Chopper Unchopped (168 page)

MELBOURNE, 1987. Joey Gravano sat quietly in his first class seat on a Qantas flight leaving Tullamarine for Rome. He was on his way to visit his Uncle Hector in Palermo, Sicily. Hector Aspanu was a nephew to the long-dead bandit and Sicilian legend Salvatore Juiliano, and that made Joey’s uncle part of Sicilian mafia royalty.

Joey had his head stuck in an old book Pop Kelly had given him and was unaware of the Chinese lady next to him. She was a voluptuous young lady who was also slightly annoyed. This was because of Joey’s interest in his old book and not in her legs, despite the fact she was crossing and uncrossing them like Sharon Stone on heat.

“What’s that you’re reading?” she asked at last, determined not to be ignored by a gorilla in a good suit. She had an American accent.

“Book on chess,” said Joey shortly, not even bothering to look up. “I play chess,” she purred. “Ya don’t say,” said Joey. He wasn’t the smoothest bastard you’ve ever seen, but she kept trying.

“Who wrote it?” she asked.

Joey looked up, slightly annoyed. It was then he realised just what it was sitting next to him.

“Doctor Emanuel Lasker,” he replied. “World chess champ for 27 years straight. The greatest chess master in history according to many. The man was a strategic and tactical genius, the master of the Sicilian Defence.”

The Chinese lady purred a whisper “I’ve never been beaten in chess. French, Dutch, Sicilian Defence, English manoeuvre, Russian attack … I know them all.”

Joey smiled.

“You don’t believe me?” the woman asked.

“I didn’t say that,” said Joey.

The Chinese lady called the air hostess. It was night time. The first class area was in a state of semi-darkness. The hostie was a gorgeous-looking blonde who’d slipped into a bit of the first class champagne in the galley, by the look of her. The Chinese lady asked about a chess board and the tipsy air hostess vanished for a few moments before reappearing with a nifty wooden case that opened up into a chess board.

The Chinese lady set up the board and turned to Joey.

“My name is Simone, by the way. Simone Tao. I work for the Royal Hong Kong Trading Company, Merchant Banking Division, so you can stop smiling at me like I’m some fool,” she said.

“I’m Joey Gravano. I work for my uncle, Hector Aspanu, of Aspanu International.”

Her eyes flickered slightly as the name registered. Aspanu International was international all right: a global washing machine for mafia drug money, a lot of which passed through Hong Kong banks. She suddenly decided to let this evil-looking Italian beat her at chess. There was such a thing as a tactical retreat, and she knew all about it.

“That’s a lovely Rolex watch you have,” she remarked.

“I’ll tell you what,” grunted Joey. “You beat me at chess, it’s yours.” He wasn’t big on the small talk, Joey, but she understood his type.

“And if you beat me?” she murmured sweetly.

Joey was never a great romantic. He grabbed his swelling crotch with his right hand.

“You get a good go at this,” he said.

Simone smiled. She’d sucked her way up the corporate ladder and if doing the job with this Sicilian hillbilly could get her close to the Aspanu Group it would be a business contact worth its weight in gold.

Eight hours later Simone Tao got off the plane highly frustrated. She’d beaten him 16 games in a row despite desperately trying to lose. God, thought Simone, he has to be the dumbest Sicilian in the whole world. But she did have his business card. Not to mention the Rolex.

JOEY Gravano quietly walked out of Leonardo Da Vinci airport at Fiumicino, near Rome. He travelled light and carried no luggage. Even if he had any it wouldn’t have mattered, because the mob controlled the whole airport and Customs was never a problem – except for long-legged Chinese ladies. Italians being Italians, the Customs officers took one look at the lovely Simone Tao and promptly took her to a private room for a full strip search. Joey smiled at this. He knew the inspectors. If she tried to protest against a full cavity search, she would spend her holiday in a holding facility until she agreed. Still smiling at this comical thought, he hailed a taxi and had himself taken to the Hotel Hassler Villa Medici in Rome. The best hotel in the city for a long sleep.

Sure enough, Simone Tao suffered the indignity of having a large fat Customs inspector’s hand poking around her most private parts.

She walked out of Fiumicino Airport like a rape victim. She wondered if her Sicilian chess partner had anything to do with her recent embarrassment as she had noticed the same inspector wave him through like visiting royalty.

