Pay Dirt

THREE

Now, drying his hands and watching the camp dog cock its leg on the Steelgard van, Wyatt knew how the snatch would go. He would hit as soon as the money was unloaded and the pay office more or less unattended. Any later and he’d be dealing with armed men and a hundred and fifty pay packets. He had seven days to put a good team together and stash some cars between Belcowie and Adelaide.

‘Hey, gringo, lunch.’

It was the repair shop foreman. His name was Carlos and he was standing with the other Chileans, waiting for Wyatt.

But Wyatt was concentrating. He stared at the Chileans as if they weren’t there. The Chileans shrugged and turned away and set out across the dusty yard to the canteen.

Wyatt looked at his watch. Fifteen minutes later he left the shed and took a roundabout route past the site office and the front gate. He was still concentrating, fixing in his mind the timing and the geography of the town and the camp. Leah’s girls worked from caravans a few hundred metres from the men’s dormitories, in a corner of the camp screened from the town by peeling gum trees. The boundary fence went along the eastern edge of the town and the town itself straggled north and south for three kilometres. After that it was nothing but dry farmland and distant hills.

His attention was caught by a movement in a dusty lot opposite the camp. A month ago the lot had been vacant, and it would be vacant again when the camp moved on, but now it was a branch of Trigg Motors, a struggling car dealership based in Goyder. Half a dozen used Holdens were gathering dust under a string of sun-faded plastic flags, and a caravan annexe bellied in the wind. Trigg himself was there today, a short, ferrety man dressed like a grazier, pasting a sale sticker to the windscreen of a 1973 Kingswood. Trigg was always there on payday, when the South Americans had money in their pockets. Apparently he enjoyed haggling with them. Wyatt turned away. Trigg would see the snatch next week but he was no hassle.

Wyatt’s next step was to get a fix on the driver and the guard. Just as he was approaching the canteen the driver emerged. Wyatt saw a big, soft, fleshy man, with large worried features crammed together on a small head. The name tag on the uniform said ‘Venables’. Wyatt turned, watching him go. Venables grunted as he walked. He looked tight and knock-kneed, his vast behind stretching his trousers.

Wyatt had no interest in Venables, beyond the man’s potential to foil a holdup, but then Venables did a curious thing: he didn’t go to the pay office but out the front gate, across the gravel road and into Trigg’s yard. He conferred with Trigg for a few seconds, then both men left the lot and walked along the road to the pub on the corner.

Wyatt heard a clatter behind him. Carlos emerged from the canteen. He tapped his watch and grinned when he saw Wyatt. ‘Fifteen minutes, okay, gringo?’

Wyatt grinned back at him. ‘Si seсor,’ he said, and he went into the canteen to get a look at the guard.

At three o’clock it all came apart.

Although the pipe-laying and trench-digging crews were back in camp and the showers were running hot and men were lining up outside the pay office, Wyatt was still in the repair shop, stripping a gearbox. Permanently suspicious and wary, he was the first to notice the upset. It started with the unmarked cars and vans. There were ten of them, all white. Half entered the camp, the other half took up positions around the perimeter fence.

Wyatt didn’t know what they wanted but he did know his prints and description were now on file somewhere, so he wasn’t going to stick around to find out. His gun and most of his cash were at Leah’s so he wasn’t bothered about the few things in the locker next to his bunk. He stepped back to where he couldn’t be seen and watched as thirty men got out of the cars and vans. There were plainclothes among the uniforms, but what interested him most were the insignias on the uniforms. These cops were federal, not state.

Then a group of Chileans outside the pay office made a useless run for the gate. A scuffle broke out. Soon all the cops were involved.

Illegals, Wyatt thought. Fucking Jorge has been employing guys who’ve overstayed their visas.

He crouched in the shadows. There were a couple of Kings woods across the road in Trigg’s yard. Wyatt could hot wire Kingswoods with his eyes closed.