From the Inside: Chopper 1 (6 page)

Dion could not be taken to hospital, and he was lying on Dave’s mother’s kitchen table. He had to be moved and the kitchen cleaned before Dave’s Mum and Dad got home.

We moved him to a mate’s house, then got together a razor blade, a sharp knife, a bottle of peroxide, penicillin powder and a bottle of antibiotics. Then we sent our other mate out to get two grams of heroin and a needle.

We gave Dion a small hit of heroin to kill the pain, then I king hit him twice on the jaw, as he lay naked on the bathroom floor, to knock him out cold. Then we cut and dug the slugs out. Every time he woke up I smashed him again to put him out. After the operation I gave him another shot of heroin. He was in Noddy land.

We cleaned all the wounds with peroxide, dusted them all heavily with penicillin powder and bandaged and plastered the wounds and made him swallow four antibiotics. He slept and slept. When he woke up we gave him antibiotics and vitamin B, vitamin E and vitamin C. If he died we’d bury him. I left. Dave nursed him for ten days — changing his dressings, pumping antibiotics and vitamins into him, keeping him warm.

Dion lived. He left and went to Ireland. He later went to South Africa. Doctor Chopper rides again.

*

Dave has always been a deep thinker. He said, ‘Forgiveness and funerals go hand in hand and the only time to forgive an enemy is after you have seen him die’.

He loves to quote the Irish author Brendan Behan who said ‘The Irish and the Jews have a psychosis’.

He also quoted him as saying, ‘A general bit of shooting makes you forget your troubles and takes the mind off the cost of living’. I have a feeling he may be planning a little bit of a comedy of his own in the future because he has quoted Israeli General Moshe Dayan as saying during the six day war, ‘If we lose this war I’ll start another one in my wife’s name’.

I think that might mean he has plans to reopen an old war and I think I know who with. The Jew hates unfinished business.

I’ll miss the Jew. I’ve told him he can come to Tassie for a visit. I’ll take him fishing, a stick of ‘gellie’ in the river and bang, we’ll be knee deep in trout. I’ve never had the patience for rod and reel.

THE JEW

He wants no glory, he wants no fame,
Very few men have heard his name.
But as a hunter, he’s the best I know,
Non-stop dash, non-stop go,
He sets to work, without a care,
The smell of burning flesh in the air,
He loves to hunt the big deal prankster,
The nightclub flashy gangster,
He plants them in the ground,
Never to be seen,
Safe and sound,
And before they die, they sometimes ask,
Please tell me who are you,
And with a toothless grin, he looks down and says,
Just call me Dave the Jew.

Chapter 5

Cowboy Johnny

‘Another kick and I’d have been dead . . . Johnny charged in, bayonet in hand, and gave his life to save mine.’

COWBOY Johnny Harris was the bastard son of a well-known Prahran prostitute. He used to stand watch in laneways in Prahran, Windsor and St Kilda when he was 10 years old, looking out for police while his Mum took care of customers in the laneway.

He could neither read nor write. I met him when I was about 15 and he was 20 or so, but he was quite childlike in the mind and I never felt younger than him. He was five foot nine inches tall, about eleven stone seven, had a slightly hunched back, a 19-inch neck, cauliflower ears and battered facial features. He was an evil-looking bloke.

The Cowboy was born in a brothel in Port Melbourne in the late 1940s. No doctor was called, no birth certificate issued. He was never christened or baptised. He never knew his father — and neither did his mother. ‘Harris’ was just a name his mother told him to use. His Mum died in a mental hospital in the late 1960s — suicide. He had no living relatives at the time of his death. Prahran was full of Johnny’s ‘uncles’ — in other words, blokes who knew his mother.

He spent his first few years in the brothel, was tormented and teased at school because he was a bastard, and left when he was 10 years old. He learned to fight early, and it became about the only thing he could do better than most.

When I was only 16 or 17, Johnny and I would enter the illegal bare knuckle fights. You could earn $100 if you won and $50 if you lost — but you also made money on the tips and side bets. It was a blood bath. For little or no money, you’d get your head beaten in. Old men betting on young boys to punch themselves half to death for chicken feed.

As a kid, Johnny also boxed in Sharman’s tent show. He boxed in the tent every year at the Royal Melbourne Show under the name ‘Cowboy Johnny’.

The tent fighters were a violent and bloody group. I remember once we were walking up Toorak Road in South Yarra, and a gentleman hopped out of a Rolls Royce motor car, went around to the footpath side to let out a lovely young woman, all dressed nice to step into a fine South Yarra restaurant. As we passed them the Cowboy stepped in and crashed the gent with a left hook to the point of the jaw. He fell and didn’t get up. I kept walking — faster, I might add. When Johnny caught up we turned a corner and both ran. When we stopped I said: ‘For God’s sake, Johnny. What was that all about?’

He said to me: ‘I had my last dinner yesterday, and it doesn’t look as if I’ll be getting another one until tomorrow, and them bastards are going to spend a week’s pay on a feed’.

