Chopper Unchopped (133 page)

Suzi’s attitude of trying to kidnap the Kid all to herself only meant that when Suzi went to the bathroom, which took a timed eight to ten minutes, then Coco spent a timed four to five minutes over the billiard table or the kitchen table or touching her toes. This was the stupid situation Suzi’s jealousy had put her into, but it was good for the hamstrings.

It was all giggles and secrets, but it was a dangerous game and both Coco and Kid McCall knew it. The life and death nature of the game aroused them both.

‘You’re spending a lot of time over at Lennox Street,’ said Russian Suzi one day. She was getting more bitter, superstitious and paranoid all the time.

‘I just go over to see Baby Micky,’ said Johnny.

‘Ya not plonking that little chick Melanie, are you?’ asked Suzi.

‘No, I’m not,’ said Johnny, which was the truth. Suzi could sense that. ‘Well make sure ya don’t, I’ll cut that dick of yours right off if I find out you’re playing up on me,’ she warned. ‘I might need an axe to do it but I bloody well will. I’ll do a Jack O’Toole on your O’Toole if you backdoor me.’

Coco sat drinking her coffee. The Kid had just rammed her ring gear so hard for the last five minutes while Suzi took a shower.

Coco was glad she was sitting down because she doubted she’d be able to stand up for a while. While considering this Coco couldn’t help but let forth with a giggle. ‘What are you laughing at?’ snarled Suzi.

‘You,’ said Coco. ‘Relax, Johnny loves you. Jesus, Suzi, I’m the one on drugs and you’re a health nut, but you’re the one that’s paranoid outta ya brain. Have a morph pill and relax.’

‘Without thinking, Suzi picked up the tablet and swallowed it down with a glass of orange juice.

‘Yeah, well,’ she said, her voice softening a bit. ‘I’m sorry, it’s just that I love ya, Johnny.’ She wrapped her arms around him.

‘I love you, too,’ said Johnny, as Coco ran her big toe up his leg and winked at him.

SIR Leopold Kidd sat in his seventh floor office on Collins Street. At 70 years of age he was fighting fit and still headed one of the biggest merchant banks in Australia. A millionaire many times over, he looked twenty years younger, and felt at ease with life despite being alone. His wife had passed away eleven years before and his only son had wasted his life with wine, women and song before putting a gun in his mouth and taking a shortcut to the place we’re all going.

Why did Sir Leopold still work? Because it was all he had. All his friends and social connections came from his work. At his mansion in Toorak he had millions of dollars worth of art and luxury but it was a cold and empty castle. He could travel the seven seas in his own yacht, or fly the seven skies in his own jet. He had luxury homes in six countries and he dined each night with captains of industry and the princes of state and federal politics on both sides of the house. He was strong and eager to go but he had no place he wanted to visit, and no-one to go with.

He was, quite simply, bored out of his brain. He picked himself up and as was his wont of late, wandered his building, putting his head into offices where he wasn’t wanted. ‘All correct?’ he’d ask brightly, like some Boer War general touring the lines to keep up morale. And some civil young silk suit, with slick back hair and a small coke habit with only seven more years to go before he paid off his Porsche and thirty to go before he paid off his house in South Yarra, jumped to his feet and smiled and said, ‘Yes, Sir Leo. All correct.’

Leopold Kidd liked people to call him Leo. As he reached the fifth floor he heard raised voices.

‘But you’re a fucking investment broker, this is a fucking merchant bank isn’t it?’ came a shrill angry female voice.

‘Yes indeed, Miss,’ said some silk suit. ‘But the trouble is …’ He didn’t get to finish. Sir Leo put his head around the door. ‘All correct?’ he said.

‘Yes, Sir,’ replied the slimy silk suit.

‘No, it bloody well is not,’ replied Coco Joeliene.

The sight of her stirred something in the old knight he hadn’t felt in years, and he wished someone else could feel it too. This black gal was tall, very tall, over six feet in her white high heels. She wore no stockings. Why would she, indeed? Her skin was like dark, rich coffee brown silk. Her legs ran all the way up to heaven, or very close to it. She wore a tightly-cut lady’s business suit, all in white with a skirt that cut off about a dick’s length from a pair of lovely knees. She wore a lovely collection of solid gold jewellery that really stood out. The suit coat cut to a deep vee at the neck to reveal – oh so tastefully – the slightest peek of a white lace bra, putting up a valiant effort to act as support.

