Chopper Unchopped (175 page)

He suddenly came to life.

“Oh, yeah. I remember. I was about eight or nine years old when that happened, but everyone reckoned the CIA or the commies or the Mafia did it, anyone but Oswald. He was supposed to be just the mug who copped the blame, the patsy.”

Tina couldn’t get her words out quick enough.

“He was also meant to be a lone wolf, no friends, knew no-one, a nut, a commie crackpot — so what’s he doing with fucking Marilyn Monroe all over him like a rash? Poppa Pietro is with Johnny Roselli — wasn’t he the whacker trying to kid everyone the Government had hired him or Sam Giancana or Santo Trafficante to kill Fidel Castro? I read a book on it some place,” said Tina.

This was all a bit much for Joey.

“I don’t get it,” he said. “Who gives a shit if Oswald did know Marilyn Monroe.”

Then Joey remembered Uncle Hector’s butter-up theory. He thought about Poppa Pietro, Jacqueline Kennedy, Lee Harvey Oswald and Marilyn Monroe being pictured together. All this at the same time the Mafia was kidding the CIA. They were putting together a hit on Fidel Castro then, bang, Kennedy gets it in the head and then Oswald gets it from a mafia puppet, Jack Ruby.

“So,” said Joey, “what do these photos prove, Tina?”

“They prove,” she said slowly, “that people who pretend they didn’t know each other really did. They don’t really prove anything more, but they suggest a great deal. I don’t know anything, but from a woman’s point of view, Joey, if I found out you were fucking Marilyn Monroe behind my back, I’d kill you.”

“But Kennedy dumped Monroe.”

“So,” said Tina, “instead of one woman who wanted him dead you have two. Jacqueline Kennedy had the money, Marilyn Monroe had the pussy. Between the two of them they knew everyone worth knowing, from the devil to the Pope.”

“What are you saying, Tina?” asked Joey, not quite getting it.

“Well, it’s just my opinion, but after seeing these I reckon Oswald did pull the trigger, but that Kennedy’s wife put the whole thing together, the Mafia oversaw operations, at the same time kidding the CIA and the White House they were going to whack Castro. And Marilyn Monroe, either knowingly or unknowingly, was used as the psychological sweetener.”

She warmed to her theory. “It’s obvious, Joey. Jacqueline Kennedy set her own husband up for it. I mean, he did give her VD and he gave Monroe a nice dose as well. Jesus, Joey, if you gave me VD I’d cut ya fucking heart out with a butcher’s knife while you slept.”

Joey was aghast.

“So all this shit, all these photos sort of prove or suggest that Kennedy’s wife set him up for a hit using his own mistress to butter up the hit man, and the mob oversaw operations and killed the hit man afterwards, all nice and tidy?”

“Yes,” said Tina. “That’s about it.”

“Well, big deal. It’s the fucking 1990s, for Christ’s sake. Who gives a flying shit?”

“Well,” said Tina slyly. “If your uncle wants these photos destroyed so badly, then someone important obviously does give a shit.” She had a point. Even Joey could see that.

LITTLE Tommy Lucchese never made it to the airport for his flight home. He was lying in the OK Motel in North Carlton with a bullet hole in the back of his skull. Next to him lay the body builder with three shots in the back and one in the head. Little Tommy had been mutilated. Someone had cut his dick off.

Police investigated it as a homosexual murder and questioned almost all Melbourne’s homosexual and criminally-related homosexual community. Had they questioned Aussie Joe Gravano’s pit bull terrier they may have gotten a tidbit of information, as Pugsley had eaten the missing tidbit in question.

Photos of Pugsley eating were sent to Sicily and America as the wish to have Little Tommy clipped had come from Bobby Boy Alderisio in New York.

“Ah well,” Don Hector had said, “morals and money. Without one, you’ll starve to death. Without the other, you’ll lose your soul, and we lost our soul a long time ago. God only has us on Sundays. The rest of the week we’re at the Devil’s table.”

Joey sat and wondered at the lie and the false pretence of it all. He was part of a system supposedly held together by a common background of nationality, culture, tradition and an alleged code of honour. The truth was, it was held together by an international body of men – some of them saints, most of them snakes, all with the same common interest – wealth, power and the continued survival of this thing they called La Cosa Nostra Soldati.