I looked at Johnny, then I took him home and my Dad cooked him a slap-up dinner. After that Cowboy Johnny Harris would have killed any man who bad mouthed my old Dad. Dad gave him good, clean secondhand clothes and footwear — and bought him his first toothbrush. My father’s kindness to the Cowboy was remembered later.

In December, 1972, my father, aged 47, and at five foot ten and 15 stone, could still put his punches together quite nicely, and he found himself in a fist fight with a larger man half his age in Williams Road, South Yarra. The other fellow also used a knuckle duster. I was in Pentridge at the time doing three months for assaulting three police. My father won the fight in nice style — but suffered some cutting about because of the knuckle duster. Johnny found out, and hunted the other chap down for about three weeks, cornered him in a hotel lounge bar in Prahran and with no howdy do’s stepped in and with six to ten punches shattered the other chap’s jaw, cheekbones and nose. Then he walked up to the bar, picked up a beer glass, broke it and delivered the ‘coup de grace’ — leaving the other chap with part of his chin and lip hanging off. He then left the pub without a word.

My Dad was the father Cowboy never had, and the Cowboy loved him dearly.

I don’t wish to go into the details of Cowboy’s death, as it is still upsetting. It happened when Johnny took on an army in a street battle in Richmond. I was being kicked to death — another good kick and I’d have been dead. Johnny charged in, army bayonet in hand, and gave his life to save mine.

The truth about the Cowboy was that he had punched and kicked three men to death during the late 1960s and early 1970s. He was no angel during the sharpie street battles of those days. There was a code in those days; not only with myself, you didn’t leave a fallen mate in the street to die like a dog, and no-one wanted any police involvement.

A lot of things got handled privately and the details are hard to explain. Many people who are still about would be outraged if I told the whole story and if they thought I had given up all the details. The bloke died saving my life. I held him in my arms as he bled to death from a broken bottle in the neck.

The Jew got there late. He sat with me, and we cried while Johnny died. I am not going any further about it; I will have to leave it at that.

If Dave the Jew and I had not paid for the cremation service Johnny would have been buried a nameless unknown vagrant in a pauper’s grave. How we got him cremated is our business. His life was a tragedy. His happiest days were with the Surrey Road Gang. Johnny’s goodbye was our personal concern. He was our brother and our comrade. Sending him off was for us alone.

Johnny always said he wanted to be burnt up when he died, and his ashes spread on the water — but not the sea, because he didn’t want the fishes to eat his remains. He once told us where he wanted his ashes put. And that’s what he got.

On the day of his funeral Dave and I met at the Morning Star Hotel. Dave carried a bag with an urn containing the mortal remains. He also carried in the bag a cut-down .22 calibre rifle with a special 30-shot clip. I carried a battery-operated cassette player with the Cowboy’s favourite song on the tape — an old 1950s rock’n’roll song,
‘Sea of Heartbreak’.
We drank at the Morning Star until closing time. Dave and I were quite tearful by then. We walked quietly along drinking from a bottle of good Irish whiskey until we got to the Prahran Swimming Pool and Baths on Malvern Road, across the road from the Prahran commission flats.

We broke the lock and went in. The night lights were on. We stood at the side of the pool and put the cassette player on and turned it up loud, and
‘Sea of Heartbreak’
rang out loud. Dave handed me the urn and I removed the lid, lifted it up high and said: ‘Goodbye Cowboy. We love you, brother’. Then I tipped the ashes into the water while Dave fired off 21 shots in the air with the cut-down .22.

I had tears running down my face. So did Dave. We didn’t care if anyone came along. We stood until
‘Sea of Heartbreak’
ended. Then we turned and walked away.

When next you use the Prahran swimming pool, spare a thought for Cowboy Johnny.

*

Three of the main offenders who took part in nearly killing me and killing the Cowboy are now dead themselves. ‘Revenge is a dish best eaten cold’.

Terry the Tank had left the Surrey Road gang and I was getting around with Mad Charlie. However, the offenders in the Richmond kicking matter had a Jewish problem which they didn’t realise. Dave the Jew took care of the three ringleaders over a period of years.

I am sorry to say I was in jail for all three ‘goodbyes’ — but nobody escapes the Jew. He watched and waited, slept under houses, stood in the rain and cold for hours and travelled by foot for days. He didn’t rest until Johnny had been revenged. The Jew felt that because he had been late arriving to the Richmond blue that my near-death and Johnny’s death fell on his shoulders — and that it was his debt of honour to get even.

The mind boggles at how those three died, as all three simply didn’t come home. One by one, they vanished. But if you can envisage a Mien Kampf-reading Jew being treated for a mental condition you might imagine what happened.

We were a hard crew, and followed violent rules. Loyalty without question and revenge or death was the creed we agreed upon. The Surrey Road gang made the mafia look like poofs.

It is no secret that from time to time in jail over the years I have not enjoyed the best of mental health.

