Then Pedersen got ready to go. It looked like being an extended departure- he was clapping the shoulders of other drinkers who’d been ignoring him all evening-so Letterman left first. He crossed the road, got into his car, and settled a hat on his head. It probably wasn’t necessary, but he didn’t want Pedersen puzzling about where he’d seen the bald man in the Fairmont before.
As Letterman watched, Pedersen crossed the road unsteadily, U-turned in front of a tram, and sped north with a faint tyre squeal. Letterman waited for the traffic to ease, then followed him. Pedersen cut through to Nicholson Street and went north along it. He’d been drinking heavily and it showed in his driving. Just my luck, Letterman thought, if he gets pulled over for drunken driving. He lost Pedersen at Brunswick Road when Pedersen ran a red light, but it didn’t matter, Pedersen was going home.
Letterman got to Pedersen’s house in Brunswick in time to see the Range Rover’s rear lights go off. He pocketed a Polaroid camera, got out and ran silently across the road and behind the Range Rover. It was a narrow street, dark, and Pedersen didn’t hear him coming. When Pedersen let himself into his house, Letterman pushed in behind him. He pushed the door closed, hearing the lock click home, and took out his knife.
Pedersen spun around, then flattened his back to the wall in shock. His breath was beery. Letterman raised the knife and touched the blade tip under Pedersen’s jaw, watching with interest the gulping motions in Pedersen’s throat. He said softly, ‘Maxie.’
Max Pedersen gulped again. ‘Who are you?’
‘You don’t want to know that, Max,’ Letterman said. He used Pedersen’s first name deliberately. It gave him an extra advantage over Pedersen, who didn’t even have a last name to call him.
For the next two minutes Letterman said nothing. Instead, he put his head on one side and then the other, turning the blade tip under Pedersen’s jaw. The hall light flashed on the steel.
The silence began to work. It always did. ‘What do you want?’ Pedersen asked. ‘Just tell me and I’ll do it. You want money? I got some in my wallet.’
Still Letterman said nothing. He would let the silence do its job, then fire the hard questions so they hit like punches.
He shouted the first one. ‘Where is he?’
Pedersen winced. ‘Who?’
Letterman said nothing. He waited, then asked softly, ‘Where is he?’
‘Who? I don’t know who you mean.’
Almost a caressing whisper this time: ‘Where is he?’
‘Who?’ Pedersen pleaded. ‘Only I live here. Who do you want?’
Letterman stood back at arm’s length and nicked Pedersen’s neck with the blade. When he spoke it was bleak and fast: ‘Wyatt.’
Pedersen’s hand went up and came away with blood on it. He looked at it and then at Letterman, as if the world was spinning too fast for him. ‘Wyatt?’
Ideally Letterman would have another man helping with the questioning, one to hurt the subject where it wouldn’t show, the other to offer a way out of the fear and pain. ‘Where is he?’ he repeated.
‘Wyatt doesn’t live here,’ Pedersen replied. ‘This is my place.’
Letterman was gentle and smiling again, but the knife was beginning to make a Crosshatch of nicks on Pedersen’s neck. ‘I know that. I want to know where he is.’
‘I haven’t seen him for weeks,’ whined Pedersen.
This was clearly the truth. Letterman had known it all along really, but still, he greeted it with total disbelief, another move that usually got results. ‘Bullshit! You’re working with him again.’
‘No, promise, no,’ Pedersen protested. He was close to tears. ‘I swear I haven’t seen him. He got in strife and cleared out and no one’s seen him.’
‘Let’s say I believe you. I don’t, but for argument’s sake, let’s say I do. If he cleared off, where would he go? Has he got some bird stashed away somewhere? Does he like to poke little boys in Manila? Maybe he’s got an old mum over in Perth or something?’
Pedersen began to get his courage back. This maniac didn’t want him, had nothing against him. ‘I hardly know the bloke. He keeps to himself. One or two big jobs a year, then he drops out of sight again.’
Letterman smiled again and let the light flash on the blade. ‘You work with him.’
‘Only the once.’
‘You were with him on his last job.’
Pedersen nodded reluctantly. ‘Yes.’
‘You stepped on some toes with that one,’ Letterman said.
Letterman always used a thin blade. Thin blades slide in easily, avoiding needless hacking and cutting. He always held the knife flat and horizontal, and used a single, direct thrust. When he went in from the front he aimed for the carotid artery. A tough sheath of muscles protects it, and that’s why the thrust has to be strong. He finished with a wriggle to sever the artery, removed the blade, and watched Pedersen slide, twitching, to the floor. It was quick and clean, one of the many things that separated Letterman from the amateurs.
He photographed the body, let himself out and drove back across the city to his motel in St Kilda. On the way he thought about the nature of luck in his profession. Although his leads had amounted to nothing, he believed that it was important that he’d followed them. It could mean good luck would come his way. He might hear something about Wyatt when he least expected it.
That was why he wasn’t surprised to find a ‘While You Were Out’ message under his door. It told him to expect a phone call. The caller would ring every hour until midnight, and again the next day, starting at seven in the morning. Letterman looked at his watch just as the phone rang. Eleven pm. The voice on the other end said he knew where Wyatt was.
FIFTEEN
The fountain near the Gertrude Street lights, the caller had said, and Letterman was now watching it from behind a tree. He was in the southern area of the parkland attached to the Exhibition Building, on the city’s edge. The time was five minutes to midnight. The caller said twelve-thirty, but Letterman was staking the place out first, looking for anyone who didn’t belong there. A tramp was sleeping on a bench near the duck pond and another was under an elm, swigging from a bottle in a paper bag, but otherwise the area was deserted. Now and then kids and lovers walked through the park, pausing to watch the splashing water before moving on again.
Lights were strung around the Exhibition Building, and if he half-closed his eyes Letterman could see its shape picked out in pinpricks of light. A Japanese tour party had been in the park when he arrived, taking flash photographs of the possums. They were gone now. A pathetic-looking student wearing an old coat had passed by him twice a few minutes ago, but Letterman had growled, ‘Got a problem, pal?’, scaring him away.
At twelve-thirty a man approached the fountain and stood with his back to it. Although the light was poor, Letterman could see him clearly enough to know that this was his man. ‘I’ll be wearing white overalls,’ the voice on the phone had said. Letterman saw a stocky man, standing confident and alert, the light making his long hair glow. There appeared to be rings on the man’s fingers and chunky sneakers on his feet.
Letterman remained where he was. This was a good place for a meeting-the noise of the fountain would provide some cover if the informant was carrying a wire, there were plenty of exits and places to hide, and it was dark. But he knew that darkness was no protection against fancy cameras and telescopic sights. He wore a rudimentary disguise-the horn-rims, his hat brim low, his collar turned up-but knew that wouldn’t stop a bullet in the back. There were plenty of people who’d want to give him one. Yet the set-up looked okay.
He stepped out from the tree. The contact had devised a stupid recognition signal, but he went along with it. ‘Excuse me, I’m looking for the hospital.’
The contact jerked his head around, recovered, and pointed toward a building opposite the city corner of the park. ‘Over there.’