The truth...or something like it.

Wake up on a late November morning with the cold muzzle of a shotgun tapping your nose and you're right there, in the moment as they say. There was a figure in the bedroom doorway. Detective 'Tall' Andre, my friend, was standing just inside the room, a wry smile brightening his face. The guy with the shotgun pointed just above my nose was a total stranger. I could feel my ass tightening. What to do? I nodded at the shooter and spoke to Andre. "I hope you and your friend have a search warrant. Otherwise, I'll be filing another complaint with the Surete." The muzzle pushed down, bending my nose to one side. "Fuck you, faggot." I got brave. "Faggot? Really. Who's the guy kneeling over me with his knee stuck in between my legs? With all respect, officer, blow me or shove off." The shooter tensed up, swung the barrel up above my face. Andre stepped forward. "Cool it, Francis. Back off. This isn't necessary. BACK OFF." Francis the Talking Pig leaned back. I sat up and reached for the phone. "Stay right where you are. I'm calling the detachment commander. Gave me his private cell number. This is going to fun." Andre took three giant steps forward and wrapped a huge hand around the phone. "Give us a minute. My friend here is a little wound up. I'll fill you in. You don't like the explanation, you make the call, no problem." Andre was a good cop, an honest guy, modest and funny. "OK. The clock is running." Andre opened the window of the bedroom, lit a cigarette and threw the package onto the bed. Francis was sitting against the wall, oddly deflated, staring at me like a leech thinking about his lunch. The room filled with foul Dumaurier smoke. "Francis has been undercover for almost two years against a biker banking operation in Montreal East. It turned out to be a safe in an abandoned apartment. The runners would dump their cash and walk away. Once a week, it got cleaned out by a senior Angel and the money got shipped. Francis laid on an operation against one guy the team wanted badly. When they nailed him in the apartment, the safe was empty. Now the Angels are looking for the last man in the place. And so is Francis. Half a million cash missing." I looked at the near crumpled figure next to my bed. "Your point being.....?" Andre knelt down and patted my knee. "The guy was a good friend of Jean-Louis. He..." I raised my arm. "Jean is long gone. Even if he wasn't, I'd never..." Francis jumped forward. "You'd never what?" "I wouldn't turn on him for an asshole who thinks shoving a shotgun in my face is going to make me come in his face." Andre stepped onto the bed between us. "Enough of this shit. Listen, my friend. This is a favour for me. Forget everythng else. I'm asking you." I stood up, searching for my jeans. "Asking what?" "Asking you to take this piece of shit into The Princess Club, introduce him around, have some drinks and then fuck off. He's on his own." Francis was by the window now, using the shotgun as a cane. "It's my ass if he fucks up." Andre followed me through the door to the john. I was bursting. "You have my word. He's just looking for a trace of the runner. That's it. He'll spend some money, get laid, listen around." I zipped up. "And what's going to happen if he's not cool?" Andre looked back to the bedroom. "I'll take care of it, don't worry. It'll be fine. He'll do it my way. I'm running him." Andre had me and he knew it. Two nights later, I wandered into the Princess Club with Francis dripping cash, sizing up the girls, cutting a figure. I hung around til midnight and then left him to his fate. My phone started ringing around 5 am. It was Andre. The remains of Francis were in the ICU at the hospital in Ste-Agathe, being stitched back together. He'd been found by the beach on Lac Superior. According to one of the bartenders, Francis left with the young girlfriend of one of the Angels who was on the road, making a big show of his score. He'd been looking for trouble and found it. At least three guys jumped him while he was fucking the girl on the beach and did him up with baseball bats. They didn't know he was a cop and could have cared less. He was just a drunk yuppie asshole who needed to be taught a lesson. Francis was retired on three-quarters pension. Andre said he had done the Surete du Quebec good service, that it was the force's responsibility as much as his own that he'd stayed out in undercover too long. Way too long. What I didn't understand was where the hell had Andre had been. He should have had Francis's back. When I asked him a couple of years later, he thought about it for a good long while. "I did him a favor. I called the club and told them where he and the girl were. They weren't supposed to pound him into ratshit, just give him a decent beating. Francis was finished, he just wouldn't admit it. Someone had to tell the truth. So I did."

