Chopper Unchopped (171 page)

For some time he had suspected Big Al and his crew of two-bob Calabrian offsiders. He’d given them the task of putting the bomb in Pop Kelly’s car, and that had turned into a fuck-up. Guglameno had neglected to include a detonator. So there were six sticks of gelignite all wired up to the ignition and no detonator.

Old Pop Kelly found the bomb and, being of the old school who hated waste of any sort, he carefully saved it up, got a detonator and two weeks later the same bomb was used by Micky Kelly’s insane Jewish offsider Mad Benny Shaprio to blow the arse out of the Calabrian social club in North Fitzroy.

It was a thing of beauty, that explosion. Especially when stupid Guglameno promptly blamed the Yugoslavs for it. In a gang war Big Al wouldn’t know if you were up him with an arm full of chairs. As far as blood and guts strategy and tactics went he was so far behind he couldn’t hear the band playing, but he was a good drug dealer and money mover.

When suspicions were raised about a double agent in the camp Aussie Joe secretly hoped it would be Guglameno, but he thought he knew the truth was otherwise, and it made him downhearted.

Uncle Hector had cleared it and Aussie Joe had been given his orders. There was no turning back. For Don Hector the leaked information about who the informer was came as no surprise, and he knew exactly what had to be done.

Aussie Joe was part of a hard clan, perhaps not quite as mindless as the worst Irish and Albanians, but when it came to the old Sicilian ways concerning honour and revenge the Aspanu clan had harder rules for their friends and family than they appeared to have for their enemies in business. A strange contradiction of the Sicilian personality is that they expect to be attacked by their enemies — that is business — but betrayal by friends and family is considered far worse because it is personal.

Enemies in war and business can only really stab you in the arse, but the betrayal of a loved and trusted friend or family member is a stab to the heart …

This explains why Aussie Joe Gravano walked into the courtyard in stony silence, ignoring loud and warm greetings from the men gathered there. He shook hands and embraced and kissed each man, then embraced his little brother Sammy last of all.

Anybody who was watching Joey closely would have noticed he had tears in his eyes, which wasn’t exactly what they’d expect. He kissed his brother on the mouth and said quietly, “Como Sardechi Questo in Siciliano, Sammy?”

Sammy didn’t fully understand the old Sicilian scarchi slang dialect but the expression “How do you say this in Sicilian?” was not lost on him. It meant how do you say death in Sicilian.

Joey was crying now, as Sammy stammered for a reply.

The other Italians in the group could make out only every second or third word. Scarchi was a mountain Sicilian slang, an old dialect.

Then, without warning, Aussie Joe thrust an ice pick into the left ear of his young brother, into the brain. Sammy’s eyes closed and as Joey withdrew the ice pick Sammy fell like a rag doll to the marble floor. The other men stood in silence. They realised Sammy must have been an informer. They knew one Sicilian doesn’t kill another, let alone his own baby brother, unless family honour and orders from the head of the family are involved.

No man spoke. They filed out of the courtyard, leaving Aussie Joe crying as he stood over his brother’s body.

Joey went down on his knees over the body of his fallen brother and crossed himself and said a short prayer in Latin.

There were a few tough Italians in that group that day, but each man left the villa with a new sense of respect, and the chilling thought that he stood with one foot in the grave if he fucked up.

GORGEOUS George Marcus made the call to the National Crime Authority headquarters in Melbourne. He was talking to Julian Farrance, QC, deputy director of the organised crime unit.

“I’m telling ya, Julian, his own fucking brother!” he chortled down the phone. “Al is in the clear. All it takes now is for old Aspanu to give the nod and Poppa Di Inzabella will give Al the nod, then he controls it all in Melbourne. Gravano thought his own brother was the dog that wagged its tongue and not its tail. Ha ha.” 

“It went magic. The DEA trick worked an absolute treat, fair dinkum. These fucking Sicilians are too busy being paranoid to think clearly. Yeah, yeah, okay. I’ll tell him. See ya.”

He hung up and returned to the car of Al Guglameno.

“All sweet?” asked Al.

“Yeah,” said George, still grinning.

Big Al never spoke to his police connections on the phone in case his voice was recorded. Likewise, he never met with them. He used George Marcus as his middle man with his NCA, DEA and Federal Police contacts. It had all been arranged by a lawyer friend of his who was now a judge.

