Chopper Unchopped (122 page)

‘I love you, Billy,’ cried Melanie. ‘I love you.’

‘I pray the Lord my soul to take,’ he whispered.

Melanie shook Billy’s head. ‘Wake up, Billy. Don’t die.’

Blueberry Hill opened his one good eye, his right eye, and looked up at the moon. Then he opened his left eye.

‘Mum, is that you, Mum?’ he said softly.

Then he closed his eyes. He was dead.

CHIEF Inspector Graeme Westlock pulled his car up and got out. The phone call he received from Anita Von Bibra sent him to the Morning Star Hotel. He had just left the carnage in Hoddle Street. Three men dead, two in hospital. Chang Heywood under arrest at Richmond Police Station. The copper couldn’t believe that Billy had been driven to a girls’ school instead of a hospital.

He got out and walked through the crowd of schoolgirls to where Billy lay dead.

‘Ahh, Billy,’ said Westlock, who was a hard-nosed bastard. ‘Not a bad way to die, kid. Lying in the moonlight surrounded by a couple of hundred wobbly bottomed school girls. Yeah kid, ya always were a show off.’

Melanie put Billy’s head on the ground and got to her feet.

‘Piss off you bastard. Go on piss off.’

The girls all began to yell. ‘Go on ya dog, piss off.’

Most of them were crying. Melanie ran forward and began to punch the big policeman, crying. ‘Go away, go away.’

Graeme Westlock held the girl and his mood softened.

‘C’mon, now sweetheart, stop all this fuss. C’mon, you lot, cut all this bloody nonsense out.’ Then he looked down at young Melanie.

‘C’mon, sweetheart. Dry them eyes. That’s Blueberry bloody Hill down there and whatever else he was, he was a tough bastard and ya know what they say … no tears for a tough guy.’

RUSSIAN Suzi was a tall, well-built lady with a beautiful but unfriendly face. She was as graceful as a panther, and about as friendly, unless there was money involved. Her charm was strictly by the hour.

Suzi had an air of arrogance. She was good looking but she knew it, and she was quite happy to make sure you knew that she knew it. She was what some would call a female Venus Fly Trap. Everything about her – the way she looked, acted, moved, walked, talked and teased – was aimed at attracting and trapping men. Her whole personality was sexual. She was a sex-show girl and took great personal pride in the fact that she was greatly in demand.

She knew that as long as men were men and they liked to look she would only ever see a dole office from the outside, and then only from a chauffeur-driven limo.

It hadn’t always been that way. As a kid Suzi had been the school fat girl, nothing more than a great mass of wobbling butter in a school tunic. But, like a lot of fat girls, she had a wonderful face. In Suzi’s case, a wonderful sexy face sitting above the biggest set of boobs any young girl ever had to lug about. But, unlike other fat girls, Suzi didn’t shy away from the boys, nor did her weight stand in her way or embarrass her. She had an arrogant, cheeky manner even then.

She was 13 years old and on her way to school in Collingwood when a gang of schoolboys, aged from 14 to 16, waylaid her and proceeded to call her ‘Fatty’. She stopped and looked at them. There were nine of them. She looked at her watch, then stared at an evil-eyed young psycho, about 14 years old, who appeared to be the head of the crew.

‘Okay Micky, I tell ya what,’ she said. ‘I reckon I could gobble you all off in half an hour flat.’ She always had a healthy appetite.

Micky Van Gogh was a bit shocked at this. Then he looked at the fat girl’s face. Jeez, she had a really beautiful, sexy face. Then Suzi started to run her tongue around her lips.

‘C’mon, dickhead. Make up ya mind.’

Micky lashed a backhander across the fat girl’s face that stung her cheek and made her ears ring. She tasted blood inside her mouth. But instead of crying she gave him a look that would blister the paint on a Kingswood at 50 feet, defying him to do it again.

‘Do you want ya doodle sucked or don’t ya, you fucking nut case,’ she snapped. She was such a romantic.

Micky Van Gogh and his mates started laughing. This Suzi chick was new in the Collingwood area, but they could see she’d fit in, no problem at all. They nicknamed her Russian Suzi. And, yes, she did handle the nine of them in half an hour. And no one ever, ever, ever called her Fatty again.

SUZANNA Polanchoishnavich was indeed Russian, hence the nickname. She sat quietly at the bar of the Caballero Night Club. It was 2pm on a quiet Monday. She lived in one of the flats on the third storey of the building that housed the club.

Suzi was no longer a little fat girl but a big, tall, beautiful woman. It was hard to pick her age. Her brown hair was bleached so blonde it was almost white, and her green-blue eyes looked as if they had seen a thousand years of life, the way even the classiest whore’s eyes always do.

Having been fat as a kid she was determined never to go down the lardarse track again. She took up weight lifting, and what had once jiggled now rippled.

She said the hours in the gym were for her dancing, but what she was really after was power. The power that comes from being stronger than any other woman. The power from sexiness, which would make men obey her. Pussy power.

She looked so good she could have been 18. No-one knew her age and no-one was game to ask.

