“Is that what started the present war?” I asked.
“Not really. A year after the Hells Angels adopted the Popeyes, a Montreal group called Satan’s Choice became the first Outlaws chapter in Quebec. They’ve been killing each other ever since.”
Roy indicated a gaunt man squatting in the front row of the photo.
“War was declared when this Hells Angel killed an Outlaw in a drive-by. For several years after that it was open season.”
“‘God forgives, the Outlaws don’t.’ That’s their slogan.” Sipowicz wrote his name, “Kuricek,” on a notebook as he spoke. I wondered how many people called him Sipowicz by mistake.
“True. But the Quebec Outlaws have suffered a severe reversal of fortune since then. Five or six are now in jail, and their clubhouse was burned to the ground a few years ago. The present war really involves the Angels and a Canadian group called the Rock Machine, and their puppet clubs.”
“Classy guys,” offered Sipowicz/Kuricek.
“But the Rock Machine also fell on hard times,” Roy continued. “Until recently.”
He clicked to a slide showing a man in a beret embracing a leather-jacketed comrade. Centered on the embracee’s back was a cartoon-like Mexican bandit, knife in one hand, pistol in the other. Red and yellow crescent-shaped banners above and below the figure identified the wearer as the national vice president of the Bandidos MC.
“The Machine was on its last legs, but appears to be undergoing a major resuscitation since members have recently been spotted wearing patches identifying them as tentative Bandidos.”
“Tentative?” I asked.
“The Machine has been granted hang-around status while the Bandidos decide if they’re worthy to prospect.”
“I can see the advantage to the Rock Machine, but what’s in it for the Bandidos?” I asked.
“For years the Bandidos were satisfied with local meth and narcotics sales, and a few bucks from prostitution. The national organization ran a pretty loose ship. Now power has shifted, and the new leadership recognizes the advantage of expansion and tight control over member chapters.
“Check out the bottom rocker.” Roy pointed to the lower banner on a jacket in the background. “Quebec has been changed to Canada. That’s a pretty clear indicator of where the Bandidos want to go. But it may not be that easy.”
New slide. A formation of bikes on a two-lane highway.
“This was taken in Albuquerque, New Mexico, a few weeks ago. The Bandidos were on their way to a run organized by the Oklahoma chapter. When police pulled over some of the boys for traffic violations, the club’s international president was among them, so investigators took the opportunity to query him about all the new faces. He admitted the Bandidos were checking out wanna-be clubs around the world, but refused to answer when asked about the Rock Machine.
“Turns out the arrangement is not a done deal. The pres had just come from a meeting of the National Coalition of Motorcyclists where the Bandidos and the Hells Angels tried to hammer out an agreement about the Machine. The Angels are not thrilled about the Bandidos’ expansion campaign, and offered to disband a prospect chapter in New Mexico if the Bandidos would drop negotiations with the Quebec club.”
“So the Machine is really hanging out there?” Ponytail.
“Yes. But if they are patched over, a Bandidos presence could shift the balance here.” Roy’s voice sounded grim.
“The Rock Machine is relatively new on the scene, n’est-ce pas?” asked the young-looking investigator.
“They’ve been around since 1977,” said Roy. “But they only added MC to their name in ’97. Before that they didn’t think of themselves as anything as conventional as a motorcycle club. It was a little surprise on their Christmas cards that year.”
“Christmas cards?” I thought he was joking.
“Yeah. Tradition means a lot to these guys. It was quite the talk of the prison chat room.” Kuricek.
Laughter.
“The cards allow members to keep up with each other,” Roy explained. “The downside is that they also fatten the intelligence files of rival gangs.”
Roy clicked to a map of Montreal.
“Currently the Rock Machine is battling the Hells Angels over control of the province’s illegal drug trade. And we’re talking big bucks, here. According to the solicitor general, Canada’s illicit drug market is worth seven to ten billion a year to organized crime gangs. Quebec represents a big piece of that.”
He indicated two areas of the city.
