Chopper Unchopped (114 page)

She worked at the Caballero Night Club, so through no fault of my own I found myself drawn in to an area and a world that was right out of my league. Melbourne is made up of gangs, crews and teams, all interconnected through blood, marriage, loyalty, friendship and business. One half of Melbourne has always been at war with the other half, and the endless bloodshed and violence between interconnected crews is and has been the normal way of things in Melbourne for more than 100 years. It’s part of the criminal culture.

Money is money, but in Melbourne whose side you are on in an argument is all important. In Melbourne, nothing is ever forgotten. Nothing is ever forgiven. Melbourne gangsters were still shooting each other over a gang war Squizzy Taylor started with Henry Stubbs 50 years after Taylor was shot dead in Carlton. Crims were still gunning each other down over a war Normie Bradshaw started in the early 1950s, and here we were in the 1990s still evening up in gun battles over the death of Pat Shannon in 1973.

It would take another 20 to 30 years to kill off all the bad blood over the Kane Brothers and Ray Chuck, and the Collingwood war which caused the deaths of Micky Van Gogh and Ripper Roy Reeves wouldn’t end for a long, long time.

Chicka Charlie was just one more funeral of many. The cops in Melbourne think the same way as the underworld. They will fight a payback war and pass it on from father and son. In 50 years time the sons and grandsons of the men involved on both sides of the argument over the Russell Street bombing and the Walsh Street shootings will still be blueing with each other.

That’s Melbourne. Nothing is over until it’s over, and even then your grandchildren will piss on the graves of men who went to war with their grandfathers 60 years ago. In a way, the Melbourne criminal world is very incestuous. Everyone is up everyone. For a big city of three million or whatever the last count was or is, the Melbourne criminal world is very much like a small Tasmanian country town: everyone is either a friend of a relative or related to a friend, the enemy of a relative or related to an enemy.

I’d never ventured over to Collingwood in my life. I was 34 years old and I’d never been to Collingwood, but now that I was keeping company with Jandie, so to speak, I could hardly not go to see her dance at the famous old bloodhouse and criminal shooting gallery that was the legendary Caballero nightclub. But, like all Melbourne crooks, I quickly did a mental check of who my enemies were friends with, not only the dagos but also the dockies. Bobby Dixon and Rolly Wooden had nil influence outside of Port and South Melbourne, maybe a little in the western suburbs and less than nil in Collingwood.

Johnny Go-Go and his insane tattooed girlfriend led a gang of lone wolf gunnies and psychopaths. The Collingwood crew was put back together stronger than ever after the deaths of Micky Van Gogh, Mad Raychell and Ripper Roy, and to enter the Caballero was to enter this world. The expression ‘no-one gets out alive’ danced inside my brain. I didn’t want to join the insane Collingwood war, but I knew if I saw Johnny Go-Go I’d agree to team up willingly and at a moment’s notice. What’s the use of being a gunnie if you couldn’t get the chance to go down in a bloody blaze of gunfire and glory. So I rang old Redda and told him to come and collect me. We were heading for Collingwood.

We got to the Caballero about 10.30 p.m. It was a dark cold night. It was nice and warm inside the Club. I sat at a table and looked at the dancers. There was Jandie, in stilettos and gee string, rocking and rolling to the music with a dozen or so sailors from the HMAS Wombat or some such nonsense, stuffing ten dollar bills into her knickers. But my attention was taken up by a chick at the far end of the club. A dark-skinned beauty with Chinese eyes, she was wearing white high heels and little white high cut knickers and dancing on a table in front of a large crowd of men, who were paying very close attention.

It was Zalinda, the little would-be law student. Well, it was a step up from hocking her box in Tope Street. I never thought much of this. As large as the criminal world was, it was so very, very small. It was then that Johnny Go-Go approached our table and said hello to Redda. Everyone knew Redda Maloney. Getting around with Redda was like walking around with a Gold Pass to every shithole in town

Redda introduced me to Johnny Go-Go. He looked at me and said, ‘We know each other don’t we?’ I explained that my dad knew his dad.

‘Oh yeah,’ said Johnny Go-Go. ‘Jackie Young, young Jacko. How’s Machinegun Bobby?’ He said this with an evil laugh, and I laughed as well.

