MY publishers contacted me roughly five minutes before publication and requested one more short story, so I sat down and pondered writing a short murder mystery called ‘Death of a Publisher – by Slow Strangulation’. However, the night before, I had been dreaming about a strange man with a pot plant so, with that as a start, I allowed my pen to stagger its way across the page, at first not knowing where I was heading from one word to the next. Then the plot took over.
I started with a pot plant and ended up again at the Caballero nightclub and beyond. This short story took me a night to write and would never have seen the light of day had my lunatic publishers not demanded just one more nutty yarn.
Don’t blame me.
– Mark Brandon Read
*
I SAT there watching Old Man Dawson as he walked up the road toward me and the rest of the kids at the bus stop. He was a local legend, a famous mental case. He had a mouth full of gold teeth and a big smile and he laughed when he smiled. A sort of mocking, knowing laugh.
‘Yeah, Pot Plant Dawson,’ said a fat kid sitting next to me.
‘He’s a mad old bastard. Look at the old goose.’
Old Man Dawson walked past us, carrying a pot plant as he always did. All the kids thought he was mad, and all the locals thought he was a little odd, to say the least. But I knew different.
The truth was, he was rich. Really rich. He owned the Dawson Cement Works and the Ice Works and the Dawson Iron Works. He was old, and his sons and grandsons ran the businesses for him, but he had plenty and his house on Military Drive was a bloody palace, worth a million bucks, my dad said. So how come he carried a pot plant around with him, no-one knew. It was just a little mad thing he had taken to doing for the past three years.
I smiled at Mr Dawson as he walked past and he gave me a gold-toothed grin and a wave, yelling ‘Hello Young Jackie.’
That’s me, Jackie Young. But everyone calls me Young Jackie. Old Man Dawson looked down at the pot plant he was carrying and back to me, and roared with laughter. He and I shared a private joke – and the joke was the secret of the pot plant. Mr Dawson carried his front door key inside the pot plant.
It all started about three years before. I was 11 years old and I found out that Old Man Dawson put his front door key into a pot plant. The trick was that he had a massive garden collection of more than 3000 potted plants in his front and back yard. I’d made various raids on his home, in search for the door key, until the day he caught me red handed. I thought he was out, but he was home. I was in the front yard tipping pot plants over when he came out and sprung me.
‘Hello, Young Jacko,’ he laughed. ‘Looking for something?’
I froze and stared at him as he locked his front door and put the key into the dirt in a small pot plant, then picked it up and walked off, laughing as he went.
Then he stopped and turned and said to me, ‘You’re a shifty little bugger, Jackie. But I tell you what, there is $2500 on top of my fridge. If you can pinch my front door key when I’m not home, the money is yours and I won’t ring the police. All you got to do is catch me when I’m not home and guess which pot plant the key’s in without tipping them over. Now clean up that mess and put them plants back in them pots. Dirt and all.’
As he walked off he said: ‘A riddle and a challenge, Jacko. That’s what life is, and there’s $2500 if you can solve it.’
I stood there and watched the old man as he walked away. To me, $2500 was all the money in all the world. But how could I find the key if he carried it with him in the pot plant. It took me a full year of spying to realise that he may not be carrying the pot plant with the key in it, and that the pot plant he was carrying was only a throw off.
Meanwhile, the pot plant collection was being added to by a dozen or so per week, and I’d stuck my Smokey Dawson super duper pocket knife into the guts of at least 1000 potted plants in search for the key. Then I just gave up, but I never told Pop Dawson and he just kept on hiding his front door key inside a pot plant, then carrying either the correct plant or a throw off with him wherever he went.
I had grown tired of it all, but Old Man Dawson was still much amused and quite convinced that I was still in search of the front door key and, I guess, the $2500 he’d told me was sitting on top of the fridge. But today as I saw him walk past, a thought occurred to me … run down to Military Drive and search the pot plants near the front door. The first dozen right near the front door. If I fail, I will walk away and never bother with Old Man Dawson and his stupid pot plants ever again, I told myself.
I got up and headed off to his place. It took me about five minutes. I jumped the front fence and made my way up the front path in between what seemed like a million pot plants, large and small, until I came to his front door. Sure enough, there was a line of about 50 potted plants running from his front door along the front of his house, under one of the windows. I thought to myself, to hell with it, and began to pick the pot plants up and tip them out. Nothing, nothing, nothing. Then, bingo. After about 20 plants I struck it lucky. My heart jumped. I grabbed the key and looked at it. No rust. It wasn’t old. It was a nice, new, well-used key. I stuck it in the doorlock and, the door opened.
I ducked inside and closed the door behind me. Inside, the house was dark. I could hear the loud ticking coming from a giant grandfather clock. My eyes grew accustomed to the dim light and I looked around the house. It was full of animal heads and paintings hanging from the walls and old wooden furniture, brass and marble statues. And, you guessed it, bloody pot plants. Big giant potted plants, palms and ferns in huge brass pots.
Old Man Dawson was mad about pot plants, all right. I walked tippy toe through this insane maze of bric-a-brac and bullshit and went in search of the fridge in the kitchen, all the time thinking that I must replace all the dirt in all the pot plants I’d emptied out.
