by Garry Disher
You dont understand, Danny said. He bet another hundred.
Carol was about to answer when she sensed that she was the object of a strangers unwavering attention. She looked up. Behind the gawking five-dollar punters, pensioners and loudmouths stood a tall, grim man wearing glasses with solid black frames. The pit boss. He held her gaze, then looked beyond her and nodded to someone.
She felt her shoulders being clasped. She knew without turning around that it was a security guard. A second guard stationed himself next to Danny.
Excuse me, miss, the first guard said.
Yes?
He leaned down. He smelt of cheap food. Youve not been playing, miss. Youve not played at all since you arrived here, three hours ago. You were not seen arriving with this gentleman.
If you would just come with us to the office . . . the other man said.
Whats it to you guys? Danny demanded.
Do you know this lady, sir? the first guard said. The backs of his hands were hairy.
People were watching them. One or two whispered to each other. Then the pit boss beckoned with a jerk of his head and Carol felt strong hands lift her.
Danny slapped a dozen chips down in front of her. The ladys with me. This is her stake.
Carol immediately selected four chips and pushed them forward. Im betting on red nine.
The croupier looked at the chips and then at the pit boss.
Nine. You heard the lady, Danny said. In fact, Ill go for that, too. He pushed all his chips forward.
The croupier shrugged. The other players were getting edgy. They hated delays. He checked around the table and prepared to spin the wheel. The pit boss turned away, clearly disgusted.
The guards muttered. Carol smiled at them. She knew she couldnt come back here, but there was no point in making enemies. It was just a little misunderstanding, she said. Thats all.
The guards edged away through the crowd. Incredible, said Danny loudly.
They were only doing their job. After all, I could be anybody.
Youre not though, Danny began, but the wheel was spinning and so he polished his cufflinks again.
Carol watched. A rapid clatter, getting slower; an impossible last-minute lurch; the number nine under the pointer.
Danny stood, roared Yes!, thrust up a plump fist in victory. People whistled and clapped. Carol smiled at Danny. The kiss he gave her was thrusting and moist. Lets have that drink.
She raked in the chips and shyly pushed them toward him. A grin was splitting his face. I dont believe it. I couldve bet black eleven till the cows came home. He pushed some of the chips back to her. Some of these are yours. You brought me luck.
She followed him out of the Monte Carlo and next door into the Tradewinds. There was a king-size bed in room 212, under an electric blue bedspread heavy enough to smother an ox. Danny parted the curtains, calling them drapes, and ushered Carol onto the balcony, pointing out the lights. He stood there with her just long enough to deny that animal heat had anything to do with why hed brought her to his suite, then closed the curtains and showed her back into the room.
There were two plush club chairs against one wall, a large TV and VCR unit on a bench, and a small table with Dannys crocodile-skin suitcase open on it. Hed left a light on in the bathroom and there was a damp towel on the floor. A bar fridge hummed in one corner. What would you like? he said.
He had loosened his collar and was mopping his brow with a handkerchief. He laughed suddenly and tucked the handkerchief away in embarrassment. Winnings taken it out of me.
Carol stepped close to him and rested her palms on his chest. Why dont you get comfortable first? She fingered his lapels. Why dont you take a shower and let me make the drinks. Ill make us something long and cool and very alcoholic
What she did with her hand then was unambiguous and the mark gleamed like a schoolboy. She stepped back, evading him, nodded at the bathroom. But dont be long.
Im long now.
Now, now, none of that.
Theres this spot, Danny said, contorting absurdly, in the middle of my back. I can never reach it.
Well youll just have to wait, wont you?
She turned to the bar. It was well stocked. She would be able to make martinis. Behind her, Danny was whistling in the bathroom. He had left the door open. Did he seriously imagine that she wanted to watch him?
She took two glasses and tumbled ice cubes into them. She broke the seal on the gin bottle.
What are you making?
She judged that he was standing at the bathroom door. She would not turn around. A surprise.
There was the sound of Dannys hands slapping himself. The shower door rolled on its coasters. She heard the water gush.
After thirty seconds she peeked. The glass shower enclosure was steamed up and Danny was soaping his groin and singing.
Swiftly she poured measures of gin and dry vermouth into each glass, then took a tiny glass bottle from her bag. The label read eye drops. She removed the top and filled the dropper with fluid. Danny turned off the water. She had about a minute. She squirted the fluid into one of the glasses, stirred the drink by poking the floating ice cube, replaced the eye dropper, and tucked the little bottle away. Da dum, she said triumphantly, turning to him, holding the glasses aloft.
Danny had succumbed to modesty. He stood by the bed, pink with emotion and steam and too many carbohydrates, a voluminous towel around his waist. Great, he said lamely.
He didnt know what was expected of him. Come, sit here with me, Carol said. She patted the edge of the bed.
I feel at a disadvantage, said Danny, taking the glass she offered him and sitting down.
