Death Deal

Nineteen

Anna Reid had reserved a room for Wyatt in a hotel in Logan City, and the first thing he did after she dropped him off by car was check out of there and take a bus back into central Brisbane. He paid in advance for two nights at the YMCA, two nights at the Victoria Hotel on Astor Terrace, and by wire for two nights at a chain motel in Surfers Paradise. Wyatt made it standard practice to arrange more than one bolthole in any place he found himself, and he never made base close to where he intended to pull a job.

A standard precautionbut there was a concrete reason for it, this time. Until he knew for sure that Anna Reid was not working for someone or did not mean him harm, any contact with her had to be strictly on his terms.

For two days he did nothing. Then on Saturday he began to fix the geography of the place in his mind. He spent the day in a tourist coach: twenty Japanese, a handful of Swedish backpackers, a retired couple from Perth and himself. Pick-up was at 9 am and they spent the morning touring the city and nearby suburbs with stops at the Gabba cricket ground, the Fourex brewery, coffee on Mt Coottha, lunch on the South Bank. The retired couple from Perth seemed to adopt him for the day. They were fearful of foreigners. The man referred to the Nips in the party and Wyatt guessed hed been a serviceman during the war. The woman muttered under her breath about the accents, singlet tops and horny, dirty feet and white teeth of the Swedish girls. Wyatt let their words wash over him. He stared out of the window or sat at kiosk tables and let the sun warm his bones as he thought about Anna Reid and a bank vault that for one weekend only would have close to two million dollars in it.

The city itself was difficult to pin down. There was no fixed quality to it. If there were any buildings left standing from the colonial era, Wyatt didnt see them. The coach would hurtle down the snarling ribbons of freeway suspended above the rivers edge, crossing one bridge after another, giving him a clear view of rakish buildings bared like teeth, and he could feel flourishing energy in the place. Then they would be prowling the slopes and valleys of the suburbs and he would see colour-supplement mansions sharing a postcode with triple-fronted brick veneers and sun-blighted wooden hovels on stilts. The camphor laurels and jacaranda had finished flowering several weeks earlier, but there were plenty of fleshy, tropical, over-scented plants to make up for them. The light was drenching, draining all colour from the sky. They passed near Boggo Road prison more than once. It dominated one of the citys hills, colder, longer, harder and more miserable than any building Wyatt had yet seen there.

After lunch the coach ran them south-east to the casinos and boutiques of the Gold Coast. Wyatt used the drive to position Logan City in his mind. As they passed through the raw new suburbs that made up the satellite city, he took in the freeway exits, the strips of trashy, low-cost glass and concrete shops on either side, the patterns of first-home-buyers houses behind them. One thing was clearif he pulled this job he would stay well clear of these streets: they looped and curved like the edges of jigsaw pieces, not a right angle among them, a living nightmare to a driver who didnt know them well and had the law on his tail.

Wyatt slipped away from the others when they reached Broadbeach. He had a pocketful of vouchers entitling him to floor shows and chips at the Monte Carlo, but he tossed them into a bin and set out to explore on foot. If he hit the Logan City bank and got away with the money, he would hide out rather than run for it, leaving the state days, weeks later. He wanted to know if the Gold Coast would conceal him, if there might be an identity he could adopt, one that would slip easily over his existing skin and make him one of thousands and therefore invisible.

He saw enough in thirty minutes to know that it was possible. He could be a tourist, junkie, gigolo, gambler, boulevardier.

The coach drew into Brisbane again at six-forty-five. The city had undergone a change: the peak hour was over, the buildings empty, the long streets windswept and bare. Wyatt shook hands with the man and woman from Perth. Suddenly they were all friends. The Japanese beamed at him. Then, just as he was turning to leave, one of the backpackers planted a kiss on his mouth. She tasted of salt; he smelt her perspiration faintly, clean and disturbing. She laughed and he laughed with her and when the group left him he felt hungry and restless for contact.

Anna Reid answered on the first ring. Ive been trying to get hold of you. They said youd checked out.

Im still around, he said.

She was aggrieved and needed to unload some of it. I thought Id kissed goodbye to my five thousand.

Nope.

Youre supposed to keep in touch.

Here I am, checking in, Wyatt said.

Yeah, two days later. What exactly is going on?

Wyatt tired of it suddenly. Are you in this evening?

A pause. Yes.

Expect me.

He broke the connection. In Roma Street he found a cab rank, twenty cabs lined along the kerb. His driver tossed away a cigarette, fitted his right shoulder against the door, and drove one-handed through the city and onto Coronation Drive. He didnt speak. Riverside lights were reflected in the black water below. A dredge, squat and box-like, lay idle in the centre of the river. Wyatt told the driver to pull into a drive-in bottle shop. He bought a bottle of imported claret and realised that it had been a long time since hed last done this.

Anna Reids house backed into a hill. Wooden slats painted white concealed a large space under the house. Wyatt climbed the steps to a broad verandah. A couple of deckchairs sat outside the floor-to-ceiling windows on either side of the front door. Soft blue and yellow light spilled through the coloured glass surrounds and he saw it darken as he knocked and a shape moved on the other side of the door.

She stepped back to let him in. He glanced around curiously. It was a common Queensland house but hed never been in one like it before. A very short hallway opened onto a large room that took up most of the central part of the house. Doors to bedrooms and the kitchen opened off it. It was a high-ceilinged room, trimmed with wooden panels and arches. An armchair in front of each window, a dining table and chairs at the far end of the room.

She stared at him and he moved first, putting the bottle down and lifting her skirt, rucking it about her waist. Everything after that broke the strain they were feeling. It was necessary, like a cure. But even as he stripped Anna Reid, and bent to touch and taste her, a part of Wyatt was removed and working. Three months ago, when he almost but didnt kill her, shed been trying to steal a dealers cache of heroin and cocaine. He couldnt see track marks in her groin, between her toes, in the crook of her arms, and he supposed that that was a good thing.