Chopper Unchopped (127 page)

‘You gonna be one hell of a big boy when you grow up kid. Zip ya pants up and don’t bother lookin’ at my arse either. You’re a bloody freak, kid.’ Then she smiled. ‘But a cute one.’

A Collingwood boy, of course.

JERSEY Phil Sinatra spoke quietly into the phone. ‘The two boys will be there in about three days. Listen, Pat. Keep quiet about this. Don’t tell none of the family you’re importing help for our friends because our friends get excited. We don’t want no loose talk, so say zip till they get there …’

‘Yeah Pat. Chips off the old blocks. Little Caesar’s kid, Angelo and Amato’s kid, Tony. Both top boys. They took care of that Benny Zito problem in Clifton, New Jersey. Gee Pat, I wish you was with me. I miss ya, brother. Anyway, they are on their way. Get Palazzolo to meet them. Don’t you pick them up from the airport. Jesus, all this shit over some Irish whore with a gang of skippy drunks backing her up. I can’t believe it, this fucking Collingwood sounds like the South Bronx on a bad night. Holy Shit. Anyway, the boys will fix it. See ya. I love ya.’

Jersey Phil Sinatra hung up. He hadn’t drawn breath for three minutes. He was thinking …

The sons of Baldassare Amato and Little Caesar Bonventre had, like their fathers, climbed the ladder and were now middle-ranking killers, guys on their way up the Bonanno crime family ladder.

Angelo Bonventre had married the grand-daughter of the late Vito Genovese himself. That made him an up and coming Mafia prince, if he stayed alive and on the right side of his inlaws, neither of which was guaranteed in his line of business. Meanwhile, life was sweet.

The Genovese name was almost mob royalty. The Aussie connection in Melbourne, Australia, was worth six million a year to the Bonanno clan. Johnny Zippo, Tommy Palazzolo, Micky Morelli, Georgio Lucchese, Lucky Lauricella, Bobby La Barbera, Nicky Gambino, Jimmy Catalano, and the Buscetta brothers all had invested big money in the Aussie smack trade.

Okay, six million a year ain’t no big deal, but it grew by a million each year and with the Colombians holding the big share of the coke market in the States, the Italians knew they had to invest off shore.

Australia could be the new land of opportunity. Here the whores were legal and there was a million or two a year to be made by getting a few sluts to lay on their backs or on all fours. And the beauty was you didn’t have to take on the locals. It was all handled hand in hand between brothers and cousins, from one country to another, with no outsiders.

They had the same set up in London, Canada, Spain, France. The only country the mob couldn’t get into was Ireland and, let’s face it, no-one with half a brain would want to get into Ireland anyway. The mad Irish had been killing Italians for years, just for practice half the time, from London to New York, from Boston to Melbourne. The Irish had never beat the Italians, and never would when it came to financial muscle, but the mad Irish bastards team up with the freaking Jews and go to war with the Italians at least once every 10 years.

‘When was the last time in New York?’ thought Jersey Phil to himself. ‘Yeah, that nut Micky Featherstone and his crew. Jesus, the mad Micks nearly tore New York apart. Well, young Angelo and Amato will fix this shit down under, once and for all.’

THINGS went quiet for about a week. It was as if the whole Melbourne criminal world was in a state of shock. Not a single shot fired. The police were raiding clubs and private homes all over the city, but not finding much. The newspapers were running headlines about a ‘wall of silence,’ the way they usually did. Chief Inspector Graeme Westlock had been placed in charge of the organised crime division and for once the homicide squad was not heading the investigation.

The Caballero was empty when the police smashed its front doors in. There was no sign of trouble, but the smell let the coppers know there had been foul play in the joint not too long before. No wonder there was a smell. There were seven rotting corpses in the keg cellar. The victims were identified by what was left of their fingerprints, tattoos and teeth. A warrant had been issued for the arrest of Karen Phillips, but the Rabbit Kisser had vanished. It was as if the war had started on Wednesday and then everyone had forgotten what the hell was going on.

ANITA Von Bibra pulled her car up in front of old Pat Sinatra’s house. She got out and walked to the front door and knocked. After a minute, she heard footsteps inside, then the front door swung open, and she saw Pat Sinatra standing there, squinting out at her through the screen door. It was a quiet Thursday morning. The sun was shining. The streets of Carlton seemed almost asleep. But as Pat opened the screen door a car pulled up in front of the house and a thickset man got out carrying a double barrel sawn-off shotgun. He ran up and screamed ‘Hey Pat!’

