Chopper Unchopped (51 page)

My sense of humor is no longer with me and a greyhound with a dodgy back is the last thing. Maybe we could get it on Workcare and live off the pension for a few years. But then again, maybe not. And so there is a better than even money chance that he could end up as Number 27 on the menu of the local Vietnamese restaurant.

Between verballing bikies, hillbilly blondes, dodgy greyhounds and lovestruck tax inspectors, my cup runneth over.

I am fast turning into a mental paralytic.

I need help … and a canine chiropractor.

SADLY, I have been told that while Karen and Tony go from strength to strength, The Buggster is no more. Here in Tassie, slow greyhounds are a penny a truckload and no-one wants one with a dodgy monkey muscle. Apparently after the trial it pulled up shaking and had a little bark (a vomit, not a woof). It was decided, without consulting me, I may add, to put the thing out of its misery.

They shot the bloody thing.

I only hope Sid Collins pulls a monkey muscle one day.

Ha ha.

One of Read’s best friends is a former Melbourne private schoolboy from a privileged background. A non-drinker, non-smoker known only as ‘Dave the Jew’, he was Read’s partner on several abductions and murders. He is ‘as smart as a whip and as dangerous as a black snake on a dark night’, according to Read. Tasmanian police were concerned that Dave, a master of disguise, may try to kill prosecution witnesses who were prepared to testify against Read. The Jew may well be mentally disturbed but, according to Chopper, a good man to have on your side.

WHEN you’re in the business of standing over people and being a criminal garbage collector you soon learn that some jobs are easy and some a little harder. There was one toe-cutting operation which certainly had its problems and I still shudder when I think back.

Dave the Jew was in charge of proceedings and insisted on using a pair of old garden secateurs instead of bolt cutters or the trusty gas bottle. I always liked the bottle because the victim would often talk when he saw the flame had been lit and he knew he would be first course in a little barbeque.

But Dave didn’t like the gas. He said it gave him a headache and that the fumes and the smell made his eyes water and his nose run.

‘Nonsense,’ I told him. But Dave always enjoyed complaining and arguing the point and because I was such a good-natured chap I nearly always let him have his way.

‘Very well, use the clippers,’ I said. Dave didn’t need a second invitation. I took no part in the interrogation. ‘All this fuss over a mere 26 grand,’ I said to the gentleman concerned at the time. He did not answer, for he was trussed like a Christmas turkey at that moment.

Dave then beat the fellow from neck to knee with a length of iron pipe that must have broken half the bones in his body. We were in the keg cellar of a mate’s pub. It was a quiet, dark place that suited our need for privacy.

The bloke had already told us where to find his stash and we had sent a helper, a chap who helped Dave the Jew out now and again, to get the money. The old guy, named Kevin, was an eager helper and he raced out to the house to search for the cash. Our target was in no position to go out to point out where the money was hidden.

But Kevin was up to the task, and two hours later came back with $25,000 plus a little bonus, the victim’s E Type Jag, a white, low-slung beauty that was in perfect condition. I would have loved to have kept it, but I knew it would lead the heat to us and was too risky. I told Kevin to take it back.

It looked like a clean win for us. We had the cash, the car was on the way back and all that was needed was for me to tie up a few loose ends.

I pulled out my gun and was about to pop a slug into the eyeball of the hoon we were dealing with when Dave said: ‘No, no, no, this one is mine’.

It was no big deal to me, so I sat back down, cracked a cold can and munched away on a family size pizza that Kevin had brought back with him.

Dave wanted to cut the poor bugger’s toes off, just to see how effective the garden secateurs were for the job. I was not happy with this and told Dave this sort of thing was not called for. But Dave argued that it would not worry the victim because he had already snapped the guy’s spine during the beating with the iron pipe.

As if to prove his rather gruesome point, Dave popped off one of the toes on the victim’s left foot, and sure enough, the bloke just lay there, he didn’t even let out a whimper. He obviously didn’t feel a thing.

I still feel ill at ease about the propriety of Dave’s conduct, but I knew better than to argue with the Jew when he was in the grip of blood lust. The stone killing ratbag could take a turn for the worse, real quick, so I let him go. I got up and checked the victim who, for the sake of the story, we will call Angelo. He was looking very dopey and glassy-eyed to me, but he had a strong pulse. My blood pressure pumps along at 105 over 68 and Angelo’s was 140 over 90, a bit higher than my own, but doing very nicely considering he was half dead.

Whenever I checked the blood pressure and pulse of a man about to die or someone we were questioning, Dave would laugh and say: ‘Look at Doctor Chopper’. But I like to check these things as a matter of routine. Dave popped off one of Angelo’s big toes and it flew across the floor and out of sight between some kegs.