He invited me and Redda over to the bar. There was a good-looking, hard-faced blonde girl at the bar wearing jeans, runners and a long black overcoat. I didn’t know her but I knew who she was. Who the hell didn’t? Karen Phillips, the psycho queen. She was holding a glass of whisky with her left hand, the one covered with a spider’s web tattoo. I felt like I was a fly and I had walked into a web. I was introduced and before I knew it Redda and myself had been invited to crew up with Crazy Karen and Johnny Go-Go. I didn’t know how it happened. They didn’t like Bobby Dixon or Rolly Wooden. Neither did Redda or me. It was a sort of unspoken agreement. Karen just put her tattooed hand on my shoulder and said, ‘Ya with us now Jacko. Fuck ’em all. By the time we are through there will be no-one left alive north, south, east or west of Smith Street. Ha ha.’

Karen thought this remark the height of good humour. A hand touched me and I turned to see Zalinda. She was nearly naked. ‘Hi ya, Jacko’ she said.

‘How’s it going with the legal studies?’ I asked. Always the gentleman, me. Like Dale Carnegie says, always remember people’s names and what their interests are. I suspected that one of Zalinda’s interests was the bulge in my Levi’s.

Zalinda told me she was at Uni full time and danced on Friday and Saturday nights to help pay the bills. She had bought her own flat in North Carlton with the cash earnings from her labour at Tope Street and she could pull a grand a night out of the Caballero.

‘You know each other?’ asked Karen Phillips.

‘Yeah’ I said, sensing that the Psycho Queen already knew the answer.

The night raged on with more heavy drinking. Johnny Go-Go and Karen vanished for a while with Redda, and I didn’t see them again that night. When Redda came back he gave me a wink and said, ‘We are on, mate.’

I asked him what he meant and he whispered, ‘Bobby Dixon, ten grand each, half now, half after’. Redda patted his pocket. ‘I’ve got half right here,’ he said, proud as a boy with a broken arm.

I went cold. ‘You told those two mental cases that we’d do it?’ I hissed.

‘Yeah’ said Redda, looking hurt. ‘Why not? We don’t like the dog.’

I said to Redda, ‘Listen mate, the Rabbit Kisser’s idea of security is to kill all the witnesses even if they didn’t see nothing. If we do this we put ourselves in the middle of a blood war for ten grand we have got and ten we may not live to collect.’

‘Don’t worry, Jacko’ said Redda. ‘We’ll be right. Hey mate, do ya mind if an old bloke has a crack at Jandie?’ I looked over and Jandie was waving at Redda.

‘Hi ya, Uncle Redda.’

‘Uncle Redda?’ I echoed, looking surprised. The old bastard looked a bit embarrassed.

‘I use to take her mum out. I’ve known her since she was a kid.’

‘You dirty old prick,’ I said. ‘You’re 100 bloody years old.’

‘C’mon mate,’ said Redda, ‘no-one misses a slice of a cut loaf. You’re only rooting her aren’t you, mate. You’re not in love with her or anything?’

‘Nah,’ I said, ‘She’s a public toilet. Go for ya life.’

Jandie was a magic-looking chick but I was right, a low life sexual and moral, mental and emotional public toilet. And I began to wonder at all of this. Jandie picked me up at the Racecourse Hotel. She conned on to me with her big tits and her micro mini. I don’t kid myself: chicks like Jandie don’t con on to blokes like me for no reason. Did this all just happen? Most of the molls in Melbourne used to work for or paid money to Mad Raychell Van Gogh. She was the most feared whore in Melbourne. Karen Phillips was her right hand girl. If the Rabbit Kisser told Jandie to pick me up or suck off an elephant Jandie would do it, and Jandie knows old Redda.

Bloody Melbourne, I thought to myself. Every bastard is related to every other bastard. Then I looked down at little Zalinda.

‘C’mon, princess. Get dressed and let’s go. Show me ya new flat.’

KILLING Bobby Dixon wasn’t too hard at all. We just knocked on his front door in Prahran and blew his head off with a shotgun. The only trouble was his wife attacked us with a meat cleaver and hit me a savage blow in the face. She showed no gratitude at all. We put six rounds into the mad cow to stop her. The following night Redda died of a heart attack in the car park behind Jandie’s place. He had been screwing the mad moll over the bonnet of his old Dodge Phoenix when his heart gave out. Not a bad way to go, I guess. More than 70 years old, humping the arse of a dick killer like Jandie over the bonnet of a classic motor car. He was carrying no money when the police found him in the morning. Jandie had thoughtfully removed some seven-odd thousand dollars he was carrying.

Nice girl was Jandie. A week later we found out that the heart attack was brought on by a quantity of meth amphetamine in his blood system. No doubt put into his drink by Jandie. I still had ten grand to collect from Johnny Go-Go and Crazy Karen, but it was something I was putting off doing. Jandie, old Redda, Bobby Dixon, the Caballero, I was still heavily bandaged and my face in stitches. The police were going silly and I was lying low, not at dad’s place but at Zalinda’s flat in North Carlton.

