Cross Kill w-4

by Garry Disher

  The woman shrank away from her door. She looked straight ahead. Soon the taxi was gone and he had a Renault-load of dykes next to him. Cropped hair. Singlet tops. Underarm hair. This bunch was actually laughing and pointing. Napper waited for the Renault to pass, but it didn’t. He craned his head-an ambulance was backing into the traffic ahead. All lanes were stalled now.

  He half-opened his door and leaned out. ‘Help you molls with anything?’

  The women in the Renault wound up their windows, locked their doors, but even though they were huddling together, leaning into one another, Napper knew he hadn’t won a victory over them.

  So he opened his door and got out. He kicked the side of the Renault and tried to tell the women all the things that were crowding his head. But the words refused to come out clearly. There was only flooding hate and rage. He felt he could tear through the metal and glass. People around him were locking their doors, saying, ‘Don’t look… ignore him,’ to one another.

  ‘Eh?’ Napper shouted. ‘Help you molls with anything?’

  Then the Renault jerked forward half a metre and Napper stepped away from it. The ambulance was gone and the traffic was moving again.

  Napper turned to get back into the ute. What was eating these people? The ute looked all right. No flat tyres. Then he went around to the back of it and the rage hit him again.

  The poster was the size of an opened-out newspaper and his bitch of an ex-wife had pasted it across the tailgate. You could read it a mile off: ‘WANTED: FOR FAILURE TO PAY CHILD SUPPORT’ screaming above a blowup shot of his head and shoulders. There was a bit more at the bottom, a catalogue of his crimes probably, he didn’t wait to find out. The lousy cow. He tried jerking at a corner of the poster. She’d used a powerful glue. Behind him, drivers were leaning on their horns and some of them were even laughing.

  ****

  Thirty-two

  Bax wandered out of the trees, stopped in the middle of the track, cocked the heel of one handmade shoe and then the other, five hundred bucks from Footloose in Chapel Street, and cursed. Dust and mud. And a hint of onionweed odour in the fabric of his suit.

  He passed some kids feeding the ducks, lovers necking on the grass, and made his way up the terraced river bank. The Mesics were waiting for him in Stella’s XJ6, Stella in the back, Leo behind the wheel. Bax folded himself into the passenger seat and said, ‘Did you get him?’

  ‘Listen,’ Stella said, and she thrust a microrecorder between the seats. Bax heard the fat sergeant incriminate himself.

  ‘Pictures?’

  Leo had a video camera in his lap. He gave it to Bax, showed him how to monitor what was on the tape. Bax saw Napper and Stella clearly, both cars, both numberplates. The recording also showed time and date. ‘Nice.’

  Leo retrieved the camera from him. ‘Yeah. Terrific. Now all we have to do is sort out a couple of professional gunmen tomorrow night, a piece of cake, something I do all the time.’ Bad teeth showed under his stiff ginger moustache. His face looked pouchy with calories and strain. ‘Right, Bax?’

  But Bax raised a hand warningly, shutting him up. He strained to hear the tape. ‘Wyatt,’ he said at last. ‘I know that name.’

  ‘So?’

  ‘So he’s bad news, not someone you’d want to tangle with.’

  ‘Great,’ Leo said. ‘I’d hate to think I was going up against a wimp.’

  Stella hitched herself forward on the rear seat until her face appeared in the gap between the seats, close to her husband’s upper arm. She touched him. ‘It’ll be fine, sweetie. Don’t fret.’

  Leo looked down at her fingers, covered her hand with his. He said to Bax, ‘I can’t see why you don’t grab them before they break in.’

  ‘Think about it,’ Bax said. ‘They’ll be at their most jumpy then, most determined. You and Stella could get hurt, not only me. On the way out of the place they’ll be more vulnerable because they’ll have their hands full and will be starting to think they got away with it.’

  He looked to Stella for support. She said to her husband, ‘We’ll be tied up, remember, so they’ll feel safe from us, they’ll have their money, and they won’t be expecting the police to show.’

  ‘You’ll probably be handcuffed,’ Bax said. ‘The pros find that quicker and easier than tying people up.’

  ‘Whatever,’ Stella said. She shook Leo’s arm. ‘Okay, sweetie? The police will grab them on their way off the property.’

