Chopper Unchopped (105 page)

ROCKET Rod Kelly, Silver and Ruler had all been transferred to the vice squad after the Samson shootout in Footscray. This was fair enough, agreed friends and enemies alike, as they had their fair share of vices.

Rocket Rod put down the phone after a long conversation.

‘That was Freddy Garris. He reckons Fatty’s little sister is a table dancer at Johnny Go-Go’s Nightclub. He reckons it’s like looking at Raychell Van Gogh’s ghost. Spider’s web tattoo, bleach blonde hair, the lot. I reckon we should take a little look in on Johnny Go-Go’s and see what’s going on.’

‘We got nothing on Karen Phillips,’ said Silver. ‘For that matter, she’s usually got nothing on, either.’

‘No, we haven’t got anything we can pin on her,’ said Ruler, ignoring Silver’s bad gag. ‘But I’d still like to know who that sheila was who rescued Mickey the Nut and fired shots at us.’

‘Yeah,’ Kelly said. ‘She could be the answer to that puzzle and a lot of others as well. Let’s go and have a quiet look.’

Karen Phillips had indeed grown into quite an outrageous-looking honey. She had been drug free for quite a while, but old habits die hard, and when a good-looking customer walked into the club and stuffed several hundred dollars into her knickers, she would invite him into her private dressing room and show the lucky punter just why they called her the Rabbit Kisser.

With tips from dancing and kissing the rabbit backstage, she was a $3000 to $4000 a week girl. Two hundred bucks for a quick encounter of the oral variety might seem an outrageous asking price, but as Karen would tell her bank manager just after his once a week freebie, for every 20 men who say no, there are 20 men who say yes. Add that to upwards of a grand in tips each week, just for dancing, and it doesn’t take long to make a bank manager smile, even with his pants on.

Karen kept her bank manager, lawyer and accountant on a permanent weekly retainer that didn’t involve money. Not to mention old Johnny Go-Go, who had fallen into a mixed state of love and lust over the girl.

When Rocket Rod, Ruler and Silver walked into the club, the whole place was dark except for spotlights on the various stages scattered around for semi-naked females dancing in semi-porno fashion for men sitting drinking and stuffing money into gee strings.

Then they saw a wild-looking, long-legged blonde with a spider’s web tattoo fully covering her left arm. She was turning on the most insane dance routine for a group of big black American seamen.

‘The Yank navy must be in town,’ said Ruler, who had a remarkable grasp of the obvious.

‘Yeah,’ said Silver. ‘Wall to wall spooks tonight.’

They walked over toward Karen’s table and watched her dance. She finished and got down as another dancer took her place. She spoke to a giant black sailor, then led him to her dressing room. As the pair vanished into the dressing room, Kelly said: ‘I think she’s in there breaking the law. This club hasn’t got a council brothel licence, and if she isn’t in there humping that coon you can bloody well hump me.’

Silver and Ruler laughed. The three coppers waited for a few minutes to give the pair a head start, so to speak, then walked in.

Karen was on her knees in front of the big black sailor, whose white bell bottoms were around his ankles. She had both her hands around his bum with her right hand holding a couple of $100 notes. The big negro was pumping what looked like a police baton down her throat.

As the cops entered the room the big sailor turned around and snapped: ‘Get outta here, man. Can’t ya see I’m busy’.

Karen stopped what she was doing.

‘One at a time, boys. And it’s $200 a pop or you can do it yourself, because I won’t be.’

Kelly, Silver and Ruler pulled out their police identification; the Negro sailor quickly pulled his pants up with Karen getting to her feet.

‘Okay, okay. You win. You blokes won’t need to pay, but you should have cleared it with Johnny Go-Go first. I fix up cops Sunday night, not Friday.’

The sailor took off, slamming the door shut, leaving Kelly and the boys alone with Karen. He’d just done $200 cold, but it was better than copping a hiding and a night in the cells as well.

‘Okay boys, pull ’em out. Let’s get this over and done with. C’mon.’