It was all getting quite sickening. Kevin returned, having taken Angelo’s Jag back where it belonged. He wondered why Angelo was still alive. ‘Dave’s in one of his experimental medical moods,’ I said.

Dave lost his temper. ‘Don’t ever say that,’ he said. ‘He’s in no pain at all.’

‘You’re a raving nut case,’ I yelled back. ‘Kill the poor bastard.’ 

‘No,’ cried the Jew. ‘He’s in no pain.’

‘I’ll kill him,’ said Kevin. We both looked at Kevin. The evil old toe-cutter had killed his fair share before, but this was none of his business. Then for some reason we all looked down and Angelo was crying, bloody crying.

‘Now look what you’ve done,’ yelled Dave.

I’ve seen them cry before, but this was different, he was crying sad silent tears, it was then that I started to feel a little sorry for him. ‘For God’s sake Dave, just finish it,’ I pleaded. Dave must have also felt bad, as he did what I asked, thank God. It was a very bad job, messy and all over the shop. We whacked the dough up. It was 10 grand each for Dave and me and around five for old Kevin. For his money, Kevin had to clean up and get rid of the body.

Torturing them and killing them is easy. Getting rid of the remains is the worst job of all. Neither Dave nor I like that part of the job and we felt we were toe-cutting toffs, top of the head-hunting hierarchy, and above that sort of work. When we could off-load the dirty work on a helper, we were quick to do so. But as a rule, we got stuck with that job as well. It is the lowest job of all, cleaning up and getting rid of the mortal remains.

But this time, old Kevin was made to earn his $5000 by doing the dirty work. I thought we had left the job in good hands, but a week later I got a call from my mate who owned the pub complaining of the stink from his keg cellar.

As soon as I went down there I smelled a rat, or worse. The place looked clean and you could smell disinfectant, but you could also smell rotting flesh.

I told my mate to go back upstairs and I stayed in the cellar and pulled the kegs out searching for what I knew was the offending item. It was the big toe that Dave had cut off. After about 30 minutes I found it. Bloody hell, a week-old toe is not a pretty sight. I have heard of green thumbs but green toes are something altogether different. I went upstairs and flushed it down the toilet. I washed the cellar down and told my mate to leave the trap door open overnight to get rid of the stench .

Dave the Jew was not pleased at the news and old Kevin, who had been cutting toes with Jimmy the Pom in the late 1960s, and was an old hand, was most sorry. Dave nearly shot the old fellow, but all was well in the end.

The whole job stuck in my memory as a bad luck job. Angelo’s tears did not sit well with me. It was the last time I allowed the Jew to take control of matters. Left in charge he could be a total butcher.

There have been very few violent Jewish criminals in Australia, but violent Jews carved themselves a large slice of the American organized crime scene, and earned themselves a bloody and violent reputation.

Dave the Jew is a violent, bloody, smiling, polite, well-mannered, educated, polished, shy, cultured, head-hunting, toe-cutting, stone-killing, psychopathic rattlesnake, who would be more at home in the mean streets of New York than the quiet avenues of Melbourne.

Dave often told me about his Uncle Benny, who died in a gun battle with a gang of Italians in Brooklyn’s lower east side. Dave said his uncle, known as ‘Benny Blue Eyes’, was part of a Jewish gang which teamed up with a mad Irish crew to fight the Italians. Uncle Benny ran three blocks with four slugs in him before he fell down dead. In the shoot-out, six people were killed: three Italians, two Irish and Benny. It took place in 1932 and Uncle Benny was only 15 years old. Naturally, Dave only ever heard his family’s side of the story and this gave him a hatred for Italians.

Another family legend which made Dave hate Italians concerned another relative who was stabbed in the chest with a bayonet while being pushed into a freight car of a train bound for Germany. Dave was told the offender in this case was an Italian soldier. The relative was a girl just 12 years old, his mother’s cousin. This along with other various horror stories from the war about relatives being whacked out in various death camps really stuck with old Dave.

‘The Germans,’ he said, ‘were monsters. But at least they were honest monsters. But the treachery of the Italians and the French and their treatment of the Jews cannot be forgiven or forgotten.’

And let me tell you, Dave has a long memory. One thing he taught me about the Jewish revenge mentality is that the sins of the father will fall on the heads of the sons, or grandsons, or great grandsons, and so on. They forget nothing and forgive nothing.

Dave hates Italians because a Dago shot his uncle in 1932 and an Italian soldier bayoneted his mother’s cousin in World War 2 … so you can imagine his reaction whenever we grab an Italian for some toe-cutting work.

The bloke is a raving nut case, but I love him, bless his insane heart.

