Enforcer (17 page)

While Knuckles was still in hospital, Jock gave another member, Opey, and me the task of finding a new clubhouse. We’d outgrown the one at Granville, and it was time for something a bit more flash.

Opey rocked up to my place one day and said he’d found a place at Birchgrove. ‘D’ya wanna come down and have a look, see if you reckon it’s a go?’

So I got on my bike and followed him down through inner-western Balmain, into Birchgrove and to the bottom of Louisa Road, which ran down a narrow peninsula jutting into Sydney Harbour. Opey had a key and took me through the place. Soon as I got inside and saw the harbour views, the size of the place, I was rapt. The backyard ran right down to the water and looked straight onto the Harbour Bridge.

‘How much?’ I asked Opey.

‘Three hundred bucks,’ he said, ‘but we can get in and have a coupla weeks free if we sign the lease later in the month.’

‘Take it.’

At the next meeting we told everyone that we’d found the new clubhouse, so members started going down to have a look. Then we started moving the bar and fridges into the place. We had a couple of tables and coin-operated Space Invader machines that we set out on the verandah, which was all encased in glass, so that you could play games or just sit there and look out over the water.

We were still at Granville, just moving things in slowly, when Shadow and Chop rocked up to me before a meeting one night and announced that they were going to bring Jock up on a charge; they wanted his colours.

I couldn’t believe my ears. Whatever they had on him, they obviously reckoned it was enough for immediate expulsion – even for the president.

‘What happened?’ I asked.

‘He’s been screwing another member’s old lady.’

‘How d’ya know?’

‘We were over at Five Dock this morning and saw

Jock’s truck parked out the front of _____ ’s house,’

Chop said. (I won’t name the member out of respect for him and his family.) ‘We pulled up and as we were walkin’ up to the front door, I looked through the winda

and there was Jock screwing _____ ’s old lady.’ Chop

grabbed Shadow and pulled him over to check it out.

‘He was going to town on her,’ Shadow said. Chop

knocked and _____ ’s old lady came to the door with

Jock standing right beside her. Shadow asked him what he was doing there and Jock said he’d just dropped in

to see _____ . Chop and Shadow just turned round and

left.

‘You’ve got no doubt?’ I asked them.

‘No,’ Chop answered. ‘No doubt whatsoever.’

‘Well you know the rule,’ I told them. ‘If you’re gunna bring someone up and you want their colours, you’ve gotta talk to ’em before the meeting and give ’em a chance to explain.’

‘There’s no way he can explain his way out of this.’

‘Have you told _____ ?’

‘Yeah.’

‘What did he have to say?’

‘He was shattered,’ Chop said. ‘He took off on his bike and we haven’t seen him since.’

‘Is he here?’ Shadow asked.

‘No, and the meeting’s about to start,’ I said. ‘Jock’s not here yet either so you’re probably gunna have to wait till the next meeting to bring him up.’

The meeting started and Jock only turned up halfway through – too late for Shadow and Chop to talk to him.

After the meeting, I called Jock out the back. Shadow and Chop came out and fronted him about what they’d seen. Jock denied it, but Shadow and Chop called him a straight-out liar. I told them to wait there for a minute and went and got Sheepskin, took him out the back. I figured we needed another member there who couldn’t be accused of bias.

‘Shadow,’ I said, ‘tell Sheepskin what you seen.’

Shadow told Sheepskin, and Chop confirmed it. Sheepskin slumped. He turned to Jock: ‘You’re a stupid fuckin’ old fool. You’re gone. You’ve done yer colours.’

I actually felt sort of sorry for Jock at that moment because he had started the club and now, for the sake of a fuck, he knew that come next meeting, he’d be out.

D
URING THE
following week we finished the move from Granville to Birchgrove, so we were well ensconced in our plush new clubhouse by the time of the next meeting. And it was shaping up to be a doozy.