As she got into a taxi she decided to think herself lucky. A Chinese girl in Italy, she was lucky it was only a fat hand up her pussy. Who could she protest to? It took 20 or 30 days to post a letter out of Italy, and a complaint would be acted on within about 20 or 30 months. Or not at all.

The taxi ride from the airport to Rome took 45 minutes with the mad cab driver heading in every direction but Rome while looking into his rear vision mirror at her legs. She had rooms booked at the Cavalieri Hilton and she couldn’t get there quick enough. She knew American money had a magical effect on cab drivers right through Europe, and the fifty dollar bill she handed the driver brought his attention back to the road and away from her legs. After a few minutes of break neck speeds she found herself in front of the Cavalieri Hilton.

God, she hated Italy. Great country, but the people were all quite perfectly insane – and they smelt. Didn’t anyone take a bath in this country, she thought to herself as she entered the grand doorway of the hotel with her insane taxi driver and several hotel porters in heated argument over who was going to carry her two suitcases. She turned to view this comic sight. God, she thought, I’ve been fisted at the airport and so far it’s been all downhill from there. No wonder they lost the Roman empire.

Gravano, on the other hand, arrived at his hotel in extra quick time, and had to force money on a cab driver unwilling to take it. He was then ushered like some Hollywood movie star to the best apartments the hotel had. He bathed, and was in bed sleeping like a baby – a big, ugly baby, admittedly – while on the other side of town a fight had broken out and knives were being pulled over who would carry the bags of the lovely Chinese lady.

“When in Rome do as the Chinese do,” thought Simone. “Bugger the bags, get me to my room.”

She never left home without her American Express gold card. She’d found that money was the only luggage worth carrying. She, too, eventually got to her apartment, bathed and slept.

Tomorrow night, she thought as she drifted off, it will be dinner with Bruno Dietrich at the Cafe Rosati in the Piazza Del Popolo. Why all Swiss bankers preferred to conduct business in this shithole of a city was a puzzle to Simone, but there it was.

WHEN flying from Rome to Palermo in Sicily wise men charter a flight from the military airport of Clampino on the edge of Rome. Joey Gravano was wise enough to do exactly this, and upon landing at a small airport that was listed on the map only by an Italian military number, Joey then spent a goodly 15 minutes meeting with his Uncle Hector in the airport’s public toilet.

Uncle Hector watched a hell of a lot of Italian spy movies and loved secret meetings. He was famous for ordering men to travel half way around the world for a ten-minute meeting at a train station in the middle of nowhere. He tended to overplay the role of the humble peasant Sicilian godfather, and would often meet people wearing dirty, old, torn clothing and a three-day growth of stubble on his face.

Being naturally shy of the tub, he bathed ever so slightly and lived in two rooms above a barber’s shop in Palermo’s red light area. His ever-ready bodyguards waited outside the toilet door. Their names were Benny and Bobby Benozzo. The whole sight was a comedy of contradiction as the Benozzo brothers dressed like Hollywood movie stars and any stranger couldn’t help but notice the two expensively-dressed thugs walking each side of an old man who looked like the village rat catcher.

But, that was the mafia in Sicily. They fitted in with all the subtlety of a camouflaged neon sign. People just pretended not to notice the fact that an Italian army captain escorted old Don Aspanu and his two well-dressed bodyguards to the toilet to meet Joey. It was hardly covert operational procedure, but that didn’t matter in those parts. Nothing mattered except keeping sweet with the mob.

Hector Aspanu handed Joey a photo and began to speak.

“His name is Dietrich, Bruno Dietrich. He’s in Rome now. Swiss banker and a Jewish thief. Dietrich is his father’s name. His mother’s name was Goldbloom. He’s staying at the Lord Byron Hotel, has lunch every day at Cafe Rosati. You know, in Piazza del Popolo. All the faggots, writers and artists and the would-be actors get their bloody espresso and shit food there. But he likes to visit the church every day, you know.”

Joey looked puzzled.

Uncle Hector snapped, “Santa Maria del Popolo. It’s the church the fucking square was named after. Ya can’t miss it. Jesus Christ, do ya wanna me to draw ya a fucking map?”

Joey shook his head.

“No, no, uncle. I got it, I got it. Rosati cafe.”

