Chopper Unchopped (140 page)

‘Ha ha ha,' he giggled, after a pause.

‘What's up?' asked Doc.

Westlock patted his friend on the shoulder.

‘The gooks and the dagos are at it. And that turd Pancho Moran rang the office this morning with an urgent message that he wants to see me. I reckon she's rock and roll time again, Doc.'

‘That Moran, he's in with them wogs, isn't he?'

‘Yeah,' said Westlock. ‘He's also pretty close to Cisco Van Gogh and the leftovers of McCall's old crew. He's a cunning little dog, but he might come in handy.'

Doc Holliday laughed as he swerved to avoid a gas truck. ‘It's like the friggin' pixie's bloody parade,' he swore. ‘Every junkie mental retard in Melbourne must be out for a Sunday bloody drive.'

‘Yeah,' said Westlock, as he jotted down the number of the offending truck. ‘That bastard is gonna get a visit. Watch out Doc – lady with a pram.'

Doc stopped at a red light and a fat woman with a pram pushed her way past the police car.

‘Jesus Christ,' said Doc Holliday. ‘Cop the clacker on that cow.'

Westlock looked at the woman wobble past. ‘Ya know, Doc, it's sights like that that make me wonder if we aren't arresting the wrong people.'

‘Too right,' said Doc Holliday. ‘Know just what you mean.'

‘BLOODY hell, Archie,' said Little Cisco, getting a little exasperated, ‘It's dead set easy. Kid McCall told me once about when the Gallo Brothers, Crazy Joe Gallo and his two brothers Larry ‘Kid Twist' and Albert ‘Kid Blast', walked into the Park Sheraton Hotel barber shop in Manhattan, New York, on the 25th of October, 1957, and blew away Albert Anastasia, the head of Murder Inc., as he sat in the barber's chair. It's a classic way to knock somebody – and Westlock gets a haircut once a month, every month at the same place, Con's Barber Shop, in Gertrude Street, Fitzroy.'

‘Con the Greek?' asked Archie Reeves.

‘Nah,' snarled Little Cisco. ‘Con the bloomin' Chinaman, ya dickhead. Of course, Con the Greek.'

‘Ohh,' said Archie. ‘So that's it. Ya just walk in and blow him away while he's having a blow wave'

‘Yep,' said Little Cisco. ‘He he he.'

Archie smiled at Little Cisco's Tommy Udo laugh. Cisco Van Gogh's favorite film was the old gangster movie ‘Kiss of Death', starring Richard Widmark. Little Cisco was yet to push a cripple lady down a staircase as she sat helpless in her wheelchair, but he was hoping to do it one day. He was not without ambition.

Archie Reeves thought to himself how it was odd that so many criminal psychopaths in Melbourne shared several of the same passions and traits with the more gung-ho police.

They were either churchgoing bible bashers, wild west nuts or movie buffs. Some were all three. It was a well-known fact that Graeme Westlock was rumored to have a giant oil painting of Hopalong Cassidy on his horse Topper. The story was that the oil painting was hanging above the fireplace in Westlock's home. Then there was the strange inscription written on Micky Van Gogh's gravestone: ‘Proverbs 14.12'. It took a full year before it became known what Proverbs 14.12 meant. It was the same inscription written on the tombstone of Jimmy Gatz in ‘The Great Gatsby'.

Yeah, thought Archie Reeves, the more serious police and the more serious criminals in Melbourne were all quite seriously mad. Shooting Westlock as he sat in the barber's chair just like the Gallo brothers shot Albert Anastasia, indeed! It was a joke. Archie shook his head. Cisco Van Gogh was as mad as the maddest he'd ever known – Kid McCall and Karen Phillips included. Archie just hoped Little Cisco didn't expect him to join in on the venture.

‘Will this be a one-out job, Cisco?' he asked, straight-faced.

‘Nah,' said Cisco. ‘Pancho will give me a chop out on this one.'

‘Are you sure?' said Archie. ‘I don't know what you see in that bloody Moran.'

‘Nah,' said Cisco. ‘She's sweet. Pancho's okay, he's a good bloke.'

‘Oh well,' said Archie. ‘As long as you're sure.'

Cisco Van Gogh smiled and patted Archie on the shoulder. ‘Don't worry, Archie, I'm not as silly as everyone thinks I am.'

Archie gave a faint smile and said nothing.

PANCHO Moran had taken the Dellacroce contract to Earl Teagarden, Preston Phillips, Geoff Twain, Bunny Malloy, Archie Reeves, Sonny Carroll, Sean Maloney, Johnny Pepper, Billy Burns, Greg Featherstone, Ferdie Taylor, Pat O'Shaughnessy and Little Cisco Van Gogh.

