Enforcer

by Caesar Campbell

  The car pulled up and it had a straight in it: ‘Oh, I saw the fire so I thought I’d drive down.’ The nominees ripped up the boot and there were John Boy and Roger. They’d walked all the way up to the road, hailed down the car and conned the bloke into driving down to the campfire with them in the boot. Their plan had been to jump out and touch one of the bikes. Too bad.

  After about three hours, there were still four members out in the darkness who hadn’t been caught, and weren’t going to get caught because they weren’t moving, so I declared game over and we got back to the business of partying. All except Jock, who spent the rest of the night pissed off that he was the first prisoner caught.

  The other thing Jock tried to do was introduce a compulsory all-black dress code for the club. I always wore black anyway, so that didn’t bother me, but he wanted us in the high, black Nazi boots and black helmets with Comanchero colours painted on the side. You didn’t even have to wear helmets in those days.

  The pathetic thing about Jock’s war mentality, though, was that his credentials didn’t even back him up. When I’d first met him, and many times since then, we’d sat around tables with him telling his SAS stories of head-chopping derring-do. Turned out it was all crap. One day me and Snoddy were over at his house and Jock’s missus, Vanessa, brought out the photo albums of his army days. Here was Jock putting up a fence, here he was building a bridge. Snoddy and I looked at each other. ‘What’s Jock doing?’

  ‘That was his job in the army,’ Vanessa said. ‘He was a sapper. An engineer.’

  ‘Not in the SAS?’

  ‘Nah.’

  AROUND THIS time we were having trouble with the Warlocks. Someone had said something they shouldn’t have at a pub one night and so Jock declared war on them. One Comanchero in, all Comancheros in.

  It took us a while to track them down because they kept moving from spot to spot. But one night Snowy from the Strike Force came to a meeting and said he’d located the Warlock’s clubhouse at Mount Druitt and checked it out.

  Jock decided we’d hit them there. Snowy wanted to be the first one in, since he’d found the clubhouse. We all agreed, and Jock decided he would stay out of it since he was too valuable to go on the hit. Evidently anyone else in the club was replaceable.

  We sussed out the Warlocks’ clubhouse beforehand. It was just an ordinary-looking house, but Snowy assured us it was the real deal. ‘Give me the gun,’ he demanded.

  The hit went down with Snowy in first, armed with a pistol, and Roach as back-up. The rest of us were watching from cars. We saw one of the Warlocks open the front door, and as soon as he saw a couple of Comos standing there he grabbed a sawn-off shotgun. Snowy froze.

  Seconds dragged on as we watched Snowy just standing there, not moving. Fortunately Roach pushed Snowy out of the way and dived on the Warlock with the shotty, and we all headed for the house. By the time we got there, Roach was on the ground wrestling with a couple of Warlocks. Our blokes started smashing the shit out of them. It wasn’t hard. There was eight of us and only four of them.

  We later found out that it wasn’t even the Warlocks’ clubhouse, just a house belonging to one of their members. We had a rule in the Comos, which I’d brought in, that you never hit a person’s home. You could hit a clubhouse, you could hit someone in the street or in the pub, but under no circumstances could you go to their house. You just didn’t know if their old lady or kids would be there. I was filthy, as was most of the club. But Jock and the Strike Force regarded the hit on the Warlocks as a great victory.

  ***

  NOT LONG after, we went on a run down to Batemans Bay on the south coast. We met a couple of sheilas down there and most of the club went through them. One member, Lard, became quite friendly with one of them and stayed in contact with her after we’d returned home.

  Next thing the rest of us knew, we were at a club meeting and Jock was wanting to go to war with the Rebels.

  ‘What? Whaddya wanna go to war with the Rebels for?’

  ‘I’ve got my reasons.’

  ‘We can’t go to war unless we know the reason.’

  After hours of arguing Jock finally told us. It seemed that two weeks after we’d been to Batemans Bay, the Rebels had turned up down there and met the same pair of sheilas. Same thing happened as with us, apparently. They had a good time together. But the sheilas rang Lard and told him that the Rebels had carved into a table:

  Comancheros suck

  Rebels rule

  And that was it. That was Jock’s big reason for wanting to declare war.

