Chopper Unchopped (225 page)

As a property developer, Big Al invested widely in all three areas using his shady business and legal contacts as front men, thus protecting himself behind a raft of paper companies. He had found a semi-legal way to push drug money through a legal washing machine, albeit a sleazy one.

He returned to his Saint Alfonse image by donating gifts of toys to the Royal Children’s Hospital. A thousand bucks worth of toys means a million bucks worth of good will, a fact American Mafia worked out decades earlier.

In America the Hells Angels ran a public anti-drugs campaign while making speed to stick in kids’ arms. Work that out. Big Al had cultivated an army of lawyers, business and legal contacts, high flyers, even magistrates and judges. Police in some quarters spoke well of him, despite the fact that he had a nasty habit of bashing innocent young constables he caught off duty in a situation where he had the drop on them. Underneath, his old street habits stayed the same, and his violent streak meant that police were sometimes called, and this resulted in the management of various clubs banning Al from attendance.

He hadn’t lost the plot – rather, the plot was starting to lose him. Older Italians and even Big Al’s closest colleagues just shook their heads at a man who, on the one hand, was so brilliant and, on the other, so spoilt and childish.

Meanwhile, Al would sit in lap dancing clubs with a semi-clad beauty between his legs and a handgun down his belt – or perhaps it was the other way around. Management and club security would stand dumbfounded as Big Al pulled his weapon out – and I don’t mean his .38 – and instruct the dancer in question to loosen her G-string and sit on it, riding him up and down while members of the Cologne crew looked on and laughed. It was taken for granted that when Alfonse and his Lygon Street team walked into any table dancing club, they paid for nothing and if Big Al or any member of his team dropped their zips, the dancer in question would have no choice but to either go down or sit on the offending member.

Al would infiltrate clubs he had no control over, using his friend and sometimes bodyguard, The Dasher. Dasher ran a security firm that supplied bouncers to most of the clubs in Melbourne. Al would see to it that professional call girls and high-class hookers were placed in certain clubs. A quick suck in the right place could take the sting out of certain investigations.

He could also screw up other clubs by using ‘gypsy’ dancers. These were chicks that went in for a week’s work to one club – but did nothing but create trouble, teasing, starting fights, spreading drugs about, offering sex and generally creating a bloody uproar – including robbing clients – before vanishing to another club where the same game would be played. Having its reputation damaged by this would impact on the club. A licence was hard to get and easy to lose, and Al would capitalise on this.

It wasn’t difficult to place under age drinkers and dancers in clubs not controlled by him, then organise for the police and assorted other inspectors to attend on the correct nights. Despite the fact that Big Al had been barred from most establishments, he still roamed freely with his small army of hangers on. The result was brawls, shootouts, stabbings, attacks with pool cues and the blatant sexual abuse of lap dancers too frightened to complain. Alfonse was having a party in a playground.

What angered Alfonse was the influx of top line, Penthouse Pet types – former ballroom and professional dancers who were a threat to his control. They were well-educated, middle-class girls from good homes who were in the new table top dancing industry strictly for the cash. They would take no nonsense and would also lay a formal and legal complaint at the drop of a fly zipper.

Threats of sexual harassment cases and lawsuits from a younger generation of professional dancers who didn’t seem to show any respect for Big Al or his crew were incomprehensible to Cologne. A financial investor in a club didn’t welcome such changes. For example, a doctor’s daughter from Perth who held a degree in economics, and who had taken up lap dancing for the tax-free cash, could earn $4000 to $5000 a week. This type of girl would not tolerate for a moment some would-be Robert De Niro mafia impersonator pulling his ugly member out and yelling: ‘Suck this, slut!’

It was starting to hit Big Al that he was no longer living in the 1970s or even the 1980s. Women’s Liberation was no longer just a word but a way of life. Strippers who didn’t use heroin or speed, strippers with bank accounts and lawyers, were giving his cosy criminal world a culture shock. Maybe violence would remind one and all just who he was. But, of course, it is difficult win respect for violence when you continue to live under the shadow of a mental case like Hacker Harris.