George Marcus loved it. It made him feel like he was some sort of covert operation James Bond secret agent. What he didn’t stop to consider was that any time Big Al felt he needed to protect himself from being exposed, he only had to have poor simple George killed. The splendid legal system being what it is in a modern democracy, the police would have a hell of a time proving to anyone that Guglameno was their man, when all the time they had only ever dealt with Marcus. It was a tactic known in some circles as a version of the “lemon twist”.

George Marcus was worth his weight in jelly beans. To find someone as stupid as George was good fortune indeed for Guglameno. And after seeing what Sicilians did to their own family members suspected of being rats, Big Al appreciated George Marcus all the more.

EUROPE, 1991. While the rest of the crew flew home from Paris, Aussie Joe went to Spain to catch up with his old mate, the China doll Simone Tao.

Simone had proved herself a blood loyal friend since 1987, and having just butchered his baby brother, Joey thought attending a bullfight with Simone might cheer him up, although it was hard to say why watching Spaniards in fancy dress filleting a live bull would make him chirpy after his recent ice-pick trick, but that’s Sicilian mobsters for you.

Aussie Joe tried to see Simone at least twice a year, and they both loved Spain. They’d take a beautiful apartment, have lunch at the Cafe Leon, dinner at the Casa Ciriaco restaurant, then on to a flamenco show. All very Christopher Skase, except that Aussie Joe paid his bills and didn’t pretend to need a respirator.

However, the fine dining and cultural pursuits sometimes got postponed because Simone had proved a master of the sexual arts and Joe often found himself unable to leave the luxury apartment for some time.

Joe had to admit that Simone had a lot in common with a circus sword swallower and although she spoke several languages she hadn’t mastered the word “no”. She also had a little weakness for being smacked across her exquisite buttocks with a leather strap until she cried “I’m sorry” for some imagined wrongdoing. But that was by the way. Simone had the brain of a pocket calculator and the loyalty of a one-owner hound dog, and Aussie Joe had come to like the twisted Chinese beauty.

He felt at ease and relaxed and less paranoid in her company, and so it was the two old friends sat in the Cafe Leon drinking Spanish coffee. Simone, with a few drinks in her, would let herself go and regale him with tales of her recent adventures on behalf of the Royal Hong Kong Trading Company.

This time, she told him of a recent business trip to Istanbul. She had to meet a Turkish general who, as it happened, was also a drug lord and merchant banker. It seems most Turkish generals have a second or third job that mostly involves either murder, prostitution or drugs.

Anyway, this particular general, Mustafa Manager, also claimed to be some sort of Turkish prince, and who was Simone to argue? She didn’t give a shit for anything except the bottom line, a phrase with more than one meaning in Istanbul.

She was collected by a police car and taken to the Orient Express Bar at the Pera Palace hotel. The night went well. The general handed Simone a list of numbers and coded names and accounts. He didn’t trust the postal service, telephone, fax, or e-mail, and liked to do business by hand, face to face. The slow way, but generally fool proof.

Simone fully expected to be taken to bed by the general as part of the deal. She was wrong. It turned out that waiting for her upstairs was the general’s esteemed grandfather, an old gentleman who’d never had a Chinese girl and was feeling curious.

The general, evidently very family-oriented, wanted to delight his grandfather’s heart by supplying a beautiful Oriental girl. It seemed the good general himself preferred teenage boys. Which is why Simone found herself on her knees trying mouth to south resuscitation to the old boy’s old boy. It seemed that in Turkey everyone went the gobble.

Despite her valiant attempts, it was a losing battle. The old Turk was in the Muslim version of heaven — but his equipment didn’t want to work. It took Simone nearly an hour to arouse the old gentleman into a state where she could mount. He then seemed to rise to the occasion, but, just as he was getting to the funny bit, it all became too much. He went into some sort of convulsions. He was doing a Sir Billy Snedden — having a heart attack on the job.

Simone jumped off immediately and called the general. The old man was rushed to hospital, but there was no gratitude for her quick thinking. Simone spent three days in a military police cell being beaten and worse, until she was a mess at both ends. Meanwhile, the general’s grandfather got better — so well that he asked after the delightful Chinese girl he’d been so kindly introduced to at the hotel.

You don’t have to be told: Simone was rushed to hospital and bathed and pampered and provided with medical attention, then filled full of morphine. Two days later she was at the hotel again, on her knees doing the same trick that had caused all the trouble in the first place, praying the old bastard wouldn’t drop dead on her. Her luck held. This time he didn’t.