She was nursing me better. I trusted Zalinda while at the same time watching every move she made. She was a fantastic little lady and she really seemed to care for me. I couldn’t introduce her to my dad. Shit, after wogs, spooks were the next ones down on his hate list, just above Catholics, child molesters and drug dealers and members of the railways police. Little Zalinda would get into a sexy white nurse’s uniform and fuss about me until I could take no more and pull her into bed.

‘Ohh, Mr Young,’ she would squeal with pretend surprise. ‘You don’t expect me to nurse that. Really I couldn’t possibly. Maybe if I sit on it it will go away.’

For a tiny little lady she had a snatch on her like a barn door. The bloody thing had no end and no sides. She would squeal with delight and pretend to be in pain as she put it in. I was so big and she was so tiny and I’d lie there and say to myself, ‘You lying slag, you could smuggle a watermelon through customs up there and it wouldn’t bring a tear to your eye.’

Zalinda still worked at the Caballero on Friday and Saturday nights. About a month after the death of Bobby Dixon and old Redda Maloney, she came home to tell me that Jandie had died of a heroin overdose in her dressing room at work, and Karen would like to come over and settle up the ten grand she owed me. ‘She said you’d understand,’ Zalinda said.

I rang the Caballero and asked for Karen. After a minute, she came to the phone. ‘How ya going mate?’ she said. ‘How come you haven’t come over to see us?’

I explained my injury, and said I wanted to keep a low profile in case someone was unkind enough to suggest a connection between it and the recent unfortunate events at Bobby Dixon’s. ‘Okay,’ said Karen. ‘I’ll pop over and see you and Zalinda tonight. By the way, Jandie was a favour.’

She didn’t need to say any more. I knew exactly what she meant. I hung up. Yeah, I thought to myself, she got Jandie to put speed into the old guy’s booze, then hump a heart attack into him. Then she gives Jandie a hot shot. I grabbed my gun. This crazy cow sets people up. Gets ’em put off then cleans up all the witnesses after. I wasn’t important to her. Revenge against every enemy Mickey the Nut and Ripper Roy ever had was her only concern, and she’d kill a dozen friends to get one enemy. She was insane. I wasn’t going to kill her, that would be suicide. Johnny Go-Go would butcher me and every relative I had in Melbourne. But I wasn’t going to let her kill me, that was for sure.

Karen Phillips arrived at Zalinda’s flat at about 1 am carrying an expensive bottle of scotch and a brown paper bag. ‘I can’t stay long,’ she said.

She tossed me the paper bag with the ten grand in it, and an extra six and a half that Jandie had removed from old Redda’s pockets.

‘She was a treacherous slut, that Jandie,’ said Karen. ‘Listen mate, I just came to square up. Here’s the dough.’ She handed Zalinda the whisky and kept talking. ‘I’m sorry about old Redda. I don’t know why Jandie would want to fill the old bloke up with speed. Anyway, come to the club when ya face heals up. We can do some more business. Johnny’s in the car downstairs, I gotta go.’

‘Yeah, okay then,’ I said.

This chick could make a warm room feel like the inside of a freezer. I was shivering from a sudden chill in the air, yet Zalinda had the heating in the flat on flat out. Karen patted me on the shoulder with her tattooed left hand and said: ‘You’ll be right, Jacko. Collingwood looks after its own.’ Then she turned and walked out. As soon as she left I began to feel warm again.

‘I didn’t know you came from Collingwood?’ said Zalinda, as she opened the whisky Karen had given her and poured us a large drink each.

‘I don’t come from Collingwood,’ I said. Zalinda looked a bit puzzled and said Karen came out with some odd things, at times. I grunted as I took a big gulp of the scotch. ‘Ya not wrong there, little princess.’

We finished off our drinks and poured a full second glass each. What the hell, I thought. The whisky hadn’t cost us anything and I’d just picked up better than 16 grand. I was feeling generous.

Zalinda was thinking. ‘Let’s take this dough and go to Surfers for a week or two and lay in the sun,’ she said suddenly. ‘Let’s get out of all of this violence shit, Jacko. I could sell my flat. Hell, I’ve got money. So have you,’ said Zalinda.

‘I could make a bloody fortune up in Surfers Paradise.’

‘Yeah,’ I said as I emptied my second glass. ‘Why not, bugger all this shit.’

Zalinda looked into her glass as she drained it. ‘This is the worst scotch whisky I’ve ever drunk,’ she said.