But the job at hand was simply too much for any bra and although the expensive well-cut suit did its best to conceal, it was clear to a blind man that this black creature with the white smile and the long black hair and the big wide eyes was built by the hand of God. The eyes caught him and held him. They were green, no doubt the ghost of some white blood in her veins from a generation or two removed. It gave her a haunting look.

‘I’ll handle this one, young man,’ Sir Leo said crisply. ‘What’s your name?’ he said to the silk suit.

‘Miller, sir,’ the suit said, looking like a whipped dog. ‘Wayne Miller.’

‘Well, Miller,’ said Sir Leopold, ‘be careful how you address a lady in future.’ He turned his 24-carat manners to Coco. ‘Miss, my name is Leopold Kidd,’ he said smoothly. ‘Chairman of the Board of Kendall, Kidd and Corbott. Alas, Kendall and Corbott are no more and you’ll have to suffer with me.’

He held out a splendidly manicured hand.

‘I’m Joeliene Gascon,’ said Coco.

‘Ahh,’ said Sir Leo appreciatively, as if she’d just said something clever and witty and interesting. ‘French.’

‘Yes,’ said Joeliene archly, ‘by way of Jamaica.’

He was already leading the way to another part of his kingdom. ‘This way, my dear,’ he said solicitously, like something between the trusted family lawyer and Casanova. ‘Dear girl,’ he continued, ‘I’m sure we can sort out whatever it is that you need sorting and, my dear, if I can’t fix it Saint Paul’s is always open.’

Joeliene laughed. She was quick on the uptake. What he meant was that the next step up from Sir Leopold Kidd was God. Joeliene smiled big and her eyes danced and her hips swung with just the hint of an extra swing, as if they had been recently well-oiled, and when Sir Leopold opened the door to his office and showed her in she swept past him close enough to touch. His left hand rested for a moment in the small of her back against the fine material of her suit. He invited her to sit and he took a chair near her to the left front side. Ignoring his huge blackwood desk, she slowly crossed her legs and the skirt, as it was designed to do, crept up her thighs at a great rate of knots. Sir Leopold looked at her body from head to toe and, 70 years old or not, found himself with a bone a dog wouldn’t chew. He was forced to cross his legs as well. It surprised him, but not her. She had been having that effect on men of all ages since she was 13. All the while her green eyes danced at him.

KID McCall and Melanie walked Baby Micky in his pram, arm in arm. They were in love. Melanie had cried the night before, telling Johnny that she wasn’t a virgin, then she screamed the roof down as the Kid entered her, for she was truly an innocent. She had found the one man she truly loved. The ghost of Blueberry Hill would always haunt her memories, but the flesh and blood reality of Johnny McCall was what she really loved.

A car screeched up on to the footpath and Russian Suzi got out. She had a baseball bat. ‘You dog,’ she screamed. ‘I knew it, I knew it, you and this little trenchmouth slut, I’m gonna kill her in front of you. Go on, ya slut, get a bit of this into ya!’ She swung the bat at Melanie.

Johnny the Kid was in a state of fear and panic. His brain raced from his own safety to Melanie’s and then to Micky in the pram. He was sworn to protect baby Micky, the ghost of Karen Phillips would haunt him forever if he didn’t. Before Suzi could take a second swing with the bat he pulled out the .38 calibre snub nose revolver he was carrying and fired. The bullet hit Russian Suzi in the centre of the chest. She stopped and looked down then back up to Kid McCall.

‘But I love ya Kid,’ Suzi said. Then she fell backwards and lay there crying. ‘I love ya, Kid’ she said three times, and died.

The Kid stood there with Melanie and Baby Michael and a crowd gathered. The police came and for some reason McCall didn’t run.

‘MADAM,’ cried a drunken Clancy Collins, ‘may I offer you a 69?’ Coco Joeliene looked around and there he was in all his wild old Irish glory.

‘I’ve been looking for you,’ said Joeliene. ‘How ya going, Mr Collins?’

‘My dear girl,’ said Old Clancy. ‘Don’t call me Mr Collins.’

‘What should I call you?’ she asked.

‘Well,’ said Clancy, ‘call me next please, and get that dress off.’

Clancy laughed loudly at his own comedy, while Coco tried to straighten him up.

‘C’mon, Mr Collins, this is serious. I need help.’

‘Well, first, my girl you’ll call me Clancy. Then you’ll tell me what help a lady in distress needs. Have no fear, my dear, Clancy’s here.’

They stood in the bar of the Santa Fe Gold Night Club in Russell Street, and Coco told him her story.

‘My dear, I haven’t acted as a lawyer for anyone in years,’ he protested. ‘But I don’t know any other lawyers I can trust,’ said Coco. ‘But my dear, it’s a murder charge and I’m out of touch. I’m no longer the man I once was.’