Suzi had just finished an hour lifting weights in the club’s gym. She was going to take a sauna but, as was her habit, she liked to knock off at least half a bottle of straight vodka with a full salami sausage sliced thinly, along with a small jar of Mexican hot chillies and a jar of olives. It seemed to cover all the food groups.

This and reading the morning paper was her daily routine. Sunday night had been a big one. She had danced from 9 pm Sunday until 4 am Monday. She didn’t do tricks unless it was for big dough, but another dancer, Kerry Griffin, had taken on more than she could chew again, and that had nearly caused a riot.

Kerry had seven guys in one of the dressing rooms all on her own. Anyway, to cut a long story short, Suzi pulled three of them out to take some of the strain and then got stuck with servicing all three for no money at all as they reckoned they had already paid Kerry – and Kerry, true to form, hadn’t actually collected any money at all. Meaning that Suzi got double deckered with one to follow for nothing. And all silly Kerry said was, ‘Thanks Sally.’

Needless to say, being screwed for no money to help someone who couldn’t even remember your right name was not Suzi’s idea of a good time, let alone professional etiquette.

Suzi was very big on etiquette. She decided to complain to the boss yet again about Kerry. The big nutcase went through the mugs like a vacuum cleaner on roller skates – and still came out broke in the morning.

Kerry was a scatterbrained hard case. She’d threaten to punch ya lipstick up ya bum if you didn’t lend her a thousand bucks – then forget your bloody name ten minutes later. She had to go. This was the conclusion Russian Suzi had come to over her newspaper and her third glass of vodka. She was a natural at the tough business decisions. She made Kerry Packer look like Mahatma Gandhi.

Kerry Griffin walked down the stairs from her small flat above.

‘Hi ya, Simone,’ she said to Suzi, who had long since given up trying to correct Kerry’s bad memory.

‘Someone pinched all my money,’ said Kerry. ‘Can I snip you for $500?’

‘No problem,’ said Suzi. ‘I’ll get it for ya after I’ve had my sauna.’

‘Thanks,’ said Kerry.

Suzi had learnt this trick a while ago. She smiled to herself, willing to bet Kerry would forget she’d put the bite on her, and snip someone else for the dough.

Tashliene and Samantha came down the stairs, then Angela. Three of the four Bennett sisters.

Tashliene, Samantha and little Angela worked at the club. Michelle had vanished overseas with some dago to the ‘Costa Del arse Sol’. Evidently, the heroin in Spain had been coming over mainly on the plane ever since. Thank you very much, Michelle.

Johnny Go Go was fond of saying to the three remaining Bennett sisters, ‘Ya know, girls, selling your numb nut friggin’ little sister to them dagos was the best thing I ever did. Ha ha.’

Merchant seamen from Spanish, Greek, Turkish and Arabic cargo ships would pay five to fifteen thousand dollars cash for a girl, and a blonde girl with big tits gets the best price. Michelle was blonde with a big set of hooters and the Spaniards went mad over her. Anal sex is a popular pastime with the wogs and dagos, and a blonde 17-year-old with big boobs who can speak fluent Greek from the waist down is worth her weight in gold.

Michelle had to go. She was part of a heroin deal, and there was no ifs or buts to it. Only tits and butts.

The proposal had been hard to refuse. It went something like this: ‘Darling, you can get rich in Spain with a needle up your arm and a dick in ya bum, lying in the sunshine on the beach, or you can go into a 44-gallon drum and lie on the bottom of the Yarra. Which one do ya want?’

Michelle was no Einstein, but even she could see it wasn’t a trick question. She went.

She loved sex, heroin and the beach, and the guys on the cargo ship seemed okay to her. That was a year before, and Johnny Go Go had made three million profit on the deal to date.

And, know what? Tito Carrasella, the Spanish end of the deal, was in love with Michelle Bennett. So this story did have a happy ending, even though Tito hadn’t as yet removed his Aussie toy girl from the brothel he’d put her into. Love is love, but business is business. Tito was a businessman, but sooner or later he would take Michelle home to the happy hacienda that heroin built. Collingwood girls don’t stay down for long. Not unless their mouths are full, or they’re wearing cement boots.

‘DID ya cop a look at this shit in the paper?’ Suzi said to the Bennett girls.

‘What’s that?’ asked Tashliene. She always was a sticky-beak, one way or the other. Usually the other, if you get the drift.

‘Some 17-year-old kid killed three men in a fist fight last night in Collingwood, then died in some schoolyard over in Richmond,’ said Suzi. ‘Fair dinkum,’ exclaimed Kerry, who may have been an expert in French and Greek, but she spoke good old Aussie strine when it came to talking, not working. ‘Who was he?’

Suzi read on. ‘Billy Hill. They called him Blueberry Hill.’

‘Shit,’ said Tashliene. ‘The bloke who killed Peter Stavros.’

Suzi read on, ‘Yeah,’ she said. ‘I think I’ve heard of this kid, must have been a hell of a bluer.’

Suzi looked thoughtful. ‘Anita Von Bibra gets a mention – and Graeme Westlock, the copper.’

‘Who’s Von Bibra?’ asked Angela Bennett.

