Chopper Unchopped (115 page)

‘Yeah,’ I said. ‘Tastes a bit bitter. Good 12-year-old scotch shouldn’t taste like it got boiled up yesterday. Bloody bitter …’

I felt sleepy. As if I could sleep forever …

IT was a quiet Sunday morning at the press rooms at Russell Street police station. Charlie ‘The Bear’ Walker, veteran crime roundsman for the Flinders Street tabloid, ‘The Sun’, stepped into the police media liaison office. He knew the policeman behind the counter. Wayne ‘Wilbur’ Wilson had been in his job nearly as long as Charlie had been pounding a typewriter. Between them they had nearly 40 years experience of crime, death, destruction and hangovers.

Walker nodded his usual quiet greeting, and picked up the chipped masonite clipboard. On it was a torn Telex message from a Carlton senior constable. It read: ‘Attended flat 4, 127 Lygon Street after complaints of loud television. On arrival, found door unlocked, entered premises and found heavily-tattooed Caucasian man, approximately 35 years of age, deceased, on floor. On couch was body of woman, approximately 20 years of age, of Indian appearance, also deceased. Fingerprint checks indicated male known to police. Female’s identity not yet known.

‘Initial inquiries indicate cause of death poisoning. Suspected suicide pact. Coroner notified. Duty inspector notified. Homicide squad notified. Forensic notified. Whisky bottle taken for examination. Names not to be released. Relatives not notified.’

Walker looked at Wilson, then said what they were both thinking. ‘Suicide be buggered. There’s no note. There’s a yarn in there somewhere, but the only people who know what it is won’t be talking.’

‘TURN the flaming radio off, Tommy. Blooming Baby John Burgess … stick it on the races, for Chrissake.’

‘Nah, Grantley Dee comes on in a second. I like Grantley Dee – “Let the Little Girl Dance”. Ha ha ha.’

Stanley Gonzalas and Tiger Tommy Bandettis were dead set best of mates except on one point. The car radio.

Tiger Tommy loved listening to the rock and roll sounds of the 3AK Good Guys. But Gonzalas liked to listen to the races on the Greater 3UZ.

The EH Holden dropped into second gear as Tommy spun it round the junction and on into St Kilda, with Grantley Dee singing ‘Let the Little Girl Dance’ on the radio. They headed full bore for the Lower Esplanade, then to Luna Park, and came to a screaming halt.

Engine still ticking over, Stan the Man got out, checked his double barrel, sawn-off shotgun, then walked into the open mouth of Luna Park. Tiger Tommy sat in the car singing along with his favourite song. The shot was deafening, but Tommy didn’t bat an eye. Stan the Man ran back to the car and jumped in. Tiger Tommy dropped it into first and with smoke pouring off the back tyres, took off. ‘Let the Little Girl dance,’ he screamed. ‘Ha ha, did you get him?’ yelled Tommy.

‘Yeah,’ said Stan. ‘One shot right in the neck.’

‘Shit,’ said Tommy. ‘It must have decapitated the bastard?’

‘Nah,’ said Stan, ‘his neck blew out and his head sort of fell forward. Funny really, I thought it would fall backwards, but his chin blew off with his neck and the whole face fell forward into where his neck used to be. Ha ha ha.’

Tommy laughed. ‘Unreal, man. Freaking unreal. One shot. I tell ya, Stan, I’m doing the next one. Three grand cash. That’s 1500 quid in the old money. God, that’s big dough, Stan. We will be able to set up business soon.’

‘Yeah,’ said Stan. ‘One more and we are sweet.’

Grantley Dee finished his song.

‘Thank God,’ said Stan.

‘He’s a top singer,’ said Tommy. ‘Ya know he’s blind?’

‘Yeah’ said Stan, ‘and tone deaf as well, by the sound of it.’

THE waterfront dockies’ war of the late 1960s was good for employment. Three grand a head killings (in the new decimal currency) could be had regularly and the firm of Bandettis and Gonzalas had risen from bashings to the real thing.

