TEN

Snyder could see that Eddie Loman was hedging. Loman wouldn’t meet his eye, and he kept rubbing his gammy leg. Snyder waited, testing him, then said, ‘Aren’t you missing something?’

‘What?’

‘There’s a fucking contract out on him.’

Loman’s face twisted. ‘You heard.’

‘Course I fucking heard. Twenty grand to the guy that fingers him.’

Loman continued to rub his leg. The movement pulled his trousers up, revealing pink plastic skin. He’d lost the leg ten years ago in a collision between a getaway car and a divisional van. Maybe he still gets ghost feelings in it, Snyder thought.

‘I mean,’ Snyder continued, ‘you begin to wonder why Wyatt’s putting an outfit together if it means all these guys are going to know where he is. You’d have to be mad, right?’

He watched Loman pour beer into their glasses and put the bottles under the coffee table. There were three bottles there now, Melbourne Bitter, resting on their sides. Loman had neat habits. His living quarters behind his hardware supply business looked to be tacked together from mismatching building materials and fire-sale furniture, but there wasn’t a speck of dust or a bad smell in the place.

Loman swallowed beer from his glass. When he put the glass down again it was fair and square on a coaster with an Aborigine painted on it. ‘Actually,’ he said, ‘I don’t think Wyatt knows.’

‘We come to the crux of the matter. You could’ve told him when he rang last night, but you didn’t.’

Loman looked up. ‘Wyatt knows how to look after himself.’

‘Cut it out, Eddie. You were going to charge him a finder’s fee for lining me up for this job of his, then dob him in for the twenty thousand. Am I right? Bit of a cunt act.’

Snyder was enjoying himself. He didn’t care much for Loman. Loman supplied experts and equipment to people who had big jobs on, and Snyder had got some work that way sometimes, but you couldn’t actually like the bloke. That grey face and smoker’s cough, the sense of decay on the inside. Plus, Snyder didn’t like being cheated. He didn’t like it that Loman was intending to earn himself an extra twenty thousand without cutting anyone else in on it.

‘Eh? Bit of a shitty thing to do to the old Wyatt? Not to mention the danger to yours truly. What if this hired gun comes after Wyatt when I’m in the firing line, eh? Answer me that.’

Loman’s face worked in worry. ‘I would’ve told him. I thought, you know, this job of his is out in the bush somewhere, he’ll be safe there till it’s over. Then I’d give him the word, kind of thing.’

Snyder nodded. ‘Oh, right, I’m with you now. You’re not after the twenty grand reward.’

‘Not me. Wyatt’s-’ Loman struggled ‘-well you don’t exactly call Wyatt a mate, do you, but he’s a good client, kind of thing.’

Snyder’s loose face seemed to tighten and he leaned forward. ‘How much?’

‘Pardon?’

‘What’s he paying you? What am I worth?’

Loman rubbed at his leg. ‘Fifteen hundred.’

‘What’s the job?’

‘He didn’t say, except it’s big.’

‘And there’s a radio he wants jammed. Did he say what I get paid?’

‘A percentage. Not a fee, a percentage of the take.’

Snyder grinned then. ‘Correct me if I’m wrong-you only get fifteen hundred bucks, I stand to get tens of thousands. I can see how a bloke might feel a bit put out about that. He might want to grab a bit more. Not you, though.’

A flush showed under Loman’s grey skin. ‘I didn’t know you and Wyatt were such good mates.’

‘We’re not. I’m a professional, he’s a professional. We just do our jobs. We don’t get greedy, rock the boat, work behind another bloke’s back.’

‘You’ve made your fucking point,’ Loman said, leaning back in his chair. The fabric was slippery brown vinyl and it seemed to fart under him. He shifted again as if to demonstrate that it was the chair, not him.

‘I mean,’ Snyder went on, ‘Wyatt’s good value. He does the right thing by blokes like you and me. You’d have to be a real bastard to shop him to some hired gun down from Sydney.’

‘All right, okay?’ Loman said. ‘You’ve made your point.’

‘That would be a cunt act,’ Snyder said.


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