wrapping her arms around her chest. ‘At first I didn’t mind. I was young, he gave me a start, he can be very compelling. Later on we stopped but he still looks at me like it’s there whenever he wants it.’

Wyatt was silent, waiting for her to say more. She cocked her head. ‘He lost a lot of money in the ‘87 stock market crash. After a while I realised he’d gone crooked. He started doing the planning kickbacks, and there were lots of little things- for example, every month he has the place swept for wiretaps and bugs. He tells us it’s Telecom doing maintenance.’

‘How did you know about Friday’s drop?’

‘He’s always very careful, but I overhear bits and pieces and I fill in the gaps. Some of his planning appeal work is genuine, but a lot of it’s rigged-straw objectors, inflated settlements, all earning him huge kickbacks. When something big goes through, he likes to brag.’

‘Using it as a come-on,’ Wyatt said.

Her eyes were large and when she smiled they seemed to lengthen and tilt upwards. She reached forward and brushed his chest almost as if she hadn’t done it. ‘I was thinking about you downstairs. Most people who aren’t straight eventually become wary and secretive. I think with you it was the other way around.’

‘So?’

‘So let’s hope it means you’re less likely to make mistakes.’

Usually when they started analysing him, understanding him, it was time to get out. But there were gaps in this job and he might learn something. Besides, she made him feel alive and well. Her knuckles brushed his chest again and he didn’t flinch. ‘You can afford to pick and choose your jobs,’ she said.