Wyatt - 04 - Cross Kill (2 page)

Stella Mesic moved in then. She
touched her brother-in-laws arm. Listen to him, Vic

Bax liked watching her in action.
She could run hot and cold, she had her husband bluffed, and he waited to see
how Victor would take it.

Victor Mesic jerked back as though
hed been scorched. I dont listen to cops on the take. Piss off, Bax. Do your
exams, make senior sergeant, get yourself a legitimate pay rise. Things are
going to change around here.

Bax stared at him. Old fears began
to creep inside his skull, his stomach. He had coke and gambling habits worth
more than five hundred dollars a week and he also had an Inspector who expected
him to clean up the stolen car rackets now that the Mesics were in tatters
after the old mans death. The way Bax saw it, if he helped Leo and Stella
regroup, not only was his five hundred bucks secure, so was his power base.
They would continue to feed him the names of small-time operators, bent
panelbeaters and car thieves, and that would be enough to keep the Inspector
off his back. It had been ticking over like that for five years now, since old
man Mesic had recruited him, and he didnt want to give any of it away. He
couldnt afford to. There was money in stolen cars, stolen parts. But if Victor
tried to move the familys operations into casinos and poker machines, not only
would Bax be left out in the cold, the Mesics wouldnt last six months. Law
enforcement was going to be tough for a start, briefed to keep the new
Melbourne casinos clean, the Mesics would go broke making the changeover, and
Victors Las Vegas wiseguy mates would rake off all the profits.

Your father would turn in his
grave, Bax said.

My father was out of date.

Leo had been standing apart from
this, the younger brother trying to find an edge. Now he had one. What do you
mean, out of date? Who built all this up? Who groomed you, sent you to the
States? Old grievances worked on his face. Me, Im just a manager or
something, I do all the hard work and I get fuck-all for it.

Ill make us rich, Leo, Victor
said.

Bax watched the brothers argue.
According to Stella, the old mans will was complicated, more or less giving
financial control to Victor, the favoured son. Now Victor was talking
asset-stripping so he could raise some big money, the sort of up-front money
demanded by his Las Vegas connections before theyd let him invest in the
casinos and gambling clubs now opening in Melbourne. Leo and Stella had been
fighting with him about it. Everybody knew, and it made the family look
vulnerable. The word on the street was that they were finished. If rival
operators didnt walk in and take them over first, theyd tear themselves
apart. Already someone had torched one of their crash repairers and one of
their car yard managers had been pistol-whipped. Stella complained that she and
Leo were scared to go out half the time.

Car stealing? Victor was saying. Strictly
smalltime.

A point-scoring expression settled
over Leos heavy face. We dont stealwe deal. Theres nothing smalltime about
that.

Victor chopped the air with the flat
of his hand. Thats ratshit and you know it.

Bax let them argue. Theyd forgotten
he was there. It was an old fight, and he had a stake in it, but hed have to
find some other way to assert himself.

He looked past the two brothers at
Stella. She stopped smoothing her thighs long enough to shrug a little and
smile. It was her way of saying she wanted him and it had better be soon.

* * * *

Three

Wary
now after his encounter with the big man outside the Mesic compound, Wyatt
dumped the Volvo in Collins Street. He tucked the keys under the front seat and
phoned the rental company with a story about a blocked fuel line. Then he
walked to a disposals store in Elizabeth Street, stripped off his whisky-sodden
clothes and walked out wearing cheap gaberdine trousers and a navy pullover
that had set him back forty dollars. Stuffing the unwanted clothing into a
rubbish bin, he made his way to a taxi rank outside the State Library. Airport,
he said, climbing into the first cab.

He settled back. The next ninety
minutes would be tedious. It wasnt likely that the Mesics had the kind of
reach that would find him easily, but one of the Mesics had seen his face, and
that was enough. Caution and concealment were in the air that Wyatt breathed.

He got out at the international
terminal, walked through to Ansett, and caught the Skybus back into the city.
There were taxis in Spencer Street but he walked past them and made his way to
the Victoria Market where he flagged down a cruising Silver Top. Box Hill, he
said.

