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."

Two rogue elephants and a rat

Things had gotten pretty awful since I'd gottento know our local biker crime lords. My wife had taken 'a holiday' and then made it clear that she wasn't coming back, which meant I was separated from my daughter for the first time since she was born. Her departure also meant I had to deal with our scumbag tenants on my own. I had leased a duplex on the edge of Val David from a friend who had gone off to become famous on NBC in Los Angeles. We let the south side of the house to a young couple with a child, who offered references and post-dated cheques. All of them , save the first one, turned out to be pure rubber. That had been 11 months ago. My friend the owner refused to help us evict them...but justice was coming. The lease was up in two weeks, there would be be no renewal and they would have to move. So I sat in my side of the place and drank myself to sleep every night. In the morning, I would wake up in the front seat of my truck, parked on the edge of a road that I had never seen before. It was startling the first few times, then became routine, figuring out where I was without looking at a map. The last morning of the lease, I arrived home exhasuted and crashed in my own bed. I woke up covered in sweat. The bedroom, the whole house was super heated. Turning down the thermostat did nothing, the furance roared on. I ran around to the other side of the duplex and knocked. Nothing. I could see through the windows the rooms had been emptied, so I pushed the door in. It popped open. The kitchen floor was covered in excrement. I jumped into the living room and snapped the thermostat off. The furnace was roaring louder than ever. The cold air returns were covered with worn rugs. It struck me that my tenants had done this as a going away present. What they did not figure on was that they could have blown the house to pieces. I ran out outside and tried the basement door, It had a new hasp lock on it! Fuck this - I could feel the heat building inside the door. I kicked it in and fell over to one side. A wave of hot air rushed out. I fumbled around the circuit breaker. finally wacking it with my fist and the furnace began to cycle down. The steel wall was red hot and warped. Son of a bitch. First I had to call the furnace company, then the cops. I got the repairman on the way and went back outside to check on the furnace as a Surete de Quebec patrol car pulled in my driveway. Before I could say a word, the bigger of two very large cops motioned me to stop where I was. I stopped. "Look, my tenant pulled a midnight move and sabotaged the furnace so it would overheat. I want to charge him." They traded looks and chuckled. "We know all about you, asshole. Harrassing that young couple to get them out so you could open a bed and breakfast. Shut your trap." The look on my face laid some doubt on the other cop, but Number One was hot to trot. He ignored what had been done to the furnace, that the house was empty and the floors covered in shit, and the lease I tried to show him. He cautioned me and charged me with Breaking and Entering. In my own house, with no tenants, with a half melted furance! I felt the irresitable pull of a totally surreal world as they placed me in the back seat of the cruiser. Thirteen hours in the interview room changed nothing. I repeatedly told them to fuck off and get me a lawyer. "Yesh, right away." I could hear the two cops arguing outside the interview room but not what they were saying. It was 11:30 pm when they tried to take me to the holding cells in Montreal. I refused to move until I made a call to a lawyer. It netted me a voice mail. An hour and half later, I was being processed into the Surete's downtown holding cells, which included the delightful 'rubber gloved finger up the ass' search. At 6 am, I given a box of warm milk and a ham sandwich, and whisked back up to St. Jerome for my court appearance. I was in leg chains and handcuffs, attached to a diminutive Columbian who'd had the bad luck to have someone put 10 kilos of cocaine in his luggage. The courtroom in St. Jerome was like something out of the French Revolution. Chaos everywhere. I could see my arresting officer behind the Crown Attorney's desk - with my fucking tenant, his fat mouse wife and her dead drunk father, leader of the local English white trash minority. Things were coming into focus. When my turn came, I stood up and clanked forward. What had been chaotic suddenly calmed into a pool of silence. The Crown attorney, a tiny red-haired woman in a sharp suit, was reading my charge sheet. Her face took on touches of her hair color, her arms shook, she began to pound one lovely high heel into the tile floor. She looked for the duty public defender and turned to the bench. "Your Honour, conference please." There was nodding and whispering and a strange look on the judge's face as he turned to me, "Mr.....ah, McKeehan, you will be released immediately. There has been a terrible mistake. The office of the Crown Attorney will be in touch with you. My apologizes." My building rage had no where to go. I looked at the cop and his group who were now backing out of the courtroom. "Thank you, your honour. Nice to see somebody knows their job." I was whisked to the holding area, unshackled and released. I ran around to the public entrance of the courthouse and into the long central hallway. A piece of high public theatre being enacted there. The Arresting Idiot had his back to me while he faced the red-haired Crown prosecutor. Most of the crowd from the courtroom were behind her, watching the show. She read from the charge sheet in short sections, then pointed out the fallicous nature of what he had done or not done in a voice that approached a shreik. The intensity of it was remarkable. No one moved, normal activity in the whole courtroom complex seem to have been suspended. I saw the judge peeking through the door of his courtroom just as Red reached her peak. "Everything you've done has cast ridicule on a system of justice that means something to the rest of us. You are going to bear the brunt of the public scandal and expense. If Mr. McKeehan brings a wrongful arrest suit, and I hope he does, I'll be the first to to offer to testify for him. Now get out of here, you useless piece of shit." He turned and almost knocked me over. I couldn't help myself. "See you soon, fucko." I looked at the Crown prosecutor, nodded a thank you, then headed outside. A lawyer sidled up to me and slipped his card in my hand. "Give me a call, I'll do it pro bono." Once outside, I realized I had no way to get home and started to walk toward Highway 15, exhausted, elated, pissed off. A car pulled up next to me. It was my friend, Detective Andre. He'd been off duty. "Get in before you get arrested for attempted car robbery by hitch hiking." He said not a word, just dropped me at my wreck of a house and went on his way. Two months later, I agreed to a negotiated settlement and a letter of apology. The next spring, Officer Idiot got swept up in a sting operation. He had been taking kickbacks from tow truck operators in exchange for preferred calls to accident scenes. He went to jail for two years, his partner was allowed to resign. All for less than $300. Seemed about right. Me, I learned something about how the Angels feel about cops - guilty or innocent made no difference - one way or another, they'd get you. That was their job.

