Chopper Unchopped (226 page)

She then made a bad mistake. She threatened to ring Al’s wife, Margaret, and tell her that she was number one in Al’s life.

Margaret was a well-educated convent girl who was not even Italian, but love made her hook up with a flash would-be Mafia maggot like Al Cologne. She had got used to the fact that the father of her children was no gentleman, but she didn’t need to have her nose rubbed in it.

The whole thing was getting out of hand. Emily was by crim standards a nice girl but a nasty drunk and even worse when on heroin. Her threat of an early morning phone call had to be neutralised – and so did she.

So it was that Johnny Moore brought young Emily to Mick D’Andrea’s club in Carlton. It was a cross between a coffee shop and a card joint. Mostly gambling went on but a little coffee was sold as well. D’Andrea ran it. Big Al owned the building. The club – or wog shop, as was the slang criminal expression – was perfect in that it had once been a butcher’s shop and boasted a large freezer at the back that no longer worked. But once the door was shut was semi-sound proof. It had to be.

The trouble was that by the time Alfonse and Mick Conforte arrived Johnny Moore and Mick D’Andrea had already dealt savagely with the girl. The only way to ease the poor girl’s pain was a gentle heroin overdose. Al then ordered the remains to be disposed of. By disposal he meant that she had to vanish for good, and not reappear floating in the Yarra River three days later.

‘If ya keep getting back up, the bastards will get tired of knocking you down.’
– Hacker Harris.

WHEN Hacker Harris went back inside in 1992 over another shooting, Melbourne breathed a sigh of relief as the mental case with no ears faced a charge that many thought would be his last. The bloke had pulled the gun out one too many times and, on this occasion, the bloke looking down the wrong end of the barrel was the president of a motorcycle club not averse to taking the witness stand.

Harris was seen by his enemies and their friends as a psychopathic madman who would gun you down for sixpence. The sooner he was locked away forever and a day, the better. Lygon Street went into a frenzy of near-hysterical happiness. It was like Italy had won the World Cup.

They couldn’t kill the big bastard but getting him locked away was nearly as good.

Half a world away Al Cologne went into overdrive. He was never the most modest or most rational of men, and this time he was flying.

‘All I want is to do what I want, when I choose, where I want with no dog putting his nose in,’ he ranted. ‘The Mafia is the sole property of television and the movies and the property of the imagination of mice. If mice and the local media, and for that matter, the local police and criminal world like to see me as Mafia, so be it. The bigger the lie, the more people will believe it. We put out a hit on Muratore – right outside his home in Hampton, the same way his father was shot 28 years ago. Remember Vincenzo Muratore? We pulled that off and even De Inzabella and Stromboli and Brazzi will have to sit up and take note!’

Benny Fanucci sat at attention, listening to Al Cologne raving on. ‘Ya see, Benny, the Mafia is what we say it is. It’s an Italian thing. It’s our thing. Fuck this Sicily bullshit. The movies invented it in the minds of the mice. So all we do is feed them the cheese and – bingo bango – ya got the Mafia. Fuck the Monzas and the Caprice family and their Sicilian shit. Fucking dwarfs. We got the drugs, the guns, the muscle, the lawyers, the cops. We got every Calabrese in Melbourne convinced I’m the next best thing to the fucking Godfather. We can do what we fucking want. Okay?’

Fanucci nodded.

‘What about the Albanians?’ asked Fanucci.

‘Fuck the fucking Albanians and everyone else. That fucking Harris is gone. He will never get out. I’ll outlive and outlast them all. You watch,’ replied Al.

‘So who will we get to do Muratore?’ asked Fanucci.

‘The Albanians,’ laughed Alfonse. ‘They will kill anyone for 10 grand.’

‘Shouldn’t we ask De Inzabella first?’ asked Fanucci. ‘After all, he killed Muratore’s father and he might get offended if we go for outside help. He might think it’s his right or something.’

‘Fuck De Inzabella,’ replied Alfonse. ‘He’s old. He’s losing it. We run Melbourne. Ya know what? After we get Muratore knocked we might stage them fucking dumb Albanians into knocking De Inzabella as well.’

