Chopper Unchopped (198 page)

MY cousin, Geoff Pepper, reminded me that in all my books I’ve failed to mention that on the first and one and only time we ever got together I got him locked up for the night. We were on a train bound for a party at Box Hill. Me, Nick the Greek Apostolidis and about thirty sharpies. There was some fight and I got my long haired hippy motorbike-riding cousin from Western Australia locked up. Nag, nag, nag. Why haven’t I mentioned it before? Okay Geoff, you’re in the bloody book at long last and, yes, it’s true that poor Geoff got arrested and locked up for the night simply for being in my company.

It was all my fault. I’m very sorry, it won’t happen again. One night out in 1974 and he’s never forgotten it. I mean, it was hardly the Great Bookie Robbery but now Geoff will want a walk-on part in
Chopper, The Movie.

If there are any other relatives out there that I somehow got arrested twenty five years ago on some drunk and disorderly charge, consider yourselves noted but not mentioned, okay. Geoff, it was one night in the Box Hill lock-up not twenty five years on Devil’s Island. So to Peppy and all the boys at Fletchers Harvey Hotel in Western Australia, adios amigos.

Right, now I’ve done all the cheerios, let’s move along.

This book is taking me ages to write. It’s easy in prison. You’re locked in a cell with nothing to do but write. On the outside things take a lot longer. When you are writing there are two things you don’t need, a wife and a dog, because they both expect your full attention.

I don’t know if my books are getting better or getting worse but I’ve noticed people who worry about that sort of shit don’t seem to sell a whole lot.

Like my publishers said to me, if we try to take it all to bits and figure out what makes it all work we will never be able to put it back together again, so to hell with it. I’ll just keep on writing them and why you keep on reading them ain’t none of my concern. Ha ha ha.

EVERY TIME I near the end of another book I wonder if it is to be my last. I’ve written fact, then fiction, now I’m back to fact. Admittedly I’ve played with some of the names, dates and places in this one so as to protect myself from the facts and from the guilty.

People have no sense of humour and as a chicken farmer I don’t want to have to lawyer up and march back into court because some brain-dead goombah wants to have a go for defamation.

That is the trouble with being an author. The people you put in the books bleed because you have spoken of them and the people you don’t write about crack the sads because they reckon they are worth a chapter or two. You can’t win.

I just try to tell a tale which lets people know what is really happening when they turn their lights out to go to sleep. Even after nine books, I am still a raw beginner at this game. Most authors are faggot, junkie, art graduates with a government grant and understanding parents. I’m just a retired gunnie with no idea whatsoever but I suspect that when the socially radical and the would-be intellectuals want to go out and buy a book they find it hard to cop anything written by a bloke with no ears.

Some bloke in a black t-shirt puts rings through his ears and a stud through his tongue and they call that art. I wear a white t-shirt and have no ears and I’m called a freak.

You work it out.

They get a little tattoo on their stringy arms and they are making a statement. I have ‘I love Ita Buttrose’ on my arse and I am prescribed medication.

Love me or hate me, I’ve got the politically correct of this world totally screwed. Bad boy made good from the wrong side of the tracks. I was about to quote the famous words of a famous man who wrote a really famous book but I’ve forgotten who he was or the book he wrote but if you walked up to a drunk in a pub in the outback of Western Australia or the Territory or anywhere in this land they will either have read my books or would have heard my name, and a lot of them will try to tell you a Believe It Or Not, UFO Chopper Read story.

So to the lah de dah literary world, I piss on you all. Except, I fear, some of you would enjoy the odd golden shower. Like it or not, one hundred years after we are all dead most of you will be forgotten and I’ll still be remembered.

Arrogant arsehole, aren’t I?

It gives me little joy but I know it gives you pricks much pain. To all my critics with love, signed Chopper.

The bloke who can’t spell, haunting you all with rows of books lined up in every airport bookshop. You people worry about the words while I worry about the story. You have to make it up because you don’t know the truth. Wearing a nipple ring doesn’t make you a tough guy.

