Chopper Unchopped (125 page)

They wanted to make money, not war. All crims eventually lose the blood lust. As they get older they want to be comfortable. Which is why they are always open to being walked over by a new group of ethnic crooks willing to die to get to the top of the dung heap.

In America the Colombians were determined to take over from the Mafia and the wogs would rather a bowl of linguine followed by a dish of cunnalinguine than fight for what they believed was theirs, handed to them by their hard old Sicilian forebears.

Karen had surrounded herself with her own personal crew. Sure enough, Russian Suzi had realised her ambition of being promoted rather than given a .38 calibre redundancy. She acted as a sort of driver, personal bodyguard, and Girl Friday to Karen – as well as running the million dollar a year prostitution empire for her. Karen had filled the Caballero with strippers and whores, all blood loyal to herself, as well as mentally insane nutters who could stab or bottle a customer to bits at a moment’s notice.

She had Hank Hitchcock, nicknamed Hankster the Gangster, a 30-year-old tank of a man who carried a sawn-off double barrel in an overcoat wherever he went. It was a good idea in winter, but in summer he lost 25 kilograms and had the complexion of a beetroot.

There was Aaron Guzzinburg, a Jewish killer from south of the river, a legend in the world of shadowy killers. His arrival on the scene came at a cost of two grand a day as a retainer, and he’d been on the scene for the past five weeks.

There were two more Jewish hitmen who spoke only Yiddish to each other and talked to no-one else, except when Karen spoke to them. They worked for Guzzinburg at a grand a day each, at Karen’s expense. No-one knew their names, and no-one was game to ask.

There was also a tall Black Jamaican chick with a massive set of tits working as a dancer at the club. She was as black as night but had dead seaweed green eyes. She seemed to be in a zombie drugged-out state as she danced non-stop for hours without a break. She could be lathered in sweat but wouldn’t pull up.

This Jamaican had big, thick sexy lips and a face that just stared out into nothing, but when Karen walked into the club the black princess would come to life, as though coming out of a trance. They called her the Jamaican at first, then someone asked who ‘the spook’ was so they just called her Spooky – but not to her face.

There was something quite strange and deep about this lady. No-one wanted to see this dark woman in a dark mood. She didn’t do tricks, she just danced. No matter what money was offered, and there was plenty, she just danced for the punters.

Then there was a young 16-year-old total fruit loop, a kid named Johnny McCall. He was nicknamed ‘Jack’, and would proudly tell one and all that Black Jack McCall was the name of the man who shot the great gunfighting legend, James Butler Hickock, otherwise known as Wild Bill Hickock. History has it that McCall shot Hickock in the back of the head as he sat playing cards in the ‘Mann and Lewis Number 10 Saloon’ in Deadwood, Dakota, in 1876.

Karen had given young Jack McCall a .38 calibre Colt Peacemaker revolver and the kid had shot three people in the past month – not dead, but not for want of trying. He saw himself as a gunslinger in the American wild west style. Karen liked the kid’s style, and he in turn loved Karen. He was quite dangerously insane. They were a good pair. Kerry Griffin was a company girl, and as far as she was concerned Karen ran the company. She would fuck or fight anyone if Karen so wished it. But her habit of forgetting who people were wasn’t getting any better. She often mistook Johnny Go Go for the bloke who cleaned the nightclub, and had once shown him where the vacuum cleaner was and abused him for not cleaning up properly.

Johnny was a trifle miffed by this, but everyone else thought it was the height of good humor.

The Bennett sisters gave blind loyalty to Karen and no other. Lee Lee, the tall sultry Chinese stripper with the savage scar under her bottom lip, obeyed Kerry.

Lee Lee was a Chinese wet dream except for the scar where her lip had been sewn back on after Kerry bit it off. A small point Kerry had since forgotten.

Lee Lee was near brain dead and could be described as a Chinese sexual public toilet with a smack habit, just waiting to die. She was little more than a slave who got her ring gear jack hammered twenty times a night at 100 bucks a pop with the club taking nearly every cent. All Lee Lee got was a needle in the arm three times every 24 hours. She slept with Kerry in her flat and was little better than a walking corpse, but she would blindly obey any command from the boss.

The clans gathered for the big meeting. It was a regular Camp David for Collingwood crims.

