Tobin took off the sunglasses. ‘Sorry?’
Wyatt waited. It was the only thing to do. The seconds ticked by while Tobin got the question worked out in his head.
‘Not me, mate,’ Tobin said finally. A sullen expression replaced the open, empty look he’d started out with. ‘What’s it to you, anyroad?’
‘You can drive heavy vehicles?’
Now Wyatt was speaking Tobin’s language. ‘No worries.’
‘A low-loader, car transporter, something like that?’
‘Yep.’
‘Are you booked up this week?’
‘Why? What’s this all about? I was told you had a job on.’
‘What about next week? Got any work on that can wait till later?’
Tobin looked sulkier. ‘I’m not exactly swamped.’
‘What about family, friends?’ Leah asked. ‘Anyone who’s going to wonder where you are if you’re away for a few days?’
‘Nup. You better start fucking telling me what the job is pretty soon or you can fuck off, okay?’
Leah seemed to know what she was doing. Wyatt let her handle it. ‘What are you doing this Thursday?’ she asked. ‘Any chance you can make a run up north?’
‘Suppose. What’s it to you?’
‘We want to show you something. Do you deliver to Burra?’
‘Every week. There’s a bloke there owes me for a case of Scotch, five hundred smokes, videos…’
Leah nodded. ‘We’ll meet you there. Thursday, ten o’clock.’
‘Listen, I’m getting pissed off with this. Time’s money. If you want a pro you got to pay for it, and I want something up front.’
‘Nothing up front,’ Wyatt said. ‘All your expenses will be paid and you get a cut on the take if you come in on this. Same terms for everybody.’
‘How much?’
‘Between fifty and a hundred grand.’
‘Each?’
Wyatt nodded.
Tobin whistled. Then he jerked his head, indicating Leah. ‘Is she in this?’
‘Have you got a problem with that?’
‘Well, I mean, you know.’
Wyatt turned and walked to the door. ‘Okay, that’s it, we find someone else.’
‘No, hang on, mate, hang on,’ Tobin said. ‘No offence. Never worked with a bird before, that’s all.’
‘One thing,’ Leah said. ‘I’m not a bird.’
‘Gi’s your name, then.’
We’re pushing him too much, Wyatt thought. He feels that he’s giving but getting nothing in return. ‘Take it easy,’ he said calmly. He gave Tobin their names and described the job. ‘Okay?’ he said. ‘Are you in so far?’
‘Security van?’ Tobin said, making a click of awe with his tongue. Then he made a show of frowning hesitation, as if he was a pro and the job had holes in it. ‘The paint job’ll have to look right.’
‘Yes.’
‘Well, look no further,’ said Tobin expansively. He pointed through the window. ‘See them vans? Painted them myself. Duco, lettering.’
Wyatt inclined his head admiringly. ‘Classy.’
Tobin thrust out his hand. ‘Count me in,’ he said.
Wyatt shook it, thinking there was muscle here and not much else. But the job demanded muscle too, and if he could run the operation so it was tight, the weaknesses wouldn’t matter.
FOURTEEN
Letterman watched as Pedersen came out of his house and got into a Range Rover. The Range Rover looked new. He started the Fairmont, ready to follow Pedersen. He was reminded of the job a security firm had offered him when he was dismissed from the force. They wanted his detective skills, they said. They’d pull strings and get him licensed as a private investigator, and he’d start on $700 a week. The money was okay, but the work wasn’t. Letterman knew about private investigators. They went into the game thinking they were Spensers or Cliff Hardys but soon went sour from boredom. Being a PI meant living in a car and working half a dozen cases at once-tailing wives and husbands, checking credit and employment records, drinking thermos coffee while workers’ compensation claimants ran around on tennis courts, maybe getting out of the car sometimes to guard an exhibition of furs in David Jones. Stuff that for a joke.
The Range Rover’s rear lights came on, the right one brighter and whiter than the left. Letterman had been tailing Pedersen for two days now. On the first day, when Pedersen stopped at a TAB to place a bet, he’d broken the brake light lens with a stone. He hadn’t known then if Pedersen would go out at night or not, but if he did, the broken light would make him easier to tail.
Pedersen pulled away from the kerb. Letterman waited half a minute then pulled out after him. On Nicholson Street, where the traffic was heavier, he settled in two car lengths behind the Range Rover, keeping the bright tail-light in view.
So far today had been a repeat of yesterday. Pedersen had slept until lunch-time, spent the afternoon going to TABs, a pub and a brothel, taken Red Rooster chicken home for dinner, and gone out again at eight o’clock. Last night Pedersen had driven to King Street in the city. Letterman had watched him park the Range Rover illegally, put on a black leather jacket ten years out of date, and try to get into one of the clubs. He’d been refused admission there and at another club a few doors along. Letterman saw him gesture angrily at the bouncers in each place. All the bouncers that Letterman had ever known were ex-crims with records for violence, so Pedersen had been lucky not to have his head kicked in. Not that Letterman blamed the bouncers. Pedersen didn’t look right. He had a prison pallor, a jumpy manner, bad taste in clothes. And he looked almost middle-aged, too old for the King Street clubs.
Tonight was different. Tonight Pedersen drove to a pub in Fitzroy. It had a blackboard on the footpath advertising mud wrestling. That sounds about right, Letterman thought, watching Pedersen park illegally again and go in.
Letterman didn’t follow straight away. He switched off the engine and turned the radio to a talk show on Radio National. With any luck he’d hear that some poofter had jabbed the New South Wales Police Commissioner with a syringe.
Later Letterman turned on the interior light and scribbled in his notebook. He had a complete record of all Pedersen’s movements over the past two days, and they added up to one thing, in his view- Pedersen was still living off the proceeds of the job he’d pulled with Wyatt six weeks ago, the job that had wrecked the Outfit’s Melbourne operations.
He also had telephoto shots of Pedersen going in and out of pubs, TABs and a brothel called Fanny Adams. He’d used up a whole roll of film and had it developed at a one-hour place, the sort of place that has a high turnover and no curiosity. Some of the photos would go to the Outfit. They demanded before and after shots of all contract hits. But the photos were also groundwork. Letterman liked to make a study of his targets before he hit them. He intended to hit Pedersen at home-he hadn’t decided how, yet-but if something went wrong and he couldn’t manage it, he’d go through the photos again and familiarise himself with Pedersen’s other haunts. He hoped it wouldn’t come to a hit in the open. The Outfit stipulated that in getting rid of loose ends like Pedersen he should attract as little attention as possible.
He turned off the interior light again, locked the Fairmont and crossed the road. He loosened his tie and untucked an edge of his shirt front before he entered the pub. He spotted Pedersen immediately, without appearing to look at him. The mud wrestling had just finished and the air carried a pungent layer of sexual hate and bitterness beneath the smoke, noise and splashed beer. Pedersen himself looked jittery and frustrated. Rather than front up to the bar, Letterman grabbed an abandoned glass with an inch of beer in it and slumped like a regular at a corner table. He didn’t look directly at Pedersen. He didn’t look directly at anything other than the floor. He kept Pedersen in his peripheral range. The Pedersens of this world, Letterman thought, can smell cop, even ex-cop, the instant they make eye contact.
Letterman stayed there for an hour. He ordered a glass of beer from a passing topless waitress at one point and endured another mud-wrestling match. A live band played between shows. Someone seemed to be selling speed and Buddha sticks.