  ‘Cops doing us a good turn,’ Leo said, shaking his head. ‘Why can’t we sort this pair out ourselves?’

  ‘One,’ Bax said, ‘you probably couldn’t. These blokes are killers, they’ll shoot their way out if they’re cornered, they’ve got more to lose than you have. Do you want to chance it? If you bring in hired guns you’ll just advertise to the world-and to Victor-how vulnerable you and Stella are.’

  Bax waited. Leo looked away. ‘Two,’ Bax said, ‘news of the raid, the arrest, police around the place for the next few days, will scare off the opposition. Three, this will throw a scare into Victor. He’ll learn that his seniority and his contacts are worth fuck-all. When he realises that not only did we know about the raid, we stopped it dead and I was instrumental in protecting the family’s interests, he’ll feel left out, his power base eroded. If you bring in hired guns for protection, he’ll take the advantage, he’ll argue that it’s time to break up the firm.’

  ‘We can put pressure on him then,’ Stella said, ‘to go back to the States and do what he did before. He’ll continue to get his percentage, same as before.’

  They fell silent. Stella hadn’t taken her hand away from Leo’s arm and after a while Bax found himself staring at it. She still had sex with Leo, so she said. She didn’t say whether or not she liked it, and she didn’t say whether or not she liked the guy himself, but she still had sex with him. This was an area in which Bax felt uncomfortable and ignorant. Once, laughing, she’d said she’d gone home still wet from him and there was Leo, wanting a screw. So, they’d screwed, she said, only she wished she’d had time to have a shower first. There was nothing calculated about the words or the way Stella delivered them-it was just the way she was. Bax hadn’t struck that kind of thing before. It did something to him, a kind of unpleasant wrench in his guts.

  He turned his attention to Leo. ‘All you have to do is act natural tomorrow night. Surprised, angry, scared of the guns. No heroics.’

  ‘Yeah, well, one thing’s for sure: I’m not risking the money. I’ll put, say, twenty thousand in the safe, the rest in a safety deposit box in the bank. We can afford twenty grand if something goes wrong, we can’t afford two hundred grand.’

  Bax shook his head. They’d been through all this. ‘He’ll know something’s wrong, Leo. He’s expecting big money tomorrow night, and he’ll be pissed off if it’s not there. We don’t know how he’ll express it: trash the house maybe, pistolwhip all of you till you say where the money is. Don’t worry. I’ll retrieve it for you, make sure it’s not logged as evidence.’

  ‘If you stuff up, Bax, I’ll have your guts for garters, I’ll spill you to Internal Affairs, I’ll take the money out of your hide.’

  Leo was hot-faced, his voice heated, so they both said, fair enough, understood, and Stella patted his arm.

  Then Stella said, apparently siding with her husband, ‘Bax, they could hurt us, just for the hell of it or so we don’t hassle them. Maybe we should go out for the evening?’

  ‘One, that will make them suspicious, all that money there and no one to keep an eye on it. Two, hurting people is not this Wyatt character’s style. We know of a dozen bank and payroll jobs he’s pulled and in each of them he took pains to keep people calm. The only ones who ever got hurt were people who crossed him or pulled a gun on him.’

  Meaning, Leo, if you’ve got a gun, hide it somewhere, don’t go wearing it tomorrow night. Bax watched the big man carefully, hoping the message was getting through.

  ‘Just act normal,’ he said. ‘Have Victor
over for dinner, make the job easier for these characters.’

  ****

  Thirty-three

  Victor Mesic was feeling acutely alert and alive. It was Thursday evening, and he’d just spent an hour on the Nautilus gear, finishing with a sauna and a shower. Seven o’clock, everything blurred and softened in the half light of evening, all his senses heightened. His Saab gleamed darkly, a mean, squat shape. He could smell onions cooking somewhere. Birds were settling in the short young gumtrees around the car park perimeter. Bass notes drummed from a weatherboard house opposite the gym.

  Then a car door opened, clicked closed softly, and suddenly something about that didn’t feel right to Victor. He was sure of it when a gun barrel probed the hinge of his jaw and a voice whispered, ‘That’s not my finger, Vic’

  He froze and put up his hands.

  ‘Don’t be a dickhead,’ the voice said. The gun nudged him. ‘Open the door, passenger side.’

