Pay Dirt (2 page)

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

* * * *

At
three oclock 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 didnt know what they wanted
but he did know his prints and description were now on file somewhere, so he
wasnt going to stick around to find out. His gun and most of his cash were at
Leahs so he wasnt bothered about the few things in the locker next to his
bunk. He stepped back to where he couldnt 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 whove overstayed their visas.

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

* * * *

FOUR

Im
good for it, Ray, you know that, Tub Venables said.

Raymond Trigg screwed up his eyes.
He was lighting a cigarette and the smoke got him, every time. I know you are,
Tub. The question is, when?

The car dealer and the security van
driver were in the front bar of the Belcowie Hotel, a dim, beery room with
laminex surfaces and cracked brown linoleum on the buckled floor. It was two-thirty
and theyd been there since one oclock, Trigg nursing small glasses of
Southwark Light while Venables soaked up pints of draught. The Chileans would
be crossing the road with their pay packets soon, but meanwhile Trigg had to
keep Tub Venables from falling apart. You got to be more responsible, my son,
he said. Five thousand bucksits a lot of money.

Interest, Venables said
mournfully. He sweated when he was scared. He was also leaning on the bar
cloth, getting his elbows wet. Ive paid back the principal, but you keep
charging me interest on the interest. Ill never catch up.

Thats how it works, Tub. Five
thousand bucks principal costs you five hundred a week interest. The five
thousand has to be paid back in a lump sumlike you cant pay five hundred
interest and a hundred off the principal or something. I told you that at the
beginning. You shouldnt have borrowed so much.

Venabless face creased fatly in
cunning. I could just stop paying.

Ah, come on, Tub. You know what
happens if you do that.

Venables looked gloomily back into
his beer glass. He didnt like Trigg. Trigg was a short, scrawny bloke who
tried to compensate for it with his moleskins, Akubra hat and elastic-sided
boots, as if he owned a sheep station instead of a car yard. But he knew it
wouldnt do to underrate the man, for Trigg also ran the local SP,
loan-sharking and distribution rackets, and with the downturn in the economy hed
become mean and touchy. Hold out on him and hed send in Happy Whelan, his
mechanic, a mindless big thug whod break your neck as soon as look at you.

You drink too much, Trigg said. You
want to watch it. That and the horses and fast women, Tub, youll keel over
before youre fifty. Ill never get my dough then. He poked the fat man. Joke,
Tub, for Christs sake.

Venables looked up. All I want is a
bit more time. I dont want fucking Happy knocking on my door.

Ray Triggs bloodless lips stretched
in a smile. Youre sounding like a cracked record, old son. He looked at his
watch. Shouldnt you get back to work? Your mates going to be pissed off. I
mean, someone could snatch the payroll.

Never happen, Venables said,
easing his buttocks off the bar stool.

He stood there, watching Trigg climb
down. He felt a dangerous desire to lift the little man under the arms and
deposit him on the floor. He hated Triggs staved-in face, the neat little
rabbit teeth on his lower lip, the elevator heels.

Trigg seemed to catch his thoughts.
He looked vicious suddenly. The vans are booked in two weeks from yesterday,
am I right?

Venables nodded. Triggs garage in
Goyder had the servicing contract for the Steelgard vans.

Pay me a thousand then, no less,
Trigg said.

He turned and crossed the room,
nodding at the licensee and the only other customer, a farmer sneaking a quick
beer.

Somethings going on over the road,
the licensee said.

Trigg paused. The licensee was
wiping glasses and looking out the window at the camp beyond the vine-covered
pub verandah.

The farmer turned to look. So did
Trigg and Venables. They watched, fascinated. There were white cars and vans
everywhere and knots of policemen struggling with angry construction workers.

Its a raid, Trigg said.

As they watched, a tall figure loped
unnoticed from a corner shed, scaled the fence as if it were nothing, and
dropped this side of it. He seemed to land on the run. There was something
skilled and resolute in the way he moved.

Venables and Trigg pushed through
the old-fashioned swing doors. The road was empty. Shouts and struggling
continued inside the camp, but the man had disappeared.

Then they heard a car start up. It
entered the road in a controlled skid, fishtailed in the gravel, and sped past
them, the engine working hard. It was a big, dusty Ford and they had an
impression of intensity and jutting angles in the man behind the wheel.

Trigg, seeming to swell, stamped his
little heels.
Bastard.
Hes taken the LTD. He shook his fist at the
receding dust cloud. Youre history, pal.

* * * *

FIVE

The
keys were in the ignition of Triggs LTD so Wyatt took that rather than waste
time hot-wiring one of the rust buckets in the used-car lot. He headed north
from Belcowie, driving the big car punishingly, feeling it bounce and shudder
on the torn-up roads. He lost control at one point, spinning around in gravel
and slamming against a strainer post. It slowed him down. The side panel had
buckled, scraping the front tyre, and he limped into Terowie, a small town on
the Broken Hill road. General MacArthur had stopped there once, in 1942; that
was all Wyatt knew about the place.