There were the Kellys, the Browns, the Pollocks, the Phillips, the Griffins, a smattering of various odd-looking fellows whose last name was Van Gogh, the Peppers, the Bennetts, the Bradshaws, the Rebecca clan, the Finneys, the Maloneys, the Lawsons, the Featherstone gang, the Taylors, the Wells family, the Cartwrights, the Crawfords, the Gilmores, the Vintons, the Rooneys, the Slatterys, the Brasco boys and, last of all, what was left of the Reeves family. It was the ‘Who’s Who’ of old-fashioned crime.

There was roughly 200 people in the club drinking and one way or another through marriage or de facto relationships involving children everyone in the room was somehow related. In spite of the fact that some of these families had been killing each other and trying to kill each other for the past 60 years, this was the Collingwood crew. Karen had pulled them together for this because she knew that pound for pound, Collingwood could put together more sheer fire power than anything the dagos had to offer, any place or any time.

Karen arrived with her small army in tow. As soon as she entered the club, she pointed to Keith Kerr and screamed, ‘Who invited that tip rat? Jackie, shoot the dog.’

Young Jackie McCall might have been bred and born in the gutter, but he understood etiquette. He pulled out his Colt Peacemaker and shot Keith Kerr stone dead. This was an invitation-only affair, and according to the lady of the house Kerr hadn’t been invited. Inexcusable manners.

Johnny Go Go was a bit alarmed about this. ‘Holy shit,’ he yelled. ‘He’s with the Peppers.’

‘Yeah well,’ said Karen. ‘Not any more. Maybe I was a bit hasty, but I owe someone a favor.’

The crowd went silent. Karen could do that to a crowd, one way or another.

‘Right you lot, cop a look at this.’

Kerry Griffin came into the big room and sat a large pickle bottle on the bar. But it wasn’t pickles inside it. It was the head of Salvatore Castronovo. He was an ugly prick when he was alive, but he was a shocker in a pickle jar.

Then Karen yelled ‘Okay, Boo Boo.’

Another stripper walked out with yet another pickle bottle with a human head in it. It was the head of Tito Carrasella. Johnny Go Go went pale. He had been doing business with the late Tito. All of a sudden it looked as if he had a corporate partnership problem.

‘Bookends,’ someone yelled. ‘Cancel the antipasto,’ mumbled someone else.

‘That’s right, Johnny,’ said Karen. ‘All the way from Italy. I should have put the prick in olive oil. Hey Michelle,’ she yelled. Michelle Bennett walked into the room. Her family rushed to greet her.

‘Tell ’em,’ yelled Karen.

Michelle cried, ‘Johnny sold me to the wogs.’

The Bennetts went crazy. Russian Suzi went for Johnny. She hit him across the throat with a sideways right hand karate chop. Johnny hit the deck, choking for air. What used to be his Adams apple was getting in the way in his windpipe. It was not a healthy look.

‘He’s been doing big smack business with the dagos,’ yelled Karen. ‘I love him, but there’s no shades of grey.’ Johnny was proving her wrong because his complexion was turning a distinctive greyish tinge, the color that precedes death.

Evidently, Karen did have some sympathy in her. It seems she didn’t want to see Johnny suffer, so she pulled out a .32 calibre automatic and emptied the six-shot clip into his head and chest. He looked like a cross between Swiss cheese and sausage meat.

The truth was that Karen knew all about Johnny’s business matters, and she thought the selling of the young Bennett girl to the wogs was both highly comic and good business. It also helped the nation’s balance of payments problems – and although Karen may have been a psychopathic slut she was a dinky-di Aussie. But she was prepared to use any advantage in the present small business and domestic matter because no-one was going to get her baby. When it came to matters of child custody she didn’t mess about. ‘Fuck the family court, Johnny had to Go Go,’ she said with a giggle to Russian Suzi.

Meanwhile, the Jamaican beauty was up on stage, oblivious to the gunplay, dancing smoothly to gentle rock and roll music. She was wearing white stilettos and matching satin French knickers. She looked out into nothing, as usual. She had long black hair like a Chinese girl. It hung down nearly to her arse.

Big Frank Bradshaw was standing looking at the body of Johnny Go Go. He was horrified.

‘You’re fucking insane,’ he yelled at Karen. ‘What’s this shit all about?’

‘We go to war with the wogs tomorrow,’ she answered. ‘You’re either all with me or against me.’

‘You can get fucked,’ said Big Frank. But as he said it, the big Jamaican girl bent down, took a razor blade from her mouth and ran it almost gently across his neck. Big Frank grabbed his throat and fell to his knees. It was a fatal case of shaving rash.

‘You know the drill,’ Karen said to Russian Suzi.