Sinking ships...

I hadn't been back to the local Hells Angels hangout, The Princess Club, since my adventures with what passes for local law enforcement. The embarrassment of my run-in with a fat bastard flatfoot had been bad enough but I'd mostly recovered, particularly when it became apparent that I was about to get a fat cheque from the province. No, it was my empty house that had captured me and now held me in its cold thrall. I'd gotten the idea that if I left for just five minutes, my wife and daughter would come back, then split becasue the place was empty. I clearly remember thinking this actually made sense but when the goodbye letter from the lawyer got delivered, it was clear the marriage was over. She'd acquired some of the natural cruelty of her mother, and refused to let me see our daughter or tell me where she was. I hired a useless private detective who did nothing but bill me weekly. I tried the bottle but being a terrible drunk, couldn't do it seriously. After a fucked-up ten days, I pushed myself up Mountain Street into the big hills for long rambling hikes. A large white German Sherherd-type dog attached himself to me and we made a good pair. He'd go his way, I'd go mine. At some unlikely point, I'd turn and there he'd be. One Indian summer afternoon, I fell asleep on the edge of a tall grass field. When I woke up, I could feel his weight against my shoulder. When I turned to the trail, there were three men standing absolutely still, terrified. When I moved my arm to wave, they jumped back moving away at speed. I guess they thought the big white dog was a wolf guarding his kill. A week later, as we climbed up out of the foothills, a voice called out. "Hey, Kerouac, wait up." I didn't recognize him until he dropped the hood of his jacket. It was Jean-Louis. I could hardly believe it - Jean -Louis in the great outdoors. Something big had happened. "Take a wrong turn, Jean?" "Fuck you, Charlie. I come to comiss...to comizur...to comissarate with you and you dump on my ass. Nice manners." I almost laughed, then I realized he was serious. "Sorry, man. Seeing you like this...after the last few weeks....it threw me off. You gonna hike up?" Jean-Louis turned to me with a sweep. "That's why I took off my cowboy boots and bought these babies here." He was wearing expensive French hiking boots made for the big mountains of central Europe or Nepal. What the hell - intention is everything, right? White Dog ignored Jean-Louis after a careful crotch sniffing and led us up, taking off into the woods just before the top. We turned onto the Mount Condor lookout trail up through noisy piles of dried leaves, following the switchbacks to the top. In those days, the lookout was an open space with a gigantic buried boulder to sit on. Jean took out a joint and a bottle of decent wine. We waited for the drugs and the view to calm our restless spirits. Jean asked me about the break and enter deal, and didn't laugh too much. I volunteered the story of my marriage wreck. He said nothing, just stared. "No shit. Well that makes two of us. I came back from a business trip and the house was empty. She only took what was hers or what she needed for the kid. I stood in the living room for I don't know how long. I was afraid what I'd see if I went in the bedrooms. I kept waiting to blow up, explode, tear the place apart, send out some men to find her. But there was nothing. Just like a blank wall in my brain. I was like that for two days, then I got a letter from some straight lawyer in town, "I love you, I care for you, but I have to think about the princess. You know what the life has done to you. I want the man I used to know. That sounds like soap opera but life has a way of imitating bad art, doesn't it? If you ever want to get out and find me, use this lawyer." Jean was fucked up. At his rank, if he left the Angels, he'd get tapped some night and end up in the Ottawa River inside a sleeping bag with an truck transmission tied to his neck. I never asked him what he was going to do but the next two times I visited him at the club, he was sober as a monk, talking non-stop into my tiny voice recorder, jamming everything in that he could. A week later, his mansion up above Ste-Adele burned to the ground. There was one charred body in it, never identified. I hoped he had pulled it off, had found his woman and his little girl, and disappeared. Jean-Louis was too good to waste. Two years later, someone left a postcard on the counter of my bike store in Val Morin. I didn't read it until late that night. "Up Mt. Condor to the open range and over the edge to freedom. JL."