The result was that Simone swore Turkey was off her travel agenda. Through the friendship of Aussie Joe, she had been invited to Sicily to meet the great Don Hector Aspanu. The Aspanu Group had entrusted quite a large amount of money to the Royal Hong Kong Trading Company, which had rocketed Simone up the corporate ladder.

Don Hector was an old gentleman in some ways, and there was no sex involved whatsoever. He did, however, take her to see his favourite movie every time she visited Palermo. The Don would hire the whole movie theatre so Simone could sit in the empty theatre with him and his two bodyguards and watch his favourite, the 1950s B Grade classic
The Girl Can’t Help It,
starring Jayne Mansfield … all dubbed in Sicilian dialect, if you don’t mind.

Simone had visited Don Hector five times and between the Jayne Mansfield movie and the all-night poker games in which everyone was expected to lose to Don Hector, she felt quite at home. No-one dared even suggest sex, let alone put any moves on her.

Evidently, a smile from Don Hector and a pat on the head with the comment of “You’a gooda girl, Simone, I lika you” was enough to ensure she could walk through the red light district of Palermo, swinging her arse like a bitch on heat and the local mad rapist would rather put a loaded gun in his mouth and pull the trigger than touch her.

Palermo was not a place where one saw a lot of Chinese girls and the Chinese lady who went to the movies with Don Hector had become a topic of whispered gossip and mystery.

Joey picked a pause in the story to break in. “I need a hair cut” he said. “Where the hell do ya find a barber’s around this joint?”

Simone spoke to the waiter, then said: “Two streets away. Only a short walk.”

“Yeah, well, let’s go” said Joey, “and you can tell me some more funny stories on the way.”

Simone smiled and took his hand as they walked in the sunshine.

ONE would think that a Spanish barber shop would contain a Spanish barber, not a Greek who spoke English. But when Aussie Joe settled into the chair the barber introduced himself as Peter and said: “Welcome to my shop. You English, I can tell.”

He was obviously addressing Joey, as Simone hardly passed as English.

“Italian,” grunted Aussie Joe, “from Australia.”

“Ah,” said Peter the Greek. “I have the relations in Australia.”

“What’s their name?” said Joe despite himself, amazed at what a small world it was.

“Kravaritis,” said Peter the Greek.

Joe thought he’d try out some basic phonetic Greek on this funny so-called Greek barber as he cut his hair. “Ya su ray te kunus ray.” He had no idea how to spell Greek, but he knew a few choice phrases from his time on the streets with other wog kids.

Peter laughed, but replied in English, which Joe thought was odd.

“Te kalla veno?” asked Joe, meaning “Do you understand?”

The Greek laughed again, then Joe continued.

“Te mama su gar mussus ray.”

The Greek laughed again. Joe had just used his worst broken Greek to suggest that the barber had sex with his own mother.

“Pusti malaka ray,” continued Joe.

The barber was as about as bloody Greek as Simone was, thought Joe. He had just called him a poofter in Greek, and got no reaction at all.

After the haircut the barber was looking nervous. “You want shave?” he asked.

Joe nodded and said something like “ef kara stou” meaning “thank you”, then blew the barber a kiss and said “sarg a pau” meaning “I love you”.

The barber was now very nervous, but looked as if he had something on his mind. He certainly had something in his hand. It was a cut-throat razor.

“Kravaritis, hey?” said Joe loudly. “Sounds Albanian to me. A lot of Albanian grandmothers got raped by Greeks.”

With that the barber slashed Joe across the neck. Joe held his throat with his right hand to preserve his vital spark as the blood rushed out, and went for his gun with his left hand.

“Nay drobro draco bracho” said Joe in Albanian.

The barber understood that, but it didn’t help him any. Joe fired a shot into his guts. As the barber dropped to his knees Simone Tao, now armed with one of the cut-throat razors from the bench, walked up and slashed his neck from ear to ear. Then she helped the bleeding Gravano out of the shop and into a taxi. The driver was ordered to drive to the nearest hospital, as if he needed telling. Joe could still talk, which meant his wind pipe was intact and his jugular vein unharmed.

“Was that a hit on you?” yelled Simone.

“How could it be?” said Joe, shaking his head — but not much, in case the wound bled worse. “Just some paranoid insane Albanian hiding out in Spain not expecting to see an Aussie dago who spoke Greek and could tell the difference between a Greek and an Albo.” The expression Albo puzzled Simone, as it sounded like elbow.