It was Sunday morning, they had one man down, were three grand richer and were home in time for the wrestling on TV. Skull Murphy was fighting Tex McKenzie and it was a must see of a Sunday morning.

Tiger Tommy and Stan the Man weren’t heavy thinkers. Their highest ambition in life was to own their own shoe shop in Chapel Street, Prahran, and nine grand would set them up. They already had three, had just earned another three and after the wrestling they would earn another three. Ah, it was a good life.

The radio blared out with the latest song from Merv Benton, and Stan and Tommy joined in. The wrestling, then another shooting and come night time they would drop a few trips and head for the Thumpin Tum nightclub or maybe Berties or Traffic or the Q Club. It would be all rock and roll.

‘Where’s Harold Holt when we need him?’ yelled Stan.

‘Gone swimming,’ yelled Tommy. ‘Gone swimming.’

Saturday night’s LSD trips hadn’t quite worn off. The sixties may have been the era of flower power but it was also the era of major big time death. World leaders were dying left, right and centre. Wars raged. It was a decade of blood, murder, suicide, assassination, war, social disorder, drugs and rock music. MPD Ltd, Bobby and Laurie, Merv Benton, Russell Morris, Normie Rowe, Grantley Dee, Baby John Burgess, PJ Proby, Doug Parkinson, Yvonne Barrett, Harold Holt, Kennedy, Oswald, Martin Luther King, The Beatles, the Rolling Stones, the Mods and the Rockers, the Sharpies, wrestling on TV, Vietnam, Dr Jim Cairns and his moratorium protesters. All the way with LBJ, Sadie the Cleaning Lady, Lionel Rose, Johnny Famechon, decimal currency, Jean Shrimpton, Sabrina and her big tits, the death of the White Australia policy, red rattler trains, Bob Santamaria (who nearly died) and six o’clock closing. Richard Neville and the Oz Magazine rocked London, Woodstock, the pill, Bob Dylan, Jimi Hendrix, The Easybeats, Henry Bolte, Ronald Ryan, Purple Hearts, the best speed ever made, Ross D. Wiley, Ian Turpie, The Deltones, Rolf Harris, GT Falcons. It was the insane decade and it was like the 1930s visits the Year 2030 all in one. Everything was oh so old and oh so new, everyone was oh so quite insane. Richard Neville thought the world could be saved and the CIA was making sure it wasn’t going to be, and all Janis Joplin wanted was a Mercedes Benz.

If she’d wanted a good deal on a second-hand car she couldn’t have gone past Kevin Dennis.

Meanwhile, Normie Bradshaw’s death in a light plane over Port Phillip Bay in the early 1960s created a bit of a problem on the Melbourne waterfront. Freddy the Frog Harrison had lost his head on south wharf in the late 1950s, with Bradshaw stepping in. Now, old Texas Terry Longfellow had a war with Pat ‘the Rat’ Shanbuck.

The wars on the docks didn’t have much to do with the 1960s psychedelic era and peace and love and ban the bloody bomb. Jackie Twist and Joey Turner never spent much time listening to Bob Dylan or smoking dope, Henry Bolte was still living in the 1860s, and poor Ronnie Ryan wasn’t living at all.

The car park of the Sentimental Bloke Hotel was the last hangout of the bodgies and the widgies of the 1950s turned rockers in the 1960s. Which is why Tommy and Stan turned up there to finish off their Sunday work.

It was Tiger Tommy’s turn, so Stan took the wheel, just as Ray Costa and Paul Butterfield headed towards the pub.

All pubs were closed on Sunday, but a sly grog operation ran in a house across the road. The go was to pull up in the pub car park, walk across the road, pick up a dozen bottles (at $10 a dozen, more than twice the right price) and head back to the car. Costa always collected a dozen after Sunday lunch. And why not? He owned the sly grog shop. His own mother ran it for him. If a boy couldn’t trust his mum who could he trust?

‘Shit,’ said Tommy. ‘Costa’s got Paul Butterfield with him.’

