Chopper Unchopped (151 page)

GENE Fitzpatrick wrapped up the Hi Standard .22 calibre automatic handgun with an extra clip and two boxes of 50 bullets in nice birthday paper. It was the 20th of April, Hitler’s Birthday. It was also Amy Jo’s birthday. She was sweet 16 and never been kissed, he joked to himself.

Never been kissed between the toes. That was about the only place the little alley cat had never been kissed, he thought.

A 16-year-old who earns two grand a bloody week working the day shift in a brothel and that’s after the house has taken a 25 per cent cut.

A 16-year-old with a grand a day smack habit — and gets it all free of charge from her Uncle Preston and Uncle Bunny.

A 16-year-old with an insane no-eared bodyguard who follows her about like a puppy dog.

A 16-year-old who has pulled her cousins, the Bennett brothers, and the other assorted Bennett nut cases back into the Collingwood crew.

Yep, this little 16-year-old was a force in her own right, with a small but deadly power base that couldn’t be sneezed at. How many 16-year-olds drove around Collingwood in a mint condition 1967 Cadillac Fleetwood Eldorado?

Gene Fitzpatrick recalled the late Karen “The Rabbit Kisser” Phillips and compared Amy Jo Phillips. Was history repeating itself?

Preston was tossing Amy Jo a birthday party at the old Telford club in Victoria Street, Abbotsford, and the Irishman was looking forward to it.

Amy Jo had changed a lot in a year. She had developed a knowing look in her eyes that made her seem much older and wiser. And like her mother, she had bleached her long hair platinum blonde. In many ways Preston Phillips and others remarked she was looking more and more like Karen Phillips herself except, of course, for the tits. She stood out in that department, boasting a set of boobs her old mother would have been proud of, to the tune of a 38-inch D cup. Some things will never go metric.

Gene Fitzpatrick arrived at the Telford Club at 6 pm as requested, to find that the whole place had been done up and returned to its former glory. Muriel Hill answered the door. Preston Phillips, Bunny Malloy and old Chang Heywood were at the bar drinking with Earl Teagarden, and Evil Hadley, Geoff Twane and Gaja Jankoo were also in attendance, along with Greg Featherstone, Sean Maloney and Sonny Carroll.

Sandie Toy and Tessa Kinsella, Reggie Rat Kinsella and Neville and Normie Reeves, Angelo and Tony Bennett sat together, drinking and ignoring all others until Filson Pepper, another Amy Jo recruit, walked in and joined them. Then Tommy Brown, the late Rachel Van Gogh’s nephew, walked in and joined the Bennetts. Tuyen Tran Truong and three of his shadow men were also at the gathering. Just to round it off, there was mad Albanian Johnny Dobro, Mekong Kellie and Benny Marshalartas.

The brothel across the road, Coco’s Restaurant, had been shut for the night and the six ladies invited to the party to add female weight to the evening. All in all, it was a somewhat sad looking lot, thought Gene Fitzpatrick. Maybe the party would get moving when Amy Jo and her no-eared shadow walked in.

Bunny Malloy walked over and put a record on. He pushed two buttons on the juke box and k.d. lang came on singing “What’s New Pussy Cat”. As the song started Amy Jo walked in with Hector Van Gogh close on her heels. She was wearing a skintight pair of faded blue jeans and a white pair of Reebok runners, a white tee shirt that stretched tight across the biggest boobs in three suburbs and an expensive black leather jacket that Preston recognised as one that had belonged to her mother. Oddly enough, Hector was dressed in exactly the same gear, as if he was her twin.

The party came to life when Amy Jo walked in.

“Happy Birthday, Princess,” said Preston.

“Happy Birthday, darlin’,” said Bunny.

Everyone gathered and hugged and kissed Amy Jo. Gene Fitzpatrick walked over and bent his head down and kissed Amy on the cheek and gave her the birthday gift. Others handed her gifts, but she opened Gene’s first and was delighted. She loaded the .22 calibre bullets into the clip then slid the clip into the butt of the automatic.