All Dellacroce wanted was for the head of the snake to be removed. But first you had to find the head.

When Kid McCall and his hit team killed Con Tu Vu and Boe Cop Nam, Duc Tu Vu and his cousin Wock Eye Kee, a cross-eyed Vietnamese mental case, had taken control. However, there was a different power behind the throne. It was all very mysterious, but somehow Dellacroce knew that the only way to win a war against the Vietnamese was to kill a local Melbourne Chinese business and political identity, Run Fat Lee, known to one and all as Ronny Lee.

Using Pancho Moran as a middle man, Dellacroce put up the sum of $100,000 for the Collingwood crew to hit Ronny Lee and handle any fallout as a result of the hit. Which is why Pancho took the plan to Earl Teagarden. Earl, uncle of the Kid McCall, carried some weight, even though he was not part of the Collingwood clan.

Pancho also took the offer to Cisco Van Gogh, who rejected it at once. However, Preston Phillips, Johnny Pepper and Bunny Malloy, along with Geoff Twain, accepted the deal and the hundred grand up front. Then they sub-contracted the whole deal out to the nutbush city limits crew – the Albanian Mafia and their Rumanian cousins.

The so-called Albanian Mafia was a mixed collection of Albanian, Rumanian, Russian and Yugoslav families, all interrelated and interconnected. Along with a smattering of mad Hungarians and Lithuanians they were a silent criminal force that rivalled the Calabrian and Sicilian criminal clans.

The Albanian and Rumanian criminals would kill God for sixpence and for twenty thousand bucks up front, the sky was the limit. Dragan Muskkar and Vladac Dobbroc, nicknamed Johnny Dobro, were only too happy to kill Ronny Lee for twenty big ones.

The Melbourne criminal scene was becoming blurred and mixed. Nothing seemed black and white any more. Preston Phillips was living with a Vietnamese prostitute, Sean Maloney was living with Tina Castronovo, Johnny Pepper was going to marry Barbie Bonventre and already had a kid with her, old Ferdie Taylor had a Chinese girlfriend and Sonny Carroll was going out with a hot-looking black chick. The whole Collingwood crew was changing. If Ripper Roy could have seen 'em all now, he'd turn in his grave.

The whole crew was split in half, with one half chock a block up a gook and the other half in love with a dago or a spook. Cisco Van Gogh found the whole thing distasteful and seemed to mix more and more with his inner circle of Archie, Normie and Neville Reeves. He liked Pancho Moran, but Pancho's relationship with the wogs was suspect to say the least.

Mind you, Little Cisco had taken to screwing the pants off Gaja Jankoo, the mad Russian girl who once acted as housekeeper for Kid McCall. It didn't enter his head that Jankoo was in fact Lithuanian, not Russian, and her uncles and cousins were part of the Albanian Rumanian crew.

The whole Melbourne crime scene had become a melting pot. Only the teams, gangs and crews remained. The wars would never end, but the soldiers in each private army could be from any nationality. Hell, the Vietnamese had moved from Richmond to Fitzroy to Collingwood. There were already Vietnamese and Chinese teamed up with the dagos in wars with the Aussies.

Any criminologist who claimed to understand the Melbourne criminal world was a liar. The whole thing ran on family, friendship, and who's up who – and it all kept changing. The friend of my enemy is my enemy and the enemy of my friend is also my enemy. However, the enemy of my enemy is my friend – and the friend of my friend is my friend.

If you kicked my mate's dog twenty years ago you'll be my enemy until we chop your leg off. In the meantime we smile at each other on Monday while plotting to kill each other on Tuesday. He's on my side, he's a good bloke; he's on his side, so he's a dog. The wars never end, and while everything else may fall, the teams, gangs and crews remain. Outsiders looking in never see it like it really truly is.

GRAEME Westlock and Doc Holliday stood in the Santa Fe Gold nightclub talking to Pancho Moran.

‘When I take a bloody haircut,' said Westlock, looking at Moran in disbelief. ‘Are you serious or delirious?'

‘No,' said Pancho. ‘It's dead set, Mr Westlock. He's gonna get ya next time ya take a haircut. Ya still use Con the Greek, don't ya?'

Westlock went silent. Doc Holliday was busy stuffing funny money down some wet dream's G-string. The police have always donated generously to good causes, just as they expect other people to donate generously to them. This time it was a donation to the policeman's balls.

‘What's in it for you, Moran?' said Westlock.

‘Look Mr Westlock, I help you today, you help me tomorrow.'

Westlock pondered this point. Moran was ambitious. Pancho played every side against each other. That was okay, thought Westlock. Pancho was betraying Cisco. He might also like to betray Gaetano Dellacroce.