  ‘You gotta be joking if you wanna go to war for that,’ I said.

  ‘We can’t let them get away with that,’ he said.

  ‘Listen,’ I said, ‘I’ll go and have a word with the president of the Rebels and see what he has to say about it.’

  Jock wasn’t real happy with this but the rest of the club, barring the Strike Force, voted in favour of it.

  So I met the president and sergeant of the Rebels out at Leppington. We discussed the matter and the president told me they’d had trouble with the two sheilas, that it looked like a case of revenge. ‘So you want to go to war over a couple of sluts?’

  ‘No, the club doesn’t, but Jock does.’

  ‘Why isn’t Jock here fronting me himself then? He’s your president, isn’t he? I’m here as the president of my club, why isn’t he?’

  ‘Well I’m the sergeant and this is what I do for the Comos.’ Jock didn’t believe in meeting with other people.

  The president of the Rebels gave me his word that what the sheilas had said was bullshit. We shook hands and at the next club meeting I relayed what had happened. They all voted not to go to war. Jock wasn’t real happy about it but he was bound by the vote.

  Later on, though, Shadow, Snoddy and me overheard Jock talking to Kraut about dynamite and the Rebels’ clubhouse. We fronted them and it came out that, in spite of my mediation talks with the Rebels, Jock had twice sent Kraut to size up the Rebels’ clubhouse. He wanted Kraut to work out how much dynamite it would take to blow it up, and was talking about doing it on a meeting night or even a club night, whichever he figured would get the most members. If it had been a club night he would have got old ladies, too. People who were just there to party. But Jock didn’t care.

  I was filthy. The club had voted for talks, and he’d gone off in secret to do this.

  ‘What are you gunna do?’ I asked him. ‘Just blow up the clubhouse with ’em all in it?’

  ‘That’s the idea,’ Kraut piped up.

  ‘I’m not fuckin’ talking to you, prick.’

  ‘The Rebels are gettin’ too big for their boots,’ Jock argued. ‘And the Angels will be next.’

  ‘Fuck me roan. D’ya wanna be the only club in Australia?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘Oh jeez, that’d be great fun, wouldn’t it.’ To me, a big part of being in the club was the dynamic that existed between the various clubs. Not being at war with them, but knowing that if you rode through someone’s territory, you might end up with eight or nine bikes chasing you down the road. You’d have to pull over and there’d be an all-in blue. I liked that tension. Often if I had nothing to do I’d pick out some club and spend half an hour riding round their area, or past their clubhouse. Sometimes I ended up in blues, other times I just rode home. But when Jock turned round and said that he wanted to be the only club in Australia, that’s when I knew we were in for big troubles. Because it would go from the Warlocks to the Rebels, to the Angels, to whoever was next on his list.

  I ROCKED up to the clubhouse one Saturday night and there was Kraut out the front, on his Triumph, with three nominees propping him up. I couldn’t work out what was going on so I watched them for a while and couldn’t believe what I was seeing: the nominees were literally pushing Kraut around the block. Kraut, a nominee himself, still couldn’t ride.

  Junior was standing there too, and he seemed really upset. You didn’t see Junior mad often, he was a q
uiet bloke, so I asked him what was wrong.

  ‘They’ve just given Kraut his colours,’ he said.

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Jock and Sheepskin.’

  ‘They can’t do that. It’s not even meeting night. You need a hundred per cent vote to patch someone. Fuck, the bloke can’t even ride.’

  I went inside and asked Jock what was going on.

  ‘Kraut’s been given his colours,’ he said.

  ‘Whaddya mean Kraut’s been given his fuckin’ colours?’

  ‘We’ve just voted on it and he’ll be patched at the next meeting.’

  ‘You’re fuckin’ kiddin’. You’re supposed to wait till a meeting to vote on colours.’

  ‘Well as president I have the right to call a meeting whenever I want.’

  ‘Yeah, but there’s s’posed to be a hundred per cent attendance.’

  ‘Well the members who were here tonight decided to overrule that and give him his colours.’

