Pay Dirt

ELEVEN

Letterman did contract work for the Sydney Outfit now but he still looked like a cop. There was no need for him to wear grey suits any more, but he felt wrong in anything else. He was tall, solid and punchy-looking, an effect that was ruined if he put on jeans or corduroys and a casual shirt. He felt he looked soft in clothes like that-like a suburban bank manager on a Saturday morning.

He threaded a navy blue tie under his collar and leaned toward the mirror to knot it. He was indifferent to the hairs in his ears and nostrils. They were indicators of his vigour and perpetual anger. So, somehow, was his balding skull. He remained close to the mirror. He was in a motel room in Melbourne that might have been designed for midgets. The mirror was too low, the bed too short, and he always had to duck his head to get it wet in the shower stall.

Although he felt relaxed, his face looked tired and unimpressed. When he was working, it looked alert and unimpressed. He was forty-six, doing what he did best, and had never felt better. The Outfit paid him a retainer that equalled his old detective inspector’s salary, plus a flat fee for each contracted hit. There was $50,000 coming his way when he found Wyatt and knocked him off. The Outfit wanted Wyatt bad. Wyatt had hit them where it hurt, killing their Melbourne head and destroying their biggest Melbourne operation.

Not that he’d be easy to find. Letterman was approaching this as if he were still a cop. For a start, the trail was cold. Most breaks in a case come in the first twenty-four hours, but Wyatt had dropped out of sight six weeks ago. Apparently he was a pro, so he’d avoid his usual haunts; in fact, he was probably interstate somewhere, keeping his head down. But he’d caused so much heat, done so much damage, aroused so much media and police attention, that the Outfit hadn’t dared send Letterman to Melbourne before now.

Other factors were working against him. First, Wyatt didn’t want to be found, meaning he’d cover his tracks, use forged ID or alter his appearance. He wouldn’t be found wandering the streets like some old pensioner who’d lost his marbles. Second, Letterman couldn’t call in favours from other cops any more. Third, the Outfit wasn’t very popular here in Melbourne. In the four days since his arrival, Letterman had been spreading the word around, $20,000 to the one who fingers Wyatt, but so far not a whisper. Wyatt was a Melbourne boy too, so that probably had something to do with it.

But the twenty thousand dollars would work eventually. Letterman knew how it was with police work-ten per cent detection, ninety per cent fluke. He’d arrested crack dealers who’d traded in the VW for a Mercedes sports, wife murderers who’d given themselves up, burglars at the scene, holdup men who’d been dobbed in for the reward. Letterman was patient. Twenty thousand was a lot of bread.

Other things were in his favour. Unless they were incredibly loyal in Melbourne, Wyatt wouldn’t be aware that the Outfit was after him. He’d be expecting cops, not contract hitmen. And crims don’t change their spots. Wyatt would surface sooner or later. He’d want to pull another job. He would need money soon, and he was a big-score crim, the kind who puts together a gang, and you can’t stay out of sight when you do that. Until then Letterman would take it step by step, like a cop. The usual routine: where was Wyatt last seen? Who saw him last? Who are his known associates?

He put on his suit coat and left the motel. The other thing about a suit is, you can hide a gun under the coat and get at it easily, where you can’t if you’re wearing a shirt or a jumper.

His Avis Fairmont was parked outside the motel room, its long snout overhanging the tyre-stop. He made the usual checks before getting in. He noted that there was no one in the space behind the front seats, then opened the boot lid gingerly, checking for wires before opening it fully and searching for a mercury electrode. Finally he examined the driver’s seat for pressure bombs and checked for wires under the bonnet. The car was clean. He put on the black horn-rims he wore for driving, got in and backed the Fairmont out of the motel carpark.

He left St Kilda and drove down the Nepean Highway to Frankston. There he cut across to Shoreham and found the post office. It was attended by an elderly, watery-eyed man. ‘I work for the Courier Mail in Brisbane,’ Letterman said. ‘I’m doing a story on the gangster who lived near here.’

‘You mean Warner?’ the postmaster asked.

