Chopper Unchopped (182 page)

“Abdul and Ahmet?” said Dave. “This is like the United Nations, Maltese, Aussies, Jews and fucking Arabs.”

“Yeah,” said Marven. “And, I think, if I’m not mistaken that V8 Commodore in front of us is the Kravaritis brothers. I think Cassie arranged that through Hacker Harris.”

“Jesus,” replied Dave, “Albanians.”

A dark blue 1977 Ford LTD pulled up in Cardigan Street alongside Marven. Cassie Connor wound the window down and so did the Al Shiek brothers. Marven did the same.

“Salam alecam” said Abdul Al Shiek to Marven.

“Alecam A Salam” replied Marven politely in his best Jewish Arabic. Cassie seemed to find this multi-cultural stuff a touch annoying.

“Talk English, ya fucking wogs,” she said.

“I’m a wog,” yelled Dave.

“Yeah,” yelled Cassie, “and you can bag ya fucking head as well. Micky Kelly got shot because the Maltese brought fucking knives to a bloody gun fight.”

“Take it easy,” said Marven. “The enemy is in there,” he said, pointing to the Calabrian Soccer Club. “Now, as soon as mad Benny gets here with Jasmyn, we can rock and roll.”

Marven was talking tough, but he didn’t feel too good about the events to come.

AS Benny and Jasmyn pulled into Cardigan Street, Benny was waffling on, as always.

“The point is, Jas” said Benny, “Wing Commander Douglas Bader, the World War Two British fighter pilot who had two tin legs — well, he is famous, but how many people know the name of the surgeon who removed his legs?”

Jasmyn looked at Benny as if he had grown two green heads.

“Well, I don’t reckon many people would, Benny” she said.

“His name,” said Benny, with a superior smile, “was Doctor or Mister Joyce.” He paused. “I bet ya didn’t know that.”

Jasmyn shook her head. He wasn’t called Mad Benny for nothing.

Benny parked the yellow Volvo in front of the Calabrian Soccer Club, then jammed the horn on. It blasted out non-stop and Jasmyn and Benny jumped out of the car and ran down Cardigan Street into the dark.

Aussie Joe Gravano stepped out of the club into the rain with the army of Italians behind him to see what the racket was. When they saw the yellow Volvo with the surfboard on the roof rack and the horn blowing, the men around him laughed. But Joey thought of the Walsh Street set-up and the cat in the bird cage murder, and reached for his gun. Suddenly the night erupted into gunfire, and within moments the shooting started from three different directions. Joey dived to the footpath and hid behind a car as did Big Al Guglameno, but Charlie Coppola and Elio Monza, along with Tony Capone and Eddie Giordano, backed up by the small army of Italians, ran blindly into the rain and darkness firing hand guns.

There was a scream. “Eddie Akadahs! Eddie Abbi!” The voice belonged to Terry the Turk, a half-Turkish, half-Italian hood who looked on Eddie Giordano as a father figure. Aussie Joe knew that Eddie Giordano must be dead. He crawled along the gutter, soaking wet, and hid under a car as the battle raged about him. There was screaming in half a dozen languages and more gunfire than Joey had ever heard before.

Big Al Guglameno got to his feet and ran blindly down Cardigan Street, leaving his men to fight while he escaped. Joey wanted to get out from under the car and fight, but in a panic situation a man reacts on the fight or flight impulse, and even brave men can flee in the face of madness.

Joey could think only of Tina. As he lay there in the dark under the car with the bullets and the blood and the groans and screams and the yellow Volvo’s horn, he began to cry.

SICILY, late 1998. It seemed that Joey had vanished, and Don Hector was worried. His body hadn’t been found with all the others outside the Calabrian Soccer Club in Melbourne after the shoot-out that had made world headlines. Uncle Hector didn’t need to ask what happened: he saw it on TV, heard it on the radio, read about it in Italian newspapers. The two Jews got whacked all right, along with about a dozen others — Arabs, Albanians, Maltese, Italians, Turks, Greeks, Australians — in the yellow Volvo ambush, or the surfboard shoot out, as various papers called it.

The whole thing was madness. Don Hector was making arrangements through Poppa Di Inzabella to withdraw all Sicilian control and, for a price, hand total control over to the Calabrians. Let them oversee the madness. The Sicilians would remain financial shareholders and major investors and have a seat at the table, but Italian crime in Melbourne would now be the Calabrians’ headache. Let them have it. The money wasn’t worth the worry. “Jesus Christ,” thought Hector Aspanu, “cats in bird cages, yellow Volvos with surfboards and tooting horns. It’s like the devil’s Disneyland.”

