‘Your worship, thank you.’
‘-worship, and my best strides got too creased to wear today. They’re at the cleaners.’
‘Couldn’t you have borrowed some clothes? Spent your ill-gotten gains on a decent wardrobe?’
Patakis’ defence lawyer had been watching De Lisle and his client tiredly, amusedly, but in good conscience he couldn’t let this go by unchallenged. Baker watched, grinning despite himself, as the lawyer bobbed up from his seat. ‘Your worship, I really must-’
De Lisle waved a hand irritably over the courtroom. ‘All right, all right. Mr Patakis, you are charged with…’
Baker had tuned the bastard out, thinking about how he’d fix him. An hour later he’d tailed De Lisle to Woollahra. De Lisle didn’t stay long. He came out wearing a change of clothes and was in his car and gone before Baker could get the Holden started.
Frustrated, Baker had another look at De Lisle’s apartment block. The place looked impenetrable: ground floor apartment, lock-up garage under the building, inside elevator, swipe-card access to the lobby. He tried something that he’d seen work on TV, pushed all ten intercom buttons, but no one buzzed him in and when a woman said ‘Yes?’, all clipped and hoity-toity, Baker had gone tongue-tied and backed off.
The next day he’d gone back after breakfast, wearing overalls and carrying a bucket and a squeegee. He waited until a suit in a BMW drove out of the underground carpark, slipped inside the building before the door had closed, and made his way to De Lisle’s patio. He knocked. No answer. Cunt, Baker thought. He’s gone for the day already.
He lifted the sliding glass door experimentally. Piece of shit: it rose three centimetres out of the track and he had no trouble levering the bottom away and stacking the whole door against the wall.
De Lisle’s apartment had the cool, restful air of a place that has been switched off while its owner is away. Baker roamed through the darkened rooms, pocketing a silver ashtray, a Walkman, a gold pen. The broad quilt in the main bedroom bore the impression of a suitcase and one or two shirts and items of underwear had been left behind.
Baker found De Lisle’s study, got out the Yellow Pages and began to ring around the airlines, giving the name De Lisle, saying he was confirming his flight details.
He hit paydirt at Ansett.
‘I don’t understand, Mr De Lisle. We had you on our eight-thirty to Coffs Harbour this morning. That flight has already left.’
‘My mistake,’ Baker said hurriedly, breaking the connection.
Coffs?
He pressed the redial button, prepared to disguise his voice, but he was connected to a different booking clerk this time. ‘You got any spare seats to Coffs today?’
‘Let me check that for you.’
He could hear her tapping away. ‘Nothing until tomorrow lunchtime, I’m afraid. Shall I confirm that for you?’
It would have to do. Baker told her yes, then asked how much.
‘Return?’
‘Yes.’
She told him and he wondered if his good luck was running out before it had begun. No way could he afford it. ‘When do I have to pay?’
‘When you collect the ticket, sir, an hour before departure if possible, otherwise the seat may be allocated to someone else.’
So Baker went to the Cross after dark to earn himself an airfare.
There was a back street where young blokes about thirteen or fourteen would hang out, hopping into the Jags, Mercs, Saabs that cruised by. A few quick blowjobs and they’d have enough to score themselves a virusy needle. But it wasn’t the kids Baker was interested in, it was the perverts driving the expensive cars. Unlike normal blokes, who bought their fucks off women inside four walls, the blokes who cruised for kids were usually very rich, usually puny, usually feeling dirty and guilty after.
At least they were easy to roll. Baker simply waited until they were finished and the kid was getting out of the car, then shoved the kid aside, dived in, punched the guy in the guts. The first one he rolled thought Baker was a cop, actually offered two hundred bucks to keep it quiet. Baker accepted. He topped the two hundred up with a cash advance of four hundred from a hole in the wall using another guy’s PIN number. The third one had a gold band on his ring finger so Baker threatened to tell the man’s wife if he didn’t pay up. Another four hundred from the automatic teller machine.
It was hard work and it was tricky and he had to deal with the dregs of humanity in the process. All in a good cause, but he’d hate to make a living out of it, not when there were easier ways to score some cash. Not this much cash though, or so quickly.
Baker went home to bed, feeling dirty, and had a shower. He woke Carol up, really wanting to wipe the evening from his mind. Apart from a bit of soppiness after, it was pretty good.
He got up early on Thursday morning, showered, shaved, told Carol he was going for a job interview, took the bus up to Shopping Town. He had a short back amp; sides at Hair Today, bought a sports coat, strides, sunnies and an overnight bag from Target, joking ‘Tarzhay’ with the girl on the cash register, who looked at him with deep boredom. Then he went to the Edinburgh Castle to score some speed, and finally took a taxi to the airport, where he slapped cash on the counter at the Ansett desk and said, ‘I believe you’re holding a ticket in the name of Baker?’
He’d always wanted to say that.
Thirty-one
Wyatt had spent all of Tuesday night staking out De Lisle’s apartment in Woollahra. By dawn it was clear that the man wasn’t coming back. That left the house on the coast.
As the first Coffs Harbour flight on Wednesday afternoon banked over the sea, wing tip angling at a thread of white sand between the breakers and the green hinterland, then levelling for the touchdown, Wyatt swallowed, and swallowed again, to clear his ears. He ran an internal gauge over himself, alighting again on the tooth. There was no pain there but his tongue would not let the jagged edges alone, automatically testing for sharpness and further erosion. He’d eaten fruitcake twenty minutes out of Sydney. The fleshy remnants of a raisin were lodged in the crevice and he knew he should take Liz Redding’s advice and have the stump pulled.
These obsessions got him onto the ground and through the terminal building and into a taxi. Coffs Harbour straggled over the ranks of coastal hillocks that rose to the mountains behind, the buildings predominantly white in the sun. White stucco, with terracotta tiles, he noticed, as the taxi weaved through the outskirts of the town. Then the houses gave way to ochred-brick shopping precincts, flashy takeaway places, car yards and pylons, with only palms and spreading overblown tropical flowers to suggest that he was in a holiday paradise. The place had a swagger born of sun-dazed greed and hedonism, not intellect. It was all desperation underneath, as superannuated retirees from the south struggled to keep small businesses alive during the off-season. If you had money and sense you’d build yourself a gangster’s fortress back in the hills. Exactly what De Lisle’s house looked like, according to Cassandra Wintergreen.
Wyatt got out at a small rental car concession, no more than a transportable hut in the back corner of a Caltex station. He’d reserved the car by phone from Sydney and had documents and cash ready, giving the rental man the name of a motel on the Esplanade. He bought a map in the Caltex shop, drove half a kilometre to a shopping mall, checked De Lisle’s address in a call-box phone book. The time was midday and the town was gearing up for the afternoon trade, cars and vans adding to the endless burden of the heavy traffic on the Pacific Highway which split the town from the hills.
On impulse then, Wyatt dialled De Lisle’s number. He counted ten rings. He was wondering if that meant that De Lisle was still on his way to Coffs Harbour or had already left when a voice grunted, ‘Yeah?’
Wyatt tried to read the voice. Someone unused to the phone? A driver, gardener, bodyguard? He didn’t want to alarm the man by hanging up, so loaded breeziness into his tone and said, ‘How are you today? My name’s Jason, I’m calling from the Pacific Spa Fitness Centre and this month we’re featuring-’