Chopper Unchopped (131 page)

Old Clancy stepped down, picked up his drink and returned to the bar. Nazzerone came out and awarded the prize to the moll from Hindley Street, Adelaide. She danced as Saigon Sally, was Thai-Chinese, had a silicone boob job, was born and bred in Lipson Street, Port Adelaide, and had never been anywhere near Saigon. In fact, she spoke Chinese with an accent that was a cross between Henry Lawson and Chips Rafferty. Someone tossed a wine glass at Nazzerone as a small protest against his lapse in taste and judgment and he ran from the stage as the booing started. The girls returned to the bar to join. McCall and Suzi said, ‘Thanks Clancy.’

McCall said, ‘You’re a shifty old diplomat, Mr Collins.’ Clancy laughed.

Coco Joeliene wrapped an arm around the old magistrate and said, ‘Can I offer you a 69? Ha ha.’ Then she stepped directly in front of him and whipped open her coat.

‘My dear, I’m afraid you’d be the death of me,’ he said. Then he stood up and kissed Joeliene’s hand and then Suzi’s and shook McCall’s and said, ‘I’m off home.’

He looked at Suzi and Joeliene. ‘I will take you with me in my dreams. Good night all,’ and he walked out.

‘You’re right,’ said Coco. ‘He is a nice old duffer, like a randy old grandad but he’s a gentleman really. He said no thank you in a really nice way.’

‘Yeah,’ said Suzi. ‘He is a bit of an old sweetie.’

The Adelaide moll walked out and came past Suzi and Joeliene. That was her first mistake.

‘Bad luck girls,’ she sneered. That was her second.

Saigon Sally didn’t see Suzi’s right hand flick out. But she sure did feel it chop her in the throat. Sally choked and gasped for air. McCall and Coco turned and walked out. Suzi followed. Sally fell to the floor, still choking, but no one heard her. The music was too loud. The strobe lights flashed and no-one saw her writhing on the floor with a shattered windpipe.

‘Do ya reckon ya killed her?’ asked Kid McCall as they got back into the car.

‘Well, if I didn’t,’ remarked Suzi calmly, ‘I’m going to get a shotgun and shoot my bloody instructor. In fact I might, anyway. He failed me on my last grading and I’ve been polishing his knob for the last seven years. How dare he fail me. Never trust a Korean with a Yankee doodle accent.’

McCall was wondering at all this. Kerry got her neck snapped for a teensy blow job, but it was quite clear that both Coco and Suzi would hump who they pleased, regardless of him. He was still a little kid in their eyes, no matter how many he killed.

IT was a warm night but rain was falling when the big Mercedes Benz glided up to the corner of Peel and Victoria Streets in North Melbourne. Karen sat next to Guzzinburg, who sat at the wheel. It was 2.30am.

Karen sat with her left hand under her leather jacket holding a .38 calibre automatic handgun with the barrel quietly pointing in the direction of Aaron Guzzinburg. He didn’t realise that although Karen had placed her trust in him, she was taking a bet each way. Force of habit, really.

‘Where are they?’ she asked.

She was looking over at the Queen Victoria Market. The acres of asphalt were shining wet under the occasional street lamps. The stalls were all folded away and locked up. There wasn’t even one of the usual mob of derelicts hanging around, necking a flagon of sherry. On wet nights they all went up to the Gill.

Guzzinburg said, ‘It’s sweet. They will be here. Your little dance trick made us late.’

‘Ah,’ said Karen. ‘Lighten up. It was the Kid’s birthday and if we are late they should be here by now, anyway.’

Guzzinburg moved in his seat. She noticed a flicker of nervous tension in the man who was usually as cold as ice. She’d been making love to him for a while now, and tonight she sensed a distant nervous stranger sitting next to her. What men forget about women is that a man can sleep with a woman for a year and still not know how her insides tick, but a woman can sleep with a man for a night and walk away in the morning with a bloody good psychological profile of the man concerned. It is part of the female gift, part of the survival weapon God gave them. Karen knew something was very wrong.

Guzzinburg lit a smoke and put it to his mouth, left handed. She knew he was right handed. Where was his right hand? It was dark, but the distant glow of a street light lit the inside of the car with a dull light.

Then Guzzinburg said, ‘There he is.’ Karen spied a short, skinny, evil-looking little man she recognised as Ahman Kuku, bodyguard to Abdul Yurenc. Then little Abdul himself stepped out of the shadows. He stood in Peel Street right near the market.

‘Let’s go,’ said Guzzinburg.

