I’d left my lemon squash at the bar of the Ashfield Tavern and gone to have a leak when I was interrupted by John Boy, a bloke I’d just met from the Comancheros.
‘Mate, there’s some blokes out there trying to lift your bike onto a ute,’ he said.
Out the front I found three of them with the front wheel of my customised Harley WLA up on their tray. I reached them just as they got the back wheel on.
‘Whaddya think you’re fuckin’ doin’?’ I said. ‘Put the fuckin’ bike back down.’
I didn’t want them getting any dints in it, so I waited just long enough for them to sit it on the kickstand before – whack – I king-hit the bloke closest to me. He went down and I started stomping on his head. One of his mates came at me and the adrenaline began to pump. I could feel the rush that came when I was outnumbered and the odds blew out. I grabbed the second bloke by the hair and bashed his head into the back of the ute. Bang. Bang. Still stomping on the bloke on the ground.
The third bloke was just about to jump on my back when John Boy stepped in and wrestled him to the ground, the two of them punching the shit out of each other. I finished off my two and picked up John Boy’s bloke. Put a sleeper on him and he was out cold. I dropped him to the ground with his mates and John Boy went boot, right in the mouth. Teeth everywhere.
I pulled my boning knife from the sheath at the back of my belt. Curved, four-inch blade, perfect for boning rabbits. I took the first bloke’s right hand and cut straight down at the base of his knuckle, slicing off his little finger. Then I did the same with his mates. Two of them were unconscious, but one wasn’t. He voiced his objection fairly loudly.
I wrapped the fingers in my hanky and shoved them in my vest pocket. John Boy just looked at me.
‘When cunts upset me I collect the odd finger or two,’ I explained.
John Boy got on his bike and I got on mine. It had been good of him to help me out. He was from a different club, he didn’t have to get involved.
‘If there’s ever anything I can do for ya,’ I said to him, ‘you got me word I’ll do it.’
‘Righto,’ he nodded. ‘I’ll see ya round.’
I headed home. Walked in the door and threw the hanky at my old lady, Donna.
‘Not more fingers,’ she said. They went in the jar with the other twenty-odd.
At the time it seemed an unexceptional night. But seven years later, mourning the loss of two of my brothers, wanted for murder and banged up with a body full of bullets, I would look back on that night as where it all began. Now it’s so obvious I can almost hear the gears crunching. My promise to John Boy, keeping my word; the revs as I switched clubs, and then the split. The acceleration as the crazy leader with a Napoleon complex and a wandering cock took us on his full-bore hell ride, wind in my hair, sun on my back, until we were rumbling into a pub car park in Milperra towards a shoot-out that would kill seven people. The Milperra Massacre, the newspapers called it.
I never call it that. I call it the ambush.
I always keep my word, but making that promise to John Boy was the biggest mistake I ever made.