  It was finally happening, just as he’d warned them it would, opposition firms moving in on the family itself. Victor fumbled a key into the lock and opened the door. ‘Slip across to the driver’s seat,’ the voice said.

  Victor stood there. He wanted badly to relieve the pressure on his bladder. ‘Who are you? What do you want?’ It came out as a croak.

  ‘Just get in the car, Vic,’ the voice said, and Victor felt the gun dig into his spine this time.

  He got in. He felt the gun tickle his ear as the man followed him into the car. With the interior light on, Victor saw the gunman’s face clearly. It was a narrow face full of scooped shadows and hard planes. If a face like that ever smiled, it would still look bleak and detached. The body was long and loose. The man seemed to fold up in order to fit into the little car. He was wearing latex gloves. ‘You can have my wallet,’ Victor said. ‘Take the whole car if you like. Just leave me here.’

  ‘Maybe later, Vic. Right now, all I want you to do is drive home.’

  The voice was low, calm, and somehow reassuring. ‘Home?’

  ‘Through the gate and into the grounds. No one’s going to get hurt, so there’s no need to go off half cocked about anything. Another vehicle will be coming in immediately behind us. No noise or fuss means no one gets hurt, nothing gets broken, okay?’

  ‘You won’t get away with it. We’ll put the word out on the street.’

  The gunman tapped the barrel on Victor’s knuckles. ‘Drive, Vic. That’s all you have to do for now.’

  Something about the man’s stillness made Victor work the Saab’s gears and pedals hard, getting the full effect of the car’s acceleration and exhaust note. He stopped that when the man said, ‘Grow up.’

  Ten minutes later the dark mass of the man stiffened and he peered forward through the windscreen. ‘We’re almost there. Okay, Vic, I know the gate is operated by an electronic signal. I want you to open it, then drive into the grounds, wait for the van behind us to drive in, and shut the gate. Then park outside your house. If you activate any sort of alarm at all, I’ll shoot both your kneecaps. You’ll never walk properly again. Do you understand what you have to do?’

  Victor didn’t trust himself to speak. He nodded.

  ‘Fine. We’re going to get along just fine, Vic. All right, slow down, blinker on, open the gate.’

  Victor did all that. The only hope for him came when Stella appeared on the steps of her house, shading her eyes from the headlights. He wound the window halfway down to shout something, but the gun changed his mind. The gunman murmured, ‘I’m a friend you’ve brought home for dinner, okay?’

  Victor nodded. He stopped the car and opened the window fully. ‘Stella,’ he said.

  ‘I wanted to catch you before you went in,’ Stella said, ‘to invite you to dinner.’

  Victor jerked his head. ‘Actually I’ve got a friend with me.’

  A strange look came and went on Stella’s face and Victor heard her say, ‘Why don’t you both come?’

  There was a low, pleasant voice next to Victor, a gun in his ribs: ‘Why not? That all right with you, Vic?’

  Victor nodded.

  Then a second set of headlights swept over Stella. She stepped back, frowning. ‘Telecom? What do they want?’

  ‘No idea.’

  Victor needed guidance here. He looked at the gunman. Stella was walking toward the Telecom van, maybe into the face of another gun. ‘What now?’

  The gun pressed harder. ‘Close the gate, switch off and get out of the car. Don’t try to run or shout or do anything at all.’

  Victor got out, stood waiting on the gravel drive. The man joined him. Victor didn’t speak again: the barrel jammed against his kidney was conversation enough.

  Then the Telecom van’s lights went out. The air was mild, the strongest stars fighting through the city’s night glow. Victor heard footsteps coming toward them along the drive. Feet scrabbled for purchase, someone swore, the footsteps came on again. Two figures appeared, Stella walking ahead of a second man. He was like the first, tall, hard and easy with his size and the gun in his hand. Stella stopped when she reached them. Full of loathing, she said to both gunmen, ‘You won’t get away with this.’

  ****

  Wyatt would have liked a dollar for all the times he’d been told that. He pressed his.38 against Victor Mesic’s temple and said around him to the woman, ‘We’ll get away with it.’

  She scowled. ‘I mean after. Any idea who you’re dealing with here?’

  Wyatt had heard that a few times too. He said, ‘We’re going into your house. Time to find your husband.’