‘We didn’t come for that, Karen,’ said Kelly softly.

‘How do you know my name?’ asked Karen.

‘Don’t you recognise me?’ asked Kelly. ‘I’ll remind you.’

He started to sing
Born free, as free as the wind blows.
It was pretty bad, but she got his drift.

Fatty’s little sister froze. A cold chill of blind rage and hatred ran up her spine.

‘Kelly’ she spat. ‘Rod Kelly.’

‘So it was you,’ whispered Kelly.

JOHNNY Go-Go didn’t miss much. He had watched Karen go to her dressing room with the big black Yank on her heels, and he had recognised Kelly and his crew. As Johnny Go-Go drew closer to the dressing room door he heard the sounds of muffled gun fire. The rock and roll dance music deafened everyone in the club, but the unmistakable sounds of shots rang out.

Several men looked around, but soon shrugged the noises off and turned their attention back to the bump and grind parade on the stage.

Johnny Go-Go opened the door. There were three bodies on the floor. Silver had three in the chest and was dying. Kelly had a slug through his forehead and one in the chest, and was already dead. Ruler had taken one in the brain, and was very dead indeed.

And Karen? She just stood there, holding her six shot .32 calibre handgun, the one Raychell had given her. She was naked except for high heels and gee string. Johnny Go-Go panicked and said ‘Karen, Karen, Karen, what the bloody hell have you done, baby? Shit, how are we gonna explain three dead jacks in your dressing room? Holy mother of God, when is this bullshit ever gonna end?’

Then he took Karen’s long black overcoat and wrapped it around the girl’s shoulders. He took the .32 handgun out of her hand and slowly walked her out of the club the back way, and into his car. As they drove along, Johnny thought, ‘I might be able to hide her out at my brother’s place in Carlton, if she don’t kill him as well.’

It was a nightmare. It was as if Raychell Brown had come back to life. But Johnny Go-Go was in love. He had to help her. Which meant disposing of the bodies of three policemen when the club closed. It was that simple, and that hard.

As they drove along Karen sat in trance, looking out the window. Then rain started to hit the windscreen.

Johnny swore softly. ‘It’s bloody raining.’ He turned on his wipers. Karen opened her window and put her face out in the rain.

Johnny yelled to her to shut the bloody window, but she laughed and then turned to Johnny, eyes blazing and raindrops running down her face. She began to laugh.

‘Ya know, Johnny,’ she said in her little-girl-lost voice, ‘I love the rain. Ha ha ha.’

‘I’M so bloody cold and the night is so clear. A full moon, yeah, there it is, I can see it. Where have my legs gone? They must be there, but I’m blowed if I can feel them. What happened? Where am I? Why am I lying on the footpath? Shit no, don’t do that. God, I’m pissing my pants. Stop it, stop it. How bloody embarrassing, laying on the bloody footpath wetting myself. Who are those people looking at me? Yeah, me. Come on, mate. Get up, get up. How come I can’t bloody move? God, this is ridiculous. Where have my arms gone? I’ve got this pain in the middle of my upper back, near my neck, sort of cold and numb, but with a fire in it. I can feel something warm running out of my chest and up and out and down both sides of my neck. Shit, she shot me. Shot me right in the back. Open ya eyes, ya silly bugger. Don’t go under. Come on mate, get with it. Don’t die, that’s it, one eye open. Why don’t no-one help me? What’s wrong with ’em all? How did I fall into all this? Oh no, police sirens! Or is it ambulance? I’m gone. I took his bloody face off with the shotgun and she stood there. Don’t die, don’t die. Dreaming of her, bloody strobe lights, off, on, off, on, red and white light, off, on, blue and white light, off, on. How am I gonna get out of this one? That bloody music. Ha, ha. If I only had time. Yeah, only time. There she is, look at them legs. Here I am, dying, and she can still make me feel horny. What’s she doing, talking to the police. Hey, I’m down here! I ain’t dead yet. One eye still open. Hey, down here! I’d bloody well wave if my arm would work …

‘Ahh, oxygen. Yeah, great. Oxygen mask, ohh good. That’s right, into the ambulance. Ahhh yeah, I can still breathe. That’s better. Yeah, sweet oxygen. If I only had time. Don’t die mate. C’mon, don’t die, you can make it, if I only had time, only time.