  ‘Which members?’ I asked, looking into the small shag room off the main area. Standing in there was Jock’s Strike Force. They were the ones who’d voted for Kraut to get his colours. ‘What about Junior?’ I asked. ‘Junior was here. Did he vote?’

  ‘Junior wasn’t in the room.’

  Junior butted in: ‘I told you, Jock, that Kraut wasn’t to get his colours.’ It was the first time I’d ever seen Junior stand up to Jock.

  ‘I don’t care what you fuckin’ say,’ said Jock. ‘Kraut’s got his colours.’

  Sheepskin was standing there but he wouldn’t look me in the eye. I just walked out and said, ‘You gotta be fuckin’ jokin’.’

  Kraut was patched at the next meeting. You could have cut the atmosphere with a knife. Normally when a bloke got his colours it was a big party and you had every bloke in the club congratulating the new member. It was a real brotherhood thing. But the only blokes that went near Kraut that night were the Strike Force. The rest of the club didn’t want nothing to do with him.

  Kraut spent the next month learning to ride his Triumph without someone holding on to him before he was allowed to ride with the club. And on his first run with us, we only made it a couple of kilometres from the clubhouse before he came off and brought down nearly half the pack. Luckily there was only minor damage to a couple of bikes, but I think even Jock was sorry then that he’d given Kraut his colours. On the ride home I pulled him out of the pack and made him ride a hundred yards behind the rest of us. He was just too dangerous.

  Kraut was told that he couldn’t ride in the pack for at least two months, during which time he had to practise hard. At the end of the two months, Sheepskin and I took him for a test ride down the road. He seemed to handle it so we agreed he could rejoin the pack, but he still had to ride at the back.

  NO ONE outside the Strike Force was happy about how Kraut got his colours. It really split the club. One night Snoddy was over at my place for tea and we were yakking on about how much the club was changing.

  ‘We’ve gotten to be the biggest club in Sydney,’ Snoddy said. ‘We’ve got some really top blokes. We should be stoked. But there are some real dodgy blokes who’ve slipped through the cracks, too.’

  ‘It’s Jock’s attitude,’ I said. ‘Wanting to go to war with other clubs, and the whole Strike Force. The way he turns people in the club against each other. It’s like he only wants to keep people in small groups.’

  ‘Whaddya mean?’ Snoddy asked.

  ‘I’ve heard him telling Bushy that Sheepskin hates him and then heard him telling Sheepskin that Bushy hates him. The whole thing. I’ve heard him tell Animal how Chop hates him, then turn around and tell Chop that Animal hates him.’

  ‘That doesn’t surprise me. That’s how he tries to stay in control, keep everyone in little cliques.’

  ‘Yeah, but it’s ruining the club. What about the brotherhood?’

  ‘Y’know,’ Snoddy said, ‘this isn’t the first time this has happened.’

  ‘Whaddya mean?’

  Snoddy told me there’d been two previous splits in the Comancheros, the last one just a year before I’d joined. He said a bunch of members, led by the former vice-president and sergeant, had left after falling out with Jock.

  ‘What happened?’ I asked.

  Snoddy said the whole thing started after the former vice-president came up with the innocuous idea of the club holding bike shows. A lot of blokes, including Snoddy, liked the idea, but Jock and his cohort shot it down. With the ute-driving Foghorn and Snowy in his ear, Jock decided to flex his presidential muscle and put an end to the debate by banning bike shows altogether. After that, the vice-president, sergeant and a bunch of other members just left the club.

  I’d heard about the former vice-president and sergeant from Jock previously; his version was that they were fuckwits. Especially the former sergeant, a fella by the name of Branko. I remembered one particular story Jock had told me about a night out with the club at some dance in Wentworthville. Jock claimed that this big bouncer had put it on Branko and that Jock had come to Branko’s rescue and flattened the bouncer. I told Snoddy the story.

  ‘Have you ever seen Branko?’ asked Snoddy.

  ‘No.’

  ‘He doesn’t need anyone to look after him. That’s just Jock bullshitting.’

  Jock had also warned me that since I’d joined the club, Branko had been going round saying he was going to kick the shit out of me. I asked Snoddy if he knew anything about it.