The whole thing was like some comic nightmare — but where was Joey? A dozen dead, and another dozen still in hospital, but no Joey. An unfamiliar emotion hit the old Don. It was sadness. He realised he truly loved his stupid nephew, even though he did little to show it. He did not want Joey dead. He wanted him back. He would abuse him, of course, but he wanted him.

DON Hector sat quietly under the shade of the big lemon tree in the courtyard of the house of the white shotgun, drinking grappa and smoking a Cuban cigar.

The Benozzo brothers stood nearby. Franco Di Tomaso and Luigi Monza came through the front gate with a third man.

“Don Hector,” said Di Tommaso as he introduced Carlo Saietta as “a friend of ours from the Death Society of Rome.”

The Don looked at Saietta and said, “the Saietta family and the Gravanos are related. Your family is related to the Aspanu clan, correct?”

“Yes Don Hector,” said Carlo Saietta. “But the society in Rome — well, we not too big on family, not like you Sicilians.”

Then he got down to business. “We got your nephew. You can get angry and kill me, but let’s get realistic. In a blood war, you’d lose. We start with the children first, and work up. You mafia goombatas belong to the funny papers and the American movies. We want one million American or we send you Joey Gravanos ears. We will bury his body like a dead dog.”

Rage welled up inside the Don, then his old age hit him and he knew he belonged to the past, and he was talking to the future. Or, at least, it would be better to act that way if he wanted to see Joey alive.

Don Hector looked at his men. He could see they did not want to be ordered to kill this Roman renegade. The old world was standing face to face with the new and the old world felt too tired and too weak to fight it.

“A million American dollars, you say” said the Don. “That is very cheap.”

Carlo Saietta replied “a little here, a little there, it all adds up.”

“I know the game,” said the Don. “A million is too small a price to squabble over. Di Tommaso, arrange the money for this bastardo bandieto,” said Don Hector, “and get Joey back, okay?”

Di Tommaso looked stunned.

“Presto, presto, presto!” screamed Don Hector. “Get my Joey back.”

As Di Tommaso and Monza left the courtyard with the Roman crook, the Don thought to himself: “I’m dying. I’m an old man. Joey is my future, and he must take my place, then he can put all the wrongs to right. Jesus, whoever would have dreamed they would dare attack the Aspanu clan this way. And I surrendered and gave in like a girl. Jesus Christ.”

Then the Don smiled. A million dollars? They could have demanded ten million and got it.

“Joey, come home to me?” said the Don, out loud. “Please come home.”

TWO days later in a Palermo restaurant, Aussie Joe Gravano sat with the Don and his men. He ordered a bottle of grappa and sliced raw steak with sauce.

“You’re a fucking animal, Joey” said Don Hector, then he looked at the waiter then down at the menu. “I’m not hungry,” said the old man, then changed his mind and ordered octopus, scampi and grappa. The others ordered and the Don said to Joey, “You’re paying for this, you have cost me a fucking …”

Monza interrupted him to speak to the waiter.

“Shut up, I’m talking!” snapped the Don with some of his usual venom.

“You have cost me a million dollars” said the Don to Joey, grumbling in a friendly way. The Don would never let him forget this. To be kidnapped by the ragamuffin shitpot Roman street bandits — the Sicilians had suffered a public relations disaster.

“Joey, Joey,” the Don muttered, “for God’s sake, what happened?”

Joey smiled. “Shit like this don’t happen in the movies, hey Padrino?”

The Don smiled back. “Maybe we should get Robert de Niro to take over, hey? Or that young one, what’s his name?” he said.

“Tarantino,” said Joey. “Quentin Tarantino.”

“Ha, ha” laughed the Don. “Yeah, we better ring Hollywood. They do it fucking better than we do.”

“Jesus, Joey” said the Don, half serious. “If it weren’t for bad luck, mamma mia …”

“Yeah,” replied Joey, “we’d have no fucking luck at all. Ha ha.”

MELBOURNE, September, 1998. Big Al Guglameno had soon recovered from the loss of face and manpower after the shoot-out. He regrouped with the help of Peter Trimboli, Paul Picassos, Charlie Gangitano, Micky Gall and a heap of other blokes with interesting names mostly of the Italian persuasion, including Jimmy Di Inzabella.

