Even though I felt that Sonny and I understood each other, I still felt awkward and uncomfortable in his world. I sought out a couple of high-rolling mobsters who owned bakeries around the city – men I’d done time with in Millhaven. As soon as we met we were joking and laughing easily about old times, and the bad taste in my mouth from Sonny’s barbecue was disappearing.
As I was about to leave, they kissed my cheeks. And here it came: “Ricky, there’s lots of shit going down. You’ve always been family. We need to know if you’re with us.”
Choices?
I said, “You’re like brothers to me. Don’t hesitate to ask for what you need done.”
“We know you need money,” they said. “We’ll have a stag for you in a couple of months. You should be able to pick up thirty or forty grand. Are you okay until then?”
I was too embarrassed to tell them I was broke. I simply nodded and said I was good. The only complication was that we were all still on parole. Even meeting like this was a violation. They were family, but I stayed away from them until the night of my stag.
Angela and I rented a place in Parkdale, in the west end of Toronto, next door to the black halfway house I’d stayed at decades earlier. This was my turf. All I wanted to do was make enough money to ease myself into legitimacy and become untouchable from the cops.
That’s all any crook wants.
You get a taste for the business, and it’s thrilling at first but after a time, if you are successful, that’s all you want – a score so big you can get out of the game forever.
I thought at the time that I could beat the cops with cunning and smarts. I might as well have had a target on my back. They saw me as a threat. They were watching.
I began by stocking up. I accumulated guns, and hid them in false compartments in the walls of the apartment. Behind the building, I buried a couple of high-powered rifles near the train tracks.
Before long, a biker I knew called me to a meeting. He wanted to make sure I understood the political situation. We shook hands, and he offered me a drink and a joint.
I refused both; live clean.
He said, “Ricky, your name is flying around the city. Our club house is near Regent Park, and we’re hearing you run Regent Park.” I had relatives there, but I hadn’t been in that part of town for ten years.
“Here’s the thing,” he said. “We’re taking over what we can. Planting flags wherever we can. But there was a meeting with our national president, and we decided to leave Regent with you, even though it’s in our area. We believe you’re not hurting our thing with your thing.
“This might change in the future, but we don’t want a war with those young hotheads hanging around there right now.” Saying that, he clapped me on the back. “We hope that maybe we can work together one day, once you’re settled in.”
I hid it from him, but I was stunned.
If my name was being passed around like that, odds are the cops had picked it up on a wiretap. I headed across town to get to the bottom of things. Within minutes, at the corner of Parliament and Dundas, a young black kid rode over on a bike, sizing me up. I burned a hole in him, and in those few seconds I was surrounded by hard young black teens.
“Hey, mister, what you want in this area?”
“Fuck you.”
The one who spoke gasped as if I’d punched him, and the others sucked their teeth. “You a cop, man?” I eye-fucked them.
“My name is Ricky Atkinson. You got a problem with that?”
Two of them rode off and came back seconds later with twenty others, all of them smiling, some of them reaching out to slap hands. I didn’t know any of them, but I recognized that some of them were cousins and I pulled them aside.
“You guys mention my name to the bikers?”
“Fuck them white-boy bikers.”
One of them pulled aside his coat to show me he was carrying a small, fully automatic machine gun. They had no idea what they were up against.
They held a small piece of real estate that didn’t generate enough money to fight over, except for other little groups of teens holding equally small pieces of turf. I didn’t want anything to do with them.
“Listen, fuck up. I will only say this once. I just got out of the joint. I got fifteen years of parole to do. I don’t need anyone, especially family, dropping my name every-fucking-where. You dig?”
The leader of the little crew sucked his teeth. “Cuz, we ain’t putting you out on front street, man. Anybody says we talking about you is a bitch-ass punk and all you got to do is say who is lying on us, man, and we will cap his ass right quick.”
I got away from them as fast as I could, but I knew I was screwed. My name had to be resonating around every cop shop in the city. If I was going to survive another month, I had to get a crew around me quickly.
Most of the gang leaders I met with over the next few weeks had just one word of advice: drugs. “That’s where the money is,” they said. “Forget everything else.”
I wasn’t so sure.
My preferred scheme involved the use of fraudulent credit cards to steal millions of dollars in gas, which I thought was preferable to the business of drugs and pushers.
The trouble with drug dealers in those days is that they weren’t really criminals, or at least I didn’t think of them as criminals. They were just people selling a product with high demand and higher profit margins.
