Wyatt - 03 - Death Deal (8 page)

Wyatt looked around swiftly. It
seemed promising. Harbutt, he noticed, was sweating. He hadnt been drinking,
the job was making him edgy.

They prowled around the shop floor.
By six oclock the last of the goods had been delivered and the sales staff
were heading for their cars. The nightwatchman had based himself at the door.
He was middle-aged, beer fat and unhealthy looking. All his attention was on
the young women as they left the building. He stared after them, rubbing his
palms on his thighs. Hed set a bright red canvas directors chair nearby. He
looked like a man who intended to get the weight off his feet when the place
was empty. Sit in his chair and stare out at the night.

He didnt see Wyatt and Harbutt in
the dark rear of the big room. They climbed the stairs, let themselves into the
first office. It contained a desk, photocopier and filing cabinet. They settled
down to wait. A dim globe at the head of the stairs leaked enough light through
the frosted glass for them to see one another. Later, when the nightwatchman
was dozing or inattentive, they would check the other offices. From time to
time they murmured. Harbutt talked edgily, as though the building bothered him:
too big, too isolated, too many sounds of its own. Wyatt let him talk. They
wouldnt be heard here and theyd know if the nightwatchman was climbing the
stairs. If he did climb them, that ishe had no reason to.

At nine oclock, two things
happened. A vehicle pulled up outside, there were voices, a different vehicle
drove away.

And lights went on all over the
building.

* * * *

Thirteen

Light
flooded the tiny office. Wyatt stiffened. He shifted around the wall until the
desk screened him from the door. From that position he could see Harbutt
clearly. Harbutt was on the floor, his back to the wall, legs straight out. He
was slack, fatalistic, as if hed expected the lights. Now he drew up his
knees, rested his forehead on them. For a short time, nothing happened. Wyatt
watched Harbutt coldly. After a while, Harbutt felt the force of Wyatt there in
the room with him, and began to talk. His voice was low, scarcely audible, and
what he said was:

Its not easy getting retrenched at
my age. It gets to you, eats away at you. I doubt if Ill find another joba
bloke like me, Im for the scrap heap. I cant turn pro. Im not like you, I
cant put something together and make it work.

Wyatt didnt reply. He might have
been listening to Harbutt, or listening to the vast silence outside the door.
He had his Colt out.

You were right to drop us, Harbutts
muffled voice went on. Derns not solid enough. Anyone can see that. Theas
got a vicious streak. She doesnt like to be crossed.

The building sat silent and brightly
lit on the dark plain. Presently Wyatt said, Youd better tell me what
happened.

Harbutt shifted his rump to get
comfortable. After you shot through the other night, Dern kicked Thea out of
his car and said he was finished with her. I gave her a lift home. You know
what shes like, Wyatt. One thing led to another. I mustve been crazy. I mean,
it shouldve been clear as the nose on my face it wasnt me she was interested
in. She thought Id lead her to you, I suppose.

You told her about tonight?

Its getting sacked like that,
mate. It was a shock. I was never that good at putting money away. My
redundancys already eaten up with the mortgage. He looked directly at Wyatt
for the first time. Theres a price on your head, twenty grand, did you know
that?

You and Thea shopped me to the
Outfit?

Harbutt nodded.

And our nightwatchmans been bribed
to go and get himself a cup of coffee for the next hour or two?

Harbutt nodded again. And thats
all I know about it, I swear. I dont know if theres one gun out there or a
dozen.

Not a dozen, Wyatt thought. The
Outfit was Sydney based, weak in Melbourne, so they wouldnt have organised
that many guns. They would have sent a local, maybe two. He slid along the
floor and eased open the door to the corridor.

They were waiting for him. A shot
rang out and the frosted glass splintered above his head. He rolled, putting
distance between himself and the door.

The position was bad, as though hed
treed himself. The only way out was down the stairs, where hed make an easy
target. His only cover was the waist-high safety barrier that ran around the
edge of the mezzanine level corridor. He crouched behind it, conscious that it
was plasterboard and wouldnt save him from a lucky or a careful shot.

He chanced a look over the rail and
ducked again, twisting to his right. There was another shot and plaster shards
sprinkled his face. Then a series of shots had him flat to the floor and moving
back through the open door again into the office. Now he knew where the gunman
wason the mezzanine floor, facing him from the corridor on the opposite side
of the building. And it was an automatic rifle. His Colt could not match it for
range, velocity or accuracy.

Wyatt rested a moment, thinking it
through. He was alone in this. Harbutt was still on the floor, head buried in
his arms, rocking his upper body. If there were two guns outside, the second
one covering the stairs from the bottom, there was no way out. If the gun
opposite was the only one, there was a chance. The rail around the mezzanine
was an equaliser. Wyatt couldnt be seen, but nor could the man opposite him.
With time, the other man might get off a lucky shot. Or hed remember what hed
come here for and move around to this part of the mezzanine and force a
confrontation.

Wyatt could wait, it was what he was
good at, but he decided to push matters. The office photocopier sat on an
open-shelved cabinet crammed with paper, pens and toner cartridges. There was
also a bottle of methylated spirits. He broke open four packs of A4 paper and
poured the methylated spirits over them, fanning the edges with his thumb to
allow penetration. He soaked several cleaning rags with the fluid, and his
dustcoat. Finally he searched the desk. He found a Bic lighter in the drawer.
He tested it, turning the flame to high.

Still keeping low, he carried
everything out into the corridor and weighed up the next stage. He needed to
cut down on the amount of light that framed him and he needed to distract the
gunman.

Leaning back, he sighted the Colt
and squeezed off a shot. The corridor light went out, glass flakes falling to
the floor. He sighted again and shot out the light at the head of the stairs.
He chanced a third shot, smashing the closest of the three main lights in the
hall. It didnt give him darkness but he was harder to see now, here above the
remaining lights suspended over the shop floor below.