I opened a big wooden door that led into a rear hallway and wished I hadn’t. I stood, staring in horror at a massive bottle some five feet high and three feet wide, filled with clear liquid. In it was something that looked at first like the body of a small ape or a large monkey. I turned on the hall light and took a closer look. Shit, it wasn’t an ape. It was a boy, a dead aboriginal kid, about 10 or 11.
I looked closer. His face was all swollen and sort of washed out by the liquid, but there was something familiar. I thought I recognised him. God yeah, it was Spit Lovett. he’d gone on the missing list about four years ago. Most of the kooris in town went looking for him. Everyone reckoned that he’d drowned in the Yarra and been swept away. Well, they were half right, I thought to myself.
Spit drowned alright. he’d got himself stuck into a giant bottle. Then I saw it in his hand. He was clenching something in his fist. I had a closer look. It was a key, very much like the key I’d used to open Old Man Dawson’s front door.
I began to wonder at this. I didn’t want to admit to myself that what my heart was pounding out and my brain was screaming out was true. I just walked down the hallway and turned and tried the knob on another large wooden door and entered a large trophy room. It was full of silver shields and cups and assorted football, cricket, hunting and fishing photos. And on the far side of the room was another giant bottle. And in it was another swollen kid in clear liquid.
First, I checked the hands. Sure enough, there was a clenched fist holding a key Then I looked at the face. I didn’t recognise this kid. He looked about my own age. A white kid with blond hair. I shuddered and walked out of that room and into another. And saw yet another giant bottle with a dead child in it, holding a key.
This time I recognised the swollen face. It was ‘G-clamp’ Gibson. Garry Gibson. he’d gone missing about a year ago, and there’d been a statewide search for him.
I ran out of that room and into another – and another giant bottle. This time it was a little girl I didn’t recognise.
I ran out and down another hallway and into the kitchen. Then I remembered the money. I checked the top of the fridge. No money – but there was an envelope with my name written on it: Jacko.
I opened it and pulled out a bit of paper. It read, ‘Dear Jacko, I lied’. I was terrified. I had to get out. I ran to the back door but it wouldn’t open. I began to panic. My heart was pumping, and my brain was spinning with fear. Get out of here, get out. I ran toward the front of the house into another room – and screamed with shock when I ran face to dead face into yet another giant bottle with another dead kid in it.
I stepped back, fell against a table and knocked over a small marble statuette. I grabbed the statue and hurled it at the big bottle – smashing the glass, spilling the clear liquid along with the floppy dead body. I ran screaming, panic-stricken into another hallway and ran back past the first bottle with Spit Lovett in it. I made my way to the front door, but it was locked. I’d opened it to get in, so how come I couldn’t open it to get out. I screamed and started to smash my fists against the door. Then I felt it a cold shiver ran up my spine.
‘Hello Jackie.’
I turned. It was old Pop Dawson, standing behind me. He smiled his golden smile and said, ‘so you finally found the key …’
*
THEN I woke up. I lay in my bed, shaking and sweating, a strange mixture of terror and relief. Did any of that ever really happen? The pot plant dream always seems to come back whenever I’ve been eating cheese on toast, which is generally Friday night.
Every Friday bloody night I get the pot plant dream. Saturday night it’s steak, eggs and chips, which means Wendy the weather girl generally pays me a visit with a bottle of baby oil. That dream I can live with, but being captured by an old psychopath pervert killer with gold teeth and a pot plant every Friday night is a bit of a worry.
I managed to doze off back to sleep, and woke up refreshed with the morning sun pouring through my bedroom window. My mad dad came in to my bedroom with my breakfast. More bloody cheese on toast. My dear old dad’s cooking skills didn’t run to much: cheese on toast, steak, eggs and chips, plum puddings, porridge, pie and peas, humbug stew, bubble and squeak, Irish hot pot and banana custard. Any one or two or three of them could be served for breakfast, lunch or tea.
I ate my cheese on toast and drank my mug of tea then got up and headed for the shower. Dad was busy watering his blooming pot plants.
I checked my face in the mirror. I needed a shave. I took my cobalt chrome false teeth out of the water glass and put them in my mouth and gave myself a big silver grin in the bathroom mirror. One day I’d have to get my nose fixed. The badly busted and broken nose didn’t fit a face as baby beautiful as mine.
‘God you’re a good looking bugger,’ I said out aloud to myself.
My old dad roared laughing from the next room.
‘Ya got a head on ya like a busted arse, Jacko. Ha ha.’
‘I’m your son,’ I yelled back.
Dad walked down the hallway of our Ascot Vale home and stood in the bathroom door with his pet Siamese cat Napoleon. He was holding Nappy upside down and looking at his bum.
‘I think this bloomin’ cat has got piles,’ said Dad.
‘Bullshit,’ I said. ‘Cats don’t get piles.’
‘Then what’s that?’ asked Dad, pointing to a red grape-like lump growing out of Nappy’s backside.
I grabbed a toothbrush and gave the offending lump a good poke, and Napoleon gave a meow and jumped out of dad’s hands and ran into the bathroom, jumped up onto the window ledge and vanished out the open bathroom window.
‘That’s my toothbrush!’ yelled Dad, and snatched it from me.
The morning comedy with my father was routine. We generally argued over his cooking, or the medical condition of the cat, or where he had hidden my gun, as was his habit.