Just then Karen noticed the glow of a cigarette butt as it dropped to the ground in the dark behind Abdul, to his left. Guzzinburg opened the car door and Karen said, ‘Hey Aaron’ and fired her gun three times into the body of the Jew. Guzzinburg lurched out of the car and instinctively returned her fire.

The slug from his .22 calibre magnum automatic cut through her lower stomach and out her back. She fired three more shots and Guzzinburg hit the footpath. She dragged herself into the driver’s seat and started the car and screamed off.

Three shots from someone behind the Turk hit the car. Karen’s left leg wouldn’t work. She felt no pain at all and was totally numb down the left side of her body, but her right foot had enough strength to drive the car, and her arms and hands worked okay. She was pissing blood. She needed help but she had no place to run to for medical attention without being arrested.

The bodgie doctors she knew only patched up minor bullet wounds, knife wounds and sold methadone on the sly. She was in serious trouble and she needed serious help. The rain beat down on the windshield of the car and she tried to make the wipers work. God help me, she thought, and meant it. She headed for the Telford Club.

WHEN Chief Inspector Graeme Westlock walked out of the shadows with his gun in his hand he spat on the ground in disgust. The two Turks had taken off down Peel Street and jumped into a waiting car.

He walked over to Guzzinburg who was crying in pain and yelling for help. He had taken six direct shots in the guts. Ohh, thought Westlock.

‘Help me,’ begged Guzzinburg. ‘Get an ambulance, get an ambulance.’ Westlock looked down.

‘Ahh, Aaron. Six shots in the guts. Ohh, I don’t think so. You’ll never make it.’ Guzzinburg cried, ‘Don’t leave me here like this, don’t just let me die like this, please Graeme, please help me.’

Westlock looked down and then he checked the street for onlookers. All was quiet in the still night and pouring rain.

‘C’mon Graeme,’ cried Guzzinburg. ‘Please, please.’ And the ice cold hit man began to cry.

Westlock bent down and put his gun to the hitman’s head. ‘C’mon now, Aaron. You know what they say … no tears for a tough guy.’

Then he pulled the trigger.

WHEN Kid McCall, Russian Suzi and Coco Joeliene walked out of the nightclub and got back into the car McCall found a wrapped parcel and a card on the driver’s seat. It was a birthday present from Karen. He opened it and found a solid gold pocket watch that played music. Ripper Roy Reeves once owned this watch and it had the engraved inscription inside it which read, ‘To Karen, the little Caballero, from Ripper Roy.’ On the back of the watch Karen had a new inscription engraved which read, ‘To Kid McCall, the little Caballero. Remember me always, Karen.’

The music was Ripper Roy’s favorite song. Karen would hum it often. It was a tune by the King of American Blue Grass Music, the great Bill Munroe, a song called ‘I hear a sweet voice calling.’

Kid McCall put the watch in his pocket and drove off, thinking it was the most beautiful and wonderful thing anyone had ever done for him. He got tears in his eyes as he thought of that wonderful lady so alone in the world. The Rabbit Kisser. He would love her until he died, and would gladly die defending her honor.

‘I hear a sweet voice callin’,’ he began to hum to himself.

KAREN pulled up in front of the Telford Club and tried to get out of the car, but her lower body refused to move. How she had even driven the car that far was a miracle. She just sat there. Where was Johnny the Kid? Let me die amongst friends, she thought to herself, her head spinning with pain and loss of blood.

The headlights of a car appeared behind her and she heard Suzi squealing to run out of the rain. Then she saw Kid McCall’s head looking through the window and the door opened.

‘Karen,’ he said.

‘They got me, Kid,’ she whispered. It sounded like a line from a bad Western, but when you’ve got a gutful of lead, you’re pissing blood and your legs don’t work any more it’s hard to be deep and meaningful.

McCall called Suzi over and Russian Suzi carried the wounded girl into the club and upstairs.

‘Not in the bedroom,’ said Karen, shaking with shock. ‘I’m not dying in bed like some old lady. Lie me on the couch so I can look out the window at the rain.’ Suzi was in tears. McCall was also crying. Coco Joeliene just sat there and began to sing, almost in a whisper, some sort of strange French-sounding chant or song, like some whacked out Voodoo Princess. She was freaking out.

‘I can’t move my legs,’ said Karen. ‘And I’ve messed myself.’

‘Don’t worry,’ said Suzi, ‘I’ll clean you up.’

‘What for?’ said Karen. ‘I’ll only bleed more and mess my pants again. Get me a drink.’