And anyway, salesmen are dreamers, or at least most of them are. They were not hardcore like I was. Most had no pedigree, and no code of ethics learned the hard way from made guys and men of honour.
You couldn’t trust them. They might have amassed fortunes, but as a rule they were wimps who would sob at the thought of facing an armed gang in Millhaven.
The credit card scam was going to take some time to set up, and until it was in place, I needed something to do. I did know a bit about drugs. Many of my family had dabbled in them at one time or another, although none were hardcore addicts. For most of my relatives, the drug of choice in the Sixties and Seventies was speed.
Why speed?
The men used it to fuel their sex addictions, and the women used it to dull the pain of sexual abuse, to ease the pain of turning tricks and to take the edge off poverty.
When the market for freebase cocaine exploded in the black community in 1979, dozens of people I knew were suddenly using. Some of them became addicted for years to come. I had no use for drugs and I didn’t like the game, but I had no moral objection to dealing.
Today maybe that’s a distinction I don’t want to examine too closely.
Within weeks a guy offered me $25,000 to introduce him to a trucker who would run some loads of Mexican weed across the border for him. Let me put that in perspective – I’d make $25,000, tax-free, for making a simple introduction.
It only took me a couple of days to find the right guy.
The three of us met at an expensive hotel, the introductions were made, and an envelope was passed to me under the table.
According to the law, that was a drug infraction. It could have sent me back to jail, but at that moment I didn’t think of myself as a dealer – I had no idea what was going to happen, or where, or how. I hadn’t seen any drugs, and I hadn’t profited directly from any sales.
Neither of the guys I introduced ever mentioned the other to me again, and I quickly forgot about them. Easy money.
Then Harry the Greek called a meeting. He knew more about selling hot gas than I did; he offered to help me if I wanted to pursue the idea. I was still thinking that drugs were something I didn’t want to get into, too dangerous all around. At least, if I got caught committing fraud, I’d only get a few months.
The assurance of the Greek’s backing was good, so I called a meeting of my own with a Chinese crime boss on Spadina Avenue. I needed his help with the credit cards.
He looked on it as easy money. He was willing to give me the best cards he had; and he’d help me finance a drug deal, or buy anything I might bring into Canada.
People trusted me. I was a rounder.
Before things went any further I needed to put together a professional crew so I approached Ross Dankwarth, a lifer and former inmate committee chairman who was with me at the Keele Street halfway house, and old friend, Reggie Mallot. I got them to put together a small gang to run the credit cards and get the trucks I needed.
Rather unexpectedly, someone else I knew gave me 60,000 Ecstasy tablets and asked me to set up a distribution network. He’d made the pills himself, in Amsterdam, but he didn’t know how to hustle them there, and hadn’t felt safe selling them overseas. Ecstasy was new in Canada at the time, so I went to the library and read everything I could.
Then I took ten envelopes and put ten pills in each and mailed them across the country to guys I knew. Within days, my phone was ringing. I was offering lots of 1,000 pills at twelve dollars a pill, knowing that they sold for twenty-five dollars wholesale on the street, and forty dollars a pop in bars.
Trouble is, nobody I knew was willing to take 1,000 pills at a time. I gave the Ecstasy back after a month. At least I was beginning to feel like I was back where I belonged, running a crew, making my own money. Best of all, the credit card scam was going to be something that had no violence attached to it and it would be hard for the cops to catch me at.
Sweeter still? Bert Novis retired and fraud was generally under the radar of the Hold-Up Squad.
I want to stress that I wasn’t thinking about the personal repercussions, or about the loss of revenue to the companies I was about to defraud. I wasn’t thinking the harm I might cause to my family, or the fact that I might be misleading the kids I spoke to in public about the horrors of prison life. All I could think about was the money, and the freedom that it would give me.
That’s the hook for most crooks – the lure of that one last score, and with it the freedom to live a normal life without being worried or bothered by the cops. Yes, and as a goal that is no more realistic than the lure of the junkie’s last high, the glorious eureka moment just before he quits for good.
A friend called me to a meeting at a small blues bar in Parkdale. He introduced me to a friend of his and the three of us sat at the back, away from prying ears.
“This man here is my right arm and my partner over twenty years,” my friend told me. “He handles the money and I take care of the logistics. I’ve told him about you.”
This-man-here was a Bay Street suit, a high roller. I looked at him and asked if he’d ever done time. The stranger said, “No, I’ve never taken a pinch. I’ve never been in jail. But I’ve been doing this all my life, since my days at Rochdale.”