Alfonse Cologne sat outside a restaurant comically named the ‘Aldo Moro’ in Rome, Italy. He was drinking grappa and eating seafood salad. Fanucci was drinking al fuoco vino (fire wine) and eating clams. Fanucci was on his way by plane to the Punta Raisi Airport in Palermo, Sicily, to visit the Monza clan. The Monzas had invited Fanucci to a wedding at the ‘Four Corners’. The main port and capital of Sicily is a beautiful city built around the centre known as La Quattro Canti – ‘Four Corners’. Some 3000 people had been invited to this wedding.

Alfonse hadn’t been invited and didn’t even know that Rocco Monza’s daughter was being married. This Melbourne born Milan Calabrese half caste false pretender was telling Fanucci that the Mafia was an invention of television. Fanucci would repeat this conversation to the Monzas. Muratore might end up dying a sudden and violent death, but Alfonse’s role in it would be no secret. Fanucci knew that if he didn’t repeat this conversation he would one day answer for it. That was Cologne’s one fault. He had a mouth like a running tap.

‘Salut,’ said Fanucci as he raised his glass.

‘Salut,’ replied Alfonse.

Sitting in the Roman sun, he felt like the criminal version of Julius Caesar. Who the fuck could stop him?

The big man smiled and Fanucci smiled in return. Fanucci couldn’t remember the last time he met an Italian with a bigger mouth and a bigger day dream than Alfonse Cologne’s. This, he thought, was one Calabrese who knows everything except who should and shouldn’t become his enemies – which makes him one very dumb Calabrese, indeed.

A man cannot he too careful in his choice of enemies.
– Oscar Wilde.

SPAGHETTI, with an olive oil and crabmeat salad, with just a touch of garlic and tender tomato paste, is best eaten with a chilled fire grappa wine. It is a cheap Catania dish, commonly served at La Lamberto Cafe just outside the Fontanarossa Airport. Most Italians are surprised that Catania even has an airport.

‘One crowded hour of glorious life is worth an age without a name,’ said Joe La Borchia as if he’d thought of it first. Fanucci nodded. Joe was a great one for quoting other people as was Big Al Colonge. He was often quoting Oscar Wilde, Napoleon, Hitler or John F. Kennedy. Hacker Harris started this bullshit off in the early 1970s. The trick with Hacker was he would invent his own quotes, and then attribute them to famous people, giving the simple minded listener the impression he was widely read. Big Al, on the other hand, was relatively well educated and had read a few books – some without pictures.

‘Never trust a Greek, a priest or a man with false teeth,’ Hacker said to Alfonse one day some 20 years ago. ‘Hitler said that.’

It took Big Al almost a year of research before he realised Hitler said no such thing at all. ‘Never trust a one-eyed man riding a three legged horse,’ Hacker had said one other time. ‘Napoleon said that.’ It was at this point that Big Al started quoting great writers, poets and politicians correctly. He was sick of being made a fool of by a no-eared mental case with the gift of the gab.

Christina and Renzo Gregori sat with them. Renzo was a short, dark-skinned Sicilian but Christina’s mother came from the north of Italy and she was tall, blonde and dark-eyed, with a large set of watermelons. She was indeed quite beautiful. How Renzo fathered such a beauty was a Sicilian mystery. Christina had travelled from Melbourne for the Monza wedding and while Big Al Cologne sat in Rome dreaming his dreams, the reality of who was really who and who would live and die and when, was being spoken of in Palermo and Catania. Don Hector Aspanis had even attended the wedding. The joke that the would-be Mafia boy from Melbourne, the Milano Calabrese, was sitting in Rome doing business with petty crooks in Milan. He had not even been aware of the wedding, which was quite comical. He lived the Hollywood Mafia dream on the profits of his heroin money and property development. He was also of use to De Inzabella but it had also come to light that Big Al was acting as a secret informer for certain government agencies such as the NCA and DEA, not to mention various federal and state task forces.

Al played both sides of the fence but forgot it was electrified.

Drug investigations, if controlled, could be useful – providing Big Al was given certain key information that was actually misinformation. Big Al would quickly lose credibility. But as Funucci and La Borchia agreed, Cologne had to go. Renzo nodded in agreement. De Inzabella would have to talk to Conforte and then get Cologne to talk to Mad Charlie.

Maybe through Charlie, they could reach out to Harris and his old crew. The Italians would set up the job but it would be carried out by others. After all, they would have to look the wife, daughters and sister in the eye at the funeral.