Joey laughed to himself. It beat being a fucking bricklayer.

MELBOURNE, 1996. Matchstick Marven Mendelsohn was a long, lanky, baby-faced, blue-eyed smiling mental case who worked for himself as the Melbourne crime world’s version of a subcontractor. Marven smiled at everyone but owed loyalty to no-one except his dear old mother, who washed his shirts and underpants for him.

Professional killers who live with their mothers are generally a precious lot, and Marven was no different. He had his quaint little ways. For example, he would never shoot anyone on Saturday as on Saturday he took his mother to the synagogue.

Marven was, as far as his mother Esther was concerned, the very model of a good Jewish boy. The nickname “Matchstick” came about as the result of an unfortunate mishap involving Marven’s tying a gentleman to a chair in a garage in Cruikshank Street, Port Melbourne, dousing him with petrol and setting him alight.

Marven only ever did it the once and has since avoided fire and the use of fire in his work. He is known to bitterly resent the fact that one small to medium mishap with a match should earn him not only a childish nickname but a rather unsavoury reputation as some sort of nutty fire bug. A more accurate nickname would be Magic Marven. This is because Marven had the knack of making people vanish into thin air.

Marven’s one true love, next to his dear mother, was his car. It was his pride and joy, a 954 Studebaker Landcruiser 232 V8 automatic, in gleaming white mint condition. He had it imported from America and at some considerable cost had it changed from left hand to right hand drive. Marven had spent more money on the old car than it was worth but, of course, price is no object when love is involved. Marven’s late father had died at the wheel of a 1954 Studebaker Landcruiser and it was the only car his dear mother felt comfy in. Mind you, his mother was not fond of her late husband because she had once discovered him in bed with the cleaning lady, a rather seductive Filipino girl.

To add insult to injury, when Mrs Mendelsohn had come home early one day to discover her husband banging away, he had simply made a temporary withdrawal, walked over and closed the bedroom door in his good lady wife’s face, then left her standing in the hallway in tears listening to the cleaning girl moan as her husband finished the job.

Needless to say, Mrs Mendelsohn had been shocked, hurt, ashamed and deeply jealous. She cried so much she could hardly see as she cut the brake cable of her husband’s much loved Studebaker. After his death in a most unfortunate road accident shortly afterwards, she was determined to get another Studebaker. Husbands come and go, but a 1954 Studebaker is forever.

She was a careful woman, and sacrificing a lovely car to rid herself of an unfaithful husband filled her with mixed emotions: joy at getting away with it, sadness that the car had to be destroyed in the process. So when young Marven replaced the family car all was well in the Mendelsohn household. Except, of course, for the cleaning lady, who was promptly replaced with a little old Greek woman. The only moaning she did was when she received her weekly pay packet.

Anyway, one day Marven parked the old Studebaker in the car park at Tullamarine Airport. An important overseas visitor from Italy was arriving, a very old and much-loved and respected gentleman called Don Pietro Baldassare. He was being met at the airport by a host of assorted relations, friends, Sicilians and countrymen.

“Lend me your tears,” thought Marven with a smile. It was broad daylight, in front of a hundred or more people. The joint was full of police, security cameras, and onlookers. It was the toughest task in the most impossible place and so given to the one Jew in Melbourne insane enough to attempt the impossible, and with the cheek to get away with it.

Marven didn’t like working for the dagos even though he had in the past. He preferred to work for Aussies. This was an Aussie-ordered hit, with five men all tossing ten thousand dollars each into the pot, cash in Marven’s hand before the job. To Marven, why the hit had been ordered was not important. How to do it and how to get away with it, that was the only concern.

Marven entered the airport wearing a bright floral silk shirt, suggesting to anyone who saw it that the wearer had recently returned from Surfers Paradise. The big blue eyes were covered with sunglasses and his number three crew cut gave Marven a schoolboy look.

Under his flowing floral shirt he had a cute Smith and Wesson .22 calibre revolver fitted with a specially designed Colt Walker silencer. The ammo was short sub-sonic soft-nosed hollow point.