Rochdale, the university student-housing experiment where I spent some of my youth robbing hippies, had quickly turned into a giant, chaotic drug hot spot. It’s now public housing for seniors.
The suit might not have taken a pinch, but my friend had been caught with the biggest load of marijuana in Canadian history at that time. He and the stranger were at the top of the soft drug trade again, having negotiated shipments of drugs and money moved around the world with the cooperation of army generals.
If they needed me, they were desperate.
“Ricky, we bought a ship for half a million dollars, and a load of hash for a million. The ship was supposed to go to Amsterdam but we lost our contact there. The ship has already left Pakistan – we need it to land somewhere within sixty days. Can you help us get it into the country?”
That kind of help has a price.
“How much hash is worth a million bucks to you guys?”
There was no room now for errors of any kind, especially errors of math. They said, “We have 18,000 pounds of very good smoke.” The street value of that much hash was around $32,000,000. I knew I had to establish a credible fee.
“That will cost you $300,000 once the ship hits the shore,” I said without hesitation. They looked at each other, then at me, and then back at each other. They nodded.
“When do you need an answer?”
“Yesterday.”
We shook hands. I was happy at the prospect of making a third of a million bucks, just because I knew some guys who knew some guys.
I drove to the gym, looking for a Portuguese mob enforcer who was training there. He had connections on the docks in Vancouver and I asked if he could help. As it happened, he was flying out to see his daughter that same weekend. He said he’d give me an answer once he got back. I didn’t ask him who, or how – those questions always arouse suspicion in people who get by on their gut feelings.
But I felt I couldn’t wait.
It was winter and a snowstorm was gathering. When I got home, I could smell the spaghetti dinner Angela was preparing. I had an idea. “How would you like to go to Montreal for supper?”
“Supper will be ready in an hour or so.”
“Put it away, this is important.”
That was all I had to say. Angela didn’t ask how I made my living. I was in on a boxing gym. I knew people. I was never broke for more than a day. I never looked at a bill in a store, and we were never hungry. She trusted me.
If we couldn’t land that ship on the west coast, it would have to come up the St. Lawrence Seaway to the port of Montreal.
Fifteen minutes later we were heading up the highway, along with everyone else trying to beat the storm and make it home. By the time we hit Kingston the snow was falling hard and Angela was holding the dash, her knuckles white.
I wasn’t afraid. I know how to drive in snow. My mind was locked on finding someone who could handle 18,000 pounds of hash. My one big score, the great white whale I was searching for.
As usual, it was not as simple as it sounded.
My phone rang when we hit the Quebec border. A Russian gangster wanted to meet first thing in the morning. I asked where. He said Montreal. I laughed at the coincidence. Russians are not afraid of snow.
We met for lunch and he asked if I could get him a load of weed to sell in the Toronto market. Coincidentally, my hash guys had hundreds of pounds of Mexican weed. Of course I could help.
Normally, coincidence tends to worry me but I trusted the integrity of the Russian. We ended the day with our women in an expensive restaurant.
In the morning, the sun was shining, the roads were cleared, and it took us six hours to get back to Toronto, plus another hour to get to a friend’s house outside the city. What friend?
One of the heads of the Irish mob.
Irish, Russian, Portuguese, Chinese. Toronto is nothing if not multicultural. We talked in his basement, with the taps gushing and the washer and dryer tumbling – covering our voices in case there were wiretaps.
We quickly struck a deal. The hash could come in once the Seaway was clear of ice and as soon as the docks opened, in about sixty days. My friend’s fee for avoiding customs was 6,000 pounds of the hash; everyone gets a cut when there’s business to be done.
I met the hash guys the next day and gave them the news. Everyone was happy: they had a buyer for their load. No muss and no fuss. For setting things up, I was going to make $300,000.
Stop. Right. There.
I repeat: most criminals tend to think of scores in the making as if they’ve already happened; nobody likes to think of failure. But big crime is like the lotto – the odds always favour someone else. The odds favour cops, and guys in suits.
Since I was doing the hash guys a favour, I asked them for one in return: could they toss me $50,000 until the ship came in? My friend began a long and careful whine – he had to cover the cost of the ship and the customs guys. He had to pay the crew to sit on the high seas an extra month until the ports unfroze. He had to lay out cash along the network that set up and moved the load. At the end of all this he said no.
Plus, he said, money was tight and he’d just bought thirty houses in the Toronto area. He threw me a bone. He owned a historical property in the city’s east end. I could buy it from him or I could rent it and run it as I wished.
The sale price, for me, was $400,000 even though it was on the market at $700,000. Really, the last thing I wanted to do was flip a house with twenty-eight rooms.
