Wyatt - 05 - Port Vila Blues (16 page)

Wyatt looked past her shimmering
black hair to the doorway. The man who stood there, a little rocky on his feet,
wore scuffed boots, a torn T-shirt, greasy jeans and denim jacket. He needed a
shave and a haircut. Wyatt expected to catch a whiff of him, a smell compounded
of unwashed skin and clothing, oil and petrol, and something else, a rotten
intestinal system leaking cheap alcohol and costly, impure chemicals bought in
alleys and brewed in backyard amphetamine factories.

The man hadnt seen them. He wiped the
back of his hand across his nose, tried to focus, jerked the gun as if waving
crowds of people aside. Wyatt watched carefully, following the gun. The size
told him it was a .357 and it seemed to have the weight of a genuine .357, not
a disposal-store replica. Then he saw the man stop wavering and focus on the
waitress. She was rooted to her stool, uselessly opening and closing her mouth.
The man giggled insanely and shuffled toward her. Gimme, he was muttering, gimme,
showing a mouthful of healthy teeth, and that wasnt right.

Liz Redding had her bag in her lap,
bent over it protectively. She had the Tiffany in there, and Wyatts reward
money. We should do something before he hurts her, she said, beginning to
turn her head.

Wyatt stopped her, his voice low and
even, not wasting itself on unnecessary words or useless inflections: Dont
move. Dont attract his attention.

They waited there, frozen, watching
the junkie. Wyatt saw him push the waitress off the stool. Gimme. Gimme.

The shove seemed to wake her. She
stumbled to the register, opened it, shrank back against the serving hatch. No
one in the kitchen had noticed her. Wyatt heard dishes rattling, a cheerful
whistle, water rushing into a sink.

The junkie crammed a few notes from
the till into his back pocket. He was sniggering, maybe imagining the next fix.
Wyatt saw him swing away again toward the door, then stop, greed showing on his
face.

Liz breathed, Oh God, hes seen us.

Wyatt watched as the junkie
approached them slowly, keeping behind Liz Redding but beginning to circle so
that he would soon be coming in on their flank.

Wyatts left flank. It seemed to be
deliberate. Wyatt had the little .32 in his lap but the angle was bad. Hed
have to shoot across himself, across the table, and, unless the man widened the
circle, hed have to place his shot close to Liz Reddings shoulder.

So far the junkie was mostly bleary
and unpredictable, as if hed targeted them as a soft touch whod hand over
their wristwatches and spare cash and not kick up a fuss about it. But then the
muzzle of the .357 came up, the man spread his legs and crouched, and he began
to raise a steadying hand to the gun. He was clean and cool and focused
suddenly, snapping out of his chemical trance more quickly than any junkie
Wyatt had ever known.

All these things registered with
Wyatt and he swung the .32 into view, catching his knuckles under the lip of
the table, wasting a precious fragment of time.

He would have been too slow. It was
Liz who shot the man. She didnt do what amateurs do, turn her head first to
find the problem then bring her gun to bear on it, but swung everything
aroundtrunk, arms, eyes and guncutting the delay time, tracking the target,
firing the instant she had him placed.

She shot the junkie twice, one a
doubling-over punch to the stomach, the other straight into the crown of his
head. This second shot blew the man back against a table. He rolled off,
tangled with a chair, and fell, leaving a red smear on the tabletop. Wyatt saw
that he was dead. The interesting fact about the dead man was his crooked wig.

* * * *

Twenty-three

Oh
no, oh no.

It was Liz Redding and her face was
white, dismayed.

Wyatt reached over, took her gun,
turned her to face him, her chin clamped in his hand. Liz, snap out of it.

Ive killed him.

It was a setup. We cant stay here,
he said.

He had the voice of a convincer,
flat, exact, experienced. Liz came with him into the sunlight and let him drive
her out of there in her car.

