Port Vila Blues

Three

They took a taxi to meet Jardine’s fence. Wyatt wound down his window and leaned into the wind. Every after-hours lapse and misery the car had ever seen was leaking from the seats into the confined space behind the driver. Jardine, foggy in the head again, leaned back into the corner and appeared to sleep. It irritated Wyatt. First the vicious, jabbing pain in his upper jaw, and now this, his friend well under par when he needed him to be sharp with the woman who would be fencing the Tiffany for them.

‘What’s she like?’ Wyatt had asked, before the taxi arrived.

‘Never met her.’

A chilling kind of dispassion was Wyatt’s style, but this time he’d given in to his impatience and his throbbing tooth. ‘Mate, how do you know she’s any good?’

‘I checked around. Mack Delaney trained her.’

‘Mack’s dead.’

‘Yeah, but he was one of the best.’

Wyatt conceded that. He’d used Delaney once in the old days to move stolen gear. Delaney had specialised in ransoming silverware, paintings, watches and coin and stamp collections back to the owners or to the insurance companies, but now and then he’d forge the provenance of a painting and sell it at auction overseas. As he’d explained it to Wyatt, art thieves had it good in Australia. Insurance premiums were prohibitive, meaning galleries and private owners were often not insured, relying on cheap security systems to protect their paintings. They also tended not to keep good photographs of the items in their collections, or at best only kept handwritten descriptions. An international magazine called Trace tackled art theft by maintaining a computerised recording system, but subscription costs were high and there were on-line compatibility problems, and, as a result, few of the Australian galleries, dealers, auctioneers or private collectors had joined. Many paintings stolen in Australia were shipped overseas to private buyers. Mack had explained that in Japan it was possible to gain legal title to a stolen art work after only two years; in Switzerland, after five years. Then there were the buyers who had no interest in aesthetics. They used the paintings to finance drug deals. In Wyatt’s eyes, everything boiled down to that, these days.

Wyatt peered at the motel as they passed in the taxi. There always was a motel, in Wyatt’s game. He hid in motels, outlined hits in motels, divided the take in motels. Motels made sense. The other guests left you alone, coming and going just as you did. If the truth be known, half of them were probably up to something illicit or illegal anyhow. Unfortunately motels were also easy to stake out and potential traps. They were stamped from the same mould: layout, carpet, paintwork, bedding, decor, prints above the fat beds.

They got out of the taxi a block past the motel and walked back. It was called the TravelWay and it faced St Georges Road. One lane of cracked and buckled asphalt had been cordoned off by plastic ribbon and witch’s hats, and boggy holes had been carved out under the tramtracks in the centre of the road. In the late morning light the street was a wasteland, still and lifeless.

Wyatt viewed it sourly: this wasn’t a place with a quick exit. The motel itself was a simple building, a one-storey block parallel to the street, with rooms facing St Georges Road and an identical number of rooms backing on to them, facing suburban back yards at the rear. Most of the cars in the lot were Falcons and Commodores, commercial travellers’ cars, white station wagons with sample cases and cardboard displays stacked behind the front seats. Wyatt automatically examined the interior of every car in the lot and on the street outside, then watched the door to room 14 for a few minutes while Jardine sat on a bluestone block in the sun.

Satisfied that they weren’t walking into a trap, Wyatt knocked on 14 and stepped to one side. That was automatic, too: he’d been shot at through spyholes; men had come at him through doors or bundled him into rooms through doors much like the red door to room 14.

Jardine, hearing the knock, blinked and limped to join him. A woman’s voice, pleasant and inquiring, the voice of a faintly puzzled legitimate guest, said, ‘Who is it?’

‘Frank Jardine,’ Jardine said.

The door opened. Nothing happened. When hands didn’t seize Jardine and men didn’t scream at him to drop to the ground, Wyatt stepped into view behind him.

The woman’s eyes flicked over them, assessing their faces, where they had their hands, finally checking the motel forecourt and the torn-up street behind them. Until she’d done this she said nothing, expressed nothing but wariness, but then she smiled, a flood of warmth in the poky doorway. ‘Come in,’ she said, stepping back, one hand indicating the room, the other holding the door fully open.

As they edged past, Wyatt saw her glance at his overnight bag. Aware of his eyes on her, she looked up and grinned. He smiled a little, despite himself. She had a cheery vigour that he liked, an air of someone good at her job but not about to let it button down the atmosphere. She wore sandals and a billowy cotton shirt over patterned tights. A faint scent of soap and shampoo drifted around her head. Her hair was fine, dark and dead straight, parted in the middle, framing her face. There was a faint asymmetry about her features: one eye seemed to stare out a little, one cheekbone sat a fraction lower than the other, giving her an air of sceptical good humour and quick intelligence.