Big Al was now a full-blown Calabrian honoured society lieutenant, overseeing all its heroin operations in Melbourne. So it was interesting to see him sitting in Dan O’Connell’s Hotel in Canning Street, Carlton, talking to Detective Senior Sergeant ‘Big Jim’ Reeves from the armed robbery squad. Not that it would have greatly surprised anybody in the underworld, as the Calabrian mob flaunted its association with the Victoria Police, and various members of the society could often be found in comic conversation with detectives. The lack of Sicilian watchdogs allowed such open displays of dubious conduct. The conversation at Dan O’Connell’s proved that the Sicilians’ instincts were pretty sharp.

“It’s gotta be done, Al” said Big Jim. “And you’re the only one who can pull it off.”

Big Al shook his head.

“The Sicilian hates my guts and I’m sure he knows I’m in with your blokes. He’s never trusted me,” said Al. “It won’t work.”

“He might go along with it if you give him a good enough reason,” said Jim Reeves. “Charlie Ford wants it and Barry Mann and his crew will do it, but you gotta set it up for us, okay?”

“Or what?” said Al Guglameno.

“Or,” hissed Jim Reeves, “you’ll pull a gun on some nice young policewoman one night and she will blow ya Calabrian dog head off. Got it, fat boy?”

Big Al sat in silence.

“When?” he said, after a long and pregnant pause.

“As soon as. Here’s a phone number, ring me when ya got Joey with ya, or when ya gonna meet him next, okay? Just fucking do it.”

“Yeah, she’s sweet,” said Al. “Consider it done.”

As Jim Reeves walked out of the bar Al Guglameno thought “I’ll set Joey up today and tomorrow the fucking cops will get someone to set me up. In the end no-one wins but the fucking undertaker.”

But Al knew he had no way out. The one who wins the game is the one who lives the longest. In the end, survival was all that mattered. He thought about the old saying: “if you wanna be a spider then you gotta live in a web.”

BIG Jim Reeves made a quick phone call to his boss, Charlie Ford of the armed robbery squad. The recent Ethical Standards Department investigations and the chief commissioner’s clean up or get out policy had seen some amazing changes. Transfers, demotions, sackings, golden handshakes, “don’t come backs” and promotions. All in order to avoid a Royal Commission, naturally. No-one, least of all the premier and the police minister, wanted to have questions asked that they didn’t already know the answers to. Such things can lead to embarrassment.

A lot of colourful cops vanished into the police equivalent of the Bermuda Triangle. Detective Sergeant Susan Hilton remained in the armed robbery squad, as did Jim Reeves, and promoted to boot. Charlie Ford was promoted and Sandra Emerson was promoted and transferred out of internal investigations and put in charge of Charlie Ford — the commissioner’s idea of putting a softer face on the armed robbery squad.

Seven new boys were transferred out of the special operations group and sent to the armed robbers. Big Barry Mann was promoted into the drug squad. But there was three strange appointments. They brought back three old hands to the armed robbers who had got the arse out to St Kilda, Collingwood and Fitzroy CIB years before for — to put it politely — excessive zeal. They were Dirty Larry Clark, Rocky Bob Porter and Crazy Ray Williams. And, somehow, Herb ‘Hatter’ Hannigan got transferred to the drug squad. He had the nickname because he was as mad as a hatter. He was 47 years of age and still a Detective Senior Constable. He’d shoot his own mother if she didn’t put her hands up fast enough. He’d been booted out of the armed robbery squad back in the early 1980s for “excessive use” of his police issue revolver after discharging it three times in to the air at a Collingwood-Carlton footy match at Victoria Park. That was his third offence. He had shot a bank robber two years previously — once to stop him and five more times to make sure — and another time he took pot shots at the wedding cake, blind drunk, after gate crashing a federal policeman’s wedding.

How Hatter Hannigan had remained in the police force and out of jail was magnificent. The new broom had raised a lot of dust and put a lot of bright new sparks in bright new places. But it had also swept some evil old spiders along with it.

THE drug squad had become a pansy boy yuppie joke. All polish, no punch, whereas the old armed robbery squad had been all punch, no polish. It was all just a case of rearranging the deck chairs on a ship that wasn’t sinking. True, it was taking on a little water, but the good ship Victoria Police didn’t sink. It stayed afloat while police forces in other states broke up.