‘So, we kill ’em both,’ said Stan. ‘We cop three grand for one,’ said Tommy. ‘Not three for two. We’re not running a charity.’

Stan thought about this, then said: ‘Butterfield’s a witness, plus it’s good for business. Texas Terry will be much impressed.’

Tommy was not convinced. ‘Butterfield’s a nightclub bouncer. Nothing to do with the docks.’

‘So what,’ said Stan. ‘We ain’t dockies either. Let’s rock ‘n’ roll, kill em both.’

Tommy surrendered. ‘Right. I’ll kill Costa. You do what you like with the other dog.’

‘Sweet,’ said Stan.

Ray Costa was carrying a dozen bottles when Tommy ran up to him with the sawn-off shotgun. Costa hung on to his box of beer bottles as if it might protect him from the first blast. Wrong. The buckshot blew right into the centre of the box and shattered the bottles, sending cold beer and a thousand slivers of glass along with the pellets from the SG cartridge hurtling into his chest and lungs.

He didn’t fall backwards, like in the movies, but dropped the box and put both his hands into the open hole in his chest. His heart wasn’t there any more, yet the blood was pumping out. Costa looked at his chest, stunned. Then he looked up at Tommy, and that’s when Tommy let the second barrel go, hitting him in the head.

Costa’s dark brown eyes vanished deep into his skull. The top of his head dissolved into a red and white and grey spray, gouting backwards across the road, and still Costa kept standing with his hands holding the hole in his chest. Another shot exploded behind Tommy and Paul Butterfield was dead and gone from a single shot out of a .22 calibre sawn-off rifle. Stan the Man yelled ‘Come on Tommy!’

But Tommy pointed to Costa and yelled, ‘Is he dead?’

‘He’s dead!’ yelled Gonzalas. ‘Let’s go.’ As the two men ran to the EH, Bandettis kept looking back at Costa.

‘He’s still standing,’ he stuttered. ‘No chest and half his head gone and he’s still standing.’

They jumped into the EH. Stan took the wheel and gunned the car in the direction of the very dead but still-standing Costa. The EH hit Costa at 40 miles an hour, sending the body smashing across the bonnet and into the windscreen. The head was half blown away, but it still shattered the windscreen. Costa’s head and shoulders spewed fluid, blood and brain matter all over Bandettis and Gonzalas. It was like a horror movie.

Tommy screamed, ‘Get him out, get him out! Jesus Christ, Stan, pull up!’

Gonzalas stopped and got out of the car and took hold of Costa’s legs and yanked him off the bonnet, then got back in.

Tommy was horrified. ‘Why did you run into him?’ he demanded. ‘You’ve wrecked the car. Look at this friggin’ mess. You’re a friggin’ nut case, Gonzalas, a dead set mental case.’

‘Ahh, stop whinging,’ said Stan the Man. ‘A new windscreen and a car wash, big deal.’

‘Big deal,’ yelled Tommy. ‘Big deal! Who was that bastard, the ghost who bloody walks? I’m going to be dreaming about that bastard till the day I die. Why didn’t he fall over? How can ya stay standing with half ya head blown off and no chest? I put two SG cartridges into him. Bloody hell, Ripley wouldn’t believe this one.’

‘Yeah,’ said Stan. ‘It was a bit of a funny one. Butterfield went down like a dunny lid.’ Tommy jerked around and looked out the rear window, back down the road.

‘What are ya doing?’ said Stan. ‘Just making sure the bastard’s not running after us,’ said Tommy, with a laugh.

Stan began to laugh, too. ‘Yeah, here comes headless Ray.’ He started making ghost noises.

They roared laughing. Tommy put the radio on. Johnny O’Keefe was on and Stan and Tommy began to chant ‘J-O-K, J-O-K.’

‘Yeah man!’ yelled Tommy as the EH Holden pelted down the road. ‘The Wild One.’

