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| Stan (left), has a plan. |
Louis Shalako
Armed robbery and the potential for violence. Fast forward to the early to mid-nineties. McNuggets, who considers himself to be a criminal mastermind, and Buddy Two-Shoes, an equal partner a lot of the time—well. He has some kind of a brainstorm.
It may have been chance, coincidence, a careless
remark by a buddy, or a fellow-traveller. He got the idea from somewhere.
They had a friend, one who drove the mail trucks. That
friend may have been the sort of person who had a good job, liked to smoke a
bit of pot, and when the day came, they might have had a little hit on that
good old crack pipe, right. And it’s pretty insidious stuff. Back in the good
old days, the vast majority of Canadians received their unemployment cheques my
mail. They got their old age pensions, by mail. They got their tax returns,
disability pensions, fucking welfare cheques, all sorts of federal and
provincial benefits by mail. People paid their bills by mail—we tend to forget
that stuff now that it’s all electronic and we live in the 21st
century. We pay our bills with a couple of clicks on a mouse these days…
However.
That must have been what got them thinking. This is
pretty serious stuff, but what if? What
if, we could grab the whole fucking truck, full of sacks of mail, on just
the right day, and what if there were hundreds, possibly thousands of cheques
in those mailbags.
I mean, it’s a pretty big town right, and cheque day
rolls around once a month.
What then?
What then,
eh?
One has to wonder how much thought they actually put
into this crime. One has to wonder, just what they planned to do next, for
surely that is the really crucial part of the operation. What would be the
point of grabbing a shit-load of cheques, if you don’t have any sort of a plan,
in terms of how you’re going to turn all that paper into cold, hard cash. And
you have to do it quick. There’s only so much time to do it. Were they going to
go all over Ontario, cashing those stolen cheques?
How?
Your buddy down at the auto leasing place must be
getting pretty warm by now himself.
That being said, these guys were known for fraud,
stolen credit and debit cards, impersonating a card-holder and making
purchases, and they probably did have at least a few ideas I am sure. What if
they also, had a friend in the bank,
or some other ideas on that score…maybe you could just sell a bunch of cheques
to a much larger player. Laundering cash is one thing, cheques are another, and
especially a big whack of personal, individual, government cheques.
I never heard much about that, but I wasn’t really hanging around with them all that much at
the time. I heard some things at second hand—the fact that they were in jail,
for example. Understandably, they didn’t want to talk much about it afterwards,
and it’s not all that easy to press for such information…
There are certain questions you just don’t ask.
Like, what in
the hell were you thinking—
So, with the cooperation of the driver, an employee of
Canada Post, with some knowledge of the inner workings of the postal system,
one of them, most likely McNuggets, cooked up some semblance of a plan.
Almost any criminal can be dangerous. These guys were
not normally known for violence, but this was a big heist, at least in their
own minds. McNuggets was not banned in the U.S., and so he went over the river
to a gun shop and got himself an electric stun-gun. Not so much a gun, it more
closely resembled an electric cattle prod, although it would absolutely put a
man down, rather than just giving a 1200-pound cow a little buzz on the ass…I
do recall him showing me, which shows that they must have (or I must have),
been coming and going still. He even offered to let my try it, an opportunity
which I politely declined. No, thanks—I’ll take your word for it. He smuggled
that back over the river. There was some contact, in that they still sold me a
bit of pot once in a while, although my cocaine days were either gone or going
very, very soon now—
Yeah, what would happen if McNuggets, or Buddy
Two-Shoes, or Zoomer, opened up a vehicle looking for a wallet, and found a
firearm in there…what then.
 |
| Promise you will never tell. Thief's honour... |
This is what I mean—sort of, when I say these guys,
low-level punks that they were, could also be dangerous, not just to other
people but to themselves as well. One thing led to another, in a logical
progression of events. And a hot firearm can always be sold, for a little cash,
to someone who might be even stupider, or maybe even just crazier, than you are. Selling someone a hot firearm, and they go
off and use it somewhere, is that a whole lot different than the person who is
just helping out a friend to find a vein, and pressing the plunger on that
syringe, in all innocence, which results in the death, not of an enemy, but a
friend—what then.
What then? The same holds true for a cheap taser
bought in a pawn shop or whatever in a little town across the river, and no
plan is completely foolproof.
Anyhow, the basic plan was pretty simple. Their postal
driver friend was to pick up a load of mailbags, wherever that might have been.
I’m thinking London or Toronto, some postal sorting facility in Mississauga, considering
the load, and then bring it back to town, where these guys would be waiting at
a certain time, at a certain corner. Their friend would have to stop at the
stop sign, and then they’d leap out, pull open the door, climb in…and take him
hostage, what with having a taser weapon and all.
 |
| A big sack of cheques, right... |
They had a story all cooked up for the guy, and all
that person had to do was to stick to it. This would be all the more
convincing, if they were actually
injured, when you think on it.
Now, this guy (or girl, which is barely possible),
must have wondered. But they were to go somewhere out in the country. Tie them
up, gagged and blindfolded, steal the truck and dump him or her out into the
road…
There was no guarantee that they weren’t going to get
zapped with that taser. There was no real guarantee of success, there was no
real guarantee of the proceeds of the crime being properly distributed, in any
sort of equitable manner, and the truth is, they got cold feet.