The driver had an oiled rockers
haircut and a face creased from years of glare, smoke and Elvis Presley dreams.
He frowned, tapped the wheel, thinking through his route. Whereabouts in Box
Hill?

Go along Whitehorse Road.

Got you.

It took them thirty-five minutes.
For the first fifteen they were caught in peak-hour traffic, crawling bunched
from light to light. When they were away from the city centre, Wyatt looked out
at the high hedges and red tiles, the decent small businesses and family homes,
and knew they were a world away from him. At the white horse in the shopping
centre he said, The Overlander.

The taxi took him to a sprawling
1970s hotel-motel a kilometre past the TAFE College on Whitehorse Road. It was
built of pastel-brown brick and consisted of a dining room, private function
rooms, swimming pool and three blocks of guests rooms. Wyatt paid the driver
and walked through. His room faced a courtyard car park. The location was good.
Wyatt never put a hit together close to where he actually pulled it.

Monday evening, six oclock. Wyatt
rested for an hour then showered and changed and went to the dining room. There
was a conference function room to the left of the main doors. A board on an
easel said: The Overlander welcomes On-Line Computing and Wyatt could hear
shouted laughter inside.

He asked for a corner table and sat
where he could see the rest of the dining room. There were solitary men like
himself there, a married couple, a family celebrating a birthday. Wyatt ate
sparingly and nursed a glass of claret. He perplexed the waitress. She was
drawn to him but he was grave and courteous and offered her nothing.

At 8.30 he left the dining room.
Someone was making a speech in the function room. Wyatt crossed the car park,
paused at his door, looked to see that no one was watching him, and crouched to
peer at the bottom edge. He had sealed the door to the doorjamb with a strip of
scotch tape a centimetre above ground level, but now the tape was sticking only
to the door. Wyatt stood, listened, went through the motions of a man fishing a
key out of his pocket and fitting it to the lock.

He went in that way too, averagely
noisy and unsuspecting, and turned on some lights. It was a small room and he
could see that it was empty, but it didnt feel right. He knew an expert had
been through it, leaving no palpable trace, only a shift in the atmosphere.
Maybe the Mesics were better organised than hed thought, or some old score was
being settled. There was always that risk in Wyatts game.

He changed into black jeans, a
hooded black windcheater and black running shoes. Since he hadnt been hit when
he came into the room it meant theyd scouted the place first and intended to
come for him when everything had shut down for the night. At nine oclock he
climbed out by the bathroom window and slipped across the motel forecourt to
the conference centre. He waited in the shadows next to the main car park. At
ten oclock reps and executives emerged tipsily from the function room, the men
slapping one another on the back, the women kissing the men and the air near
the cheeks of the other women.

Wyatt watched them get into their
cars and drive away. He didnt know until the last minute whether or not his
idea would work, but when only one car remained and the driver stumbled and had
trouble finding his keys, Wyatt got ready.

The man was trying one key and then
another in the lock, and peering comically at his keyring. He gave up, leaned
his arms and bald head on the roof of the car, and Wyatt heard strangled
noises. The man was laughing.

Sorry, pal, Wyatt muttered,
stepping out of the shadows.

At that moment the man slid to the
ground and began to snore. It sounded heavy and permanent and Wyatt put his gun
away. He took the keys from the mans fist and dragged him into the shrubbery
separating The Overlander from the service road. The snoring stopped for a
moment, started again.

Wyatt paused. The snoring would
attract attention. Let the poor bastard sleep it off in the car. He unlocked a
rear door, dragged the man out of the shrubbery again, and half-lifted,
half-tumbled him onto the floor behind the front seats. He got behind the
steering wheel and started the engine. Behind him the snoring settled into a
rhythm.

Wyatt drove out of the conference
centre car park and right into Whitehorse Road. At the Station Street lights he
U-turned and came back. This time he steered into the courtyard where guests
parked their cars. He slotted into an empty spot near the street entrance and
got into the back of the car. He rested his feet on the bald mans chest and
pushed down gently. The snoring stopped. Five minutes later it broke out again,
and again Wyatt prodded the man.

It was deep and shadowy in the back
of the car. Wyatt watched and waited. He could see the door to his room
clearly. When they came they wouldnt see him. The bald man stirred and
muttered but didnt wake.

