Before leaving the farm camp, I picked up the wages the government owed me, not that it was much. While I was in the accounting office, one of the pretty girls bent over to get something from her purse. I don’t know if she did it to tease me or if she simply didn’t know that I was behind her. It’s been thirty years and the memory of her bending over still brings a smile to my face. That day, I smiled all the way to the bus station and all the way to Montreal.
As soon as I arrived, I picked up the city’s European pulse and was happy to be among people who openly enjoyed their freedom. It was the festive winter of 1976. All around Montreal, work crews were busy putting final touches on everything to do with the Summer Olympics, which were scheduled to open on July 17. Uncle Joe lived in a predominantly Jewish neighbourhood, with a mixture of blacks and whites that reminded me of my childhood. I walked into his shop and was enveloped by the sounds of machines washing clothes, steam presses hissing and pipes knocking out a rhythm that sounded like music.
Uncle Joe sat before a steam press iron, hidden in a cloud of steam. Aunt Gail held a blouse in one hand and a button in the other, with a needle and thread in her mouth.
Gail was tall and thin, in her early forties, with long brown hair. Her smile was not inviting. She barked an order at me, to take a load of clothes out of one of the huge washers, and she went back to sewing the button on the blouse.
Collins Bay served as the prison laundry for the entire Ontario penitentiary system. In comparison, my uncle’s shop was small and crowded. He and my aunt were far too busy to stop working.
As soon as Joe caught a break, he shook my hand and bought me a coffee in the shop next door. He was a smaller, skinnier version of my father. He happily shared essential information with me – like how the Montreal girls were easier and more carefree than the girls in Toronto.
After the second coffee, he got straight to the point.
“Ricky, I really need your help. My wife and I are behind the eight ball. We’re working our asses off putting in twelve-hour days just to catch up on the bills. We can’t pay you a lot for working, but we can feed and house you. As soon as I get back on my feet, I’ll take care of you with a proper wage and shit.”
Yes, well, I was a thief, a robber and a safecracker and maybe I was still young, but I knew when someone was pitching a hustle my way. Uncle Joe was on the mound throwing fastballs.
In the end, my instinct was to help my family, no matter what. So now I was in his game, playing by his rules. He slapped me on the back and said he’d take me out after work the next day and show me the town.
My uncle took me out all right, usually on Saturday nights to the seedy country music bars on the main drag in Montreal’s Chinatown. I wasn’t much of a fan, but I went anyway to bond with my father’s brother.
Boxing was big in Montreal and I signed up at a gym on Avenue du Parc under the tutelage of manager Roger Larrivée, While I was training, I met a cute little girl named Chantal, who had younger brother who also was into boxing. Within a month I was the heavyweight champ of Montreal and within four months the Quebec heavyweight champ. I put a lot of energy into staying clean, enjoying my freedom and helping my uncle keep his struggling business afloat. I loved exploring the beautiful city of Montreal with my new girlfriend.
One day in the late spring, I found myself exhausted after a late night with Chantal, followed by an early morning emergency involving a leaky boiler flooding the basement of my uncle’s shop. I hadn’t had much sleep, but I put in a full workday. After hitting the gym, I was driving back in my uncle’s car when I dozed off at a stoplight. My foot slipped off the brake, causing the car to slide forward, hitting the car in front of me.
The owner was reasonable. He agreed not to call the cops if I paid for the repairs. The estimate – for a thousand bucks – arrived a day or so later. It might as well have been for a million. When I mentioned it to Chantal, she offered to turn herself out. I declined. That would have taken an investment in clothes and a trip to Toronto to get her trained. I also knew that her father had a gun.
The only solution was a bank.
At least, I thought the only solution was a bank. I was young, smart, fast and tough. I already had one in mind. It wasn’t far from the Olympic Village and there was a mattress factory nearby. My plan was to set off a bomb in the mattress factory and plant a few fake ones here and there as a diversion – just – just enough to keep the cops busy while I made my getaway.
First, I tried a dry run with the explosives.
There was a construction site near the Cavendish Mall in Côte Saint Luc. I dug a hole, covered it with a grate and blew it up as I was walking back to my car. Boom. Within seconds, the balconies of the surrounding apartment buildings were filled with people staring at the rising smoke.