GENE Autry once said that he was the first of the singing cowboys. Maybe not the best, but the best don’t matter if you’re the first.

Edmund Hilary may not have been the greatest rock climber and bee keeper God ever stuffed guts into, but he climbed the big one before the glorified tourists started queuing up to do it.

I’m probably not the best crook to write a book but I started it in these parts and, well, that’s what counts. I might not touch a reader like George Orwell or Graham Greene could but I bet you I could bring tears to their eyes if I got the blow torch going on the soles of their feet.

I thought I might run short of things to write about now we are on the ninth book but I have discovered something that hack crime reporters have known for years. Crims keep on getting knocked off, and then you can talk about them. The difference is I know all of them and don’t have to sit in a press conference being told lies by a copper who is waiting for some scientist from forensic to read the tea-leaves to guess what might have happened.

I’m waiting for Jason and Nick the Greek Apostolidis to get murdered as I’d rather write about them after they are dead, that way I can’t be sued for slander. It is just a matter of time before I can start to sharpen my pencil, because the dogs are barking.

I’m not calling publicly for anyone to shoot anyone, naturally, but it’s a bit hard on a poor bloke trying to write a book without the benefit of a literary grant if people aren’t being murdered fast enough.

I mean, for God’s sake, what’s the hold up? I’d like Jason and Nick to both know that my pen is poised awaiting their exits, with a certain literary glee. Ha ha ha.

Don’t lose your sense of humour, boys. I’m only being comic. I wish both Nick the Greek and young Jason the very best, although there’s a lot to be said for euthanasia. All I’m saying is that from a writer’s point of view it’s a damn sight easier to write about people after they are dead. It saves a host of legal hassles. The blokes I want to write about just aren’t dying fast enough. Get a wriggle on fellas. Haven’t you heard the old gangster motto, live fast and die young?

TIGER Besanko is another one who should take a good, hard look at where his life is going and how it’s interfering with my true crime writing. C’mon, Tiger, get with the program. When you’re dead I’ll make you famous from a literary point of view. There are blokes out there living far too bloody long. Would it be asking too much for me to call on Jason, Nick Apostolidis and possibly Gilbert Besanko to commit suicide? Your deaths won’t be in vain, I promise you. Come on, Nick, you’re not doing much these days. You may as well be dead. Ha ha ha.

How am I meant to write a ripping good yarn about people without being sued? It’s like pop stars. As soon as they neck themselves with a hard-on they sell a million records. I would have thought they would have sung better when they were alive.

If the buggers won’t die on me, well, I’ll just live in hope. Who knows, some nice reader might go out into the night and whack all three of you just to aid a poor struggling no-eared author. It’s a strange world we live in, yes indeed. It really is.

What’s that about the pen being mightier than the sawn-off?

Wouldn’t it be funny if, in years to come, people found out that a certain unnamed literary person aided and planned the deaths of others simply because he wanted to write about them in his books without being sued. Yes, you’re quite right. The whole topic is simply too far-fetched. That would make a good plot for a wild crime fiction movie, wouldn’t it. The author and the hitman. They could call it
Chopper and The Jew
, maybe?

The hitman calling on the author to twist the facts ever so slightly in the direction of others so that he could continue to stand in the shadows. In return, the author calling on the hitman to once in a while, now and again, toss a little inside information his way or indeed whack one or maybe even two for the sake of a ripping read. Imagine that, an author who knew of a hit before it took place. Goodness gracious me.

No, you’re quite right, the whole thing is too far-fetched. An author working hand in hand with a hitman, indeed. Even Quentin Tarantino wouldn’t touch a plot like that. Then again, Tarantino has been catching the late train to work on the Hitchcock Railway for a long time.

Think about it. One ear cut off October 22, 1990, in
Reservoir Dogs
, but ears had already fallen in another place on the other side of the world more than ten years before he ever thought of it. Imagine trying to out Chopper the Chopper — I should be paid royalties by that clown. Ha ha.