Time passed. Whether it passed
quickly or slowly wasnt a question that Wyatt asked himself. Waiting was
something he did every day. It couldnt be avoided.

Several cars entered and left the
courtyard through the evening. None of them interested Wyatt. Then at four
minutes past eleven he did get interested. A Laser, windows tinted, lights off,
entered from the service road and began to prowl the perimeter of the area. It
circled once, rolled silently back across the courtyard, and parked near his
room. Wyatt waited. Nothing happened for several minutes. Then, a slight
movement: the drivers door was opening. Wyatt expected to see the inside light
come on but the interior stayed black. Theyd sent a pro. He continued to wait.

The driver was a woman and suddenly
she was out of the Laser and pressing against the wall outside Wyatts room.
She wore close-fitting black jeans and a T-shirt and had a silenced pistol in
one hand.

A memory trace stirred in his mind,
an image of a swift, black, female shape. Ten months ago a man hed sometimes
worked with had shopped him to a Sydney crowd called the Outfit, and the killer
theyd sent to get him was a woman. This same one. Wyatt had escaped then but
he knew that she was good at her job and she would keep tracking him.

She slipped a key into the door,
then she was inside. Wyatt waited. No light showed behind the drawn curtains.
He didnt expect to see light anyhow. She was a pro; she wouldnt shine a torch
around.

After a few seconds the woman came
out fast, looking spooked, and got back into her car. The Laser muttered into
life, backed away from Wyatts door, sped with a faint squeal out onto
Whitehorse Road.

Wyatt got out of the bald mans car.
He didnt think thered be a second gun to worry about. He loped, half-crouching,
across the courtyard to his room. The door was open. He slipped inside, turning
on the lights. He smelt the shots before he saw the damage. She had fired
half-a-dozen shots into the spare blankets and pillows heaped body-like under
the bedspread. Then shed seen the trick and run.

At least he knew now that the Mesics
hadnt set this up. But it did mean the Outfit still had a price on his head.
Hed caused them some grief in the past and it seemed they werent going to let
him forget it. Wyatt felt rare anger building in him. It came hot and hard and
for a moment he was blinded by it. Nothing was smooth or easy anymore. No one
would let him be.

After a while he changed his clothes
and packed his bag. He wiped the place clean of his prints and went back to the
bald mans car. Time to find another bolthole.

* * * *

Four

There
were always question marks hanging over the early days of a job. Until he knew
that the ground was safe and the job feasible, and until hed put a team
together, Wyatt would spend a few hundred dollars here and there so that he had
a few boltholes if things went sour on him. In addition to The Overlander hed
paid in advance for rooms at a hotel and a guesthouse.

The hotel was behind the University
in Parkville and it had a checkerboard facade of white marble slabs and tinted
glass in aluminium frames. LONDON hotel was scrawled across the face of it in
red neon. The lobby was deserted when Wyatt got in at midnight. He made for the
stairs, attracting the attention of a clerk behind the desk. The clerk was
slight, pale, his lips loose and red. He smiled wetly at Wyatt, but Wyatts
return smile was cruel-looking across the stretch of maroon carpet, and the man
looked away. Wyatt climbed the stairs, checked the corridor, let himself into his
room, checked that.

Unbidden anxieties plagued him then.
He stretched out on the bed and tried to sort out what was wrong with him,
wrong with the Mesic hit. He analysed the complications one by one. First,
profit had always been his simple, reliable motive, but this time revenge had
muddied it. Second, he couldnt hit the Mesics while the Outfit still had a
hard-on for himhed have to find a way to warn them off. Third, the old
pattern was broken. He was forty and had spent half of his life pinpointing
where the money was and putting together an operation to snatch it. Hed
started small, honing his skills, and by the time he was thirty hed become
more ambitious, going for the big moneybanks, bullion, payroll. For the past
decade hed worked no more than three or four times a year, resting between
jobs. He had no ties to speak of, and when he wasnt working hed felt relaxed,
inclined to find the appealing things in people, not their possible weaknesses
or potential for treachery. All that was destroyed now. He was broke and
nowhere was safe for him anymore.