So Big Al began to knock the smaller fish into shape and, for a time, he felt the 1970s and 80s had returned. But, while Harris lived, Cologne would always remain a joke that was enjoyed behind his back.

‘WHEN will this stone be removed from my shoe?’ Cologne complained to Poppa Capiso. Like every other would-be gangster, he’d been watching too many Godfather films.

Poppa Brazzi was an old Sicilian who smiled at Alfonse but secretly didn’t like him. ‘Non capiso’, he replied.

‘Harris,’ said Cologne sulkily, ‘he is a stone in my shoe. When can I have the stone removed?’

Old Poppa Brazzi just smiled. ‘Un bicchierre di grappa’ Alfonse muttered in Italian. The old man nodded and with a wave of his hand, Big Al had a waiter appear with a cold bottle of Sicilian grappa.

‘Grato,’ said Poppa Brazzi.

‘You want something to eat?’ asked Big Al.

The old man thought, ‘In insalata,’ he replied. Again Alfonse waved his hand before speaking.

‘And the stone in my shoe?’ he said again, impatiently.

The old man smiled and said,

‘For a bottle of grappa and a seafood salad, you come to me about Hacker Harris. “Aiuto, Poppa Brazzi”.’ The old man mimicked Alfonse, meaning, ‘Help’. He continued: ‘Calabrese crostata di frutta,’ meaning ‘Calabrian fruit pie,’ an insult directed at Alfonse. ‘And you’re a fucking Milano Calabrese, hey Porko,’ said the old man. ‘I tell you what, Alfonse. You want a stone out of your shoe? Remove it yourself, or take your shoe off. Otherwise I think Harris will cut your feet off. Then you won’t have shoes to put stones into. I can’t help you,’ the old man concluded.

‘Mi spiace,’ he said, meaning that he was sorry. He didn’t sound it.

Alfonse got up and walked away. Brazzi wouldn’t dismiss Big Al so quickly unless, of course, Di Inzabella himself had turned his back on Alfonse. The Monzas and the Caprice family were all linked with the Stromboli clan. The Agillette family, the Italiano clan and the Muratores had all been doing business of late with the Dardo family, who were Albanian. Old Poppa Dardo was a friend of Hacker Harris. The ghost of Sammy Stromboli was coming back to tap Alfonse on the shoulder.

‘Fuck ’em all,’ said Big Al to himself. ‘I’ve got the men, the money and the contacts. I’m tomorrow. They are all yesterday.’ He knew all about talking the talk, did Al. But it wasn’t enough. He had to walk the walk, and that could be bad for your health – particularly with a stone in your shoe.

VICTOR Italiano, Larry Lampert, Angelo Stromboli, Gilbert Bazooka, Luigi Costa and Little Mario Barzini were arrested on a multi-million-dollar guns and heroin raid. Code-named Operation Hammer, the raid was led by Detective Chief Inspector Paul Holliday and involved Federal and State task forces. Also arrested was Nick (‘The Greek’) Postalas, Al Cologne’s underling and spy. On Alfonse’s orders, the treacherous Greek provided the information to police before vanishing into the witness protection program. Beware of Greeks bearing tins.

It didn’t take Bazooka long to figure out that if the Greek gave them up, he did so on the tactical advice of Alfonse. Bazooka and his crew had lent Alfonse about $250,000 for a Russian heroin buy. The profits were to be invested in King Street property in Melbourne. Alfonse later claimed the Albanians ripped the money and tried to involve Bazooka and his crew in a gang war.

However, Gilbert found out that Alfonse had paid off a $100,000 debt to the Di Inzabella family and $100,000 to a family trust based in Milan. There was no Russian heroin deal and never had been. It was all part of Al’s insolent plan to rob his fellow crooks.

While Gilbert was in prison fighting for bail – with no one yet believing his supposedly paranoid opinion re Al’s treachery – Alfonse himself borrowed the cash from the Costa family to bail everyone out. Would a guilty man do such a thing? Of course not! It was all Nick the Greek’s fault, Alfonse claimed, straight-faced. Some people believed him. Others almost did.