“Thanks Gene,” said Amy Jo. “Now we got two.” With that she pulled out a beautiful automatic that perfectly matched the one she’d just been given. Everyone laughed.

Gene thought that his good looks and charm had won the young girl over. He had become a powerful force within the Collingwood crew and shared equal authority with Preston Phillips, but the bad blood between Fitzpatrick and Neville and Normie Reeves still existed and so Amy Jo was loath to take sides until she became powerful enough to make such a move.

She knew Neville and Normie were a pair of shits, but Fitzpatrick wanted to rule everything. Amy Jo had started to see herself in a Karen Phillips, Raychell Van Gogh light. She had gathered about her a young crew of madmen in the form of the Bennetts, her own cousins, Tommy Brown, Filson Pepper and, best of all, Hector “The Cannibal” Van Gogh.

Johnny Debro and Benny Marshalartas were swinging voters. They would follow the strength. Tuyen Tran Truong had already handed over four kilos of pure white rat heroin to Amy Jo on credit. It was a secret deal. If she could handle it, he would do more business. All of Collingwood felt that Amy Jo and Hector Van Gogh and their small crew had their eye on leadership and saw themselves as the new headless horsemen of the Collingwood criminal world. Preston Phillips was Amy Jo’s uncle and if he could see leadership he would hand it over when the time was ripe …

All of which set the scene for Amy Jo’s birthday party. It was the night young Amy Jo moved from a world of lightweight fun and games into a world where death sits on your shoulder and the only way to survive is to make death your friend. Gene Fitzpatrick kissed young Amy good night. He had to leave early, around 7.30 pm. Amy Jo stood at the bar with Hector Van Gogh close at hand.

“I wonder what really did happen to my mum?” said Amy out loud. “I remember years ago the old yarn about Fatty Phillips turning dog and getting put off by Mad Raychell and Micky Van Gogh. And Karen Phillips, Fatty’s little sister, just turned a blind eye. Yeah, well, I know my mum was no good. I know she was talkin’ to Doc Holliday, but no-one can just let that sort of shit go.”

The room went quiet. Amy Jo held a pause just long enough, then swung around to face Preston Phillips.

“Uncle Pres, you didn’t kill Stella, did ya?” she said softly.

Preston flushed red. “No, baby, course not. What a thing to ask me,” he blustered.

“Well, someone in this room did,” snarled Amy Jo.

Hector The Cannibal put his right hand behind his back and grabbed the butt of his Beretta automatic. Filson Pepper, Tommy Brown, Angelo and Tony Bennett did the same. The party mood had vanished and serious tension had taken over.

“Someone put Stella off,” said Amy. “I wonder if Bobby Torres saw anything that night.”

“She was a dog,” yelled Neville in a panic.

Amy turned. “Yeah, I know that, Neville. Why are you so upset? All I said was I wonder what Bobby Torres saw.”

“Ya can’t believe him,” said Normie.

“Why don’t you two idiots shut up,” yelled Bunny Malloy. He was livid.

“You two bob jumped-up slut,” he yelled. “You’re a junkie and a moll and ya mum was a dog. Don’t come in here trying to act like Karen Phillips, putting it on us over ya dead dog of a mother.”

Amy Jo didn’t miss a beat.

“Bobby Torres said you drove the car, Bunny, and Neville and Normie tossed her in the back.”

Malloy went silent.

“But, I ask myself, which one of ya killed her?”

Neville cracked. “Bunny did. Me and Normie only screwed her.” Neville pointed at Bunny. “So what,” said Malloy. “What are you going to do about it, moll?”

Amy Jo smiled. “Nothing. Hector, have you anything to say?”

No-one saw the gun in Hector’s hand in the dimly-lit room, but they all saw the muzzle flash as the 9 mil. slug spat out and shattered Bunny’s cheek bone. Tessa Kinsella and Sandie Toy screamed. Neville and Normie went for their guns but got smashed to the floor and disarmed by the Bennett brothers and Filson Pepper. Tommy Brown pulled out a .44 handgun that could stop an elephant and covered the crowd with it. Amy Jo stood over the fallen body of Bunny Malloy.

