Garry Disher - Kick Back

The weekend passed. He gardened, gathered pine cones in the pine tree plantation, spoke to Craig, and started to clear the thicket of blackberry bushes on his southern boundary. But a sense of lucklessness seemed to wash around him. He was forty and felt that he’d lost the old easy pattern, become unrelaxed, caught up in complications and uncertainty. Nothing he touched seemed worthy of him anymore. He needed money. He needed luck.

The call came on Sunday evening. The telephone rang once and stopped. Wyatt stiffened, waiting for it to sound again, then fall silent, then sound a third time, the signal he’d worked out with Rossiter. Once, a year ago, the telephone had rung at length and at intervals all through the day and into the evening, leaving him edgy and alert, his gun at hand, the safety catch off. But nothing happened. He supposed it was a wrong number. Only Rossiter knew his address and telephone number.

The telephone rang again. Wyatt waited, and when it rang a third time he picked it up but did not speak. Rossiter said, without preamble, ‘Rob Hobba wants you to ring him,’ and read off a Melbourne number. Wyatt dialled, let it ring twice, hung up, and dialled again.

Hobba answered immediately. ‘Yes?’

‘I’m calling about your advertisement in the Trading Post,’ Wyatt said. ‘I need more details.’

‘It’s a Westinghouse,’ Hobba said, ‘very clean, large capacity but easy to shift. However, I have to sell within the next few days. Any chance you can come and see it?’

Wyatt thought about it. He’d worked with Hobba twice, a bank hold-up and an armoured-car hijack, and both had gone like a dream. Hobba was good; he wouldn’t be making contact unless he thought the job had possibilities. And it was an easy job he was talking about, a safe, but it had to be done soon.

‘Tomorrow morning would suit me,’ Wyatt said. ‘I’ll come up to Melbourne and ring you again when I get there.’

They rang off and Wyatt poured away the scotch he’d been drinking. He would not drink again until after the job. Already he felt calmer and more compact. He did not prefigure the job but went to bed and slept dreamlessly.

This time Wyatt took the train to Melbourne. He didn’t want to be burdened with a car. If the job looked like taking a while, he’d rent himself one.

He got out at Flinders Street, walked through to the Gatehouse on Little Collins, and registered under the name Lake. The room they gave him looked out onto an airshaft, but it was comfortable. Wyatt liked the Gatehouse. It was central, cheap and old-fashioned, a hotel for bemused farmers and their families visiting Melbourne from the country. You didn’t get cops checking faces in the lobby or bars at the Gatehouse.

Now he was leaning his long frame against the window, regarding Robert Hobba with cold interest. ‘Three hundred thousand dollars?’ he said.

Hobba nodded. ‘In cash.’

‘Where?’

‘An office safe.’

Wyatt frowned. ‘Lifts, doors, cameras, security patrols, nightwatchmen… ‘

‘That’s just it,’ Hobba said. ‘It’s in a house.’

Wyatt watched him, wondering if this job was like all the others, no more than someone with an itch and a way in. At first sight, Hobba didn’t inspire confidence. He sat on the edge of the bed, narrow shoulders sloping to a bulky stomach and massive thighs. He had prominent lips in a grey, puffy face. When he was nervous he licked them.

He licked them now. ‘A converted house in South Yarra,’ he said. ‘Quiller Place. Went by it yesterday. Single storey, quiet street. A lawyer’s office. Easy’

Wyatt said nothing, deliberately putting pressure on Hobba. Then he said, ‘Tell me what a suburban law firm is doing with three hundred thou in the safe.’

Hobba wet his lips again and looked at the ceiling. ‘Let’s see if I’ve got this straight. When you want to build a shopping centre, whatever, you apply for a planning permit. If you’re out of luck, some neighbour comes along and lodges an objection. If you go through a tribunal it can take a few months. Then when you’re about to lay the foundations some other geezer objects. Your costs go up, everyone’s being fucked around, so to save hassles you buy off the objectors.’

He frowned, then looked at Wyatt and smiled in satisfaction.

‘So?’ Wyatt said.

‘So this lawyer, Finn, negotiates these things.’

‘Negotiates himself three hundred thousand dollars? That’s some fee,’ Wyatt said.

‘He only gets a percentage,’ Hobba said. ‘There’s a deal going through on Friday and he’s the banker for a few hours. We’ll only have one shot at it.’

Wyatt had not moved from the window. He leaned against the frame, arms folded now, assessing Hobba and his story. He said, ‘How come you know all this?’

It was eleven-thirty. Hobba had arrived at eleven-fifteen and already had smoked three cigarettes. After each one he took a mint from a rattling tin and tossed it into his mouth. Now he shuddered and coughed, and Wyatt, recognising a delaying tactic, said sharply: ‘Where did you hear it?’

Hobba sighed. ‘The horse’s mouth.’

‘Finn?’

‘Not him,’ Hobba said. ‘The partner. A bird called Anna Reid.’

‘Don’t like it,’ Wyatt said. Then, ‘How close are they?’

‘Not close at all. Just partners.’

Hobba wet his lips again, drew violently on his cigarette, and knocked off the ash with three dainty taps of his forefinger. He wore glasses, looked crumpled and gave an impression of incompetence, but Wyatt had worked with him before, had seen the excessive gestures disappear and the shapeless body grow still and efficient.

Wyatt continued to watch him. He waited, saying nothing. Sometimes people found him to be patient beyond reason. Finally Hobba shifted restlessly and said, ‘You know Maxie Pedersen?’

Wyatt remembered a hard, sandy man who specialised in safes when he wasn’t dealing dope on a small scale. ‘Last I heard he was doing five for blowing a TAB safe. He also deals, so no thanks.’

Hobba shook his head. ‘He’s given that away. Strictly safes now. Anyhow, he got out a year ago on parole. The Reid woman is his lawyer, Legal Aid. She told him about Finn’s safe.’

Wyatt was liking this less and less. ‘If Pedersen’s fucking her, that’s it, I’m out.’

‘Nothing like that.’

‘But she’s got him excited about three hundred thou that isn’t hers.’

Hobba shrugged. ‘All I’m saying is, according to Max she’s not pulling his dick. The money’s there.’

There was a silence. Wyatt turned on the electric kettle. He tried to go behind Hobba’s story. He wondered about the woman: maybe she was bored, kidding herself she was living on the edge, flirting with hard men and risks.

He made tea with the hotel’s tea bags, waiting for the water to turn a deep reddish-brown. He threw away the bags and handed a cup to Hobba, who sipped from it cautiously and then reached for the sugar.

Wyatt blew on the surface of his tea. ‘Let’s suppose Pedersen’s right. The woman bothers me. She’s got too much to lose. Her share of three hundred thousand dollars isn’t going to be all that much. How do we know she’s not after thrills? Maybe she’s setting us up. “Your Honour, I was helping Mr Pedersen rehabilitate himself-I had no idea he’d fallen in with thieves again”.’

Hobba was losing heart. ‘Talk to her, mate. She convinced Max Pedersen, who’s no mug, and he convinced me.’

Wyatt said, ‘She approached Pedersen because he knows safes?’

Hobba nodded. ‘She defended him on the TAB job. Anyhow, he told her he couldn’t do it alone. She doesn’t like it but she said she’d meet us.’