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close friend since I was 15 years old, and he is, to say the least, a very odd fellow. Very strange, indeed. But then, you’d expect a bloke with no ears to have strange friends, wouldn’t you?
    Dave is an occasional criminal and part-time gunman — but without a criminal record. He has never had his prints taken and the police don’t even know he exists, but he has mixed with and done work for some big-time criminals, including a few of your so-called Mr Bigs. Not all the dangerous men get talked about in the newspapers or end up in court rooms or prison cells.
    Dave is sometimes called ‘Meyer Blue Eyes’ because of his vivid blue eyes. He has an uncle in America called ‘Al Malnik’, a Jewish money man who was groomed by the late American Jewish financial underworld figure Meyer Lansky. I know it all sounds totally unbelieveable — but the FBI could tell you who ‘Al Malnik’ is.
    Dave the Jew is also close to Abe Saffron’s family, Abe being some sort of a Dutch uncle of Dave’s. His father was a well-known Melbourne restaurant owner, and another relative is a clothing manufacturer in Melbourne. His mother died recently, he was born and bred in South Yarra, educated at Wesley College, is a non-smoker and non-drinker, and can’t drive a car — although he sometimes insists on doing so.
    Dave has been a close personal friend of a top IRA man for years, and spent six months in Ireland in 1975 or 1976. The Jew is a great man for international politics. He has collected $15,000 for the Sinn Fein but he has donated half of it to the Orange Lodge here in Melbourne. Talk about having a foot in either camp. The Jew says he has mates in both camps, so it is only fair. Apart from that, he has always liked having a bit each way.
    He spent about nine months in the Israeli Army in 1980-1981, then deserted. He can never return to Israel again — they would shoot him. He was locked up in a fort in the Philippines, but escaped and returned to Australia.
    He has undergone treatment for a mental condition — paranoia — and sometimes believes he is the living, breathing spirit or reincarnation of the late American-Jewish gangster Benny ‘Bugsy’ Siegel.
    Dave is a lot of things. He is as mad as a hatter, as shifty as a shithouse rat, as smart as a whip and as dangerous as a black snake on a dark night. And a true and loyal friend, which is why I cannot betray his name.
    Several unsolved murders can be put down to Dave the Jew.
    One of the strangest things about Dave, as the son of strict Jewish parents, was his constant reading of Adolf Hitler’s ‘Mien Kampf’. I asked him one day why he read such a book and he looked at me and replied quietly: ‘Know thy enemy’.
    I have always remembered that, and I have used that tactic ever since. For example, how do you locate an enemy if you don’t know where he is living or if he is in hiding? Locate his Mum and Dad’s address. The one day of the year when you can bet that your enemy or target will be at a certain address is Christmas Day at his Mum’s place. Most people go to Mum’s on Christmas Day … unless your name is Chopper Read, in which case you go and have a counter lunch. Even Christmas Day would not induce me to eat steamed chicken.
    Another fact is that most men can be located either at a funeral or in a hospital waiting room — the trick being to get them to those two spots. And all ethnic people love their mothers. Once you have explained a matter to ‘mummy’ she will speak to her son for you. Bingo.
    Know thy enemy. Basic Black and Tan logic and tactics. The Black and Tans being the feared paramilitary unit used by the British Army against the IRA in the early part of this century. I won’t go into Black and Tan methods of carrying out interrogations. Suffice to say that I said to (Lynas Patrick) Driscoll once that I considered the removal of toes to be rather humane by comparison.
    Speaking of which, Dave the Jew rang me one day in 1977 and asked