Hector kept going. “You can spot him at the cafe sidewalk tables easy as shit, but I want this thief shot in the church. It’s nice and quiet in there and people should die in church, don’t ya think?” he said. He wasn’t really asking advice. He never did.

Joey nodded diplomatically. “Yeah, church seems a nice place to die.”

Uncle Hector laughed. “Even for a make-believe Swiss, pretend German Jew, church is a good place to die. So you do this tomorrow, okay Joey? Not the day after, but tomorrow.”

“Okay. Yeah, sure, Uncle Hector.”

The old man kissed his nephew.

“You a good boy, Joey.” As character readings go, this was giving Joey a bit the best of it, but family is family, after all. It’s not every young man who’s willing to shoot people for his uncle.

THE Cafe Rosati is on the Piazza Del Popolo, a vast airy square or the world’s most beautiful car park – take your pick. In one corner was the church, Santa Maria Del Popolo. Joey sat at a sidewalk table and waited. His uncle was right – good espresso, shit food. They catered to the American tourist trade, and what would Yanks know about good cooking? Joey went to check his watch, and remembered the Chinese chess player on the plane. Just then, he heard a voice.

“Lost your watch, honey?”

Joey looked up to see the Chinese girl he was day dreaming about. She was in full summertime glory, almost wearing a tight-cut pair of short white shorts, and her bare honey-coloured legs went all the way down to little white slip-on Italian shoes. Very cute. She wore a white loose fitting cheesecloth shirt. The splash of solid gold jewellery around her neck and wrists set it all off perfectly, but Joey did feel a certain concern that the shorts might not be quite up to the job of holding her arse in. Even passing priests were doing a double take. Let’s face it, she was a nice change from choirboys.

A beautiful Chinese female face has lips that swell in a pouting and a sexy manner under those sly sexy eyes. It’s a teeny bit politically incorrect, but Chinese girls are either dog ugly or ball-breakingly beautiful. Simone Tao was in the second category.

Two Italian actresses – probably porno queens, by the look of them – were sitting at a nearby table. They started slandering the Chinese beauty to each other loudly in Italian. Joey turned and in Italian told the two men they were sitting with, in his unmistakable Collingwood Sicilian accent, that if they didn’t shut their whores up he would shoot both men on the spot. A threat like that can be either ignored or taken seriously. The stone cold silence indicated Joey had been taken seriously.

Simone Tao produced a pair of sunglasses and sat down next to Joey in silence, looking for all the world like some exotic Chinese movie star. Joey was trying to be polite but he was also trying to carry out his uncle’s orders, and this little bit of Chinese champagne wasn’t part of the program.

There was a long pause while he tossed up what to say. “I’m here on business,” he said at last.

“So am I,” replied Simone.

“Yeah, well, if we meet anyone” said Joey, “I’m ya friend Rocco and I’m a fucking bricklayer.”

Simone looked at Joey.

“Rocco the bricklayer. Got it,” she said.

God, thought Simone, this guy has to be without a shadow of a doubt, the dumbest dago in the whole wide world, but he had a powerful brute force about him with an edge of evil to it. She couldn’t help but feel physically attracted to the dumb thug. She couldn’t really explain why she was attracted, but there it was. The ‘Rocco the bricklayer line’ was probably close to the truth – as if a size 10 IQ like this could possibly work for the Aspanu outfit, let alone be related to the old Godfather himself. She smiled to herself as she took Joey’s hand.

“Rocco the bricklayer, that’s easy to remember, babe.”

“Just make sure you do,” said Joey, then he looked directly at her tits under the cheesecloth shirt. Real smooth bastard.

“I thought you Chinese chicks was all flat-chested?” he remarked politely, just to keep the conversation going.

“My mother was Spanish Filipino,” replied Simone, puffing herself up, quite delighted by the fact her big tits had caught Joey’s attention. A business management degree got her in the corporate door, but her looks had helped her get her legs up the ladder. Whores stood on sidewalks and did it for peanuts; Simone didn’t stand on sidewalks and when she did the business, deals got done and million-dollar contracts got signed, and she worked not only on a salary but on a commission bonus.

She might be the daughter of a Chinese pickpocket, but Simone was only one more good contract away from being a millionairess herself. No-one called a rich girl a whore even if she looked like one.