Rossiter shook his head. ‘Forty thousand to the bloke that knocks you. They reckon you stuffed up their Melbourne operations. They’re building up again and won’t feel happy till you’re off the scene.’
The price was going up. It had been twenty thousand a few months ago. Wyatt shifted in his chair. The house, the terribleness of the Rossiters, were starting to get him down. He’d get what he wanted, then leave, bugger the small talk. ‘I want to knock over the Mesics,’ he said.
Six
The thing about a Capri is, it’s shapely, mean through the corners and not so expensive that you’d want to know how come a cop drove one. Bax slotted his little car into a gap between the wall and the decent family station wagon that belonged to Coulthart, his Inspector, a man obsessed with breaking the car rackets, and got out. He locked the Capri-a gift from old man Mesic before he died-and entered the main building.
He gave the nod to a constable on the front desk and was buzzed through to a nervy zone of two-fingered typing, snatched smoking and close-mouthed phone calls. His desk was in the corner. Coulthart had left files on it, all flagged with yellow slips. The name Mesic and a question mark had been scrawled on some of the slips.
At eleven o’clock Coulthart called him in for an update. There was a dusty African violet on the Inspector’s windowsill and coffee rings on his blotter. Coulthart closed the door behind Bax and said, dropping his voice, ‘I put some files on your desk.’
Bax nodded.
‘Well?’
‘Boss, an operation like this, we’re steering pretty close to the edge.’
Coulthart was a soft, untidy looking man. He banged his right fist gently into his left palm, the closest he ever got to passion. ‘But not close to the Mesics.’
Bax’s elegant suited shoulders expressed regret. ‘Nothing leads to them, boss. That’s the way it is.’
‘You keeping tabs on everything? Every motor, every transmission, every outer shell? Every flaming wing mirror?’
‘Sure.’
‘And you’re saying the Mesics handle none of it? Come on, Bax.’
Bax checked that there was no gap above the knot in his tie. ‘Boss, I keep telling you, there don’t seem to be any big fish involved, only a lot of little fish, blokes like that panelbeater we nailed last month. We caught him cold with a chassis off a Fairmont swiped from Shopping Town six months ago.’
‘Who swiped it?’
Bax stared at Coulthart, saying nothing. Coulthart knew the rules, he’d set up this fuckwitted operation.
‘Forget I asked,’ Coulthart said. ‘How do we know your man isn’t selling to the Mesics on the sly? Is the paperwork tight on this?’
Any paperwork that Coulthart needed to know about was, so Bax said, ‘Yes.’
‘These small operators,’ Coulthart went on, ‘blokes like this panelbeater. He’s not working for the Mesics?’
‘No,’ Bax said. ‘That’s where the trail ends, every time, with the small fish. But I’ll keep digging. As for the Mesics, they might be diddling the tax man, but that’s about it. They seem clean.’
Coulthart clearly wasn’t convinced. Meanwhile he was responsible for an off-colour operation that could bring Age ‘Insight’ reporters down on him like a ton of bricks, so he asked Bax worriedly, ‘How many vehicles are we up to now?’
‘Forty.’
Coulthart looked hard at the top of his desk. ‘Forty,’ he said.
He said it slowly, as if doubts were finally creeping in. He’d devised an operation that could get them all into trouble. Bax had been ordered to recruit two professional car thieves, promise them good money and immunity from prosecution, get them to swipe late model luxury Fords, strip each car, stamp ID numbers on everything, release the parts on the black market, and follow the trail to the receivers. Clearly Coulthart hoped he’d turn over the Mesics that way, but it was a mad scheme, doomed to stuff up in a big way.
Well, Bax thought, so long as it’s Coulthart’s neck on the block, not mine. Bax had been working the scam for six months now. He’d arrested a dozen characters like last month’s panelbeater, he’d juggled like crazy to keep the Mesics out of the frame, and the whole thing had him living on a knife edge.
‘Forty cars,’ Coulthart said. He smothered a groan. ‘If what you say is right, we’re just feeding a habit that’s always been there anyway.’
Bax adjusted the back of his suit coat so that it wouldn’t crease in Coulthart’s office chair. ‘That’s about it, boss. There’ll always be blokes who swipe cars, always be chop-shop cowboys who flog or use the parts off them. If you want my advice, the only way you’re going to make a killing in this game is to put a cap on the iffy Mercs coming in from Hong Kong.’
Anything to get Coulthart off the track. It wasn’t easy for Bax now, earning his five hundred a week from the Mesics. In the old days it simply meant steering the law away from them. Now, with the old man dead, it also meant protecting them from opposition firms like the guy in the Volvo yesterday, and protecting them from dangers within in the form of Victor Mesic.
Plus which, old Karl Mesic had agreed to buy complete cars from Bax before he died. All Bax had to do was steer one car in ten to a Mesic chop-shop and keep it out of the paperwork. This scam promised to earn him thousands of bucks a year on top of his five hundred a week, and he badly needed it. But the old man had died before Bax could get the scheme up and running, the Mesics were falling apart, and if Coulthart’s operation came unstuck, he, Bax, could fall with it.
He stared at the African violet while Coulthart continued to groan. The answer was Stella Mesic. She was the strong one. If he could help Stella and Leo divert Victor, maybe send Victor back to the States, the firm could take over where Karl had left off, Leo providing the muscle, Stella the management, Bax the brains and protection.
Coulthart pushed away from his desk and lifted out of his chair. He favoured creased, lightweight suits summer and winter and sometimes Bax glimpsed flesh between the straining buttons of the man’s drip-dry shirts. He avoided Coulthart’s midriff and stood up too. ‘So, what’s it to be, boss?’
‘Give it another month,’ Coulthart said. ‘I want a couple of lightning raids on known Mesic outlets.’
‘I’ll need warrants.’
‘No problem.’
‘Suit yourself,’ Bax said, ‘but I’m telling you, you won’t find anything.’
‘Try, okay?’
Then, when Bax was opening the door, ‘Baxy?’
Bax stopped. ‘Yes, boss?’
‘Do the blokes, you know, take you seriously, got up like that?’
Jesus Christ, did he mean did the blokes think he was on the take? Bax looked down, checking his long frame, the expensive dark suit that shaped it. His shoes gleamed, his shirt was spotless, thick white cotton. ‘What’s wrong with it?’
Coulthart’s face reddened, the look of a man caught out in a cheap thought. ‘What I mean is, it’s a dirty job, you’ll ruin your dacks.’
To help the poor bastard out, Bax grinned and winked. ‘I like to set standards, boss. Be on the cutting edge.’
Coulthart relaxed. ‘Yeah, well, see if you can cut your way through to the Mesics.’
Seven
In the lounge room of the house in Abbotsford, Rossiter stared at Wyatt. ‘You want to hit the Mesics?’
Wyatt said nothing, waiting for his words to sink in.
‘At least your timing’s right, but aren’t you heading a bit off course?’
Wyatt knew what he meant. The Wyatt that Rossiter knew hit banks, armoured cars, not the cash reserves of other crims.
‘I mean, they’re ripe for a takeover. The flash boys are sniffing around, seeing what they can pick up, but not you, Wyatt.’
‘That’s my business.’