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Jacks and Jokers
By Matthew Condon University of Queensland Press
Copyright © 2014 Matthew Condon
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-7022-5199-3
CHAPTER 1
The Year of the Dragon
By mid-1976 Inspector Terence (Terry) Murray Lewis of Charleville, a dusty town in western Queensland, should already have known that he was in for a stellar year. To begin with, it was a leap year, and he finally got to celebrate his birthday – 29 February – on the actual date. Also, he was born under the Chinese astrological sign of the Dragon, and 1976 was coincidentally the Year of the Dragon. Lewis would be turning 48.
He may not have been familiar with the characteristics of the revered Dragon in Chinese astrology: inflated self-assurance, tyrannical with a stern demeanour, impressed by prestige and rank, devoted to work and lucky with money-making schemes – the Dragon was renowned for leaving a trail of wealth.
By winter Lewis had already had a frank and lengthy discussion with Queensland premier Joh Bjelke-Petersen on the airstrip at Cunnamulla following a country cabinet meeting of the ruling National Party, and he would soon be making a flurry of political contacts. He also wasted not a single opportunity – like his friend Anthony (Tony) Murphy up in Longreach – to disparage the administration of Police Commissioner Raymond (Ray) Wells Whitrod.
The day after Bjelke-Petersen flew back to the big smoke of Brisbane, Lewis returned to his desk in downtown Charleville, in the wooden police station beside the stone bank in the main street. It was a timely visit by the premier. Lewis had had enough of being stuck in western Queensland, and had actually applied for a vacancy in the Commonwealth Police. The Dragon could be stubborn and impetuous at times, and did not like taking orders – they could express flexibility and be amenable to life around them; but only to a point.
'It crossed my mind to leave – that's when I applied for a job in the Commonwealth [Police],' Lewis recalls. 'I made an application ... I think there were two vacancies, one for an Assistant Commissioner somewhere, and a Superintendent. They flew me to Sydney.'
Lewis was picked up at the airport by New South Wales police officer Dick Lendrum who had married Yvonne Weier – one of Lewis's favourites from his days in the Juvenile Aid Bureau (JAB) in Brisbane in the 1960s.
After his interview (he would later find out that he didn't get the job), Lendrum arranged for Lewis to meet the New South Wales Police Commissioner Fred 'Slippery' Hanson, a foundation member of the legendary '21 Division' unit, formed to smash post-war hoodlum gangs. Hanson had become Commissioner in 1972, succeeding the corrupt Norm Allan.
Hanson had made his views on policing very clear not long after he took the top job. 'Every cop should have a good thumping early in his career to make him tolerant,' he told the press. 'A good thumping teaches a young policeman how to get along with people. It's no use getting police recruits from university, the ones who have never knocked around the lower levels.'
It was rumoured Hanson had been corrupt New South Wales Premier Robert Askin's organiser of paybacks from illegal casinos, as had Allan.
'[Dick] took me and introduced me to Fred Hanson, whom I'd never met,' Lewis says. 'He's the one who said [of Whitrod], "Oh yeah, how's that fat little bastard up there who should be charged with assuming the designation of a police officer?"'
Meanwhile, retired detective and former Rat Packer Glendon (Glen) Patrick Hallahan was trying to make a fist of the farming life. He had left Brisbane under a cloud following his abrupt resignation from the force in 1972, although for a while continued to live at Kangaroo Point before shifting to acreage in the Sunshine Coast hinterland.
He and the land would be an awkward fit. The big, powerful Hallahan, plagued with bouts of ill-health since the late 1950s, was a city creature, a habitué of bars, wine saloons and restaurants – he relished the bright lights of Sydney. Well into his thirties, he continued to enjoy the nightlife.
In the aftermath of his departure from the force, his good friend – newspaper reporter from the 1950s and now editor of the Sunday Sun newspaper Ron Richards – offered Hallahan an alternative career.