Ross asked a trucker friend of his from Beaver Creek if he wanted to invest in the gas business. The trucker jumped at the chance to make some extra bucks. He said he knew some trucking companies out west that could use cheap gas, adding that he could come up with a couple hundred grand of his own to invest depending on the profit margin.
In the meantime, Ross asked his parole officer if he could earn a few bucks working at my gym. He was shot down because his parole officer thought Ross would be running illegal card games at night, as happened at most old-school gyms. I was working out with Trevor Berbick at the time. He was on his way to the heavyweight championship of the world.
Roy Gumbs, the former middleweight champ I’d cornered for once in Halifax, called from St. Kitts. He had more on his mind than renewing our acquaintance. After we chatted for a while, he asked how I was doing financially.
That was a subtle question, and I replied with equal subtlety that I could use some help with the gym. He said he was connected in Vegas, maybe he could help me out by providing fighters for the promotions I came up with. Just before he hung up, he alluded to a conversation we’d had ten years earlier, and said he wanted to talk some more.
We had talked about taking over an island in the West Indies. The idea wasn’t fanciful. Roy had worked as a cop in St. Kitts. He knew the politics, and who to pay, and who to threaten to get what he wanted.
He thought we could create a criminal stronghold, including running the police and even the government. He talked about some guy who pulled all the strings as someone really special in the criminal underworld.
Several days later he surprised me by walking into my gym. We spent some time together talking, and then took a walk in a nearby park so that we could continue our conversation without fear of interruption.
Roy pulled out a newspaper from St. Kitts and handed it to me. I took it from him carefully, knowing it might have been just a newspaper, but whatever was in it was important. He pointed to a story about Charles Miller.
Miller had an iron grip on the island. The article spoke of politicians and police inspectors being murdered and intimidated into giving up control of the island to a gang of thugs. Miller was wanted everywhere, so he stayed on the island, surrounded and protected by an army of mercenaries. The story mentioned that Miller had been a former CIA agent.
I handed the paper back to my friend, thinking how the years had changed him, and how they probably had changed me as well. I asked the question, even though I was pretty sure I knew the answer.
“What does this guy have to do with you?”
“I can get you anything you want. We can also take any amount of money you’ve got and clean it.”
If this thing, whatever it was, played out properly, then I wouldn’t have to climb up the ladder a rung at a time, ducking cops, and dealing with pushers I didn’t like. I’d be on top and untouchable.
Roy made me an offer, a demonstration of good faith; that’s how I saw it at the time, good faith. He said he had some blow that was ninety-four percent pure, and he’d sell me a kilo for $4,000. At the time, you couldn’t buy that much for that little without leaving the country to get it yourself.
It looked like this was going to put me right up at the top in a hurry: I had visions of making millions a month without doing much more than concentrating on finance – arranging boats, planes and human mules to bring the dope from the island to Canada – easy enough to do with the connections I had.
Roy flew back to his little kingdom.
I thought it would be easy, and it certainly looked that way, but I was still on the fence about calling him back. There were calculations to be made besides planes and boats and the cost of doing business. The path that could lead to riches ran awfully close to the path that could lead to death, or at least to a long stretch in jail.
One of the reasons for my caution? Billy McAllister had just got out of prison when an old friend he hadn’t seen in ten years set him up on a drug conspiracy. He ended up in a Florida jail serving “life sentences.” I didn’t want the same thing to happen to me.
Guess what?
The lure of the money won out. I called Ross and Reggie and explained the change of directions I was taking. It was fine by them.
What I didn’t know is that both of them had been selling dope to Ross’ trucker friend behind my back, to earn a few bucks to keep them going. The lesson?
Never trust a pusher.
Ross suggested I meet the “Trucker,” to see if he wanted to get in on the gas fraud business and to feel him out on any dope deals I might have in mind. The Trucker had reasons for wanting to get close. I thought those reasons were financial.
By now, a lot of things were falling into place. In addition to the hash deal, I had another deal to bring 5,000 pounds of weed into Canada from New Jersey. At the same time I also had an offer of hundreds of pounds of cocaine from Columbia. And a friend in Brazil who had control of the docks wanted me to go into farming with him, just outside of Rio, as a way to launder money. It was not so far-fetched. After all, I had experience with farming, thanks to all my time in prison.
There are some things common to all business transactions, legitimate or otherwise: you spend a lot of time in meetings, you talk, and in the end you have to trust. In the world of legitimate business, if you aren’t careful, you lose your shirt. In the world of crime, if you aren’t careful, you lose your life.
