Cross Kill

Twenty-six

The phone rang just as Bax was knocking off for the day. He picked it up and heard Stella Mesic say, ‘Is Mack there?’

This was a signal and Bax felt himself go tight inside. ‘There’s no Mack here, sorry. You must have the wrong number.’

‘Sorry about that,’ Stella said. The line went dead and after a few minutes of paper shuffling, Bax rang through to reserve an unmarked Falcon from the motor pool. It was waiting for him in the garage and Bax cringed as he strapped on the seatbelt: the interior smelt of men who lived on cigarettes and nerves and doner kebabs. Bax had also read somewhere about the vinyl in modern cars, how it secreted toxins into the air you breathed.

He cranked down the window a little and headed across to the Doncaster Freeway, where he took the Bulleen Road exit. Stella Mesic’s blue XJ6 was waiting in the Heidi Gallery car park. Bax skirted the stained grey flank of the gallery, dodged sculptures and trees, and found Stella at the river’s edge.

She didn’t smile, didn’t touch him, just stood there clasping her upper arms, and that was hard for Bax. She’d snatched some time with him on the weekend, and Bax was playing it through his head like a film: her legs, her flat brown stomach, the smattering of fine hairs around her navel.

Now it was as if none of that had ever happened when she said flatly, ‘We’ve got a problem.’

He swallowed. ‘A problem?’

‘A cop came by the house last night.’

In a rush, Bax said, ‘Internal affairs? Asking about me?’

A grimace showed on her face. ‘Calm down, nothing to do with you. This was an overweight individual called Napper, cunning but not very sharp. An ordinary station cop, a sergeant, only he wasn’t wearing his uniform.’

‘Local?’

‘No. Some inner suburban nick.’

Bax couldn’t work it out. ‘What did he want?’

‘He said he had reliable information. He said the family was going to be hit soon. He said they’d be pros, and they’d be armed. He said he thought we’d like to know.’

Bax ran his mind through the names of men he’d put away over the years and men who’d ever worked with or for the Mesics or set up in opposition to them. He said, thinking aloud, ‘The guy in the Volvo last week.’

‘Therefore we have to treat what this cop says seriously; it supports what we already know.’

‘Did this Napper character say where he got his information from? I mean, how come he approached you first and not the local boys or D24? Did he name names?’

Bax was losing control a little. He knew it from the way Stella was watching him, head cocked at an angle, waiting for the bluster to pass.

‘Well, we come to the crux of the matter, don’t we?’ she said. ‘One, our Mr Napper thought we might prefer to deal with the problem ourselves, avoid having cops hiding in the shrubbery. Two, he said he knew who and when and how, but at this stage he wasn’t at liberty to divulge that sort of information.’

Bax nodded. ‘He thought you might like to think it over, come to some sort of arrangement with him.’

‘Exactly. A ten thousand dollar arrangement.’

‘And once this crisis is over,’ Bax said, ‘he’ll be on the doorstep again, wondering if some more permanent sort of arrangement mightn’t be possible.’

‘Yeah, well, you’d know all about that,’ Stella said, and the way she said it was like a knife slicing through Bax’s heart.

He coughed. ‘Who did he speak to? All three of you?’

‘Good, your mind’s working. He spoke to Leo and me. Victor was at the gym and we haven’t told him yet. I thought we might leave him out of things at this stage.’

‘How did Leo take it?’

‘How do you expect? He’s in a stew, now he’s had time to think about it. He wants to bring in some of his hood friends to guard the place.’

Bax sighed, visualising the carnage. ‘Think he’ll tell Victor?’

‘I talked long and hard and persuaded him not to. I said we’d deal with it. But he’s unreliable, easily swayed by Victor.’

‘Ten thousand bucks,’ Bax mused. ‘When does Napper want to meet you again?’

‘Wednesday. Neutral ground, he said. He’ll let us know.’

‘I’ll check him out for you.’

Stella stood close to him, touched his arm. Sunlight spangled her hair, her dress, the water in the river. ‘I was counting on you to warn him off, beat him up or something. Tell him this is an undercover operation he’s walked in on. At least come to the meeting and help us negotiate.’

Bax put plenty of expression into his face and voice. He held her arms, leaned forward, kissed her briefly. ‘Sweetheart, I can’t. I can’t risk upsetting another cop, or revealing that I’m linked in any way. All he has to do is drop a quiet word in the right ears and I’m done for, {and you with me.’

Stella jerked free and stepped away, her shoes tearing a clump of onionweed. He could smell it, and the river’s staleness. He was back at the beginning with her. She was sharp and angry when she said, ‘So we fork out ten thousand dollars and he gets away with it, leaving me with a lot of hassles and you in the clear. Is that what you’re saying?’

Putting his mind to it, keeping his voice low, his hands to himself, Bax said softly, ‘There’s a way around this. I know how we can beat this cop.’

She watched him, her head cocked.

He went on, turning the force of his eyes on her: ‘Trust me, Stel.’

Bax had been told that he had liquid eyes. Her shoulders shifted uncertainly. He reached for her hand. ‘You know I’m good at this sort of thing. Trust me.’

It was win or lose. In a moment she sighed and Bax saw that he had won again.