Chopper Unchopped (203 page)

‘Now you either are talking to me with the phone down the toilet bowl or your phone is off. You are being questioned for half the unsolved murders in Melbourne and you are worried about whether they will capture the spirit of Amos in the movie.’

‘I love ya Chopper, I had nothing to do with your stabbing in H Division all them years ago. I hear you’re having a son, mate, call him Amos,’ he said.

‘No, I’m calling him Charlie, after Mad Charlie,’ I said. ‘Dave and me didn’t do Charlie,’ Amos said. ‘I never said you did, Amos.’

‘I love ya Chopper and I always will,’ he said.

I couldn’t help but think that half the underworld headstones of Australia should be inscripted with the words, ‘I love ya and always will.’

And so I say I love you, too, Amos, but a thousand miles have travelled between us and we will never meet again. I get these phone calls from old crims desperate to know how they will be portrayed in the film. Now I am a gentleman farmer and I have no intention of shooting a director or a producer over some artistic creative tension. Let the nutcases buy some popcorn and go and see it for themselves.

I NOTE with comic interest that three members of Alphonse’s old heroin army have been done for using a shop in Northcote as a front for selling drugs.

Alphonse was into those coffee shops in the late 1970s. It was an old trick. Get some old shop in Brunswick, Northcote, Coburg or Footscray, get a second hand coffee machine, a counter and a half a dozen old tables and you were in business.

You get six old wogs to sit there every day and all night playing cards. Sling them a few bucks and coffee and grappa and they were the best watchers about.

One of the old dagoes would carry a gun for you. Stick up a picture of The Pope and the Italian soccer side and Robert’s your mother’s brother.

‘Could I have a cafe latte and half a gram of smack to go please.’

Before Crown Casino opened Alphonse used the coffee shops for fronts to gambling joints but that has now dried up.

The old wogs at the front were just old trolley pushers from the markets. The joke was that Alphonse would tell them, ‘Listen, the heroin is only a side line, the real money is in the coffee.’ Ha, ha.

IT was in early 1973, a few months before Billy ‘The Texan’ Longley ordered Kevin Taylor to murder Painters and Dockers secretary Pat Shannon that there were some serious industrial problems around building sites in Melbourne. Big Norm Gallagher, the head of the Builders Labourers Federation, had slapped some ban on that meant the Painters and Dockers recreation rooms in South Melbourne couldn’t be finished.

Putty Nose Nicholls, Doug Sproule and Pat Shannon walked into the John Curtin Hotel in Lygon Street to negotiate a settlement with Norm, as gentlemen do. Putty Nose put a gun in Norm’s mouth, a .38 revolver it was, and Shannon suggested the green ban should be banned.

‘Listen comrades,’ said Norm, which was a bit rude because one shouldn’t speak with one’s mouth full, but he went on anyway. A deal was stuck and the ban was off. Three weeks after the Painters and Dockers building was completed the ban was back on again. Funny that. Years later Norm was to deny the story. He said it was a .45 automatic.

Me and Keithy Faure asked him to slap a ban on building the Jika Jika maximum security section at Pentridge and he did it for us. Later we asked him to lift it when the conditions at H Division got even worse.

Big Norm did time in 1985 and when he was in the shower with twenty other blokes in A Division he didn’t look like some general who controlled a union army. He used Rapid Shave foam, that poofy stuff that comes out all foamy. I used soap and water, after all it was a jail, not a beauty contest. What did he think? Jana Wendt was gonna pop out of the shithouse for an interview?

In 1977 a person very close to me requested I kill Big Norm. The plan was later called off and I was glad it was.

Some important people get talked about all the time and they will never know that they can live or die on the flip of a coin in some drunken conversation by two men who have never even met the target. Big Norm was marked for death over a remark he made on the evening news. I knew it was insanity but I could not say no to the man who asked me to knock Norm. The gentleman in question came to his senses the next day and called it off. I would have done it if I didn’t get the call to cancel.

I wonder how different Victoria would have been if I had not got the call. I am glad I didn’t head off too early that morning.

THE time has come to pay a tribute to a toe cutter and head hunter of the old school — ten years younger than me but with the same attitudes. Old Norm Dardovski, the Melbourne-Albanian crime boss first mentioned the name of Anton Lukacevic to me back in 1987. I didn’t know him from Adamvic. He was a twenty-two year old punk tough guy, screaming for a reputation.

