Chopper Unchopped (141 page)

The Mekong crew had carved out a heroin empire worth between three and six million dollars a year and seemed to be well armed and interconnected with all the old crews – including the old Collingwood crew, yet on the face of it the old Aussie Irish mob and the up and coming Vietnamese had nothing to do with each other.

However, this strange and unseen relationship between the two gangs had not escaped the attention of Pancho Moran. Moran reported this vital intelligence to Gaetano Dellacroce, and Dellacroce sent him to see Preston Phillips. So it was that Pancho Moran found himself sitting at the bar of the old Telford Club.

The club had been let go and was rather run down. No-one lived upstairs any more and it was now used for general storage and a place to bash, torture and shoot people in private.

Preston Phillips, Johnny Pepper, Bunny Malloy and Preston's moll gook girlfriend Mekong Kellie were all in attendance.

‘Look Preston, all Gaetano wants is to talk,' Pancho started. ‘The old days are dead and gone. It's the future we all have to look to and the only way to go is to crew up together. One big solid Aussie, Italian, Vietnamese crew. If the three main crews teamed up we could control everything. We would have every side covered.' While Pancho tried to sell Dellacroce's master plan to Preston Phillips, Mekong Kellie stood on the pool table dancing to an old Dusty Springfield song playing on the juke box. The lyrics went: ‘The only one who could ever reach me, the only one who could ever teach me, was the son of a preacher man.'

Johnny Pepper was standing beside the pool table trying to stick the barrel of his gold cup .45 calibre automatic handgun up the bum of the wiggling Asian beauty.

‘Cut that shit out,' yelled Preston. ‘Don't worry, Kellie. Johnny's only kidding.'

Preston Phillips returned his attention to Pancho Moran.

‘Yeah Pancho, it all sounds okay, but what about the Albanians? Do we include them?' he asked.

‘Piss on the Albanians,' said Pancho.

‘Well, what about Graeme Westlock?' asked Bunny Malloy. ‘Do we include him?'

Pancho was taken back. ‘What's he got to do with it?'

‘Ya know Anne Griffin?' asked Preston.

‘No,' said Pancho. ‘Not really.' Then he admitted, ‘Yeah, well I do and I don't. I've seen her about.'

Bunny Malloy laughed. ‘Have you ever seen her about the Santa Fe Gold?'

‘What do ya mean?' asked a now very nervous Pancho.

‘Anne Griffin works as a table top dancer when she's not on her back. She might be a moll and a maddie but she never forgets a face and she don't tell lies. Pancho, you're a fucking dog. You been talking to the police,' said Bunny Malloy.

‘Bullshit,' spluttered Moran. ‘What? You're gonna take some moll's word over mine?”

Preston Phillips pulled out his .38 calibre police special. ‘Pancho, the point is even if Anne never seen you with the police we was still gonna kill ya.'

‘Yeah,' yelled Johnny Pepper, ‘Cos the thing is, Pancho, we don't like ya.' And with that Preston Phillips, Johnny Pepper and Bunny Malloy all took aim at Pancho Moran and pulled their triggers. Bullets from three different directions smacked into Pancho's body and he fell to his knees.

Mekong Kellie got down off the pool table and grabbed a big bread knife and walked over and cut Pancho's throat from ear to ear. Pancho's head fell backward and blood pumped out like a red oil well from the gaping hole in his neck. The girl was covered in blood.

‘Jesus, Kellie,' said Preston Phillips. ‘That wasn't necessary. Look at all this bloody mess.'

Preston got up from the stool he was sitting on and backhanded the girl hard across the face. As he did this Pancho's body fell to the floor.

‘You mad cow,' yelled Preston. ‘You mad sick cow.'

Then he let fly with a second crashing backhander that sent her about six feet backwards and onto the floor.

Bunny Malloy proceeded to undo his fly and said to Preston, ‘Hey Preston, waste not, want not mate. Don't flog her too hard.'

Preston looked at the dead Pancho with his head almost cut off, and then at the fallen and crying Kellie. The whole party had turned a little sick for his liking.

CISCO Van Gogh sat in Chang Heywood's old 1967 Hillman Arrow car. Archie Reeves had agreed to come along for the ride, much against his better judgment. Neville and Normie Reeves sat in the back seat, highly excited. Cisco was about to gun a copper down in a barber's shop, just like on the old late night TV black and white gangster movies. They thought it was great.

