Kick Back

Thirty-Two

The word was out on the street now, so all Bauer could do was wait. He spent the morning in his workshop, tuned to the easy listening station, humming along to Neil Diamond, Frank Sinatra, Liza Minnelli, and sometimes someone a bit racier, like Joan Armatrading.

Humming helped him to concentrate. On the bench in front of him was a packet of.38 calibre hollow-nose cartridges. Taking them five at a time, he prised the lead noses out of their brass jackets and upended them in a small vice. He filled the hollows with mercury from a dropper, sealed them with wax melted on a bunsen burner, and fitted them in the brass jackets again.

He might never use the cartridges, but he liked to have them ready. He’d seen the damage they could do to a kaffir’s back, the mercury forcing its way through the nose and spreading out, causing a massive wound and certain death from blood loss if nothing else. Bauer hummed along with Barry Manilow, his fingers deft with the little cartridges.

There was a telephone on the bench. He was patient. Someone would bite, hooked by ten thousand dollars.

He felt secure in here. There was no window. The furniture consisted of the work bench, a chair, a planet lamp, filing cabinets, shelves and a small wardrobe. His rifles and target pistols were behind glass in a cabinet on one of the walls. The environment was atmosphere controlled, and Bauer cleaned and oiled his guns regularly. Shelves on a second wall held telescopic sights, tinted shooting glasses, earmuffs, gun oil, rags, brushes and boxes of ammunition. On the wall above the work bench, beneath ordnance survey maps, was a shelf of manuals and back issues of Soldier of Fortune.

The wardrobe was next to the airtight door. In it were the jackets and trousers he wore for hunting and shooting-range practice. Some of the clothing was black, some khaki, some in camouflage shading. He kept rubber-and-canvas boots at the bottom. The drawers held belts, webbing, clips, black skivvies, T-shirts, balaclavas and holsters. Familiar gear, similar to the gear he’d worn fifteen years ago, hunting terrorists across the border into Mozambique. These days he bought his stuff from a mail-order firm which had a booth at the Soldier of Fortune convention in Las Vegas.

The phone rang at midday. A woman’s voice, drowsy with recent sleep, said, ‘Are you the one offering the reward?’

‘Reward,’ Bauer said flatly.

The voice grew flustered and uncertain. ‘You know, for information.’

‘About what?’

‘About some robbery. A safe.’

‘Could be.’

The voice was silent. Then, ‘This reward-is it the real thing?’

‘If the information is useful.’

‘How will I know if it’s useful?’

‘I’ll know,’ Bauer said. ‘Who are you? Where are you? What do you know?’

‘I’m not stupid enough to tell you over the phone, now am I? I want to see the colour of your money first.’

‘Where and when?’ Bauer’s tone was quick and contemptuous and it rattled the woman on the other end. She gave him an address in Fitzroy, for two o’clock.

The line went dead. Bauer resumed work on the cartridges. After a while he began to hum, smiling because he knew the address. He didn’t know what it all meant yet, but he soon would.

He finished the cartridges, packed them away, and decided to get ready. He was mindful of what might be ahead. Whatever it was, it would be close and quick and it needed to be quiet.

He opened the gun cabinet and took out the.22 pistol. With this gun Bauer was capable of placing six rounds in a ten-centimetre grouping across a cardboard chest at twenty metres, but today would be close-range work and that’s what the.22 was best suited for. Also, the gun had no history and the little slugs he used would tear apart in the body and be useless as ballistics evidence. He checked the clip: full. Unfortunately, the wood grip was too oily from all his good care so he wrapped it in rubber bands so it wouldn’t shift in his hand. He slapped the gun from one palm to the other. Left or right, he was good with both.

Then a silencer, a shoulder holster and his short black quilted coat. He checked the mirror: nothing showed. Bauer believed there were too many cowboys in his game. If not selling absurd T-shirts they were lugging around Colt Python.357 magnums weighing 47 ounces. After a while they got tempted, tried a thrill killing or a hold-up, but they always got caught, always held onto their guns or failed to clean their prints off the shells they ejected at the scene.

He put on lightweight combat boots, locked the door behind him and went to the kitchen to wait. As usual, Placida was there, listening to a cassette of wailing love songs of the Philippines. It was a harsh white room, the neon strip-lighting cold and bright in the ceiling. A clock ticked on the wall. Placida looked up as he entered, saw how he was dressed, and paled.

Bauer watched her. ‘Come here,’ he said. His voice was like gravel crushing.

She approached, her eyes cast down. ‘You know what to do,’ Bauer said, pushing down on her head.