Jerry Langton Three-Book Bundle (77 page)

Although evidence was piling up, there was little the police could do unless they could tie the money to drugs and find out who the people hiding behind the codenames were. They got both when the second angry woman walked into the RCMP Montreal headquarters on January 24, 2001. Sandra Craig had survived two attempts on her life when the Hells Angels were removing their competition from the streets of Montreal. She'd lost her husband and her livelihood as a drug trafficker because the Nomads were making sure every dealer in the city bought from The Table. Now it was her turn to ruin their lives. After asking for and getting assurances from Sergeant Tom O'Neill that nothing she said would be used against her, she presented him with copies of some spreadsheets similar to what the police had found in apartment 403. He asked her to explain what they meant. She told him that they were records of cocaine and hashish sales between the Craigs and the bikers. He asked who her customers were. “André Chouinard and Michel Rose,” she answered. O'Neill asked her to repeat what she had just said. “André Chouinard and Michel Rose,” she said calmly. Police knew these names of the members of The Table.

Less than a week later, they struck. At night, police raided the Rue Beaubien apartments and two others that were used for nothing other than to count and store huge sums of cash. Altogether, they confiscated more than $5.6 million of the Nomads' money. When they arrested Chagnon as he showed up for work the following morning, they took his two cell phones, three pagers and his little black book of phone numbers. Inside, they got what they were looking for—a directory of who held each coded account. One of them, amusingly named Gertrude, belonged to Walter Stadnick and Donald Stockford.

Jean-Guy Bourgoin and Stéphane Sirois were two old friends going in different directions. Both were founding members of the Rockers, but Sirois had left the club in 1997. Police learned from informants that he left because his wife was afraid he'd get hurt. None of the other Rockers held it against him. “It's always that way,” one of them told him. No hard feelings. Bourgoin, on the other hand, stayed in and went hardcore. According to police, he controlled the drug trade in Plateau Mont-Royal. In February 1995, he and Normand Robitaille were arrested for extortion. They demanded $450,000 from a local businessman with a severe cocaine habit and drove him to his bank to clean out his savings account. As they waited in the car, the intended victim told the bank manager what was going on. The police grabbed Bourgoin and Robitaille and charged them with forcible confinement, unauthorized possession of a firearm and concealing evidence. They were sentenced to 26 months in prison. In September 1998, Bourgoin was in trouble again. He was charged with assault after he attacked Montreal Alouettes linebacker Stephen Reid with a metal pipe in a bar fight, and spent 20 days in jail.

About the same time Bourgoin came out of prison, Sirois returned to the Rockers. His two-year tenure out of biker life had been moderately successful, but the news of massive payouts to informants at the height of the war caused him to rethink his career. Sirois—again, some say, at his wife's urging—called the RCMP about becoming an undercover agent-source. The cops jumped at the chance. Sirois was articulate, fearless and well-respected by the other bikers. The police knew he could not only infiltrate the bikers at the highest level, but he could also be a sympathetic character on the witness stand.

The Rockers welcomed him warmly and it didn't take long for Sirois to be reacquainted and trusted by heavyweights like Bourgoin. The RCMP put a recording device on his chest and asked him to talk to Bourgoin about three topics: money-laundering, drug sales and murder. He delivered on all three.

After a few beers at an East End strip club, Sirois told Bourgoin he had a little problem. Getting back into business had made him a lot of cash very quickly, and he needed a way to keep it from drawing too much attention. Bourgoin laughed and gave his old friend a playful punch on the arm. He told him he'd set him up with an accountant. “He's a hell of a guy, worked 25 years for the government and he was Rizzuto's accountant. He's always worked for those Italian guys,” Bourgoin said. “You give him the cash, say ‘here wash this for me'—and he will play with your money.” While he said it, he made a washing motion with his hands.

A few weeks later, Sirois met with Bourgoin again, this time at the clubhouse. He didn't have to ask him for anything. Trusting his old friend, Bourgoin offered to cut him in on the action of a popular new product—bootleg Viagra. “I have it in industrial quantities,” he said. Feigning skepticism, Sirois asked if it worked. Bourgoin laughed and told him that he should try it himself, saying: “You'll be as big as a horse.” Using RCMP money, Sirois bought some. He never said if he tried it.

The RCMP learned a lot about the makeup of the Rockers through the Sirois tapes and his verbal reports. He told them about two associates who claimed to be full-patch Rockers to impress some girls. As soon as Bougoin found out, four real Rockers dragged the boasters into the clubhouse and beat them so severely that “they were on the floor, in convulsions.” Sirois couldn't help looking shocked and disgusted. Bourgoin tried to calm him down and explain the situation by pointing out that some of the Rockers would do anything to get ahead and they knew that the straightest road to the top of the Hells Angels' enforcer unit was through displays of savagery. “These guys all want to get promoted.” Bourgoin told his old friend. “They're all mental cases, psychopaths.” Even more revealing was the conversation Sirois had with Rocker Sébastien Beauchamp, who told him what bikers thought of ordinary citizens. “I look at people who get up at seven, get stuck in traffic just to work for ten bucks an hour, then come back at night,” he said. “They're the fools; we're the ones who are sensible.”