I think I’d best leave this topic alone or certain paranoid people might start to think I’m not being comic and sarcastic that this is not just a little bit of fun with words.

Perish the thought that anyone might feel for a moment I may be serious. I’m sure long lives will be had by all. Anyway, what the hell would I know? That’s my story and I’m sticking to it.

MIDDLE-aged men who still view themselves as forces to be reckoned with, criminally speaking, bore me to tears. Age and wisdom cannot enter the field of criminal combat against the strength and madness of youth, although I must say that among the criminal youth of today I see no real threats. Once every ten to twenty years a real nutter comes along, so when the criminal history of Australia is written every hundred years there would only be five to ten names that would be worth the mention.

The rest would flow down the great steaming river of vomit out into the septic tank of nothingness where they belong and rightfully so. I’m rarely wrong in my criminal judgement of people and that’s what kept me alive over the years but now and again I’m forced to reconsider my original opinion.

The old Collingwood saying of ‘Good blokes don’t get bail’ comes back to haunt me. When I hear news of a so-called good bloke getting bail on a serious charge of robbery or violence I quietly wonder why some men are granted bail while the vast majority of offenders charged are left to rot in the remand yard. A case in point I’m forced to make mention of is my old mate Micky Marlow.

I wrote about Michael John Marlow in my second book
Chopper
2:
Hits and Memories
, and if you haven’t got it then get back to the book shop you tight-arsed bastard, and get it. Get the whole set as a matter of fact. I need the money, if my publishers don’t drink all the profits.

Anyway, I digress. Years ago Micky was a good crook and a rock solid crim. He was always a bit of a ladies man. I knew the bloke as a safe cracker, a tank man, a cool-headed professional.

Mick avoided prison because he was a thinker. I mean, he did a few months in the can but nothing worth a mention. He had been questioned over and over again relating to jobs all over Tasmania and the mainland, including murder. He was a chap I respected to a certain degree. One of my shortcomings is that I don’t fully truly respect any crim who has not done the hard yards in the hard yards inside.

Good crims don’t get bail and it’s a prejudice of mine that dubious bastards never do much jail. I don’t believe in good luck and active crims who continue to avoid prison are, in my opinion, suspect as it simply cannot continue without police help.

People who get bail and keep out of jail are usually the ones who keep talking to the police. In other words, they fill the jails with other people so they can stay outside. They stay out as long as they are useful to the coppers.

When I got out of prison I was contacted by Kellie, Micky’s former de facto and the mother of his daughter. She wanted to see me. I wanted no part of it. I don’t involve myself in interpersonal matters.

Kellie had given Micky the arse after finding Micky with another lass who looked rather similar. Typical Mick Marlow and highly comic, I thought. Mick was also still involved with a highly dubious collection of fellows I no longer wanted to hear about or know about.

If I wasn’t going to see my own father because I considered him a security risk I could hardly see Micky. Then bang, Micky got pinched on a rape blue and got bail. A violent sex attack and bailed to appear. Sorry, but while I wish no-one any ill will I don’t want them sitting in my lounge room either.

Who gets bail on a rape blue? Certainly no-one I know nor would want to know. God bless you and keep you all the best and all the rest but via con dios, amigo.

I have had a few mates pinched on rape, Mad Charlie included, but none of ’em ever got bail. Only certain types of people get bail and I’d rather not mix with them.

Call me a snob if you like. I got a $500 bail once in my life, in 1974, the result of a police clerical error after the Magistrate had formally refused bail.

I mean, sorry, but you gotta be a dead set suckhole to get bailed on a serious blue. Yes, most people can get bailed with a top lawyer and a lot of bullshit but bashing women has never been my go and I don’t go out of my way to mix with people who do.

Lions don’t mix with hyenas. Bashing women in front of children, Jesus Christ. Anyway, I’m not trying to set myself up as some Alan Jones type moral judge, but Mick got eight years from a judge, which makes his pleas of innocence sound a little hollow.