Chopper by Mark Brandon Read

Author:Mark Brandon Read [Read, Mark Brandon]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: (¯`'•.¸//(*_*)\\¸.•'´¯), Non-Fiction, Biography
ISBN: 9781904034148
Publisher: John Blake
Published: 1991-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter 14

The plastic Godfathers

‘Freddy is a thickset, broad-shouldered, barrel-chested man with the physical strength of a small bull — and the courage of a rice bubble’.

THERE are certain criminals who get around Melbourne with big reputations thinking they are the mafia. Most of them are jokes. They bore me to tears. Their idea of mafia is to wear dark glasses in Lygon Street.

If you stand on a corner in Lygon Street wearing dark glasses and slip-on shoes and there’s more than two of you, then you’re in the mafia. It’s just ridiculous. These plastic crims, with their car phones and coke habits, they try to follow anything on American television. They aren’t tough at all.

There is one silly fat fool I’ve known for years, and as long as there’s a crim to sell down the drain neither he nor any of that Carlton Crew will do a day’s jail.

It is well-known in criminal circles that there are four main police stations in Melbourne: St Kilda Road, Russell Street, William Street . . . and Lygon Street. More crims have been given up by that lot of would-be pretenders than in the rest of Melbourne. So much for the mafia code of silence. They wouldn’t know anything about it. If that fat plastic Godfather ever ended up in here he would get a welcome he would never forget.

You are dealing with crims today who ‘fought’ their way through the back streets of ‘tough’ suburbs like Lower Templestowe, North Balwyn and East Ivanhoe. I was brought up in Thomastown. We thought the people in West Heidelberg were posh because they had sewerage.

The crims today come from quite affluent backgrounds. It’s shocking when you think about it. There is no excuse for some of them being inside. Some of them have matriculated, some have been to university. It’s drugs that have got them here, you understand.

It’s not the same anymore. I don’t want to spend the rest of my life mixing with this lot. Honestly, there are crims in here in their 20s who talk about the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. How can you spend your time with people like that?

The hard crims were the men with the dash to fight each other in the field of combat; they were the ones respected in the underworld. But now it is the man with drug connections. Some weak insipid, effeminate, little character calls the shots.

The number of crims who have Scarface on video at home is ridiculous. The Carlton Crew all have Godfather One, Two and Three on video. They have been talking about taking a contract out on me: $15,000 down and $15,000 when the job is completed. These so-called contracts are generally made in loud voices and in public, at card games or late at night at nightclubs.

The aim is to impress the crowd and to frighten me. All I can do is pass on the words of an old mentor and one of the world’s really hard men: ‘If the mafia

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