I walked out into Racecourse Road in the warm morning sun and stood, waiting, lighting up my seventh cigarette for the morning. I’d cut myself down to a modest 30 per day in keeping with my new keep-fit program. An old Dodge Phoenix pulled up. My father’s best friend was at the wheel, Arnold Maloney, or ‘Redda’, as he was known from Fitzroy to Ferntree Gully. An old time welterweight prize fighter, Redda was an old man and an alcoholic but he could still punch holes in most of the so-called up and coming punk false pretenders that infested the Melbourne criminal world. I called him Uncle Arnie.
I enjoyed the company of men older than myself and Uncle Arnie was a toff, one of the last of the old-time hard men.
‘How’s ya dad?’ said Redda.
‘He’s as mad as a hatter,’ I said. ‘All he talks about is the cat’s piles and how the Australian Labor Party is being taken over by the Catholic Church.’
Redda gave me a puzzled look as I closed the car door behind me and settled myself into the seat beside him.
‘But it is, isn’t it?’
‘Isn’t it what?’ I said.
‘The Labor Party,’ said Redda. ‘The Church has been running it for years.’
I sighed. ‘Shut up and drive, Redda.’
*
WE were heading to a brothel in Tope Street, South Melbourne. We knew it would be closed, but the lady who ran it lived above the joint. Her name was Georgina. Don’t ask me her last name or her real name. All I knew was she owed Rolly Wooden $15,000 and I was on a one third recovery fee. Five grand for collecting 15, that’s not too bad. It was an old and long lost debt.
Georgina was the defacto wife, girlfriend, whatever to Machinegun Bobby Dixon, a so-called union boss on the waterfront, and a Trades Hall heavy. Rolly Wooden’s problem was that he was an honourary Life Member of the same union. He wanted the money back but he didn’t want to upset Machinegun Bobby. But, as old Redda was fond of saying, ‘Piss on ’em all, Jacko. We are surrounded by poofters and fools, piss on ’em all.’
I checked my 9 mm Beretta while Redda held the car steering wheel in one hand and a bottle of Vic Bitter in the other. His fourth for the morning by the look of the three empty aristotles rolling around on the car floor.
We got to the Tope Street address and I rang the bell. We had to wait for a while, then a Little Indian chick answered the door. Her name was Zalinda. She was dark and beautiful with sort of Chinese eyes and those lips that look like they’ve been sucking lollypops since she was six years old. Her hair was like black silk and she was tiny, about five feet tall and as skinny as a rake. She was quite breathtaking.
My mood mellowed as soon as I saw her.
‘Is Georgina in?’ I said in my Sunday best voice.
‘She is upstairs,’ said Zalinda. ‘Who may I say is calling?’
‘Tell her Jackie Young wants a private word with her, please.’
Zalinda invited us inside and showed us into a plush waiting room. It had a bar fridge, which Redda noticed immediately. The old bugger could smell a bar fridge at 50 yards through concrete walls. Zalinda was quick off the mark and invited Redda and my goodself to help ourselves. Then she turned around and bounced her little black bottom up the stairs to get Georgina.
‘This will be money for jam,’ whispered Redda.
‘I don’t know,’ I replied. ‘Getting money out of molls is like getting blood out of a stone.’
‘Well then, blood it will be,’ laughed Redda. ‘But we ain’t leaving empty handed.’
He pulled the cork out of a small bottle of Johnny Walker Whisky and drowned half the contents in three large swallows and handed the rest to me. I finished the rest off and Redda reached for a larger bottle of Black Douglas Whisky and we proceeded to do likewise with it. After about ten minutes we heard footsteps on the staircase and a tall, wet dream redhead walked into the room with the little Indian princess close on her heels.
‘Hello Jacko,’ she said. ‘We haven’t met before, but I know your dad.’
I thought to myself for a moment, was there anyone in fucking Melbourne who didn’t know my dad? For a man who hadn’t been out of the house in the last 20 years, that was pretty bloody amazing.
‘Oh,’ I said with a surprised look, ‘Where do you know my dad from?’
‘He is a friend of my father’s,’ said Georgina.
‘And who is your dad?’ said Redda.
‘Earl Cartwright,’ said Georgina. ‘He’s the MLA for the seat of …’
‘Yeah, Yeah’ interrupted Redda. ‘I know him. Shit, you’re his kid. Shit, Jacko,’ he said to me. ‘Cartwright and Bunny Whales run the docks. Biggest pair of dogs in the western suburbs.’
Georgina froze and snapped at Redda, ‘Who the hell are you, ya silly old turd?’
‘I’m Redda Maloney, and you’ll be copping this whisky bottle up the clacker if you snap at me again.’
Her mood suddenly softened. ‘Look, what’s going on and what do you want?’ she asked.
‘15 grand’ said Redda. ‘You owe Rolly Wooden 15 grand.’
‘Listen,’ said Georgina. ‘Bobby Dixon is a good friend of mine, and he said that debt was cancelled.’ Redda was about to tear strips off her but I cut him off. He had a tongue like emery paper and broken glass. I went for the smooth approach. As my dad told me many a time, you can turn nasty anytime.