I had Ross talk to the Trucker about bringing in the weed from New Jersey. The Trucker seemed reluctant; he’d rather run a load of blow, which would mean more money faster. He said he wanted to meet me. He had a lot of nerve.
I decided to test him.
We met late one night in a parking lot. He was eager enough to get in on the stolen gas scam, which was still coming along slowly, but he was even more eager to run cocaine; fewer trips, less risk, more money.
He said, “Listen, Rick, with you I’m in the big leagues. I can do a run or two of cocaine and retire. I don’t want to a lot of little runs with weed.”
A run or two, and retire. That is the dream.
But he had it a bit backwards. I wasn’t in business to satisfy him. I had plans of my own, and I blew up at him.
“Who the fuck do you think you are to school me? You may know Ross, but who else do you know?”
I didn’t want an answer, and I didn’t care at that moment what he might have known. I walked back to my car, ripped the door open, and drove home in the face of a snowstorm. That was the test. I needed to know how he’d react. I had seen my share of undercover cops sitting in the various prisons I had been in, trying to catch me. That made my leery of everyone and everything but I was also greedy and desperate – two things that bring down every rounder.
The next day, Reggie gave me two names of guys who did business with the Trucker while they were all in Beaver Creek prison camp, so that I could check them out. I knew both of the references from jail, and soon set up a meeting. They confirmed they’d done a couple of deals with the Trucker a few years back, without repercussion or concern, but both stressed it was just small kilo weed deals.
I had Reggie set up another meeting.
At this point I knew I had an advantage, psychologically, given how the last meeting had ended: the Trucker might figure that he had made me mad, but he wouldn’t want to keep me mad with the prospect of a deal in front of him.
He had money and he seemed genuinely eager to invest, which to my way of thinking meant I could use him. I asked him how he felt about taking $100,000 down to St. Kitts to buy some blow. He could bring it back through the airport with the help of my connections there. This run was a tester, part of a larger plan to bring back as much as 500 kilos a month until we got rich or got tired of playing the game.
“This is the kind of action I love,” he said, leaping at the opportunity. “When do I go, and what do I get for my investment?” I asked him to wait a bit.
We met again a week later and I gave him a sample, two ounces of the ninety-four percent pure that had come to me from the West Indies. He called me the next day to say he was willing.
Christmas was coming. I avoided his calls because I wanted to spend some time concentrating on my family. This would be the first Christmas for the kids with me out of prison.
Instead, Reggie talked to him weekly, telling him everything was okay, assuring him that he’d just have to wait, that I was the boss, that he couldn’t and shouldn’t rush me, etc.
January and February came and went and with the arrival of spring break, the whole city seemed to want to party. And then Rodney called and said he had some blow he wanted to get rid of; he had airport connections, and he wanted me to use the Trucker.
So he wanted to make some money, and I wanted to test the system. I sold the Trucker a pound. Rodney’s stuff was not as pure as it might have been – certainly it was not as pure as Roy’s – but he took it anyway, which made me suspicious.
Here’s how my thinking went. Although he was a whiner, and I disliked him, I would have some respect for him if he’d declined a weak deal.
On top of that, I was pissed at Rodney for disrespecting me with garbage dope. I thought about ripping Rodney off, or having him taken care of in a more brutal way, in order to save face. As soon as I thought of killing someone over a drug deal I snapped awake. I knew that if I stayed in the drug game I would end up killing scores of people who didn’t have the principals I had. I didn’t want to start with killing Rodney. On the other hand, I had plans for the Trucker and decided right there and then to rip him off and get out of the dope game for good. I thought I might be able to take care of both of them with one slick move.
I’m not bragging about this. That’s how my mind worked at the time, and that’s how the business works, even now. Your ego and your nerve form the basis of your reputation, and you can’t let your reputation suffer.
I came up with a scheme to get the Trucker to come up with a pile of dough. I knew if it worked I wouldn’t have to sell any blow to make any money.
I told him I wasn’t too happy about Rodney’s shitty dope, and promised to make it up to him. I asked him to take enough money down to St. Kitts to buy ten kilos of cocaine at $15,000 a kilo; all he had to do was sit under a coconut tree and wait for my man to meet him.
But he’d have to front the money.
I assured him that he would be treated with respect, and that he would be in safe hands. I also said that the airports in St. Kitts and Toronto were ready to turn a blind eye. I wasn’t kidding. Roy had taken care of St. Kitts. Rodney had a guy at Pearson who had ways to get past Customs, and I had an ace card if I needed one, in the form of a crooked Customs agent. I told the Trucker that he could trust me with his money and his life, or he could forget it.
