Cross Kill

One

The stranger appeared just after lunch on day one of Wyatt’s operation against the Mesics. He was driving a red Capri, soft top down, and Wyatt watched him park it against the kerb, unfold from the car, stride to the compound gates and bend his face to the intercom grille in the brick pillar. MESIC was spelled out in shiny red tiles above the intercom and Wyatt saw the stranger touch the name as though to draw luck from it. Then the gates jerked, swung open, and the man stepped through the gap. He was about thirty, and he had the raw-nerved, hole-and-corner look of a man who exists on coffee and whispers. Wyatt put that together with the car, the costly jacket and jeans, and speculated that here was someone who made a profit for the Mesics and profited by them.

The Mesics were small-scale racketeers with ambitions, and Wyatt was watching their place through the rear window of a rented Volvo. The Volvo was a good touch. He’d faced it away from the compound gates and was sitting in the back seat so this wouldn’t look like a stakeout to casual eyes. But the car looked right anyway, so he wasn’t expecting trouble. The citizens of Templestowe, crooked and otherwise, ran to Volvos, Saabs, cars like that.

This was Wyatt’s second stakeout of the Mesics. Ten months ago he’d sat outside the compound gates like this, burning to hit the place, but he’d been a marked man at the time, with every gun-happy hoon and policeman in Victoria after him, so he’d fled the state. Then, in Queensland, he’d robbed a bank and killed a man and given up a small fortune to help someone run for her life, and it had all added up to ten months of hand-to-mouth waiting.

But now the heat was off and he was back in Melbourne again, watching the Mesics. The place still looked brash and new, a hectare of land that had been stripped bare and turned into a family compound: raw landscaped terraces, young trees, shiny lockup garages and a couple of blockish cream-brick houses that could have featured in a travel brochure from some sunny, dusty spot on the Mediterranean coast, the whole lot protected by a wire and girder perimeter fence three metres high.

Wyatt saw a door open in the first house. A young woman appeared at the top of the steps. She looked expensive and dissatisfied, restlessly touching herself- hips, thighs, chest, sleeves, collar, the hem of her dress. Thick auburn hair was piled over her head and shoulders, catching the sun as she explored her body. As the visitor approached her up the steps, she seemed to relax. She touched his arm and led him into the house.

There was no one else around. A contract cleaning service called Dustbusters had come and gone before lunch, but so far Wyatt had not seen any guards, children or servants who might get in his way. He didn’t want to have to send in an army against an army.

So the place looked easy-not that it had ever been a question of whether or not Wyatt would pull this job. He was only interested in the how and when. After all, the Mesics had his money in there. They didn’t know they had his money, but that was no consideration of Wyatt’s. A little over ten months earlier he’d been putting together an easy payroll snatch in the red dirt country of South Australia, only to be cheated of the take by a man who owed a lot of money to the Mesics. There had been a few deaths and a lot of aggravation because of it and Wyatt wanted his money back. It was big money. Over three hundred thousand. It would set him up again, enable him to buy a place, live in comfort while he concentrated once more on the big jobs, the way it had been for him before it all went sour.

Wyatt rolled his head a few times to ease his knotted muscles, then reassessed the Mesic place. The advantages were clear. First, it had more than one exit. He never hit places where he ran the risk of boxing himself in. Second, the big houses of Templestowe sprawled behind hedges and trees, meaning a lower risk of snooping neighbours. Third, the streets were broad and fast, and the freeway was easy to get to. He could be well clear of the area before the local law showed. That’s if they did show. It wasn’t likely. The Mesics were crooked. They didn’t want the law poking around. Their security system wouldn’t be wired to the local cop shop.

Wyatt went still. Something was happening. The electronic gates were swinging open again. Just then a shadow passed across the Volvo’s side windows and he sank in his seat as a black Saab turned into the Mesic place.

He raised his head to watch, thankful that the creeper being trained along the security fence was still sparse and patchy. He saw the gate close and heard a faint snarl as the Saab rounded the curving gravel drive and stopped outside the first house. As if on cue, the front door opened and the woman and her visitor started down the steps.

Two men got out of the Saab. Wyatt could see a facial resemblance between them and guessed that they were brothers. Other than that, they were not alike. The passenger, dressed in jeans and running shoes, was a tall, solid, slow-moving man of about thirty who hung back as the driver walked fast toward the house.

The driver was about forty, and slighter, shorter and sharper than his heavy younger brother. Draped in a double-breasted bone-coloured suit over a tieless black shirt buttoned at the neck, he was a Hollywood version of a new-wave Mafia hood. His hair was thick and black, curling to his shoulders, and Wyatt saw it toss as the man began a dance of anger, pointing, shaking his fist and apparently yelling at the woman. Her visitor seemed to laugh in his face. The woman scowled.

Wyatt turned away. Who ran the Mesic operation? Who would give him the most trouble? Where were the weaknesses? He couldn’t plan this job until he had that kind of information.

Rossiter would have the answers-that’s if Rossiter felt inclined to help him. Rossiter had once been his go-between, but now there were good reasons why Rossiter might wish him dead. When everything had gone wrong for Wyatt the year before, others had been affected too, including Rossiter.

Wyatt peered out at the Mesic place again and what he saw made him duck in his seat. He messed his hair with his fingers, tugged his shirt out of his waistband and pulled down the zipper at the front of his trousers. He reached for the Scotch bottle on the floor and drank deeply from it. He splashed a little around the inside of the car and down his chest. Finally he rubbed his face hard with his hands, reddening the skin, and sprawled out along the back seat.

Even with his eyes closed he sensed that someone had come to stand next to the Volvo, blocking the light. The door by his head opened. A hand smacked him hard on the cheek.

‘Get out.’

Wyatt blinked his eyes, grunted, tried to turn over on his side. He recognised the solid character from the passenger seat of the Saab.

The hand smacked him again. ‘Come on, pal, move it.’

Wyatt opened his eyes and kept them open. He sat up by degrees, exhaling over the big man.

The man jerked back. ‘Jesus Christ. Come on, out.’

‘I’m over point-oh-five,’ Wyatt slurred. ‘Let me sleep it off.’

‘Bullshit,’ the man said, reaching in a massive arm.

Wyatt let a drunken look of cunning grow on his face. ‘They can’t book you if you’re sleeping it off in the back seat and you’ve got the keys in your pocket.’

‘Don’t fuck with me. I don’t know who you’re working for but you can tell them the Mesics are not for sale.’

Wyatt blinked and frowned. ‘What?’

The big man’s face twisted. He had short hair that kinked like wood shavings on his overheated scalp and Wyatt could smell fury and perspiration on him. Spittle sprayed onto Wyatt’s face as the man said, ‘Tell your boss the Mesics are reorganising. We’re not rolling onto our backs for anybody.’

Wyatt muttered that he didn’t know what the man was on about and got out of the car. He was rocky on his feet, bleary and unappealing, someone who didn’t belong in Templestowe.

A furrow of doubt appeared on the big man’s face. ‘If I see you here again you’ll find yourself in the Yarra.’

Muttering, ‘Keep your shirt on,’ Wyatt got into the driver’s seat of the Volvo. He ground the starter. The engine caught. He crunched the gear lever into first and pulled away from the kerb, the engine howling. He steered along the centre of the road, loudly, inexpertly, like a drunk, and all the while he was thinking that if there was trouble in the Mesic camp he should hit them as soon as possible.