Garry Disher - Death Deal

Lovell had kept a wary eye on the driver, dumped his bag in the corner and gone to the drinks cabinet. Get you something?

No thanks. But you go ahead, Bone said.

The situation had called for something with a bit of bite, like Jack Daniels. Lovell kept the neck of the bottle away from the rim of the glass, not that his hands were betraying him much.

Yet.

Hed sat opposite Bone. The driver had edged around and after a while Lovell heard the guy breathing behind him, long regular intakes and exhalations. The whisper was, it was the driver who knocked people that Bone wanted knocked. There were two that Lovell knew of, dealers whod become addicts, a big no-no as far as the organisation was concerned. I can explain, he said.

Bone picked a speck of lint off his knee and smoothed the expensive cloth. That would be a start. My partners and I, we ran a few possibilities past each other. One, your courier was arrested. Two, your courier robbed you. Three, your courier was robbed. Four, you robbed us. He looked up. Not necessarily in order of importance.

Lovell had known then that Bone had been speaking to Rice, the Drug Squad detective. It was a courier problem, he said.

And youve taken care of it?

I have.

Good. That still leaves us with a shortfall, though, doesnt it?

Ill make it up.

Of course you will. Youre obliged to, for a start, and we dont doubt your ability. The problem is, we may have lost valued customers as a result of last weekend.

Mr Bone, theyre a dime a dozen down there.

Im glad to hear it. Bone got up. Because weve started losing business to some Lebanese outfit. He showed some emotion. Quite mad. Kill their own mothers if there was a dollar in it.

Its not my fault what happens at street level.

It is if you cant fill orders and we lose buyers as a consequence.

Ill get you your cash.

Bone and the driver were at the door now. Bone said, Thats not the point. What this organisation depends on is regular cash from regular clients. He paused. And your New Guinea trips? Everything clockwork there?

Lovell swallowed. Of course.

Bone had smiled. Fine, Ian. Well speak again. You have forty-eight hours.

They had left Lovell with a headache like a steel band around his skull.

He slept badly. Then, at two oclock on Monday morning hed woken up thinking: Why not a second loan?

Banking hours were ten till four, but Lovell got to the TrustBank in Logan City at nine-twenty-six. Catch Nurse while the guy was still half asleep and easily persuaded. If Nurse needed extra persuasion, Lovell had it, his. 22 target pistol, the shape cold and sculptured like some sort of ray gun.

He rapped his knuckles on the glass.

A minute later, when nothing happened, he rapped again. A minute after that he wondered if maybe it was a public holiday. In his line of work, public holidays didnt mean much. No, all the shops were open. The post office was open. Bank staff worked nine to five; they had to be in mere, thirty minutes to opening time, having coffee, putting cash in the tills. So why were the blinds still closed? How come the place looked so shut up?

Lovell had gone around to the rear of the building. There was Nurses silver Volvo. The boot lid was up. The back door was propped open.

So the bastards were there. They just werent answering the front door. All right, in through the back.

And now the doorway was darkening and a man wearing a suit was coming through it, moving fast. A box thudded into the boot of the Volvo; the car shook with the weight of it.

The thing was, the bloke had a balaclava over his head. Lovell blinked. If this was a snatch, that was his cash they were taking.

Wyatt ducked, turned, bringing up his gun in one movement.

A man hed never seen before was framed in the doorway, body low, swinging a pistol on him. It was some kind of fancy target pistol and Wyatt heard it snap sharply a couple of times. The shots went wide. He returned the fire, then ducked back into the bank.

Riding was there, dancing lightly, shifting his aim, looking for trouble. Wyatt pushed him back into Nurses office. Stay with them.

Already there were raised voices on the footpath outside. Wyatt slipped farther into the bank, using desks and filing cabinets as cover. He waited. He couldnt show himself at the corridor. He and Riding could try for the front door but that would mean showing themselves on the street. If the gunman let them get that far.

Who was he? Was Anna Reid pulling some kind of cross?

Wyatt edged around to the main counter and crouched there, two metres from the corridor entrance. The gunman moved first. He came through fast and low, firing rapidly. Wyatt tried to track him with the. 38.

Riding was the first to die. He stepped out into the gunmans path, readied the shotgun, and caught a slug high in the cheekbone. Wyatt saw him spin back against the wall and glass split and fell in shards around him as he slid to the floor.

By now the gunman was past Wyatt. Wyatt rolled free of the counter, looking for a clear field of fire, and saw the gunman die.

It was Nurse, dazed and bloodied and filled with something like hate. He seemed to shake the banks revolver like a deadly forefinger at the gunman and fire it at the same time. The gunman pitched over backwards.

Nurse saw Wyatt. He ducked into the strongroom.

Wyatt moved. He wasnt going to play cat and mouse with Nurse. He ran for the Volvo, leaving seven strongboxes behind.

The big car snaked a little until the rear tyres caught. He heard the boot slam. Out on the street people stared and scattered. When he was clear of the shopping centre he slowed the car, pulled off the balaclava. A dense cloud of smoke was building in the east.

At the service station he parked next to the Camira. Everything was slow and measured now. He transferred the strongbox to the Camira, got in and started the engine. He backed out, drove away slowly. No-one noticed him. The drama was somewhere else, the sky acrid and roiling, sirens on the freeway above.

He looked at his watch. Nine-forty. Phelps would be leaving Nurses house about now.

At ten oclock he reached forward and turned on the radio. Thirty-two degrees, winds moderating. Wyatt kept the needle on 99 kph and looked at the city skyline in the distance. Already it was limned in a haze of dust and smog in the lifting sunshine. Heading the news bulletin was an unconfirmed report of a robbery and shootout at a Logan City bank.

He turned down the volume. Two million dollars, eight strongboxes. Assuming the money had been divided evenly among the strongboxes, hed got away with just a quarter of a million dollars. Riding was out of the picture, so that left eighty-three and a third thousand dollars each. Make it eighty thousand for himself and Phelps, ninety thousand for Anna Reid to cover her costs.

Or nothing for Anna Reid if shed sent in that gunman. Wyatt left the freeway and followed the river around to St Lucia. Would she have been so stupid? He could think of better ways she could have pulled a cross on him.

And shed have thought of better places than the bank for springing a hijack. Wyatt drove behind Womens College and paused a while. There was the Commodore, Phelps waiting in the drivers seat. Wyatt rolled forward again, steering slowly off the road until he was parallel with Phelps. The big man seemed to be engrossed by a pair of myna birds under the casuarina trees. He didnt glance around at Wyatt, didnt get out of the car. That was wrong and Wyatt cranked the gear lever into reverse. He didnt get further than that before a black Range Rover blocked him and two men came at him with guns drawn.

When Wyatt and Riding had left with the manager, Phelps slopped milk into his Nescafe and sat opposite the Nurse woman. As he reached across the table for the sugar the woman cleared her throat and he saw mucous flip onto his wrist. It was yellow-white and he shook his hand with a great, recoiling shudder.