‘She’s a lady lawyer,’ snapped Kerry. ‘Geez, even I know that. God, you’re a dumb moll.’

Angela went quiet, and decided to ask no more questions. Then Kerry would be right on both counts.

‘Billy Hill,’ said Suzi to herself. ‘Billy Hill.’

She got up and went to look at one of several hundred framed photos hanging on the club walls. ‘Billy Hill,’ she kept repeating quietly. She was looking for someone called Muriel. Eventually she found the photograph she was looking for.

‘Yeah,’ she exclaimed, ‘Muriel Hill. She danced here about seven or eight years ago. Good friend of Raychell Brown. Shit, I knew her myself when I was 15 years old, when I first started here.’ In their game eight years was a life time, most were either retired or dead within five.

‘Hey Kerry,’ she said loudly. ‘You remember this chick?’ She was pointing to the photo. It was the women in the clubs who would remember a face. To the punters they were all just legs and tits. The mugs rarely looked them in the eyes.

Kerry came over and looked. ‘Oh yeah. Mary Ann. I remember her. Top worker, then gave it all up to look after her sister’s kid.’

Suzi said nothing, and just nodded. Even though Suzi knew that Muriel gave up work to look after her brother’s kid, and Mary Ann was the name of a barmaid who hanged herself in the toilets at the club about two years before, Kerry’s scattered identification was confirmation of what Suzi was thinking. Kerry never forgot a face – it was just that she never remembered a name.

Muriel Hill, she thought. Karen Phillips would want to know this, and earning Brownie points with the Rabbit Kisser was one of Russian Suzi’s favorite pastimes.

As Russian Suzi turned to return to her stool at the bar she saw Tashliene and Samantha up on the bar in a 69 position, with Kerry and Angela looking on giggling. It was rehearsal time.

‘God help us all,’ thought Suzi to herself, ‘lesbian sisters and psychopathic whores, I gotta get out of here.’ And Karen Phillips, she knew, was the only one with the power to promote.

Girls didn’t just leave the Caballero these days. Under Karen’s rule you got promoted out, or put off, but no-one got out alive without her permission. She didn’t want any of her girls learning the business and then setting up competition.

It may have been restraint of trade, but a corpse can’t go to the Trade Practices Commission. Suzi hoped the Rabbit Kisser’s new baby had mellowed her attitude. The baby was the only thing that had been near her tits without paying a big quid for the privilege.

Suzi returned to her stool and wondered about this and other matters. She had always been curious. For a whore, she was a heavy thinker.

JULY 12, 1979. While the Orangemen were banging their drums on the streets of Belfast, Big Billy Hill sat in the back of a spotless black Cadillac with three other guys on a hot afternoon on Knickerbocker Avenue in Brooklyn, New York. Big Billy had a sawn-off shot gun in one hand and a photo of a baby boy in the other.

‘Little Billy, I wonder what will become of him,’ he thought. ‘Ahh, I guess it’s better for him to just grow up and think his old man is dead. These fucking dagos, how I hate them. I kill them, I work for them, I take their money, I run from them, I hide from them and I work for them some more. I even leave my wife and child for them. Ha ha.’ Big Bill gave a sardonic laugh.

Not that the wogs with him would understand that. They’d think a sardonic laugh was a small fish with a sense of humor.

Little Caesar Bonventre said, ‘What ya laughin’ at, Aussie Bill?’

Big Bill replied, ‘How come the best hitmen you dagos have got are all fucking Irishmen?’

Bonventre looked sour. ‘Cos youse guys ain’t got enough smarts to make money any other way, that’s why. Killing people – that’s all you stupid Irish are any good for.’

Little Caesar liked to act tough and pretend he was named after the great Roman leader Julius. The truth was he got the nickname because he liked salad and no-one was game to call him Waldorf.

‘Yeah,’ snorted Big Bill. ‘So how long Meyer Lansky been a fucking Italian?’

‘What do ya mean by that?’ asked Little Caesar.

Big Bill smiled. ‘What I mean is, you stupid wop dog, if you dagos are so fucking smart, how come you all work for a Jew?’

Little Caesar nearly choked on the rage that welled up inside him. The truth hurt, but Baldassare Amato and the Bonanno family were going to change all that.

‘Listen, Aussie boy,’ he snarled. ‘You’re here to do a job, not to make smartarse remarks about things you don’t understand.’

‘Ah, eat shit, Caesar,’ grinned Billy Hill. ‘You import help from Ireland, South Africa and Australia and you reckon I’m the one with problems. The Mafia is a fat old whore with a terminal case of the pox. When Hollywood stops making movies about you, there’ll be no more Mafia. You’re yesterday’s men.’

Caesar screamed: ‘We will always be here.’

‘Yeah,’ said Big Bill. ‘Tell that to the Chinese and the Colombians. Ha ha.’ The shotgun in his lap dissuaded any further geographical and ethnic debate.

Meanwhile, the big Cadillac had glided to a halt outside a little joint called Joe and Mary’s Italian American Restaurant. In the tiny courtyard out the back, the boss of the Bonanno crime family sat having lunch. This was Carmine ‘Lilo’ Galante. He sat with a bodyguard called Leo Coppolla.