‘They asked me to do extra shifts.’
‘So you could keep an eye on me?’
‘Yes.’
‘Is anyone else here on the payroll? Anyone else told to keep an eye out for me?’
The clerk shook his head. ‘Just me,’ he said miserably.
‘I’ll need to collect my things.’
The clerk began to look panicky. ‘I was told to pack up everything in your room after you left this morning.’
‘Have you done it?’
The clerk nodded. ‘It’s all out the back.’
‘Where?’
‘I’ve got a room here.’
‘We’re going to chat a while, until your replacement comes on duty.’
The clerk swallowed. ‘Then what?’
‘That’s up to you. For the moment all you have to do is act like I’m a mate who’s dropped by for a drink.’
The evening-shift clerk arrived soon after that. Wyatt’s man took off his bow tie, shrugged himself into a zippered nylon jacket and led Wyatt through dark corridors to a poky courtyard room next to the motel kitchen. The air smelt of rotting food. There was a rattly airconditioning unit nearby. The clerk hesitated at his door. Wyatt nudged him with the.38. ‘If it’s any consolation, I don’t intend to kill you,’ he said, ‘although that’s open to change.’ The clerk’s shoulders slumped. He opened his door.
The room smelt of poverty. There was a dull, oily sheen to the walls, from cheap paint badly mixed and meanly applied, revealing green paint underneath. Against one wall was a plywood wardrobe with a spotty mirror, next to a varnished desk with a world map on it. A frayed armchair was in one corner, a cheap stereo in another. At some stage in the past, cigarettes had been stubbed out on the smoky plastic turntable lid. The tits-and-bums calendar on the wall was two months out of date. The feature for July was a tanned backside awkwardly cocked with grains of yellow sand clinging to the flesh.
Wyatt pushed the clerk down into the armchair and sat on the bed opposite him, the.38 dangling loosely between his knees. ‘What’s your name?’
The clerk opened and closed his mouth. Finally he said, ‘Philip.’
‘Phil, or Philip?’
‘Whatever. Doesn’t matter.’
It mattered to Wyatt. This was all part of relaxing the man, letting him feel he had some identity, some importance, despite the circumstances. ‘Which do you prefer?’
‘Philip.’
‘Okay, Philip, all I want from you is some information.’
‘They’ll kill me.’
‘Why should they do that? Why should they even know you’ve been talking to me?’
Philip was silent, thinking about it. ‘What do you want to know?’
‘You fingered me, correct?’
Philip said yes. He was looking at the floor.
‘How did you know it was me? Who told you to look out for me?’
‘You were seen arriving in Melbourne a few days ago. They tailed you. They knew where you’d checked in.’
‘They. Who do you mean by they?’
Philip looked up. ‘They’re from Sydney.’
‘The Outfit?’
Philip nodded.
‘Do you work for them?’
‘Not me. I was given five hundred bucks to keep my eyes open, pass on messages, that kind of thing.’
Wyatt smiled. It didn’t reach his eyes. ‘Five hundred bucks. You’re beginning to feel that’s a bit on the low side, eh, Philip? You thought your life was worth more than that.’
‘Give us a break,’ the man said, and he began to list his fears, creating a picture of meanness and badness in the Outfit. When Philip had talked himself out, Wyatt said, ‘Did you know there’s a contract out on me?’
‘Forty thousand bucks.’
The clerk smirked a little. To kill that, Wyatt raised his.38, cocked it, released the hammer, cocked it, released the hammer, until the smart look left Philip’s face. He lowered the gun again. ‘Who do you take your orders from? Kepler in Sydney?’
‘I don’t know. All I do is ring this number they gave me.’
‘Have you got a Melbourne address for them?’
Philip looked up at Wyatt. ‘I don’t know where they’re based down here. Look, forget it, stay clear, you’re just buying yourself a lot of strife.’
But Wyatt had no intention of staying clear. He couldn’t work while there was still a price on his head. He couldn’t put a team together against the Mesics while forty thousand dollars was distracting every punk on the street.
He stood up to go. There was a safe-at-last look on Philip’s face. Wyatt removed it. He said flatly, ‘I know where to find you, Philip.’
Twelve
Wyatt needed a bed for the night and he needed a safe passage to Sydney, but the Outfit was a threat on both counts. He didn’t think they’d have the clout to cover every hotel, every booking office, but he didn’t want to test it. He killed time in a cinema then found a bar in a side street and nursed a Scotch, thinking it through, Renting a car was out, sitting behind a wheel for ten hours on a highway where the fuel tankers jackknifed and jobless rural kids tried to end it all by steering into the oncoming traffic. That’s also why he wouldn’t hitchhike-that and the fact that he liked to have more control when he was on the move. He could change his face, but that required time and a bolthole, and he was running out of both. He couldn’t fly-the Outfit would concentrate its energies on the check-in counters. If he wasn’t so broke, he’d charter a plane and avoid the normal passenger formalities, but his funds were low and he’d need all of it to bankroll his hit on the Mesics. That left a bus or a train-assuming the Outfit didn’t have city terminal staff on its payroll or hadn’t brought extra people down from Sydney to find him now that he’d been spotted.
‘Same again, sir?’ the barmaid said.
Wyatt had been staring past her, sitting as still as a tombstone, his concentration absolute. He knew he couldn’t walk to Sydney, or swim or flap his arms or somehow materialise there, so he went through the options again, looking for holes.
He found one, blinked and smiled.
‘It moves, it breathes, it’s alive,’ the barmaid said.
Wyatt was aware of her watching him after that, polishing glasses, one eyebrow hooked, ready to banter with him. He guessed that she bantered with everybody, it was second nature to her, but something told him that banter was only part of her act this time. She seemed to like him and, as evening approached, he felt drawn to her. When finally he grinned, her face grew watchful and anticipatory. It was an engaging face, smart and humorous. She moved easily and well as she worked. An hour later he had a bed for the night.
Her name was Marion and she lived in cluttered comfort in an East Preston weatherboard house. The floor seemed to dip dangerously under Wyatt’s feet, and doors sprang open as he walked past them, but the central heating had kicked in an hour earlier and immense cushions and bright fabrics gave the house a cheery edge. A child’s hectic drawings were stuck to the refrigerator but Marion, brewing tea in the light of a candle and touching Wyatt’s arm from time to time as she moved about the kitchen, said nothing about having a child. She was frank and generous and uncomplicated, and had little to say to him at all.
Until, curled next to him on a sofa, she said idly, ‘Are you on the run?’
He stared at her. ‘What makes you say that?’
‘No car. You’re travelling light. You don’t strike me as completely broke, or too mean to pay for a motel.’ She looked at him carefully. ‘I’d say you genuinely want to be with me, but you also need a bed for the night, somewhere safe.’
He shrugged, and she put her hand on his chest as though to shut him up. ‘I don’t mind,’ she said. ‘I know you’re in trouble-I’m just trusting that none of it’s going to follow you here, into my house.’
Afterwards, when she fell instantly asleep in her big bed, he watched her for a while on his elbow and the strain of his chosen life began to look absurd to him.
She remained asleep when he got up on Wednesday morning. He showered, dressed, consumed toast and coffee and touched her neck goodbye, and she remained asleep through all of it, as though she felt safe. He pocketed her keys and left a note telling her where she could find her car. Then he heard the front gate scrape open.