‘C’mon, get me to hospital. No, I’m not dead, don’t take my mask away. I’m not dead. Open ya bloody eyes. Yell out. Why won’t my voice work? Why can’t I open my eyes? No, no, I’m not dead. God, there she is again, look at the long-legged witch, up on that stage dancing. The wet dream from hell.

‘How did you find me? I’d spent a lifetime avoiding honeys like you, and of all the hearts in all the world you had to razor blade your way into mine. Go on, get out, leave my mind alone, let me die alone and in peace. Don’t follow me to the grave. Shit, what did that medic say? Dead! Hey, idiot. I’m not dead. Can’t ya see, I’m alive in here, look inside my brain, ya dumb bastard.

‘Look at this witch. Look at her. God, he reckons I’m dead and I feel horny. This isn’t real. She’s following me all the way inside my mind to the morgue. I’m not breathing. I can’t feel a thing. Eyes closed, yet she’s alive inside my mind. Look at her rockin’ and rollin’.

‘Yeah, who wouldn’t toss his whole bloody life on to the roulette wheel for her? Ha ha ha.

‘It makes me smile. I must look a sight. Dead as a door nail, with a smile on me face. Come on, princess, let’s go. You stay right where ya are, dancing in my head. C’mon darling, it’s grave time. Oh well, better to die with you holding the hand of my memory than to die alone. Stay there, baby. Don’t leave me, stay there. I didn’t know dead men could dream. Ha ha. Great. Blow me to the grave, princess. Who would ever have guessed it. Dead men get to dream and she is coming with me, for ever and always. The Strobe Light Dancer, rockin’ and rollin’ in my mind’s eye. It’s you and me forever, into the depths and darkness of eternity …’

HOW did it all begin? Let me take you back seven days. It seems like a thousand years ago, but it’s only a week. It’s Saturday night as I lie here dying, and I met her last Saturday. I got out of jail Friday morning. Six years prison with nothing and no-one. Days spent in violence just trying to stay alive and nights spent with my eight-day in one hand and my imagination in the other. First port of call was my dad’s place, a shower, shave, a change of clothes, the $1200 stuffed down the barrel of my sawn-off shotgun was still there, and my little five-shot .22 magnum revolver was in perfect working order.

I had half a box of ammo in reserve, so I loaded the .22 and put a dozen extra bullets in my pocket, put the $1200 in the other pocket. Then I donned my old favourite box Chester overcoat, gave my dad a kiss on the cheek and went out to see what the new world had to offer me.

I’d spent six years dreaming totally unrealistic crap and now I was free and cashed up, armed up and all set to rock and roll – but I didn’t have the faintest idea where to begin or what to do. I walked into the first pub I came to and sat lost and all alone getting quietly pissed, wondering where the world I’d once known had gone to.

My whole life had been like one giant revolving door with people passing through it. They left their mark in the waiting room of my heart and mind – then vanished. All I wanted was for someone to enter and not leave me. I walked home, a bit sad, my big first day out had been a big heap of bullshit and nothing.

I fell into bed and slept. When I woke up the sun was blazing. It was Saturday morning, and the world looked a better place than it had the night before. Sure enough, while I’d been asleep, Wazza Warren had rung my dad and invited me to meet up with him for a drink at some club in the city. It was called the ‘The Mexican Madonna’. Funny name for a club, I thought. But a lot more than the date had changed in six years.

Wazza Warren. I met him in prison about four years ago. He was doing two years. I’d already done two years when he came in, but we hit it off okay. When he got out two years ago he kept in touch.