It was pissing down rain as they waited in the old car across the road from Con the Greek's Barber Shop, in Gertrude Street, Fitzroy. ‘Holy shit,' said Archie. ‘It's coming down cats and dogs. You'll bloody drown in this, just walking across the bloody street.'

Little Cisco sat in silence checking his H & K 9mm automatic. It was a modern, heavy duty job, the sort of gear the SAS and anti-terrorist squads use. He'd cut Westlock in half with this thing, Cisco thought to himself.

‘There they are,' said Archie. Sure enough, when Cisco peered through the rain-splattered car window he saw Westlock and his faithful sidekick Doc Holliday getting out of an unmarked police car.

The two cops wore overcoats, which might have seemed odd, normally. But, it was raining, after all. They made their way into Con the Greek's shop and started chatting to the bloke waving the scissors.

‘How's it going, Con?'

‘Ahh, Mr Westlock,' said Con with a big smile. ‘Is a shit of a day. Good a day for ducks.'

Westlock smiled as he took off his overcoat and hung it up.

‘Yeah Con, good day for the ducks.'

Above the coat rack was a large photo of Sir Donald Bradman. Con the Greek loved cricket, which was a touch unusual for a Greek. On the other wall was a large photo of David Boon. At least Boon looked a bit Greek.

‘Speaking of ducks,' said Doc Holliday, pointing to the photo of Bradman. ‘He was gone for a duck in the last game he ever had.'

‘Ahh Mr Holliday,' said Con. ‘That's not fair. Don the Batman was the best. He even better than Boonie – not much, but yes, I have to say Don the Batman was Mister Magic with the bat.'

‘Ya know,' said Doc Holliday. ‘Don Bradman was really born in Melbourne.'

‘Bullshit,' said Con, who believed the customer was always right, except when it came to cricket. ‘He came from New South Wales, then went to South Australia.' And he looked to Westlock for confirmation.

‘No,' said Westlock, sitting in the barber's chair. ‘Don Bradman was born in Hoddle Street, Collingwood. Three houses down from David Boon.'

‘Ahh Mr Westlock,' said Con. ‘You pulla my leg. Boonie came from Launceston, Tasmania.'

Westlock shook his head. ‘Nah, Con. Hoddle Street, Collingwood.'

Con looked at the photo of David Boon in disbelief.

‘Collingwood?' he said.

He gave up the argument, and threw the black nylon sheet around Westlock and tied it tight around the policeman's bull neck.

‘Boonie come from Collingwood?' Con muttered to himself, still in a state of puzzled disbelief. ‘I reckon you tell Con the bullshit, Mr Westlock.'

Graeme Westlock turned to Con and said, ‘Con, I'm a member of the Victoria Police Force. Would I tell you a lie?'

Con shook his head, ‘No, Mr Westlock. I'm a just surprise, that's all.'

Westlock silently pulled out his .38 calibre police special with his right hand and held it against his stomach with the barrel aimed toward the open doorway, which had red, yellow and white strips of plastic hanging over it, designed, it would seem, to keep the flies in. Westlock gently clicked the hammer back and held the weapon steady under the cover sheet. Doc Holliday sat on the bench at the rear of the shop. Surprise, surprise, his overcoat concealed a cut-down 12 gauge shotgun with a pistol grip handle. ‘Short back and sides and a bit off the top, hey Con?' said Westlock cheerfully. He was a tough bastard. ‘Okay Mr Westlock,' said the Greek barber. Doc Holliday pulled the latest copy of Louis L'Amour's Hopalong Cassidy adventure out of his overcoat pocket and began to read.

‘Great day for a shoot 'em up, hey Graeme?' said Holliday.

‘Always a good day for one of those, Doc,' Westlock quipped. Both men laughed at their private joke.

‘LISTEN,' said Archie Reeves to Little Cisco. ‘Have you given this enough thought?'

Cisco gave his 9mm auto one final check and tucked it into his waist band under his coat.

‘Yeah. I'll never get another chance like this, Archie. Now you three wait here. This won't take long.'

Cisco opened the car door and a sheet of rain blew in. Cisco laughed and turned to Archie, Neville and Norm. ‘Ha ha, great day for a shoot 'em up, hey boys?'

He got out of the car. The rain drenched his hair and the drops ran down his face. Cisco turned and looked back at his mates through the open door before he closed it.

‘Ya know boys, I love the rain. Ha ha ha.'