“The disputed turf involves the north and east sides of Montreal, and parts of Quebec City. Since 1994 there have been hundreds of bombings and arsons, and no less than one hundred and fourteen murders.”
“Counting Marcotte, the Vaillancourt twins, and the Toussaint child?” I asked.
“Good point. One hundred and eighteen. At least a score of others are missing and presumed dead.”
“How many of these asshole warriors are out there in the trenches?” Kuricek.
“The starting lineup is about two hundred sixty-five for the Angels, fifty for the Rock Machine.”
“That’s it?” I was astounded so few could wreak so much havoc.
“Don’t forget the second-stringers.” Kuricek leaned back and his chair whooshed softly.
“Both sides have puppet clubs that align with them. It’s these losers that do all the dirty work for the organizations.” Roy.
“Dirty work?” It all sounded dirty to me.
“Distribution and sale of drugs, debt collection, weapons and explosives buys, intimidation, murder. These puppet clubs are the dregs of bikerdom and they’ll do anything to prove their balls to the big dogs. That’s why it’s so hard to nail a patch holder of a major club. The bastards are slippery as hell and always operate at arm’s length.”
“Then if you do bust them they make bond and use their baboons to terrorize or kill your witnesses.” Kuricek.
I pictured the shattered flesh that had been the Vaillancourt brothers.
“The Heathens are aligned with the Rock Machine?”
“C’est ça.”
“And the Vipers with the Hells Angels?”
“C’est ça.”
“Who are the others?”
“Let’s see. The Rowdy Crew, the Jokers, the Rockers, the Evil Ones, the Death Riders . . .”
At that moment Martin Quickwater appeared in the doorway. He was wearing a navy suit and crisp white shirt, and looked more like a tax lawyer than an organized crime investigator. He nodded at Roy then his eyes swept the room. When he saw me his eyes narrowed, but he said nothing.
“Ah, bon. Monsieur Quickwater can give us the FBI perspective.”
But that was not to be. Quickwater had urgent news. The body count was about to go up.
BY SUNRISE THE NEXT DAY I WAS AT THE VIPERS’ CLUBHOUSE IN St-Basile-le-Grand. The building stood alone on an acre of land that was entirely enclosed by an electrified fence. Surveillance cameras dotted the barrier’s upper rim, and powerful floods lit the perimeter.
Gates at the highway end of the road were electrically operated and monitored from inside the house. When we arrived they stood open, and no one questioned us via the intercom. Though I could see a remote camera focused on us, I knew no one was watching. The warrant had already been served, and unmarked cars, cruisers, coroner transport vehicles, and the crime scene van were parked along the side of the drive.
Quickwater drove through the gates and pulled in at the end of the row. As he cut the engine he glanced sideways at me, but said nothing. I returned the pleasantry, grabbed my pack, and got out.
In back the grounds were wooded, in front an open field stretched from the house to the highway. The gravel road on which we’d entered bisected the front clearing and ended at a ring of asphalt encircling the building. Waist-high cement cones bordered the asphalt, placed to prevent parking within fifteen feet of any wall. The arrangement reminded me of Northern Ireland in the early seventies.
Like the citizens of Belfast, the bikers of Quebec took the threat of car bombs very seriously. A black Ford Explorer was parked at the edge of the asphalt.
Sunlight mottled the horizon, bleeding yellow and pink into the pale purple of early dawn. An hour ago, when Quickwater had picked me up, the sky had been as black as my mood. I didn’t want to come here. I didn’t want to deal with Mr. Personality. And most of all, I didn’t want to unearth more dead bikers.
What Quickwater told us yesterday had caused a weight to settle over me. As I’d listened to his account I knew that what was to have been peripheral involvement on my part, undertaken only to permit me to work on Emily Anne’s case, would now become a major task, and the thought of all I’d have to do was pressing me down like a school-yard bully. I reminded myself that a nine-year-old child lay in the morgue, and her shattered family would never be the same. I was there for them.