The first shot hit Anita Van Bibra in the back and blew her lungs and heart out and all over Pat Sinatra’s white shirt. The second blast blew Pat’s eyes and nose right back through his head along with his brain and sent the whole bloody lot splattering down the hallway.

Hankster the Gangster got back into the old blue Ford Falcon with young Michelle Bennett behind the wheel. She planted her high heeled foot to the floor. The V8 answered the call like it was the start of the big one at Bathurst, with Alan Moffatt in the pilot’s seat. The screech of the tyres blotted out the sound of the flywire door, sprayed with blood and guts, banging in the breeze.

MICHELLE, along with her mad sisters, had been put to work in a small brothel run by Russian Suzi, but managed by Hankster the Gangster. The Collingwood crew had sliced up its empire and fortune.

The Bennett family would gain control of almost 50 per cent of the prostitution, as it was the largest criminal family in Collingwood, no mean feat in itself. There were some big families in Collingwood, and most of them were criminal in some form or another. Anyway, as most of the whores in the parlors were either related to a Bennett or going out with a Bennett or married to a Bennett or named Bennett, it only seemed fair that the Bennetts got the biggest whack from the local parlors. The only fly in the soup was Normie Taylor, who would regularly show up at parlors and not only shag the arse off his step-daughters and nieces, but pocket the takings while he was at it, from force of habit. So when Normie showed up dead in Smith Street, Collingwood, with his backbone filleted very roughly with a 12 gauge shotty, the unfortunate occurrence was naturally blamed on the wogs.

This made Hankster the Gangster almost smile, as he had been dispatched on the little errand to lay Normie to rest. Not that it worried anyone, much, especially the police. Old Normie was a sick, perverted low life who had to go one day. He was not missed, except by his young step-daughter, Angela Bennett, who loved the old nut for some strange reason, even if he did plonk her as regular as clockwork.

The lesson to be learned from Normie’s timely demise was this … an underworld war was always a good time to cull a few from your own team. The other side would always be blamed. It was like a free hit.

Poor Angela always was a bit of a nut, and showed up for work at the brothel dressed all in black out of respect for Normie.

Aaron Guzzinburg and his two Yiddish-speaking helpers had been sticking close to Karen for the past week. Young Kid McCall, as the girls had begun to call him, was holed up at the Telford Social Club with Russian Suzi and Coco Joeliene, the big Jamaican girl with the sore pussy.

No-one knew where Karen or Aaron Guzzinburg and his crew were hiding. She just rang and gave orders, and when she said ‘jump’ people just said ‘how high?’ If there had ever been any doubt about her, there wasn’t any more. Not after the coldblooded exhibition at the club on the night of the meeting, followed by the slaughter of the wogs. It was the biggest defeat suffered by armed Italians since Tobruk.

The truth was, Karen had won the war on the first day. There wasn’t much more to do except to hit a few stragglers. The Sicilians and their Calabrian lackeys had vanished, or so it seemed, but Karen didn’t take a victory for granted and prepared herself for the Sicilian payback that she knew would come. They would either use outsiders or use the police but the payback would be delivered. It was the Italian way.

RUSSIAN Suzi put the phone down. ‘That was Karen. We have to go and see some turds in Errol Street, North Melbourne,’ she said.

‘What’s going on?’ asked Johnny McCall.

‘Ahh, a couple of yankee doodle dagos are meeting with Pino Castronovo and Gaetano Mazzurco at the Limerick Castle Hotel tonight,’ said Suzi.

‘Dagos at the Limerick Castle,’ said Kid McCall. ‘That’s a bit funny. That would be like an Irish birthday party held at the bloody Luna Bar in Lygon Street. Most odd.’ The Kid had a most odd way of talking sometimes. He said things like ‘most odd’, as if he was bloody Sherlock Holmes or something.

‘Yeah,’ said Suzi. ‘It is, but who cares? Are you a gunman or a tourist guide? Keep your mind on the main game.’

Coco Joeliene was wearing a white body suit, with press studs at the crotch and white stay-up stockings with her trademark white five inch stilettos. Suzi was dressed the same, but in black. They were trying to teach young Johnny to do the ‘Rocky Horror Show’ dance. Coco pressed A14 on the jukebox and the music blared out.

‘Let’s do the time warp again, let’s do the time warp again,’ went the lyrics.

Johnny yelled out: ‘It’s just a jump to your left, now a jump to your right.’

The two girls and The Kid had become quite good friends over the past week and had taken to sleeping in the main bedroom upstairs, which had a giant queen size bed. Johnny would sleep between the two girls like a little kid snuggled between two big mothers. Mind you, their idea of mother care was to smother KY jelly all over the pointy end and keep trying him on for size. Both girls seemed hell bent on taking the lot even if it killed them. It drove them insane. Professional pride was on the line. They were both workaholics.