The big blonde stepped forward and grabbed his head and snapped it hard to the left side and Frank fell down dead. The two unnamed Jews and Aaron Guzzinburg and Hankster the Gangster all pulled out guns. Some members of the crowd did likewise, but not against Karen.

The Rabbit Kisser started to laugh.

‘Now, why don’t we clear these stiffs away and let’s all nut this shit out. Okay.’

Half an hour later the club was jumping. The girls were all dancing. It was a full-on party. Seven of the Bennett boys were so glad to see their distant young cousin Michelle again, they were gang banging her across one of the club tables, much to her apparent delight to be welcomed home so warmly.

Sick pack of monkeys, them Bennetts, thought Karen. Considering that nearly all the people in the room were somehow related through marriage, there was a lot of sex going on.

Kerry Griffin was up on stage doing the business with Pop Finney. It was a case of pop goes his weasel. Shit, thought Karen, Pop Finney was married to Kath Brown, Kath was Jenny Brown’s sister, Jenny was Kerry’s mother. That made Kerry Pop’s niece by marriage, sort of. Depraved bitch.

There was young Angela Bennett copping it the Greek way over in the corner of the club, courtesy of Normie Taylor. Oh well, at least Normie wasn’t a relative, she thought. Only her step father. Ha ha.

Karen signalled and a team of about twenty of the family heads went up to the Penthouse on the sixth floor to talk business.

Kenny Pepper spoke first. ‘What if the Corsettis and the Mazzaras and Castronovos start to import Sydney hit men?’ he asked.

Aaron Guzzinburg giggled. For a Jew, he had mad blue eyes. Rumor had it he was the black sheep of a respectable shopkeeping family, and had once gone to one of the poshest private schools in Melbourne. But that was a long time ago. Now he killed people.

Russian Suzi smiled.

‘Where do they keep all the Sydney hit men?’ asked Karen.

Kenny Pepper looked puzzled. ‘I don’t know, I just asked what if they started importing Sydney gunnies.’

Karen continued, ‘I’ll tell ya where they keep all the Sydney hit men, in the same cupboard they keep all the Abo brain surgeons.’

The men laughed their guts out. Except Kenny Pepper, who looked a bit shamefaced. Then he spoke up, going for the historical angle. ‘Snowy Cutmore was a Sydney gunnie – and he killed Squizzy Taylor.’

Ray Taylor, head of the Taylor family, pulled out a gun and shot Kenny Pepper in the knee cap. Evidently he disapproved. ‘Squizzy was our great great grandfather and we don’t need turds like you reminding us of that shit,’ he said reprovingly. It wasn’t good manners to talk like that about people’s forebears.

‘Anyway,’ said Karen, ‘the bloody Cutmores lived in Smith Street, Collingwood, before they moved to bloody Sydney.’

The men all nodded.

‘Oh,’ said Kenny, ‘I didn’t know that. Can I go to hospital please?’ His manners had improved dramatically but his walking hadn’t. He had developed a pronounced limp in the previous 30 seconds.

Karen nodded. ‘Yeah, go on. Someone take him.’

When Kenny was carried out Ray Taylor said, ‘I didn’t know that about the Cutmore family.’

‘Yeah,’ said Karen, ‘I thought everyone knew that.’

‘Oh well,’ said Ray. ‘That makes everything all right.’

Karen had just made the Cutmore story up on the spot, but she knew that by lunchtime tomorrow Snowy Cutmore would be an old Collingwood boy along with Ned Kelly, Les Darcy, Banjo Paterson, Henry Lawson and fucking Superman.

Anyone from Collingwood could tell you that Ned Kelly was born in the backroom of the Tower Hotel. He was Collingwood through and through. Pinched his first horse from some mug in Forest Street, Collingwood.

Legends, she thought to herself. They hanged all the good ones and told lies about the rest. Ahh Collingwood, God bless it. Good old Collingwood forever. Hardly won a footy match for years, yet pound for pound outnumbered every other fan club in Australia ten to one. Collingwood had pride, guts, many a drunken lie told in pubs and the ability to bury anyone who dared question it. Snowy Cutmore, indeed. She smiled to herself.

BY Wednesday lunchtime the streets of Melbourne ran red with blood. Or, at least, that’s the way the media splashed the story. In fact, a few inner suburban streets got the odd splash of Italian blood.

Tommy Novella, Carlos Popovic, Mario Delucca and Danny Boy Mazzara carelessly got in the way of shotgun blasts. They had just left the bar of the Dan O’Connell Hotel in Canning Street, Carlton, when Ray Taylor and his crew hit them.