It was as if Montagna was getting crazier by the day. He seemed frantic as he tried to reassure his loose coalition that he wasn’t behind the hit on Larry Lo Presti. How could anyone suspect such a thing? He had respected Larry’s late father and would not touch his son. Also, Closure reported to Desjardins that Montagna was talking about a mysterious person lurking in Montreal called “36.” Montagna was spreading word that “36” worked with the “family.” Montagna was still pushing the idea hard that it was Vito’s group—now along with “36”—who had tried to kill Desjardins.
While lots of noise was coming from the Montagna side in early November, it was still proving hard to divine exactly where the man himself was.
Desjardins didn’t like going out at night now because he didn’t carry weapons, which would be a breach of his parole conditions. If police caught him carrying a firearm, he would be back in prison to serve out the remaining five years of his drug-smuggling sentence.
The Québécois mobster heard a rumour that Moreno Gallo would have been very nervous to know was circulating. Word was that Gallo had given “files” to Montagna. If true, then Desjardins could be sure that Gallo was firmly in the American’s camp. “Files” referred to the records kept by major organized crime sports books, and Gallo had run Platinum for Vito. A gambler’s “file” was made up of significant financial records, such as mortgages and banking information. It also included the names and addresses of a gambler’s parents and other close relatives. This information would be carefully studied before the operators of a sports book determined how much, if any, credit he could be granted. The information also let the sports book operators know where to go calling if a gambler couldn’t make good on debts. That degree of financial diligence could be overlooked if the prospective gambler was related to someone of interest, such as a professional athlete. In those cases, it was better for the gambler to run up a major debt, so that the book’s operators could suggest to the athlete that all would be forgiven in exchange for the fixing of a game or the provision of inside information on a team. If Gallo had indeed turned over files to Montagna, then not only did Desjardins know what side the millionaire baker had taken, it also meant a major betrayal of Vito, punishable by death.
In the third week of November, Mickey Mouse finally resurfaced. He still wanted to meet with Desjardins, the man he had almost certainly tried to murder just two months earlier. Mickey’s paranoia was feeding off itself and he talked again of bringing up guys from New York to bolster their ranks.
For his part, Desjardins continued his effort to make nice, as if he and Montagna were old friends bonded by common enemies. Desjardins warned him that he had just heard that Operation Whale would hit later that month. Perhaps they could meet to talk about it. There had been a leak about the list of names of targets in the raid. Leaks about upcoming police raids were commonplace when the targets were Hells Angels or the mob, with the result that the wanted men were often missing or had cleaned up their environs by the time police arrived. Oddly, Desjardins’s reported list of warrants also contained the names of some honest people. He spoke with conviction as he called for a get-together and warned Montagna to be careful. Within a couple of days, Montagna seemed to believe the police operation was all about him.
The hunt for Mickey Mouse appeared to be almost over.
The wife of a Desjardins associate gave birth to a boy on the morning of November 24, 2011—American Thanksgiving Day. The baby came into the world around the time a video camera captured a white Ford F-150 pickup driven by Jack Simpson leaving Île Vaudry and heading north on Celine-Dion Boulevard. Around that same time, Sal Montagna seemed to be alone as his car entered the metro parking lot, his movements recorded by a security camera.
Moments later, Montagna walked into the lobby of the Hôtel Champlain and descended into the subway. It’s unlikely he was afraid to meet up with seventy-one-year-old Simpson, who had no record of violence.
An hour later, a neighbour of Simpson’s on Île Vaudry heard two shots in quick succession. Next came the sound of shattering glass. A stranger dashed down a slope, away from Simpson’s house. The fleeing man slipped and disappeared from sight. Seconds later, he jumped back into view, frantically attempting to cross the narrow Assomption river. There was a splashing sound in the icy waters. Then nothing. Thirty or forty seconds later, another man, with glasses and backcombed salt-and-pepper hair, climbed into a white pickup truck. As a witness called 911, he saw the white four-door Ford F-150 pickup drive out of view on Celine-Dion Boulevard.
Neighbours ventured out to discover the soaked, bloodied body of a man lying face up in the snow on the riverbank. It looked like the same man who had leapt into the river minutes earlier. He had managed to cross the river, leaving blood in the snow on both banks.
At 10:10 a.m., police arrived to see the motionless body of Salvatore Montagna lying on the snowy shore. At 11:34, the acting boss of the Bonanno crime family was pronounced dead at Le Gardeur hospital.
As police analyzed the crime scene, a Montrealer flew to Toronto Island airport and went to a restaurant in Yorkville. There, he sat down with two members of the Commisso crime family. The lunch over, he returned to the airport and immediately flew home to Montreal.
Later that day, some of Desjardins’s men finally had time to do something truly pleasant: visit the newborn baby in hospital.
One life had ended and another had just begun.