Wyatt - 01 - Kick Back (3 page)

Ask you to use your brains, Ivan
said, and look what happens. Im putting you back on collecting.

Sugarfoot dabbed at his face with a
handkerchief. He shivered in the chilly air of the storeroom. Yeah, well I
want a change. Im going freelance.

Oh really? Doing what? Mugging old
ladies?

Sugarfoot flushed. Wyatts
bankrolling something. Im gonna

Ivan jerked him by his shirt front. If
he is and he sees you hanging around hell wipe you out, no questions asked.
Stay away from him.

Sugarfoot looked down at his brothers
hand. With great dignity he removed it, gratified to see Ivan wince. He said, See
my face? Im supposed to just let him get away with it?

Hes bad news, Ivan said. Look,
take the weekend off. Well see what we can find for you next week.

Not all that much, he told himself.
Their existing set-up ticked over nicely. Sugar did the minding, he did the
thinking. He was fucked if he could see Sugar doing business with Bauer and the
Sydney outfit, for example.

Sugar? he said. Think about it,
all right? Take a couple of days off. See the girls in Calamity Janes, get
your end in, and well talk about it on Monday, okay?

The best solution, he thought, would
be to give Sugar the sort of muscle work hed respect. Maybe Bauer could use
him.

He walked Sugarfoot out of the shop
to the street. Sugarfoots Customline was parked outside the takeaway joint. He
clapped his brother on the back, returned to
the storeroom, went out the
back door and got into the Statesman.

His car phone was top of the range.
He tapped out Bauers number in St Kilda. Placida or whatever her name was
answered in her Manila whorehouse accent: Who is speaking please?

Get me Bauer.

The handset clattered in his ear.
Bauers raspy voice came on the line.
Ja?
Amazing the way Bauer still
said
Ja,
even though hed left South Africa fourteen years ago.

Its about Calamity Janes, Ivan
said. Are you delivering the take to Sydney on Monday?

Ja.

Tell them I found out whos been
skimming off the top.

Who?

One of the shift supervisors.
Ellie.

There was a pause. Ivan went on: Want
me to handle it?

No. Theyll tell me in Sydney what
to do. Ill deal with it when I get back on Monday.

Whatever it is, take my brother
along. I need him to pick up a few clues so we dont have to keep bothering
you.

Your brother, said Bauer
repressively.

Sugarfoot, Ivan said. Hes okay.
He just needs someone to show him the ropes.

* * * *

Four

In
his big Customline outside the takeaway joint Sugarfoot was resting his head,
waiting for his knot of bitterness to ease. Then the pain and the shame and the
need for comfort told him he couldnt stay out here all night. He fired up the
big motor and drove away from Bargain City, over the Westgate Bridge again and
across to his place in Collingwood. He drove slowly, one hand on the wheel, one
shoulder against the door. He believed that if he moved he would fracture.

He reached his shabby terrace house
feeling as though hed been away for a week. The lights were on. The others
were home, fuck it.

He went in by the back porch. In the
laundry he ran cold water into the sink, leaned over, sluiced out his mouth,
and washed the crusted blood from his cheek and forehead.

On the way through to the stairs he
paused in the kitchen doorway. The wood stove was alight, softening and warming
the room. Tina had her numerology chart open on the table. When she was not
reading it or absorbing energy from crystals, she volunteered at Friends of the
Earth. Rolfe was tinkering with a bicycle lamp. He wore shorts all winter and
the high point of his day was running five times around Victoria Park. As far
as Sugarfoot was concerned, they were both off the planet. Luckily the house
was big enough for him to avoid them most of the time, and they were too up
themselves to be sus about what he did for a crust.

Tina glanced up, her face as
tight-arsed as ever, then down again. Usually she wore overalls but tonight she
had on what looked like a T-shirt the size of a tent over purple tights and
about a dozen other garments, so Sugarfoot still had no idea what sort of body
she had. She didnt notice his cuts and bruises.