“Albanian,” explained Joe. “Ya only got to blink the wrong way in front of a paranoid Albanian and he will think you’re out to kill him and will try to get in first. Of all the fucking barber shops in Spain we walk into some hideout for mental case Albanians.”

“Jesus Christ. You mean,” asked Simone incredulously, “all that was sheer coincidence?”

Joe nodded. “It’s not so strange,” he said. “I know barbers in Sicily who cut one neck a month because they don’t like the colour of ya fucking tie. I think I’ll cut my own hair from now on,” he added savagely as the taxi screamed to a halt outside a medical clinic.

The close call with the mad Albanian barber caused the police to raid the barber shop to investigate his death — only to find a heroin processing factory operating in the back. They promptly forgot the murder to proudly boast to the media they had busted an Albanian mafia heroin ring in Madrid. According to the Spanish press, the Albanians worked for the Sicilian mafia.

“Yeah,” thought Joe when he heard that, “when the bastards aren’t trying to kill us they’re working for us.”

IT was 1993. Franco Di Tomaso and Luigi Monza spoke no English but little Boy Bobby Aspanu did. Bobby preferred it that way. When he went to Australia and got off the plane at Tullamarine airport, as he did several times a year to visit friends and relatives in Melbourne, he always used Sicilian bodyguards who spoke no English.

Di Tomaso was a member of the Aspanu clan, but Monza wasn’t. He was a member — or former member — of the outlawed Italian Masonic lodge P2. If a candidate in the Italian craft failed a test or in a duty or obligation of trust or otherwise “fucked up” he was either killed or, as with Monza, had the last joint on his right index finger cut off. This meant he could be identified in the dark or if he shook hands with any member of the lodge and immediately recognised as an outcast from the organisation.

The Aspanu clan offered Monza a safe haven, and his gratitude and loyalty to little Boy Bobby Aspanu was without question.

On this trip Bobby was meant to be visiting his Uncle Joey Gravano, but that was only an excuse for Bobby to see Alphonse Guglameno and his Calabrian crew — Eddie Giordano, Tommy Monnella, Little Anthony Capone — and Gorgeous George Marcus, the Greek who pretended to be Italian.

Bobby had other Melbourne interests. He was, for instance, screwing Tommy’s little sister Sally Monnella. To Bobby, Sally had a lovely name. He couldn’t work out why, in Australia, people found her full name so funny. These Aussies had an odd sense of comedy.

“MY bloody uncles had a bit of bad luck with his last two wives,” said Tina Torre to Joey Gravano.

“Yeah,” said Aussie Joe. “What happened?”

“Well,” continued Tina, “his first wife died after she ate some poison mushrooms.”

“Shit,” said Joey. “What happened to his second wife?”

Tina was trying hard to keep a straight face.

“Well,” she said, “she died from a blow to the back of the head with a claw hammer.”

“Fucking hell!” said Joey, totally convinced Tina was telling the truth. “Who did that?”

“My uncle, actually,” she replied.

“Why?” asked Joey, still believing her wild yarn.

“Coz she wouldn’t eat her bloody mushrooms, that’s why” said Tina, bursting out laughing.

Joey went silent, then smiled and made a mental note to add that story to his endless list of jokes. The mushroom joke was as old as the hills but he hadn’t heard it before.

The two sat in the lounge bar of Squizzy Taylor’s Hotel in Fitzroy. Strictly speaking, this was enemy territory but they were waiting to meet Tina’s best mate Cassandra Connor. The Connors were related to the McCall family and the Reeves and Pepper clans, the Browns, the Kellys, the Scanlans and the rest of the mad dogs who infested Collingwood, Fitzroy and Richmond. Tina Torre was a good girl with no involvement in the criminal world. She honestly believed Joey Gravano was a bricklayer. She had a kind face and a smile that would melt ice. If you took her home to meet your mother your dad would fall in love with her. Joey had been raised on a diet of low-life sluts and found Tina a welcome change. The only problem was that while she had a face made in heaven, the devil had played a part in designing her body. She looked as if she were built for sin, which can tend to get a nice girl into trouble.

There was something about her that frightened Aussie Joe. On one hand, when looking at her body, he wanted to drop his pants and do bad things. But, on the other hand, he had an overwhelming urge to say the fatal words “I love you”. The truth was, he would marry Tina any time if he could only muster up the courage to ask her — but she was from another world.