Green’s Dictionary of Slang

any form of illicit earnings.

1936		J. Curtis Gilt Kid 121: ‘Must you go, Ken, darling?’ ‘Sure. Got to get the wages, baby.’.
1955		B. Hill Boss of Britain’s Underworld 138: My mob [...] looked forward to some wages. In a way I owed it to them to stay on and graft.
1970		G.F. Newman Sir, You Bastard 86: Perhaps he [i.e. a corrupt policeman] collected wages [...] for nothing more than that.