Kick Back

Forty

Wyatt drove the Hertz Falcon hard along Royal Parade, working it out.

Hobba had been tortured for information, but what did he know that Sugarfoot could use? It wouldn’t occur to Hobba to mention the safe house-as far as he knew, it was finished with. He’d give Pedersen’s address and explain about Rossiter, but Sugarfoot would already know all that.

That left Anna Reid’s involvement. Sugarfoot would know about her by now.

Wyatt spurted through gaps in the traffic. There was a chance that Sugarfoot would be staking out Pedersen’s, but he’d lose patience eventually, or fade away when the cops arrived-as they would, they would check on all Hobba’s associates. Either way, Sugarfoot would go after Anna Reid.

Wyatt turned off near the University and entered a maze of side streets. Anna lived in a small Victorian house on a street of similar houses. He drove by slowly. Her house was in darkness. He drove the Falcon four blocks down, parked, and got out. The misty rain continued to fall. Water drops beaded on his clothes and soon he felt damp and cold for the second time that day. He remembered that he hadn’t eaten. He stopped at a milk-bar, bought a meat pie, coffee and a bar of Swiss chocolate, and gulped them down as he walked back to Anna’s street. The hot food and drink revived him. He told himself the chocolate would give him energy.

He crossed the first intersection bordering the block that Anna’s house was on, then circled around to walk across the intersection at the other end of the block. He looked down Anna’s street each time. He didn’t see any unusual activity.

He fastened the silencer to the Browning and entered the street, holding the gun inside his coat.

He did what he always did in these situations-checked every garden and the back seat of every car, and touch-tested for engine warmth. Three cars were warm, a small Mazda and two Holdens, but that didn’t mean much because there was a rowdy party at a house five doors from Anna’s. A stereo throbbed and several lights were on. Otherwise the street was quiet, almost deadened. The night air seemed to sit, sluggish and heavy, just above the rooftops. It smelt of the city’s toxins. The only movement Wyatt saw in any of the gardens was a cat flattening itself along a fence rail as he passed it.

He didn’t know how good Sugarfoot was at this kind of thing. Sugarfoot might have got lucky with Ivan and Hobba. But he was in none of the cars, and Wyatt couldn’t imagine him waiting outside in the cold, so if he had come he would be inside Anna’s house.

Wyatt had no wish to tackle him in a confined space. He decided to work on his nerves. He began pacing up and down on the footpath outside the house, pausing to gaze up at the front door and the windows on either side of it. He hoped Sugarfoot would notice him. He hoped to rattle him and force his hand. If he could entice him out of the house, even better.

After a few minutes of this he opened the gate in the picket fence and entered the little garden path, slamming the gate behind him. There might have been a twitch at a curtain, he wasn’t sure. He stepped onto the verandah and prowled heavily over its creaking boards, regularly knocking on the front door and both windows.

There was no response but the certainty grew in him that someone was inside the house. He stepped off the verandah and into the garden. He could see another reason why Anna wanted money. Where her neighbours had graduated to bark chips and Japanese maples, she had neglected, weed-clogged garden beds and lumpy gravel paths that went from the front yard to the back. Wyatt circled the house twice, gravel complaining under his shoes.

The next stage called for absolute silence. He wanted the contrast to shake Sugarfoot enough to make a move. He waited for ten minutes, crouched in darkness by the trunk of the fig tree at the back of the house. Anna’s cat came by at one point, purring, flexing his body back and forth against Wyatt’s legs. Wyatt said psst softly and Masher flicked his tail and stalked away.

Wyatt pictured the layout of the house, calculating where Sugarfoot might hide himself. The dark interior, the mocking noises outside, then the silence-would these be enough to drive him into a small, enclosed space, such as a corner in a small room? Would he stay out of the bigger rooms, their large empty spaces filling with imagined shapes and sounds?

Anna hadn’t taken Wyatt to the rear of the house on Tuesday night. He crept up to look. He found further signs of neglect, a sealed porch with bulging, water-stained masonite walls and a narrow, louvred window. Two cement steps led to a screen door, behind which was an ordinary door, the kind with an old-fashioned black lock on the inside. Wyatt opened the screen door a millimetre at a time, avoiding noise from the rusty hinges, then propped it open with a bucket that was next to the gully trap. He crouched to look at the lock on the inner door. The first house he’d ever broken into had had a lock like this. It had been a simple matter to slip newspaper under the gap at the bottom of the door, poke the key with a piece of wire until it fell onto the newspaper on the other side, and slide it out.

But there was no key in Anna’s lock. Wyatt straightened, stood to one side, and turned the heavy black knob. The door was unlocked. He started to open it, pushing gently inwards. A hand-width later he encountered resistance. He released the door knob, lay on his side on the steps, and wound his hand through the gap.

Beer bottles. Sugarfoot had set up a crude alarm.

There seemed to be six bottles, in two rows of three. Wyatt took them one at a time and moved them away from the door. He felt tense, imagining cowboy boots crushing down on his blind fingers.

He got up and again pushed on the door. He felt cold to the bone now, from the long wait and the chilly steps. When there was a sufficient gap he slipped through and immediately to one side.