Why? Simple, really. In Melbourne, the police might punch a bullet into you for next to nothing but most of them won’t take your money. They will shoot ya but they won’t rob ya. Corruption is what sinks a police force. Shooting a criminal six times when a stern talking-to would be all he would have got in any other state — that’s not corruption, that’s just the way it works south of the border, down Mexico way.

You can hold a Royal Commission into police corruption, cash and drugs and prostitution, graft, bribery and so on but you can hardly hold a Royal Commission into the combined culture and mentality of an entire police force that sees itself some sort of latter day Texas Ranger outfit.

The cowboy mentality runs as deep in the Victorian police, as it does in the Victorian criminal. Mexico — whoever thought up that nickname for Melbourne and Victoria was spot on. But we digress.

CHARLIE Ford picked up the phone. “Yeah. G’day, Jim. Yeah, yeah, good.”

Big Jim Reeves was trying to explain something in code over the phone. “Bugger the KGB bullshit, Jim. Did the dago go for it, or what?”

“Yes,” replied Jim Reeves.

“Good,” said Charlie. “Fuck the Sicilians, they wouldn’t tell ya what day it is — but the Calabrians, well ya can’t shut the pricks up. Ha ha.”

He was in full stride now. “Ya can’t win the fucking drug war — and ya can tell Bazza I said this — but ya sure as hell can manage it. We’ll let the Calabrians float as long as they help us. Sink everyone else, okay? Remind Bazza of the immortal words of Graeme Westlock, as long as the dogs keep barking, they can keep breathing. Ha ha. Gravano is off tap because we’ve got fucking Guglameno on tap, that’s all there is to it.”

“How do we play it, boss?” asked Jim Reeves.

“The dago will use the cucumber routine, anyway” said Charlie. “I don’t need to be involved no more. You work it all out with Bazza, okay mate?”

“Okay,” said Jim, and hung up.

The old apple cucumber trick, thought Charlie to himself. Well, that’s something we can thank the old Collingwood crew for. Shiftiest trick ever invented. Roy Reeves, Micky Van Gogh and John McCall they would have made handy coppers.

THE apple cucumber relied on the friend of the target unknowingly leading the victim to his death, with the friend totally unaware he was being used as a goat to trap a lion.

Young Jimmy Di Inzabella had always looked up to Aussie Joe Gravano, and as the grandson of old Poppa Di Inzabella, Aussie Joe trusted Jimmy even though Joe knew Jimmy had become a part of Big Al Guglameno’s new crew.

Big Al had spoken to Jimmy in secret, explaining that he wanted to put right all past ill-will between Aussie Joe and himself and wanted Jimmy to invite Joey for a friendly drink at the Terminus Hotel in Abbotsford. Just a friendly drink between young Jimmy and Aussie Joe — but don’t mention that Al would show up a little later, as if by accident. Big Al explained that it would look better that way.

Young Jimmy Di Inzabella thought it was a good idea to smooth over any troubled waters between his new boss and his old mate so he rang Aussie Joe with a friendly and relaxed, casual invitation to join him for a few drinks and a get together at the Terminus.

The pub had once been an underworld Collingwood bloodhouse but had since turned into a rather fashionable gathering place for writers, singers, actors and TV and film people, the arts and academic set.

Melbourne had buzzed with Chinese whispers — with a bit being added on each time the yarn was re-told — about an eventual show down between the Calabrian boss Guglameno and the Sicilian. The Sicilians had handed all day-to-day power, authority and control over Melbourne operations to the Calabrian clans, but as long as Gravano stayed around to watch, Guglameno felt ill at ease. It all had to be sorted and young Jimmy felt he was doing his part in bringing the two men together. Even if it was a sort of sneaky way of doing it, he was sure it would be for the best.

Aussie Joe accepted the invitation from Jimmy and naturally thought the youngster had arranged this friendly drink on the orders of his grandfather, old Poppa Di Inzabella. Aussie Joe guessed the old man was about to move against Guglameno and was sending his grandson to sort out the details. At last, thought Joey, we can rid ourselves of this maggot once and for all. Joey thought for a moment to ring his uncle in Sicily, but decided against it. He couldn’t keep waking the old man up with phone calls every time there was a new move on the chess board.