I got up, got ready and went out. It was about four in the afternoon when I got to the club. It was closed. It didn’t open till 6 pm, but Wazza was inside. He was the live-in bar manager, not a bad job for an alcoholic street fighter who couldn’t read or write. He let me in. The joint was a vision in red, black and gold, with mirrors all over and around the walls. Chairs sat high at the stage and around various smaller platforms and stages. I’d never seen a club like it. After copping an eyeful of this for a while I looked at Wazza. He was dressed sharp – flash as a rat with a gold tooth, as my old dad used to say. He looked smug with it, as if he knew he was on a good thing and wanted me to know, too.

‘What the hell is this place, Wazza?’ I asked.

‘It’s a dance club,’ he said. Deadpan, but I could tell he was chuckling up his sleeve at my wide eyes. I’m six foot plus of muscle, tattoos and bad intentions, but at that moment I must have looked a bit like a hillbilly kid on his first trip to the big smoke.

‘What sort?’ I asked Wazza. Meaning what sort of club.

He explained that while I’d been away, the smarties had brought in an American idea called ‘lap dancing’ or ‘table dancing’. What it meant was that when the club opened for business 20 of the hottest-looking honeys you’d ever set eyes on would come out in stiletto heels, gee string and garter belt, and wiggle it and jiggle it about half an inch in front of your nose while the punters stuck cash in the knickers and garter belts.

The lights would get turned down and the whole club would turn into a strobe-lit sex machine. It was madness, magic bloody madness. Wazza told me I was in for a top night. He gave me four stay-awake tablets, the sort truckies pop, and I washed ’em down with a cold can of beer.

The ladies started to roll into the club around 5 pm and 5.30 pm. They all looked good to me. Tall, leggy, pouty looking blondes and redheads. Chinese chicks, black mammas, brunettes. They all seemed to wear dark glasses and they all, without question, totally ignored me. Except for one big, tall redhead who spoke to Wazza then turned and looked at me, took off her dark glasses and said, ‘the table with the red velvet chairs, okay?’

I didn’t say anything. Then she pointed to a few lounge chairs in the corner with a low table in front of them. It was the darkest and most private corner in the joint. Then she marched off, swinging the best set of hips I’d seen in a long time. Mind you, for six years I hadn’t seen many, but I had a good memory.

‘Who’s she?’ I asked Wazza.

‘Carolyn, she’ll look after you. I told her you just got out.’

Carolyn, Carolyn. I repeated the name over and over in case I forgot it. ‘Who is she?’ I asked.

Wazza gave me a funny look. ‘Who cares who she is?’ he said. ‘She’s a dancer and she works here. Best body in the club. You wait till she gets her gear off.’

‘What was that funny accent?’ I asked.

Wazza thought, ‘I don’t know. Scottish, New Zealand, something like that.’

‘Why did she pick me?’ I asked.

Wazza thought again, then said ‘I’d mentioned my mate in jail was due out. She seemed interested and a bit curious and told me if you ever came in to point you out.’

‘Does she know what I was in for?’ I asked.

‘Yeah,’ he said. ‘I told her. ‘She never minded. After all, you’re not a sex offender. All you ever did was shoot a few arseholes.’

He laughed, ‘In fact, she went all wet between the legs when I told her you’re a gunnie from Collingwood and that you always carried a gun on you.’

Wazza was smiling. I wasn’t. There was a small silence.

‘You told her a bit too much, I reckon,’ I muttered.

‘Ahh, C’mon mate,’ said Wazza. ‘She’s a thrill seeker, a danger junkie. She loves all that gangster bullshit.’

‘Okay,’ I said, ‘but don’t tell her nothing more.’

WHEN the doors opened at 6 pm, a few men started to come in. The bouncers and bar staff got busy for a big night, and the place started to hum. I grabbed a large scotch and went and sat in the corner. The music was loud and the place was a black, red, blue and yellow flash of on-again, off-again strobe lights. The chicks came out. Every one of them looked like she’d come out of a top-shelf porno movie.