Old Norm said, ‘Chopper, Anton loves you, he respects you.’ I controlled the world Anton wanted to enter and he had the brains to knock first. All he wanted was my blessing and a few words of advice.

I said, ‘Tell Anton, just shoot everyone and take their money, toss the rule book out the window, fear nothing, love no-one, remember every hurt and never forget a kindness.’ As long as his interests didn’t conflict with my own I wished him well.

Professional killers, the real cold nutters within Australia, form a small club. They either know each other or know how to reach each other. We (I mean they) don’t have a club room or a secret club house but have invisible ties. Count me out, of course, but I am an honorary life member of the house of death, even though I have hung up my guns.

‘Mad Tony’ or Lucky Lukacevic climbed the ladder of violence and is a target hitter, meaning he picks his mark. One thousand is the same as ten thousand and ten thousand will get you a million dollar death. Anton has been very lucky and very smart and I should know. After all, I wrote the book. All he had to do was read it. Mad Tony is one of the top three most feared toe-cutters in the business. You don’t need to know the names of the other two. I will warn him that he has about ten years left to get his money and get out.

Very few head-hunters are allowed to retire. Those who do are either really hard or really shifty. Anton is hard and I was just plain shifty. Ha ha.

Remember, Anton. The one who wins the game is the one who lasts the longest. You have made them drink their own blood and made them pay you for the privilege.

You have learned from the book of Chopper, but read on, son. You must develop new skills to survive. You must now learn who are your friends because you will need them. If everyone fears and hates you then even mice can turn into cheese-eating lions.

I don’t say I agree with your business, but compared with you Neddy Smith was a lady’s hair dresser and not a very good one.

Some of your tricks have had me rolling around the floor with laughter. They all want to go to heaven but none of them want to die.

But be warned, I found that my smiling face saved my life and you don’t have a smile. Jesus Christ was the son of God and he still lost a court case and then his life. You’ve beaten three murder blues in four years and your luck may be running out. Any one of us can be killed.

I was told ten years ago you would be another me when your tail feathers grew. Well, you’ve made it and now comes the hard part. You have to live the legend. Getting there is the easy part, staying there is the trick.

Personally I think you will end up getting knocked because like Alphonse and Mad Charlie you will stay at the too long and not see it coming.

Your old mother would have told you to leave a party while you are still enjoying yourself but you’ll want to stay until last drinks and it will kill you in the end. I hope I’m wrong but you can’t sing or dance so what can you do?

I WRITE about bad men and women and you can read about it and if you find it spooky, pull the doona up to your faces and thank your lucky stars the boys in blue are out there to protect you.

An interesting point about police. They leave the Police Academy with fire in their eyes and the burning desire to do good and lock up crims.

Then after about six years they get a transfer to the superannuation squad and the rest of their careers are devoted to getting up the ladder and getting more promotions.

They want to score brownie points before floating off into the public service sunset. Crims are not the only ones with retirement plans. Coppers give up their gung ho attitudes and get their thrill playing the public service roulette game.

The tough nuts like Murphy and Rocket Rod and others have left and are replaced by men armed with cardigans. They think a throwaway is a disposable milk carton and a verbal is the opposite of a noun.

Coppers aren’t what they were but, then, neither are the crooks. Police learn quickly that the streets should be patrolled by young constables before they wake up how to take short steps.

I mean, getting stabbed, shot, bashed, verballed, slandered, abused, betrayed while being investigated by your own side while upholding law and order and the good of the community … this is meant to be a career?

27 AUGUST, 1999. At about 9am Charles Vincent Read was born at the Royal Hobart hospital. I didn’t know what to say or do. It was a caesarean birth. I’ve seen some worse sights, but I just can’t remember when. I held the little baby in my arms and then for the first time in my life, I truly knew what love meant.

I left the hospital that night and had to tell someone of the news so I drove to see my mates Shane Farmer and Mario Diienno, pronounced piano with a D in front of it. They are my mates so it was an obvious place to go although Mario wondered out loud whether a strip club was the right place for a new father to be. It was perfect because what was being flashed about was what got me in this trouble in the first place, ha, ha.

