Chopper Unchopped Read Online Free PDF Page B

relaxed comfort with his trust fund. And I’m where I am. That’s the Surrey Road gang now … a memory of my teenage years.

Chapter 3
Family and friends
    ‘Dad saved me a lot of bother … and Brian Kane an early funeral.’
    MY dear old Dad, Keith Alfred Read, served in the Australian Army for 24 years, the merchant navy for two years, and was a professional welterweight boxer for a while. As a result of his time in the ring he became friends and remained friends with the great Eddy Miller until Miller’s death in the late 1960s.
    During the 1939-45 war Dad served on the island of New Britain, then he went to Indonesia, Rabaul and other islands, then to Japan, where he saw Hiroshima first hand.
    Later, he joined the merchant navy for two years, then rejoined the army and served in the K Force in Korea.
    On leaving the army the second time he worked for Apps funeral directors. Apps had the Government contract picking up all the homicide and suicide jobs.
    My Dad is well known to all the crims who know me. He has withstood gossip and slander in the streets where he’s lived and countless death threats, all because of me. The stress and strain of my 20-odd years of police, prison and criminal trouble have taken their toll on Dad. However, he has stood with me rock solid and loyal through thick and thin. He would stand in front of me and take the bullet meant for me if he could. His love and loyalty is without question. What else can I say?
    *
    All my life Dad has slept with a gun beside his bed. And after his divorce from my mother he took to sleeping with a fully-loaded pump action alongside him in the double bed, barrel pointing down towards his feet. But I got him out of that. It now goes under or alongside the bed on the floor. Getting up at night to go to the toilet, with my old Dad and his trusty pump action in the next room, meant yelling out: ‘Going to the toilet, Dad’ so he knew who was walking around.
    ‘Right, boy’ he would yell back. One thing, with the old soldier in the next room, armed up, I slept well.
    *
    Once, when he was young, Dad got the idea that the next-door neighbours were mistreating their family pet. Every time he looked over the fence the animal seemed to be getting thinner and thinner.
    He complained to the neighbours, and said he hated cruelty to animals. Every time he asked them if they were feeding the dog, they swore they were. But it seemed skinnier than ever, and one day Dad could take no more. He jumped the fence, threatened the neighbour with a beating, then took the dog and drowned it to put it out of its misery.
    It was the first time he had seen a greyhound.
    *
    Old time gunman Horatio Morris introduced me to an old Melbourne bookmaker we’ll call Bert, a dark horse, behind-the-scenes man and quite a nice chap. And there was another fellow, a bookie called Pat. I met Pat years later in South Yarra in 1977. He was very close to Brian Kane. On the night in question Kane had pulled up outside an address in Rockley Road, South Yarra, to speak to a chap who had been roughing up Pat’s lady friend. The address was right next to where my Dad and I lived.
    I grabbed Dad’s pump action shotgun — the old Bentley — loaded it with heavy shot and ran down and bailed Kane up. Having met him at the Morning Star hotel in Prahran a month or so before in the company of police regarding a matter concerning Billy Longley, I was convinced he was in Rockley Road to kill me, and I had the barrel of the gun in his mouth.
    My Dad rushed out and calmed things down, allowing poor Brian to explain that he was on a mission of mercy regarding Pat’s lady friend being belted by the chap in the address near us in Rockley Road. Whereupon, we all went in and spoke to the offender in question.
    It was a close call. Dad saved me a lot of bother … and Brian Kane an early funeral.
    *
    Margaret is the only real girlfriend I’ve ever had. She has stuck by me with love, loyalty and devotion since 1983.