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 the 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.
But he didnt trust her. He trusted only himself, a fact that had kept him alive and on this side of the barred windows and the razor wire.
Wyatt? She shook his arm. Hear me out?
He looked at the ground. Someone had stepped in chewing gum, a streak of it stretching from the heart of the wad. He wasnt used to her and he wasnt used to this.
Have lunch with me? Listen to what I have to say?
He nodded. It was the warmest he could get.
She took him into the mall, turning right toward the river. A hundred metres down, in the centre of the mall, was an open-air bistro. Anna led him to an umbrella-shaded table set flush against the waist-high enclosure that separated the tables from the tourists and the shoppers. The cover was good for the things they had to say to each other. A Madonna clip blasted out from an adjacent Just Jeans outlet and a kid with a squeezebox was busking for coins on the opposite side of the mall. There was also a catwalk nearby, a man in a tuxedo squawking into a microphone as young women paraded in bathing suits. Wyatt watched the people watching the parade. Japanese tour parties, a couple of backpackers with peeling noses, students, shoppers. Almost everyone wore shorts and sneakers, so he forgot about watching for the kind of body language that said someone was packing a gun and meant him harm.