Chopper Unchopped (156 page)

“Westlock!” he yelled. At the same time Preston reached over and grabbed Fatty’s .45 calibre automatic from out of his belt under his jacket.

“Don’t do it, Pres,” yelled Doc. “Don’t do it!” But Preston Phillips was ruled by a death or glory ethos that ran in the family. He aimed the hand gun at Westlock and pulled the trigger. The big slow-moving slug smacked into Westlock’s coat – and into the bullet proof vest he was wearing under it. The sledge hammer effect of the impact knocked him off his feet. Meanwhile, Doc Holliday and Charlie Ford fired on Phillips. One of Charlie’s slugs hit him in the nose and the force of the bloody impact made Phillips’ right eye ball spit out of its socket and hang down his cheek. Holliday emptied his gun into Phillips’ chest as Fatty lay on the floor screaming like a big pig with a sticking knife in its gizzard.

“Are ya okay, Graeme?” yelled Holliday.

Westlock got up. “Yeah, I’m okay. Shit, this didn’t need to happen. We only wanted to pinch him on a shit charge. It wasn’t worth dying for.”

HECTOR Van Gogh walked into the private lounge in the brothel. “The postie’s been,” he said. Four letters for Jody, about twenty thank you and I love you cards for Penny, by the look of it, and one parcel for Amy. Where’s Amy?”

Penny took the cards clients had sent her and put them up on the bar.

“I don’t know, she had to go out.”

“What?” said Hector. “Without me?”

Penny shrugged. “She said she had to go and see a man about a dog.”

“What did you reckon of Sonia the other night, Penny?” asked Hector.

“Well,” said Penny. “She was indeed a surprise. Evidently she has danced prior to her taking up her present occupation. Hector, I can assure you that you don’t dance like that without serious past experience.”

“I reckon Benny got his end in there,” said Hector.

“Yes,” said Penny. “I wouldn’t be at all surprised.”

“I reckon your body is better, Penny” said Hector.

The former school teacher walked over to the boy.

“I’d look a sight trying to put on a striptease wearing glasses,” she said.

“I reckon your specs is cute,” said Hector. He mightn’t have had much in the way of ears, but the boy had charm.

Penny was wearing an all black leather bondage and domination outfit – long black leather thigh high boots with a stiletto heel, black high cut knickers and a tight corset that pushed her boobs up and made them look even bigger.

“I’ve got a client in ten minutes, Hecky, and Amy Jo is out.”

She reached her right hand out and undid Hector’s fly, stuck her hand in and took hold of his most tender part with her long, painted fingernails. While other men would scream in pain and pull away, Hector’s eyes blazed in pure pleasure as Penny’s hand dug in deep. He began to swell. Penny was plumbing new depths in degradation and delighting in it. She manipulated the boy’s swollen member out of his trousers.

Hector turned and emptied a small plastic bag onto the bar and then bent his head down and took a deep snort of the white powder. Penny, still holding his throbber, bent forward and snorted a nose full of the mix, then turned and sunk her teeth into the swollen flesh in her hand. Hector let out a whimper of pain and pleasure, and she took it as a cue to deep throat the lot. Hector had the school teacher by the hair and was thrusting himself back and forth. Within moments he climaxed in a fit of rage and fell against the bar, but the school teacher continued. Hector yanked her by the hair and pulled her to her feet.

“No more!” he said in a strangled voice. The pain had caught up with the pleasure.

Penny tucked Hector away and did his fly up and straightened his trousers. Hector’s hands were trembling. Penny gave him a cuddle.

“I can make it much, much better than that,” she cooed.

Jody knocked on the door.

“Penny, your client’s here.”

“I gotta go, Hecky,” she said, and walked out.

“Oh Mr Reynolds, you’re five minutes late. You’ll be punished for this, you little shit,” she yelled at the mug waiting meekly in the lounge.

“Yes, Miss McMahon,” whined the terrified but highly excited little man. Hector listened to this and muttered to himself. “Slut, filthy slut.”

Amy Jo returned to the brothel about 4.30 that afternoon.

“What’s going on?” she said. “Penny pinched my best customer,” yelled Jody. “He’s been a twice a week, two hours a time, regular ever since I’ve been here. Today he arrives twenty minutes early while I was with another client and Penny pinched him.”

Penny was sitting in the private lounge area when Amy walked in with Jody behind her, still complaining.

“Is it true, Penny?” asked Amy icily. “Did you pinch Jody’s mug?

Penny yawned, “Jody doesn’t do Greek. I do. We are here to offer a professional service. The customer has a right to value for money.”