The Viper shooter who’d obliterated the Vaillancourt brothers had been willing to deal. Facing his third bust and murder-one charges, he’d offered the location of two bodies. The crown had countered with second degree. Voilà. Daybreak in St-Basile.
As we trudged up the drive dawn gave way to morning. Though I could see my breath, I knew the day would warm with the sun.
Gravel crunched underfoot, and now and then a pebble dislodged, skittered across the uneven roadbed, and rolled into a side trench. Birds twittered and scolded, announcing their displeasure over our arrival.
Suck eggs, I thought. My morning began before yours.
Don’t be a baby, Brennan. You’re annoyed because Quickwater is a jerk. Ignore him. Do your job.
Just then he spoke.
“I need to find my new partner. He’s just been loaned over to Carcajou.”
Though Quickwater didn’t offer a name, I felt sympathy for the unlucky cop. I took a deep breath, hiked up my pack, and looked around as I followed his back.
One thing was clear. The Vipers were never going to win Landscaper of the Year. The front of the property was a good example of what nature preservationists in the U.S. Congress had fought to protect. The bottomland that stretched to the highway was a sea of dead vegetation splayed against the reddish-brown spring mud. The scrub forest behind the house had been left to the decorating of its quadrupedal inhabitants.
When we crossed the asphalt and entered the courtyard, however, a design plan was evident. Inspired by the better prisons of America, the enclosure had all the essentials, including twelve-foot brick walls topped with surveillance cameras, motion detectors, and floodlights. Wall-to-wall cement covered the ground, with basketball hoops, a gas barbecue, and a doghouse with chain-link run. Steel doors had replaced the original courtyard gate, and the garage entrance was steel-reinforced and welded shut.
On the trip out, the one time Quickwater had spoken was to give me the basic history of the property. The house was built by a New Yorker who’d made his fortune running booze during the days of the Volstead Act. In the mid-eighties the Vipers bought it from the smuggler’s heirs, put four hundred thousand into renovations, and hung up their logo. In addition to the perimeter security system, the boys had installed bulletproof glass in all first-floor windows, and steel plating on every door.
None of that mattered this morning. Like the gate, the clubhouse door stood wide open. Quickwater entered and I followed.
My first reaction was surprise at the lavish outfitting. If these guys needed to make bail or hire an attorney, all they had to do was hold an auction. The electronic equipment alone would have netted them F. Lee Bailey.
The house was built on multiple levels, with a metal staircase twisting up its core. We crossed a black-and-white-tiled hallway and started to climb. To my left I got a glimpse of a game room complete with pool and Foosball tables and a full-length bar. On the wall above the liquor collection a coiled snake with fleshless skull, fangs, and bulging eyeballs grinned down in orange neon. At the far end of the bar, a bank of video monitors provided sixteen views of the property on small black-and-white screens. The room also held a large television and a sound system that looked like a NASA control panel. A patrolman from the St-Basile PD nodded as we passed.
At the second level I noted a gym with at least half a dozen pieces of Nautilus equipment. Two weight benches and an assortment of free weights sat in front of a mirrored wall to the left. The Vipers were into body image.
On level three we crossed a living room done in late-millennium biker bilious. The carpet was deep red plush, and locked horns with the gold on the walls and the blue in the fabric of the oversized couches and love seats. The tables were brass and smoked glass, and held an assortment of snake sculptures. Wood, ceramic, stone, and metal serpents also lined the windowsills, and snarled from the top of the largest TV I’d ever seen.
The walls were decorated with posters, enlargements of snapshots taken at club soirees and runs. In shot after shot members flexed sweaty muscles, straddled cycles, or held up bottles and cans of beer. Most looked like they came from a point on the IQ curve that sloped low and very gently.
We wound our way past five bedrooms, a black marble bath with a sunken Jacuzzi and open glass shower the size of a squash court, and finally into a kitchen. There was a wall phone to my right, with an erasable message board bearing numbers, gibberish in alphabetic code, and the name of a local attorney.
To my left I noticed another staircase.
“What’s up there?” I asked Quickwater.
No response.