Greed got the better of him, as I knew it would.
Meanwhile, Angela was pressing me to get some kind of legitimate work, and with her media connections she set me up with a couple of TV shows. I was booked to talk about the days of the Dirty Tricks Gang, my life in prison, and the progress I was making with my sideline – talking to kids at risk.
I ended up doing an interview with Erica Ehm, who had been a bright young VJ on the MuchMusic channel. She was doing talk interviews. And I was still talking about going straight and doing right.
After the interview, while she and Angela chatted about old times and toured the studio, I got impatient about the St. Kitts deal so I excused myself and made a call.
I got Roy and told him I was sending someone to meet him. I faxed him a photo of the Trucker and left the rest to him. Not even Roy knew what I was up to.
If this were a movie the foreboding music would come up here.
I drove my mark to the airport, cautioning him that the RCMP sometimes took over the jobs of airport workers in Toronto, often for a week at a time, to curb any interest airport employees might have of importing on their own.
“If anything happens, I’ll pay you back and find another way to bring the dope into the country.” He nodded, and I continued. “Look at it this way – you get a paid vacation in paradise, you’ll meet some really cool people, and you won’t lose a cent no matter what happens.”
He boarded the plane and I knew I had him.
In St. Kitts, the Trucker sat under a coconut tree in the heat, clutching a gym bag full of Canadian $100 bills, looking at every black man who passed by. That would have been a lot of black guys.
And at the prearranged time, the champ came jogging along, throwing punches in the air. Roy stopped to stretch and struck up a conversation with the nervous stranger; nothing unusual, islanders are friendly.
When the Trucker turned the talk to boxing, and when he mentioned my gym, the connection was made. Roy looked after him for a week, taking him fishing, golfing, and partying at a place called the Monkey Bar.
As part of my master plan, I walked out of my back door and across the way to the Canadian National Exhibition grounds, picked one of the dozens of pay phones there and called Roy in St. Kitts. I explained that there was a problem at my end, and he was to keep the Trucker’s money, and to send him back with nothing.
Roy put the Trucker on the phone. I said, “Plan B, my friend; don’t worry about a thing.” He was in no position to question me.
I met my Toronto airport connection and told him when the Trucker was coming in, and I asked him to observe his arrival from a security point of view, and to let me know if anything was amiss.
I said he’d be coming in clean.
That night, I got two urgent calls, one from the Trucker, and one from my security agent. They both wanted to meet right away. I met the airport guy first.
“Your guy stood around the baggage drop until the last bag came down,” he explained. “He looked nervous, and he put our security on alert. He picked up one bag but left the last one rolling around like a hot potato. My boss was unable to wait any longer. He sent us out to grab the bag and your guy. We took him into custody.
“He claimed he didn’t know whose bag it was. When we opened it we found cocaine. We let him go, but he’s now red-lighted in our computer system. Turns out he’s also got a prison record, with an address in Calgary.”
I thanked him for his troubles and slipped him $500 in an envelope; after all, nothing’s free in the drug world. This would not have been possible in the super security conscious post 9/11 world.
I arranged a meeting at a restaurant with the Trucker. He was pacing back and forth in the parking lot when I pulled up. I walked over briskly, showed my gun and told him I wanted him to put his hands on his car so I could frisk him.
He was shocked. Things were unfolding as I’d planned.
I said, “What the fuck, man, I told you not to bring anything back. What the fuck happened down there?”
He said he’d been told that Roy’s boss, Charles Miller, had ordered him to bring back ten kilos in order to test Toronto security. He was too afraid to refuse.
“Yeah, well, you violated the terms of our agreement. I’m not taking responsibility for your loss. The only consolation I can offer is that I’ll pay you back your hundred grand on our next deal. But you’ll have to step up to the plate and come up with a million dollars.”
I was rewarded with a blank stare.
“You tasted the product down there. It’s as good as it gets; where else you gonna get anything that pure? I’ve got several ways to get it into Canada. I’ve talked to Montreal; the docks are open for us there. I’ve also got people in British Columbia. And, I have an ace card at the airport. It’s still good to go. If you don’t do anything stupid like you did this time, all will be okay and you’ll be a rich man.”
He said, “I’m not going to take any chances with a million bucks in cash unless I meet your airport guy. And we have to go into this as full partners, no hidden agendas.”
I pretended to consider his proposal.