Where in the fuck are you going to hide a Canada Post
truck for any length of time.
These guys were bound to get caught, one way or
another. They just didn’t see that.
The reader or listener may be able to guess what
happens next. The cops had been tipped off. The boys were waiting, and their
friend pulls up to the exact spot, right on schedule.
It must have seemed like they had it made. All the
cops had to do was to remain in concealment, all they had to do was to wait, to
pounce, and to catch them red-handed.
Which is exactly what they did.
It’s a funny thing about McNuggets, who had his pride.
He was never caught in the commission
of a crime. No, ladies and gentlemen, he was always betrayed. He was always ratted off by a friend.
This is one of the things that made him dangerous. He
couldn’t accept that he had simply bitten off more than he could chew.
He didn’t take into account that that other guy had a
wife, a kid, a home, and a good job, and he’d just been talking in his cups, as
the saying goes. That other guy wasn’t prepared to do hard time for him, in
spite of the criminal code of honour, or whatever ludicrous ethical and values
system one subscribed to—
It never occurred to him that the other guy had no
reason to trust either one of them, or that they wouldn’t, in fact, taser him,
take all the money, and if he didn’t like it, he could go fuck himself.
What’s he going to do now? Call the cops and confess
to a federal crime?
 |
| Enough to put a man down... |
Interestingly, McNuggets was the only guy I ever heard
of who waived bail. That might have been smart, start early on your sentence
and just get it over with. He’s the only guy I know that entered a plea and
headed off to the penitentiary, where at least they had a library, recreation
facilities, and the opportunity to learn some kind of a trade…poor old Buddy
Two-Shoes, in a separate trial, didn’t stand much of a chance once his
accomplice had copped a plea. McNuggets did four years and Buddy, two and a
half, one must assume he made some kind of a statement of fact. McNuggets was
the only guy I know, who literally showed me a set of lock-picks. McNuggets was
the only guy I know who bought some kind of plastic card-printer or embosser,
paying a couple of grand for that off of Ebay. What was he thinking of? And
McNuggets, as you may recall, had that grow-op in his basement, which he showed
to anybody who came by the house, but only after swearing them to an oath of
secrecy…McNuggets waived parole.
When he was out, he was out. He didn’t owe anybody anything. There were no conditions, once
he’d served his sentence and allegedly, paid his debt to society.
As for Two-Shoes. Maybe he caught the benefit of the
fact that his buddy had a worse, or maybe even just a longer, record. A record as long as your arm—how often have we
heard the expression?
Hell, maybe McNuggets just had longer arms.
He told me an interesting story. When he was really
young, and fearless, he’d broken into a home. He’d hit the jackpot—he’s found a
stash of weapons. Jamming them all into a pillowcase, having read a book or two
on burglars, safe-crackers and the like, he got the hell out of there.
It didn’t take too long before he realized he couldn’t
take them home. He said he’d taken them ‘out in the woods’ and buried them.
When he went back some time later, he did find them, but they were all rusty
and he still didn’t really know what to do with them. One wonders what to make
of a story like that, or what eventually happened to those weapons.
This might also account for some of that paranoia, when I was talking about
writing about small town criminals.
As for Zoomer, there was a story where a couple of
cops grabbed him off the street one day. They did not take him downtown. They
took him to some empty apartment in the south end of town and tied him up in a
chair…they beat the living fuck out of good old Zoomer, and considering the
person, one wonders what exactly they hoped to achieve.
You’re not likely to reform a guy like that.
The story goes, that he had stolen a cop’s hat out of
a vehicle.
A fucking hat,
really?
So, there is such a thing as honour, there is such a thing
as humiliation, wounded pride and the like.
One wonders if there was also a weapon, a handgun, of
official issue or otherwise, and whether such a weapon had ever been recovered.
Pure speculation on my part, but it is what it is,
ladies and gentlemen.
God knows there’s enough weapons out there.
 |
| Looks like he scored. |
***
It has been said that the average person can
unknowingly walk past 36 murderers in their lifetime.
Think about the stranger who you brushed shoulders with on the bus, the person
standing in front of you in line to grab a coffee or the passenger who sat down
next to you on a plane. – New York Post.
END
Poor old Louis Shalako has books and stories available from iTunes.
See his art on Fine
Art America.
Check out One Million Words of Crap, an audio essay on
independent, digital publishing, in celebration of fourteen years here at Long
Cool One Books.
My Criminal Memoir. (Part One).
My Criminal Memoir, Part Three.
My Criminal Memoir, Part Four.
My Criminal Memoir, Part Five.
My Criminal Memoir, Part Seven.
My Criminal Memoir, Part Eight.
My Criminal Memoir, Part Nine.
My Criminal Memoir, Part Eleven.
My Criminal Memoir, Part Twelve. (Access restricted due
to content. 18+)
My Criminal Memoir, Part Thirteen.
My Criminal Memoir, Part Fourteen.
My Criminal Memoir, Part Fifteen.
My Criminal Memoir, Part Sixteen.
My Criminal Memoir, Part Seventeen.
My Criminal Memoir, Part Eighteen.
My Criminal Memoir, Part Nineteen.
My Criminal Memoir, Part Twenty.
My Criminal Memoir, Part Twenty-One
My Criminal Memoir, Part Twenty-Two.
Thank you for reading, and listening.
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