Death Deal w-3

by Garry Disher

  They were waiting for him. A shot rang out and the frosted glass splintered above his head. He rolled, putting distance between himself and the door.

  The position was bad, as though hed treed himself. The only way out was down the stairs, where hed make an easy target. His only cover was the waist-high safety barrier that ran around the edge of the mezzanine level corridor. He crouched behind it, conscious that it was plasterboard and wouldnt save him from a lucky or a careful shot.

  He chanced a look over the rail and ducked again, twisting to his right. There was another shot and plaster shards sprinkled his face. Then a series of shots had him flat to the floor and moving back through the open door again into the office. Now he knew where the gunman wason the mezzanine floor, facing him from the corridor on the opposite side of the building. And it was an automatic rifle. His Colt could not match it for range, velocity or accuracy.

  Wyatt rested a moment, thinking it through. He was alone in this. Harbutt was still on the floor, head buried in his arms, rocking his upper body. If there were two guns outside, the second one covering the stairs from the bottom, there was no way out. If the gun opposite was the only one, there was a chance. The rail around the mezzanine was an equaliser. Wyatt couldnt be seen, but nor could the man opposite him. With time, the other man might get off a lucky shot. Or hed remember what hed come here for and move around to this part of the mezzanine and force a confrontation.

  Wyatt could wait, it was what he was good at, but he decided to push matters. The office photocopier sat on an open-shelved cabinet crammed with paper, pens and toner cartridges. There was also a bottle of methylated spirits. He broke open four packs of A4 paper and poured the methylated spirits over them, fanning the edges with his thumb to allow penetration. He soaked several cleaning rags with the fluid, and his dustcoat. Finally he searched the desk. He found a Bic lighter in the drawer. He tested it, turning the flame to high.

  Still keeping low, he carried everything out into the corridor and weighed up the next stage. He needed to cut down on the amount of light that framed him and he needed to distract the gunman.

  Leaning back, he sighted the Colt and squeezed off a shot. The corridor light went out, glass flakes falling to the floor. He sighted again and shot out the light at the head of the stairs. He chanced a third shot, smashing the closest of the three main lights in the hall. It didnt give him darkness but he was harder to see now, here above the remaining lights suspended over the shop floor below.

  Without pausing he rested the Colt on the rail and snapped off four shots at the man opposite him. He heard them pass through the plaster and heard the soft thump of someone rolling for cover.

  Wyatt judged that he had about five seconds before the gunman felt secure enough to return the volley. He lit the rags and the dustcoat, and flung them over the rail. Then he lit the paper bundles, watched the flames take hold, and scattered them onto the furniture below.

  The rifle opened up again, so he scooted back along the corridor toward the stairs. Four shots, then silence.

  Nothing happened for a while. Wyatt slid the spare clip into the Colt and waited. There were foam rubber sofas and vinyl armchairs directly beneath him. He knew they would burn readily, producing plenty of smoke, but it would take some time for them to catch.

  Thats if hed got lucky with his aim.

  Wyatt noticed the smell first, acrid and poisonous. He heard crackling then as the flames caught, and the smoke, when it reached him, was thick and black.

  Then the alarms went off and sprinklers came on.

  Water drenched everythingthe offices, corridors, the big display floor below.

  Wyatt moved. He ran half-crouched down the corridor. As he rounded the corner and crossed the space toward the head of the stairs, a shape confronted him in the gloom, elastic and dark. He ducked, got off a shot. The shot went high. There was no answering shot. Instead, he saw the black figure hurl the rifle at him, butt first. It spun end over end and then he was tangled in it. He fell. The Outfit gun disappeared down the stairs and in those seconds, in the obscuring blackness, Wyatt formed one impression: the Outfit gun was a woman and she was hard and quick-looking, like a coiled black spring.

  He got to his feet. He didnt go after her. She would be out the door and away before he got there. The fact that she hadnt stayed to finish the job indicated that she was alone, her clip was empty and she wanted to disappear before cops and firemen arrived.