Still considering him a trusted confidant, Bourgoin invited Sirois out for a fancy sushi dinner in the West End. In fact, Bourgoin was considering recommending him for a promotion. Rather than the “baseball team” (the squad of Rockers who intimidated debtors and enemies with fists and bats), Bourgoin wanted Sirois to join the “football team” (the Rockers who eliminated enemies with guns and bombs). The work was less physically taxing, the pay was much higher and the chances for advancement were much greater. Sirois said he was interested, but that he needed more details, especially when it came to the cash. Bourgoin laughed and laid out the compensation package like any other prospective employer. The Hells Angels, Bourgoin said, would pay $100,000 for every full-patch Rock Machine member murdered, $50,000 for every prospect and $25,000 for every hangaround or known associate.

Ginette Martineau and Raymond Turgeon were exactly the kind of people Beauchamp was making fun of when he was talking to Sirois. She was 49, he was 52 and they lived together in a nondescript apartment in the suburbs. They worked together at Acces-Sport, a privately owned licensing office that handled automotive issues for the insurance bureau of Québec. Money was always tight and thrills were few and far between. So when a charming young man offered to pay Martineau for some information about some license plate numbers, she was eager to deal.

On January 17, 2000 Martineau handed her new friend a photocopy of the license and insurance information for a man named Marius Poulin. It included his home address and phone number. She got $200 in return. Ten days later, Poulin was found dead in the stairwell of his apartment building.

Before she was caught, Martineau gave her friend another important file in exchange for $200. It was for Michel Auger, who had never visited their Rue Ontario store. “For some reason, he gave the newspaper building as his home address,” said Randall Richmond, the prosecutor who tried Martineau. “And that's where they got him.” It became increasingly clear that Martineau was passing information to the Hells Angels' executioners. “A man's life went for $200, that's what it amounted to,” said Richmond, referring to Poulin. “It's pretty horrifying.” Though they couldn't pin conspiracy on Martineau or Turgeon, they did manage to convict them on 25 breach-of-trust charges and the 25 charges of fraudulent use of insurance-board files. They both received sentences of five years. And, although they could never find the triggerman for the Auger shooting, Richmond did put the man who supplied the weapon, a Hells Angel's associate named Michel Vezina, behind bars. Vezina was sentenced to 59 months for trafficking the .22-caliber Ruger that Auger was shot with and a far more lethal Luigi Franchi submachine gun. It was his second conviction for trading illegal weapons in three years.

Significantly, an unnamed party requested four publication bans for the Martineau-Turgeon trial. Judge Maurice Galarneau granted them all. Under his orders, the media were not allowed to report what happened to the other people whose information was accessed; they could not report any speculation by lawyers or witnesses as to whom the information would have helped; they could not name the party who asked for the bans and, perhaps ridiculously, they could not reveal the subject Auger normally wrote about.

One person Auger wrote about frequently was Peter “Buddy” Paradis, one of the most powerful members of the Rock Machine. He didn't start out big. In 1981, at the less-than-legal age of 16, he started working as a stripper in Montreal's gay clubs. After two years on the stages and tables, Paradis learned a more lucrative trade—dealing drugs, mainly cocaine. He made a pretty good living as an independent until the war broke out and he was forced to pick sides. In June of 1994, he was one of many small-time dealers approached by Rock Machine founding member Renaud Jomphe to join their side. It was hard to say no.

Jomphe—known by some as the “King of Verdun”—was a well-known dealer long before the Rock Machine was an entity. Paradis agreed and his fortunes immediately improved. Jomphe sincerely liked Paradis, taught him the intricacies of the industry and gave him contacts that increased his reach. At the height of the war, on October 18, 1996, Jomphe went out for dinner at the Kim Hoa restaurant in Verdun with two of his henchmen, Christian Deschesnes and Raymond Laureau. It was his last supper. They were already drunk when a masked man approached their table and raked them with submachine-gun fire. Jomphe and Deschesnes died immediately and Laureau was injured severely enough to end his gangster career.

By that time, Paradis had shown he was smart, courageous and ready for the big time. They gave him Jomphe's old fiefdom. Not only did his income almost quadruple, but he also became a Rock Machine prospect. With added rewards came added responsibilities. On April 11, 1997, Paradis was driving through the East End with two of his dealers, Mario “Marteau” Filion and Simon “Chiki” Lambert, when Lambert spotted one of the enemy. Hells Angels-associated dealer Raymond Vincent was standing on a street corner as they passed by. Filion, who was driving, turned the corner and went around the block. Lambert put on a ski mask, pulled out a gun and rolled down his window. As they passed by again, Lambert shot Vincent three times. He later died in an area hospital.

Life as the boss wasn't always easy. When one of Paradis's dealers, Yan Bastieri, complained that Hells Angels associate Eric Perfechino was muscling in on his business, Paradis gave him a gun and told him to “do what you know you have to do.” Perfechino was murdered a week later.

As the war intensified, Paradis never went anywhere without his bodyguard Daniel “Poutine” Leclerc. On the surprisingly cool summer night of August 10, 1998, Leclerc drove Paradis to his home in Lasalle. Neither driver nor passenger noticed the two men parked in the black Ford Taurus in front of the house. As Leclerc drove off, two masked men emerged from the Taurus and shot Paradis four times before escaping. After eight days in a downtown hospital and still weak, Paradis returned home.

As soon as he was healthy enough, Paradis went back to work. His contacts in the Rock Machine told him that the gang's brass was pleased with his efforts, but would not be reluctant to give his position to someone they considered more courageous if his recovery lingered on much longer. Things weren't going well for the Rock Machine and they needed money fast. The Hells Angels were winning the war and more and more street-level dealers were defecting from the faltering Alliance. But the “Hells” (as the Rock Machine called them) weren't the only enemy.