He was in unrelieved darkness. The gloomy overhang of garden trees, the evening mist, the single frosted louvre window meant that no light penetrated to the back of the house.

He felt his way across the porch by touch, a step at a time, until he came to an inner door. He paused, reconstructing what lay beyond it. He remembered a passage, running the length of the house to the front door, rooms opening onto it on either side.

He stepped to one side to consider his next move, brushed against something soft, and instantly froze. A moment later he let himself breathe out again. It was a rack of coats.

He opened the passage door. He couldn’t avoid a faint scrape and click. Once in the corridor, he kept to the wall where there was less chance of floorboards creaking, and moved to the first door that opened off it. There was more light apparent in the house now. The top half of the front door consisted of two stained-glass panes. Two red, white and gold cockerels glowed faintly at each other in the light from the street. At the bottom was Masher’s cat-flap.

The first door along the corridor was ajar. Anna hadn’t shown him this room, but Wyatt could tell from the smell and a rattling hum that it was the kitchen. He checked it quickly but knew Sugarfoot wouldn’t spend his time in such a distracting room. He moved to the next door. It, too, was open. He expected to find every door open. Sugarfoot would have gone from room to room after he’d got inside the house, opening doors so that he could move about unimpeded.

Wyatt stood at the very edge of the door. It led to a small bedroom-the spare bedroom, judging by the unused feel about it. The air was stale. A solitary single bed and bulky wardrobe occupied most of the space, but what interested Wyatt was that the room had been searched. The mattress lay at an angle on the metal bed frame and drawers had been emptied onto it. He waited, willing his senses to pick up Sugarfoot crouching there in a corner. He was conscious that he had the light behind him, that all Sugarfoot had to do was aim and fire. But he couldn’t afford to ignore this room before going on to the others. He had to check them all.

He lowered himself to the floor and began to pull himself into the room. His body scraped faintly on the dusty carpet. When he was well inside he edged first to the left and then to the right of the bed. By now he was in shadowy regions and his eyes had adjusted to the light.

Sugarfoot was not in the room.

Wyatt got up and moved silently back to the door. He stood where he could see along the corridor. The next doorway was not quite opposite this one.

He crossed quickly and entered in a rolling dive that took him across the room to the shelter of an armchair. Nothing. He was in Anna’s sitting room, next to the rug where they had made love. He could smell her perfume, but her three-seater couch was on its back and the armchairs had been slashed. The VCR/television unit had been tampered with. The digital clock was flashing, frozen at 19.43. He searched quickly. No-one.

That left the two front rooms, her bedroom and the dining room. Wyatt moved along to the end of the corridor, his back flattened to the wall. He stepped away from the wall, turned to face the front of the house, and heard the sound that saved his life: Masher butting through the cat-flap. Wyatt jerked back against the wall in fright, heard shots behind him, and felt a burning pain.

There were three shots, silenced, sounding like muffled coughs. He tumbled through the bedroom door and rolled across the carpet at the foot of the low-slung, queen-size bed.

He’d been grazed at waist level. The bullet had punched through his jacket and shirt and scored a furrow in the flesh under his rib cage. He lay winded on the floor. Blood was oozing into his shirt.

He’d been set up beautifully. Sugarfoot must have been hiding in the dark porch, waiting for him to pass through to the main part of the house where he would be framed, a perfect target, against the light filtering through the glass in the front door. And Sugarfoot had gone for the torso, grouping his shots at trunk level where he could be more certain of a hit.

Wyatt rolled over and onto his feet. He stood close to the edge of the door frame, giving himself a view of part of the corridor. Sugarfoot would no longer be there, but Wyatt fired five rapid shots with the silenced Browning. He heard the 9 mm slugs strike the wall at a shallow angle and deflect to the back reaches of the house. He kept his eyes closed, avoiding the muzzle flashes that cause temporary blindness.

It was no better than a delaying tactic, but it would keep Sugarfoot away and give himself time to think. He wouldn’t play a waiting game this time. He moved to the window. Light cotton curtains were drawn over it. He parted them, turned the window latch, pushed up the bottom pane, and climbed out.

He left the window wide open and crouched on the verandah, looking back into the room. The party down the street was very noisy now, an insistent pounding of bass notes and rowdy shouts. Sugarfoot would notice the increase in sound, assume that Wyatt had escaped through the window, and come to investigate.

Wyatt waited and listened, the long barrel of the Browning resting on the window sill, trained at the bedroom doorway. Several minutes went by. Suddenly something, a shoe, flew into the bedroom. Wyatt ignored it; Sugarfoot was trying to draw his fire, place him by the muzzle flash of his gun. Then, almost immediately, a shape stepped into the doorway.

Wyatt closed his eyes again and snapped off three shots. It was not blind firing: he had fixed the image of Sugarfoot, crouched in a shooter’s stance, gun held straight out in a two-handed grip. Wyatt trusted snap-shooting, knowing that instinct made him point straight, knowing too that he would lose his sense of field and perception if he looked too long at the target.

He heard his shots thud home. He saw the arms fly out, the gun drop, the body spin and fall.

He also saw that it wasn’t Sugarfoot Younger.