I sat back in a big red velvet lounge chair, as instructed. Where was Carolyn? Then I saw this walking wet dream come up from out of the darkness. She bent forward and kissed me like a butterfly on the mouth with a little flick of her hot, wet tongue on my top lip. I reached out to grab her, but she was gone.

In the blink of an eye she got up on this small table in front of me and started to swing and sway to the music. The whole thing was quite sexually insane. I pulled out a fist full of money and she saw it and got down and began to dance all over me, touching me and teasing me as I stuffed money into her knickers and gee string. At the end of the dance she walked away, then turned and let me know she wanted me to follow. I wasn’t going to argue. My dad taught me to be polite to ladies at all times, even if they weren’t altogether ladylike. I got up and followed. You could have stopped me with a chainsaw, but not much else.

She went behind a red velvet curtain and through a doorway. Once inside, she closed the door and together we walked along a darkened hallway to a small, dark dressing room. It had a big mirror on the wall with a light above it, a comfy chair and a bench full of make up.

There was a small washbasin and tap. The whole thing was pretty dingy. Carolyn wasn’t. She took out the 100 or so dollars I’d stuffed into her knickers and handed it back to me.

She said, ‘I don’t do this for everybody, but you seem like a good bloke and I know ya been away for a long time and only got out yesterday.’

As she was saying all of this she had the zip on my pants undone, one hand down my jocks and the other hand undoing my belt. As she undid the belt, my .22 magnum handgun fell free and hit the floor. She looked at it and her eyes opened wide.

‘Ohh,’ she purred, ‘I think you’re gonna be a really interesting guy to know.’

We did the business with her sitting on the make-up bench, the whole thing was over before it started. Six years of dreaming about women like Carolyn – all blown in a six-minute frenzy. When it was over and she was adjusting her knickers and readying herself to go back to work, I said the most ridiculous thing.

I looked into her face and said, ‘I love you’.

It was the most childish and stupid thing to say, but I felt hopelessly and utterly in love with this heavenly creature. For a bloke fresh out of the joint, she was a vision splendid, with her suntanned legs extended – like something out of a porn movie they watch in heaven. To me, she was no any ordinary woman, she was an angel with a figure designed by the devil to tempt men. She had the sort of face that men would die for – and kill for. A pouty look with lips that looked as if they’d spent the last 20 years sucking icypoles. I’d spent the past six years having serious sex with my mattress, dreaming about glamour girls half as good looking as this pornographic princess. And I’d just blown six years of pent-up prison passion deep inside a dream come true.

In love, in lust. Call it what you will, but I was in it. I would have pulled my heart out and handed it to her. She stopped and looked at me and touched my cheek with her long fingernails and sort of stroked my face and said: ‘You’re a really nice guy, but don’t tell me you love me. You don’t even know me.’

‘Yes I do,’ I said. ‘I’ve been dreaming about you for the last six years.’

She lifted her face up to mine and kissed my cheek.

‘Can I see you again?’ I asked.

‘I’m here every night,’ she said.

‘Can I see you after work?’ I asked.

Then she mentioned her boyfriend and my blood ran cold. She stood there hitching her gee-string knickers up and told me she had a boyfriend. A jealous arsehole who loved to slap her about. If she got caught after hours with another man she’d be in big trouble. She was free from 6 pm till about midnight at the club, but then the boyfriend showed up. He would hang about till 3 or 4 am, then take her home. She’d hand over most of the cash from her night’s work to him. He was a big, good-looking wog from Footscray. The bodybuilder, all muscle and mouth type. He spent his time gambling, lifting weights, working on his suntan, selling a few drugs here and there, buying stolen property, doing a bit of security work as a bouncer at a few clubs and pubs, buying himself la-de-da Italian-made clothes, slapping his girlfriend about and whoring her arse off when he needed money. Generally just rock and rolling around town, looking good and trying to play the role of the up and coming tough guy. His name was Eros Pantanas, but everyone called him Rocky.