Wyatt entered the room cautiously. Apart from the standard fittings, it was empty. Jardine checked the ensuite bathroom and came out again, nodding the okay. So he hasn’t completely lost it, Wyatt thought, setting the overnight bag on the bed and unzipping it.

‘Straight down to business,’ the woman said.

‘He is a bit obsessive,’ Jardine agreed, catching her mood. Together they watched Wyatt.

‘Does he talk? Drink tea or coffee?’

‘Been known to,’ Jardine said.

Wyatt had few skills at this sort of thing, but he made an effort. ‘I won’t have a drink, bad tooth, but you two go ahead.’ His palm floated automatically to his cheek.

The smiling sympathy in Liz Redding’s face and manner was genuine. ‘Abscess? Old filling?’ She came close to peer at his face. ‘It does look swollen on that side,’ she said. ‘You’d better get it seen to or your performance will suffer.’

She could have meant anything by that. He felt an absurd desire to embrace her. ‘I’m fine.’

‘Sure. Tough guy.’

‘Look, can we get down to it?’

‘Suit yourself.’

Wyatt stepped back from the bed and leaned his rump on the leading edge of the television bench under a painting of junks on Hong Kong harbour. Jardine swung die room’s only chair around and sat in it. Both men watched Liz Redding fold back the tissue paper until the Tiffany sat in the palm of her hand.

‘Nice,’ she said at last.

Taking a jeweller’s glass from her pocket and holding it to her eye, she examined the Tiffany stone by stone, turning the piece occasionally, allowing for light refraction. Finally she took a small set of scales from a box in her satchel and weighed it. ‘It’s the real thing, all right.’

‘How much?’ Wyatt asked.

‘He does like to get down to it, doesn’t he?’ she said. ‘Depends on whether or not it’s sold as is or broken up, the gold and the stones sold individually.’

‘Be a pity to do that,’ Jardine said. He took the Tiffany from her hand, placed it above her right breast, angled his head to gauge the effect. ‘That’s where it belongs.’

Liz Redding grinned, pushed his hand away. ‘Yeah, right, once a year I draw the curtains, remove it from its hiding place, admire myself in the mirror.’

Jardine grinned back at her.

Wyatt’s jaw was burning. All the strain of his chosen life seemed to erupt in him and he snarled, ‘Cut the crap, you two. I want to work out where and when so we can get the hell out of here.’

It might have been Wyatt’s anger, or it might have happened anyway, but Jardine’s treacherous body failed him again. He seemed suddenly to fill with shame, shifting in his chair and moaning softly.

Wyatt frowned at him. ‘What?’

Jardine, his face contorted, said helplessly, ‘Mate, I’ve shit meself.’

Wyatt stared at him. ‘Oh, Frank,’ he said.

He lifted Jardine out of the chair. Jardine was a tall man, once quick and strong like himself, but now he was skin and bone. The chair seat was smudged watery brown and Jardine reeked of his own waste.

‘Come on, pal. I’ll take you to the bathroom.’

Jardine shuffled with him across the floor. ‘I’m sorry about this. I’ll-’

‘Shut up,’ Wyatt said. He felt a kind of tangled anger. He didn’t want thanks, he didn’t want to clean shit off his friend, he had no room for feelings he’d never had before, yet he knew all of it was unavoidable and necessary.

‘Sometimes I just-’ Jardine said.

‘For Christ’s sake, shut up.’

Then Liz Redding was on the other side, helping him support Jardine. ‘Quit that. You’re upsetting him.’

For a moment, Jardine was the instrument in a tug of war. ‘I’m taking him to the bathroom,’ Wyatt said uselessly.

‘No you’re not. I’ll do it. You haven’t got the touch.’

‘I’ll call a taxi.’

‘Forget it. Just leave, okay? I’ll get him cleaned up and I’ll drive him home myself.’

Wyatt released Jardine. Jardine’s shame eddied around the three of them. By now it was an intimate thing to Wyatt, not strange or repellent. He said, ‘Take care, Frank.’

He turned to Liz. After a moment he said, ‘Thanks.’

She sighed, nodded, smiled sadly. ‘Give me twenty-four hours to put out some feelers, here, Amsterdam, maybe New York.’

‘Okay.’

She led Jardine into the bathroom, saying, ‘Tomorrow morning suit you?’

‘Southbank,’ Wyatt said.

‘Fine.’

Wyatt left the motel. He liked to be the first to leave. If you left first, the others couldn’t wait around the corner and follow you.