We had all agreed we wouldn’t tell the other members about Jock screwing another member’s old lady. The member concerned had asked us not to, so out of respect to him we kept it just between Shadow, Chop, Jock, Sheepskin and myself.

Come meeting night, we were all sitting there in anticipation. Chop wanted to make the first issue on the agenda the taking of Jock’s colours, so when he wasn’t there on time we delayed the meeting for twenty minutes. But in the end he never turned up. Nor did he show up at the next meeting.

Half an hour into the fourth meeting since Shadow and Chop had sprung him, Jock rocked up at Louisa Road with his Strike Force. He strutted in and called everybody together like he had a big announcement. He waited for silence before beginning. ‘I’m splittin’ the club in two.’

We all just looked at him.

‘I’ve started a chapter out west,’ he continued. ‘It’s to be called the west chapter and I’m going to be president. The people in here are called the city chapter and, Caesar, I want you to be president. Whoever wants to come with me can leave now, but there’s one rule in the west chapter, and that is that I have the final vote on everything. Whoever doesn’t like that can stay here with the city chapter.’

‘Fuck off,’ Snoddy replied. ‘Get outta the clubhouse. Anyone who wants to go with Jock, go now.’

‘Yeah,’ said Davo, ‘fuck off, go join his Strike Force.’

I really think Jock expected three-quarters of the club to get up and follow him; he thought he was that special. But just one member, Bear, and one prospect, Bob, got up and went over to join Jock and his Strike Force. Jock looked shocked to see the rest of the thirty-odd blokes stay put.

Before they left, Lard, who was staying at Birchgrove, approached Jock. ‘We’ve got a national run coming up in October. What’s gunna happen there?’

‘Our chapter’s gunna be going to Molong,’ said Jock.

‘Well if the national run is to Molong then that’s where we’ll be, too,’ said Lard. ‘We’re still one club.’

‘Youse can do whatever you want,’ Jock said.

Oh, shit.

O
nce Jock had left the meeting Snoddy turned to me. ‘So you’re president.’

‘Nah, you can be president,’ I said. ‘You’re the life member. I’m happy with being sergeant.’ I liked the job. I liked being the one out the front of the pack. To me the president’s more of a figurehead; the sergeant is the bloke who really runs the club. He looks after the security, he looks after all the blokes, and I’ve always found that when members have problems – whether it be with their old ladies, financial or anything else – they’ll go to the sergeant first.

The rest of the talk among the members was, ‘Why did he do it?’

Everyone had their own ideas, but Shadow and I pulled Snoddy aside for an officers’ meeting. I thought Snoddy deserved to know the real reason for all this animosity from Jock. We’d already asked the member concerned beforehand if it was all right to tell Snoddy and he’d agreed. So we got Snoddy to give his word that everything we were about to tell him must never be repeated. Snoddy had a Campbell ring so I knew I could trust him.

I told him about Jock screwing _____ ’s old lady. Chop joined in: ‘Jock’s obviously split the club so that me and Shadow can’t bring him up on charges.’

‘That’s the reason for the two chapters,’ Shadow said.

Jock had declared that each chapter would run its own race and have its own rules. That meant we couldn’t turn round now and vote him out of our chapter; he wasn’t in it any more.

Snoddy shook his head. ‘That cunning old cunt done it so he wouldn’t lose his colours.’

We never told anyone else the story of Jock rooting _____ ’s old lady. Even in years to come when our club got torn to pieces and picked over by investigators, when people used to say the split was over drugs or over Snoddy wanting to take over the club or me wanting to take it over, we never let on the real reason out of respect for the member who Jock had done the dirty on.

O
NCE THE
dust settled and we were officially in residence in Birchgrove, the first thing I did was go and see the bloke in charge of our local police station up at Balmain. I asked him to bring up his station sergeant, because like in outlaw clubs, I’d found that it was the crown sergeants or the station sergeants who really ran the coppers in the area. I introduced myself and told them that we’d moved in, and what the go was: that if they didn’t harass us in the Balmain area they wouldn’t get any shit from us. There’d be no blues, no yahooing. ‘If you respect us, we’ll respect you.’

