RARA-AVIS: Re: Montreal Mobster

From: Kevin Burton Smith ( kvnsmith@thrillingdetective.com)
Date: 15 Feb 2002


>Kevin could probably give you the numbers more accurately.
>Montreal's his turf, but I believe there are more than 100 murders (and not
>all of them bikers by any stretch) attributed to the Hells Angels vs. Rock
>Machine battle for turf. Quebec was a final North American frontier, with
>something similar anticipated in Ontario when things got settled down
>river, as they were within the past year. After that it took the Hells
>about a week to organize independent Ontario clubs, thought that may not be
>complete yet.

Yep. At least a hundred. It's hard to tell though. Some biker gets killed, is it a hit, or just a domestic dispute? Rumours are a recent car bomb that went off, sending a couple of bikers to the great beyond may have been set by a jealous girlfriend.

Anything you've heard about the Mafia, just think bikers. That's how big it is.

And Montreal, always a wide-open town, has -- through a combination of corruption, laissez-faire attitudes, bloated bureaucracy and far too often incompetent cops -- become a kind of ground zero for the bikers. In Chandler's last short story with Marlowe, THE PENCIL, he refers to Montreal as "almost as crooked" as we are. I'll take that as a point of twisted pride, and carry it with me wherever I go.

Can a whole city be a femme fatale?

-- 

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