From the Inside: Chopper 1 by Mark Brandon "Chopper" Read Read Free Book Online Page B

elbow. I thought being driven to hospital by the unsuspecting ‘murder victim’ was a touch of Hitchcock. They simply thought the poor fellow had fallen from the balcony.
    There’s a postscript to that story. The chap who did all the beforehand planning and paid Dave $20,000 cash up front to do the hit was later shot dead himself . . . not long after he demanded his money back and threatened the Jew’s life. Ha ha.
    In early 1987, in Collingwood, I had four shots fired at me from a moving car. I made phone calls to various people and tried to have the offenders identified and located. I received information that it might be an Italian crew from Carlton. I rang Dave the Jew and demanded he case all the clubs in Carlton.
    The Jew obtained a Salvation Army uniform and hat and collection tin — and a dozen copies of the ‘War Cry’ — and he did Lygon Street. He noted that they are a ‘bloody good-hearted lot’ in Lygon Street: he made some $200-odd dollars, most of it from the clubs. However, an observant eye would have picked one flaw in the Jew’s cunning covert operation. The Salvos don’t collect money at two o’clock in the morning.
    He reported back on key figures, car rego numbers, club telephone numbers, where different people parked their cars, approximate nightly cash turnover — and the number of fire extinguishers, a key factor. He reported access to rear exits and the width of entrance stairs.
    I was considering a little IRA tactic called ‘petrol and plenty of it’. However, I was approached by certain police who swore to me that this crew was not guilty. I was of two minds about believing this or not. Dave, however, felt a fire was a wonderful idea, and that guilt could be determined after the event. The fact that the police knew about the shots fired at me, and police interest in my feelings re: Lygon Street, and the fact guilt had never been proven, led me to cancel ‘Operation Wog Fry’.
    It was a case where a peace meeting between my good self and the police stopped a war. We were going to turn part of Lygon Street into an inferno. I think Dave was a little disappointed we didn’t go ahead with the barbecue.
    *
    Dion was an Irishman — a seaman who went to Melbourne at least once a year. I met him through Dave the Jew. Dion now lives in South Africa and won’t be returning, so it’s okay to tell this story.
    In 1977 an argument broke out between Dion and Dave the Jew. Dave rang me and wanted me to come to his home in South Yarra. When I got there I found a badly-wounded Dion. Dave had shot him three times in the back, once in the chest, once in the buttocks, and once in the upper left leg. Dave had used a .32 calibre revolver.
    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.