Jerry Langton Three-Book Bundle (70 page)

While they were at the bottom of the river, two warrants were issued for Steinert's arrest. The police found evidence of drug dealing and immigration officials wanted to see him after he missed an extradition hearing. When he couldn't be found, the province seized Château Lavigueur and auctioned it off. While the paperwork was being straightened out, the former Steinert compound was put under 24-hour surveillance to foil any Hells Angels' attempts to burn it down.

Martin Clavel was a somewhat bumbling member of the Rock Machine who was arrested by the Sûreté du Québec (SQ) on August 27, 1997. The only thing special about his arrest was that he possessed something that had never been seen in Canada before: a “Support Your Local Bandidos” T-shirt. The press ran with it, widely reporting that the Bandidos were reinforcing the Rock Machine. But while the Hells Angels would never allow a non-member to wear their name or logo, the Bandidos will sell their gear to anyone. With that in mind, some voices claimed it was hype; but the Rock Machine, which was losing the war against the Hells Angels in Quebec, were looking for friends wherever they could find them.

Fred Faucher's letter to the Swedish Bandidos had paid dividends. The reply he received read, in part: “It is with great interest that we have read about the situation in Quebec. It's much the same conditions here in Scandinavia. We would like to hear more.” Faucher and fellow Rock Machine members Paul “Sasquatch” Porter and Johnny Plescio were invited to the Bandidos Euro Run, where they met with, and were interviewed by, the international president from Texas and presidents from chapters in Sweden, France and Australia. Less than a month later, the Bandidos and Hells Angels signed a peace treaty on live national television in Denmark.

While many observers declared this pact ended hostilities between the Bandidos and Hells Angels worldwide, the opposite is actually true. The pact was a farce. Representatives of the Danish, Swedish and Norwegian governments had met with the leaders of both gangs and told them to sign the deal or their organizations would be outlawed. Realizing that none of those countries would hesitate to bring their militaries into the fight, the bikers signed. But it didn't make them friends and it didn't change things in Quebec. The Bandidos in Sweden—and more importantly, in Texas—were still very keen on the Rock Machine, and very much the enemies of the Hells Angels.

The potential for a merger took a step forward on September 11, 1997, when the Rock Machine's top two members—Claude “ Ti-Loup” Vézina and Dany Légaré—went to prison on drug charges resulting from a raid in May. With them gone, Faucher—the man who had initiated the Rock Machine-Bandidos' alignment in the first place—became the highest-ranking member of the gang in Quebec City. His first executive decision was to repay his hosts in Europe with a party in Quebec. At the Loews Le Concorde hotel in Quebec City, Faucher threw a lavish party for the Bandidos, who attended from around the world. One notable Bandido who didn't make the party was Danish member Jan “Clark” Jensen, who had been deported from Canada two weeks earlier because of his lengthy criminal record. When a Quebec City uniformed officer recognized two Rock Machine associates on the sidewalk in front of the hotel, then noticed a mass of Harleys in the parking lot, he called for backup. When they arrived, they arrested six locals on outstanding warrants and deported Bandidos international vice-president George Wegers, the highest-ranking person at the party, back to the United States.

Prison guards and employees in Quebec were in a state of panic in the fall of 1997. Two of their peers had been professionally murdered and police had no real supects and no hard evidence. But the guards themselves were ready to make their own less formal investigation. Working day in and day out with many people who'd enjoy seeing them dead, the guards could make educated guesses as to which groups and individuals would be able to carry out such an elaborate plan. Many of them remembered the list of their names and home addresses found in a prisoner's cell in Archambault prison back in 1992. Even if the police didn't realize it, or didn't say it out loud, the prison guards knew who was killing them—the Hells Angels.

That fall, anxious guards noticed people taking pictures of their houses and cars. Some reported being followed as they drove to and from work and even on their jobs. Their panic turned to terror on October 14, when a prison guard's house was burglarized. While his most saleable items—TV, VCR, computer—were left untouched, the thieves did take something far more frightening—two complete guard uniforms, two extra shirts and a pair of handcuffs. Fed up with a lack of help from police, the prison guards took the investigation into their own hands. A combination of their own recollections and a brief, sometimes brutal, questioning of every man on his way into Bordeaux prison soon led them to the accurate conclusion that Stéphane “Godasse” Gagné had at least something to do with the murders. It made sense— he was a vicious thug out to prove a point and he had experienced some really bad times with guards. Among the other names bandied about were André “Toots” Tousignant and Paul “Fonfon” Fontaine, who were also involved. As prisoners were released from Bordeaux and other institutions, they took what they'd learned from the guards' unsubtle investigation directly to the Hells Angels.

Serge “Pasha” Boutin was a successful drug dealer for the Pelletier brothers. He ran their operations in Montreal's gay village. When the war broke out, he sided with the Hells Angels and assumed the same role as a member of the Rockers. Just before Halloween, one of his street-level dealers—fresh out of Bordeaux—told him what the guards were saying. The next time he saw them, Boutin called Gagné and Fontaine into his office. He told them that the guards were spreading rumors that they were the killers. When neither said anything, Boutin waited until they left and called Boucher. Boucher then called Gagné and set up a meeting on the busy corner of Rue Ontario and Avenue de Lorimer. He told Gagné that the prison guards knew he was the murderer, and that they knew this because he was such a bastard to them behind bars. Gagné struggled to maintain his composure. He left the meeting wondering if he would be eliminated as a threat to Hells Angels' security.