He went upstairs to his room and
closed the door and drew the curtains. He had all night and he was going to
ease his mind.

He got out his trunk and unlocked
it. With the .32 now in Wyatts hands, all he had left in the way of handguns
was a replica, a Colt Python .357 with the six-inch ventilated barrel. But he
had a Winchester riflea .460 magnum, blued metal, burled walnut stock. The
genuine article. The problem was size and noise and getting rounds for it.
Sugarfoot dreamed of close work with a sawn-off Remington eleven-hundred
shotgun firing pellets the size of .38 slugs.

He had a few grams of Columbian
left, hidden in a plastic bag in his shoe cleaning kit. Plastic drinking straw,
mirror and razor blade. He chopped and sorted the coke into two lines and bent
over them with the straw in his nostril. Two quick, strong snorts, one in each
nostril, and wait, not long, for the expansion it always gave him.

Then turn on the VCR, slide in
The
Long Riders,
watch the unfolding story of The Great Northfield, Minnesota
Raid. He was in the wrong century. He belonged then, not now. Carry a gun, use
it, no questions asked. Quick raids on lonely towns, then slip away where they
couldnt track you down.

None of that crappy work Ivan made
him do, Ivan calling him the Enforcer like it was supposed to make him feel
good. Going around collecting debts, putting the hard word on mugs late with
the interest. Using his muscles, never his mind.

A long film. Towards the end,
Sugarfoot sat forward in his chair, feeling concentrated and alive. He would
never tire of this: minutes of beautiful camera work, the action slowed down,
complex angles and sound effects so you were actually
in
there, hearing
every shot fired, hearing that incredible low whirring howl of a flying bullet,
hearing it hit, a dull slap, plucking bone chips and blood.

The horses rear. The Younger gang
regroups. Sugarfoot Younger saves others even as bullets slam into him. Outside
the town he slumps over his saddle and when his men prop him up, concerned, he
says, Go, save yourselves, Im finished. They dont want to leave him but he
insists. They lift him from his horse and place him behind a fallen log. Give
me my Winchester, he says. Ill hold them off for you. Already they can hear
the posse. Troubled, close to tears, his men mount up again, wheel round and
gallop away. Sugarfoot has held up his thumb to them but they dont see that,
or see him settle his Winchester on the log, firing when the posse appears
between the trees.

That night, his men come back. They
take his body to a secret burial place. Now, at the same time every year,
silent, grim-faced men gather at the log. Every year there is one man less. You
dont survive long in this line of work.

Of all the stories in his head,
Sugarfoot far preferred this one. After seeing
The Long
Riders
he
liked to go back over the action, fine-tuning it.

In another story he sometimes played
with, his end is witnessed by a huge crowd and millions of viewers, television
cameramen in risky positions filming him picking off Asians, wogs and poofters
with AIDS-pinched faces. The government tries to play down his death and his
funeral, but its impossible, hes hit a nerve with the people.

But it was a problem getting all the
details right in that one.

So he rewound the video. A new story
came to him. In this one he uncovered the job Wyatt was bankrolling and picked
him off and ran with the take.

* * * *

Five

Wyatt
dumped Sugarfoot Youngers pistol in the nearest storm drain, then drove away
from the city, pushing south through the wintry night, feeling corroded and
uneasy.

There had been a time when he pulled
just two or three big jobs a year, banks and armoured cars, working for four
weeks and living on the proceeds for forty-eight. Hed spend six months
somewhere warmItaly, the Pacific Islands, South Americaand when the money ran
out hed go back to work, always choosing a hit that posed interesting
problems, always working with pros, never junkies, parolees, cowboys.

He tried to shake off the sour
feeling. He switched on the car radio to monitor the ten oclock news. Nothing
about the Frome job.