Letterman nodded. He’d been reading back issues of the Melbourne newspapers and knew Wyatt had used that name. He’d also obtained photocopies of the police identikit picture. He pulled one out and showed it to the postmaster. ‘This him?’

They both examined it. According to the police artist, Warner had a thin face, loose shortish hair and bleak features.

‘Not a bad likeness,’ the postmaster said. ‘I tell you what, we were flabbergasted. Seemed a nice sort of a bloke, kept to himself, kind of thing. No one here had a clue.’

Letterman put the picture away. Everyone had a clue now, though. It was quite a story, front-page stuff. Gang warfare, the headlines said. Organised crime elements from Sydney battling it out with local criminals, several of whom had been shot dead. Police were looking for a man who called himself variously Warner, Lake and Wyatt, last seen at his farm on the Mornington Peninsula.

‘I’m putting together a story about the hidden lives of people like him,’ Letterman said.

The postmaster pursed his lips and looked out of the window. Letterman wasn’t perturbed. The guy was trying to say he was canny, you couldn’t put anything over on him. ‘A Brisbane paper, you say?’

‘That’s right,’ Letterman said.

‘You heard about it up there?’

The way to this bloke’s heart was pride. ‘I’ll say,’ Letterman said. ‘It was a bloody big story.’

The postmaster beamed, then looked regretful. ‘There’s not much I can tell you, though.’

‘For starters, did he get any mail? Readers like to know about that kind of thing. You know, letters from girlfriends, letters from overseas, letters from interstate, stuff like that.’

The postmaster shook his head. ‘Like I told the police, he might’ve posted letters, but he never received any. People don’t write like they used to. They use the phone these days.’

Letterman thanked him and got directions to Wyatt’s farm. The house was sealed up. All the grass needed cutting. The dirt track showed no sign that vehicles had been along it recently. Wyatt is long gone, Letterman thought, and he won’t be coming back. Letterman said as much to a neighbour, an angry-looking farmer. ‘You’d be mad, wouldn’t you,’ the man demanded, ‘to try coming back? We were pretty upset about the whole thing. If he did show himself now, no one would give him the time of day.’

Letterman got back into the Fairmont. It had been a wasted trip, a long shot that hadn’t paid off, and he’d stepped in cow shit and pulled a thread of his suit on a barbed wire fence. He hated the bush, didn’t know why anyone would want to live there.

Frustration brought on his indigestion, and during the long drive back to Melbourne he let himself reflect upon the past couple of years. They’d said he could make Commissioner one day. He’d come up through the ranks, and he’d done law and accounting part-time in his younger days. He’d had his own detail in the vice squad, and been second in command in the drug squad.

But you don’t get anywhere waiting for information, so he’d built himself a good network of snouts, turned a blind eye where necessary, picked up the odd suitcase from a station locker.

Then came the whispers; that he’d corrupted junior officers, made deals with underworld figures, assaulted witnesses. He faced them all down. Then he was charged: conspiracy to murder, conspiracy to pervert the course of justice, attempted bribery. They didn’t have a shred of evidence, their witnesses suddenly got cold feet or went on holiday, and Letterman had walked, but eighteen months ago the police tribunal had sustained five out of eight misconduct charges against him and he was given the boot.

He’d cleaned out his desk and gone home. That evening the phone had rung. It was the Outfit. You scratched our back in the past, they said, so we scratched yours, dropped a few quiet words in a few ears. So how about it? Want to continue doing what you’re good at?

As he drove through Moorabbin Letterman pictured again the hate on the faces of the cops who’d tried to put him away. He fished a Quick-eze out of his pocket and chewed on it. His belly rumbled and the pain eased. What he most liked about this job, apart from being his own boss, was there were no more logbooks, no more manuals, no more working by the book.

St Kilda Junction was coming up. Letterman crossed into the left lane, ready to turn into Barkly Street and his motel. Change his suit, clean the shit off his shoes, then back on the streets.

Known associates. When everything had blown up in Melbourne six weeks ago, three names surfaced: Wyatt, Hobba, Pedersen. Hobba was dead. Wyatt was the reason for all this in the first place. That left Pedersen.