Chopper Unchopped (195 page)

Sometimes you can see best from the outside looking in, but in the world of the professional hitman this is not the case.

There is a one-way mirror. If you don’t belong you look in the mirror, scratch your nuts, pull a couple of nose hairs out and be on your way. You have no idea what is on the other side.

Reporters and coppers exchange theories and earnest looks but most times they are just guessing, at best, or making it up, at worst.

They throw a line in the water and just hope. Sometimes they get a bite but it is based on dumb luck, not great knowledge. After all, they charged me with murdering Sammy the Turk just because I took half his head off with as shotgun.

Any fool could see that it was a clear-cut case of self defence that resulted in him getting a terminal migraine. Luckily the jury had a better understanding than the lawyers and the coppers and I was found not guilty, which was a triumph of our justice system.

I’ve just been told to stop all that writing nonsense and chop some wood for the fire. In Tassie you can have the greatest train of thought and be writing it down as you slowly die from the cold. Now, I have already suffered for my art so excuse me while I warm up.

First I chainsaw half a day in the bush and cart it home. Now I’ve got to chop it all up with a wood splitter. Well I don’t mind the thorns, because my wife is such a rose. Ha ha.

Sawn-off shot guns, chainsaws, tiger snakes and wives. If you don’t take a firm grip they can jump back and bite you.

MEANWHILE, back at the mental hospital, Mister Read was taking his morning medication as he got off the plane at Melbourne Airport. It was Saturday, 5 June 1999 — my first time in Melbourne as a free man in more than ten years.

When I was released in 1991 I left straight for Tassie, so I was looking forward to seeing the old town again. I knew I could be there for about twenty-four hours before nervous crims would come looking. They would assume that if I was in town I would be after them so, out of panic, they may do something stupid.

Neil Diamond was in concert at Melbourne and Mary-Ann wanted to see him so over we went. I’d arranged to see Colin Dix and his wife Simone. Colin is the producer of my two CDs
The Smell of Love
and
Get Your Ears Off
— both under-rated classics that will surely become collectors’ items.

After that I had to see my twin publishers, Sly and Greedy. I had arranged to see ‘Loxy’ — Robert Lochrie and his wife Jenny and several others, but I had to ring up and tell them I wasn’t coming. I’m sorry about missing them, but you can fit only so much into an overnight visit to Melbourne and I didn’t want to argue with friends over who to see and where to go with no real time to do any of it.

I don’t like to leave the farm and Melbourne is now a strange land to me. All my old friends and enemies are dead — or at least, look as if they ought to be. Most of them are gone and for me the heart of Melbourne was in the heart of my friends and, yes, even my enemies and now that heart is missing for me. Melbourne is only a sentimental memory and seeing it again made me cry inside.

We stayed at Le Meridien at Rialto, Collins Street, Melbourne. American Express all the way. If I had a cat small enough I may have been able to swing it in the room they gave us.

Mary-Ann and I met up with Colin and Simone and we made our way to the restaurant. We ordered our meals and drinks. The service was slack, and after thirty minutes I got a steak that wouldn’t fill Karen Carpenter.

The $127 bill for the meal was equally on the nose. All in all I reckon you’d get better accommodation, food, booze and service if you were in witness protection, which is saying something.

Snobbery and poshness is all very lah de dah and nice but over-priced booze and small meals along with slow service followed up with a ‘you’re not one of us, we don’t want you here’ attitude is not my idea of a good time.

Small hint for the novice traveller as well: always travel with your own toilet paper.

Anyway, it was good to see Colin and Simone. Colin is quite a normal type person face to face and not at all the mental case I took him to be. Whereas Sly and Greedy both drink like there is no tomorrow and hold a conversation by the throat. We drank at the bar of Le Meridien from about 5.30pm until 11.30pm, then made our way to an Irish pub for some sort of Irish stew, stout and beef potato pie and glasses of Irish Whiskey — my publishers are always very health conscious and always have all the food groups.

I made my way past the Irish as Paddy’s pigs waiters, waitresses and general staff to the upstairs toilet and just happened to see inside the kitchen.

The cook in this Irish pub was a Chinaman, no doubt from that old Irish clan of Wong Fung O’Reilly.

Well that was about it for me. Let’s get out of here and back to Le Meridien for more drinkies — as you would.

We walked up a dark Melbourne lane and saw some dapper-looking little chap walk past, talking into his mobile phone. Then he called out and came back. He said he was in charge of a modelling agency and wanted to take some photos of me. Now, I might have tickets on myself but I never thought of me as a Calvin Klein type. It was only when I had a look at Sly and Greedy that I realised that I was the good-looking one.

