Get involved with the Hells Angels or any of the biker gangs, and you're going collide with some characters. Not just bikers. There are some borderline nutsos on the other side of the street too. Here's how I met mine. I offered an old man who was living in a garage in late November - no heat, boxes of empty beer bottles and a lonely intensity in his eyes - a bed in my studio. I had to keep him away from my wife of that period who was sure he was going to murder us all in our beds. (She left a while later for 'a few weeks'.) Hans had connections to the former owners of Tremblant Ski Hill, and one of his lady friends there gave him some very confidential documents that seemed to indicate that the new owners were laundering somebody else's ill gotten gains through a Dutch bank with a branch in the Bahamas. I had one contact with the RCMP (da Mounties) at Mirabel, and I took the papers there, and left it to them to figure out. A few days later, I got a call from a certain Officer Westlake from the Organized Crime Task Force in Montreal. He'd obviously read the stuff and was asking a lot of questions for which I had no answers. The mood turned sour when I blurted out, "Christ, didn't Mirabel tell you the story? I never even read the stuff. I'm not a goddamn accountant.' Westlake snapped back, "Don't use the Lord's name in vain! Answer my questions or I'll rip you a new asshole." For no particular reason, it suddenly occurred to me that this guy was kibitzing, was not who he said he was and that I should say goodbye now. I immediately phoned Mirabel and left a message for my contact. In strolled old Hans, whistling some old Tyrolean folk tune, with the telltale odor of Labatt Blue floating before him. Turns out he knew Westlake, sort of. He'd cut the lawn of the Officer's neighbour's cabin on the lake all summer and ran into him yesterday morning. One thing led to another, and Hans gave Westlake an extra copy of all the paperwork! "Hey Gary, we got to get the word out before the CIA shuts it down. They run everything. You know that. We gotta move on this. This is bigger than you think, it's all connected." That's when I heard the baseball bat thumping on my front door, accompanied by a Biblical sized voice - "Get your ass out here, you fucking hippy scum." The Lord's officer had arrived. What did I have to defend myself with? A .410 shotgun without any cartridges. Time for 911. Or better. I phoned my detective friend Andre on his cell. He and his partner, the enormous Ti-Jacques, were ten minutes away. He laid it out for me. "Stay away from the door and DO NOT PICK UP THE FUCKING SHOTGUN, loaded or not. He had heard of Westlake, a guy three years from retirement, still a First Class Constable, not with the RCMP but the Montreal force. The only reason he hadn't been dropped off the edge of the world was that he ran first-class undercover operations against the Native Indian cigarette smugglers. He had a reputation for leaving broken bodies behind, so DO NOT PICK UP THE FUCKING SHOTGUN!!! Tell him we're on our way."
Things were strangely quiet in the front of the house now. Where was Hans? Well, he had gone out the back door and was standing nose to nose with Westlake, waving his semi-drunken fingers in the big man's face as though he was casting a spell. Might have been. Hans was maybe 5ft, 4". It was quite a sight, him crowding Westlake who was 6ft 3", balancing the baseball bat over his shoulder, He could have propelled the old man to his heavenly reward but Hans was in charge, backing the rogue cop to the road, one step at a time, one argument after another. Just as they reached the curb, a full sized unmarked Ford pulled up and Andre stepped out, not sure what was going on. I hadn't mentioned Hans to him but he was cool with it. Andre was the best cop I ever met. He could defuse a tense situation and leave everyone with the feeling that they had done him a personal favor. He took the baseball bat, offered Westlake a cigarette and they chatted. Jacques checked me out, and then the five of us gathered on the lawn. Westlake was still a bit confused about who Hans was and none of us could help him out there. When the smokes were finished, apologies were offered somewhat reluctantly and we all went our way. A week later, Hans moved in with a lonely widow, my wife decided to stay gone for good and the RCMP phoned to say 'thanks but no thanks, and your friend should return these papers to the rightful owners'. Which he did.
I can still see the old man backing that brutal fuck of a cop into the road. When I asked him why he had taken such a chance, he didn't have a definitive answer. "I never liked feeling helpless. I put up with his shit for as long as I could, and then heard myself saying, 'That's enough.'." It was probably the bravest thing I'll ever see a man do, Two months later, Tremblant paid a $7,000,000 bill for federal taxes that had been 'miscalulated'. No one ever thanked Hans. I don't supposed he gave a shit. Long may you run, old man. Long may you run!
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