Hallahan, one-time crack detective, receiver of graft from prostitutes, accomplice to criminals in both Brisbane and Sydney and associate to drug dealer John Edward Milligan, would try his hand as a specialist writer and break exclusive stories about crime and corruption. Richards believed that Hallahan could utilise his extensive police (and criminal) contacts, both state and federal, and drum up some rollicking Sunday crime reads.
Despite the fact that the office of the Sun was located in very familiar territory to Hallahan – the heart of Fortitude Valley – life as a reporter didn't work out. 'He produced a story using Federal Police intelligence about the arrival of the phenomenon of the car bomb in Australia,' recalls Des Houghton, then a young journalist on the Sunday Sun, based in Brunswick Street. 'It caused a bit of a drama and there were questions asked about where he got his intelligence from.
'Hallahan was aloof. He was a hit with the women in the office. Most of the time he asked for help in how to fill out his expenses.'
After the car bomb scoop, Hallahan virtually disappeared, resuming residence with his wife, Heather, in Obi Obi on the north coast, growing fruit and vegetables and toying with the idea of selling farm machinery. Despite the distance between them he was not lost to his old mate Tony Murphy. The two men remained in regular contact.
During this time in the state's capital, the classified advertisements in the Courier-Mail newspaper were featuring – in the Beauty and Health section – a relatively new phenomenon to the Brisbane scene – the massage parlour.
In the preceding few years parlours such as the Brisbane Health Studio, The Oriental Bathhouse, The Coronet and others, actually dispensed what they advertised – qualified massages. Each was equipped with bona fide massage tables.
The first Brisbane 'health studio' to be prosecuted as a premises used for prostitution was the Carla-Deidre Health Studio in Enogerra in June 1970. A man called Bernard John Pack was prosecuted. The case against Pack established that 'relief massages' given to men fell under the prostitution umbrella.
Quaintly, staff of the Temple of Isis were charged in 1971 with breaching the Physiotherapists Act by misleadingly calling themselves qualified masseurs or masseuses.
Police from the Licensing Branch, Drug Squad, Consorting Squad, the Valley Crime Intelligence Unit and even Commonwealth Police regularly visited the parlours, trying to catch prostitutes in the act of sexual congress. On some occasions officers confiscated parlour towels.
If prostitution was detected, the girls were immediately breached. There were no tip-offs about raids, no protection money payments, no charging on rotation. But by 1976, the entire parlour scene had changed.
As Lewis toiled in Charleville, and Premier Joh Bjelke-Petersen jetted out on an overseas trade mission, hoping to convince both the British and the Japanese to invest in Queensland's limitless reserves of coal, and state Cabinet debated sand mining on Moreton Island, gentlemen were being invited to explore the pleasures of female 'masseuses' across Brisbane city.
There was the Penthouse Health Studio at 141 Brunswick Street, Fortitude Valley. There was the Kontiki at 91 Gympie Road, Kedron. 'Have you met our pretty and talented girls at Kontiki? Well they're just longing to entertain you the way you enjoy the best.'
There was the Fantasia Health Spa at 187 Barry Parade, Fortitude Valley. And the Golden Hands Health Salon at 1145 Ipswich Road, Moorooka. 'Come and meet our lovely talented girls ...'
In the Year of the Dragon, a lot of money was changing hands in Brisbane after dark, and men like corrupt former Licensing Branch officer Jack Reginald Herbert picked up the scent.
The luck of the Dragon would touch Lewis not once, but twice, in just a matter of months. Coming events – an act of police brutality in far-off Brisbane, and a bungled drug raid in even remoter Far North Queensland – would trigger Commissioner Ray Whitrod's demise. They would also, as if by magic, open a clear path for Lewis to the summit of the Queensland Police Service.