  They went in by the front door, Stella Mesic first, followed by Jardine, Victor and finally Wyatt. He looked around. Concealed lighting smeared striped wallpaper and threw the shadows of clocks onto the parquet floor. The place seemed to be full of clocks: fussy gilt affairs on spindly tables, a couple of grandfather clocks in wall recesses. Wyatt told them to stop in the hallway. The woman had been cooking; he could smell curry. Light spilled out of a half-open door nearby; a TV muttered; somebody coughed.

  Wyatt put his mouth to Victor’s ear. ‘Show yourself in the doorway, but don’t go in. Tell him you need a hand with your car.’

  The next step was Jardine’s. Jardine flattened his back to the wall next to the door, his gun arm extended, as Victor Mesic said, ‘Leo, can you come here a sec? I stalled the car and can’t start it again.’

  The doorway darkened. ‘Maybe you flooded-’

  Leo felt the gun under his jaw and he stopped in his tracks. ‘Who the hell are you?’

  ‘Shut up and on the floor,’ Wyatt said.

  There was a long, slim-line European radiator bolted to the hallway wall. It ticked and complained softly. Wyatt motioned with his.38: ‘On the floor, backs to the heater.’ He covered the Mesics while Jardine cuffed them to the support clamps.

  Very little was said after that. This was the stage Wyatt preferred, professionals doing what they did best. The heart of the Mesic operation was a large office across the hall from the sitting room. Wyatt wasn’t interested in the massive dimpled leather sofa or the glossy desk and bookshelves. He led Jardine to the safe. It was thick, solid, painted grey. Jardine squatted in front of it. His strong fingers reached out and touched the door. ‘No problem.’

  ‘Are you sure?’

  ‘You see it all the time. They throw a few thousand bucks into a security fence and alarms, and hang onto crappy safes.’

  ‘How will you do it?’

  Jardine brushed his fingertips around the circumference of the door. ‘Drill a hole in each corner, load with nitro, blast her open.’

  Wyatt nodded. ‘If you need me I’ll be scouting around.’

  Jardine took a heavy drill from his bag and started drilling. Wyatt left him there and turned off the alarm system and power to the gate. Then he prowled through the house looking for pickings. He knew the real reward would be in the safe, but he was moving instinctively toward darkness, concealed opportunities, closed in spaces.

&
nbsp; He also wanted to remove himself from the Mesics. They were so full of loathing for each other that an unease was settling in him. Something about the whole operation bothered him. They’d done their homework, everything was going smoothly, but it was all too smooth and he was waiting for a cross.

  He started with the main bedroom. On a dresser next to the bed he found a thin Louis Philippe watch and a wallet stuffed with fifties and hundreds. He counted it quickly-about a thousand dollars. He pocketed the watch and the cash and ranged quickly through the other rooms, finding nothing else. There were plenty of pictures, vases and ornate clocks, but they were all so much junk to him.

  Then he went downstairs and into the office, ignoring the Mesics cuffed to the radiator. Jardine had turned the desk on its side to shield the room from the blast. He had finished drilling and was packing the holes. He didn’t acknowledge Wyatt.

  Wyatt opened the front door and stepped outside. Silence was his element so he kept to the lawn, skirting the gravel drive. The house that was now Victor’s and had been the old man’s was cluttered, every flat surface crowded with vases and figurines, the pictures on the walls mostly Sunday market bush-hut scenes. The sofas and chairs were made of pinewood and red- and green-stained leather. Clunky, box-like pine dressers jutted into most of the free space. Every other surface was dazzling white enamel.

  He didn’t spend more than ten minutes going through the rooms. He discovered a second watch, a gold lighter, three hundred dollars in cash, things he could carry in his pockets.

  Outside again, Wyatt watched and waited in the darkness. He heard traffic in the distance, a car accelerating along a nearby street, random noises in the houses opposite the compound. There was no wind. He seemed to hear his blood flowing. He began to feel better. He liked risk, liked being alone, found the tension addictive.

  Back at the first house, Jardine said, ‘Ready to blow.’ They waited in the hall with the Mesics. The nitro blast created noise and smoke but Jardine had contained the effects to the door of the safe. When the smoke cleared Wyatt could see it hanging open on one hinge. There was money stacked inside, untouched by the explosion.