Gilbert remembered when Shane Goodfellow gave Crown evidence against Hacker Harris in the St Kilda nightclub murder. Goodfellow remained under Big Al’s protection and on the payroll. Boris the Black Diamond was also facing Supreme Court on heavy heroin matters. Boris did business with Al and Cologne had borrowed heavily from both Boris and the Chinese for a heroin deal that didn’t come off. Again, the sum of money was staggering. With these thoughts as a starting point, things began to tick over in Gilbert’s mind. He spoke to Gonzo and the Kindergartens. The Muratore, Italiano, Stromboli, Agillette, Lampedusa, Vasari, Brazzi, Barzini, Vittorio and Costa families also felt that something was not quite right. It was Alfonse who had told Gilbert to place Nick in such a powerful and invincible position. The Monza and Caprice families already hated Cologne and had suspected him for some time of being a transgressor and a traitor. The Monza family called Alfonse ‘La Toeletta’. You didn’t have to be a language professor to work out that it meant ‘the shithouse’. This was a Sicilian slang insult of the foulest kind.

‘Our Calabrese paisan, you know,’ said Poppa Nicola Stromboli to Poppa Costa over the phone. ‘You know the Milano movie star. I think he’s a playing the double game.’ Poppa Costa listened hard.

‘He has no gratitudine, no riconoscenza (thankfulness). All the porko barstardo does is bugia, bugia (lie, lie)’, Costa replied. ‘He’s a fucking juggler, borrowing money from Peter to pay Paul, then tells both men that he’s been robbed. He gives police too much of the sessanta nove.’ Stromboli laughed – ‘sessanta nove’ means sixty-nine, and implied that Alfonse and the police were pleasuring each other a little too hard.

‘He has no honor,’ said Costa, ‘and no honesty. Please leave it to me, I will speak to Brazzi and arrange to see Di Inzabella.’

‘Bene Grazie,’ replied Stromboli and hung up the phone. He turned to Poppa Dardo and his three sons. ‘Tell Mick Conforte and that Mad Charlie Hajalic that I want to see them.’ Poppa Dardo nodded and smiled.

ALFONSE Cologne, Mick Conforte, Mick D’Andrea, Joe Gotto, Mad Charlie Hajalic, Carlo Di Inzabella and Ronnie Burgess sat outside the Pasta Rustica restaurant in Lygon Street, Carlton.

Di Inzabella was doing the talking: ‘The shopping list is unbelievable, Al. Listen to this.’

Plates of lasagna and salad sat before the men on a large table littered with bottles of shiraz.

Di Inzabella returned to his reading. ‘The Fanucci family are in with the Stromboli clan and the Stromboli clan is in with the Dardos.’

‘Ha! Ha! Ha!’ snorted Alfonse.

‘I don’t understand,’ said Mick Conforte.

‘Just listen,’ snapped Alfonse.

‘OK,’ continued Di Inzabella. ‘You won’t believe this. Shit! Holy Mother of God. You won’t believe it. Sixty German Mauser 7.62s, and home made 9mm sub-machine guns made by the Protestant paramilitaries in Belfast.’

‘What?’ said Big Al. ‘Sixty of them!’

‘No,’ replied Di Inzabella. ‘Sixty Mauser 7.62 bangers and two dozen of the 9mm subbies. OK? And Ingram 9mm sub-machine guns – at least 50 of them. Israeli-made Desert Eagle .357 magnums, .44 magnums and .50 calibre Action Express. Boxes of them. And 9mm Heckler and Koch P7 semi autos, Japanese Kyunana Shiki, 20mm model anti-tank rifles – 152 pounds of heavy duty murder, seven round, gas-operated, fully automatic, rare as hen’s fucking teeth, Al, for Christ’s sake,’ continued Di Inzabella.

He continued, ‘Browning M2 machine guns. AWP 7.62mm sniper rifles. 7.65mm Czechoslovak model 61 Scorpion sub-machine guns. Sterling 9mm L2A3 sub-machine guns.’

‘Now get this,’ he continued. ‘One Russian-made S A 7 anti-aircraft missile, with optical aiming and infrared homing, for God’s sake. A crate of old British stuff, plus 55 anti-tank rifles, a M79 grenade launcher, three Russian-made 7.62mm model Maxim machine guns, three British .303 Bren guns. Browning .50 calibre M2 machine guns. The list goes on and on. It’s unbelievable, Al.’