There was a high pressure point in late 1983 after I was released from Jika. As I walked from Jika up to the mainstream of Pentridge, I was convinced I was walking into a blood bath. Then a familiar voice spoke to me.

I looked over my shoulder and there was Cowboy Johnny Harris walking behind me. I was told by prisoners and prison staff that for a few days my face and eyes had a crazy look. I spent two days talking to a dead man. In my mind I was convinced he was walking with me. I was in a highly dangerous state of mind.

THE COWBOY

His friendship I can’t forget, I’ll remember him ’till I die,
And sometimes in the dead of night I think of him and cry.
He fought his way into my heart, head butt, fist and tooth,
His shadow always with me, a memory from my youth,
No-one’s guts were stronger, no-one’s heart more true,
And no-one loved him more than me and Dave the Jew,
He gave his life that I should live,
And the dogs who killed him we don’t forgive,
That’s a tale the Jew won’t tell,
But all of them now rest in Hell,
The man without a name, a father or a mother,
Cowboy Johnny Harris, you’re not forgotten. Brother.

Chapter 6

Mad Charlie

‘Charlie studied Mafia crime books like a priest studied the Bible.’

‘MAD Charlie’ was a friend from my teenage days. He looked and sounded like a comic book gangster as a young man. He had dreams of greatness within the underworld. Once, in 1974, he went to America with his Mum and Dad, where he got to shake hands and say ‘hello’ to Carlo Gambino, the boss of bosses of the American Mafia. Carlo Gambino was head of the Gambino crime family, the largest of New York’s five Mafia crime families.

Charlie was only 17 years old then, and returned with a heart full of dreams and a head full of big ideas. We saw the
‘Godfather’
movie together. Charlie studied Mafia crime books like a priest studied the Bible. As a young up-and-coming criminal he had guts, brains and a small gang. Even as a teenager he was noted for his horrific violence in a street fight. He dressed expensively and had a style and class and flair that drew the attention of the main players in the criminal world.

I acted as Charlie’s personal bodyguard along with ‘Mad Archie’, a streetfighter who had punched in the heads of such men as Brian Kane and others of that ilk. As a gang of young standover men in 1973-1974 we had no equals. I was an 18 stone giant with a total disregard for the so-called king pins of the Melbourne underworld. I wanted to launch an all-out gang street war with the criminal world, and sit Mad Charlie on the throne. It sounded like a teenage criminal dream — but we had the guns and the wise advice of men like Horatio Morris directing me with tactics and targets.

Had Charlie given the go-ahead in 1974, I had a death list and enough M26 hand grenades to knock a giant hole in the Melbourne underworld — a hole big enough for us to walk through. But back then Mad Charlie didn’t fully understand the power and total insanity of the men he had with him. By the time he found out, it was too late for Charlie. He had lost the energy that fuelled him.

Charlie got the nickname ‘The Don’ as the result of a raid on a St Kilda massage parlour in 1974. In Mad Archie’s cherry red GT HO, armed with baseball bats, we cruised off to St Kilda. Charlie in the back seat with his always handy copy of Mario Puzo’s book
‘The Godfather’.
Charlie said in jest: ‘Chopper, you can be Luca Brasi; Archie, you can be Paulie Gatto’. He made Garry the Greek his adviser. Then we asked who he was going to be, and he said: ‘I’m the Don, of course’. So, in fits of laughter, off we went to St Kilda with Mad Archie at the wheel. He brought the big GT HO to a screaming halt across the footpath in front of the parlour in question; we ran out like screaming wild Indians and got to the front door . . . but where was Mad Charlie?

We looked around and there was Charlie sitting in the back of the car, reading his beloved
‘Godfather’
book. I went back and opened the door of the car. Charlie got out and said: ‘That’s right, Chopper: never forget the Don’.

‘Never forget the Don!’ indeed. Bloody Mad Charlie was sitting there waiting for me to open the door for him. To this day those close to Charlie still call him ‘the Don’.

We didn’t know it then, but that raid and others like it was the high point in Charlie’s criminal career. Raiding the parlours in the cherry red GT HO started what the papers called the 1974 ‘parlour war’ in the Prahran, Armadale, St Kilda, and Elsternwick areas.

However, five years jail saw Charlie bashed twice in fair fighting at the hands of Frankie Waghorn. Charlie’s failure to revenge it saw him lose face in the criminal world. His failure to back me in the Overcoat Gang war in Pentridge meant that in the world of real blood and guts his name no longer counted. In 1987, I told Charlie I would back him in a war within the underworld that would have put him on top of the heap, but he had lost his guts for true violence, and he declined.

In late 1989, he was shot in the guts in front of his $250,000 South Caulfield home. He’s still alive, but his dreams of underworld glory never reached his teenage fantasies. All he has now are his mafia books and his collection of gangster videos.

But to the underworld kingpins who might laugh at Charlie now . . . in 1974 one word from him could have seen them all dead, and changed the face of the underworld forever. We had the death list, the guns and the insanity to carry it out.