‘Look Georgina, I think we have gotten off to a bad start,’ I said. ‘Let’s all go upstairs and talk this shit over.’ Georgina gave me a little smile and her eyes gave out a professional twinkle. I could tell she was thinking that this whole unpleasantness over the $15,000 could be sorted out with a little bedroom accounting upstairs. She paid all her debts and bills off that way, so it was quite natural for her to misunderstand my intentions, which were entirely honourable, I can assure you.
Zalinda was a mind reader. She gave Georgina a quick look, then gave me and Redda a dazzling smile. Poor little Zalinda had no idea what any of this was about, but she was quite convinced that it would involve the removal of her knickers in about five minutes, and she seemed quite happy to help solve any pressing problem Georgina was faced with.
We all went upstairs. It was obvious at one glance that the two women had been sharing the same large queensize double bed. Georgina removed her little flimsy dressing gown and fell back on the bed, spreading a rather long set of legs.
‘How about we work this off on a time payment scheme,’ she said in a voice that had launched a thousand stiffs.
Zalinda took the cue. She made her little white silk dressing gown vanish in no time flat, and got to her knees in front of old Redda, and I don’t think it was because she intended to tie his shoelaces. I stepped toward Georgina, took out my Beretta and brought it down across the her face. Her top lip and top teeth exploded in a shower of blood. She screamed and started to choke as her top teeth got caught down the back of her neck. She rolled off the bed and fell on all fours, vomiting blood and teeth, crying and gagging. Zalinda froze in horror. People are always surprised when you act honourably like that, instead of taking advantage of defenceless women. All we wanted was to collect a debt, not indulge in hanky panky.
‘Where does she keep her money, princess?’ I said to the little Indian beauty.
Zalinda wasn’t feeling very brave just then. She stood up and, like a frightened child, walked into the kitchen and removed a kitchen drawer and reached in and took out a small locked metal strong box.
‘I don’t know where the key is,’ she whispered. ‘Georgina has got it.’
I took the box and shook it. It was heavy. ‘How much is in here?’ I asked.
‘Friday, Saturday nights’ takings and I think Sunday and Monday as well. Six girls working the night shifts, 12 hour shifts,’ said Zalinda. ‘Each girl makes $200 an hour, 50 bucks goes to Georgina, 12 times $50 is $600, $600 times six is $3600, $3600 times four is $14,400 plus a $2000 float petty cash. I reckon there would be 16 grand in there. Probably more,’ she said.
I was a bit taken back at Zalinda’s accounting. Then again, most molls had brains like pocket calculators. That’s why they got into the hawking the fork caper in the first place. I walked over to Georgina, who was still on all fours, crying and bleeding.
‘Where’s the key to the money box?’
‘I haven’t got it,’ she sobbed.
‘Look honey,’ I said. ‘Give us the key or I’ll smash your little black plaything here in the face so many times she won’t get a job selling her arse in a horror movie.’
‘Smash the dog of a thing,’ said Georgina, ‘I haven’t got the key.’
I looked at Zalinda, her eyes turned from fear to deep hurt and then to fury. Hell hath no fury like a lesbian in love, who’s just been told she don’t matter any more. I sort of felt a bit sorry for little Zalinda. None of this shit was her fault. I gave Georgina a swift kick in the side of the face; she screamed and rolled on her back and curled up into a foetal position.
I said one more time, ‘where’s the key?’ and reached down and pushed the barrel of my Beretta into her right eyeball. She screamed again and yelled, ‘In the fish tank. It’s in the fish tank.’
I turned to Zalinda. ‘Where’s the bloody fish tank?’
Zalinda was attempting to dress herself. She put on a pair of white short pants that came down to her knees, and a tee shirt. The clothes looked ten sizes too big for her, but she did look cute. She looked at me with a start.
‘Can I get dressed please?’ she asked.
‘Yeah, go on,’ I said. ‘But where’s the fish tank?’
‘It’s downstairs,’ she said, putting on a silly pair of slippers.
‘I’ll show you,’ and off we all went downstairs into the waiting room again. I hadn’t noticed the fish tank when I first came in. It stood alongside the TV set. Zalinda pointed to it.
‘Well, reach ya bloody hand in and get the key,’ I growled at the girl. She did, and after about a minute of hunting around in the pebbles on the bottom of the tank she came up with the key. I opened the money box.
‘Shit,’ I said to Redda. ‘There is about 20 grand easy in here. Let’s go.’ Redda and I headed for the door. ‘Hang on,’ I said. ‘Wait. What about these sheilas.’
‘I won’t tell,’ said Zalinda. ‘I’m going to pack my gear and get out of here, if that’s okay with you?’ I looked at her and said, ‘Do what you like, darling’.
I went back upstairs to Georgina and said, ‘Tell Bobby Dixon I took ya money and if there is any police involved in this, if I can’t kill him, I’ll kill his family. I’ll kill your dad. Just cop it sweet and say nothing. If ya want to back up and kill me, fine. Do it or try to but tell on me and you and every relative you’ve got will be declared dogs and I’ll drown you in a river of your own blood. Your dad, your mother, brothers, sisters, kids. She sobbed and cried. ‘I won’t tell, I’m not a give up.’
‘I’ll eat your mother’s eyes if you do,’ I said. ‘Now cop it sweet.’