ROME, September 1998. Sitting quietly on the sidewalk in front of the Cafe Trajon in a narrow laneway in the market area the Saietta family of brothers and cousins — Angelo, Bruno, Peppe, Aldo, Hugo, Mario, Carmine and Tito — were drinking red wine, eating plates of crab meat, lobster, anchovies, garlic and onions.

The waiter looked horrified, but dared not argue and went off to pour him a large glass of ice-cold Australian beer. Then Mario yelled out in Italian, “Hey waiter, eight beers please.” The light luncheon was all very peaceful. They were sitting under an umbrella protecting them from the glare of the morning sun. It was a normal mid-morning Roman get-together and all was well. Italian criminals loved to mix up their food and wine. Years in prison did that to men, even if it horrified fine food and wine fanciers.

They lit up fat Dutch cigars and the sidewalk table erupted into clouds of blue smoke as the waiter carried out a long tray of beer in big glasses.

The diners drank a toast. “God bless La Roma Societa Di Morte.” They were, of course, the ones who had extracted a million dollars ransom from Don Aspanu after kidnapping Joey Gravano. They started talking business, about ripping off a tonne of high explosives from the Russians and selling it to the Arabs.

Then Hugo spoke up about something on his mind.

“I’m a bit puzzled by the lack of reaction from Poppa Aspanu. I thought revenge and a blood vendetta for sure.”

Angelo laughed. “The Sicilians have lost it. If it wasn’t for Hollywood, there would be no fucking mafia.”

As the group of men sat and chatted a voluptuous whore walked past their table like a catwalk model, swinging a set of curvaceous hips and magnificent tits that bounced about like melons wrapped in a silk scarf. She was wearing a black clinging, wrap-around dress and black Roman sandals.

About ten feet past the table where the Saietta family was seated she stopped and bent over to inspect her left foot and gave a little whimper, as if she had caught a small stone in her sandal. Her massive bosoms almost fell out of her dress. All this display was aimed in the direction of the Saietta table.

“Holy mamma mia,” said Angelo Saietta.

“Lo zucchero, lo zucchero.” Meaning sugar, sugar.

“Yeah,” said Bruno, “she’s got the biggest set of watermelons I’ve ever seen.”

“Hey,” yelled Peppe. “Signorina, parla Italiano?” Do you speak Italian? Not a real deep question, but it did the trick.

She looked up and flashed a wide smile and said, “Si Signore.”

“My name is Peppe Saietta and these are my brothers and cousins, would you care to join us for a morning drink?” asked Peppe.

Would she ever. As she walked toward them, she said: “My name is Carlotta.”

Tito yelled to the waiter, asked him his name, which was Carlo, and then said: “Okay Carlo, bring Frizzante Bianco Vino (sparkling white wine) for this panna montata madonna.”

Carlotta blushed at being openly referred to as whipped cream — a Roman slang expression for what she was, a beautiful whore.

“Would you like something to eat, Carlotta?” asked Mario as he slipped a folded one-hundred dollar American note down her cleavage.

Carlotta smiled.

“Do you have any cetriolo with besciamella?”

They laughed appreciatively. Carlotta had just asked for cucumber with white sauce.

“My little one, for one hundred American dollars how many cetriolo with besciamella can you eat?” asked Mario lewdly.

Carlotta looked around and counted the men quickly. “Otto,” she said, meaning eight. Then she smiled and put her left hand into Aldo’s lap and squeezed him. Her right hand went into Mario’s lap.

Mario cracked a joke and everybody laughed. It was just another good morning in Rome: eight gangsters and a whore all about to go off for a little harmless Italian romance before lunch …

None of them noticed the man in the long black overcoat about 15 feet away. It was Franco Di Tommaso. As he pulled the old wartime Beretta 9 millimetre machine gun from under coat Carlotta the whore saw him and screamed out something about not having anything to do with the men at the table. She was too late. Repeated blasts from the 30-shot machine gun cut her screams short.

Carlotta and the eight Saiettas fell across the table, each other and the cobblestone laneway in a mish mash of blood, wine and food. At such murderously close range a 9mm slug will pass through one body and into the next. But the killers were taking no chances. Luigi Monza stepped out from nowhere and sent a second spray of machine gun fire. Monza smiled at Carlo the waiter and he and Di Tommaso walked away, got into a waiting Citroen car at the end of the laneway, and away they went.