Without pausing he rested the Colt
on the rail and snapped off four shots at the man opposite him. He heard them
pass through the plaster and heard the soft thump of someone rolling for cover.

Wyatt judged that he had about five
seconds before the gunman felt secure enough to return the volley. He lit the
rags and the dustcoat, and flung them over the rail. Then he lit the paper
bundles, watched the flames take hold, and scattered them onto the furniture
below.

The rifle opened up again, so he
scooted back along the corridor toward the stairs. Four shots, then silence.

Nothing happened for a while. Wyatt
slid the spare clip into the Colt and waited. There were foam rubber sofas and
vinyl armchairs directly beneath him. He knew they would burn readily,
producing plenty of smoke, but it would take some time for them to catch.

Thats if hed got lucky with his
aim.

Wyatt noticed the smell first, acrid
and poisonous. He heard crackling then as the flames caught, and the smoke,
when it reached him, was thick and black.

Then the alarms went off and
sprinklers came on.

Water drenched everythingthe
offices, corridors, the big display floor below.

Wyatt moved. He ran half-crouched
down the corridor. As he rounded the corner and crossed the space toward the
head of the stairs, a shape confronted him in the gloom, elastic and dark. He
ducked, got off a shot. The shot went high. There was no answering shot.
Instead, he saw the black figure hurl the rifle at him, butt first. It spun end
over end and then he was tangled in it. He fell. The Outfit gun disappeared
down the stairs and in those seconds, in the obscuring blackness, Wyatt formed one
impression: the Outfit gun was a woman and she was hard and quick-looking, like
a coiled black spring.

He got to his feet. He didnt go
after her. She would be out the door and away before he got there. The fact
that she hadnt stayed to finish the job indicated that she was alone, her clip
was empty and she wanted to disappear before cops and firemen arrived.

So did Wyatt. But he allowed himself
a moment for what he had to do next. Harbutt was coughing. The fire had roused
him from his blues and he came out of the office, a handkerchief over his nose.
His eyes were streaming. He stopped when he saw Wyatt. You got him?

Wyatt shook his head. Cleared off.

Im glad youre okay, Harbutt
said. Then he saw the big Colt. A kind of sadness settled in him. You know youve
got nothing to worry about from me.

Wyatt raised the muzzle. Thats
right, he said.

* * * *

Fourteen

Wyatt
spent the next five days aboard a rotting barge, existing on tinned beans and
peaches. The world had become a place full of holes, corners and darkness.
There was no-one he could turn to and he mistrusted the daylight. The money in
his pocket had been meanly acquired and it would not see him beyond the next
week. His pistol, tied to an inglorious killing, lay rusting on the bottom of
the Barwon River. If they came to get him now, he had only his fists to face them
with. And alone, in hiding, he began to feel eyes at his back.

On the fifth night he moved. Any
earlier and hed have been trapped inside the police search radius or stopped
on an exit road. After five days and no sightings, the search would have been
called off. Slipped through the cordon.

Thankful of the darkness and the
water, he went by boat this time, casting free in a motor cruiser and heading
it out into the bay. The sea was calm and nothing showed on the radar. He
sipped scotch and ate from a tin of sardines hed found stored in the galley.
It was an expensive boat, well fitted out, but by morning it would be a chain
around his neck.

He had to leave the state. Hed been
offered a way, and had turned it down. Brisbane. Mostyn had said the client was
a woman in Brisbane. Stolle himself had said it. The whole deal sounded too odd
to be a trap. The general style of the people who didnt like Wyatt was to come
at him with a gun, not try an elaborate ruse. Nothing about Stolle said that he
was a hired gun. He hadnt been armed; his ID said he was a private
investigator. Stolle had also mentioned flying. That meant airports and people,
hardly the conditions for an ambush. Finally, there was that five thousand
dollars. Wyatt took in everything the boat had to offer and saw only one thing
that could help him now.

He had to call twice on the cellular
phone before relays picked up his signal. It was one oclock in the morning and
Stolles voice was thick with sleep and irritation. What? he said flatly.

You said five thousand.

Stolle came awake then. Thats
right.

Is this line secure?

I ran a check only yesterday.

What about the room?

Its clean.

Wyatt was silent, wondering how to
play this.

Say whats on your mind, Stolle
said.

Im interested in your offer.

Good man. Ill be in my office at
eight.

Things have happened, Wyatt said. I
want you to collect me now.

Stolle didnt query or demur. Where?

Carrum. The Nepean Highway crosses
a channel there. Park your car somewhere, wait for me on the bridge. If I see
anything I dont like, thats it, Im gone.

They settled on 3 am and Wyatt broke
the connection. He checked the fuel gauge: plenty to get him across the bay. By
two-thirty he was throttling back a few hundred metres from the Chelsea
foreshore. He could see streetlights and occasional headlights. By day Carrum
and Chelsea were parts of an endless strip of sunblighted, low-cost houses and
shopfronts. Wyatt knew and hated the area but right now it had the advantage of
a marina where he could moor the boat without drawing attention to himself.

Thirty minutes later he was on dry
land and watching the bridge. At five minutes to three a battered white Toyota
van crept across the bridge. The words Food Delivery Vehicle were stencilled
on it and the rear windows had a blackness about them that had nothing to do
with the night. If Stolle used it as his surveillance vehicle, it was a good
one.

Wyatt waited. He saw the van draw
off the road and into a parking bay. Stolle got out and walked to the centre of
the bridge. He did not look around and he gave no sign that he was nervous or
had brought backup along. Wyatt let ten minutes and a handful of late cruising
taxis and panel vans go by, then stepped out of his cover and onto the bridge.