“Sorry, Bunny. Sorry, Uncle Preston. I know Bunny was ya friend, but fair is fair.”

Preston nodded slightly. He wasn’t arguing. Amy Jo started to walk out and looked at Neville and Normie Reeves. To kill Malloy in front of everyone was a good career move. But to kill the Reeves brothers would be suicide.

“I’m not killing anyone for getting up me mum,” she said.

Neville and Normie stood up in tears.

“I’m sorry,” said Neville.

“I’m sorry,” said Normie.

“Yeah well,” said Amy Jo. “Bunny’s dead and mum’s dead. So we will leave it at that, okay?”

Neville and Normie nodded.

As Amy Jo and her crew walked out Neville called out “We are still friends aren’t we, Amy?” Amy Jo turned. “Yeah, Nev. We’re still friends.”

BEAUTIFUL Dreamer wake unto me, star light and dew drops are waiting for thee. Sounds of the rude world heard in the day, lull’d by the moon light have all passed away.

“HERE he comes,” said Westlock, and with that Doc Holliday stopped singing.

Gene Fitzpatrick pulled up outside his house in Cruickshank Street, Port Melbourne, in his 1986 Mercedes Sports. He got out and instead of going straight inside he stood in the gutter and took a leak.

It was a very poorly lit street at night time, something that some residents had complained to the council about for some time. It encouraged undesirables, they said.

They didn’t come much more undesirable than Holliday and Westlock, who had got out of their car sneakily and were walking toward Fitzpatrick, guns drawn.

“How ya going, Fitzy?” said Westlock.

Fitzpatrick didn’t stand on formality. Without even taking one hand off his fly he pulled out his .32 calibre automatic and fired, hitting Westlock in the chest.

Westlock staggered back and Doc Holliday emptied six slugs into Fitzpatrick. Then he grabbed Westlock’s handgun and emptied three more into him.

It made the Gary Abdallah job look half-hearted. This amused Westlock, whose sense of humor ran deeper than a .32 slug in his guts.

“Ha ha,” he laughed. “I think you got him, Doc. Ya under arrest, Dog,” he yelled at the Irishman’s body. Then he said, “Get me to hospital, Doc.”

As Doc Holliday floored the unmarked police car toward the Alfred Hospital, Westlock began to sing as he held his bleeding chest.

Step aside you ornery tender feet, let a big bad buckeroo pass,

I’m the toughest hombre you’ll ever meet though I may be the last,

Yes siree, we’re a vanishing race. No siree, can’t last long, step aside

you ornery tender feet while I sing my song.

I’m an old cowhand from the Rio Grande.

Then he passed out.

“Don’t die on me Graeme,” screamed Holliday. “Come on, mate, don’t die.”

COLLINGWOOD, 1938. “Nail his hands to the table,” said Milton Van Gogh. Harold, Herbert and Hector Van Gogh took hold of a terrified Darcy McSwiggin, sat him in a chair and forced his left hand, palm down, on top of the heavy wooden kitchen table in the kitchen of the Kitten Club in Cromwell Street. It wasn’t looking good for McSwiggin.

Shirley Phillips stood in the kitchen doorway. She was bigger than the average heavyweight fighter, but a lot prettier, with big hips and a colossal bosom. She stood nearly six feet tall and weighed at least 240 pounds. Everyone agreed she was fat, but she still had sex appeal. She had long legs, was 46 inches around the hips with a 36-inch waist, topped off with a 52-inch set of tits, a 19-inch neck and a set of biceps like a circus strongman. There was no doubt about it: the woman was massive.

But Shirley Phillips had a beautiful face. She had long flowing golden hair, dancing blue eyes, and mostly she was naturally happy and friendly, with a warm and gentle nature, which was why she was much loved and very popular around Collingwood.

There were a couple of things guaranteed to wipe the smile from Shirley’s face. She would not tolerate anyone who lashed her for money, or anyone who mistreated one of her girls. Which is where Darcy McSwiggin had made an error of judgment, leading him to his present predicament.

Herbert and Harold held McSwiggin down as Hector held his arm, then Milton nailed his hand into the table with a flat-topped roofing nail. McSwiggin screamed in agony.

