Hits and Memories: Chopper 2 Read Online Free PDF Page A

hate,
But shit happens and things change,
You might have to pull the gun,
When trouble comes into range,
But night after night and day after day,
You see trouble and you try and walk away,
But you can only walk ’till your back's to the wall,
Then someone has to live and someone has to fall.

Chapter 3
    The Scorpion and the Bullfrog
    ‘It now appears to me that I can only trust someone when I have a loaded gun stuck in their mouth.’
    IT took Read exactly six months and 450 kilometres to turn the full circle. He was back in a prison cell charged with the attempted murder of his friend Sid Collins, the former Melbourne president of the Outlaw motorcycle gang. As Collins lay near death in the Launceston General Hospital Read was enjoying his continuing love affair with the gaming tables at the nearby casino.
    Around midnight on May 13 Read was leaving the casino in a taxi when he was surrounded by ten police, all with guns drawn. He was ordered out of the cab. Read responded: ‘What’s this? A tax assessment?’
    Read’s dry humor fell on deaf ears, for his driver and mascot Trent Anthony had already made a statement identifying Read as the shooter. Strangely, Collins himself originally stated that he was shot by an unknown man outside his house in High Street, Evandale.
    Days after Read was charged, Collins changed his story. He said he had been sitting in the back seat of Read’s Ford sedan when the former Melbourne hitman turned from the front passenger seat and shot him in the chest.
    The charge of attempted murder was later dropped to grievous bodily harm. Police alleged Read shot Collins in the car and that Anthony and Read then drove the badly wounded man to hospital. The weapon, a .9 mm Beretta pistol, was later found hidden in the backyard of Read’s home.
    Collins later claimed that just before the shooting Read had said to him: ‘Do you want one in the brains?’
    The bullet entered Collins’s chest, deflected off a rib and passed through his colon and — according to medical evidence — damaged one kidney ‘like taking the top off a boiled egg.’
    Read had been close to Collins and claimed he had paid for the ex-bikie’s fiance’s wedding dress. Just before the wedding Read wrote to Collins from Risdon jail: ‘Dear Sid, I regret to inform you that I will be unable to attend your forthcoming wedding celebrations due to pending legal matters. Wishing you a speedy recovery. Regards, Mark’
    MANY years ago the old former boxer, merchant sailor and standover man Vincent Villeroy told me he thought I would die in jail or on the gallows. I was highly offended and asked him why, and he just replied: ‘Because, young fella, that’s just the way you are. A man is what he is and all the preachers, school teachers and the best-laid plans in the world won’t change what you are.’
    Then Vincent told me a story I still remember 15 years later . . .
    The scorpion and the bullfrog were on their way home and both came to the edge of a raging river. The scorpion couldn’t swim, but the big bullfrog was a powerful swimmer. The scorpion said: ‘let me climb on your back and you can swim me across the river.’ The bullfrog replied, ‘you must think I’m stupid; if I let you ride on my back, you will sting me and I will die.’
    ‘Don’t be silly,’ said the scorpion, ‘if I sting you we will both drown.’
    The bullfrog thought about it for a moment and then replied, ‘yes, of course, I see your point. OK, you can ride on my back.’
    So the scorpion hopped aboard the frog’s back and the bullfrog started to swim powerfully across the flooded river. But as the bullfrog reached the middle the scorpion lashed out with its poisonous tail.
    The frog cried out, as the venom began to paralyse its hind legs, ‘why, why, why now? Now we will both drown.’
    ‘Why?’ said the scorpion as it was swept away to its death, ‘because that’s just the way I am.’
    That old story is coming back to haunt me now.