Garry Disher - Kick Back

Sugarfoot stiffened. He said involuntarily, ‘Hobba. I smelt it on him this afternoon.’

‘Jesus Christ,’ Ivan said, his voice low and passionate. ‘This is all your fucking fault. Last week you fucked up Wyatt’s insurance job, today you go following him all over the place. I’d like to know how your mind works sometimes. What did you expect he’d do? Take it lying down? He’s telling me he can hit me where and when he likes.’

‘Bullshit. He’s bankrolling. He’s got a job on with Hobba.’

‘So? That doesn’t change the fact he nabbed five thousand bucks of the outfit’s money. What am I supposed to tell Bauer? “Sorry, the take’s a bit less this week.” Jesus, they already got their eye on me. This’ll convince them I’m holding out.’ He looked across at Ken Sala. ‘I’ll make up the difference myself. What Bauer and Sydney don’t know won’t hurt them. We’ll deal with Wyatt later.’

Sugarfoot shrugged. ‘Suit yourself.’

‘Just keep your trap shut,’ Ivan said. ‘Okay?’

Then he sat next to Ken Sala on the bed. He explained how none of this was Ken’s fault, and he, Ivan, would put it right, and Ken could go on as before, so long as he kept his trap shut, okay?

‘Okay,’ Ken Sala said.

He fingered his neck worriedly.

Wyatt called Anna Reid at six o’clock and she said she had the polaroids, come around any time, and now they were in her lounge-room and she was riding him on the rug in front of her log fire, concentrating hard. He looked up at her face, the parted lips, the eyes staring as if hypnotised by the patterns in the rug. Now and then she came out of it, saw him and grinned, leaned over his face to give him a nipple or to let the line of his cheek and jaw brush her breasts left and right. Sometimes she clenched her face in a kind of fury, as if this were not enough and she wanted to consume him as well. She would bite, ride him quickly for a while, ease again.

‘This is what I’ve been thinking about,’ she said, ‘not the money’

In answer, Wyatt raised her a little with his hands and pushed up. She bent her head back. Then he rested and she lifted herself and they watched as she moved on him again.

When she pulled at his shoulder, he rolled with her. She backed along the rug, wanting him to follow. She climbed backwards into an armchair, Wyatt almost losing her, then flopped back, getting her breath, while he moved in her again.

She said, ‘I want to finish, yet I don’t want to.’

Wyatt gravely took both her hands and moved them down. She looked questioningly at him, then smiled slowly, and he watched her long fingers begin working, circling, pushing hard at herself. He was on the edge too so he watched her face, and when her eyes opened in a kind of sorrow he let himself go.

The room was hot. They were perspiring. Wyatt, arms locked to support his weight, looked down at Anna, who watched him drowsily, her face swollen, heavy-lidded. She blew air between her breasts and onto his chest and it felt like a cooling breeze.

After a while he pulled away and fell back onto the rug. It was an expensive rug and he seemed to sink into it. ‘I feel exposed up here,’ she said, lying down with him. A moment later Masher joined them, purring, coiling his furry back into Wyatt’s waist.

They slept. Later, stroking Anna’s arm, Wyatt asked, ‘Did anyone see you using the camera?’

She groaned and stirred. ‘Back to reality. No. I waited till they were away from the office.’

‘Did you get shots of every room?’

She put her head on his chest. When she answered, her voice seemed to amplify, to carry in his chest cavity. ‘Every room, the alarm system, the safe.’

Wyatt tried to see her face. He saw only her scalp through her hair. He flopped back again, looking around at the walls and ceiling, the paintings, the light fittings. She had expensive tastes.

Soon he felt restless. Anna was looking down the slope of his body, tracing its hard, muscle-corded surface with her hand, but he’d begun to think about the job he had planned with Pedersen later this evening, and about the Finn job itself. He looked at his watch. Seven-fifteen. He shifted slightly, disturbing Masher, who stretched and shuddered and began to purr again.

Anna sensed the change in Wyatt and pulled away from him. ‘Are you going?’

‘Soon.’

‘I’ll get the photos.’

In a graceful single motion, she uncoiled from the floor and stood back from him. He got to his feet, watching her cross the room to where a leather bag had been placed on a small table. She had a lithe, unselfconscious style of walking. The red marks on her skin from his body and the carpet were oddly appealing and in other circumstances he would want her again.

She came back with a handful of polaroid shots of Finn’s office. He began to shuffle through them. He came to one that showed the safe and he stopped, thinking hard. He stood like a statue, staring into Anna’s fireplace without focusing on it, trying to work out the details.

She touched his arm. He seemed to jerk awake and she flinched a little at the look of coldness and distance on his face. ‘Whoops,’ she said.

He muttered something.

‘You were far away,’ she said.

He hated to be interrupted when he was concentrating on a job. He wanted to leave, go for a walk somewhere, find a quiet place where he could think. But that might offend her, so he started to say something reassuring. And then the answer to the Finn job came to him, quick and complete. A smile creased his face, transforming it.

‘Welcome back,’ Anna said, stepping close to him.

He watched her. She had the control now. This was what she was good at. Her head dipped and she moved down his body, nuzzling him. Later, when they were on her rug again and she was moving on him, she leaned forward to kiss him and he could taste both of them on her lips.

Her thighs began to pull at him as if measuring desire and anger. Her face was severe. ‘I didn’t expect any of this,’ she said.

He nodded. ‘I’ve got a place on the coast,’ he said, watching her. ‘We’ll go there when this is over.’

She smiled and stopped her pulling and they fell into a trance-like rocking. Masher woke suddenly, licked a foreleg, fell asleep again.

By eight-thirty that evening, Wyatt and Pederson were watching cars hiss along Chapel Street in dismal rain. An Alfa and then a BMW paused outside Henri’s Bistro and drove on again, looking for somewhere to park. Five minutes later the occupants were back, running in the rain, getting their feet wet, ruining their composure.

Pedersen was sour about it. ‘It wouldn’t hurt these guys to drop their chicks off and then park.’

‘There’ll be a gentleman along soon,’ Wyatt said.

They were standing under the awning of a shoe shop two doors down from Henri’s. They wore hired navy-blue uniforms, gloves and caps, decorated with enough gold braid to unnerve the Queen. In his pocket Wyatt had a dozen cards, printed with the words ‘Valet Parking’. In smaller type at the bottom was a disclaimer: ‘The management takes no responsibility for loss or damage’. He got a kick out of that.

‘What’s wrong with these fuckers?’ Pedersen said. He was hyped-up, cracking his knuckles, pacing back and forth.

‘Take it easy,’ Wyatt said.

Pedersen sniffed. ‘I do safes, not this shit.’

Wyatt turned to examine him, his face expressionless. ‘There’s no guarantee we’ll score. Waiting’s part of the job, you know that.’

‘Yeah,’ Pedersen said. ‘In the rain.’

Wyatt said nothing. There was always someone who got jumpy before a job. There was always someone not as solid as you’d like. Always some personal problem, some quirk, but if you spent all your time ironing it out, you’d never get anything done. He just hoped Pedersen was sound in the long run.