The men sat in silence. ‘Anti-aircraft guns,’ said Alfonse. ‘Mamma Mia. Holy fucking Madonna. We only want a dozen or so handguns. We don’t want to fight World War 3.’

‘OK,’ said Di Inzabella.

‘Smith and Wesson, Rugers, Aldo Ubertis, Uberti Schofields, Colts, Walthers, Browning, Jenning, Beretta, Norinco, Springfield, Glock, Remington, Van Hee, Benilli, Pardini, Beeman, Steyr, Luger, Webley, Winchester, Takarev …’

‘OK, OK,’ said Alfonse. ‘Shit, how many guns have these pricks got?’

Mad Charlie Hajalic felt ill at ease. They were meant to be buying arms and ammo from the Albanians but Charlie knew there was only one crew in Australia with a stranglehold on weapons of this nature. They were all Aussies and all of them were heavily teamed up with Hacker Harris. Charlie shook his head. Big Al was indeed losing the plot. If he buys even one gun from the Albanians and lashes on the deal, he would pull the last straw. Charlie could feel Hacker’s web closing in on them all.

CHERRIE was 5 feet 6 inches tall in the old money, with black hair and eyes and olive skin. She was a lap dancer. She was what the Italians described as ‘hot chocolate’. She had an arse that would slide onto anything erect providing the club lighting was dim and the management even dimmer.

It was $20 for a lap dance but Cherrie had a trick that collected her an even $200 per dance. She would work up the client till the cork was about to pop and then bend down and whisper ‘pull it out, baby’. With a quick twist and turn, amidst a club full of drunks looking on, but not paying much attention, she would slide her magnificent behind down on the rampant member and with three or four slippery slides up and down, collect his load. No one would be the wiser and all this in a crowded club. She had been sacked before for blatantly blow jobbing clients in public, but her new trick was very hard to detect in the darkness of a strobe-lit nightclub.

Candy was the centre of attraction. Six foot tall, all tits and legs, and a Penthouse Pet-type blonde, more Las Vegas than Melbourne. But a pure professional, meaning all show, no go. Strictly look but don’t touch. So while Candy was the main attraction in the joint, hot arse Cherrie would slip and slide away on 15 or 20 stiffs a night. At 200 bucks a pop, now and again she could afford to get caught and sacked. As a gypsy dancer, she could travel from one club to another with a few nights of straight lap dancing to prove she could pull in the punters. Then she would attack them. She could knock the top of anyone in less than two seconds. She was also the girlfriend of Donny Corset, the young son of old Dino Corset, Frankie Witton’s offsider. He was also a personal friend of Alfonse Cologne.

To say that Cherrie was more than a little confident was a polite understatement. However, when Alfonse raped her in a King Street club, then pistol whipped her young boyfriend, Cherrie took the matter to Dino Corset and in turn to old Frankie Witton. Al said a thousand sorries all round but he still had a problem. Cherrie’s last name was Kindergarten. Dino and Charlie, understanding that boys will be boys, forgave Big Al. But this didn’t quite work with the Kindergarten family.

The Kindergartens, being the long range chess players they were, insisted all was well and to top it off, young Cherrie told Al that any time he wanted it he had it, knowing all the time that Big Al was going to get it anyway. Cherrie was a professional and she believed that a walking corpse always deserved one last screw.

JOE La Borchia, otherwise known as La Piccolo Demente (‘the little lunatic’), was a Naples Italian and a Camorra man all the way back to his great grandfather. He sat in a restaurant in Adelaide looking like thunder. Alfonse owed Joe $52,000 and the debt was long overdue. This was not good.

‘Misericordioso,’ yelled Joe in Italian, as he tended to when he got excited, which was often.

‘Alfonse is the boss of the kids. He owes money. He must pay. And he expects me to cut my friendship with Hacker. Me and “Mentale” go back a long way.’

‘Mentale’ was Joe’s pet nickname for Hacker. Again, you didn’t have to be a professor of European languages to know what it meant.