  So did Wyatt. But he allowed himself a moment for what he had to do next. Harbutt was coughing. The fire had roused him from his blues and he came out of the office, a handkerchief over his nose. His eyes were streaming. He stopped when he saw Wyatt. You got him?

  Wyatt shook his head. Cleared off.

  Im glad youre okay, Harbutt said. Then he saw the big Colt. A kind of sadness settled in him. You know youve got nothing to worry about from me.

  Wyatt raised the muzzle. Thats right, he said.

  Fourteen

  Wyatt spent the next five days aboard a rotting barge, existing on tinned beans and peaches. The world had become a place full of holes, corners and darkness. There was no-one he could turn to and he mistrusted the daylight. The money in his pocket had been meanly acquired and it would not see him beyond the next week. His pistol, tied to an inglorious killing, lay rusting on the bottom of the Barwon River. If they came to get him now, he had only his fists to face them with. And alone, in hiding, he began to feel eyes at his back.

  On the fifth night he moved. Any earlier and hed have been trapped inside the police search radius or stopped on an exit road. After five days and no sightings, the search would have been called off. Slipped through the cordon.

  Thankful of the darkness and the water, he went by boat this time, casting free in a motor cruiser and heading it out into the bay. The sea was calm and nothing showed on the radar. He sipped scotch and ate from a tin of sardines hed found stored in the galley. It was an expensive boat, well fitted out, but by morning it would be a chain around his neck.

  He had to leave the state. Hed been offered a way, and had turned it down. Brisbane. Mostyn had said the client was a woman in Brisbane. Stolle himself had said it. The whole deal sounded too odd to be a trap. The general style of the people who didnt like Wyatt was to come at him with a gun, not try an elaborate ruse. Nothing about Stolle said that he was a hired gun. He hadnt been armed; his ID said he was a private investigator. Stolle had also mentioned flying. That meant airports and people, hardly the conditions for an ambush. Finally, there was that five thousand dollars. Wyatt took in everything the boat had to offer and saw only one thing that could help him now.

  He had to call twice on the cellular phone before relays picked up his signal. It was one oclock in the morning and Stolles voice was thick with sleep and irritation. What? he said flatly.

  You said five thousand.

  Stolle came awake then. Thats right.

  Is this line secure?

  I ran a check only yesterday.

  What about the room?

  Its clean.

  Wyatt was silent, wondering how to play this.

  Say whats on your mind, Stolle said.

  Im interested in your offer.

  Good man. Ill be in my office at eight.

  Things have happened, Wyatt said. I want you to collect me now.

  Stolle didnt query or demur. Where?

  Carrum. The Nepean Highway crosses a channel there. Park your car somewhere, wait for me on the bridge. If I see anything I dont like, thats it, Im gone.

  They settled on 3 am and Wyatt broke the connection. He checked the fuel gauge: plenty to get him across the bay. By two-thirty he was throttling back a few hundred metres from the Chelsea foreshore. He could see streetlights and occasional headlights. By day Carrum and Chelsea were parts of an endless strip of sunblighted, low-cost houses and shopfronts. Wyatt knew and hated the area but right now it had the advantage of a marina where he could moor the boat without drawing attention to himse
lf.

  Thirty minutes later he was on dry land and watching the bridge. At five minutes to three a battered white Toyota van crept across the bridge. The words Food Delivery Vehicle were stencilled on it and the rear windows had a blackness about them that had nothing to do with the night. If Stolle used it as his surveillance vehicle, it was a good one.

  Wyatt waited. He saw the van draw off the road and into a parking bay. Stolle got out and walked to the centre of the bridge. He did not look around and he gave no sign that he was nervous or had brought backup along. Wyatt let ten minutes and a handful of late cruising taxis and panel vans go by, then stepped out of his cover and onto the bridge.

  Stolle swung around at his approach. This had better be on the level. I didnt come here to be thumped and robbed again.

  Shut up, Wyatt said. I hope you didnt bring those two clowns along with you.

  Mostyns off the case and Whitney cleared out on me.

  Wyatt said, Good, and walked off without waiting. Stolle caught up with him next to the van. Where to?