I put my boot into her ribs for one last goodbye. When I went downstairs Zalinda was standing there with a plastic rubbish bin bag full of clothes and she had changed into a pair of white high heels and a white silk dress that looked like some sort of baby doll sexy dressing gown. She looked like a refugee from a porno movie.
‘Can you give me a lift, please?’ she asked. ‘I want to get out of here.’
I said, ‘Yeah, come on.’
We all walked out. She got into the back of the Dodge and I said, ‘you got any dough?’
‘Only my wages for the last three days.’
‘How much is that?’ I asked.
‘$4500,’ she said, without batting an eyelid.
Redda coughed. ‘Four and a half grand, Jesus Christ.’
Zalinda had that cute, puzzled look, like a kitten who can’t work out where you’ve hidden the saucer of milk. ‘Well,’ she explained, ‘ten mugs a night at $150 each in my pocket is $1500 times three is $4500’.
‘Ten a night,’ I said. ‘How many nights do you work?’
‘Five nights a week’ she replied.
I thought about this, little Zalinda was earning more hard cold cash in a week than me and Redda earned in a month. In fact, most of the hard men in Melbourne wouldn’t pull six grand a week. It was really quite shameful.
Blokes like me spent our lives wading through a sea of blood and guts on a razor blade between life and death to earn less dough a week than your average cracker with a tube of KY Jelly, a jumbo size box of condoms and a bucket for a bum. The silly part was that a lot of working girls hero worshipped gunnies and gangsters the way rock and roll groupies were mad about long-haired pansies with swivel hips and poofy guitars, yet the gangsters earned less regular income than the gobble doc girls. But, of course, they didn’t know that and none of us was about to tell them. Call it professional pride.
I shook my head, the whole thing was a shameful comedy. Redda drove along sucking on a bottle of Johnny Walker whisky he had taken from the bar fridge. Back at Tope Street I asked Zalinda where she wanted to get dropped off. ‘The Park Motel in North Carlton,’ she said. ‘I’m enrolling at Melbourne Uni next month so that will be handy.’
‘Melbourne Uni,’ I said with surprise. ‘What are you doing working in a whore house?’
‘Saving money,’ she said. ‘I’ve saved quite a bit over the last year.’
‘I bet you have,’ said Redda. ‘I bloody well bet you have. What will you be studying?’
‘Criminal Law,’ said Zalinda.
Redda and I both broke up laughing. ‘How old are you, princess?’ I asked.
‘I’m 18,’ she said. ‘I’m having a year off before I start Uni.’
I wondered out loud if many lady lawyers took a year off doing such things to subsidise their studies. ‘At least two more that I know of,’ said Zalinda. ‘Carmella, she works part time on the night shift, is a second year law student.’
‘Well,’ I said. ‘Who knows? One day you might be able to defend me.’ Zalinda reached over and put her little arms around my neck and giggled. ‘I’ll get you off as well, Jacko, even if I have to pork the prosecutor.’
‘Ha, ha. You may very well have to,’ said Redda with a chuckle like a chainsaw. ‘The last bloke Jacko shot was in front of 78 eye witnesses outside Flemington racetrack.’
Zalinda thought a second about 78 eye witnesses. ‘What did you plead?’ she asked.
‘Not guilty, of course’ I said, indignantly.
‘Perfectly correct,’ said Zalinda. ‘Bodgie witnesses and police verbals. How long did you get?’
‘Two years’ I told her. ‘Do ya reckon ya could have gotten me off that one?’
‘Not unless it was an all male jury and I had their phone numbers,’ said Zalinda, quick as a flash. The girl had a sense of humour as well as her more obvious assets.
We dropped her off at the Park Hotel and with a kiss goodbye and a wave and a laugh she bounced across the footpath and into the joint. As we drove off I wondered if she ever would become a criminal lawyer. Most working girls were space cadets and dream merchants, but that kid seemed to have her shit together.
We headed off the Beach Road, Brighton, to Rolly Wooden’s place. Rolly drove a 1973 Rolls Royce, powder blue or sky blue, call it what you will. And he had it parked up on his nature strip. We got out of the car and walked up the driveway. Rolly opened the front door and stood in the doorway.
‘You two dickheads made a nice pig’s breakfast of that one,’ he said before I’d even spoken.
I pulled out 10 grand and said, ‘Here’s ya money,’ and Rolly laughed. ‘That’s not my money you collected. That’s money off ya own bat. You heard about the debt and did a bit of freelancing work and used my name without permission. You’re a pair of dead men.’
‘That’s bullshit,’ I said.
‘Yeah, I know,’ said Rolly, ‘but that’s what I just told Bobby Dixon. He was on the phone to me 20 minutes ago. Why didn’t you mask up? Why introduce yourselves, I’m sorry Jacko but you and Redda are on ya own. Keep the 10 grand. You’re both dead men.’
Redda and I stood there. Rolly went inside and slammed the door.