‘Hacker’s a fucking legend,’ said Joe. ‘Whereas Alfonse is a half caste Calabrese. A Milano maggot. Alfonse I can do without. Hacker will be with me till the grave. So you can tell the fat pig bastardo Calabrese to fuck his mother in the arse. I want my money and Hacker Harris and me are blood brothers, capiche!’

Johnny Conforte nodded. ‘Capiche, Joe,’ he said soothingly.

‘I understand that fucking De Inzabella well,’ said Joe. ‘We got telephones over here too, you know. The Caprice and Monza families in Sicily, they not too happy with that old rascal, as well.’

Johnny Conforte moved uneasily in his chair. Joe La Borchia (Joe the Boss) was a true rattlesnake. When Italians from all over Australia with mainland Italian and Sicilian family connections were dirty on you because you owed money to all of them, you could con Lygon Street you were Mafia until you were blue in the face. But the truth was you would either pay up or die. There was no way to warn his own family that sides must be taken, and quickly, unless they were all to finish up in the same grave.

JAS and Jody were sisters. Long, blonde and sexy to the point of tempting a saint if they ever got to Heaven, which was considered unlikely by most who knew them. The smart money said chances were they would both go to hell for their earthly misconduct. Jas could suck the chrome off an exhaust pipe if Jody didn’t get to it first. Which was why, as dancers, they were in great demand. However, while working the Melbourne clubs, they both owed their friendship and loyalty to Hacker Harris and Joe La Borchia in return for favours and kindness in the past. The sisters may have had hot pants but their friendships and hearts were blood loyal.

It is unbelievable what a man will tell a woman while his exhaust pipe is being de-chromed, and the sisters were dynamite double agents in this regard. Dead set Mata Haris, not to mention Linda Lovelace and Monica Lewinsky.

One night Jas was busy doing exactly that for Alfonse Cologne while her sister Jody was backing up on Mad Charlie Hajalic when they heard the name Harris being mentioned along with the sum of $60,000. The name Joe La Borchia was also mentioned. The sisters couldn’t believe that Al and Mad Charlie would be stupid enough to talk about a contract to have two men killed while engaging in sex in a darkened nightclub in the presence of two ladies they didn’t know. But that is what methamphetamine does to people. It opens the mouths of normally silent men. Not to mention their flies and Y-fronts.

Jasmine and Jody wasted no time in alerting Hacker Harris, who was in prison, and Joe La Borchia, who wasn’t, of the conversation they had overheard. Jody travelled to South Australia and Jasmine to Pentridge to pass on the information. Then, for some reason, Harris sent Jasmine to see Poppa Dardo and Poppa Brazzi. The old Albanian was very polite, thanking Jas for the message before trying to pants her – or more accurately – unpants her.

Evidently, Jody had a similar proposition put to her by Joe in South Australia. Italians, no matter who or what, could never be trusted with pussy unless it had four legs, purred and liked saucers of milk – and even then you couldn’t be too sure, with some of the randy bastards. This tendency, of course, was not to be taken personally.

It was simply the nature of the beast. Chicks like Jasmine and Jody brought out the beast in every man, and it was just that the Italians were not so good at hiding their true feelings. A throbber was more a compliment than an insult and no offence was taken. But Harris and La Borchia took great offence at the message passed onto them by the helpful young ladies.

EMILY Hanlon was tall, blonde and the de facto wife of Giorgo Monza. Emily was also the girlfriend of Joe La Borchia, not to mention the mother of two children to Frankie Mackenzie. She was an energetic girl.

Like half Australia’s underworld, Emily was also related through marriage to the Kindergarten family. But poor Emily had a wandering eye and a pair of long legs that seemed to open whenever the word heroin was mentioned. She had met Big Alfonse Cologne and Mick Conforte in the company of Mad Charlie Hajalic at a Melbourne nightclub. To cut a long story short, Emily had ended up back at a house in Moonee Ponds in the company of Johnny Moore with a needle in her arm and several other pricks in various parts of her anatomy. Unfortunately, she had fallen in love with Big Alfonse and, via Moore, had located Cologne’s unlisted telephone number.