Pay Dirt

TWENTY-TWO

Letterman hated the country. His suit was wrong, so were his shoes, and he’d had to park several kilometres short of the farm and go the rest of the way on foot. He’d bought the car that morning, soon after Snyder had called him on the radio. It was a clapped-out Valiant that had set him back $1900. He should have spent another hundred and bought some suitable bush gear as well.

But he’d found Wyatt. He climbed through a wire fence and cut back across a paddock to the Valiant. A mistake, he soon realised. The ground was full of traps for the kind of shoes he was wearing. They slipped off the grass tussocks and twisted on concealed stones and rabbit holes. Grass seeds hooked themselves to his socks and trousers. Now that he’d found Wyatt all he wanted to do was go back and wash the dirt off. He badly needed a Quick-eze.

The only accommodation available in Vimy Ridge had been an on-site caravan in the tourist park. Snyder had called him there at one-thirty saying he only had a moment, he was supposed to be doing a band search on his radio.

‘Where are you?’ Letterman had wanted to know.

‘We’re camped in this empty farmhouse.’

‘How the fuck am I supposed to find you? I told you to come in and get me. I didn’t give you that two thousand for nothing.’

‘Settle down. One of the others is going in. You can follow him out here.’

‘Wyatt?’

‘Not Wyatt, a guy called Tobin.’ Snyder described Tobin. ‘He’s picking something up at the hardware. The same ute that picked me up yesterday.’

‘I’ll find him.’

‘I tell you what,’ Snyder said, ‘it’s a sweet job.’

Letterman didn’t care about the job. As a concession to Snyder he’d agreed to hit Wyatt when the job was over; what he cared about was how easy Wyatt would be.

‘Tell me about Wyatt.’

‘He’s hard to read. He’s all brain and nerve reflexes. On Thursday I wouldn’t try announcing myself if I were you. I’d just go in and pop him.’

‘What about this Tobin bloke?’

‘He’s a moron. Wyatt’s the only one with a gun. Apart from me.’

There had been a pause. Letterman said, ‘Apart from you. How did you get a gun?’

Snyder had been cocky about it. ‘Brought it with me. What I do is I strip it and hide the parts with the radio gear so no one knows what it is, then reassemble it later.’

‘Very clever. I hope you’re not thinking of popping Wyatt. He’s strictly mine.’

‘It’s sort of insurance,’ Snyder said. ‘You know, in case a certain person decides he might try and get out of paying me what he owes me, kind of thing.’

Letterman had gestured irritably at the wall of his caravan. ‘Tell me about the farmhouse. I can’t get too close behind this Tobin character.’

‘Stop when you come to a tin hut in the corner of a paddock. The farm’s off to the right about three or four k’s. But we got a deal, you know. You don’t pop Wyatt till after the job.’

‘Shut up. All I’ll be doing is checking out the place. I have to know where to go on Thursday while you’re out doing the job.’

‘You better time it right Thursday. If Wyatt sees you he’ll kill you, no question. If he sees a car shouldn’t be there, he could jack it in.’

‘Yeah, yeah,’ Letterman said. ‘Listen, what about the locals?’

‘You’ll be right,’ Snyder said. ‘It’s the only farmhouse along there.’ He’d sniggered a little. ‘Tell you what, you could wear one of your suits. If you meet anyone on the road you could tell them you’re from the bank. They’ll think you’ve come to repossess and they’ll piss off and leave you alone. I like the grey one myself.’

Letterman thought about Snyder’s crack now as he stumbled across the paddock. Snyder would be the first to go, no question.

After breaking radio transmission Letterman had left the caravan and gone to look for Tobin. He’d picked up the big hoon at the hardware place, waited while he made a phone call at the post office and shopped at the Four Square supermarket, then settled in a kilometre behind him on the road north from Vimy Ridge. They travelled on the bitumen for several kilometres then turned onto a dirt road. Letterman had hated it. Tobin’s utility stirred up thick dust so it was like driving through brown smoke and clouds of it had poured in around the Valiant’s pissy door seals. He’d sneezed and cursed and hoped to Christ he didn’t have a head-on smash with someone coming from the opposite direction.

Thirty minutes later he’d thought he’d lost Tobin, but then he saw the tin-hut corner. A narrow, pitted track ran off to the right of it. He had parked there and crossed the paddocks in his unsuitable shoes and seen the farmhouse in the distance.

And now he was back at the Valiant, his discomfort forgotten. By Thursday afternoon all this would be over.