A few days later, Mom Boucher arranged to meet Gagné on the sidewalk in front of his Rue Bennett headquarters. When he got there, Gagné started gushing about all the security precautions he had taken and that if the guards suspected him it was because he had fought with them in Sorel. Boucher calmed him down and told him it was time to hit another “screw.” Gagné didn't understand; the police were everywhere and everybody knew the Hells Angels were behind the prison guard murders. Boucher laughed. “Not to worry, we'll do the police, we'll do judges and prosecutors too,” he told Gagné. “But that's not for you, dear Godasse, you've already done your job.” Then he gave Gagné a different assignment. He was to tail members of Montreal's Italian mafia in an inconspicuous gray Chrysler and videotape them using a camera concealed in a box of tissues. Nobody ever told him, but Gagné was sure Boucher was planning a war against the mafia.

Although the prison guards and public were outraged by what they perceived as a lack of action regarding the guard assassinations, the Montreal police were quietly and effectively chipping away at the biker infrastructure. Under the codename Project HARM (Hells Angels, Rock Machine), police were buying drugs in bars undercover, then arresting the vendors and closing the establishments. It was running smoothly until the night of December 4, when four plainclothes cops were sent to bring down an escort agency in Rosemount that was known to have biker connections. When a frantic call for backup came in, the only available officer was André Bouchard, commander of the Montreal police. When he arrived he saw four cops, guns drawn, surrounded by 15 bikers and their women. The cops were screaming at the bikers, telling them to get on the floor. But the bikers were clearly unafraid of the officers and one even threatened them, saying, “You think you can shoot us all?”

Bouchard, a veteran of the days when officers beat up bikers on sight, made the difference. Arriving in his full dress uniform, complete with gold braid and gongs, he approached the biggest biker, sized him up, holstered his gun and then punched him in the jaw. The biker went down in a heap and the others got on the floor.

The police had stumbled upon treasure. In the back of the escort agency, they found a map of Montreal annotated with every Hells Angels-associated bar, complete with their contacts and whose responsibility it was to get them drugs. Armed with that information, Bouchard sent out every available officer that night. Before sunrise, the Montreal police arrested 28 Hells Angels associates, confiscated $2.5 million in drugs, 18 cars and 67 illegal weapons. But like a diamond amongst gold dust, they also found Steve Boies. There seemed to be little special about him, a regular street-level dealer, but when the police found almost four kilos of cocaine stashed in his house in Berthierville and a pager that linked him to a bombing attempt on a Rock Machine clubhouse, it was enough to put him away for a long, long time and he knew it. Boies then pulled out his get-out-of-jail-free card and started talking. He had some important friends and they had done some bad things.

Boucher, Gagné and Tousignant didn't know about the arrests. They were at Boucher's South Shore farmhouse going over the final details of an ambitious plan. The 20th anniversary of the Hells Angels in Canada was approaching and a celebration was scheduled for the following night. Boucher surmised that if the Rock Machine had any fight left in them, they'd almost certainly have to strike then. As part of a comprehensive overall security plan, he had rented two helicopters with the plan of putting Tousignant in one and Gagné in the other. They would circle the Sorel clubhouse and shoot any invaders from above. After much of the meeting was over, Gagné received a call on his cell phone and excused himself. Taking Tousignant's car, he sped down Route 132 until he came across a phone booth (Hells Angels never discuss anything of importance over cell phones) in Verchères. He called Benoît Cliche, his lawyer, back. It was bad news. Boies had been caught and had turned informant. Gagné sped home to St-Hubert, grabbed his wife, packed a few bags and got back on the road. He hadn't gotten very far on his way east when his wife convinced him to find a place to stay for the night. When he spotted a motel just outside St-Hyacinthe at 11 p.m., he stopped. As soon as he opened the door, he saw the lights and heard the sirens. The SQ had been tailing him since he'd left Montreal.

Back at the SQ offices in Montreal, Gagné sat in an interrogation room across the table from a faintly familiar face. His interrogator was Sgt. Robert Pigeon, the same officer who had made the arrest that sent him to Bordeaux in 1994. Pigeon told Gagné he knew about the attempted murder of Christian Bellemare. Gagné told him he wasn't going to talk and asked to call his lawyer. According to Gagné's later testimony, he tried three times between 3:00 and 3:30 a.m., but Cliche did not answer. Gagné returned to his seat and declared again that he had nothing to say. Pigeon knew Gagné and was pretty sure he lacked the intellect or ambition to mount two very intricate and successful attacks on the prison guards, especially when he recalled how poorly he'd pulled off the attempt on Bellemare's life. His theory was that if Gagné was actually just the triggerman (as Boies had assumed), he was the SQ's only chance at catching the architect of the assassinations. That man, Pigeon correctly surmised, was Boucher. Gagné called his lawyer again at 6:24 a.m.; there was still no answer. When he returned, he looked at his questioner and asked, “If I talk, how many years will I get?”

It says a lot about either Pigeon's persuasiveness or Gagné's character that he folded. In truth, Boies had told the police little of value. The only mention of Gagné that wasn't pure speculation was a reference to his asking Boies to clean his garage and get rid of some clothes. But Gagné didn't know that. After consulting with his wife, he made the deal. Another fact Gagné did not know until Pigeon told him was that he was liable for the murder of Pierre Rondeau, the second prison guard. Although he had never actually intended to shoot Rondeau, one of the bullets he'd shot at Robert Corriveau had hit him. Forensic experts determined that the bullet entered Rondeau's body before he died, making Gagné at least partially responsible for his murder. In Canada, the murder of two officials guarantees a mandatory 25-year sentence with no hope of parole. If the charge implicating him in Rondeau's murder was dropped, Gagné would face a 25-year sentence with a chance at parole after 15 years for the murder of Diane Lavigne. The police also offered $400 a month in cash and to drop any charges against his wife. Before talking to his lawyer, Gagné spilled his guts.