One of the seats faced the slippery dip and the river. He slumped in it in an attitude of dejection and prepared to wait. Three o’clock, one hour early. Now and then he raised the sherry bottle to his lips but was otherwise perfectly still, his chin on his chest, the frayed cap concealing his face. He kept one hand under his coat, holding his Browning. He had a clear view of the footbridge. When Sugarfoot arrived to make his inspection, Wyatt would spot him immediately.
During the next hour, five people entered the park from the footbridge. The first two were a businessman and a teenager with wisps of orange and blue hair who disappeared into the trees a minute apart. Two joggers thumped across the bridge soon after that. They were followed by a wino, who homed in on Wyatt’s bottle. The wino shuffled past the seat twice before hovering nearby in a test of Wyatt’s sense of brotherhood.
About to tell him to scram, Wyatt thought better of it and inched along the seat to give the man room. ‘Sit down,’ he said. He raised the bottle. ‘This’ll warm your guts.’ The wino said Ta’ delicately and drank deeply from the bottle. ‘Ah,’ he said. He wiped the rim with his sleeve.
‘Have another,’ Wyatt said.
The man was ideal cover: so obviously derelict that he coloured Wyatt and the entire playground area. Sugarfoot would discount them immediately.
When it reached four-fifteen and Sugarfoot had not showed himself, Wyatt turned side-on in the seat. To an observer he appeared to be in animated conversation with his drinking mate, but he was looking beyond the bleary, whiskered face to the golf course, the bridge and the dense trees. Shadows were lengthening in the bad light of late afternoon, making objects difficult to assess. A misty rain began to fall and he hunched deeper into his coat. He stayed like this until four-thirty, but saw nothing. At quarter to five, he knew that it was a no-show.
‘Keep the bottle,’ he said, cutting the derelict off in mid-ramble about a shearing shed and a shearing record in 1954.
Hawking and spitting, Wyatt shuffled back across the golf course. He felt tense, wondering if Sugarfoot was smart after all, had support, had the cross-hairs of a telescopic sight on him all this time, waiting for a clear shot.
He kept his head down. Golfers swore at him. A golf ball bumped past him, someone yelled ‘Fore!’, another laughed.
Behind the clubhouse he stood at drunken attention and surveyed the parked cars. Some he remembered, others had arrived more recently. There was no two-tone Customline, but nor did he expect there to be. He was watching for warning signs: a man taking too long to find his car; a car circling the rows instead of leaving; a silhouette showing suddenly in a car window.
After a few minutes he wandered among the cars, looking for the one that didn’t belong. It was an empty gesture at best, since every car looked exactly like a family car used to cart golf clubs around.
He returned to the Hertz Falcon. Just before reaching it he dropped a handful of coins. They rang out, clear and metallic, on the hard asphalt. He knelt to recover them. He also swung round on the soles of his shoes, scouting for figures crouching behind nearby cars.
Nothing.
He checked the back seat and got behind the wheel. It was unlikely that the car had been wired, but still, he felt a prickle of fear as he turned the key in the ignition.
He drove to a secluded street and removed his coat, trousers and cap. They were damp, and had made his clothes underneath feel damp, but there was no time to do anything about that. Sugarfoot had not shown. He might have changed plans, had a fight with Ivan, sought help, decided on a different surprise.
Wyatt started the car again and drove to the Collingwood address Rossiter had given him. Time to go after Sugarfoot, not wait for him.
Thirty-eight
The big Customline was parked in the street. The road surface under it was bone-dry, indicating that it had been there for some time. The house itself looked to be vacant, an impression encouraged by the peeling window frames and verandah posts and the expensive renovation of the houses on either side of it.
Wyatt rapped the front door knocker. When there was no answer, he walked around to the back of the house. Out of habit he looked in the two sheds built against the back fence. One contained newspapers stacked for recycling, the other a workbench and a number of bicycle spare parts.
The back door key was under a bluestone block that supported a terracotta pot of herbs. Wyatt turned the key softly and let himself into the house. He stood, listening, for two minutes, then began a rapid search of the rooms on both floors.
He rejected the common living areas and two of the bedrooms-one because it clearly belonged to a womaer because he doubted that Surgarfoot subscribed to bush-walking magazines.
That left a elarge front room on the first floor. It was dimly lit, the air heavy with an atmosphere of cloaked obsessions. Among the pulp novels in the bookcase were sets of American handgun magazines and several large folios on weaponry from remainder bookshops. One shelf was crammed with war and western videos, heroes posed like gods on the covers. There was a small desk under the window. The drawers were locked. Against one wall was a large, gloomy wardrobe. It, too, was locked. Wyatt looked under the bed. He saw a padlocked chest but didn’t bother to drag it out or force the lock. He had a good idea what he’d find.
He went downstairs again. He locked the back door behind him, put the key under the bluestone block, and walked around to the front of the house.
A voice demanded, ‘Who are you?’
The woman had just come home. She had a sharp, unhappy face and stiff, chopped white hair. A badge on her overalls said, ‘Reduce, Reuse, Recycle.’ She glared at Wyatt. ‘What do you want?’
‘I’m after Sugarfoot. I did knock,’ Wyatt said, ‘then I went to see if he was around the back.’
‘Are you a friend of his?’
Wyatt watched her. She was hostile, but not towards him, so he said, ‘Not exactly. He owes me some money.’
Her lip curled. ‘That would be right. You could try his brother’s place. He said he was going there to pick up a bookshelf. But that was this morning.’ She fished in her pocket for the front door key. ‘If you see him,’ she said, ‘tell him to bring back my Kombi now, or I’m reporting it stolen.’ She slammed the door.
Wyatt left. In Carlton, and again in Footscray, he encountered heavy football traffic. The victors’ cars seemed to ride high in the fast lane and flow with the green lights, streaming ribbons and scarves. The losers were miserably bunched in family sedans. They progressed in frustrating short surges. Glowering fathers slapped at legs in the back seat. Then it began to rain and a car clipped a bus and Wyatt was stalled in banked-up traffic. The city was moving uselessly, resentfully, into Saturday evening.
By six o’clock he was parked in the alley behind Bargain City. The rear door was locked. He walked around to the street entrance. Metal screens secured the door and windows. There were no lights on. All life seemed to be centred on the video shop and the takeaway cafй. Wyatt returned to his car, pursued by gusts of music, film images, vinegar sharp on fish and chips.
He was covering bases. He drove the two kilometres to Ivan Younger’s house. Ivan liked to say, ‘Footscray is where I was born, it’s where I operate from, it’s where I belong,’ as if he saw himself as a godfather living among his people. His sprawling 1950s brick and tile house was set on a large block of land in a street of workers’ cottages. A high bluestone wall, topped with broken glass, surrounded the house and grounds. Above the steel entrance gate was a security camera. Wyatt stayed clear of the gate, guessing that it would be locked. He stood where he could see through to the house. It appeared to be in darkness.
Just then a child appeared on the footpath. She wore a parka and was clumping home from the corner shop on rollerskates. Her movements were clumsy. She needed her arms for balance, but held them tight against her body, supporting milk cartons and a breadstick. Where the footpath dipped to allow car access to Younger’s gate, she began to lose her balance. She stumbled, clown-like, against the gate.