A second uniform from St-Basile stood on the far side of the room. “It’s another rec room,” he said in English. “With an outside deck and ten-person spa.”
Two men sat at a wooden table framed by a small bay window, one disheveled, the other pressed and groomed to perfection.
I looked at Quickwater, who nodded. My heart sank.
Luc Claudel was the nameless unfortunate newly partnered with Quickwater. Great. Now I’d have to work with Beavis and Butt-Head.
Claudel was speaking, now and then tapping a document that I assumed was the search warrant.
The man he was addressing looked less than pleased with his morning. He had fierce black eyes, a hooked nose that did a sharp left just below the hump, and more hair on his upper lip than a bull walrus. He scowled at his bare feet as he clenched and unclenched the hands that dangled between his knees.
Quickwater nodded at the walrus.
“The Neanderthal is Sylvain Bilodeau. Luc is explaining that we’re here to do a little gardening.”
Bilodeau glanced at Quickwater, then at me, his eyes hard and unsmiling, then refocused on opening and closing his fists. A tricolor serpent wound the length of his arm, and appeared to sway as the muscles tensed and eased. I suspected Quickwater’s metaphor had done our Paleolithic cousins an injustice.
After a few more words Claudel stopped talking and Bilodeau shot to his feet. Though he couldn’t have been over five foot three, he looked like a poster boy for steroids. For a moment he said nothing. Then, “This is shit, man. You can’t just bust the fuck in here and start digging the place up.” His French was so heavily accented with backcountry joual that I missed a lot of the words. But I definitely caught his drift.
Claudel rose and looked Bilodeau in the eye.
“That’s exactly what this little piece of paper says we can do. And, as I explained, you’ve got two choices. You can show class and just sit tight like a good little boy, or we can haul you out of here in handcuffs and treat you to free accommodations for an indefinite period of time. It’s your choice, Nose.”
Claudel pronounced the nickname in a mocking tone. Good handle, I thought.
“What the fuck am I supposed to do?”
“You’re going to reassure your friends that it’s in the best interests of their continued good health not to drop by here today. Aside from that, your day is going to be leisurely. You’ll do absolutely nothing. And Caporal Berringer is going to stay here to watch you do it.”
“I’m
just taking care of business here. Why the fuck do you have to show up this morning?”
Claudel reached out and clapped Nose on the shoulder. “Life is timing, Nose.”
Bilodeau shrugged free and stomped to the window.
“Fucking son of a bitch.”
Claudel held up his hands in a “what can I do” gesture. “Maybe you’ve got bigger problems than we do, Nose. Guess the brothers won’t be thrilled about you sleeping on watch.”
Bilodeau crisscrossed the room, pacing like a caged animal. Then he stopped at the counter and pounded it with both fists.
“Fuck.” His neck muscles bulged with rage and a vein throbbed like a tiny stream in the center of his forehead.
After a moment he turned, scanned from face to face, then pinned me with a look of Charles Manson intensity. He uncurled one fist and pointed a trembling finger in my direction.
“That motherfucking turncoat prick of yours better get it right the first time.” His voice quivered with rage. “Because he’s a walking dead man.”
• • •
The turncoat prick in question had been waiting one hundred yards away in the backseat of an unmarked Jeep. As part of his plea bargain he’d agreed to take us to the grave site. However, nothing would persuade him to get out of the car until we were well clear of the house. He would be driven, or the deal was off.
We left the house and went directly to the Jeep. I took the front passenger seat and Claudel climbed in back while Quickwater continued down the road to check with the recovery team. The cigarette smoke was so thick inside the vehicle I found it hard to breathe.
Our informant was a middle-aged man, with celery green eyes and dull red hair pulled into a ponytail at the back of his head. With his white skin, lank hair, and pale reptilian eyes, he looked like something that had evolved in the waters of an underground cave. Viper was an appropriate affiliation. Like Bilodeau, he was short. Unlike Bilodeau he was not interested in a prolonged stay at the clubhouse.
Claudel spoke first.