IN THE early 1970s the bashing of poofs along the Yarra River walkway and in the Fitzroy Gardens, to name a couple of places, was considered not just the done thing, but the height of good humor. Cowboy Johnny was a great one for this before I met him and tried hard to encourage the Surrey Road Gang to join these after dark recreational pursuits. But Dave the Jew, ever the toff, thought such activities vulgar and uncouth. Dave was, and still is, a criminal snob, much like my good self, and didn’t want to soil his hands flogging poo pushers in public dunnies.

Terry the Tank was neither here nor there on the issue, happy to go along with whatever I decided. The Cowboy felt that we should have a meeting on the matter and a vote, so under the stage of the Try Boys’ Youth Club, a gang meeting was held. I was the General, but Dave the Jew was a nutter who carried a loaded .38 calibre handgun on him at all times. So let’s just say I was not a foolish General.

I explained that as leader of the gang I would remain neutral and go along with what the three of them wanted. ‘Well, I reckon we should bash the shirt lifters,’ said the Cowboy. Terry the Tank kept silent, sensing a showdown between the Jew and the Cowboy. The Jew spoke: ‘I for one will not be hunting through the public lavatories of this city in search of pansies.’

The Cowboy, sensing a highbrow debate for which he was obviously ill-equipped, used a basic psychological trick to try to grab the high ground. ‘Are you a poof then?’ the Cowboy sneered.

Even I would never have spoken to the Jew in such a manner. The Jew was livid. ‘I will not be bullied into bashing poofs. I am not a poof and if you weren’t a mental defective I’d shoot you,’ he said to the Cowboy.

Crash! Dave hit the deck and the Cowboy started throwing punches. No-one called Cowboy Johnny Harris a ‘mental detective’. That’s what the poor old Cowboy thought The Jew had called him, a mental detective, and the poor, simple Cowboy thought the Jew had accused him of being some sort of mad policeman. The truth was that me, the Jew and Terry the Tank, wouldn’t have beaten The Cowboy in a fist fight even if we attacked him when he was asleep. We beat Johnny via the use of friendship and mind control. The Jew was in big trouble, he was being punched stupid. I yelled to Terry to break it up. Terry the Tank rushed in, only to be punched to the floor in half a second by the Cowboy, who had got his second wind.

I screamed to The Cowboy to stop it at once and to cut it out. He paused for long enough for me to rush in and grab Dave’s handgun out of his coat before the Jew could regain his wits.

After a while Dave and Terry regained their senses, if that was at all possible, and I laid down the law. ‘Right,’ I said. ‘We are going out right now to bash a few poofs and that is all there is to it.’ I gave Dave back his gun, after removing all the bullets. Dave said: ‘All right, but I go under protest’. But first Johnny wanted Dave to say sorry for calling him a mental detective. ‘Defective,’ said Dave. ‘Defective, not detective.’

Cowboy looked puzzled and said: ‘What’s a defective’. Dave just smiled, shook his head and put his hand on Cowboy’s shoulder and said: ‘I rest my case.’ So, laughing, but with Cowboy still a wee bit confused, we went off in search of bottom bandits.

We headed straight for the Fawkner Park toilets, which were infamous for unwholesome nocturnal activities, but believe it or not, we couldn’t even find the toilets. ‘This is insanity,’ said Dave. ‘We can’t even find the dyke, let alone the bloody poofs.’

So we took a tram to St Kilda, got off and walked to the Lower Esplanade, where there was a public toilet block which was supposed to be the gay boys’ version of heaven. It was a famous hang out (literally) for shirt lifters and pillow biters. It was homosexual HQ.

So there we were, hanging about outside the dunnies without a lot happening. We decided that Terry the Tank, Cowboy and I should hide and leave Dave out the front as bait for the gay boys. After about five minutes a police car pulled up and both coppers got out to question Dave. They ordered him to move on or they would charge him with loitering for the purposes of soliciting. They were convinced that Dave was a poof hanging about for a quickie. After the police car cleared off, we came back to find Dave bright red. He was livid

‘They thought I was a poof,’ yelled an outraged Dave. He was very upset. It was not his night, and our laughter did not help matters.

We went back to Fawkner Park and this time I was the bait. Thank God it was dark. A la de da gentleman minced up to me and asked me the time. I told him I didn’t have a watch. He then asked me: ‘How big is your lunch box?’ I just stood there because I didn’t understand poof slang. Dave then yelled out from his hiding spot that the guy was a poof. The gent, then realizing the game at hand, decided to move along with some haste. Dave took off after him, with gun in hand. Then ‘bang, bang’ and we saw two bright muzzle flashes in the dark. I don’t know who was more shocked — me or the poof. I had taken all Dave’s ammo, but the shifty bugger always carried another six rounds in his pocket, as I was later to learn.