That’s when it dawned on me: I was in a Jewish neighbourhood, on the Sabbath, four years after the Munich Olympics and a few weeks away from the opening of the 1976 Olympics. Plus this was Montreal and thanks to the radical violence by the Front de libération du Quebéc (FLQ), bombs were always on people’s minds.
I got out of there in a hurry, hoping no one had noticed me. Montreal clearly was not a place where I could do this kind of work.
The following Friday I got on a bus to Toronto. I packed a gun, gloves and a two-dollar Halloween ghost mask I painted so it was flesh-coloured.
Life is strange, or maybe it’s just my life. The bus stopped in Kingston, and a woman in her fifties got on. She was tall, attractive and businesslike. She asked if she could sit next to me. I put the gym bag with the gun and the disguise under my seat. She started chatting, the way some people do with strangers on the bus, as a way to kill time on the road.
She was a former nun who spent her time working in chapels in prisons in southern Ontario. She pulled out a photo album and began showing me pictures of guys she called “her boys.” Page after page of them, all guys I knew. On and on she talked about how “her boys” wouldn’t have gotten into trouble if there had been someone in their lives like her and so forth.
I kept my mouth shut until we hit the Don Valley Parkway about fifteen minutes from downtown Toronto. Then I asked to see the album again and I pointed to the guys I knew, filling her in on what they were in for. She took her album and found herself another seat.
As we neared the bus station on Bay Street, she came up to me and was about to say something but I cut her off.
“Screw you, you’re a hypocrite.”
She slunk back to her seat as if I’d shot her. She may have been wounded, but there was no quit in her. She started in on me again and I cut her off again.
“You abandoned me in my time of need. That’s not very Christian of you.”
Undeterred, she sat down beside me again, chatting a mile a minute, apologizing, offering to make it up to me, offering to buy me something to eat. I was about to brush her off for good when we pulled into the station.
There were cops milling about. I still had her album, so I asked her to carry my bag. She held it to her chest as we shuffled off the bus and past the cops.
When she offered me a place to stay, I took her up on it. She had a large bachelor apartment in a three-storey brownstone building near Harbord and Bathurst Street. It was sparse and simple, filled with lot of books about religion. She made me a sandwich and a cup of tea. Then she pulled out a prison-style mattress and set it beside her bed.
“You sleep here for the night.”
I sat down on the bed instead.
“If you want to know what it’s like to be a convict, you sleep on the floor.” And I lay back and closed my eyes. In the middle of the night, I felt her – naked – snuggling up to me. Some church lady.
In the morning, I got up first. I had things to do. She started chatting as soon as I woke her up. She made tea and offered to take me to her bank and get me a couple of bucks.
I hadn’t considered this. Could I be a gigolo?
Nope to that, but I found myself wondering about her bank. We took a streetcar. She chatted all the way. If you like coincidences here’s a good one – her bank was familiar. I’d knocked it over for Warren Hart.
I took a deep breath as we entered, taking care not to leave any fingerprints. The place was fat with customers, but no one paid any attention to me. I was with the woman they all knew as a one-time handmaiden of Christ.
I stood in line with her all the way to the wicket. The head teller came over for some small talk. When she looked at me, I smiled. Normally, the head teller was the keeper of the keys and, therefore, the main target.
In this case, it became apparent that all of the tellers kept their drawers open during rush hour. I got lucky when I heard one of them ask another for a $1,000 bill. She would be my target. The one with the big bills rendered the most profit in the least amount of time. No point being greedy, not when every second counts.
I had my getaway planned before we left.
The talking nun gave me a fifty-dollar bill and the key to her apartment. She said she would be home just after 4 p.m.
“Maybe you can spend another night.”
Yeah, maybe I could.
I took the fifty and went to Malabar, a huge costume store, where I spent some money rounding out my disguise with some theatrical makeup for the mask, plus fake eyebrows and a beard.
Then I went to my parents’ house. They were surprised to see me and wanted to know about Montreal and Uncle Joe. I told them that everything was fine. No sense worrying them.
Dwane was at the Paramount Tavern, so I borrowed my sister’s bike and rode over to see him. I also I peddled past the bank, performing a mental run-through and timing myself. All I needed now was someone I could trust to watch the bike while I was busy.
Having satisfied myself about the plan, I headed for the bar, where I was immediately at home among the pimps, players, drunks and working stiffs having an afternoon drink. I knew all the black faces and I knew they’d be my witnesses if the cops came snooping around.