Carol dipped a finger in her drink and touched it to his lips. She brushed his hot cheek with the cool edge of her glass, then slipped the base under the towel and let it rest on his thigh. Danny sighed. He raised his own glass and drank deeply.
Youre tense, Carol said. Her voice was soft. Her fingernails scratched gently in the hairs on his leg. Ill give you a back rub. Would you like that?
Danny laughed abruptly and turned onto his stomach. Youre amazing.
Carol began working her hands along his spine toward his shoulders. There was a great deal of him, and none of it firm. He sighed again, and once or twice rolled onto one hip to sip from his glass. When she thought he might he losing interest she let him hear her peel off her stockings. He gave a little groan, drank deeply, and stretched.
In ten minutes he was drowsy. In twenty, asleep. He had been administered several millilitres of scopolamine hydrobromide, a chemical found in motion sickness pills, and would be unconscious for up to twenty hours. He would wake up feeling dopey and useless.
Carol went to work. She washed both glasses and let water run in the sink while she cleaned her fingerprints off all the surfaces shed touched. She stripped Danny of his ring and watch, and scooped up the cufflinks, lighter and gold chains hed left on the bedside table. She emptied his wallet. He had almost three thousand dollars in it. Not bad, but not great.
There was nothing of value in his suitcase. His toiletries bag was crammed with soap and shampoo sachets hed stolen from the Tradewinds. But in the wardrobe, next to a pair of carpet slippers, was a small briefcase. With a handkerchief wrapped around her fingers she pulled it out and upended it on the bed.
And found her ticket out of this dump.
* * * *
Nineteen
Anna Reid had reserved a room for Wyatt in a hotel in Logan City, and the first thing he did after she dropped him off by car was check out of there and take a bus back into central Brisbane. He paid in advance for two nights at the YMCA, two nights at the Victoria Hotel on Astor Terrace, and by wire for two nights at a chain motel in Surfers Paradise. Wyatt made it standard practice to arrange more than one bolthole in any place he found himself, and he never made base close to where he intended to pull a job.
A standard precautionbut there was a concrete reason for it, this time. Until he knew for sur
e that Anna Reid was not working for someone or did not mean him harm, any contact with her had to be strictly on his terms.
For two days he did nothing. Then on Saturday he began to fix the geography of the place in his mind. He spent the day in a tourist coach: twenty Japanese, a handful of Swedish backpackers, a retired couple from Perth and himself. Pick-up was at 9 am and they spent the morning touring the city and nearby suburbs with stops at the Gabba cricket ground, the Fourex brewery, coffee on Mt Coottha, lunch on the South Bank. The retired couple from Perth seemed to adopt him for the day. They were fearful of foreigners. The man referred to the Nips in the party and Wyatt guessed hed been a serviceman during the war. The woman muttered under her breath about the accents, singlet tops and horny, dirty feet and white teeth of the Swedish girls. Wyatt let their words wash over him. He stared out of the window or sat at kiosk tables and let the sun warm his bones as he thought about Anna Reid and a bank vault that for one weekend only would have close to two million dollars in it.
The city itself was difficult to pin down. There was no fixed quality to it. If there were any buildings left standing from the colonial era, Wyatt didnt see them. The coach would hurtle down the snarling ribbons of freeway suspended above the rivers edge, crossing one bridge after another, giving him a clear view of rakish buildings bared like teeth, and he could feel flourishing energy in the place. Then they would be prowling the slopes and valleys of the suburbs and he would see colour-supplement mansions sharing a postcode with triple-fronted brick veneers and sun-blighted wooden hovels on stilts. The camphor laurels and jacaranda had finished flowering several weeks earlier, but there were plenty of fleshy, tropical, over-scented plants to make up for them. The light was drenching, draining all colour from the sky. They passed near Boggo Road prison more than once. It dominated one of the citys hills, colder, longer, harder and more miserable than any building Wyatt had yet seen there.
After lunch the coach ran them south-east to the casinos and boutiques of the Gold Coast. Wyatt used the drive to position Logan City in his mind. As they passed through the raw new suburbs that made up the satellite city, he took in the freeway exits, the strips of trashy, low-cost glass and concrete shops on either side, the patterns of first-home-buyers houses behind them. One thing was clearif he pulled this job he would stay well clear of these streets: they looped and curved like the edges of jigsaw pieces, not a right angle among them, a living nightmare to a driver who didnt know them well and had the law on his tail.
Wyatt slipped away from the others when they reached Broadbeach. He had a pocketful of vouchers entitling him to floor shows and chips at the Monte Carlo, but he tossed them into a bin and set out to explore on foot. If he hit the Logan City bank and got away with the money, he would hide out rather than run for it, leaving the state days, weeks later. He wanted to know if the Gold Coast would conceal him, if there might be an identity he could adopt, one that would slip easily over his existing skin and make him one of thousands and therefore invisible.
He saw enough in thirty minutes to know that it was possible. He could be a tourist, junkie, gigolo, gambler, boulevardier.