He barrelled down the first side
road, a winding channel between overhanging trees. Three hundred metres down he
spotted a narrow parking bay and a pipe-and-glass bus shelter. He pulled in. Take
off your T-shirt.

She looked at him numbly then
nodded. She was mute, everything closed down now, but he was banking that
elation and relief would flood in soonand anger, and questions.

He was already taking off his jacket
and reversing it, tan corduroy outermost, the plain weatherproof cotton now the
lining. He stripped off his buttoned black shirt, pulling it over his head to
save time.

Beside him, Liz Reddings head and
arms were briefly lost to view as she bent forward and removed the big T-shirt.
He saw her flexing stomach, her breasts beneath her raised arms, squeezing
together briefly, the brownness very brown against an unfussy white cotton bra.
Wyatt felt a powerful urge to pull her against his chest. It was as much a
symptom of his lonely state, a memory trace of friendly, uncomplicated intimacy
with a woman again, as a need to feel her bare skin against his. Then she was
shaking hair out of her eyes and swapping shirts with him. He also gave her the
jacket and the sunglasses and seconds later was peeling the little rental car
away from the parking bay, snaking down the road as he accelerated.

A short time later, he began to
double back, turning right at each intersection until they were on an approach
road to Emerald again. He slowed as they entered the town, looking left and
right as he cruised past the side streets. Liz Redding was looking with him. There,
she said.

It was a small, high-steepled church
with room for parking under a box hedge at the rear. No one would spot the car
there for a few hours, maybe even for a couple of days. They got out, walked
unhurriedly back into the town. Wyatt sensed the change in Liz Redding, an
electric charge in her step. She was waking out of her shock and misery,
engaging with the world and him again. Her arm went around him and he felt a
ripple of energy in her flank.

They ambled to his chunky rental
Commodore, got in. By now there were sirens in the distance, an awareness of
high drama telegraphing itself from person to person along the street. Wyatt
started the car, signalled, U-turned slowly and took them out of there.

He was looking for somewhere to hole
up overnight. Motels and hotels were out. So tooto a lesser extent were
guesthouses and places offering bed and breakfast. Wyatt and Liz Redding no
longer resembled the couple whod fled from the caf, and their car was
different, but the police would eventually begin a check of all accommodation
addresses in the area and want to talk to all couples.

He found it outside the next town.
The sign read Expressions of interest invited for this outstanding commercial
opportunity, the hype referring to a half-built holiday lodge consisting of a
mud-brick reception area and half a dozen mud-brick cabins. Weeds grew hard
against the walls and plywood had been tacked over most of the windows. Here
and there tin flapped in the wind. There was a lock-up garage at the rear of
the property. The lock was flimsy. Wyatt forced it and drove in. Nothing inside
but dusty drums and a stack of floorboards. They closed the door again, hurried
across to the lodge, and began to check each of the buildings, keeping to the
back walls. The cabins were empty but two rooms behind the main office had been
set up as accommodation for a caretaker or nightwatchman in the days when the
developer still had hopes for the place. They found a tiny kitchen with tins of
Irish stew and peaches on a shelf, a gas burner, a kettle, three enamel mugs
and half a packet of stale tea. In the other room there was a foam mattress on
a lightweight tubular metal camping cot, two thin khaki blankets folded at the
foot of the bed.

They stood there, turned, and
contemplated one another gravely. Since fleeing the caf, Wyatt and Liz Redding
had scarcely spoken, communicating in snatched murmurs, a kind of shorthand
that worked because they each wanted the same thing, each faced the same odds.
Now they didnt need to talk at all. Wyatt eased the reversible jacket away
from her shoulders. He unbuttoned the black shirt. Liz Redding fixed her gaze
on him, eyes dark in her strong, dark face. When the shirt was on the floor,
Wyatt leaned his bony nose to the dark cleft between her breasts, kissed each
upper slope, reached around to unfasten the strap. He was clumsy and she
laughed once, quietly, not minding.