Mary-Ann had run around doing the shopping and other chores before the birth. She comes from tough stock but sometimes I think her family takes this stiff upper lip thing too far. I knew a bloke with a stiff upper lip once. Then I ripped it off. I bet you it stung, Sitting there with Mario, a Royal Commission waiting to happen, I thought, isn’t it strange, whenever anything happens in my life, good or bad, I end up with an Italian next to me. Thanks mate.

A FEW DAYS LATER: Baby Charlie is now home. When parking the car in front of the Royal Hobart Hospital to pick up wife and child I took out the headlight of a posh BMW.

I jumped out all apologetic to speak to the driver who was there to see his wife and baby. He told me he had read all my books and he didn’t seem to take the damage too seriously. We shook hands and in my confused state I have forgotten his name. But thanks mate, we have a lot in common, new kids and the need for panel beaters.

This driving business can be quite traumatic. I have already been forced to take out the rear side window with a hammer when I locked the keys inside the car. I put the poor Ford Falcon through a barbed wire fence on my own property when I was tired and emotional as a newt.

I have been told that some of the locals want to go roo and wallaby shooting on Read’s Run. A quick phone call to my legal advisers indicated they can’t do it without my permission and I am not keen on letting them in. If they jump the fence we will enter the murky world of trespass and litigation. I am polite, but I am still a rattlesnake.

I rang Amos to tell him his phone was off, he sounded like he was off as well. I know the federal authorities are showing a great interest in him — he has been described as a ‘Person of Interest’.

I suspect this roo shooting business is just a way of getting the hillbillies back on to my timber lease. If these wombats want a range war then they will need a missing persons register just for Richmond Tasmania.

I may not be the toe-cutter I once was but I could out think this lot on my worst days. I am giving little Charlie his bottle and he drinks nearly as well as his old man.

I am sitting in the kitchen, it is 12.30am and the wood heater is burning away merrily. My wife has come into scold me for sipping on a Mercury Light Alcoholic Cider which is only 2.8 percent alcohol. For goodness sake, I am more than 2.8 percent myself so what’s the problem, it would actually be diluting my alcohol content by drinking this piss. And apples are a local product so I am helping create jobs in Tassie, so there.

Sure I love the occasional drink but so did Winston Churchill and thousands of others who left their mark.

So I have my shortcomings yet, like you, when we are gone they will be remembered for these comic little ventures.

There was a prison officer in Risdon who always said my marriage would last and here I am with my son smiling and filling his nappy as though it is the height of good humour.

Every time that screw shut my cell door he would smile as though to say I am out and you are in. I would just smile back for chess is a long game and a pawn can laugh at a king for as long as he likes but he can never win the game.

He was a pawn and I was a king and time alone can win wars. His wife has left him now and he sits alone in his self made prison. I should feel sad for him. I don’t.

As far as the roo shooters are concerned, perhaps I should bring Dave over for a working holiday. Then it wouldn’t be the roos being shot, just the local wombats. As my dad used to say, half the bastards need a bullet in the head and the other half need two.

I WRITE and tell the truth but to avoid the hangman’s rope so to speak I will alter or twist little side issues to protect myself, and others from the curiosity of the law. If I talk of a body, I will not necessarily inform the reader of the exact location otherwise pesky coroners and homicide detectives looking to go to the next rung on the police ladder will be popping around for a chat. When I write the truth I am faced with verbal bullets from my critics and real ones from my enemies. Words are like magic star dust to be thrown into the eyes men to confuse and inform at the same time.

The pen is mightier than the sword but in fairness to the sword great things have been done by men and swords. But without the pen the actions of the sword would not be remembered beyond one generation.

Few men have made their marks with pen and sword and I have stumbled into that exclusive class and now I am a father too.

I always swore that as a feared criminal I would never have a wife and children for I knew they would always be the weak link.

I was right, of course. No strength in swordsmanship, however just can stand secure against a mad man’s thrust. Mad men have missions and they don’t have homes.

The birth of my son was the final confirmation that I am finished with crime. A man can throw his own life into the fire but not that of his family. I know the truth as I exploited criminals who had to worry about their families. A criminal family man was like butter doing battle with a hot knife.

I wonder what little Charlie will think when he is old enough to read and sees what his father was before he was born. I just hope he doesn’t see me as such a fool and I hope he will see that his very life helped change his father for the better.

I don’t regret anything. Every drop of blood, every tear, every day of solitude in jail brought me to this place and to my son. It was all worthwhile.