At Frankston he turned onto a back
road and cut across to Shoreham. Thered been a time when he felt free to pick
and choose his jobs, not go to sleazebags like Ivan Younger. Work had been a
challenge then, it kept him alive. Hed liked the feeling of concentration,
ignoring everything that didnt relate to the job. He knew how to wait,
immobile, for long periods. Small talk would bore him. He would be cold and
distant, but he men he worked with never minded that: he cut through the fog of
detail surrounding any job.

He turned on the windscreen wipers.
A misty rain was sweeping across the Mornington Peninsula. At Shoreham he
turned north, taking a narrow road into a region of orchards and weekender
farms set amongst trees and dams on small, humped hills. Here and there he saw
a distant light, but it was almost midnight and most of the locals would be in
bed.

Italy, the Pacifiche hadnt been
somewhere like that for a while. Things had started to fall apart about two
years ago. Someone shot on a job, big jobs that fell apart even before hed
applied his mind to them, too many small jobs, too many cowboys like Sugarfoot Younger
on the scene. Too much high-tech gadgetry around every door, window, safe.

He came to a hairpin bend, slowed
the car and steered into his driveway, a narrow track winding through an avenue
of golden cypresses. Below him were the lights of Shoreham. Beyond the town was
the black mass of the sea. There were no ships lights.

Suddenly the rear wheels lost their
grip on the mud. He steered into the slide, and when the car was righting
itself he saw a rain-slicked figure glisten once in the headlights and
disappear.

He also saw the rifle. He pulled on
the handbrake, turned off the engine and headlights, and wound down his window.
He listened for a moment, his hand drawing out the flat 9 mm Browning he kept
in the car. Hed taken out the bulb of the interior light and had the door open
when a voice called, Mr Warner? Sorry, Mr Warner, its only me.

The figure that stepped out of the
cypresses and onto the track wore a stockmans waterproof coat and carried a
powerful torch and a hunting rifle. It was the neighbours son. Wyatt hid the
Browning again. Craig, he said.

Sorry, Mr Warner. That damn fox
again.

Now Wyatt could see Craigs pimples
and earnest face and the troubling raindrops in his eyelashes. Did you get
him?

I tell you what, Craig said,
shaking his head in wonder, hes a cunning bugger.

Wyatt nodded. He started the car again.
Well, good luck, he said.

Night, Mr Warner. Sorry if I
startled you.

Wyatt continued along his driveway
and across his yard and into the old shed he used as a garage. He backed in, to
give himself that second or two of forward advantage if ever he had to run for
it, and tucked the ignition key in a slot under the steering column.

He went to bed then and in his
dreams gave way to impulses to hurt and kill. He woke up sweating. He tried to
read but he felt dissatisfied, on edge. It was bad enough that hed spent hours
on a minor job with second-raters and come out of it minus the money, but hed
also been too close to losing control back there in Ivan Youngers storeroom. A
job was a job; there was no room for emotions. He had hurt and killed before,
but only when necessary. Otherwise it became the solution to everything and
that was dangerous.

In the morning he walked. He did
this after every job. He tramped around his boundary fence as though defining
and measuring his fifty hectares, his cottage and reedy creek, his trees,
waterfowl, leaning gates and view of Phillip Island across the bay. The farm
was his. He owed no money on it and his name did not appear on any documents or
electoral rolls, but, for the first time, it was all he hadapart from $1000
and $2000 emergency caches in Sydney, Adelaide, Brisbane, cities where he had
pulled jobs and might again.

Only one person who counted knew he
lived here, a retired hold-up man named Rossiter who passed on messages. Anyone
looking for Wyatt knew to contact Rossiter first. The word was Wyatt was the
best, he was available, but these days Rossiter rarely called with anything
worthwhile.

The neighbours and the townspeople
believed that Wyatt was a stockbroker named Warner who had got out at the top
of the market but still dabbled in it between periods travelling overseas. They
mostly ignored him. He wasnt one of the loathed January holiday makers, but
nor was he exactly a local. Whenever Wyatt travelled he paid Craig good money
to keep an eye on his place. He was also quiet, courteous and reclusive, and
that suited everybody.