‘You fucked up once, you’ll fuck up again. We’re taking you home to Ivan.’
‘He’ll fucking kill me. Give us a go, Wyatt. I’ll drive, keep a lookout, whatever.’
‘Lie down on the ground,’ Wyatt said.
Hobba grinned. Sugarfoot, panicked, said, ‘Jesus, no need for that. I won’t tell. Just let me go.’
‘Shut up,’ Wyatt said. ‘No-one’s going to shoot you. Just lie there on your stomach.’
Sugarfoot, afraid now, settled onto the damp cobbles. When Hobba rested a foot on his back, he uttered a small, shocked cry.
‘Don’t be a sook,’ Hobba said. He began to prod Sugarfoot with his shoe. ‘What’s with the pony tail and the earring, Sugar?’ he said. ‘Eh? You a poofter?’
‘Fuck you. I’ll fucking get you cunts. I’ll track the three of youse down.’
‘Leave it,’ Wyatt said wearily. He pulled on Hobba’s sleeve. ‘I want a word.’
A short distance away he muttered, ‘We can’t waste time with this. We’ve got work to do.’
‘Waste him,’ Hobba said. ‘You heard him, he’ll just keep hassling us.’
‘Then we’d have Ivan’s hoons after us. We don’t need that. Throw a scare into him and let him go.’
‘Suit yourself.’
Meanwhile, pain was beginning to register above Sugarfoot’s fog of dreams and grievances. He raised his head from the ground. ‘I’m fucking bleeding to death here.’
‘Shut up,’ Hobba said. He swiftly crossed to Sugarfoot and, taking a knife from his pocket, knelt down and sliced off the pony tail. He showed Sugarfoot the blade and the hair. ‘See this? If I see you again, even by accident, I’ll slice off your balls. Then I’ll start on your face.’ He stood up and kicked Sugarfoot’s ribs. ‘Now piss off.’
Sugarfoot scrambled to his feet and made for the street in a stumbling run. He didn’t look back.
They watched him go. ‘What a prick,’ Hobba said. ‘I didn’t mean he had to leave his car behind.’
Wyatt was still, concentrating hard. They needed a safe house now, till the job was over. Without one they risked being found by the Youngers.
But they had a job to do in Fitzroy first.
Seventeen
Of the four thousand prostitutes in Melbourne, nine hundred work in legal brothels. Escort agencies, street trade, and a thriving cottage industry account for the remainder.
Two were run by Ken Sala. Cher and Simone operated out of a two-bedroom townhouse in the Caribbean Apartments, a converted bluestone factory in Fitzroy, turning tricks for clients in hotel rooms or in the townhouse itself. On a good weekend they could each pull in fifteen hundred dollars, and another fifteen hundred during the week. Ken, who lived in one of the adjacent apartments, gave back only a third, but he paid all their bills and didn’t steer any creeps their way, so they weren’t complaining. Anyway, as he was always reminding them, he was just a cog. He pocketed a thousand bucks in commission and the remainder went to some syndicate in Sydney.
It was three in the afternoon and Ken was starting a new day. First he did the paperwork for the weekend’s takings. The deal was, he collected from Cher and Simone on Monday, did all the paperwork on Tuesday, and waited till the bagman came around in the evening to collect.
Five thousand, six hundred bucks. About average. There was a travel agents’ convention starting Friday, so things would pick up a bit then. He stuffed the money into a cash box, locked it and shut it in the bottom drawer of his desk.
Every afternoon at this time he liked to wander down Lygon Street. He’d tried Brunswick Street but the style there was more your ponytails, ‘fifties gear and anaemic punk birds dressed in black. Lygon Street was more his scene. He went into his bedroom and put on the baggy electric-shimmer trousers with the pleated front, a black silk shirt, a drape jacket with broad shoulders and discreet checks, and low profile Italian slip-ons so slight they felt like slippers. He finished by gelling his hair. He looked at his face. Not one you’d mess with.