I knew I had him hooked. I was going to rip him off anyway, so I didn’t think it mattered one way or another if he met my airport connections. If that helped loosen him up then it worked in my favour.
“No problem. You’ll meet him. You’ve already met the other end.” I drove away, still a little pissed at Roy for causing me a minor problem, but certain that I could still set the Trucker up for a million-dollar rip-off.
I didn’t go directly home. I went back to the CNE first, to that bank of pay phones where I put in another call to Roy.
“You fucked me. My friend didn’t make it through the airport.” I didn’t bother to hide my anger.
Roy asked, “Is he in jail?”
“No, but he lost the bag.”
Roy lost his patience, yelling at me over the phone. “What are you upset about? If you want us to give the money back, we will. But if that little weasel comes down here again, I’ll send him back to you in a box.”
This wasn’t going well.
I said, “My friend, don’t you raise your voice to me. I’ve always been a heavyweight. You understand what I’m saying to you?”
Roy calmed down. And so did I when he explained his side of the story.
He said, “My boss took the position that you don’t know shit about what’s going on here. He wanted to sweeten the deal with your guy. No disrespect for not clearing it with you first. I would have made sure you got cut into any profits that guy made. Why are you so upset?”
I was on a pay phone, calling another pay phone, so I opened up. “Listen, I have a plan. He’s going to come back with a million dollars. I’ll split it with you – I want you to take the goof down.”
“You want to burn the bastard?”
“Yeah. But I don’t want any problems in communication so you’ve got to come up here to see me. I can’t come to you.”
Roy’s tone turned even more pleasant. “I’ll be up this weekend. Let me tell you, my friend, there’s no sweeter business than the one I’m in.”
I batted that back. “You’re in the wrong business, my friend. The future is in computers. After this play, that’s where I’m headed.”
This was news to Roy.
“I’ll be up this weekend.”
As it happens Ross was back in jail, having tested positive for drugs at the halfway house, so I called a quick meeting with Reggie and one of the Italian guys – a hit man I knew from Millhaven whose services I might need if things went wrong with the Trucker. My plan?
Roy would give the Trucker a suitcase with a million dollars’ worth of pure dope, and one of his guys would switch it for garbage dope in the airport in St. Kitts.
Once the plane was in the air, I’d have my airport guy alert Customs. They’d seize the garbage dope.
That way, I could scream and holler about my losses and blame them on the Trucker, ending our relationship and keeping his money. If he got out of line, well, whatever happened would be his fault.
I have to repeat, I am not proud of this. The business was treacherous, and so was I because the success of this deal was going to set me up for the future. And I wasn’t shitting Roy about the computer idea. I had already bought several of the most powerful machines on the market I had a hacker lined up who was willing to work for coke. If things turned out, there’d be no more hit men, no more bags full of dope, no more crooked customs agents or dealers. Just little illegal keystrokes, so small no one would ever notice.
A harmless bit of skimming.
Nickels and dimes a day, amounting to millions.
When I told Angela about Roy’s arrival, she invited one of her girlfriends to meet him. Then she went shopping for a spread of the finest meats, fruits and cheeses.
Angela may not have known exactly what I was up to, but she wasn’t stupid. I loved her, in part, because she didn’t put her nose in my business.
I went to meet Roy’s flight. The airport was jammed with visitors, it being the July 4th weekend – everyone was going home to spend the holiday with relatives. Still, I could sense something wasn’t right.
In spite of the crowd, I spotted plainclothes cops everywhere. When I spotted Roy, I also saw undercover men perk up. Something was very wrong.
All I could think of was getting outside so I could run.
Roy spotted me and smiled. I walked him quickly towards an exit, and as we neared the door I saw an agent talking into his sleeve. Soon they were all doing it.
“I think we’re going to be arrested.”
Roy opened his mouth to say something but I hustled him outside. The airport limos were all there. The doors were open and the trunks were up but there wasn’t a driver in sight. Damn.
My car was parked nearby.
We never made it.
Cops wearing balaclavas and combat gear poured out of two vans, armed with machine guns. Other cops came forward with handguns and shotguns. I looked up and saw snipers on the roof of the airport.
There was death in every direction when my head exploded. One of the cops smashed the back of my skull with the butt of his machine gun; when I tried to get up another one smashed me in the face.
“Get his gun! Get his gun!”
“He doesn’t have a gun!”
“He always has a gun.”
I came to my senses. “I ain’t got a gun, asshole.” Along with the rifle butts, what hit me then was that I was the real target of the arrest.
I’d been set up.
