Wyatt - 04 - Cross Kill (11 page)

He found Jardine leaning on a column
outside. The big man looked as though he owned the place. There was a trace of
amusement on his face. Wyatt didnt say anything until they were in the car
park, crawling in Jardines car toward the pay booths.

How did he react?

A caricature of disbelief and
outrage, Jardine said. He went white, bolted outside and jumped in the first
cab.

What will he do?

Hell shit himself for a while. He
cant go back to check on the diamonds in case its an outside job and he finds
an angry foreigner there. Hell want his money from the Outfit but he doesnt
know if its a cruel joke on their part or it really is an outside job, in
which case hell be scared theyll think he did it.

Jardine had nothing else to say and
that suited Wyatt. Jardine had no use for small talk either. They rode in
silence back to the Dorset Hotel. Wyatt thought about the kind of phone call
the Outfit was getting from its diamond buyer about now. He imagined the soured
relations and the Outfits hundred thousand dollar loss. He imagined the other
damage he had lined up for them.

* * * *

Nineteen

Max
Henekers wife was oddly proud of her husbands unusual job. He spent weekdays
at home with her in their place at Palm Beach, playing the stock market,
gardening, walking with her along the beach. Quality time, she called it, and
that was why she didnt mind his flying interstate every weekend. Hes a
troubleshooter, she explained to her friends. Company computers are always
tied up Mondays to Fridays so he goes in at weekends to check for viruses,
hackers, unauthorised use, etcetera, etcetera. Her friends seemed envious.
They had husbands who got in the way on weekends and were distant and cranky
with them the rest of the time.

Maxs story to his wife was an
approximation of the truth. Yes, he worked every weekend but he didnt go
interstate and his knowledge of computers was limited to doing simple accounting
on his Toshiba laptop. In fact, Max went no further than a first floor hotel
suite in Kings Cross and he was what the police would call a distributor.

The system worked like this.

While the authorities were stirring
themselves every time flights from South-East Asia and South America came in,
high quality Columbian cocaine was making its way by yacht and light plane to
isolated beaches or abandoned airstrips in northern Australia. Here it was weighed,
paid for and sent south packed in concealed compartments in dusty campervans
driven by middle-aged and retired couples. These people were never pulled over,
never searched. Campervans are slow, benign, innocent, and no highway cop is
going to hassle elderly folk enjoying their declining years on inflation-eroded
retirement packages. Youd have to be a bastard to do that.

Campervans making the Sydney run
were required to branch off along Pennant Hills Road to Parramatta Road, then
make for a certain twenty-four hour service station and check in for a grease
and oil change. Here Outfit mechanics removed the cocaine, weighed it again,
baked twenty per cent of it to make crack, cut the rest with glucose, and
repackaged it. The elderly geezers were paid off and the load was sent by a
Datsun utility marked Spare Parts to the basement car park of the hotel in
Kings Cross where Max Heneker stayed in a suite that was on permanent hold for
the Outfit.

Maxs Thursday afternoon to Monday
morning job started when he weighed the cocaine again and took it upstairs to
be separated into 50, 100, 250 and 500 gram packets of cocaine and smaller
quantities of crack. Crack hadnt taken off yet, but the Outfit was confident
that it soon would. Max spent most of Thursday afternoon doing this. Lester, an
Outfit goon built like a bull, watched him do it. Then Lester weighed the
cocaine again, just in case. Who knows, maybe Max was siphoning off the odd
gram or two when Lester had his back turned. The Outfit was obsessed with being
ripped off somewhere along the line. Max knew that, and made sure the buck
would never stop at him. He disliked Lester. Max was small, precise, neat; he
resembled an accountant. Lester liked to sprawl in a tracksuit, carelessly
shaven, crushing beer cans while he watched videos of the World Cup. He also
seemed to believe that soap washed away his natural oils. By midnight on Sunday
the air in the suite was ripe and Max worked with a scented handkerchief in his
fist.