Jody stood there in her white stilettos and white high-cut bikini bottoms and put her hands on her hips and stuck her big sun-tanned beach girl chest out.

“Every mug I’ve ever had falls in love with me,” she snarled. “Don’t go putting me down, ya toffynosed, stuck-up bitch. You’re as sick as they come. Amy, that sly slut blew Hector in here when you were out.”

Penny felt a chill of fear. Amy carried a gun.

“She didn’t,” said Hector. He got up and walked over and produced a straight razor from his inside coat pocket and with a flash of stainless steel opened Jody’s face up from her left eye to her jaw line. The blood ran down all over her semi naked body. Jody screamed and held her face but the blood oozed out through her fingers, then Hector calmly put the razor back in his pocket.

Amy was shocked, first at the news that her own Hector had been unfaithful and secondly at this outburst of mindless violence.

Penny, on the other hand, looked on in satisfaction. From where she was standing, Hector had come to her defence and had justly punished the offender.

“She’s useless now,” said Amy Jo. “What good is a scar-faced whore. God, Hector, she will scream to the jacks over this.”

“Oh,” said Hector, “if that’s all that’s worrying you, no problem.” And with that he walked over and took the screaming girl and proceeded to strangle her. Jody gagged and choked and the blood from the face slash rushed out. Hector’s hands tightened and tightened, like a vice. The girl’s tongue came out of her mouth and her eyes opened wide and she began to wet herself, then her bowels opened and she did a mess in her bikini bottom, but still Hector’s strong hands tightened even harder around her tender female neck until Jody went limp and slumped to the floor. The blood from the face slash stopped flowing, but Hector didn’t loosen his grip. He tightened it.

It was a terrible thing to see. But not for Penny. “Yes, yes,” whispered the mad schoolmistress, rapt. “Ohh yes, Hecky.”

Her eyes were wide open and highly excited. Hector was mad, but she was scary.

“Is she dead?” she asked.

“Yeah,” said Hector, as if he’d just necked a chook. “She’s gone.”

Amy felt drained. She just looked at Hector, fascinated. She was just a teenage kid, after all, underneath it all. She was big for her age, a seasoned whore and the head of her own baby doll criminal empire, but she was still just a kid. Hector was a few years older and a textbook pain-freak psychopath. Penny McMahon was 27 years old and a total head case. She had turned into a blood-sucking, insane sicko speed-snorting whore. Amy realised she had been playing a razor blade game against people out of her league, using monsters who could kill her at a moment’s notice. Preston Phillips had just been blown away and now Hecky had just necked Jody in front of her.

“Shit,” said Amy faintly. “I really don’t need any of this today.”

Penny got to her feet. “What will you do with her, Hector?”

“I’ll bury her in the backyard,” said Hector. “Can I have her jewellery and the cash she keeps in the security drawer?”

Hector looked at Amy, who was opening her mail, the parcel on the bar.

“Yeah,” said Hector. “Let’s drag her into the bathroom till closing time. Then we can bury her later on.”

Penny helped Hecky drag the dead girl into the bathroom and she whispered to him, “that was the biggest rush I’ve ever had. It made me go all wet watching you in action, Hecky. God, I want you so bad.”

“Shush,” said Hecky and jerked his head in Amy’s direction.

Hector and Penny returned to the lounge. Amy was holding a plastic bag in one hand and a white card in the other. Amy Jo smiled to herself, then put the bag on the bar and tore the card up and went into the bathroom. She stepped over Jody’s body, tore up the card and flushed it down the toilet, then returned and got a spoon, a filter and a fit. All the time she was thinking, this is the mink de ville, the Rolls Royce, best you can get.

“Who sent that to ya?” asked Hector.

“Oh, just a bloke I know,” said Amy as she held a cigarette lighter under the spoon then sucked the liquid up into the fit. She held the hypodermic needle and tapped it with her finger. Then, as she was about to insert it into a vein in her left arm, she looked at Hector and Penny.

“Ha, ha” she giggled, as if she’d just seen the funny side of an in-joke. “Just what the doctor ordered.”

ST KILDA, 1997. It was a month since Amy Jo’s sudden and unexpected death. Penny McMahon pulled up her flawless 1967 model 1200cc Harley Davidson chopper, kicked the bolt on the gate, swung it open and rolled the big bike through.

Hector had moved into Penny’s house on the Esplanade, and Sonia Vonchek had moved in with them. It was a big three-bedroom joint with a huge lounge room, dining room, multiple showers and toilets, a sauna, heated swimming pool and a barbecue in the backyard. Penny put the bike next to Amy Jo’s 1967 Eldorado Cadillac Fleetwood and went inside.