Within five minutes he had stolen
another car. He drove south this time, keeping to the main road. In Riverton he
stole a third car. The closer he got to Adelaide, the more civilised the
landscape seemed to become. The towns were closer together, the farms less
wind- and sun-blighted. But he was afraid of roadblocks. At Tarlee he headed
across to Nuriootpa and wound through the small towns, wineries and sleepy
tourist roads of the Barossa Valley. Then, hoping theyd think he was aiming
for Melbourne, he turned south-east and drove to Murray Bridge. He dumped the
third car there and caught an Adelaide train, getting off in the Adelaide
Hills.

He walked the final ten kilometres
to Leahs house, taking small back roads which were choked on either side with
blackberry bushes. Soon his heart stopped hammering. The hills reminded him of
the small farm on the Victorian coast which hed been forced to abandon a few
weeks earlier. There were the same orchards and fat white sheep, the same
geometric patterns of roads, paddocks, hedges and townships. Only the sea was
missing. He breathed in and out, almost enjoying himself.

He let the tension run out of his
body and started to think about the chinks hed identified in the Steelgard
operation. Wyatt didnt take foolish risks. Having a shot at the Belcowie
payroll now would be risky but he thought he could make it a calculated risk.
He acknowledged the element of frustration in his motives, but frustration wasnt
an emotion he had much time for.

Wyatt was forty years old.
Respectable men his age were marking time until their retirement. The hard men
his age were dead or in gaol. Wyatt was different. Hed never been burdened by
doubt, uncertainty or personal ties. He worked from an emotionless base. He
could cut to the essentials of a job and stamp his cold hard style on it.

The essentials of this job were
clear-the Steelgard operation was vulnerable, at least on the Belcowie run.
The guards were careless and lazy, the delivery itself unvarying and insecure.
Hed have to change the how and the where, though. Belcowie and the Brava camp
would be in a state of tension for the next few weeks.

A car changed down to first gear
behind him and began to labour up the hill. He stepped off the road and into a
clump of trees. The vehicle came into view, a faded green Land Rover with dogs
and fencing wire in the back.

When it had gone, he continued
walking. Ten minutes later he came to the little town where Leah lived. It was
called Heindorf and revealed the German influence in its cottagey stone houses,
painted wood trims and European trees.

He stood at the end of her street
and crouched as if to tie his shoelaces. He couldnt see anything that shouldnt
be there. The cars were the same ones hed seen a few weeks ago. No one was
about. He stood up, entered the street, and walked to the end. Leahs house was
halfway along. Everything looked all right. He turned the corner. The street
backed onto a small pine forest. He climbed through a wire fence, circled
behind the first row of trees, and stopped at the rear of Leahs house. He
checked for life in the neighbouring houses. No windows were visible, only
fences and backyard fruit trees. It was early evening. Here and there a light
was on.

Leah was squatting with a trowel at
the edge of a strawberry patch when he cleared her back fence. He landed neatly
and crouched, as still as a spooked cat in the twilight. She didnt seem
surprised to see him; she merely stabbed the trowel into the black soil and
stood up.

It was on the six oclock news,
she said, brushing her hands on her jeans.

Immigration?

She nodded. They detained eight of
Jorges Chileans.

Anything about me?

Only that one man had escaped in a
stolen car, Leah said.

Then she looked bitter. I had to
tell my girls to pull out. The feds were getting nosy. She shook her head. It
was a goldmine while it lasted.

She was getting depressed. Wyatt
knew her well enough to read the signs. Shed sometimes fall into a fatalistic
blackness of spirit that might be triggered by some reversal but was never
entirely absent from her makeup. She thought of her past as a yoke. Shed been
on the game for years, and now she ran girls whod once been like her. She
believed that shed be happy when she broke out of that pattern. She needed
luck, shed say sometimes. Luck and money.

Ive been thinking, Wyatt said.

Thats what youre good at, Wyatt.

He let it go. He said, I want
another crack at the payroll. I need your help.

He knew that she welcomed action
when she got the blues. He watched her. Normally he thought of her as having
the kind of grave beauty that didnt need a smile or other signs of life, but
now she grinned. Her nose wrinkled. It altered her entire face.

* * * *

SIX

The
day started badly for Trigg and it got worse. First there was an article in
Cosmopolitan.
Hed gone into Cut and Dried for a body-wave, add a few centimetres to
his height, and he was under the dryer, flipping pages, when he came to Short
MenAre They Sexy? Raelene had yanked him out before he finished the article
but not before hed read that because Alan Ladd was so short, Hollywood had
shot all his love scenes with him standing on a box.

Then when Trigg walked back down the
main street of Goyder, two people made cracks about the LTD getting stolen in
Belcowie the day before, and his reflection in the shop windows showed that his
body-wave was full of air, standing up from his head like it was in shock. His
cuban-heeled elastic-sided boots seemed to expand to the size of footballs on
his feet. He had the feeling the whole of Goyder was laughing at him. It got so
bad that he stopped and bought a tub of Brylcreem, and back at Trigg Motors he
plastered his hair down and saw clients without getting up from behind his
desk.

But hed asked the mayor to drop by
after lunch. Hed have to stand up then there was a lot at stake. She arrived
at two-fifty, twenty minutes late, and he took her on a tour of the showrooms,
service bays and car lots of Trigg Motors, calling her your worship.

Then he took her back to his office.
Coffee? he said. Tea? Something stronger? I got sherry, gin and tonic, rum
and coke?

The mayors cats-arse mouth
tightened. She seemed to sniff. Im afraid I have to get back to chambers,
she said.