Suzi poured a large Jamieson’s and took a giant gulp of the smooth Irish fire water herself, straight from the bottle. So did McCall.

They handed the bottle to Joeliene but she was out of it, rocking back and forth chanting something in a weird dialect that sounded like some sort of Black Magic prayer to God, or maybe the Devil.

‘Shut her up,’ said Karen, and Russian Suzi slapped Coco hard across the face. But Coco was in some sort of self-hypnotic trance.

‘Take her out of the room,’ said Karen. Suzi took Coco into the bedroom and closed the door. The chanting continued, but not so loud this time.

‘Give us a kiss and a cuddle, Kid,’ Karen said.

He knelt down and put his arms around Karen and kissed her.

‘Ya won’t forget me will ya, Kid?’

‘I’ll never forget you, Karen.’

He kissed the dying girl and hugged her tight. Then she looked out the window and said: ‘Listen Kid, run downstairs and get me one of them icy poles out of the fridge. My tummy is so hot I’m burning up. I like them icy poles.’

‘Okay Karen,’ said Johnny.

When the Kid walked out Karen looked at Russian Suzi and said, ‘Do the trick with the neck, Suzi, before the Kid gets back. I ain’t gonna make it. I could lie here like this for days. Do it.’

‘No. I won’t,’ Suzi said.

‘Do it,’ Karen ordered. She was breathing raggedly. ‘Just do it.’

Suzi bent down and took hold of Karen’s neck gently and lifted it, steeling herself for the blow. Karen looked out the window and said ‘Ya know Suzi, I love the rain.’

IT WAS six months later. The war was over and all was quiet. Karen Phillips’s body had been discovered the day after Aaron Guzzinburg was found dead near the Victoria Market. Karen had been found wrapped in a snow white blanket with a pillow under her head, lying on top of Raychell Van Gogh’s grave.

Someone had carried out some sort of bizarre funeral ceremony. They’d lit a small fire at the foot of Raychell’s grave and killed a chicken and splashed its blood over the white blanket. Candles had been laid out around the body and lit.

A Miss Muriel Hill claimed the body, as the executor of Karen’s will. When she was finally buried just across the little walkway from Ripper Roy, Micky and Raychell, a heap of unsolved murders were all swept into the grave with her.

It was strange, but the night Karen died, the empty Caballero Club burnt to the ground. It was for the best. With the death of Karen Phillips and the destruction of the club came the end of the war.

KID McCall, Russian Suzi and Coco Joeliene were highly excited. It was the grand opening of the new massage parlor across the road from the Telford Social Club in Victoria Street. A council permit had been granted in Suzi’s name and $137,000 had been spent on flash renovations: spa baths, a king-size sauna, a lounge, and small luxury bedrooms with ensuites. There was a courtyard garden, a bar, a pool table, hot tub, showers and shit houses. In other words, this, that and the other and two of everything. Six new top-of-the-range girls had been taken on, and a raunchy collection of saucy little sleaze queens they were. Mammaries seemed to be the order of the day and of 100 girls interviewed for these select positions, so to speak, only the six were picked.

It is said, and truly so, that 90 per cent of whores and ladies who work in the area of the erotic arts have blonde hair – and if they don’t they bleach it blonde. It all came from (according to rumor) the wartime blackouts in Australia and London, when prostitutes bleached their hair so the punters could spot them standing on the streets at night.

It was said that any blonde seen after dark in St Kilda, Kings Cross or Times Square in New York or Soho in London was indeed a lady of the night. Strippers, on the other hand, bleach their hair blonde to stand out in a darkened night club. A spot light or strobe looks better with blonde hair than any other, particularly in the downstairs department.

So it was that out of the 100 girls interviewed at least 80 to 90 of them showed up looking like Marilyn Monroe or Madonna on a bad night.

There was two former centrefold girls from leading men’s magazines, long leggy blondes with a generous helping of bazoomers. There was a half-Chinese, half-Maltese girl with long, jet-black hair and Latin or oriental looks. She was only a short lady, small and slim, but when she took her shirt off Suzi hired her at once because she had a stunning set of watermelons. There was also a chick who was a bit of a comedy. She walked in the door, undid her shirt, let loose a set of monsters, then she took out her false teeth and put her own hand into her mouth up to her wrist and sucked on it back and forth. When Suzi said, ‘you’re hired,’ Melissa Clarke, the young lady in question, said: ‘I take it up the clacker as well.’ It was a top CV.