“Hello Hecky, hello Sonia,” said Penny brightly. “Well,” she continued, “our little yellow friend Tuyen Tran Truong is extra pleased. I’ve got four more kilos in the saddle bags on the Harley. Oh Hecky, I am quite pleased. My house is all paid off, I’m debt free and an independently wealthy lady of leisure.”

“Then why don’t ya stop work?” asked Hecky with a grin.

Penny smiled back. “Oh, Hector, how cruel of you to suggest such a thing. My poor gentlemen depend on me. The poor dears would be lost without my stern hand to guide them.”

You didn’t have to be a rocket scientist to twig that Penny had become a highly-paid bondage and domination mistress dishing out pain to the lovers of same. As for Sonia, the police mysteriously cancelled her licence to own and carry a hand gun, and her private agent and security licence too. No reason was given except that she was “unfit” to hold a licence. She was now driving Hector around, as Hector still hadn’t learnt to drive. She was also helping Penny out in the Bondage and Domination area, but her dream was to start her own martial arts school, a project Hector had agreed to back financially.

The day Amy Jo pegged out on Preston’s going away present of pink rock, Hector and Penny had copped $14,000 from the security drawer and another $60,000 from the floor safe in the laundry. Then they had taken Amy’s car keys and left. On the way out, Hector stopped by the kitchen to turn on the gas burners on the stove. Then he dropped a match in the curtains, and left the front door open a fraction to encourage a nice draught. He might have been insane but he was no idiot. The fire not only got rid of the mortal remains of Jody and Amy, but two other girls and an innocent client. Hector had calmly strangled them one at a time while Penny held a gun on them. You know what it’s like when you’re on a roll.

The day after Amy Jo’s death was discovered a death notice appeared in the
Herald Sun
newspaper. It read:

Amy Jo Phillips
“The Pussy Cat”
Tragic Loss
“Beautiful Dreamer
Wake unto me”
Rest in Peace,
from Doc Holliday
and all the boys in the armed
robbery squad.

COLLINGWOOD was in a state of shock. The kid seen by many as the new Karen Phillips had been revealed as a secret dog, but what happened next was the worst. The armed robbery squad, vice squad, drug squad, special operations group and BCI along with federal police and NCA and DEA – everyone bar the Bureau of Meteorology, the AFL umpires panel and parking officers – hit Collingwood in a series of dawn raids the like of which had never been seen before.

It was code named “Beautiful Dreamer”.

The combined forces of law and order did over premises in Wellington Street, Islington Street, Victoria Parade, Hoddle Street, Smith Street, Gipps Street, Johnston Street, Coco’s Restaurant, The Telford Club, the commission flats, Easey Street, Gold Street, Forrest Street, Langridge Street, Oxford Street, and Park Street. It took two cops just to handle the street directory.

They arrested Fatty La Rocque, the O’Brien brothers, the Bennett brothers, the Brown brothers, the Kilpatricks and Greg Featherstone, the Kinsellas and the Toys, Sonny Carroll, Sean Maloney, Pat O’Shaughnessy, and Gaja Jankoo.

Some stray Italians who happened to be visiting drug connections at the time of the raids got swept up, too. There were Bonventres, Castronovos, Grecos, Mazzurcos, Corsetties and Carrasellas, members of every main Calabrian and Sicilian family.

The Mekong Mafia wasn’t spared either: thirty Vietnamese gangsters were dragged out of their hideaways in the Commission flats. Of the Collingwood crew Filson Pepper, Tommy Brown, Johnny Dobro, Benny Marshalartas, Angelo and Tony Bennett got pinched. However, the “white rat” himself, Tuyen Tran Truong, avoided detection. With twenty seven kilos of pure heroin in the boot of his Commodore he cruised past the police carrying out the raids and went to stay with his sister in Douglas Parade, Newport.

Earl Teagarden lived in Peel Street, North Melbourne, but he got swept up with the rest. So did old Chang Heywood over in Richmond, but Muriel Hill and the fortune in arms and ammo in her tool shed in Lennox Street somehow avoided detection. Not that it mattered much to the police. They already had the biggest haul of illegal firearms and ammo in Australian history and three forty-four gallon drums of pure meth amphetamine, twelve kilos of pure cocaine and twenty seven kilos of pure heroin along with twenty seven million dollars in cash and stolen property. They also dug up and uncovered fifteen corpses, some of which dated back to the 1920s and 1930s.