  Your place.

  Stolle said nothing to that. He unlocked the van, got in, opened the passenger door for Wyatt. He drove in silence back along the Nepean toward the city. At St Kilda Junction he headed north along Punt Road and right into the cramped streets of renovated workers cottages in Prahran. A minute later he picked up a small electronic device, pushed a button, and light spilled onto the cobblestones from a garage door in an alley ahead of them. Stolle drove in, pushed the button again. The garage door clanged, sealing them off from the night.

  Stolle had a little pistol in his fist. Get out.

  You wont need that.

  Get out.

  Wyatt waited for him at the door that led to the house. He let Stolle prod him with the gun into the kitchen and then through to a room at the front. Stolle had spent some time and money on the place: thick woollen carpets, central heating, expensive fabrics on the chairs and over the windows.

  Stolles front room had the look of an underused office. The furniture smelt new; there was dust on the screen of his Apple. He shoved Wyatt in the back. Have a seat.

  There was an armchair and an ergonomic desk chair. Wyatt collapsed into the armchair. He realised how tired he was and a series of tendon-stretching yawns broke out in him suddenly. Stolle grinned at him, swivelling back and forth on the rotating seat of the desk chair.

  God knows what she sees in you.

  Who?

  The client. On the run, fresh out of luck and friends, you dont exactly inspire confidence.

  Wyatt yawned again. I want to see the five thousand.

  Stolle lost his grin. After a while he nodded and reached his right hand into his left sleeve. Wyatt heard a snap of elastic on flesh and then Stolle was throwing him a small packet.

  He caught it with both hands. He knew at once that it contained less than five thousand dollars. He riffled the notes with his thumb: ten one-hundred dollar notes, torn cleanly in half.

  This was stupid. He felt too weary to fight it. He shook his head, dropped the half notes on the floor.

  Stolle reached into an inside pocket of his jacket. This time it was an envelope with a key in it. Brisbane bus station locker key. Theres four thousand dollars waiting for you. The other half of the money on the floor youll get when were on the plane tomorrow morning.

  Wyatt stared fixedly at Stolle and weighed it up. He could thump Stolle for the other half and walk out of here with a thousand dollars now, but be arrested or shot tomorrow. He could let Stolle take him to Brisbane and still find trouble, whether or not the promised five thousand was attached to it. He didnt think this deal came free of trouble. It was trouble in the sun, though, a place where his face meant nothing to anyone, and those things were more important than anything else right now.

  What does this woman want?

  She said there was something in it for you. Maybe your parents died?

  Wyatt said nothing to that.

  A rich uncle maybe?

  Did she give you a name?

  No name.

  Describe her.

  Stolle swivelled unconcernedly in the chair. He shook his head. Youve come this far. By lunchtime tomorrow youll have answers, plus five thousand bucks in your pocket.

  What about you?

  Me? Stolle grinned. I pick up my dough and go and play in the sun. He rattled imaginary dice in his palm and tossed them across his desk.

  Wyatt shrugged. He didnt gamble and didnt understand the compulsion. Chance came into his workthe bystander in the wrong place at the wrong time, an unaccountable switch in routinebut mostly he worked from verifiable information and he controlled all the factors. He got up. Youve got the tickets?

  We pick them up at the airport. Stolle looked at his watch. The flight leaves at ten. Im getting some shut-eye. Id advise you to do the same.

  He disappeared. It was 4 am. Wyatt stretched out on a sofa in the sitting room. When a board creaked in the hall three and a half hours later, he came awake all at once, his eyes open and staring upward into curtained daylight. He heard an extractor fan rattle into life and then water gushed in the bathroom.

  They left Stolles house an hour later. Wyatt had had his first shave in five days. He wore an old suit of Stolles. It fitted badly, looking wrong by itself, so with Stolles help he made a few additionsa lightweight overcoat to drape over his arm, a scuffed briefcase, a rolled-up newspaper.