THE screw had a head only a mother could love, and a temperament to match. ‘McCall,’ he snarled, ‘you’re getting out in the morning. Pack your gear.’

‘Thanks sir,’ said Johnny McCall, and the prison officer slammed the cell trap door shut.

‘Shit,’ said Leigh Kinniburgh, ‘you won’t be getting much sleep tonight.’

Johnny McCall had been sharing a cell in A Division, Pentridge, with this young Richmond tough for the past nine months. And Kinniburgh had spent the whole time regaling McCall with wild yarns of fist fights and shootouts in Richmond and stories of Billy ‘Blueberry’ Hill and Bobby Boy Michieletto.

He told stories about how his Uncle Billy got shot in the jaw by Johnny the Pig back in the wild 1970s, and how his other uncle several times removed bullets from friends with the help of large amounts of grog and some drugs mixed up by a tame local chemist.

He told McCall of a legendary streetfighter and gunman from the western suburbs called Harold who hanged himself in the Footscray lockup some 20 years ago. And how his grandfather once rode the 1965 Melbourne Cup winner Light Fingers, and how he was the great-great-great-grandson of Ned Kelly, and how he had once waved at Ripper Roy Reeves from a distance of 300 yards.

The wild yarns went on and on, in between blasts of heroin. But all in all, Leigh wasn’t a bad young bloke. He had a badly smashed-in face and no front teeth and spoke with a dribble – the result of being in some sort of coma, so he claimed. McCall didn’t mention his own ‘Blueberry’ Hill connection in the form of Muriel Hill and Melanie Wells, as that would expose Baby Micky. And Johnny knew that a secret shared is a secret lost, and that sometimes discretion can be the better part of valor. ‘Ya won’t need ya color telly and ya radio and the cassette player or the CD player when ya go, will ya Johnny?’ asked Leigh. ‘Nah, you can have the lot,’ said McCall.

McCall had served nine months of a 12-month term for unlawful possession of a firearm, a stiff sentence for a first offence. His lawyer, Clancy Collins, had lodged an appeal against conviction on the manslaughter blue and briefed Mr Robert Rouldorff QC at $5000 a day. The manslaughter conviction vanished, but McCall still had the possession of a handgun bullshit to do.

All in all, thought McCall, things have gone off brilliantly.

Russian Suzi, God bless her, had left Coco’s Restaurant and the Telford Club to him in her will. This made Johnny feel a tad guilty over killing her, but it was too late for all that now.

Coco Joeliene had dropped a pile of cash to his mum’s place – about half a million, so his mum reckoned. Joeliene didn’t know exactly, because she hadn’t bothered to count it. She just guessed.

Muriel had taken over the management of Coco’s Restaurant and sold her flower shop in Lennox Street, Richmond. Johnny’s sweetheart girlfriend, Melanie Wells, was acting as live-in full-time nanny for Baby Micky.

‘Yeah,’ thought Johnny, as he started pulling the photographs off the ceiling and walls, ‘things have really come together.’ Here he was, not quite 19 years old, and he was at least half a millionaire. He owned a whore house and the Telford Club, which he planned on turning into a sly gambling club. The Crown bloody Casino hadn’t pinched all the business. The scallywags and hard men didn’t always like flashing cash around in squarehead places with security cameras in case the authorities got nosy about where it came from. Johnny still had more guns than God in the cellar of the club, and a few other little stashes.

He was a rising criminal star. He had it all. As he pulled down the wedding photos of Clancy Collins and Melissa Clarke he laughed to himself at how the romance had come about. It seemed that old Clancy had taken to walking about at night, carrying an old antique sword in a cane for personal protection.

He was walking down Lygon Street, East Brunswick, one night about six months before on his way to see his accountant at the Quarry Hotel when up ahead he heard the cries of a lady in distress. Well, maybe not a lady altogether, but she was young and definitely distressed. It was young Melissa being molested by a gang of drunken louts and roughnecks. They had the fair Melissa bent over the hood of a HQ Holden and were giving her a goodly bit of the old ram jam big band up the South Pacific region.

Old Clancy yelled for them to unhand the girl but to no avail. The old gent then drew his sword from his cane and with his overcoat flapping in the wind he charged up the street and entered the field of combat like Basil Rathbone. He slashed to the left of him and to the right of him and to the left again, and dispatched the offenders in grand fashion.

