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Porky’s with Frank ‘Ashtray’ Amante and the usual muscled strip-club touts. If not there, then on the door at his latest and greatest nightclub, the Piano Room, schmoozing with the A-listers. Or, sometimes, he’ll be deep in conversation in a corner of Dragonfly, where it all began.
    With Tongan Sam, Turkish Mick or Big Fadi in tow, John will walk the Golden Mile like a latter day mafia don, shaking hands, greeting people and checking on his businesses. Most Cross identities are loathe to talk about the sawn-off ‘King of the Cross’ but if pressed will simply say he’s a ‘well-respected businessman’.
    At the time of writing, he was poised to be even better known, following his portrayal in the third of the drama series
Underbelly
.
    When it was first announced that the show would portray crime and corruption in King’s Cross, John was offered a consultant role but, at least officially, he declined. The ubiquitous lawyer Stephen Alexander was later quoted as saying the third series might present certain difficulties regarding his client’s interests and activities.
    â€˜It’s a lot easier to make movies or documentaries with people that have passed on,’ observed Alexander, showing a remarkable grasp of the obvious. ‘It’s a free country and people are entitled to do what they do, but I hope they have their facts right.’
    You may, Stephen. But does John?

3
THE KILLING OF DANNY K
    The dead man’s colleagues did not even pretend to cry – in fact, they threw a party at a Darlinghurst night club …
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    IT was the underworld’s version of the Last Supper. But instead of one Judas there were four – three of them armed.
    The treachery of those he trusted was about the only Biblical overtone in the short life and brutal death of standover man and would-be drug overlord, Danny Karam.
    Karam, 36, died in a hail of sixteen bullets from three guns fired by his most trusted lieutenants in a street in inner-city Surry Hills on 13 December 1998. It was a calculating and cold-blooded hit, even by gangster standards.
    Minutes before Karam got the bad news, one of the accused men made him a cup of coffee and chatted with him, knowing his colleagues were set to murder him as soon as he went outside. Lucky it wasn’t instant coffee, or theymight have missed their chance to give Danny a wake-up shot that would take his head off.
    But they didn’t miss. Four men were linked to the murder but one fled to Lebanon and did not stand trial with the other three. One of those charged had to be brought to court each day from jail where he was already serving life for a double murder.
    Danny Karam’s twisted dreams – and a few vital organs – were blown away by gunmen in his own image, whose callousness he encouraged and exploited. Society might well be a better place with Karam dead – and his killers being locked up for most of their adult lives.
    All of Karam’s ‘working’ life in Sydney’s drug scene had been aimed at creating a reputation for toughness and setting him up to move on to bigger and better criminal rackets. Now, at a pivotal moment in his career, he was handed a redundancy package by those who apparently nursed similar ambitions. Another example of the great cycle of criminal life.
    It was not a time for genuine grieving. The deaths of criminals rarely are, apart from the tears of a few close family members. The public is glad that one less dangerous sociopath is off the streets. The dead man’s colleagues did not even pretend to cry – in fact, they threw a party at a Darlinghurst night club called Rogues because Karam’s exit put a new patch of drug-selling turf up for grabs.
    â€˜There was a saying at the time,’ recalls self-confessed corrupt cop Trevor Haken, ‘that if people really knew what happened on the streets of Kings Cross, they’d surround the place with barbed