The coach drew into Brisbane again at six-forty-five. The city had undergone a change: the peak hour was over, the buildings empty, the long streets windswept and bare. Wyatt shook hands with the man and woman from Perth. Suddenly they were all friends. The Japanese beamed at him. Then, just as he was turning to leave, one of the backpackers planted a kiss on his mouth. She tasted of salt; he smelt her perspiration faintly, clean and disturbing. She laughed and he laughed with her and when the group left him he felt hungry and restless for contact.
Anna Reid answered on the first ring. Ive been trying to get hold of you. They said youd checked out.
Im still around, he said.
She was aggrieved and needed to unload some of it. I thought Id kissed goodbye to my five thousand.
Nope.
Youre supposed to keep in touch.
Here I am, checking in, Wyatt said.
Yeah, two days later. What exactly is going on?
Wyatt tired of it suddenly. Are you in this evening?
A pause. Yes.
Expect me.
He broke the connection. In Roma Street he found a cab rank, twenty cabs lined along the kerb. His driver tossed away a cigarette, fitted his right shoulder against the door, and drove one-handed through the city and onto Coronation Drive. He didnt speak. Riverside lights were reflected in the black water below. A dredge, squat and box-like, lay idle in the centre of the river. Wyatt told the driver to pull into a drive-in bottle shop. He bought a bottle of imported claret and realised that it had been a long time since hed last done this.
Anna Reids house backed into a hill. Wooden slats painted white concealed a large space under the house. Wyatt climbed the steps to a broad verandah. A couple of deckchairs sat outside the floor-to-ceiling windows on either side of the front door. Soft blue and yellow light spilled through the coloured glass surrounds and he saw it darken as he knocked and a shape moved on the other side of the door.
She stepped back to let him in. He glanced around curiously. It was a common Queensland house but hed never been in one like it before. A very short hallway opened onto a large room that took up most of the central part of the house. Doors to bedrooms and the kitchen opened off it. It was a high-ceilinged room, trimmed with wooden panels and arches. An armchair in front of each window, a dining table and chairs at the far end of the room.
She stared at him and he moved first, putting the bottle down and lifting her skirt, rucking it about her waist. Everything after that broke the strain they were feeling. It was necessary, like a cure. But even as he stripped Anna Reid, and bent to touch and taste her, a part of Wyatt was removed and working. Three months ago, when he almost but didnt kill her, shed been trying to steal a dealers cache of heroin and cocaine. He couldnt see track marks in her groin, between her toes, in the crook of her arms, and he supposed that that was a good thing.
* * * *
Twenty
Nurse blinked awake by degrees. He badly needed to urinate. Hed heard knocking sounds but they had gone away after a while. Now strong sunlight was heating his face, penetrating his eyeballs. He turned his head away; it was like rolling a heavy iron ball on wet beach sand and still the sun bore down on his fleshy cheeks and neck. Lifting both hands to his face was no help; they were too heavy, too slack.
So he lay there. Then he thought about the unfamiliar bed, the room, the towel tangled around his legs, the sun at a high angle outside the window. These facts were the configuration of a messy life and he jerked upright. His watch was gone but the bedside clock winked 14:30 in red numerals and at once he knew that hed lost seventeen hours out of his life. Other realisations chased it. He staggered to the wardrobe. The briefcase was there but not precisely angled as hed left it and the top was open. He knew by its weight that the bag was empty but still he shook it and stuck his hand inside it.
And his wallet was missing.
And his cufflinks and chain.
That girl last night, Sonia, whatever her name was. It took Nurse some time to move beyond the notion that hed drunk and screwed himself into a seventeen-hour unconsciousness. Sure, hed had a couple of scotches, a drink at the bar when hed met this Sonia, then the martini shed made for him at nine oclock, but thats all. And he didnt remember screwing her, though theyd been working up to it. The more he thought about it the more convinced he became that the only action his cock had seen in the last seventeen hours was just now when it reminded him his bladder was full. So that meant the bitch had slipped something into his drink while hed been taking a shower.
Nurse let outrage carry him through the next few minutes in the bathroom. He came out feeling better physically, bladder eased, the sleep washed from his face, but then it hit him that he was in the middle of something nasty.
If the girl was working solo, shed struck luckybut how did he explain it to Lovell?
If
the girl knew he had the stuff, then she was working for the people Lovell sold to, meaning Lovell had made himself some enemies.
Nurse preferred to go with this idea. It would take the heat off him for a while, distract Lovell from the key issuethat he, Nurse, had been careless and let someone pinch seventy-five thousand dollars worth of heroin.
Or had allowed it to happen. Nurse went cold, knowing thats how Lovell would see it. Lovell was in the sort of game where you expect the worst of everyone, where you suspect everyone of trying to rip you off or inform on you, so when something goes wrong you hit back and you make it hard and permanent.
Thats how Lovell would read the facts and it terrified Nurse. He put on his pants. Then he removed them and got into bed. With the covers to his chin he felt marginally more secure, but it was all relative: he couldnt stay here forever.