My brother jumped up, rushed over with a smile. We slapped hands and hugged. The smile left his face as soon as he felt the gun in my waistband. Pulling him aside, I told him my plan. He agreed to watch the bike.
After buying a round of drinks, we went back to the nun’s apartment. I changed into a cheap suit that I had found at the Salvation Army. By the time I was done with the makeup and the trimmings, I looked like an average white businessman in his forties.
My brother’s clothes were bright, and quite distinct from mine. After the robbery he could walk away without worrying about the cops mistaking him for me. We made our way to the bank without saying much. I was unafraid and committed to the job, in spite of the risks. My need for cash was eating me like a cancer.
Pulling on my clown mask, I entered the bank and took a couple of strides. Leaping over the counter, I landed beside a startled teller. It happened so fast that no one realized what was going on.
Easing the teller out of the way, I yanked the drawer open and began pulling out wads of money, focussing on big bills, shoving as much as I could into my trusty gym bag.
Brave girl, she reached for my arm. I pushed her away and waved my gun in the air.
“This is a fucking robbery. Don’t anybody move or I’ll blow your fucking heads off.”
The place went dead silent.
An instant later, I had what I had come to get and I made my way out the back door. The whole thing had taken maybe fifteen seconds. I ran like a track star across the street and into the laneway. No one followed me or shouted at me to stop.
Cutting between two houses, I ran through the backyards, crossed another lane and then went between two more houses, where my brother was waiting with the bike. Elapsed time? Maybe a minute.
I dashed away on the bike, only slowing down when I reached the laneway behind the nun’s apartment building. I was safe, and I knew it.
It was a good job. I had a bag of money and no one got hurt. All I had to do now was change and get back to the bar. Before my brother arrived, I had stacks of bills laid out. Not a lot of money, perhaps, but it amounted to $300 a second.
I knew then that there was no future for me in Montreal. I didn’t have enough friends there. My old gang was in Toronto, the home of easy money.
At the bar, I told Dwane I’d be home for good in a month or so. We were relaxing with our drinks when two, big black gangsters walked in. Big Joe and Jerry Patterson.
I hadn’t seen them since the Don Jail. Jerry hugged me right away, feeling for a gun.
“Montreal that dangerous? Or you in town on a mission?”
“You know how much I like my little friends with me all the time,” I told him. Jerry laughed.
“Nigger, you don’t have little friends,” said Big Joe. “We’re all heavyweights here, man.”
I dislike the word “nigger,” no matter who uses it but I got his point.
I also knew he was paranoid, maybe with reason. He’d done time for breaking the back of a hit man who’d been sent to get him. I knew he didn’t trust anyone much, so I said as little as possible, but I showed some manners.
“Thanks for the comfort bag in the ’haven.”
Some haven, Millhaven.
“Man, ten dollars’ worth of chips and chocolate bars is nothing. Shouldn’t we always look out for each other in those shitholes?”
I responded correctly. “We should always look out for each other, wherever we find ourselves.”
Jerry laughed again and looked at Joe. “That’s what I’m talking about, Joe; with this brother on our side, we can take this motherfucker over, man.”
Joe shot him a look. They got quiet.
I left them and went to play chess with a friend. My mind wasn’t entirely on the game. I’d already figured out that Joe and Jerry were muscling in on the card games and the dope action. Now they wanted to take over. The local mafia boss, Paul “The Fox” Volpe, would help plant the flag.
By the time I called “Checkmate,” I had thought it through and was reconciled to the notion that a union with Big Joe and Jerry could be profitable. However, I was not about to let them stand in my way if I decided to work without them.
I took the Sunday night bus back to Montreal and got in as the sun was coming up. Back at the dry-cleaning shop, Chantal was waiting for me. She said she wanted the nightlife. She thought she was ready to be turned out.
She had no idea what she was talking about. I had relatives who had been raped by stepfathers, uncles and brothers. Some of them started tricking before they were ten years old. Some were still in the game. None of them bragged about being hookers and none of them wanted their daughters on the street.
She didn’t know it then, but our relationship was over.
I called my parole officer and told her my father had been in an accident. I was needed at home. She gave me a travel permit, assuring me that she would do the paperwork to have me transferred.
I took the bus back to Toronto and called Chantal with the news. I never heard her voice again.