  No-one stopped them; no-one looked twice at them. Stolle sat next to Wyatt on the plane but he didnt communicate with him beyond indicating a picture of Jupiters Casino in the in-flight magazine. The flight was direct to Brisbane and took two hours. Five minutes before it landed, Stolle bent down and reached for something on the floor. It was an envelope and he said to Wyatt, You dropped this. Wyatt put it in his pocket. He guessed it was the other half of the torn one thousand.

  No-one stopped or noticed them at the other end. Stolle collected his bag and led the way outside the terminal building. The air was hot and dry. They took a taxi, riding in silence across the flatlands near the airport. Dead grass lined the highway and closer to the city Wyatt saw further signs of drought, patches of bare earth showing in the parks and gardens. The sky looked brown and he could smell dust above the traffic fumes. Somewhere in the interior strong winds were stripping the topsoil, lifting it high and out over the coast.

  Then the taxi was plunging into the canyons of the city. It was a glassy place, brash and fast. The taxi pulled up in Adelaide Street. The driver pointed. Bus terminals through there, under street level. He spoke rapidly, strangling his words: a Queensland way of speaking.

  They got out and walked through to the mall and the stairs that led down to the lockers and the bus stands. All the while Wyatt felt focused and wary, the back of his neck prickling with the weight of the hand that might reach out to spin him around. But there were only out-of-work kids in the mall, bored police watching them, Japanese tourists in baggy cotton shorts.

  The number on the key was 226. Locker 226 was in the centre of several banks of grey-faced lockers. There were people there, depositing or retrieving luggage, but the one of most interest to Wyatt stood up from a moulded plastic seat that was bolted to the floor and intercepted him as he approached the lockers. He didnt say anything, didnt move. She had nearly killed him three months ago and he wondered if death was part of this deal.

  Fifteen

  Wyatt backed away a little. It was a bad place to be plenty of exits but he was underground, in a city he didnt know, among people who would profit by his being dead.

  Anna Reid seemed to sense this in him. She stood well clear, her hands where he could see them, and said, Wyatt, its okay, as if shed backed a risky dog into a corner. He stopped, his eyes restlessly scanning the crowd thronging the terminal.

  Mr Stolle, Anna said. She smiled and shook Stolles hand.

  Wyatt watched them closely. He saw Anna stand centimetres from Stolle and hand him a buff-coloured business envelope from t
he bag over her shoulder. The envelope disappeared somewhere inside Stolles coat. The transaction was quick and neat. No-one else saw it. Its all there, she told him.

  The grin was wide on Stolles face. I trust you. Listen, now Im here, how about dinner one night?

  He waited. Anna Reid stared at him. Then she said distinctly, You must be joking.

  Stolle flushed. He said, You lousy cow, and backed away.

  Anna watched him go. She wore a sleeveless cotton dress, olive green, and black sandals. Her hair, black and straight and fine, was drawn back behind each ear. It gave her a poised, challenging air. When Stolle was gone, she turned back to Wyatt. Give me the key.

  He handed it to her. The number 226 stencilled on the locker door was chipped and faded. She opened it, took out an Ansett bag, and gave it to him. He slung it over his shoulder wordlessly. It felt light, but the bag had been padded out to give it bulk, probably with balled-up newspaper. She said what shed said to Stolle: Its all there.

  Wyatt said harshly, Whats this about?

  She ignored him. Have you had lunch?

  Forget it.

  He wanted to get away from her, from this place under the street where no natural light ever penetrated. He turned to leave, and as he did so she caught his arm. Her grip was strong. Ive got a job for you.

  The low voice, the pressure on his arm, made him remember her, and at once some of the tension went out of him. Anna Reid had embroiled him in a chain of disasters but he remembered the heat of her, the kind of energy that spelt danger and risky rewards. They had acknowledged one anothers lawlessness and there had been a time when hed believed they could work together. Then it had all gone wrong. Hed had the chance to kill her, just as hed killed Harbutt, but he had not done it and, since then, whenever she had surfaced in his mind, hed been glad that he hadnt. Hed mostly put her out of his thoughts but sometimes an image of her lurked in the recesses of his mind. At those times a melancholy would settle over him.