Knocking at heaven's door with a baseball bat...

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!

A little praise is not a bad thing....

From a fan in New England:

"Love the prose style. Again, thanks for the read. I only read 1 or 2 fiction books per year, and I was glad this was one of them. Please pass on my regards to your friend Gary-A Job Well Done!!"

I'm speechless...but not for long.

Jean-Louis staggers, pukes, falls down, amazes me.

It was Saturday night. I fought my way through the door into the throng and caught Jean-Louis's eye right as I hit the club's dance floor. I waved a crisp Corona cigar in his direction, his face lit up and he took am awkward step towards me, tripping big time, his feet flying forward as his ass hit the ground. The crowd knew who he was and gave him some space. One of the bartenders rushed over and tried to pull him up. No way. Jean-Louis was wasted. Another bartender stepped in and together with his mate, straightened up the boss. The crowd applauded as Jean-Louis was led off to the office. He disappeared into the john and from the gagging sounds I could not help hearing through the flimsy door, he'd evacuated whatever foul shit was left in his stomach. When he came out, he looked better but smelled like a box of week-old dead fish. I caught a corner seat and tossed him his cigar. We puffed away in silence for awhile and then talked Expos baseball. He was a rabid fan with box seats and had hardly ever missed a game until that summer. The provincial police had started to openly photograph he and his guests, sometimes standing in the aisle next to his seat and glaring at him. He glared back until he got sick of the game, gave the cops the finger and his people left. He hadn't been back. "Another reason to piss on their graves" was his final comment on the subject.
We puffed a bit longer, savoring the thick aroma. I decided to lighten the mood by asking about the origin of the club's name. It was a mistake. Jean-Louis stuck his forefingers in the small mountain of coke on the table, shoved them up his nose and slid onto the arm of my chair, leaning in close as he wiped his nostrils. I struggled to keep my stomach from flipping over. "Man, that's a story. Could have been a sad one. But the Good Lord willed a happy ending to it. See, my wife was a junkie. Bad one. She'd kick the habit but keep backsliding. Finally I went to the Basilica and paid a shit load of cash for a three month novena to be done for our special intention - if she stayed off the juice, then God would let her get pregnant and have the baby. And fuck me if she didn't do it. When she got off the shit, she was randy as a rabbit and we went at it day and night, The day the little sweetheart was born, I ordered the new sign. 'The Princess Club'. The most expensive model they had. Believe it. That's the God's truth."
I had to say something but was sure I'd start to laugh if I opened my mouth. I just kept shaking my head and said. "Hmmm, hmm! Huh! Whoohee!" The urge to laugh faded away and I looked up to Jean-Louis, offering my hand to him. "The Lord's will! Ain't that some shit?" When he raised his face, it was covered in tears. Tears of regret. Tears of joy.
Tomorrow - Knocking at heaven's door with a baseball bat.