It was at this point that young Melissa fell in love. She so overpowered old Clancy with her charms they were married within a month. It seemed married life was the salvation for both of them. Melissa no longer worked at Coco’s or any other restaurant of ill repute, and old Clancy no longer staggered the streets of Melbourne at night and haunted hotels and nightclubs yelling, ‘Madam, may I offer you a 69’ as he waved his ever-present glass of Vat 69.

He was too busy at home in bed being physically attacked. Good luck to the both of ’em, thought Johnny. They’d taken their honeymoon in Kingston, Jamaica, at Coco Joeliene’s invitation, and her expense, and McCall had the snapshots sent over to prove it.

As for Jamaican Joeliene. Well, well. McCall looked around at his cell walls littered with photos she had sent him including her wedding photos. She had married Sir Leopold Kidd at, believe it or not, Government House in Kingston, with the Governor-General of Jamaica acting as best man. She was all tits and taffeta on the day and looking wonderful.

McCall received a letter each week from her with at least six photos in each letter, and she demanded he ring her reverse charges at least three times a week. He would ring and it would be night time in Jamaica and if she was asleep she would just stick her nose in a fat bag of cocaine and chatter away for an hour or more. And could she keep McCall entertained with tales of her high adventure as Lady Joeliene, the wife of a millionaire merchant banker and Knight of the Realm.

No door in the Caribbean was closed to her. She lived in a mansion in Kingston and kept Sir Leopold’s yacht, renamed Lady Joeliene, in Montego Bay. She opened a bar-restaurant-nightclub affair in Kingston and, you guessed it, she named it Coco’s Restaurant. It was the hottest place in town, the star attraction being a former Miss Trinidad and Tobago from Port of Spain who had fallen on hard times. And fallen on a few other things since.

This wanton wench put on a show which would be quite against the law in Australia. She openly bragged of having accommodated the entire touring Australian cricket team between the hours of 9pm until midnight before attending to the needs of the local side. A sticky wicket all round.

Lady Joeliene would often hand the phone over to the former Miss Trinidad, leaving McCall in no doubt that Isabella Dominuquez would be a most interesting lady to know socially if he ever got to the Caribbean.

Kinniburgh was looking at him. ‘Can I have a few photos of Joeliene?’ he asked hopefully, looking like a smashed-up pig dog wagging its tail for a bone. It was more a case of wagging his bone for a piece of tail.

McCall looked and picked out a couple of Joeliene on the beach on Montego Bay, wearing some sort of saucy bikini, and another of her in some sort of tiny G-string thing. All tits and legs in the sun, surf and sand.

‘Gee, I’d love to slip it into her,’ said Kinniburgh, clutching himself like a drowning man grabbing a straw.

McCall laughed. ‘I’m sure if she was here right now she’d be more than happy to knock the top off it for ya, mate, because she’s that sort of lady. But you’ll never get the chance, mate.’

Kinniburgh frowned. ‘Yeah, but I can still dream.’

McCall thought, ‘Yeah, that’s all a bloke in jail has really got – his memories and his dreams.’ Anything to escape the reality of the moment. McCall remembered the nights he had spent looking at Joeliene’s photos of far away Jamaica and reliving old memories and loving her letters and phone calls. Yeah, Melanie Wells would visit him on contact visits and when the coast was clear he’d empty a healthy load of prison frustration into her, but in his dreams he wanted to be in the sun and surf and sand with his old friend, Coco Joeliene.

The truth was, he really missed his old mate and desperately wanted to see her again and planned to do just that when he got out.

On Coco’s advice, McCall had transferred a large slice of his funds to a very friendly bank in Georgetown, Grand Cayman Island. His passport was in order and so was Melanie’s. His mum had agreed to take over the babysitting of Micky. He would get out and check on the Telford Club and Coco’s Restaurant, then grab Melanie and jump on a plane for Jamaica.

He needed sun, surf and sand after this bluestone hell hole. He looked at a photo of Coco on the beach, with her left arm around Sir Leopold and her right arm around Archie Reeves of all people. The terror of every chemist shop in Collingwood.

Hell, thought McCall. Did that little scallywag kick a big goal when he handed Coco Joeliene a fist full of pethidine way back when. He was behind the bar at Coco’s Night Club and didn’t ever want to return to Collingwood, and who can blame him?