I asked him if he’d run out of models with no ears and he let out a nervous giggle and wandered off. And they call me crazy.

As a wise man once wrote, the night quietly sank into a bottle of beer as I waved Sly and Greedy goodbye.

I saw Sly look at me with a hint of concern. Was I returning to the Le Meridien or heading off into the night? Do leopards change their spots? How would I know, do I look like David Attenborough?

I knew of a club run by a Chinese lady not too far away, just off King Street. And there were various clubs in Chinatown, a few brothels run by friends of mine from the 1970s and dance clubs still controlled by Chopper Read friendly people so I just walked blindly about in the night, viewing a lost city, almost wishing Alphonse was still alive.

I got up to Lygon Street and just stood and looked at a street alive with Generation X nothing people. No-one recognised me except for one old man.

As I turned to walk back toward the city I heard a ‘Hey Chopper.’ This old guy had run a restaurant in Lygon Street since the late 1960s. He must be in his seventies … whereas I just felt as if I was. I won’t mention his name or his business as it would not be healthy for him. We stood and talked.

‘Chopper, you back. Good to see you. You want coffee, something to eat? Come in, come in.’

‘No Poppa,’ I replied, ‘I’m sweet, I just come for a look see.’

‘A look see for what?’ said Poppa. ‘I’m selling up. Fuck it, I’m too old for this shit. All the good boys they all gone. Now yuppies and Italian yuppies, they look at you with the eyes and smile but they got no heart, no guts, no dash, no style, they no can explain,’ said Poppa.

‘Greedy self-centred little turds,’ I replied.

‘Yeah,’ said Poppa. ‘Fucking selfish turds.’

‘Spoilt,’ I said.

‘Yeah,’ replied old Poppa, ‘spoilt.’

As I walked away the old man called to me ‘Hey Chopper, I loved Alphonse like my own son, but I love you too.’

I waved and walked on. That was always the problem with big Al and me. A lot of his friends were my friends as well. It almost makes me want to cry. But not quite.

I WALKED down King Street. Two girls came smashing down a flight of stairs, all fists, feet and teeth. One chick was kicking the living guts out of the other. They both fell at my feet.

‘Hi you, Chopper.’ A big pair of eyes and a wide smile beamed up at me. ‘How you going?’ I replied.

One lady got to her feet and kicked the other in the head. It was a full-stop to their animated interaction.

‘Piss off, you moll,’ she hissed as the bloodied and beaten loser scurried away.

The winner straightened herself up. Really big eyes, really big smile, lips and teeth, big boobs, long legs, micro mini skirt and high heels. Stockings, suspenders.

It wasn’t
TV Ringside
gear but I wasn’t complaining. She was a dancer off duty and fighting drunk.

‘Hey Chopper, my boyfriend would love your fucking autograph.’ She had a way with words.

She had more chance of getting it than he did and she looked like a girl who was used to getting her own way. She had a smile that would suck the lead out of a shotgun shell. This chick was a weapon.

Drunk, fun loving and almost wearing hardly any clothes at all, she wasn’t
The Flying Nun.
She was the sort of girl you’d take home to meet mum providing your mum needed a good smack in the mouth or a broken bottle in the neck.

Her name was Monique, or at least that’s what she told me. My name was Chopper, or at least that’s what I told her, while staring at her ample chest, which appeared to be staring back.

A big-eyed, big mouth, big tits, long legs, wiggle when she walks, giggle when she talks Polish chick whose dad was or used to be a prison officer in Pentridge with me when I was an inmate. I won’t mention his last name for fear of embarrassment at Pentridge staff reunions.

I thought how stupid I was not to realise immediately that with a name like Monique she would be Polish, wouldn’t she?

This chick could talk the leg off an elephant and probably deep throat one as well, from the look of her. She had a mouth wider than Mick Jagger’s. As a married man I am no longer meant to notice these things, but as an author I am allowed to. It’s called literary licence, and it’s a lot easier to get than a gun licence. So you can all get stuffed.

She walked along with me in the night, chattering away. Most Pentridge prison officers back when I was there told their kids Chopper Read bedtime stories. Her Polish father told young Monique quite a few. As we walked along I couldn’t help thinking that I would have liked to have told her a few Chopper Read bedtime stories myself, but that would be taking things too far.

I didn’t ask her what the fight was about as I was trying to remember the way to a small side lane that ran off another side lane. I was trying to find an old Chinese gambling club Mad Charlie had introduced me to in 1974, and I wondered if it was still going. It had been going since the 1920s and had been run by Mama San for the past twenty years — thirty years, really, but like most ladies she lies about her age.