Meanwhile, down at the Limerick Castle, Pino Castronovo and Gaetano Mazzurco stood in the bar with two short thickset young men. Angelo Bonventre and Tony Amato spoke with tough clipped New York accents. There was a fifth man with them, an Aussie named Terry Kerr. He was doing a lot of talking.

‘Listen Pino, I’m telling ya I can set Karen up. We kidnap The Kid’s mother, you know, Johnny McCall’s mum. She lives in the Collingwood Commission flats. That will bring The Kid out. I know she likes that kid. Shit, she’s known the little mental case since he was a baby. She’d follow him to Hell to make sure he’s okay.’

The two American mob guys liked this idea, but Pino shook his head. It was bad enough that they were working with a traitor like Terry Kerr at all, let alone allowing him to suggest battle plans, he reckoned. Still, Angelo Bonventre couldn’t help being attracted to the idea.

‘Ha ha. Between the Irish and the Sicilians, it’s a wonder anyone’s got a fucking mother left,’ Angelo said.

‘Ha ha ha. Yeah,’ said Tony Amato. ‘Remember Mothers Day 1977?’

‘Shit yeah,’ said Angelo. ‘How could I forget? The whole Trafficante family woke up to find that there wasn’t a mother, grandmother, wife, sister, or daughter left. Kidnapped the lot. They made peace before lunch. Ha ha. That fucking Gambino, he was a cunning old rat.’

‘Yes,’ said Pino, who didn’t have the faintest idea what his second cousin was talking about.

‘I’m sure we are all very interested in your sentimental yarns of Mafia adventures of yesteryear, but this is here and now and half our people got whacked on the one day. Are you now suggesting we run about town on some giant hunt for mothers and grannies.’ There was a trace of sarcasm in his voice.

‘You talk a bit fancy kid,’ Angelo growled to Pino. It was not meant as a compliment.

‘University,’ grunted Gaetano Mazzurco, a man of few words. ‘Pino is a university graduate.’

‘Yeah well,’ said Tony, ‘if he talks like that to us again he will be a broken jaw graduate, okay?’

Pino said, ‘Sorry’ but nevertheless he’d made his point.

‘Nah,’ said Angelo. ‘Ya right, we will lay off the mothers.’

The men continued drinking. Both Angelo and Tony thought that Australian beer was the best they’d ever tasted and planned on drinking more. After some ten minutes Pauly Della Torre, another Castronovo cousin, walked into the pub with a fantastic looking whore who worked as a dancer in one of his clubs. She was legs and tits made by the hand of God. The men turned to look.

‘Angelo. Tony,’ said Pauly. ‘I’d like to introduce you to a good friend of mine. Miss Carolyn Woods.’

Carolyn put out her hand and said, ‘I’m very honored to meet you, gentlemen.’

They were no gentlemen, but then again, she was no lady, either.

Angelo took her hand, and showed no signs of letting it go for a while.

Pauly continued, ‘Ya see, fellas, little Carolyn’s got this problem.’ ‘What’s that,’ said Tony, running his hand across the girl’s bottom as she gave him a big smile.

‘Well,’ said Pauly, ‘Carolyn here don’t like one guy at a time, she likes two at a time, and she has a lot of trouble finding two guys who want to play.’ Angelo looked at Tony and Tony nodded. ‘Carolyn,’ said Angelo. ‘This is your lucky night.’

KID McCall, Coco Joeliene and Russian Suzi sat in a beat-up old Jag across the road from the Limerick Castle Hotel, quietly waiting. Coco Joeliene had been answering Kid McCall’s questions as she’d got to know him. Like him, she’d opened up more and more.

Suzi was also curious about the big Jamaican beauty, and sneaked in a few innocent questions about her past.

‘I was born in a small seaside town called Rio Bueno near Montego Bay, baby,’ Coco said in that sensational West Indian accent. ‘Baby, it a beautiful place, but we were dirt poor folks. My brothers sell me to whore house in Kingston. I was 10 maybe, 11 year old. Big girl for my age. The whorehouse kept me till I was about 13, then sold me to sailors who took me to Haiti and sold me to brothel in Port Au Prince. Same story again about a year later and I was working in a whore house in Costa Rica. Then I ran away to America. Mexico first, a few whorehouses there. Then New York. Strip club and whore house in Queens, then I meet nice man. He fix me with papers, passport. I go with him to Copenhagen in Denmark and do porno movies.