Three-twenty-five. Time to cruise. ‘Hey, Ken,’ the guys would say on Lygon Street. ‘How’s tricks?’ He hadn’t seen the joke at first, but now he did, and knew it meant that he was accepted.
His buzzer rang. He put his eye to the spyhole. No-one there. The courtyard was empty.
‘Who is it?’ he said.
No answer.
It was the kind of thing kids were always doing. This one kid would come around delivering the Herald-Sun and ring on every bell whether the person took that paper or not. Ken opened the door. He’d soon sort the little bastard out.
It was the kind of thing that happens in a bad dream, the two men wearing balaclavas coming through the door at him. Something-the door?-split his lip open. The men punched him, pushed him against the wall, kicked the door shut. It was over in about five seconds.
Less than a minute later they had him in an armchair and one, a fat one smelling of mints, was waving a gun in his face, going, ‘Kenny, we want the cash.’
The other one, a slender, fluid, hard-edged looking guy, did a quick check of the other rooms and came back and leaned in the doorway. There was an air of stillness about him.
‘What cash?’ Ken said.
The hard-looking one stirred. He said, ‘He’s wasting our time. Take the place apart,’ and started to rip prints off the walls and tear the covers off the Penthouse magazine and the Stephen King paperback on the coffee table.
The fat one pulled out a knife and slit the grey and pink leather sofa, three thousand bucks in Scandinavia World.
‘What the fuck are you doing?’ Ken said. His voice squeaked a little. He tried again. ‘Who are you? What do you want?’
The hard one said, ‘The cash. The week’s takings.’
‘You don’t know what you’re letting yourself in for,’ Ken said. ‘I’m connected. There are going to be some pissed-off people as a result of this.’
‘So you admit to the cash?’ the fat one said.
‘There’ll be fucking trouble. Plus which’-and Ken’s treacherous voice rose again-’how the fuck am I going to pay them back?’
The hard one looked at him. ‘Just get the money.’
On the way out the fat one grinned and the hard one said, ‘Like the threads, Ken.’
It was three-thirty. They had been in and out in less than five minutes.
Eighteen
By four-thirty Wyatt was on the footpath outside a building near Queens Road, having his hand shaken by a man who said, ‘Mr Lake? Call me Rocky.’
Rocky drove a black Porsche Targa with a car phone and personalised plates. He wore a white shirt and a double-breasted suit sharp as a knife. He released Wyatt’s hand and clapped his palms together. ‘Right,’ he said. ‘Short-term rental, fully furnished? No problem.’ He spoke urgently, his face too close, as if Wyatt’s only wish in life was to hear his words. ‘What firm you with?’
Wyatt mumbled a name. ‘Sydney based,’ he said. ‘Today I learned I’ll have to stay here for another three weeks, so I thought, why not the wife and kids as well? They’ll be down on the weekend. That’s why I need the extra rooms. Plus I’ll be doing a certain amount of entertaining, and you can’t do that in a hotel room.’
Rocky watched Wyatt’s face, fascinated. Then he couldn’t help himself and said, ‘Excuse me, I think the frames of your glasses are twisted.’
‘Yeah, damn things,’ Wyatt said.
There was a pause. Rocky clapped his hands together again. ‘Right.’ He indicated the building behind him, three storeys of pastel pink stone, and grey doors, window frames and entrance canopy. ‘We got several apartments available.’ He numbered his clean, white, ringed fingers. ‘You got your VHS, CD system, central heating, washing machine, two phones, proper down doonas. You got your intercom at the main entrance here, and your lock-up garage in the basement, room for two cars.’
‘Can I see the garage?’
Rocky looked surprised. Usually they wanted to see the apartment first. ‘Sure. No problem.’ He led Wyatt down a ramp to a large, dim, underground space. Along one wall were twelve steel garage doors. ‘Incredibly secure. The lift’s on the other side. I’ll show you.’