But as she stepped by him to drape the jacket on a chair, her arm brushed against him. He tensed. In the silence she said, ‘Two things. First, I’ve been stealing from my trust account.’
He nodded.
‘To repay a bookmaker,’ she said. ‘I have to put the money back before I get found out. Second, I could take some polaroid photos of the layout and the alarm system if that would be a help.’
Wyatt ran through the possibilities. Perhaps she wanted him to trust her. Or she wanted to know if she could trust him. Or it was all a game to her. ‘Photos would be useful,’ he said. ‘Take them tomorrow. I’ll be in touch.’
She looked at him ironically. ‘You’ll be in touch.’
He nodded, refusing to smile. ‘About the money you owe,’ he said. ‘You just decided you’d ask Max to rob a safe for you.’
‘It wasn’t quite as blatant as that. I was explaining his parole provisions one day, and he told me I was wasting my time. He said he expected to be back in jail again sooner or later.’
‘That got your mind working.’
She smiled. ‘I didn’t say anything for a few days. He didn’t seem like an idiot, but I couldn’t be sure, so I sort of circled around the topic to see how he’d respond.’
‘What did he say when you finally mentioned it?’
She shrugged. ‘He didn’t seem surprised. I was just another crook; this was just another job.’
They hadn’t wasted time with small talk or hedging, and now they were silent. But Wyatt wanted to know more. After a while he said, ‘How come you’re Finn’s partner?’
‘He knew my father in Brisbane. When I came down here he took me on.’
She looked, briefly troubled, at his face, and he understood that she was unhappy. Beauty attracts the bad offers, he thought, and she’s accepted some of them. He said suddenly, ‘Finn expected you to go to bed with him.’
‘Well, well,’ she said, raising her eyebrows. She went serious again, wrapping her arms around her chest. ‘At first I didn’t mind. I was young, he gave me a start, he can be very compelling. Later on we stopped but he still looks at me like it’s there whenever he wants it.’
Wyatt was silent, waiting for her to say more. She cocked her head. ‘He lost a lot of money in the ‘87 stock market crash. After a while I realised he’d gone crooked. He started doing the planning kickbacks, and there were lots of little things- for example, every month he has the place swept for wiretaps and bugs. He tells us it’s Telecom doing maintenance.’
‘How did you know about Friday’s drop?’
‘He’s always very careful, but I overhear bits and pieces and I fill in the gaps. Some of his planning appeal work is genuine, but a lot of it’s rigged-straw objectors, inflated settlements, all earning him huge kickbacks. When something big goes through, he likes to brag.’
‘Using it as a come-on,’ Wyatt said.
Her eyes were large and when she smiled they seemed to lengthen and tilt upwards. She reached forward and brushed his chest almost as if she hadn’t done it. ‘I was thinking about you downstairs. Most people who aren’t straight eventually become wary and secretive. I think with you it was the other way around.’
‘So?’
‘So let’s hope it means you’re less likely to make mistakes.’
Usually when they started analysing him, understanding him, it was time to get out. But there were gaps in this job and he might learn something. Besides, she made him feel alive and well. Her knuckles brushed his chest again and he didn’t flinch. ‘You can afford to pick and choose your jobs,’ she said.
If he’d known her better he might have told her about scraping the bottom of the barrel with people like the Youngers. But he felt his luck had changed now; the Youngers were irrelevant. ‘I like working through the details,’ he said.
‘That’s obvious. Just now, when everyone was here, you seemed to be interested only in the job. Not them, not me.’
‘I keep the distractions till later.’
‘Uh huh,’ she said, nodding ironically.
He waited to see what she would do.
What she did was touch his chest on the way out and say, ‘I can do more than just take polaroids of the layout.’
Fourteen
Monday night was Sugarfoot Younger’s night for prowling the bars and dance floors of Club H in King Street, keeping an eye on the patrons, thumping heads that got out of line. Ivan had hard cash invested in Club H. Sugarfoot didn’t know if Club H was a Bauer operation or not. All he knew was, he hated the powder-blue tux, and the women were slags. You’d think as bouncer he’d be in a position to grab some of the action, but he hadn’t scored once. All the chicks seemed to come from Mount Waverley and wanted to know how come he drove an old car.
At eleven o’clock he popped his knuckles and stepped out for some fresh air. Being a Monday night, and mid-winter, there wasn’t much action in King Street. Not like the time he worked a Saturday night shift: guys openly dealing, chicks crying rape, torn scalps, cops, ambulances, a couple of bouncers charged with assault. Do this full time? Fifteen bucks an hour? Forget it.
He was more and more determined to turn pro. Seeing Bauer in action this afternoon had left him feeling unsettled and excited. Bauer had the right idea.
Monday night bouncer? Collector of small debts? No input into planning? Fuck that. One swift, clean, impressive hit, that’s all he’d need.
He finished work at one o’clock. By one-thirty he was sitting in the Customline in the car park of the Housing Commission flats in Racecourse Road. Hobba lived on the eighth floor, but Sugarfoot didn’t go up to check it out. Too many ethnics about. Leave your car unattended and they’d strip it. Look twice at them and they’d knife you.
Sugarfoot started the Customline and drove out of the car park and across to a long, narrow street in Brunswick. He looked sourly at the houses. They were small workers’ bungalows, but the street was well on the way to becoming yuppie heaven. Already there were brass numerals and restored verandahs. Pedersen’s weatherboard was set amid tidy garden beds and gravel paths. Gloomy fruit trees dominated the back yard.
Sugarfoot sat for a while. There was no sign of life, but he didn’t expect there to be. If Hobba and Pedersen did have something planned with Wyatt, and if it hadn’t happened yet, their daytime movements might be the key. Meanwhile, finding out where they lived was all part of the groundwork.
Sugarfoot drove home and set the alarm for eight o’clock. Fucking terrible hour but he was treating Tuesday as the first day of the rest of his life.
Fifteen
Before going for the guns on Tuesday morning, Wyatt checked out of the Gatehouse. He never spent more than one night in a place when he was setting up a job. He checked into a cheap hotel nearby, put his remaining cash in a money belt around his waist, and entered the Underground at Parliament Station. He caught a train that went through Burnley. Out of habit he sat at the end of the carriage, where he had a clear view of the aisle and the entry and connecting doors. He kept his hand on the knife in his pocket. That was habit, too. But knives were useful. People respected the swift threat of a blade where a gun or a raised fist simply flustered them.
The carriage was almost empty. Two men, one elderly, the other about forty, sat near the middle doors. Three middle-aged women were going home with their shopping. Wyatt listened to them comparing the hairdressing salons in Myer and David Jones. Two young Vietnamese men, quick and glittering, sat at the far end of the carriage. Across from Wyatt was an overweight teenage mother wearing stretch jeans and scuffed moccasins. She had trouble keeping still, and shouted rather than spoke endearments to a squawling child in a pusher. There was graffiti on the windows, the script bold and mocking.
He got off at Burnley Station and stood at the timetable board watching others get off, watching for lingerers. He saw the young mother light a cigarette and shake the pusher. She joined a huddle of people at the exit gate, people who could easily be her parents, siblings, neighbours. They disappeared into the flat, exhausted streets. Sour poverty and contention and mindless pride, Wyatt thought. He’d grown up in a suburb like this. Everyone had talked solidarity, but he’d never seen it.