A Lemonade in Blackall
Just as Police Commissioner Ray Whitrod and Police Minister Max Hodges had paid a visit to Inspector Terry Lewis in Charleville in the winter of 1976, taking morning tea in the station and keeping tabs on the banished Rat Packer, they continued their tour 300 kilometres north to remote Blackall.
A grazing town perched on the Barcoo River and home to the historic Blackall Woolscour, the township evolved mainly as a service centre to surrounding properties. On one of those – Alice Station – in 1892, shearer Jack (Jackie) Howe broke colony records when he shore with hand shears 321 sheep in seven hours and 40 minutes and catapulted himself into folklore.
As was the custom, Whitrod and Hodges' visit necessitated a function in one of the local hotels, which was attended by 30 to 40 dignitaries, graziers and of course the local police. The Blackall police station was operated by sergeant in charge Les Lewis and four other officers. At the event, Les Lewis was sipping a glass of lemonade when he was approached by Minister Hodges.
'What are you drinking, sergeant?' Hodges asked him.
'Lemonade,' Sergeant Lewis replied.
'What would you usually drink?' 'Beer,' he replied. 'But I never drink [alcohol] in uniform.'
Hodges pointed out that even the Commissioner of Police was drinking a glass of wine in full uniform, and said to the barman: 'Give the sergeant a beer.'
As the two men engaged in conversation, the Minister immediately expressed his dislike of the inspector in charge of the Longreach district (which took in Blackall, 213 kilometres away), Tony Murphy.
'Murphy's got a chip on his shoulder,' Hodges remarked. 'So has [Terry] Lewis.' Hodges went on to tell him that Whitrod planned to transfer Terry Lewis from Charleville to Innisfail in Far North Queensland, 'to keep him as far away as possible from Brisbane and the Commissioner', and that Murphy would be staying put in Longreach 'until he learned to smile'.
Sergeant Les Lewis, who worked well with Murphy and believed the famous detective from Brisbane had done a good job in Longreach, told Hodges that Murphy was expecting a transfer to Toowoomba where his wife and children had settled.
Hodges said it wasn't going to happen. 'Hodges was very firm,' recalls Lewis. 'He was the boss.'
A few days later, Murphy's car pulled into the police yard in Blackall. He was on his way down to Toowoomba to see his wife, Maureen, and the kids. The drive – over 1200 kilometres – also took him en route through Charleville.
Sergeant Les Lewis felt compelled to relay to his boss details of the meeting with Hodges and Whitrod. 'I've got something to tell you if you promise not to take it further,' he said. He told of Hodges' refusal to move Murphy out of Longreach until he 'learned how to smile'.
Murphy immediately got out of the car in a rage and repeatedly kicked the tyres of the vehicle. 'Those bloody bastards,' he shouted.
Murphy then 'took off out of the yard' and headed for Terry Lewis in Charleville. In Murphy's mind, Hodges' remarks about himself and Terry Lewis constituted the persecution of senior officers in the Queensland Police Force.
He would most certainly be taking the matter forward.
Love in the Lido
Down in the mean streets of Kings Cross, Sydney, once plied so successfully by former Brisbane madam Shirley Margaret Brifman, another young prostitute, Anne Marie Tilley, was working the lanes and backstreets.
Tilley, even before she hit her teenage years, was steeped in the business of prostitution. Her foster father had once been a driver for the legendary Sydney madam Matilda (Tilly) Devine of the Razor Gang era in the 1920s and 1930s. He told her many stories through her girlhood. At the age of 11, Tilley was entranced by the popular 1963 Billy Wilder film, Irma La Douce, a musical comedy about a policeman who falls for a prostitute in Paris. In the movie, honest gendarme Nestor Patou (Jack Lemmon) unwittingly begins arresting call girls who are favoured by corrupt senior police and is thrown out of the force. By fate he becomes close friends with prostitute Irma (Shirley MacLaine) and eventually declares his love. Tilley adored the luxuriant lifestyle of the on-screen prostitutes. She adored Irma's fluffy white dog. She knew this was the life for her.