Yes, the lady in charge had been in control of Chinese gambling for the past thirty years. A woman with fourteen sons doesn’t need to be a man, now that’s a bit of Chinese wisdom that puts Irish logic to shame.

I located the club in question only to find it had been turned into a whorehouse and Mama San was up at the Crown Casino with everyone else. I was dumbfounded. Why doesn’t the National Trust save what really matters? Mamma San’s, Bojangles Nightclub and a half-a-dozen old style massage parlours from the seventies, for instance. But we can’t live in the past I suppose.

I walked back toward the Le Meridien filled with my own thoughts of the Melbourne I had lost when I realised that young Monique was still walking beside me, chattering away. ‘Up here isn’t a bad place, Chopper.’ Monique darted through a dark doorway and up a flight of stairs past a big bald bouncer who tried to tell me that I knew his mother. I smiled, nodded and walked on by hoping to hell that I didn’t know his mother — or, if I did, she had hair and wasn’t sixteen stone at the time.

The club was dark as all clubs are. Some chick tried to take my overcoat.

‘May I take your coat, sir?’ she asked.

‘No, you may not take my coat,’ I replied.

Within moments the manager of the club was notified. Evidently there was a no-eared gentleman in the club who would not surrender his overcoat to the overcoat lady. I did not know that this was now illegal in Melbourne but I had been away a long time. The manager was a little, very polite, very nice, Chinese lady.

‘Hello, I am manager, how may I help you, you frighten girl when you no give her coat, she think you have gun.’

Who could think of such a thing. As though I have ever used an overcoat to conceal weapons. The very thought of it is just spooky.

The bouncer was in some sort of nervous state, but the Chinese manager soon got with the program.

‘When they tell me Chopper Ree here I have to come say hello.’

‘Read,’ I said, ‘not Ree.’ I hate to be a stickler for diction, but we have to do our best.

She smiled and said ‘Chopper Ree.’

I nodded and smiled back. ‘Yes, Read.’

‘You drink at bar, no pay,’ said the little Chinese lady. She called a girl over and said ‘Mr. Chopper Ree no pay.’ I looked around the club and half the place seemed to have mobile phones stuck to their ears. None of these peanuts were talking on mobile phones when I came in and they weren’t ringing dial-a-prayer.

I polished off a few free drinks and walked out noticing that the door bouncer had totally vanished, not a bad trick for a slob as big as him. Shit, maybe I did know his mother, but I’m pleased to say not too well, as her bouncing baby boy doesn’t look like me at all. As I walked down the street I heard the sound of high heels against cement. Young Monique was running after me.

‘Hang on, Chopper, where you going?’ she asked.

‘Back to my hotel,’ I replied.

‘Great,’ she smiled wide, ‘let’s rock on’.

I don’t think I misunderstood her. I was old enough to be her dad but not so old that I didn’t pick up the thread of the conversation.

‘Nah, Princess,’ I said. ‘My wife is waiting for me. She’s having a baby in September, it’s late and she will be wondering where I am. I gotta go.’

And with that I turned and walked away.

‘See you, Chopper,’ came the voice. I knew I wouldn’t.

All I wanted to do was get back to the hotel and see Mary-Ann, then get on a plane and get out of Melbourne. I returned to the Hotel Le Meridien (which means rip-off in French) and Mary-Ann was waiting for me. A little annoyed, a little worried but glad to see me. We went to bed, but I couldn’t sleep.

FOR some reason I kept thinking how I hadn’t seen Flinders Street Station at night. I tossed and turned but couldn’t sleep. It was 4am. I got up and got dressed. I was going out. But this time Mary-Ann wasn’t going to be left in a hotel room, so she got up and got dressed as well and we took off for an early morning walk around the old home town. I knew I may never be back and I wanted one last look.

We must have walked for miles but as we walked past the drunks, junkies, vomit and blood of Saturday night and Sunday morning in Melbourne, all I wanted to do was go back to Richmond, Tasmania, and kiss every blade of grass on the farm. We had both changed, me and Melbourne, and we no longer recognised each other. I was a stranger. It made me realise that a man can only march forward, he can never go back. I felt sad. I’d spent quite a few years missing my old home town only to find that my Melbourne had gone.

My memory of it was alive, but all else was dead. I wondered at the young, big-eyed kid who had followed me about hours before. When I tell people I’ve been walking around town with Chopper Read they won’t believe me, she said. Poor old Chopper Read, I thought to myself, he is alive and well inside the imaginations of others, but for me that Mark Brandon Read is also just a memory that goes with my old Melbourne. A long-ago memory.