Cross Kill

Thirty-two

Bax wandered out of the trees, stopped in the middle of the track, cocked the heel of one handmade shoe and then the other, five hundred bucks from Footloose in Chapel Street, and cursed. Dust and mud. And a hint of onionweed odour in the fabric of his suit.

He passed some kids feeding the ducks, lovers necking on the grass, and made his way up the terraced river bank. The Mesics were waiting for him in Stella’s XJ6, Stella in the back, Leo behind the wheel. Bax folded himself into the passenger seat and said, ‘Did you get him?’

‘Listen,’ Stella said, and she thrust a microrecorder between the seats. Bax heard the fat sergeant incriminate himself.

‘Pictures?’

Leo had a video camera in his lap. He gave it to Bax, showed him how to monitor what was on the tape. Bax saw Napper and Stella clearly, both cars, both numberplates. The recording also showed time and date. ‘Nice.’

Leo retrieved the camera from him. ‘Yeah. Terrific. Now all we have to do is sort out a couple of professional gunmen tomorrow night, a piece of cake, something I do all the time.’ Bad teeth showed under his stiff ginger moustache. His face looked pouchy with calories and strain. ‘Right, Bax?’

But Bax raised a hand warningly, shutting him up. He strained to hear the tape. ‘Wyatt,’ he said at last. ‘I know that name.’

‘So?’

‘So he’s bad news, not someone you’d want to tangle with.’

‘Great,’ Leo said. ‘I’d hate to think I was going up against a wimp.’

Stella hitched herself forward on the rear seat until her face appeared in the gap between the seats, close to her husband’s upper arm. She touched him. ‘It’ll be fine, sweetie. Don’t fret.’

Leo looked down at her fingers, covered her hand with his. He said to Bax, ‘I can’t see why you don’t grab them before they break in.’

‘Think about it,’ Bax said. ‘They’ll be at their most jumpy then, most determined. You and Stella could get hurt, not only me. On the way out of the place they’ll be more vulnerable because they’ll have their hands full and will be starting to think they got away with it.’

He looked to Stella for support. She said to her husband, ‘We’ll be tied up, remember, so they’ll feel safe from us, they’ll have their money, and they won’t be expecting the police to show.’

‘You’ll probably be handcuffed,’ Bax said. ‘The pros find that quicker and easier than tying people up.’

‘Whatever,’ Stella said. She shook Leo’s arm. ‘Okay, sweetie? The police will grab them on their way off the property.’

‘Cops doing us a good turn,’ Leo said, shaking his head. ‘Why can’t we sort this pair out ourselves?’

‘One,’ Bax said, ‘you probably couldn’t. These blokes are killers, they’ll shoot their way out if they’re cornered, they’ve got more to lose than you have. Do you want to chance it? If you bring in hired guns you’ll just advertise to the world-and to Victor-how vulnerable you and Stella are.’

Bax waited. Leo looked away. ‘Two,’ Bax said, ‘news of the raid, the arrest, police around the place for the next few days, will scare off the opposition. Three, this will throw a scare into Victor. He’ll learn that his seniority and his contacts are worth fuck-all. When he realises that not only did we know about the raid, we stopped it dead and I was instrumental in protecting the family’s interests, he’ll feel left out, his power base eroded. If you bring in hired guns for protection, he’ll take the advantage, he’ll argue that it’s time to break up the firm.’

‘We can put pressure on him then,’ Stella said, ‘to go back to the States and do what he did before. He’ll continue to get his percentage, same as before.’

They fell silent. Stella hadn’t taken her hand away from Leo’s arm and after a while Bax found himself staring at it. She still had sex with Leo, so she said. She didn’t say whether or not she liked it, and she didn’t say whether or not she liked the guy himself, but she still had sex with him. This was an area in which Bax felt uncomfortable and ignorant. Once, laughing, she’d said she’d gone home still wet from him and there was Leo, wanting a screw. So, they’d screwed, she said, only she wished she’d had time to have a shower first. There was nothing calculated about the words or the way Stella delivered them-it was just the way she was. Bax hadn’t struck that kind of thing before. It did something to him, a kind of unpleasant wrench in his guts.

He turned his attention to Leo. ‘All you have to do is act natural tomorrow night. Surprised, angry, scared of the guns. No heroics.’

‘Yeah, well, one thing’s for sure: I’m not risking the money. I’ll put, say, twenty thousand in the safe, the rest in a safety deposit box in the bank. We can afford twenty grand if something goes wrong, we can’t afford two hundred grand.’

Bax shook his head. They’d been through all this. ‘He’ll know something’s wrong, Leo. He’s expecting big money tomorrow night, and he’ll be pissed off if it’s not there. We don’t know how he’ll express it: trash the house maybe, pistolwhip all of you till you say where the money is. Don’t worry. I’ll retrieve it for you, make sure it’s not logged as evidence.’

‘If you stuff up, Bax, I’ll have your guts for garters, I’ll spill you to Internal Affairs, I’ll take the money out of your hide.’

Leo was hot-faced, his voice heated, so they both said, fair enough, understood, and Stella patted his arm.

Then Stella said, apparently siding with her husband, ‘Bax, they could hurt us, just for the hell of it or so we don’t hassle them. Maybe we should go out for the evening?’

‘One, that will make them suspicious, all that money there and no one to keep an eye on it. Two, hurting people is not this Wyatt character’s style. We know of a dozen bank and payroll jobs he’s pulled and in each of them he took pains to keep people calm. The only ones who ever got hurt were people who crossed him or pulled a gun on him.’

Meaning, Leo, if you’ve got a gun, hide it somewhere, don’t go wearing it tomorrow night. Bax watched the big man carefully, hoping the message was getting through.

‘Just act normal,’ he said. ‘Have Victor over for dinner, make the job easier for these characters.’