Jean-Louis, Cuban cigars, VSOP brandy and a pound of Peruvian flake

I'd had some contact with biker gangs in my hippie music concert days. A local gang, The Vagabonds, would show up at the concert site, erect an Army surplus tent and announce the drug selection they were offering for the evening. They were odd, marginal by choice and strangely reliable. There were few problems. But approaching the Hells Angels in my own back yard was like showing up in drag at the spring training camp for the NY Yankees. These guys were dangerous, the tops, apparently very bad guys. My detective friend said I should find a box of Cuban cigars, and show up at their local dance bar enveloped in a haze of commandante smoke. I tracked down a nice corrupt Transair pilot who made several runs to Havana every week and the next night, a Thursday, I pushed my way through the main entrance, ordered a double Irish with an ale chaser, and lit up a Corona. Ten minutes later, a tall figure in jeans and Hells Angels colors squeezed in next to me. "My god, that smells better than the sweet spot between my old lady's legs." A pretty good opening line. I pulled out another fresh Corona, and then in a fit of inspriation, a second one. "For later, my friend." He flashed a broken smile, took my shoulder in his substantial hand and led me to the back of crowded club. My host had to stop to talk to a staff person. I watched a sting of youngsters heading out the side door to the ATM across the street, then turning back to the covered parking lot where they traded their cash for drugs. Any sympathy that I had felt disappeared when I thought of my young friend and his damaged heart. Still, I had to stay dispassionate. My new friend grabbed me again and leaned in. "I'm Jean-Louis." We made our way back to the office and the endless party that filled it. Nothing was too good for me. A bottle of VSOP, my choice of a couple of too-young girls, a mirror covered in coke. Jean-Louis urged me to take one of the 'chicklets' into the bathrooom for 'the blow job of the century'. I begged off with a shy story about being newly married and he seemed to respect that. The coke was Peruvian flake, uncut and smooth as stainless steel. Jean-Louis finally plunked down next to me and whispered in my ear, "So what is it you want, ranchero?" I thought for a moment and went with as much of the truth as he could handle. "I'm a writer and I've heard all this shit about the Angels. don't know what to believe, so I thought I'd see for myself." Jean-Louis squinted at me, stroked his chin and swept his long damp hair back over his head. He'd made up his mind. "Not a fucking newpaper writer, eh?" I leaned forward. ""Not in a thousand fucking years." He offered his hand in a power handshake and the bargain was made. Just like that. Cuban cigars and brandy and Peruvian coke. I had no idea where this was going to lead me. If I had, I might never have gone back the Princess Club...but I did go. I woke up the next morning with a handover, a sore nose and a question banging around my brain. "What kind of biker gang names their drug bar "The Princess Club'? I went back Satruday night to get an answer I could never have guessed. Tomorrow - you ain't gonna believe this....