*
THREE months passed by and I never heard any more about nothing to do with the 20 grand, Georgina, the brothel in Tope Street, Rolly Wooden or Machinegun Bobby Dixon. The shooting of Chicka Charlie Doodarr in the Coliseum Hotel by some lone wolf gunnie overshadowed all other news, and underworld crews all over Melbourne were running for cover or hiding under their beds. My old dad was a personal friend of Johnny Go-Go’s dad, so even though I knew Go-Go only at a waving distance, a polite nod of the head in passing sort of thing, because of my father I felt committed morally and emotionally to the Collingwood side of any argument. This was despite the fact I was an Ascot Vale boy and I was seeing a stripper who lived in Ascot Vale named Jandie, an all tits and legs glamour girl who could melt fly buttons and zippers with a smile.
She worked at the Caballero Night Club, so through no fault of my own I found myself drawn in to an area and a world that was right out of my league. Melbourne is made up of gangs, crews and teams, all interconnected through blood, marriage, loyalty, friendship and business. One half of Melbourne has always been at war with the other half, and the endless bloodshed and violence between interconnected crews is and has been the normal way of things in Melbourne for more than 100 years. It’s part of the criminal culture.
Money is money, but in Melbourne whose side you are on in an argument is all important. In Melbourne, nothing is ever forgotten. Nothing is ever forgiven. Melbourne gangsters were still shooting each other over a gang war Squizzy Taylor started with Henry Stubbs 50 years after Taylor was shot dead in Carlton. Crims were still gunning each other down over a war Normie Bradshaw started in the early 1950s, and here we were in the 1990s still evening up in gun battles over the death of Pat Shannon in 1973.
It would take another 20 to 30 years to kill off all the bad blood over the Kane Brothers and Ray Chuck, and the Collingwood war which caused the deaths of Micky Van Gogh and Ripper Roy Reeves wouldn’t end for a long, long time.
Chicka Charlie was just one more funeral of many. The cops in Melbourne think the same way as the underworld. They will fight a payback war and pass it on from father and son. In 50 years time the sons and grandsons of the men involved on both sides of the argument over the Russell Street bombing and the Walsh Street shootings will still be blueing with each other.
That’s Melbourne. Nothing is over until it’s over, and even then your grandchildren will piss on the graves of men who went to war with their grandfathers 60 years ago. In a way, the Melbourne criminal world is very incestuous. Everyone is up everyone. For a big city of three million or whatever the last count was or is, the Melbourne criminal world is very much like a small Tasmanian country town: everyone is either a friend of a relative or related to a friend, the enemy of a relative or related to an enemy.
I’d never ventured over to Collingwood in my life. I was 34 years old and I’d never been to Collingwood, but now that I was keeping company with Jandie, so to speak, I could hardly not go to see her dance at the famous old bloodhouse and criminal shooting gallery that was the legendary Caballero nightclub. But, like all Melbourne crooks, I quickly did a mental check of who my enemies were friends with, not only the dagos but also the dockies. Bobby Dixon and Rolly Wooden had nil influence outside of Port and South Melbourne, maybe a little in the western suburbs and less than nil in Collingwood.
Johnny Go-Go and his insane tattooed girlfriend led a gang of lone wolf gunnies and psychopaths. The Collingwood crew was put back together stronger than ever after the deaths of Micky Van Gogh, Mad Raychell and Ripper Roy, and to enter the Caballero was to enter this world. The expression ‘no-one gets out alive’ danced inside my brain. I didn’t want to join the insane Collingwood war, but I knew if I saw Johnny Go-Go I’d agree to team up willingly and at a moment’s notice. What’s the use of being a gunnie if you couldn’t get the chance to go down in a bloody blaze of gunfire and glory. So I rang old Redda and told him to come and collect me. We were heading for Collingwood.
We got to the Caballero about 10.30 p.m. It was a dark cold night. It was nice and warm inside the Club. I sat at a table and looked at the dancers. There was Jandie, in stilettos and gee string, rocking and rolling to the music with a dozen or so sailors from the HMAS Wombat or some such nonsense, stuffing ten dollar bills into her knickers. But my attention was taken up by a chick at the far end of the club. A dark-skinned beauty with Chinese eyes, she was wearing white high heels and little white high cut knickers and dancing on a table in front of a large crowd of men, who were paying very close attention.
It was Zalinda, the little would-be law student. Well, it was a step up from hocking her box in Tope Street. I never thought much of this. As large as the criminal world was, it was so very, very small. It was then that Johnny Go-Go approached our table and said hello to Redda. Everyone knew Redda Maloney. Getting around with Redda was like walking around with a Gold Pass to every shithole in town
Redda introduced me to Johnny Go-Go. He looked at me and said, ‘We know each other don’t we?’ I explained that my dad knew his dad.
‘Oh yeah,’ said Johnny Go-Go. ‘Jackie Young, young Jacko. How’s Machinegun Bobby?’ He said this with an evil laugh, and I laughed as well.
He invited me and Redda over to the bar. There was a good-looking, hard-faced blonde girl at the bar wearing jeans, runners and a long black overcoat. I didn’t know her but I knew who she was. Who the hell didn’t? Karen Phillips, the psycho queen. She was holding a glass of whisky with her left hand, the one covered with a spider’s web tattoo. I felt like I was a fly and I had walked into a web. I was introduced and before I knew it Redda and myself had been invited to crew up with Crazy Karen and Johnny Go-Go. I didn’t know how it happened. They didn’t like Bobby Dixon or Rolly Wooden. Neither did Redda or me. It was a sort of unspoken agreement. Karen just put her tattooed hand on my shoulder and said, ‘Ya with us now Jacko. Fuck ’em all. By the time we are through there will be no-one left alive north, south, east or west of Smith Street. Ha ha.’
