I Munro - Lives of Crime

O ut of nowhere, he produced the gun. There was the conversation. Then, there was the gun.

From somewhere inside that tight T-shirt, or those three-quarter track pants, came the gun. A six-shot revolver, like the ones kids use to play cowboys.

A. 38 calibre. Not an ugly little snub nose. Not a cannonlike Magnum. But full of lethal menace all the same.

The big man made a lunge for the gun at the end of the tattooed arm and the world exploded.

It was the loudest noise he had ever heard, and something burned the air alongside his left ear.

Dominic Gatto was still grabbing for the gun, wrapping both his paws around the little mans gun hand.

I had hold of his hand with both my hands and just pushed it towards him, Gatto said later. I have got to be honest; I thought I was a dead duck.

As he forced the revolver back against the little man, Gatto felt himself toppling forward. He was trying to hold the little mans trigger finger in place, trying to force it to squeeze out another shot.

He did not fall, but pressed the gun towards the little man and the world exploded once more. And again, and again and again, showering the pair of them with burned cordite.

Andrew Veniamin, alleged hitman and all-round Melbourne western suburbs bad boy, lay on his back, a lake of blood forming behind his head and soaking his shirt.

A scorch mark on his chest told of the closeness of one shot that either sheared his carotid artery, or severed his spinal cord, its ultimate path unclear.

Despite the severed carotid, there was not much blood spray on the walls, just the growing spill behind his prone body. A third bullet had entered his head above the right ear, bounced off the interior of his skull and drilled through his brain. But all that became known later.

Gatto eased the gun from Veniamins grip and walked out of the passageway, through the kitchen towards the restaurant area of La Porcella, an unremarkable faux Italian restaurant in inner-city Carlton, which he treated as his office.

He had the revolver, a Smith & Wesson, in his right hand. With his free hand, he tested his left ear.

He told his mates that Veniamin had said he had killed his close friend and gangster Graham Kinniburgh three months earlier, and now he had tried to kill Gatto too.

Can you believe it? He killed Graham and he told me he was going to kill me, someone remembered Gatto saying, before asking if his ear was bleeding.

Gatto slipped a little Sterling. 25 calibre pistol, his own gun bought from the now-deceased drug king pin Lewis Moran, out of his right trouser pocket and palmed it to a friend, telling him to look after it. (Pity that Lewis sold it. There was a night in March 2004 when two gunmen came charging through the front doors of the Brunswick Club on busy Sydney Road Lewis preferred drinking hole that he could have used some hardware of any calibre at all.)

Anyway, there would be no mention of this little gun for nine months, until it became clear that Gattos story of self-defence was not believed, and that he would be tried for murder.

There were two Dominic Gattos who appeared during the Supreme Court trial for the killing of Andrew Veniamin in May 2005, 14 months after Veniamin died.

To begin there was the tall and trim Gatto, capped with a helmet of greying hair, and eased into a well-cut business suit. When the jury was absent, this Gatto conducted audiences with the retinue of family and associates that arranged themselves behind him each day.

His wife, his brother John and his wife, sometimes his children young adults were there, while above, in the public gallery were the usual court watchers and non-family Gatto supporters. These included building industry workers in their union windcheaters and non-industry types in dark shirts and gold jewellery.

Once the talking was done Gatto would turn back to the court, draw himself to his full height, fill his chest and run his thumbs around his belt line to prepare for the next court session.

And sometimes, when the jury was present, this Gatto could not suppress himself. So when the prosecutor held aloft the six-shot revolver that killed Veniamin, and assured the jurors not to be afraid, the gun had been rendered harmless, this Gatto smirked and lowered his head too late to hide his amusement. And as the prosecutor related the story of how Veniamin was shot, this Gatto turned to smile encouragingly at his family. Despite 14 months in custody, he had the air of a man at ease, and enjoying himself.

This Gatto speaks in aphorisms, such as you dont know whats in a mans heart. Interviewed at the restaurant two months before the shooting, he said this to police while referring to Veniamin.

The cops were investigating three underworld shootings, including the murder of Gattos best friend, Graham Kinniburgh, known as The Munster for his resemblance to the 1960s American TV character Herman Munster.

Kinniburgh was gunned down outside his home in the comfortable, leafy suburb of Kew soon after midnight on 13 December 2003. It looked like a professional hit, although The Munster managed to fire a shot before his attacker finished him off.

Another expression this Gatto relied on was you never get into trouble minding your own business. This was to explain why he lied to police, telling them he knew and had heard nothing about who was responsible for the murders of Kinniburgh and two others.

Another was keep your friends close, and your enemies closer.

If this last saying sounds familiar it may be because it was previously delivered by Al Pacino in his Godfather Part II role as Michael Corleone, a character ruthless with enemies. Yet when Gatto said those same words, it sounded as if he had made the expression his own. He was trying to justify having stayed in contact with Veniamin long after he had ceased to trust him.

In the witness box Gatto was charismatic and persuasive, but also aggressive when crossed and revealing of a lifestyle where carrying a gun is as routine as donning a business suit.

The other Dominic Gatto was in the court only briefly, captured on a security videotape at Crown Casino. This Gatto appeared drinking and talking at a bar, a bear of a man, dressed in a vast short-sleeved shirt that shrouded him like a curtain.

This Gatto, 30 kilograms heavier than the man who faced the jury, was the one that confronted the diminutive 168-centimetre Veniamin at the moment of his death.

This Gatto was captured on camera during their casino peace conference, called days after Kinniburghs murder. Veniamin had to stretch to put his heavily tattooed arm around Gatto, and to offer him the obligatory kiss of greeting and farewell.

This Gatto made another appearance, on another videotape. During this second recording, at the homicide squads office, he is seen distractedly inspecting his fingernails during police questioning while a few kilometres away, in a passageway at the rear of Carltons La Porcella restaurant, investigators picked their way around Veniamins still-cooling body.

They had been friends, Gatto and Veniamin. And Gattos mates were friendly with him, too. Steve Kaya had known the dead man most of his life. Faruk Orman said he had retreated from his friendship with Veniamin in the 18 months before his death because he was crazier and even more out of control than when Orman was close to him:

Like, he was always unpredictable, you know, but he just got a lot worse.

Orman and Kaya, who knew Veniamin from his days growing up around Sunshine in Melbournes western suburbs, and the late Ron Bongetti like Kinniburgh, a father figure to Gatto were there the day Gatto shot Veniamin dead.

While there were two Gattos, there really was only one Andrew Veniamin.