They seemed to think that was fair and we shook hands.

As it turned out we got on real well with the local coppers. We kept to our end of the deal: we’d ride out of Balmain in a pack but keep to the speed limit, only opening up the bikes once we were on Victoria Road and out of the Balmain area. The other thing was, they used to have a lot of assaults in Balmain, but as soon as we moved in they all stopped. Because if we went to a pub and there were a lot of yobbos there, we soon cleared them out. We ended up being unofficial bouncers for most of the pubs. So we were liked in Balmain. The suburb might be wall-to-wall yuppies now, but back then it still had a bit of a bohemian spirit. The cops even ended up coming down to the clubhouse of a Saturday night to buy a feed and have a beer. The old ladies would make them up a plate of sausages or chops and they’d pay their five bucks. It was the cheapest feed around. And funnily enough the licensing police never hassled us either.

J
OCK’S WEST
chapter had left Granville and rented a big house on a corner just up from the Rosehill pub. But they had virtually no members to go with it. Just about everybody bar the Strike Force had stayed with us.

So Jock was keen to get the Bandoleros on board. The Strike Force sergeant, Sheepskin, went and saw Bernie and told him that Jock wanted him to come over to the west chapter.

‘What chapter’s Caesar in?’ Bernie wanted to know. ‘I’m not doing nothing till I talk to him.’

So Bernie rang me and I told him what had happened. He said he’d call a meeting of the Bandoleros that night and ring me straight after. When he called back he said he and all but three of the Bandoleros were coming over to the city chapter. So that was the end of the Bandoleros. Bernie and his crew were made prospects for us and the rest of them just went independent. I think they could smell trouble.

The next month, September, Jock was due to marry his old lady, Vanessa. There were big plans for his bucks’ night, but not one member from the city chapter got invited. There was already friction anyway but that left a pretty bad taste in our mouths.

Jock and his mates went up the Cross on his bucks’ night and one of his Strike Force, Sparra, got into an argument with some Samoan or Tongan women, calling one of them a slut. A bunch of big Islanders jumped them and the whole west chapter copped a real good hiding. Most of them ended up in hospital.

It was embarrassing enough for us that Comos had been smashed – it weakened the colours even more – but then we found out that, in typical style, Jock was reworking the story to tell everyone that it was our chapter that got beat up.

If it had really been my blokes, I’d have been evening up big time. But Jock had his own ideas about retaliation. He found out where these Islanders drank and had two of his members ride past and throw half a house brick through the pub window. Stuck to the brick was a note that read:
This could be a bomb.
And that was it. As far as Jock was concerned he’d retrieved his club’s honour.

It certainly wasn’t over as far as the head bloke of the Islanders was concerned. He grabbed one of the hookers up the Cross who he knew hung round with us and told her to get a message to the Comancheros: he wanted to fight the head of the Comos. So this sheila came out to Birchgrove and passed the message on. She said the head Islander was a real big bloke, six foot five and seventeen stone, with tribal tatts on his chest and arms, and down his legs to his knees.

Even though we were now two chapters, Jock still considered himself to be the head bloke – ‘El Supremo’ – so Snoddy rang Jock’s place to forward the message on. Vanessa answered.

‘Can you put Jock on?’ Snoddy asked. He could hear Jock in the background whispering, ‘Who is it?’ and Vanessa going, ‘It’s Snoddy.’ Jock went, ‘Tell him I’m not here.’

So Snoddy told Vanessa instead: that this bloke wanted to fight the top Comanchero and it was to be in three days’ time, at two pm, in the alley behind the Rock’n’Roll pub at Woolloomooloo.

Jock never rang back.

The deadline passed and the hooker rang us again to say this Islander was really hassling her because no one had come in to fight him. Snoddy told Davo to tell the girl we’d be in the lane behind the Rock’n’Roll at two o’clock the next afternoon.