Karen thought this remark the height of good humour. A hand touched me and I turned to see Zalinda. She was nearly naked. ‘Hi ya, Jacko’ she said.
‘How’s it going with the legal studies?’ I asked. Always the gentleman, me. Like Dale Carnegie says, always remember people’s names and what their interests are. I suspected that one of Zalinda’s interests was the bulge in my Levi’s.
Zalinda told me she was at Uni full time and danced on Friday and Saturday nights to help pay the bills. She had bought her own flat in North Carlton with the cash earnings from her labour at Tope Street and she could pull a grand a night out of the Caballero.
‘You know each other?’ asked Karen Phillips.
‘Yeah’ I said, sensing that the Psycho Queen already knew the answer.
The night raged on with more heavy drinking. Johnny Go-Go and Karen vanished for a while with Redda, and I didn’t see them again that night. When Redda came back he gave me a wink and said, ‘We are on, mate.’
I asked him what he meant and he whispered, ‘Bobby Dixon, ten grand each, half now, half after’. Redda patted his pocket. ‘I’ve got half right here,’ he said, proud as a boy with a broken arm.
I went cold. ‘You told those two mental cases that we’d do it?’ I hissed.
‘Yeah’ said Redda, looking hurt. ‘Why not? We don’t like the dog.’
I said to Redda, ‘Listen mate, the Rabbit Kisser’s idea of security is to kill all the witnesses even if they didn’t see nothing. If we do this we put ourselves in the middle of a blood war for ten grand we have got and ten we may not live to collect.’
‘Don’t worry, Jacko’ said Redda. ‘We’ll be right. Hey mate, do ya mind if an old bloke has a crack at Jandie?’ I looked over and Jandie was waving at Redda.
‘Hi ya, Uncle Redda.’
‘Uncle Redda?’ I echoed, looking surprised. The old bastard looked a bit embarrassed.
‘I use to take her mum out. I’ve known her since she was a kid.’
‘You dirty old prick,’ I said. ‘You’re 100 bloody years old.’
‘C’mon mate,’ said Redda, ‘no-one misses a slice of a cut loaf. You’re only rooting her aren’t you, mate. You’re not in love with her or anything?’
‘Nah,’ I said, ‘She’s a public toilet. Go for ya life.’
Jandie was a magic-looking chick but I was right, a low life sexual and moral, mental and emotional public toilet. And I began to wonder at all of this. Jandie picked me up at the Racecourse Hotel. She conned on to me with her big tits and her micro mini. I don’t kid myself: chicks like Jandie don’t con on to blokes like me for no reason. Did this all just happen? Most of the molls in Melbourne used to work for or paid money to Mad Raychell Van Gogh. She was the most feared whore in Melbourne. Karen Phillips was her right hand girl. If the Rabbit Kisser told Jandie to pick me up or suck off an elephant Jandie would do it, and Jandie knows old Redda.
Bloody Melbourne, I thought to myself. Every bastard is related to every other bastard. Then I looked down at little Zalinda.
‘C’mon, princess. Get dressed and let’s go. Show me ya new flat.’
*
KILLING Bobby Dixon wasn’t too hard at all. We just knocked on his front door in Prahran and blew his head off with a shotgun. The only trouble was his wife attacked us with a meat cleaver and hit me a savage blow in the face. She showed no gratitude at all. We put six rounds into the mad cow to stop her. The following night Redda died of a heart attack in the car park behind Jandie’s place. He had been screwing the mad moll over the bonnet of his old Dodge Phoenix when his heart gave out. Not a bad way to go, I guess. More than 70 years old, humping the arse of a dick killer like Jandie over the bonnet of a classic motor car. He was carrying no money when the police found him in the morning. Jandie had thoughtfully removed some seven-odd thousand dollars he was carrying.
Nice girl was Jandie. A week later we found out that the heart attack was brought on by a quantity of meth amphetamine in his blood system. No doubt put into his drink by Jandie. I still had ten grand to collect from Johnny Go-Go and Crazy Karen, but it was something I was putting off doing. Jandie, old Redda, Bobby Dixon, the Caballero, I was still heavily bandaged and my face in stitches. The police were going silly and I was lying low, not at dad’s place but at Zalinda’s flat in North Carlton.
She was nursing me better. I trusted Zalinda while at the same time watching every move she made. She was a fantastic little lady and she really seemed to care for me. I couldn’t introduce her to my dad. Shit, after wogs, spooks were the next ones down on his hate list, just above Catholics, child molesters and drug dealers and members of the railways police. Little Zalinda would get into a sexy white nurse’s uniform and fuss about me until I could take no more and pull her into bed.
‘Ohh, Mr Young,’ she would squeal with pretend surprise. ‘You don’t expect me to nurse that. Really I couldn’t possibly. Maybe if I sit on it it will go away.’
For a tiny little lady she had a snatch on her like a barn door. The bloody thing had no end and no sides. She would squeal with delight and pretend to be in pain as she put it in. I was so big and she was so tiny and I’d lie there and say to myself, ‘You lying slag, you could smuggle a watermelon through customs up there and it wouldn’t bring a tear to your eye.’