JOK was still okay, but Ray Costa and Paul Butterfield were definitely DOA …

THE shoe shop in Chapel Street, Prahran, was small but it did look lovely – if you were a fancier of such premises. Stan and Tommy were so proud of their new business that they both wore suits and bow ties and pointy toe shoes, and had their long hair oiled and greased back in full Elvis Presley fashion.

Tommy and Stan were mods by fashion – long haired, hippy, LSD dropping, dope-smoking mods – but they had suddenly decided to turn rocker after the Ray Costa shooting. It seems the police were looking for two long-haired hippies in a blue EH Holden. Funnily enough, the EH had been replaced with a cherry red, hotted-up FJ Holden to confirm the new rocker image.

The new shop had music blasting out of it. Jerry Lee Lewis, ‘The Killer’. Yeah, they did look the part all right.

A fat lady walked in and as she was about to sit down, Stan yelled out ‘It’s a men’s shoe shop, ya fat moll. Piss off.’

The woman scuttled out in fear. Tommy looked at Stan and said, ‘Listen man, we gotta do something about your attitude visa vee customer relations’.

‘Customer relations,’ spat Stan. ‘We don’t want fat molls like that coming in here messing up our place.’

Tommy shook his head. He could see Stan’s attitude towards the customers might be a sales concern.

TEXAS Terry Longfellow’s ongoing battle to gain control of the dockies’ union, or the Victorian Federated Ship piss pots and decapitators union, as it was comically nicknamed, was well on its way to victory. And he knew he had two good men in Bandettis and Gonzalas, even if they were a pair of whackers with a heavy taste for LSD.

Gonzalas, for example, often believed he was being followed by a giant fish, the same fish that ate Harold Holt. Texas Terry reckoned that Bandettis was the saner of the two, as he didn’t think fish were following him – only that the National Civic Council was plotting to kill him, and that the Pope was plotting with the CIA to destroy the Australian footwear industry.

Apart from those small eccentricities a more clear-thinking pair of fellows you couldn’t wish for – and Texas Terry knew that the killing of his old rival Pat the Rat Shanbuck would take a clear head, a warm gun and ice cold nerves. He had never been to the Chapel Street shoe shop before, and was a bit taken back when he got there. The shop was empty of customers and Tommy and Stan were facing each other, arms around each other’s backs and holding hands, waltzing around the shop like a pair of queer ballroom dancers.

Loud classical music was blasting out from a tape sound system. It was a Strauss Waltz, the
Blue Danube
or some such nonsense. Terry sat down and waited for them to finish, and when the waltz ended Texas Terry clapped his hands. Stan and Tommy smiled.

Strauss was grouse, but they were waiting for a bit of rock. Then Janis Joplin started up.

‘We put that waltz on for a bit of a break,’ explained Stan.

‘Very nice,’ said Terry, ‘Very nice indeed.’ A customer walked into the shop and asked for a pair of Hush Puppies. Stan roared at the young man, ‘You bloody poofter, get out of here. What do ya think this is? We don’t sell Hush Puppies. Go on, piss off, you bloody queer.’

The young fellow made a hasty retreat. Stan regained his composure. ‘Good to see you, Terry,’ he said. The old man couldn’t help it. He had to ask.

‘Excuse me, Stan, but you are actually trying to sell shoes in here, aren’t you?’

Tommy broke in. ‘Yes, we are. We sell a hell of a lot of football boots and runners and gentlemen’s dress shoes.’

Terry smiled. ‘But not a lot of Hush Puppies, I take it,’ he suggested as gently as one of the most feared men on the Australian waterfront could.

‘No,’ admitted Tommy. ‘Stan isn’t too keen on Hush Puppies.’

‘Why not?’ asked Terry. ‘Easy,’ said Stan. ‘Men who wear white socks wear Hush Puppies.’

‘Oh,’ said Terry. ‘Say no more, that explains it.’ He gave Tommy a comic look and Tommy broke in again, before Stan had time to come to grips with the finer points of sarcasm.

‘Anyway, Terry. What can we do ya for?’

‘Simple,’ said Terry. ‘Pat the Rat.’

‘Oh yeah,’ said Stan. ‘What of him?’