The old Don was in his late 70s by all accounts, dying of lung cancer and on a world trip before he kicked the bucket. Marven wanted to make sure he died of lead poisoning first — which, of course, would be a more merciful end. Marven knew he couldn’t get the old gentleman with a clean head shot, as that would mean pulling the gun out and raising his arm to head level in front of a hundred people. So, on the best medical advice, Marven was planning something else. He’d been told that an elderly gent with cancer would not survive several bullet holes in the stomach. He might get to hospital, but he’d die.

Marven was also a bit of a psychologist. He knew that people run from a fallen dead man but rush to help a wounded one, and in the panic Marven planned to get away unnoticed. The idea was simply to let the old dago get through Customs, then clip him 30 feet from the main exit doorway or as he was coming down the escalator. Which was easier said than done.

JOEY Gravano, Tina and a small army of Sicilian and other assorted Italian types greeted the old Don with a show of great emotion.

Customs was quick and after a short while, with all bags gathered, the old man and his horde of excited friends and relatives made their way toward the main exit. Outside was a line of six 1988 Lincoln town car stretch limos. No expense was spared for Don Pietro’s arrival. He was to stay as a personal guest of Joey Gravano at his home in Domain Road, South Yarra.

As the old man approached the main door he suddenly looked down at his stomach — not so much in pain as in disbelief. He put his hand up to his stomach as another small hole appeared in his shirt. Then blood appeared, and another puncture hole appeared in his white shirt. For a moment people close to him thought the cancer in him had burst his stomach. Then two more small holes appeared in his shirt, making five. Gravano realised at once that the old man had been shot and looked around frantically for the offending party. He turned back to see Don Pietro drop to his knees.

“Ahhhh,” he moaned. He pitched face forward, but was caught by people around him.

No-one saw Marven standing by the hire car counter with the cute little pistol in his left hand under his flowing shirt. People milled around, thinking the elderly gentleman was having some sort of collapse or heart attack. Marven quietly walked out.

Two police rushed past him to see to the emergency as he drove away. He picked up his car phone and rang the Big Bad Blonde Agency and ordered up a lady, as was his habit after a bit of excitement. He liked to relax and he had a regular lady. His mother would be outraged if she knew, because she was a German girl built like a Nazi beauty queen. But it all appealed to Marven’s twisted sense of humour. Killing an Italian, then fucking a German, he giggled to himself. A few Jews in Melbourne would be able to see the comic side of that. Ha ha.

He had other thoughts as he drove along. He wondered if Jewish hit men were getting smarter or Italian gangsters were getting dumber, as it seemed the easiest fifty grand he had ever earned. An airport full of people and no one jerried. Dress like a clown and people think you are one. Never do a hit dressed like a nightclub gangster.

A WEEK after the death of the old dago Don, in a nightclub called The Men’s Gallery in Liverpool Street, Hobart, a long-legged table dancer with a cheeky smile and laughing eyes was busy swinging her vanilla ice cream arse about the place, to the thunderous applause of male onlookers. There were various other Penthouse Pet type yummies swinging themselves about as well. The audience was showing enormous interest. One old gentleman, in particular, seemed on the point of a heart attack because of the undivided attention he was getting from Cassandra Connor. Her bum was about an inch from the old bloke’s nose when she looked up to see three old faces she hadn’t seen in a long time. They belonged to Micky Kelly, Mad Benny Shapiro and Matchstick Marven Mendelsohn. Cassie squealed with delight and ran into the open arms of Micky Kelly and started kissing his face and neck like a happy puppy who’s been promised a big bone.

Wiggling and giggling, she gushed: “When did you get out, Micky? I didn’t know you was out.”

Micky freed himself from Cassie’s grasp and she then grabbed Mad Benny and Marven at the same time.

“Calm down kid,” said Micky.

But Cassie couldn’t relax.

“God, it’s good to see some old faces for a change,” she said.

Micky smiled. “When I told you to piss off out of Melbourne for a while I didn’t expect you to come this far south,” he said.

Cassie was wearing nothing but a high-cut thong bikini bottom that left little to the imagination, a pair of stiletto heels, and a garter belt around the top of her right leg stuffed with money. Her bikini bottom was also holding a fair amount of paper money that had been placed there by sweaty hands.