Then Wyatt was unbuckling the belt
at her waist but he felt her hands on his, pushing him away with a queer,
embarrassed kind of modesty. She finished the act for him, watching his face as
she let the pants fall to the floor, weighted heavily by something, the belt,
then slid her briefs to her ankles and stepped out of them.

When it was her turn to strip him
she started slowly but grew impatient, all the constraint gone as if it were
pointless. She was full of charging energy, and Wyatt was infected by it. He
fell back with her onto the bed and let her straddle him.

She began. He saw her close her eyes
tight in concentration, head tilted to one side as if she were listening for a
voice. Then a little later shed remember him, and grin and buck and lean down
to bite his lip.

At the end of it, she dozed. Wyatt
waited. Finally her eyes snapped open. You were right, it was a setup.

Yes.

He was acting the junkie. Someone
hired him to kill us.

Or only one of us. Me, Wyatt said.

She stiffened in his arms. Or me. I
didnt set you up.

They fell silent, playing out the
possibilities.

Youre good with a gun.

He felt her shrug against him. It
pays to be. In this game youve got to be prepared for any contingency.

Queer, formal wording. Wyatt rolled
away from her.

She was alarmed, a little hurt. Where
are you going?

He leaned back to kiss her. She
smelt and tasted humid and salty from their lovemaking. He heard her murmur,
the words unintelligible but affection and desire clearly there in them. He
disengaged. Handkerchief, he said.

She watched him, lazy-looking and
tousled, propped up on one arm. That changed to alarm when she saw him reach
for her trousers. I havent got she said, stopping when he uncovered the
little revolver concealed there.

She seemed to slump, then rallied. So?
So what if I carry two guns?

All the tenderness was gone from
Wyatt. He fixed on her like a pin through a butterfly. A crotch holster? Come
on. He gestured with the little gun. This is your backup piece. If you were
wearing boots Id also expect to find a gun there. But it was the way you handled
yourself in the caf. Youve had training. And look at this, no front sight,
thumb-bar filed off the hammer so it wont catch on anything.

Mack Delaney trained me, she
muttered, mouth sulky.

Bullshit, Wyatt snarled, a slow
hard rage building in him, narrowing his face and filling it with colour. Delaneys
dead. You knew I couldnt check on you. He gestured with the gun. Get up.

When she was standing before him,
tall and bare and defiant, he said, Pick up your shoes.

He saw it in her face at last,
confirmation, a sense that she knew he had her. Lets talk about this.

The shoes.

He watched her pick them up. She
half threw back one arm sullenly, as if she might smack him down with a shoe,
but stopped when he ground the tip of the gun against her throat. Lets see
it.

She removed it from beneath the
lining of her left shoe. She held it out, propped between thumb and middle
finger so that he could read it. He read Victoria Police and Senior
Constable and that was enough.

How long have you been working
undercover?

She shrugged. She wasnt going to
say, but then seemed to think that it wouldnt matter what she said now. A few
months.

If you knew the Tiffany was stolen,
why didnt you have me arrested at Southbank that day?

Too soon.

Wyatt stared at her fathomlessly
until she said, I thought you were part of the magnetic drill gang. I wanted
the whole gang.

Who knew you were meeting me today?

Thats my problem.

Id say it was a problem for both
of us.

Let me handle my side of it. The
cash is there in the bag. That parts real enough. The insurance company wants
the Tiffany and was prepared to pay to get it back. Take the fucking Tiffany
too, for all I care.

A deals a deal, Wyatt said. You
figured I belonged to this gang?

I did. I dont now. She paused. At
least tell me where you got the Tiffany.

He smiled his brief vivid smile. No.
This way we find out who tried to kill us from separate ends.

Vengeance is mine, sayeth the Lord,
she said, then seemed to wonder why shed said it.

There were nylon restraining links
in her bag. He let her get dressed then cuffed her to a corner of the iron cot.
I suppose you could always drag it down the road with you.