The Italians just aren’t as good at hiding their emotions as Hollywood portrays it. Everyone was in agreement. The whens and by whom and how had not yet been worked out. Oh, to be Irish because people killed one another in the street with no planning whatsoever and thought very little about it, or anything else, except perhaps the drink afterwards. But an Italian murder was an opera – and a game of chess. Much ‘atenzione’ had to be paid to detail long before the trigger was pulled. Tradition demanded it. This wasn’t just a death. It was a political statement – and every politician’s death takes much backroom planning. Everyone had to be in agreement to avoid misunderstandings and disputes later.

The whole thing was like preparing a fine Italian dish: it needed the correct amount of olive oil because you couldn’t drown a man like Alfonse in vinegar. You had to sink him slowly in a bath of warm olive oil, saying ‘sorry, friend’ as you pushed his head under. An Italian death was almost as religious as a mass or a wedding or a funeral.

First came Why? Then came How? Then Who?

‘Un bicchiere di vino,’ called Fanucci, and they all raised their glasses and toasted their plan.

And another nail was hammered into the Calabrese coffin.

Blood and treachery are the two great blessings the Lord bestowed on the Irish people. –
Michael Collins.

DESPITE moves being made behind Cologne’s back by the old Australian crews and his own people, the big man survived all odds. Big Al had a strange magnetism and the ability to talk his way out of death – and make a profit along the way. His ability to borrow large amounts of cash from men who didn’t even trust him was all part his personality.

Even true Mafia – the Sicilian, Napolitan and Calabrian clans – believed Cologne was ‘connected’. His ongoing verbal war with Hacker Harris was all part of his psychological strategy and tactical thinking. Hacker was without doubt the most hated crim in Melbourne and if there were no Alfonse, then Harris would be left to run wild like a fox in a hen house. Or, at least that was the impression Alfonse liked people to get.

He was America to Hacker’s Russia. Without one, the other would dominate the world. Big Al was the only force in Melbourne able to control Harris, hold him at bay, kill him or keep him out of town, ran the propaganda line. The fact that Harris was in prison seemed beside the point. Harris represented blood, torture, mindless murder and general insane mayhem while Alfonse represented some sort of order.

He had proven himself in combat by gunning down Johnny Workman in East St Kilda and proved himself as a fixer by getting away with it. By a stroke of great good fortune for Al, the DPP dropped the charges. Wicked rumours of police and political or judicial influence ran riot.

The truth was the two star witnesses flew overseas thanks to Al’s chequebook and the case collapsed. Big Al seemed to be the one man in Melbourne who could do as he liked when he wanted.

Al mixed with millionaires, TV and football personalities, boxers, singers and rock and roll celebrities. He was the black prince of Lygon Street, and a lot of people liked to be seen with him.

Harris, on the other hand, was a mental case who was rarely out of prison, with little more than a small following of deranged psychopaths. Yet Big Al was always a little overshadowed by this one enemy.

Al was big but if Harris walked through the door, Cologne would call for the Kimbies because he would wet his pants. Even Al’s friends noticed these things and muttered rumours behind Al’s back. While Cologne pretended not to notice, his hatred for Harris blinded him to the true extent of the hatred he had caused to be directed towards himself.

A man must know his enemies, but Alfonse had reached the point where he could no longer tell the difference. Rumours of Harris’s release from prison kept cropping up.

One unnamed underworld source told the
Herald Sun
newspaper that Harris had 90 days to live. That is, if he actually was released from prison.

‘I wonder what underworld source told them that?’ laughed Poppa Brazzi. ‘Holbrook’s Worstershire Sauce by the sounds of it,’ he snickered. ‘Ninety days to live, hey? They couldn’t kill Hacker if they tossed holy water over him and hammered a wooden stake through his heart. You sit in Lygon Street eating seafood, pizza and drinking lemonade while the sun shines on your BMW and you make calls on your mobile phone to your lawyer.

‘The girls may admire your $100 haircut and your $1000 sports coat. Meanwhile, you’ve got one fucking popgun under the front seat of your car with six rounds of ammo and can’t find anyone in Melbourne who can supply you with a box of 50 rounds and you can’t hit the side of a fucking shed with a bucket full of shit in a gun fight.

‘I think old no-ears will outlive us all, and especially Alfonse. Like that fucking mad Harris said, “Cheque books don’t win gang wars.” Underworld source indeed,’ he snorted.