“Right,” said Milton. “The other one.”

The second hand received the same treatment.

Young Betty Brown came to the doorway behind Big Shirley. She had been working at the Kitten Club now for two and a half years and at the age of 17 had become the Club’s most popular draw card. She was pure sex, a voluptuous, all tits and legs wet dream. The Kitten Club was a sly grog joint, with gambling and whores thrown in. The girls were called hostesses. The young whore could make five to seven pounds a night, after Big Shirley had taken her commission.

Betty Brown also put on a striptease show on Saturday nights that packed the place out. People might think the table dancers of the 90s discovered the tease business but Melbourne has always had a huge sex trade, it was just harder to find. The Kitten Club boasted the wildest whores in Melbourne, and Betty had become the Princess of Cromwell Street. Big Shirley treated her like a daughter and Betty looked to Big Shirl as the mother she didn’t have. All of which meant that when Darcy McSwiggin punched Betty in the face and gave her a black eye Big Shirley decided not only to teach the thug a lesson, but to set an example to one and all. An example that would live on in legend.

Big Shirley walked over to the kitchen drawer and pulled out a table spoon. A small crowd of girls had gathered, including the O’Connell sisters, who had given up the Russell Street brothel to move up to the Kitten Club.

Big Shirl walked over to McSwiggin, took him round the neck with one large and powerful arm and dug the table spoon into this right eye ball. McSwiggin screamed, but he might as well have saved his breath for all the good it was going to do him. Big Shirl wrenched the eye ball out of its socket. It was attached to a membrane cord and Shirl grabbed the eye in one large fist and yanked. McSwiggin was screaming and trying to struggle free but Harold and Herbert held him tight. Then Big Shirl got really tough. She took out the other eye as well. She wasn’t a woman to be crossed.

“Call Doc Friendly,” she said, “and get him patched up. If he can’t be helped, kill him. Once he’s patched up put him in the cellar. We’ll keep him like a blind pet dog. Anyone hits my girls I’ll do worse. He’s lucky. He got me on a good day.”

The onlookers and whores were terrified by this exhibition. Even the hardest and toughest of whores acted like little girls. When Big Shirl spoke, they jumped to attention. But they knew that Shirl protected them and cared for them and oversaw all their sexual activities.

“Right, girls,” barked Shirl. “Get back to work. Rhonda, you take care of Doc Friendly when he gets here. He likes you. Play a bit of doctors and nurses with the old goat. Tracy, you can strip this Saturday night. Betty is having a rest.”

“I’m okay, Shirl,” said Betty.

“I’ll tell you when you’re okay,” said Shirley.

The big woman walked over and put her hand inside Betty’s black silk dressing gown and ran it up the inside of her thigh. Betty fell into Big Shirley’s bosom and opened her legs just a bit.

“There, there Princess, Auntie Shirley’s not gonna let no-one hurt you,” the big woman said soothingly as she slid three fingers deep inside the girl. Betty Brown nuzzled her face between the massive tits, opened her legs wider and began to moan and grind her hips.

The Van Gogh brothers stood in excited silence at this wanton display of the love that dare not speak its name, as Oscar Wilde had called it.

Big Shirl picked Betty up, lifting her until she was on tip toes, then bent her head down and kissed her. The Van Gogh brothers stood next to the bloody unconscious remains of Darcy McSwiggin, gaping as the two women kissed each other full on the mouth. It was all too much for Hector. He undid his fly buttons and began to tug himself. Young Betty could see Hector out of the corner of her eye as she kissed Shirley and she winked at him. Big Shirl noticed this and, still holding her young plaything in one powerful arm, she turned and in a flash snatched hold of Hector’s swollen member with her right hand.

“Ya wanna get that seen to Hecky, before ya lose it” she purred. With that she squeezed until Hector squealed in pain. This whole show delighted the other Van Gogh brothers. They roared laughing.