Archie wanted to open his own small bar and call it the Collingwood Club. Coco was looking at a small place for him on Prince Alfred Street. Lucky bastard, but he did thieve her a million-odd bucks worth of top-of-the-range drugs and got about ten grand for the lot and blew that on bullshit with his mates. So she sort of owed him.

Sir Leopold ran his business interests from Jamaica now, and Lady Joeliene had become a power of sorts in her local government parish and was a member of the PNP, the People’s National Party, as well as a cash contributor to the JLP, the Jamaican Labour Party. She always liked a bob each way.

Sir Leopold loved her desperately, and why not? He spoiled her rotten and gave her twenty percent of a Jamaican aluminum business, so Lady Joeliene was now a heavy in the metals game. From blowjobs to bauxite.

McCall looked around to see Leigh Kinniburgh stick a heroin needle into his arm for his second plug of the day. God, get me out of here thought Johnny. Thank you, Joeliene. You have kept me sane, and soon I’ll be with you again.

He picked up a photo sent to him by the new girl at Coco’s in Abbotsford. She took over when Melissa Clarke bailed out to marry old Clancy. Her name was Kristy Toy. She was a Collingwood girl, a crew cut neo-Nazi boot girl but built for athletic passion. She came in to visit McCall soon after she started work at Coco’s but got barred from the prison after the screws found her bent over a table with The Kid. The screws thought they’d need a crow bar to pull them apart.

As the screws grabbed McCall, Kristy yelled, ‘Fuck ’em, Johnny. Keep doing what you do best,’ and he did. In the end they left him to it until the finish. Kristy got dragged away by two bull dyke female prison officers and Johnny McCall spent a month on punishments. Ha ha.

Melanie never found out why he was on punishments and too bad if she did. Jail is jail and wet m dreams that produce themselves in the flesh on contact visits cannot be ignored, not when most of the poor bums in the joint are pulling themselves, dreaming about things they will never get.

Yeah, he loved Melanie but being in prison had done something to McCall. Hell, he might even pull Kristy to one side on the quiet when he got out tomorrow. He had to check on Coco’s anyway. She was a raving nutter with a heap of guts. McCall also knew a thousand per cent that Joeliene fully intended and expected him to ram her solid, and likewise her double-jointed star nightclub attraction. The Kid was going to make up for lost time. Most women who loved prisoners couldn’t understand what happened when they got out. It was like putting a starving man in front of a mountain of food, he ate until he was sick. A prisoner who’s been starved of pussy never knocks back a chance again.

Isabella had already told McCall in no uncertain terms that Melanie or no Melanie she wanted him knee deep inside her within the first five minutes of their meeting each other. What was he to do with Melanie? He was a kid with a thousand things to do and places to go and dreams to live, but all Melanie wanted was to get married. He knew he could never be faithful to one woman. That’s why he got on so good with Joeliene. He loved her and she was his friend, but sex was just uncomplicated fun. It didn’t mean romance, hearts and flowers and till death do us part. Holy shit, bloody Muriel came in to see him with little Baby Micky. She was wearing a tight skirt and bare legs with high heels and he lost the plot and put the hard word right on her. Muriel blushed a bit, looked around, went silent then said, ‘Don’t ever let Melanie find out about this.’ She was old enough to be his mother, but she had a good memory.

Outside, in the criminal world, he knew life meant sex, drugs and death. In jail, life meant sex, drugs and death. Drugs meant money, sex meant money, and money meant death or murder either to earn it or to defend it. It all meant the same thing.

In jail, all he thought of was sex, money and power. It all came back to murder to defend it or earn it. He wanted every woman he saw. Jail was a cess pit: wall-to-wall junkies, wall-to-wall bloodshed. Sex was the butter that smoothed things over. If a guy owed money on drugs he sold what he could to pay the bill. His arse or his mouth, or he begged his wife or his sister or even his daughter to pay the bill. Or he got a knife or an iron bar and paid the bill himself.

Drop ya pants or die. Or your wife or sister or girlfriend or daughter drops her pants or you die. Either that or you kill or cripple. It was all filth and inhumanity. Only the truly evil survived. And he had wide-eyed innocent Melanie looking to him to be her white knight. If he was any sort of knight at all it was a black knight. He liked killing, and he loved dirty girls and wicked ladies. Melanie was in for a broken heart.

‘Hey Johnny,’ said Leigh Kinniburgh. ‘Ya won’t sleep tonight. Da ya want a bit of speed?’