Between about five oclock on
Thursday afternoon and late Sunday evening, Max received clients. Some were
buying for themselves, but most were regulars, the street dealers, stocking up
for the busy period, the weekend. The cocaine flowed out, the money flowed in.
Max kept strict records, entering every transaction into a code-named document
on his Toshiba laptop. At midnight on Sunday he handed over the takings and the
floppy disc to Lester, who left the hotel, first handing Max four thousand
dollars in an envelope. Max would go to bed then, returning to his wife and his
Palm Beach house at lunchtime on Monday. More often than not, he was exhausted
and went straight to bed again.

Max had scarcely got out the scales
and sandwich bags that Thursday afternoon when there was a knock on the door.
He glanced at his watch. Four oclock. The first clients were not expected
before five. He looked across at Lester, nodded, tossed a quilt over the
evidence and stepped across the thick carpet to the door.

Meanwhile Lester positioned himself
with his back to the wall on the other side of the door. Max waited while
Lester fastened a suppressor to an automatic pistol and squeezed the fat
fingers of his left hand through a knuckleduster. Lester nodded and Max said, Who
is it?

I need some crack, a voice said.

For Christs sake,
Max thought. Tourists and
respectable people stayed in this hotel from time to time. Come back later,
he said, his voice low and hoarse, his mouth pressed to the door.

What? the voice cried.

Come back after five, Max
whispered.

Cant bloody hear ya, the voice
shouted. Look, I got cash, look at the floor.

Max and Lester watched as a hundred
dollar note slid into view. It was snatched back again. The voice went on: Give
us some crack and Ill be off.

Max put his eye to the spyhole. He
saw an untidy male wearing a black windcheater over a check flannelette shirt.
The guys hair was a mess and he had his arm in a sling. He was waving hundred
dollar notes in the air with his free hand. There was a professional-looking
bandage around his head. Max had noted that it was the yuppies who used coke,
the deros who used crack. So far, so good, but to double check he said, Who
said to come here?

Stooge, the man said, naming a
Bondi Beach street dealer who sometimes bought from Max.

Max nodded okay to Lester, unlocked
the door and drew back the chain. Then he moved to the centre of the room and
called, The doors unlocked.

The man entered slowly, edgy and
defeated looking. He glanced worriedly at Lester, who by now had tucked the
pistol into his waistband and had his arms folded, and advanced to where Max
was waiting in the centre of the room.

There was a second knock. Lester
whirled around, his hand digging for the automatic. Even if the folds of his
tracksuit hadnt got in the way, he would have been too late. He didnt see the
quick, neat spin behind him. He didnt see Max go down, disabled by a kick to
the knee. He heard it, but by then it was too late, for the dero was grinding a
gun into the base of his spine and a masked man was coming through the door.

What unnerved Max and Lester during
the three minutes that followed was that the two men didnt speak and they didnt
want the cocaine. The man in the mask trained a gun on them, the man with the
bandaged head carried the cocaine into the bathroom and flushed it away. He
seemed to smile. There was no sense of loss or regret about him.

When it was over, Max risked raising
his head from the carpet. Have you any idea, the faintest trace of an idea,
whose toes youre stepping on here?

The man with the bandage looked at
him appraisingly. The face was almost pleasant now, animated by intelligence
and irony, the bandage rakish looking on the narrow head. Maybe hes some kind
of anti-drugs vigilante, Max thought. Someone whod welcome the chance to have
his say. If you could tell us where youre coming from, Max said reasonably, maybe
we could work something out.

But the face grew hard by degrees,
and a chill crept along Maxs spine. The voice when it came was flat and
distinct. Tell Kepler it could happen any time, any place.

* * * *

Twenty

At
least half of the men milling around in Prestige Auto Auctions on Friday knew
that Bax was working motor vehicle theft, so he couldnt very well do his own
bidding. He was spotting. He strolled through the place twice, glancing idly at
the ranks of glossy, top of the range Hondas, BMWs, Saabs, Audis, Toyotas, for
all the world as if hed dropped in especially to be a pain in the neck to the
men there who knew he was a cop.