  ‘Dunno about that,’ Snoddy said. ‘I thought they were good blokes.’

  I decided to test just how much of Jock was bullshit. Some time later I tracked Branko down and fronted him. Soon as he realised who I was he wanted to know, ‘Whaddya got against me?’

  ‘You’re the one who’s been running round mouthing off about me,’ I said.

  ‘No I haven’t,’ he said, before it dawned on him. ‘Hang on, did Jock tell ya that?’

  ‘Yeah,’ I replied.

  ‘Right, you got twenty minutes?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  We sat down and he told me about the split in the club; how five or six blokes had just walked out because of Jock. He warned me, ‘Don’t believe anything he says to ya.’

  He said that the incident at Wentworthville had really gone down with Jock getting belted by the big bouncer. Branko, a fair-sized bloke as Snoddy had said, went over and dropped the bouncer. But by the time they got back to the clubhouse it was Jock who’d rescued Branko rather than the other way round. And that’s how the story was told from then on. Which, needless to say, Branko didn’t appreciate.

  IN EARLY 1982, Snoddy and another member, Charlie, went over to the United States to buy some cheap Harleys. Snoddy had arranged with some friends from the Hells Angels that some of their American brothers would meet them at the airport when they arrived in California, then show them around and help them to buy some bikes. But when Snoddy and Charlie turned up in Los Angeles there were no Angels there to meet them. So instead they forked out $400 for an old Dodge and headed off across the States. They ended up in Albuquerque, New Mexico, at a motorcycle shop called Crazy Larry’s, where they got talking to some of the local outlaw bikers from a club called the Bandidos. They were one of the biggest outlaw bike clubs in America. When the Bandidos found out Snoddy and Charlie were from Australia they invited them to a local bar to drink with them. The rest of the Albuquerque Bandidos rocked in, including the president, Ha Ha Chuck. They got talking to him and ended up staying at his place for a few days. Ha Ha arranged for some bikes to be brought up from other chapters of the Bandidos, and Snoddy and Charlie had them shipped back to Australia.

  When Snoddy got home he couldn’t stop talking about the Bandidos and the way they operated. Snoddy said the Bandidos ran things so differently to Jock’s military unit. The Bandidos were like an outlaw club was supposed to be. It was old school: honour and loyalty and having a good time with your brothers. Basically a bunch of blokes getting on their bikes, going out and partying
. Everywhere there was one Bandido, there’d be another half a dozen Bandidos. According to Snoddy they were like a family. His stories struck a chord with me because that’s what I wanted the Comancheros to be. One big family that partied together and looked after each other. Not going out playing toy soldiers.

  The rest of the blokes (barring the Strike Force, of course) were as rapt as I was. It pissed Jock off something fierce, because he reckoned the way he ran the Comancheros was the only way to run a club. Snoddy even told Jock, ‘If we’d been Bandidos, Kraut would never have got his colours.’

  There wasn’t a lot we could do to change Jock’s style, but one thing we did do in admiration of the Bandidos was stop calling our nominees ‘nominees’. The Bandidos called their blokes ‘prospects’, so we started doing that too. Jock hated it, but I thought it sounded better, and as I was in charge of the prospects at the time, I made an executive decision.

  It was only a small step, but it would prove to be a significant one. And I think it dawned on Jock then that things were starting to change.

  CHAPTER 8

  On 7 February 1982, my mate John Boy, who’d first brought me into the Comancheros, was riding up Woodville Road with Bushy, heading towards Merrylands. He was making a right-hand turn at a green arrow when a car coming in the opposite direction ran the red and hit John Boy dead on. He didn’t stand a chance. Any club tension was put aside while we mourned the loss of a good brother and organised his funeral.

  It was a traditional club funeral. On the day, we draped John Boy’s coffin in a Comancheros banner and placed it on a customised sidecar. Then we began the slow procession up the F3 to Palmdale Lawn Cemetery north of Gosford on the central coast, where we buried our members. There were Comanchero bikes in front of his coffin and Comanchero bikes behind. The old ladies followed in cars, along with more bikes ridden by some Hells Angels and independents who’d known John Boy.