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His next statement shocked me.
5
“Tomorrow morning, I’ll be ten floors below you at Wilfrid-Derome.”
“I don’t understand.”
“I’ve been asked to rejoin my old squad.”
“Crimes Contre la Personne?” Crimes against persons. Assaults. Murders. The rough stuff.
“Yes,” Ryan said.
“You’re returning to the SQ?” I was so stunned I was babbling. We’d discussed Ryan’s retirementad nauseambefore he’d finally decided to pull the plug.
“Yes.”
“But you just left.”
“They’ve cajoled me back for a special assignment.”
“What’s so ‘special’?”—pulling my hands free to hook air quotes—“that suddenly they can’t manage without you?”
“I think they miss my boyish charm and cutting wit.”
“And your humility.”
“And that.”
I said nothing. Though amused by Ryan’s comments, I was not amused by the idea that, once again, he’d be in harm’s way. Crimesagainst persons cops face bad people. All those years that he was on the street I’d learned to keep my fear in check. To ban thoughts of the dreaded phone call or knock on my door. That anxiety was supposed to be behind me now.
“There’s a problem with the OCGs.” Ryan used the acronym for outlaw criminal gangs.
“Montreal has always had a gang problem. I thought the violence had been toned down.”
I was referring to a particularly bloody period when the Hells Angels were fighting a local group called the Rock Machine over control of the drug trade in the province. Roughly one hundred and fifty died during the biker war, each gang slaughtering its rivals with creative abandon.
Many victims were found shot and torched in burning vehicles, or floating headless and handless in the Lachine Canal. No faces, no dentals, no prints. You get the picture. Many of those corpses ended up in my lab.
Joe Q. Public was largely detached from it until a child got caught in the cross fire, blown to bits in a car bomb explosion. Finally, an outcry arose, and a multiagency task force was created. Arrests followed, trials, convictions. In the end, those still breathing and not behind bars decided it was better for business to rein in the bloodshed.
But that wild ride was long past. I’d heard little about the Angels or the Mafia for many years.
“Dozens of bikers went to jail,” I said. “I thought that pretty much shut things down.”
“You think being in the slammer stops these thugs? Besides, many of the old geezers are out now. And, more important, a new generation is trying to make its mark.”
Ryan shook his head in disgust. I waited for him to continue.
“In my first briefing I learned that the island of Montreal is now divvied up between gangs associated with the Crips and gangs associated with the Bloods. Both gangs with Los Angeles origins. TheCrips are mostly northside, the Bloods mostly southside. Mostly. The situation is complex as hell.”
“Don’t the younger guys grasp the fact that joining forces is better than slaughtering each other?”
“Historically, Crips gangs have been more willing to collaborate with the Mafia and the bikers,” Ryan said. “The Bloods prefer to maintain their independence. Not all, but most of the current bloodshed is due to conflict within the Bloods.”
I said nothing.
“For example, there’s ongoing hostility between the Profit Boys from Rivière-des-Prairies and Zone 43 from Montréal-Nord. That conflict accounts for a lot of the recent shootings and firebombings.”