At the age of 16, in a Kings Cross nightclub – the Lido in Roslyn Street, a notorious haunt for gangsters and callgirls – Tilley met her very own Nestor Patou. His name was Hector (Hec) Hapeta, not an honest policeman, but a retailer of pet meat based in the distant suburbs of western Sydney.
Hapeta was hanging out with a prostitute 'keeper' called Bob. Tilley and a girlfriend wanted to get on the game. Bob threw some money on the table and asked young Tilley to go buy him and Hec a drink at the bar. She refused – ladies didn't go to the bar – and Hapeta, dressed as he habitually was in a three-piece suit, told Bob to leave her alone. Hec would get the drinks.
Hapeta was a 'smiler'; he had a happy demeanour and a cheeky sense of humour. Tilley thought he was a gentleman. They would soon move in together in a flat in Liverpool, and Tilley would begin her notorious career as a prostitute and brothel madam.
It would have been inconceivable to both Hapeta and Tilley that by the late 1970s they would find themselves drifting north to the sun and warmth of Queensland. There, with astonishing speed, they would build a vice empire of gargantuan proportions that would make them wealthy.
It could have been a plot from one of the film-loving Tilley's matinees, but this time a western. Two savvy operators ride into a hick town, take over the saloons and the houses of ill-repute, and laugh all the way to the bank. And they wouldn't need to worry about the sheriff. Because very quickly, the sheriff would be handsomely remunerated to turn a blind eye.
A Stellar Career
Meanwhile, in the Queensland capital, Gerald (Tony) Fitzgerald, QC, aged 34 (and born in the Year of the Snake), was not only one of the busiest and most respected lawyers in town but was also juggling a young family – three children under the age of five. The Fitzgeralds lived on the Brisbane River in Rosebery Terrace, Chelmer, just across the Walter Taylor Bridge from Indooroopilly.
Having taken silk the year before – one of the youngest to do so in the state – Fitzgerald had carved a lucrative niche for himself in commercial law. A Catholic, and son to a senior public servant, he had been something of a prodigy. He was called to the Bar in 1964 and for a time worked out of chambers above Cassells' frock shop in Queen Street, dubbed the 'Outs of Court' (as opposed to the official home of Brisbane's legal fraternity, the Inns of Court up on North Quay.)
By the mid-1960s he was being mentored by the legendary lawyer Gerard Brennan and moved up to the Inns, on the same floor as knockabout barrister and South Brisbane MP Colin Bennett. Brennan was the epitome of ethics and fairness in the law. A Catholic himself, he was also a champion of gentlemanly distance between the courts and government. The son of Justice Frank Brennan, he, like Bennett, believed strongly in social justice for all. He had a profound impact on Tony Fitzgerald. Brennan's father had died when he was just 21. Fitzgerald had lost his mother, Doris, to a kidney ailment when he was six years old. Both had risen out of humble financial circumstances.
Fitzgerald, like many of his young contemporaries, had heard of the police practice of 'verballing' or fabrication of evidence. And like the rest of Brisbane, knew the gossip that former police commissioner Frank Bischof was corrupt and that his bagmen in the 1960s were known as the Rat Pack.
Fitzgerald most likely heard much of the local tittle-tattle in the rooms of the Johnsonian Club in Adelaide Street. A beacon for barristers and journalists, the place was often packed with members for weekday lunch. It served a mean steak and offered the hottest English mustard in town. There, Fitzgerald rubbed shoulders with some of Brisbane's most colourful legal practitioners, including the cigar-smoking Jack Aboud. The old barrister would often leave a burning cigar on a stairwell outside court and pick it up again on his way out. Aboud, his taste buds dead from smoking, adored lashings of the Johnsonian mustard.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from Jacks and Jokers by Matthew Condon. Copyright © 2014 Matthew Condon. Excerpted by permission of University of Queensland Press.
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