Normally he wore overalls, always dazzling white Yakkas, great-looking against the tan he kept topped up in the Lifestyle solarium. But he’d discovered, the first time he cruised the La Salle grounds, what a drag the overalls were, so today it was green Stubbie shorts, Reeboks and a T-shirt. He also wore Nepalese rings and bracelets, bought cheap from weekend stalls on the Esplanade.
He turned the Toyota into the hospital grounds. Lawns stretched for miles, interrupted by walking paths, seats, flowerbeds and clumps of European trees. Most visitors turned right, taking them to the main buildings. Snyder took the left fork, which circled the hospital perimeter. Staff and visitors rarely ventured where he was going.
He rolled down his window and listened. The Toyota echoed off the bluestone wall on his left and the belt of weeping willows on his right, sounding like a sewing machine. Snyder was disgusted. The trouble with all the greenhouse shit they bolted to engines these days was not only loss of power but also loss of a decent exhaust note.
Then Alice stepped out from the trees and waved. Snyder looked at his watch: four fifteen. When he’d come here on Monday he’d said to her, ‘I’ll be back Friday, okay? Friday, quarter-past- four.’ He’d said each word slowly and clearly, hoping they’d register but knowing they mightn’t. After all, she was in here because her brains were scrambled.
But she had understood him, and here she was, four-fifteen, waiting for him. He stopped the van where it was screened from the hospital administration block by trees and watched her approach. Her hair had been washed this time. It floated free from her head like bits of spider web in a breeze. Her jaws were busy with chewing gum again. He’d smelt it on her breath on Monday, Juicy Fruit or something. She looked doped to the eyeballs again, her skin blotchy, a bit of dribble on her chin.
Forget the face, Snyder thought. Put a bag over it. He smiled at her through the glass and opened the passenger door. Jesus Christ. She was actually blushing and moving her shoulders around as if she was a teenager getting into her boyfriend’s car for the first time. She’d been around, though. She looked to be about thirty. Now and then on Monday she’d almost made sense some of the time.
‘Alice,’ he said.
Alice got in and shut the door and slid across the seat and put her tongue in his ear and her hand inside the leg of his shorts. Snyder was glad he didn’t have the overalls on. ‘Did you bring them?’ she asked.
Snyder played with her. ‘Bring what?’
Instantly her arms went around herself, her mouth turned down and her eyes went ugly with tears. ‘Smokes,’ she said. ‘Nice things.’
‘Oh, that,’ Snyder said.
‘Please.’
‘Smoking’s bad for you.’
The mouth opened again and wailed, ‘You promised.’
‘Settle down,’ Snyder muttered. He managed a smile. ‘You’re not being fair,’ he said. ‘If I give you nice rings and nice smokes, you have to give me something in return. It’s not fair otherwise.’
It was amazing how easy it was to switch her off and on. She’d said on Monday that she’d been in La Salle for fifteen months. Snyder felt the shrinks should have done something for her in that time, but she was still fucked up. As he talked, he watched her face. A flooding look of relief and gratitude passed across it, followed by dismay, followed by a look of lust that was almost enough to turn him right off. Her hands and tongue started to go all over him as they had on Monday, and he told himself again, forget the face.
He showed her the carton of cigarettes inside the shopping bag in the back of the van. That set her going again. She climbed over the seat, pulling her pants off, tugging at his hand. Although he was only with her for fifteen minutes, the atmosphere was so hot and feverish that he was able to do it twice.
Then he pushed her out with the cigarettes and a $12.95 necklace. He drove back to the main entrance, keeping his eyes open for hospital security. As usual, there was none.
By six o’clock he was in Eddie Loman’s back room, hearing about a job he was needed for over in South Aussie.
The interesting thing about it was, Wyatt was behind it.
TEN
Snyder could see that Eddie Loman was hedging. Loman wouldn’t meet his eye, and he kept rubbing his gammy leg. Snyder waited, testing him, then said, ‘Aren’t you missing something?’
‘What?’
‘There’s a fucking contract out on him.’
Loman’s face twisted. ‘You heard.’
‘Course I fucking heard. Twenty grand to the guy that fingers him.’
Loman continued to rub his leg. The movement pulled his trousers up, revealing pink plastic skin. He’d lost the leg ten years ago in a collision between a getaway car and a divisional van. Maybe he still gets ghost feelings in it, Snyder thought.
‘I mean,’ Snyder continued, ‘you begin to wonder why Wyatt’s putting an outfit together if it means all these guys are going to know where he is. You’d have to be mad, right?’
He watched Loman pour beer into their glasses and put the bottles under the coffee table. There were three bottles there now, Melbourne Bitter, resting on their sides. Loman had neat habits. His living quarters behind his hardware supply business looked to be tacked together from mismatching building materials and fire-sale furniture, but there wasn’t a speck of dust or a bad smell in the place.
Loman swallowed beer from his glass. When he put the glass down again it was fair and square on a coaster with an Aborigine painted on it. ‘Actually,’ he said, ‘I don’t think Wyatt knows.’
‘We come to the crux of the matter. You could’ve told him when he rang last night, but you didn’t.’
Loman looked up. ‘Wyatt knows how to look after himself.’
‘Cut it out, Eddie. You were going to charge him a finder’s fee for lining me up for this job of his, then dob him in for the twenty thousand. Am I right? Bit of a cunt act.’
Snyder was enjoying himself. He didn’t care much for Loman. Loman supplied experts and equipment to people who had big jobs on, and Snyder had got some work that way sometimes, but you couldn’t actually like the bloke. That grey face and smoker’s cough, the sense of decay on the inside. Plus, Snyder didn’t like being cheated. He didn’t like it that Loman was intending to earn himself an extra twenty thousand without cutting anyone else in on it.
‘Eh? Bit of a shitty thing to do to the old Wyatt? Not to mention the danger to yours truly. What if this hired gun comes after Wyatt when I’m in the firing line, eh? Answer me that.’
Loman’s face worked in worry. ‘I would’ve told him. I thought, you know, this job of his is out in the bush somewhere, he’ll be safe there till it’s over. Then I’d give him the word, kind of thing.’
Snyder nodded. ‘Oh, right, I’m with you now. You’re not after the twenty grand reward.’
‘Not me. Wyatt’s-’ Loman struggled ‘-well you don’t exactly call Wyatt a mate, do you, but he’s a good client, kind of thing.’
Snyder’s loose face seemed to tighten and he leaned forward. ‘How much?’
‘Pardon?’
‘What’s he paying you? What am I worth?’
Loman rubbed at his leg. ‘Fifteen hundred.’
‘What’s the job?’
‘He didn’t say, except it’s big.’
‘And there’s a radio he wants jammed. Did he say what I get paid?’
‘A percentage. Not a fee, a percentage of the take.’
Snyder grinned then. ‘Correct me if I’m wrong-you only get fifteen hundred bucks, I stand to get tens of thousands. I can see how a bloke might feel a bit put out about that. He might want to grab a bit more. Not you, though.’