‘Bullshit,’ said Coco Joeliene. ‘You’re Clancy fucking Collins. Jesus, you’re a living legend,’ said Coco.

‘True, true, true,’ said Clancy, ‘and you say self-defence was involved. A jealous Amazon with a black belt in karate and a 17-year-old lad defending a 15-year-old-girl and an infant child. Another drink, my dear, a double.’ Clancy handed the waitress his empty glass and stuffed $20 into her garter belt.

‘Yes, yes, yes,’ he said in deep thought, totally ignoring the bevy of dancing babes on the stage. ‘You know, I reckon old Clancy could do it.’

Coco threw her arms around the old gentleman’s neck and his hands fell on to her hips and bottom and he didn’t remove them.

‘Now, my dear, as to my fee, I’m a bit out of touch. Let’s say two grand a day and lunch and drinks at half time.’

Coco laughed. ‘Let’s say four grand a day and lunch and drinks at Coco’s Restaurant every day of the week after work,’ she replied.

Clancy looked surprised. ‘My dear, I didn’t know you were in the catering trade. How very convenient. Ha ha. Yes, my dear girl. Clancy Collins rides again. And if I may say so I’ve never lost a murder case.’

Coco was impressed. ‘How many murder cases have you won?’ she asked, as they left the club arm in arm.

Clancy coughed and cleared his throat. ‘None, my dear. You see, I’ve never actually defended anyone on a murder charge. In fact, the last time I appeared in court was 1969 Richmond Court of Petty Sessions, O’Connell versus the Crown. A nasty case of wrongful arrest involving a man with a goat. We’ll say no more on that topic. Distasteful business.’ ‘Did you get him off?’ asked Coco.

‘Yes, of course,’ replied Clancy. ‘But the goat had to be put down. As I said, my dear. Nasty business.’

COCO Joeliene was putting a suitcase full of drugs into the back of her car, along with another bag containing $500,000 in cash. She had given Johnny The Kid’s mother another 500 grand, and invested a further half million with her dear friend Sir Leopold Kidd, who had doubled her investment in three months. Somehow, Russian Suzi and Johnny The Kid and Coco had blown the other half million that made up the two odd million in the secret cellar, but who cared? It was time for Coco to go.

She’d been someone else’s slave girl since she was 10 years old and now she was a woman with her own money and truckloads of it, and a man who truly loved her. Yeah, Sir Leopold was old enough to be her grand dad, but he loved her and if she took it easy on him he could last a good few years yet. She didn’t really love him, but she liked the old guy. He was nice and he knew that she was God’s little goodbye gift before he went to the big boardroom in the sky.

How many old pops get to sail off into the sunset with a woman most young men would commit suicide over. He was in seventh heaven and he knew it and she’d keep him there. Why not? Old Leo was a good old guy and she was 49 inches of Jamaican marshmallow all alone in the world.

‘How ya goin, Joeliene?’

She looked up. It was young Archie Reeves, the teenage thief who entertained her with chemist shop goodies in return for a little cash and a whole lot of Joeliene. He was a scruffy, cheeky-looking scallywag with a cute look. Joeliene had a soft spot for this streetwise young ragamuffin in spite of the fact he was a hopeless tealeaf and a pants bandit who’d upend anything in a skirt, given half a chance.

‘How ya goin’ baby?’ said Joeliene.

‘Are you going someplace Coco?’ said Archie.

‘Yeah, Baby,’ said Coco.

‘Where?’ asked Archie.

‘Oh on a yacht, far away,’ she said.

‘Can I come?’ said Archie. ‘Please.’

Coco looked and thought why not take a little bit of Collingwood with her. In a world of death and tears, this scruffy little sneak thief was probably the happiest, cheekiest memory she had next to Clancy Collins. Why not?

‘Yeah, okay Kid,’ said Coco. ‘You want to pack?’

Archie jumped in the car. ‘Nah, I’m right. I got nothing anyway,’ he said.

Joeliene jumped in the car and started the engine up and drove off slowly. As they passed the terminus a laughing and very drunk Clancy Collins staggered out with his arm around a scantily clad Melissa Clarke. He’d grown quite fond of Melissa. He raised his glass and yelled, ‘a 69 my dear.’

Coco laughed and waved. The old boy would have won Johnny The Kid’s case had he not fallen asleep during his own summing up. In his final address to the jury he had nodded off, dead drunk, and still got a not guilty verdict on the murder charge, but poor Kid McCall went under on manslaughter and copped a quick three years.