‘You're sort of Gaetano's brother-in-law or something, aren't ya Pancho?' asked Westlock.

‘I was gonna be,' said Pancho ‘till them gooks give it to poor Angela.'

Westlock pretended to be sad. It didn't come easy.

‘Yeah, they don't reckon she will make it,' said the big cop. ‘Bloody tragic. Freaking insane animals, them gooks.'

‘If she does make it,' said Pancho, ‘she will be a vegie.'

Doc Holliday broke in. ‘What's Cisco reckon of all this kissy kissy with the wogs then, Pancho. Ha ha?'

Moran didn't like Doc Holliday and the feeling was mutual.

‘Anyway, Mr Westlock. I told ya what I told ya. I gotta go now.' He turned and walked away.

‘So Pancho betrays Cisco, hey Graeme?' said Doc Holliday.

‘You know, Graeme,' continued Holliday, ‘I reckon everyone will end up dead.' The two men walked out of the club. Holliday burbled on, much to Westlock's entertainment. ‘Yeah Graeme, I can see it all now, every one of us will end up dead. It's like something out of a Banjo Paterson poem.' And with that, he started to recite a verse of a Banjo classic, or at least his memory of how it went.

By the old Campaspe River, where the breezes shake the grass,

There's a row of little gravestones that stockmen never pass,

For they bear a crude inscription saying stranger drop a tear

For the cuff and collar players and the Geebung boys lie here.

Westlock and Holliday roared laughing and together they walked off into the night.

EARL Teagarden and Little Cisco Van Gogh sat in a car with Archie Reeves outside the Terminus Hotel in Victoria Street, Abbotsford.

‘Ya know Cisco, the wogs have been here for a long, long time. They are part of Aussie land, even if blokes like us don't like it.'

‘How do ya mean?' asked Cisco.

‘Remember the story of the 1854 rebellion at Ballarat?' said Earl.

‘The Eureka Stockade?' said Little Cisco.

‘Yeah, of course, with Peter Lalor. Everyone knows that.'

‘Yeah,' said Earl Teagarden. ‘But did you know that Peter Lalor's right hand man, the bloke who stood with him during the whole shit fight, was a dago?'

‘Bullshit,' said Archie Reeves.

‘No,' said Earl. ‘Fair dinkum, a wog, an Italian from Calabria named Carboni, Raffaello Carboni.'

‘Shit,' said Cisco. ‘There are Carbonis living in Collingwood.'

Earl Teagarden shook his head and changed the subject. ‘You're getting off the track,' he said. Earl didn't want to get into one of the famous Collingwood conversations about anyone who was anyone coming from Collingwood, from Ned Kelly to Mother Teresa.

‘I'm just letting ya know that the Italians have been here for as long as the Irish have – and a damn sight longer than the Dutch,' he said.

Cisco put his hand inside his coat, onto the butt of his .38 calibre automatic handgun. He didn't look happy.

‘What do ya mean by that smart arse remark?' he snapped. ‘The Van Goghs have lived in Collingwood for a hundred bloody years.'

‘Yeah, and Van Gogh's an Irish name, isn't it Cisco?' said Archie.

The conversation was starting to annoy Earl. Trying to talk common sense to the mentally ill was always a danger. He breathed a sign of relief when Anne Griffin walked up and tapped on the car window.

Cisco opened the car door. ‘How's it going, Anne?'

‘Ronny Lee just got blown away in the waiting room of the Royal Melbourne Hospital. It just came on the TV in the pub,' she said.

IT had happened like this. Ronny Lee had gone into hiding and was nowhere to be found, so Dragan Muskkar and Johnny Dobro had simply walked up to his 73-year-old mother as she shopped in Little Bourke Street, punched her to the footpath then shot her in both knee caps.

She was rushed to the Royal Melbourne Hospital, and members of the Albanian crew sat off the hospital and simply waited for Ronny Lee to show up. It was an old trick, but a good one. It took Ronny three days to turn up, but the psychology proved correct. And Ronny proved dead soon after arrival.

The strange thing about this was that when Dragan Muskkar and Johnny Dobro came running out of the hospital after shooting Ronny they jumped into a getaway car driven by Nguyen Cao Ky, the brother of Preston Phillips's whore girlfriend Mekong Kellie. Nguyen Cao Ky and Nguyen Bao Dai were the right and left hand men to Le Duc Tho and Ngo Dinh Diem, two Vietnamese gang leaders from Collingwood who were at war with the Chinese and Vietnamese gangs from Richmond, Fitzroy and Footscray. They were nicknamed the Mekong Mafia, and most of the thirty-man gang lived in the Collingwood Commission flats.