‘As I just said to Rose, you put a price on my head and now I want you to remove it.’
Kepler laughed. ‘Why should I do that?’
‘To save yourself more grief.’
Kepler shrugged. ‘I’ve got a large and loyal workforce. We’ll hunt you down.’
Wyatt ground the barrel of his.38 into a bulge in the quilt that was Kepler’s foot. ‘Kepler, I’m doing the hunting now. Can’t you see that?’
The foot jerked, then stopped. ‘I’m genuinely puzzled. Why don’t you just take the diamonds and piss off overseas?’
Wyatt shook his head. ‘I like it here.’
‘Or go underground,’ Kepler said.
‘I don’t want to run. I don’t want to be looking over my shoulder for the rest of my life.’
Kepler gestured irritably. ‘You’ve got the drop on me here, I’m defenceless, so why not kill me?’
‘It might still come to that.’
‘No, seriously,’ Kepler said. ‘I want to know.’
‘Having a price on my head interferes with the work I do. I want to continue doing what I did before all this. I want to operate freely. I can’t while the contract’s still active, wondering if every punk I meet intends to prove himself by going up against me.’
‘And if I don’t cancel it?’
‘Then I’ll kill you. Maybe not now-maybe I’ll let you stew a little. And I’ll keep hitting your operations until no one trusts you, until you’re ruined.’
Towns spoke for the first time. ‘That wouldn’t remove your central problem, Wyatt. The contract would still be active. The organisation has plenty of resources. Even if you kill all three of us, whoever takes over will find you sooner or later.’
Wyatt didn’t look at Towns. He watched Kepler, saying nothing. He’d known how the conversation would go.
‘Are you listening?’ Kepler said. ‘In terms of a bargaining position you’re offering fuck-all. Why should we listen? You can’t just promise to stop hitting us. You’ll have to come up with something substantial.’
Wyatt seemed to think about it. Kepler looked at him thoughtfully. ‘What I could do is offer you a job. A man with your talents, you could be very useful.’
‘You must be joking,’ Wyatt said.
He knew what working for the Outfit would be like. The Outfit had snared a lot of good professionals who were now in the slammer. What they offered sounded good on the surface. They’d set up every job for you, complete with floor plans, equipment, back-up-even videotapes showing the layout if that’s what you needed. Then they’d fence the jewels, paintings, bullion, travellers’ cheques for you, launder the cash, taking those sorts of risks onto their own shoulders so that you weren’t worrying about being ripped off or trapped by undercover cops.
The catch was, once you were one of theirs, the Outfit worked you day and night and paid you peanuts for all that hard work and talent. If lucky, you’d earn maybe ten cents on die dollar for everything you stole and the Outfit pocketed the rest. If unlucky-if you were arrested, or cracked under the pressure-you were on your own.
No thanks. Whenever Wyatt needed to fence anything, there were good men he could go to, independent operators who valued the work he did and paid top dollar.
‘You’re making a mistake,’ Kepler said.
Wyatt shook his head.
‘Okay then,’ Kepler said, pushing the covers down to his waist, ‘finish me off here and now.’
‘Shut up, Kepler. You asked for something substantial. I can give it to you. You’re expanding into Victoria, correct?’
Slowly the scorn and irony disappeared from Kepler’s heavy face. He laughed harshly. ‘We would’ve had a toehold there by now if you hadn’t stuffed us around.’
‘Forget that,’ Wyatt said. ‘Have you heard of the Mesics?’
Kepler eyed him, looking for the trap. ‘Stolen cars.’
‘Karl Mesic died recently. The oldest son intends to move them into more ambitious rackets, but meanwhile they’re vulnerable. Already a lot of small operators are sniffing around ready to snap up the bits and pieces.’
Wyatt paused. Then he smiled. There was no warmth in it, only a hard certainty. ‘I can give them to you.’
‘You can give me the Mesics?’
‘Lock, stock and barrel, so long as we hit them now while everything’s still in place, still operational.’
Kepler regarded him sceptically. ‘What’s in it for you?’
‘The Mesics have got some money that’s rightly mine. Last year one of their agents ripped me off. I don’t expect to get everything back, but every Thursday night there’s a lot of cash in the safe. I’ll take whatever’s there. That’s all I want.’
Kepler was suspicious suddenly. ‘Who else have you approached with this idea?’
‘No one. Why?’
Kepler’s face cleared. ‘I want to be sure there’s no competition. You say you only want cash? Not an operating percentage?’
‘I want whatever I can carry with me out of the door,’ Wyatt said. ‘Everything else is yours.’
‘Such as?’
‘One, you get to talk to the Mesics face to face. Two, you get their records-everything you need to know about their current operations and what they have in mind for the future. Armed with that kind of information you could take over without a hitch.’
‘So that’s the deal, your trump card? You give me the Mesics, I put the word out that the contract’s cancelled?’
‘That’s it.’
Kepler seemed to lean back and size him up. ‘I don’t doubt you could knock them off, if you had the right sort of team.’
Wyatt had written this script in his head and so far none of the players had missed a beat. ‘Yes,’ he said.
‘And you can’t put a team together if there’s a contract out and every second hoon’s got the hots for you.’
Kepler was still keeping to the script. Kepler was a survivor. He tested everything for the profit margin and the risk factor before he committed himself. Wyatt leaned forward. ‘Believe it or not, I’ve got friends, people who would rather work for me than against me, despite the forty grand you’ve got on my head. All I’ll need from you at the start is some operating cash.’
Kepler thought about it. ‘I don’t think I can do that.’
‘Why not?’
‘A man likes to keep an eye on his investment. I mean, your pals could rip you off, you could fuck up, I could be throwing away good money and earning myself a lot of pain if the Mesics hear about this.’
Wyatt frowned, stringing this along. ‘What have you got in mind?’
‘My people work with you. They don’t get their hands dirty, they don’t put their lives at risk, but they’ll be in the know and they’ll provide whatever resources you need.’
Wyatt waited for a few seconds. He worked on the principle that self interest was the driving motive in human affairs. He didn’t trust Kepler. He didn’t trust anyone. Unfortunately, however, to do the work he did he had to trust some people part of the way. The jobs where he could operate solo were rare. He had to work with others. The best he could do was watch his back, minimise the risks, cancel the forces acting against him before they could take effect. ‘As long as they know who’s the boss,’ he said finally.
‘Maybe,’ Kepler shrugged. ‘It all sounds pretty dicey to me.’
Wyatt looked directly at the fat man and it was a look of hard, tired wisdom. ‘Kepler, make up your mind now-do you want me out of the way, or do you want me to hand you the Mesics?’
Kepler probably wanted both things. Certainly Kepler might order him killed after the Mesics had been hit. Wyatt had worked that factor into his thinking.
Meanwhile he was tired of going around in circles. ‘Do you understand me, Kepler? I hand you the Mesics. You cancel the contract. We have to agree at that basic level. Otherwise I’ll kill you. Even if it means I have to look over my shoulder for the rest of my life, you’ll still be dead.’
‘We could hit the Mesics ourselves.’
‘Then why haven’t you done it? The truth is you’re still weak in Melbourne. I know the city. I know the Mesic set-up. I know how to hit them. It’s what I’m good at. It’s my job.’
The script ended here. The only step left to Wyatt was to kill Kepler now, in the bed. Towns and Rose sensed that and seemed to wait with him while Kepler thought it through.