Mad Benny patted Cassie on the arse and said, “doin’ okay, then Cassie?”

“Listen, Benny” she said, “a fat lady with a wooden leg would make money down here. American sailors, merchant seaman, Japanese fishing boats. It’s money for jam, I’m tellin ya.”

THE following morning Cassie woke up in a queen size bed in a plush suite of rooms in the Wrest Point Casino. Beside her lay Micky Kelly, still asleep. The fog started to roll away from her hungover brain.

Micky had wanted her all night long so he’d played roulette downstairs while Cassie took Mad Benny and Mental Marven (she’d always called the lone wolf killer “Mental” and was the only girl allowed to get away with such familiarity) upstairs with the intent of polishing them off quick smart. After all, it was Micky who had just gotten out of prison and so, according to the Robbers Rule Book, Page 47, sub-section 3, was fully deserving of any and all available snatch on offer.

Cassie slowly moved out of bed and made her way to the bathroom. As she passed a side table she saw a pile of hundred dollar bills big enough to choke a mule. She stopped to look. They were folded into bundles of what she guessed were fifty notes apiece. That made five grand a bundle, and she counted twelve bundles of hundreds. She dimly remembered Micky saying something about roulette.

She decided Micky couldn’t have won that much at roulette. She made her way into the bathroom, got under the shower and began to lather up.

She could be a bit naughty now and then, but only for the right bloke — or blokes, as the case may be — and they were few and far between. But, she had to admit to herself that when the right blokes did show up she tended to lose the plot a bit in the sexual morals department.

Just as she was considering the pros and cons of all this in a lather of soap suds, steam, hot water and daydreams, Micky Kelly pulled the shower screen back.

“Hey Cassie,’ he said. “How would you like to pretend to be a lawyer and go in to Risdon Prison and visit Hacker Harris for us?”

Cassie looked at Micky as if he was mad.

“Don’t worry, Princess, I got all the badge identification for ya.”

“Hacker Harris,” said Cassie. “They kicked him out of the Collingwood Crew on the grounds of mental illness. He needs a psychologist, not a fucking lawyer.”

“Now, now, now” said Micky, trying not to laugh. “Don’t be sarcastic.”

He shut the shower screen to let Cassie finish her shower in peace.

Sarcastic, thought Cassie, how can you make a sarcastic remark about an old gunnie who thinks he is the reincarnation of Garry fucking Cooper?

THE following day Cassie arrived at Risdon Prison, otherwise known as the Pink Palace, in a hire car, a well-cut suit, bare legs, and high heels. The black skirt was cut tight around the hips and showing enough leg to put a smile on the screws’ faces. She was directed to the medium security unit at the side of the jail.

Prison security was so lax they didn’t even ask her to produce any identification. Evidently a big smile and a good set of legs was all that was needed. She gave them her name and said she was a lawyer and would like to see Hacker Harris. Five minutes later she was sitting in the contact visit area with the old cowboy from Collingwood. And, true to form, after passing on the message from Micky Kelly and getting the information Micky needed, she naturally thought Hacker would urgently request a Monica Lewinsky. Cassie had been sent into visit guys in prison before, and she knew she could hardly say no to a presidential request for a spot of executive relief.

But all Hacker wanted to know was if Cassie could help him with the correct words to the Beverley Hillbillies song. So she sat there, all legs and big eyes, in total disbelief at this insane request as she sang the song to a delighted Hacker Harris.

Hacker laughed his head off and waved Cassie goodbye as he walked away singing the old song to himself.

When Cassie got back to the casino Micky Kelly asked, “Did he tell ya?”

“Yeah,” she said, still not really believing what she’d just done. “He said it’s buried in the back of a house in Thomas Street, Yarraville. Albanian Billy’s place.”

“Jesus,” said Micky, “Bronco bloody Billy’s joint.”

Even the two Jews looked a little worried at this news.

“What is it?” asked Cassie.

Micky explained.

“Hacker Harris is the only crook in Australia who owns two 84mm Carl Gustov anti-tank guns, nicknamed the Charlie Gutsache.”