“Ya like little Betty, do ya, Hecky. Well, I tell ya what, you fellas, get this piece of human shit all cleaned up and patched up, and after Doc Friendly sees to him ya can all have a little taste of Betty. Only ya gotta be gentle and nice, no rough stuff. You’d like that too, wouldn’t ya, Betty?”

The young whore smiled and nodded. She had always hero-worshipped the Van Goghs and until now had never had the chance to bed them. Maybe that was part of the fascination. Everyone in old Calcutta had screwed her, including her own cousins and brothers and uncles, but the Van Goghs always remained aloof.

“C’mon Princess,” said Big Shirley and led Betty down the hall and into Big Shirl’s private bedroom, a room where young Betty spent a lot of her time. As she was about to walk through the bedroom door Betty turned and put her hand to her lips and blew Hector Van Gogh a kiss. Big Shirley laughed and gave the young girl a friendly push and with that the two women vanished into the darkness.

“That Betty Brown has turned into a little honey,” said Milton. “She always was a good sort but she’s come on well,” agreed Herbert.

“I’d kill anyone for her,” said Hector.

The Van Gogh Brothers all looked at their poor, dear insane brother Hector.

“You’d kill anyone for anyone,” said Milton.

KALAN Reeves arrived in New York City in 1928 on the coast-to-coast train from San Francisco. Like everything else, immigration visas could be obtained for a price and Kalan had the correct change. He made his way to the Irish quarter of Brooklyn. Rent was $6 a month for one room and one cold water tap. It didn’t take him long to team up with other members of his extended family who had fled Ireland during the Great Potato Famine of 1846.

Brooklyn was a city slum. Besides the Irish quarter, there was the Italian quarter, Polish quarter and so on. Crime and its close relative, professional prizefighting, were the only way up or out. There were plenty of colourful characters around. One of them was Con Coughlin, whose little sister Mae Coughlin married Al Capone in December, 1918. However, the former Cellar Club dance girl and prostitute had little love for her family, and so the Irish side of the Capone family never saw a penny of Al’s money And there was Tommy Reeves, Patsy O’Connor, Gun Boat MacGreevy, a former gang boss of the East Side Irish, Butchy O’Donnell, and Roy Meeghan.

Every man with a brother, every brother with a cousin, every cousin with a sister. The Irish quarter was so inter-related that few Irishmen asked an Irish whore her last name for fear she be the sister of a cousin or the wife of a long lost brother.

The poverty and filth and violence was overwhelming and the racial rivalry was bloody. The Irish hated the Italians and the Italians hated the Jews and the Jews hated everybody.

Bobby O’Banion, a cousin of the late Chicago Irish gang boss Dion O’Banion, was married to Raychell Reeves, a cousin to Kalan. Tracy Brown married Kevin Moran, cousin of another gang boss called George “Bugs” Moran. It was a sexual affair with Tracy Brown – who was in fact a third cousin to Kalan Reeves – that involved Kalan and Tommy Reeves and Patsy O’Connor in a plan that would cost them all dearly.

On the 17 January, 1920, the US Government passed the Volstead Act, effectively creating Prohibition, lighting the fuse that led to an explosion in bloodshed and gang warfare never seen before in the criminal history of America, and which was to set a pattern for the next half a century.

A crime boss called Joseph Aiello had mustered together the shattered remains of the old Genna gang and the old O’Banion gang as well as various freelance enemies of Capone’s. It was the O’Banion and Moran connection that drew Kalan Reeves (and the Collingwood connection) into this very American web.

Capone lived in the Metropole Hotel, at 2300 South Michigan Avenue in Chicago. Capone and his gang occupied more than 50 rooms on two heavily guarded floors. They had their own private lifts and their own private bars, private whores and private gambling tables. One Sunday morning, as Capone and his personal bodyguard – “Machine Gun” Jack McGurn – walked down the stairs with about thirty gang members, Kalan and Tommy Reeves and Patsy O’Connor came into the hotel, drew weapons and fired nine shots between them at Capone. They missed him – but killed three of his men and an innocent bystander.