Zalinda still worked at the Caballero on Friday and Saturday nights. About a month after the death of Bobby Dixon and old Redda Maloney, she came home to tell me that Jandie had died of a heroin overdose in her dressing room at work, and Karen would like to come over and settle up the ten grand she owed me. ‘She said you’d understand,’ Zalinda said.
I rang the Caballero and asked for Karen. After a minute, she came to the phone. ‘How ya going mate?’ she said. ‘How come you haven’t come over to see us?’
I explained my injury, and said I wanted to keep a low profile in case someone was unkind enough to suggest a connection between it and the recent unfortunate events at Bobby Dixon’s. ‘Okay,’ said Karen. ‘I’ll pop over and see you and Zalinda tonight. By the way, Jandie was a favour.’
She didn’t need to say any more. I knew exactly what she meant. I hung up. Yeah, I thought to myself, she got Jandie to put speed into the old guy’s booze, then hump a heart attack into him. Then she gives Jandie a hot shot. I grabbed my gun. This crazy cow sets people up. Gets ’em put off then cleans up all the witnesses after. I wasn’t important to her. Revenge against every enemy Mickey the Nut and Ripper Roy ever had was her only concern, and she’d kill a dozen friends to get one enemy. She was insane. I wasn’t going to kill her, that would be suicide. Johnny Go-Go would butcher me and every relative I had in Melbourne. But I wasn’t going to let her kill me, that was for sure.
Karen Phillips arrived at Zalinda’s flat at about 1 am carrying an expensive bottle of scotch and a brown paper bag. ‘I can’t stay long,’ she said.
She tossed me the paper bag with the ten grand in it, and an extra six and a half that Jandie had removed from old Redda’s pockets.
‘She was a treacherous slut, that Jandie,’ said Karen. ‘Listen mate, I just came to square up. Here’s the dough.’ She handed Zalinda the whisky and kept talking. ‘I’m sorry about old Redda. I don’t know why Jandie would want to fill the old bloke up with speed. Anyway, come to the club when ya face heals up. We can do some more business. Johnny’s in the car downstairs, I gotta go.’
‘Yeah, okay then,’ I said.
This chick could make a warm room feel like the inside of a freezer. I was shivering from a sudden chill in the air, yet Zalinda had the heating in the flat on flat out. Karen patted me on the shoulder with her tattooed left hand and said: ‘You’ll be right, Jacko. Collingwood looks after its own.’ Then she turned and walked out. As soon as she left I began to feel warm again.
‘I didn’t know you came from Collingwood?’ said Zalinda, as she opened the whisky Karen had given her and poured us a large drink each.
‘I don’t come from Collingwood,’ I said. Zalinda looked a bit puzzled and said Karen came out with some odd things, at times. I grunted as I took a big gulp of the scotch. ‘Ya not wrong there, little princess.’
We finished off our drinks and poured a full second glass each. What the hell, I thought. The whisky hadn’t cost us anything and I’d just picked up better than 16 grand. I was feeling generous.
Zalinda was thinking. ‘Let’s take this dough and go to Surfers for a week or two and lay in the sun,’ she said suddenly. ‘Let’s get out of all of this violence shit, Jacko. I could sell my flat. Hell, I’ve got money. So have you,’ said Zalinda.
‘I could make a bloody fortune up in Surfers Paradise.’
‘Yeah,’ I said as I emptied my second glass. ‘Why not, bugger all this shit.’
Zalinda looked into her glass as she drained it. ‘This is the worst scotch whisky I’ve ever drunk,’ she said.
‘Yeah,’ I said. ‘Tastes a bit bitter. Good 12-year-old scotch shouldn’t taste like it got boiled up yesterday. Bloody bitter …’
I felt sleepy. As if I could sleep forever …
*
IT was a quiet Sunday morning at the press rooms at Russell Street police station. Charlie ‘The Bear’ Walker, veteran crime roundsman for the Flinders Street tabloid, ‘The Sun’, stepped into the police media liaison office. He knew the policeman behind the counter. Wayne ‘Wilbur’ Wilson had been in his job nearly as long as Charlie had been pounding a typewriter. Between them they had nearly 40 years experience of crime, death, destruction and hangovers.
Walker nodded his usual quiet greeting, and picked up the chipped masonite clipboard. On it was a torn Telex message from a Carlton senior constable. It read: ‘Attended flat 4, 127 Lygon Street after complaints of loud television. On arrival, found door unlocked, entered premises and found heavily-tattooed Caucasian man, approximately 35 years of age, deceased, on floor. On couch was body of woman, approximately 20 years of age, of Indian appearance, also deceased. Fingerprint checks indicated male known to police. Female’s identity not yet known.
‘Initial inquiries indicate cause of death poisoning. Suspected suicide pact. Coroner notified. Duty inspector notified. Homicide squad notified. Forensic notified. Whisky bottle taken for examination. Names not to be released. Relatives not notified.’
Walker looked at Wilson, then said what they were both thinking. ‘Suicide be buggered. There’s no note. There’s a yarn in there somewhere, but the only people who know what it is won’t be talking.’