I was cuffed and yanked to my feet and tossed into the back of a waiting car as if I were a sack of meat, with two masked cops for company. “Sit still and don’t move, or I’ll blow your fucking head off.”
“Fuck you.”
It was all I could think of to say, knowing that I was probably looking at years of loneliness and – quite frankly embarrassment – ahead of me. The route they used took us past the CNE. When I turned my head I could see my house surrounded by cop cars.
At least there was nothing illegal at the house. They tossed it and arrested Angela anyway, but not before she offered them the feast she had prepared, so that it wouldn’t go to waste. Always gracious, was my girl.
Once again back at 52 Division, this time surrounded by the RCMP and Toronto drug squad cops, ten of them. I was on unfamiliar ground; I had no idea how these guys conducted business. After a few minutes of silence – perhaps they thought I was going to spill my guts – one of them said, “We’ve got a surprise for you.”
In walked the Trucker.
He took out his badge and stuck it in my face. “You’re under arrest.” As if I didn’t know. He pulled up a chair and sat down facing me. “We’re arresting people all around the world right now. We have seventeen warrants out for your gang. Everyone’s going down. You’re on top of the heap, Ricky, and you’re looking at a life sentence.”
I stared at him with my one good eye.
He continued, sarcastic and triumphant. “I thought we could trust each other but when we saw you with the Italian the other night, I knew you didn’t respect me anymore and that really hurt my feelings.”
Have I told you how much I love sarcasm?
“For my own safety, I had to close the operation down,” he explained. “Too bad because with your connections we could have been running around the world for a long time.”
I suppose I was lucky that he’d shut me down before I’d made moves into one of those countries where they execute guys like me for drug stuff.
“By the way, after we wrap this up I’m officially retired. I’ve had twenty years of this shit.” He stuck out his hand and said, “My name is Clive.”
He seemed proud of that.
“You only have one chance to get yourself out of this mess, but it has to be now. You know the Italian bakery you were at the other night? We’d love to nail those guys. You were in Montreal with Eddie Melo. We’d love to nail those guys, too. Cooperate with us and things can go really sweet for you. If not, well, you know what’s going to happen.”
I smiled and kept my mouth shut; anything I said could have been used against me in court. After a minute of silence, they locked me up for the night.
I rotted in the Don for a year until trial.
I was in for a surprise, but not the one my lawyer had warned me about. The cop I knew as the “Trucker” did not lie in court, nor did he embellish or add things I hadn’t said on tape.
It is one of the few times, if not the only time, I had any respect for any of the cops who testified against me.
Here’s the real surprise: all the pay phones at the CNE had been tapped. I also learned that if Roy had not said his real name over the phone, no one would have known who he was.
Worst of all?
My voice, on tape, talking from the phone in Erica Ehm’s office, running my mouth on what I thought was a safe phone but which was tapped at the other end.
I felt like a fool.
When we finally got to court, I learned that I had been set up by the very head of the RCMP in Ottawa, who had watched me on Jane Haughton’s show going toe-to-toe with one of his officers from Calgary about the faint hope clause for lifers.
The judge at our preliminary trial said he’d had enough. He could not find sufficient evidence to proceed with charges against fourteen of the accused. Thanks to Trucker Clive’s testimony, he also withdrew charges against me of conspiracy to commit murder and conspiracy to rob an undercover police officer.
“I have never heard of anyone trying to smuggle cocaine into Brazil,” noted the judge disdainfully. “So, I am also withdrawing that charge. What a waste of time and money.”
The Crown shrugged. “That’s the way it goes, Your Honour.”
The Trucker – oh, hell, let’s give him his due and call him The Copper – walked over to the prisoner’s box and extended his hand. I refused to take it but I held no grudge.
He’d been smarter than me and he’d been fair in court. He was not the instrument of my own greed and stupidity. I was.
In the end, I received a twenty-year sentence for conspiring to import drugs.
As far back as I can remember, I’ve always been on the alert. But being alert is not enough. I’ve always questioned my observations, trying to see what it is I’m looking at, working hard to keep my instincts honed.
In crime, as in many other walks of life, if you see something dangerous you either cross the street or you deal with it. Sometimes you have doubts, and sometimes you doubt your doubts. It’s wearying.
Every time things have gone wrong, it’s been because I’ve ignored my instincts. Roy had said there was something wrong with the the “Trucker.” The usual and the successful position: when in doubt, wipe him out. But I’d said Roy should just send him back up.
My mistake.
And let that be the last sentence in the story of the original Dirty Trickster.