The rifle shots made a harsh, metallic sound. Not the soft pop-pop-pop firecracker report of lower-powered automatic pistols, these sounded like iron hammers pounding on steel spikes. A little after 9:30 a.m. on September 16, 2011, two dozen shots were heard, rapid-fire, from Lévesque Boulevard near the Highway 25 toll bridge. They sounded close to Desjardins’s luxury house on the Rivière des Prairies, in Laval’s Saint-Vincent-de-Paul district. They were so loud they startled a lone passenger on a passing bus.
The gunfire originated near a clump of bushes on Desjardins’s property, close to the river, where he often met with contacts. He was getting into his new black BMW X5 when the shooting began. Bodyguard Jonathan (Kid) Mignacca was sitting half in his Jeep. He fired twice at the black gunman, who was at a disadvantage as he was shooting uphill. Mignacca’s show of force was enough to chase the assailant back to a waiting red Sea-Doo. Desjardins’s BMW was pockmarked with bullets, but he didn’t suffer a scrape. Mignacca received only minor wounds. The sole casualty that morning was the Sea-Doo, which was later discovered on the Montreal side of the river, torched.
Streets were closed off. Ford Fusions swarmed the area. Fusions were the cars of choice for undercover cops trying to look inconspicuous; several of them in one part of town was enough to make a pistol-packing gangster’s heart race. Members of Desjardins’s group let out a collective sigh of relief when they learned that their leader—known in the group as “Old” and “China”—was okay. He had spent only a little time in the back of a police cruiser for questioning. Mignacca was in hospital, but doing well. While police found no gun on him, there were gunpowder traces on his hands and he faced charges for discharging a weapon.
Desjardins was remarkably cool during the questioning by police. Someone with a machine gun had just tried to fill him in and he didn’t look a bit rattled. He also showed absolutely no interest in giving police any clues. They seized his car and Mignacca’s BlackBerrys, hoping analysis would reveal information the gangster wouldn’t.
The Montagna side reached out to Desjardins. Within hours of the attempted murder, they asked Giovanni Bertolo’s younger brother Giuseppe to set up a face-to-face talk between Montagna and the Bertolos’ boss as soon as possible. Giuseppe wasn’t sure it was a good idea. It sounded like another attempt to get at Desjardins.
A Sûreté du Québec surveillance team watched as a black BMW X5 pulled into the Tim Hortons at 10005 Louis-H. Lafontaine Boulevard in Montreal at 3:23 p.m. Not long after that, a black-and-grey Ford Flex also appeared at the doughnut shop. Domenico Arcuri Jr. got out of the Beemer and Montagna stepped from the Flex, and they headed inside. Bertolo texted Vittorio Mirarchi to say the face-to-face meeting with the Montagna group was about to begin—without Desjardins.
Police watched from a distance as Montagna led the discussion. Montagna stressed that it wasn’t his group behind the Desjardins murder bid. The real would-be assassins, according to Montagna, were the “family.” Montagna suggested that new Rizzuto leadership had now been established: Vito’s mother, Zia Libertina. As he described it, all power flowed from the octogenarian. If Montagna was telling the truth, this was a development to be feared, not laughed off. Zia Libertina was a Mafia don’s daughter, and she had recently lost both her husband and her eldest grandson to gunmen while her only son rotted in an American prison cell. It sounded absurd, that the acting boss of a New York Mafia family could be afraid of the wrath of a great-grandmother, but Mickey Mouse was clearly nervous.
Montagna described Desjardins as the only ally he could count on in Canada. Montagna’s men would be happy to meet him anywhere. Montagna nervously tapped his hand as he made his pitch. Bertolo thought he could see tears in Arcuri’s eyes.
Montagna pleaded in the doughnut shop for Arcuri to believe he had nothing to gain from Desjardins’s death. As the American told things, now, more than ever, the Desjardins and Montagna sides needed to stick together. Clearly, the New Yorker was rattled. The fact that Desjardins chose not to meet with him spoke volumes: it was easy to conclude that the hunter and the hunted had shifted roles. Montagna seemed almost relieved by the heavy police surveillance.
The meeting over, Montagna climbed back into the Flex and retreated from sight. The attempt at détente with Desjardins hadn’t been a success, but it could have been worse. At least he hadn’t been shot.
Not long after that, the Desjardins side looked for help from a sixt-ynine-year-old man nicknamed Toilet. Jack Simpson’s nickname came from his plumbing business, but his long criminal record was what made him interesting. His life had been on a downward swirl since he was eleven and his father died. He did time in a delinquent boys’ home, and then prison stretches after convictions for counterfeiting in 1962 and 1980. He had escaped prosecution while running a car dealership that served as a front for Rizzuto family car thefts, but was nabbed again for his role in an attempt to smuggle a planeload of three hundred kilograms of cocaine. That netted him a twenty-eight-year prison sentence in California, which was reduced to sixteen years in 2000 after he was transferred to Canada.
Simpson’s wife and mother died while he was behind bars. Now out on full parole, he was living on Île Vaudry, a working-class/commuter neighbourhood on a small island about fifty kilometres north of Montreal. For all his efforts in crime, Simpson was close to broke. He had a job that paid him seven hundred dollars a week and massive debts that required him to file for bankruptcy and obtain a second mortgage on his home.
Desperate, criminally inclined and with no history of violence: Jack Simpson was just the sort of man who might have a chance of getting close to Mickey Mouse.