It amused him the way four bent
dealers slipped out through the side doors and another handful stopped
muttering into mobile phones or to each other in the shadowy corners of the
vast auction hall. It amused him to saunter past them, sharp as a tack in his
iron-grey tailored suit, as out of place among the stretch jeans and blow-waved
heads as a Piaget watch in a tray of Pizza Hut giveaways. The remaining men in
the place were your ordinary suburban punters after a bargain and they paid Bax
no attention at all. He circled the hall a third time, listened to some
half-hearted bidding for a late sixties E-Type in need of a complete
restoration, and went out onto the street.

Axle was waiting for him in a
Japanese rustbucket. The body was canary yellow, the drivers door white, the
boot lid pale green. Not for the first time did Bax wonder how it was that a
professional car thief like Axle, who specialised in lifting Porsches from
South Yarra driveways in the time it took you to blow your nose, would want to
drive around in a heap of shit.

He slid into the passenger seat.
Axle was listening to a cassette, a world-weary American voice filling the car
with a string of one-liners. Bax opened his mouth to speak but Axle chopped the
air with the flat of his hand. Check this.

Bax listened. The comedians voice
wound on, utterly tired of life: I went to a restaurant, it said breakfast
any time, so I ordered French toast in the Renaissance. Despite himself, Bax
sniggered.

Axle shut off the tape machine. His
ravaged face was pink with appreciation, his eyes moist. Steve Wright. Kills
me every time. Well, what you got?

Lot nineteen, Bax said. White
Honda Prelude with bad rear-end damage. He took an envelope from his pocket
and gave it to Axle. Theres five grand. The car might go above five, but I
very much doubt it.

Axle tucked the envelope inside the
denim jacket he wore over a black T-shirt, summer and winter. No worries.

Get a receipt, do all the
paperwork, and arrange to have it delivered to that body shop the Mesics run in
Flemington.

Axle was surprised. Not their
Richmond place?

Bax shared some of the irritation hed
been feeling lately. No, fuck it all. The older brothers back in town and hes
decided to sell the Richmond place.

Huh, Axle said.

So, arrange delivery, then you and
I go looking for a another white Prelude.

No worries, Axle said, and he left
Bax there. After a while, Bax turned on Axles sound system and heard the
cassette through to the end, snuffles of laughter escaping from him every few
seconds. Outside the car, a gritty wind was hassling the pedestrians and inside
his head the Mesic problem and the problem of the money he owed his SP bookie
were never far away, but for a time at least, the world didnt feel such a bad
place.

Forty minutes later Axle was there
with the envelope. Three seven fifty, he said.

Good one.

Axle started the car. The motor
backfired once, settling into a surging idle. White Prelude, he said.

Car park at the Prahran market?

Axle shook his head violently. No
way known. Theyve got this lookout tower, some guy on the PA spotting parking
spaces for people. Well try Chaddie.

The drive to Chadstone shopping
centre took them thirty minutes. They searched the immense parking areas for a
further ten minutes until Axle stopped the car and beamed. There.

A young woman had just locked a
white Prelude and now she was snapping on stiletto heels across the asphalt
toward the side entrance of Myer. Bax watched her limbs moving inside the power
dressers pencil-line skirt and padded shoulders. He liked the way her calves
flexed and he looked for the line of her knickers, an image of Stella Mesic
filling his head.

Wakey, wakey, Axle said, passing a
hand across Baxs face.

We wait till shes inside, Bax
said, then we wait another couple of minutes in case shes forgotten
something.

Fair enough.

They saw the woman veer toward an
ANZ automatic teller machine and join the queue. There were four people waiting
and the line moved slowly. Both men sighed simultaneously and settled in their
seats. After a while, Bax, encouraged into intimacy by their shared liking of
the comedy tape, said, They call you Axle because you steal cars, right?