Tommy Reeves and Patsy O’Connor were gunned down by Jack McGurn, but Kalan escaped into Michigan Avenue and vanished. However, he had no close friends or family he could trust in New York. The wrath of Capone against the one Irishman who escaped meant that he was in a strange land and outcast. All alone. The rules of loyalty in America weren’t the same as in Ireland or Australia. If you are alone with no money and your enemy is rich and powerful in America, you will remain alone.

Kalan Reeves was a desperate man. He was shot by police while trying to hold up a pawn shop in San Francisco, where he had gone to try to jump ship for Australia. He got his boat ride, all right, but it wasn’t the one he wanted. He was sentenced to 15 years hard labour on Alcatraz, in the middle of the harbour. Which, as fate would have it, was the same prison Capone ended up.

Kalan Reeves got remissions, and was released from Alcatraz in 1938, one year before Capone got out in 1939. He decided to stick to his plan of going to Australia, where he had family ties from the old country. Which is how he came to be reunited with his brother Regan and his cousins in Collingwood.

DARCY McSwiggin lived, if you could call it living. He was patched up by Doc Friendly, a morphine-addicted doctor who’d been struck off when the authorities found out that most of the injections he gave were in his own arm. True to Big Shirl’s threat, McSwiggin was locked in the pitch black dark in the cellar under the house in Cromwell Street. There was a trap door in the pantry that opened onto a stair case down to the cellar, which measured 16 feet by 12 feet, in the old money. A bale of straw was dropped in the cellar along with a few old blankets and a bucket for a toilet.

McSwiggin was thrown a loaf of bread, and some meat and cheese and water daily, or every second day, and beaten down with a leather whip if he tried to make it up the stairs. He was a powerful man, but the nails in the hands had left them curled up and partly crippled. Within six weeks his hair and beard took on the look of a wild animal and within 12 weeks his fingernails were like claws. He would scream and growl and crawl about like an animal and lived in his own filth. People in the kitchen above could often hear the rats squealing as the blind and by now quite insane monster in the cellar caught and killed them for snacks.

The trap door was held in place by a large Jackson key lock, which he had no chance of breaking. The one voice that could terrify McSwiggin into silence was Big Shirl’s. Keeping the tormented man in the cellar gave Shirl a monstrous weapon of fear. Especially after the Molly MacInerny affair, which was talked about in hushed tones around Collingwood for years to come.

Molly MacInerny was a bouncy, full-bosomed, wide-hipped lass of buxom proportions. To call her fat would be unkind, but it was widely agreed that young Molly was built for comfort. She had been sold into prostitution in 1934 at the age of 15, and it was by no means the wrong vocation for her, because she showed quite some enthusiasm for the caper. Molly was by nature a hard case who had grown up fast in the worst years of the Depression. By the age of 12, she was selling her charms for sixpence a time. Soon after, her father took his own life and her mother was put in a mental hospital.

When Molly was 14 years old she was sent to live with an uncle and aunt in Collingwood. Her brothers had all taken to the road with their swags years before. She was happy with her uncle and aunt but her uncle began to notice the young girl’s charms and Molly, unable to say the word “no”, was soon attending to her uncle’s needs on a regular basis, as well as providing him with a mysterious two to three shillings a day as a result of her freelance sexual efforts.

Molly was pretty happy with this arrangement, all in all, but her everloving aunt wasn’t overjoyed with her conduct at all. One day Molly agreed to go with her auntie to “visit a sick friend.” Auntie walked Molly to a house on Cromwell Street. The friend was Big Shirley Phillips and Molly’s auntie received a five pound note and the promise of 10 percent of the girl’s earnings for a year. The deal was done. Molly protested but was slapped from one end of the hallway to the other. Then she was locked in a bedroom and men came in and took her one after the other, all night long. In the morning the battered and bruised girl was shown three pounds. It seemed that she had earned three pounds for her night’s work. She couldn’t remember how many men she had taken but Big Shirl kept a pound and gave Molly two quid, saying “We can do it the easy way or the hard way. Perfume and hot soapy water, nice silk dressing gowns, good hot food, warmth and protection and a fair price for your efforts. Or you can be beaten and pack raped nightly and treated like a low-life dog. What’s it to be?” It wasn’t a trick question.