His voice trailed off. I’d come to appreciate Paul Spraiger over the short time I’d known him. He mulled things over before shooting his mouth off, and was generally worth listening to.
“Which ties into Deschamps how?” I prodded him.
He took his eyes off the scenery and looked at me from the back seat. “Oh, I don’t know-not in any specific way. But I’d heard Sherbrooke was a Hell’s Angels stronghold-one of their biggest and most secure. I was just surprised another group was working the same turf.”
“Hell’s Angels?” Smith asked, surprised. “I thought they were mostly in Montreal.”
“They’re there, too,” Spraiger explained, “and a bunch more places. But so are a lot of others. Sherbrooke was like a haven-at least I thought so-a place to call their own.”
“The local cops must love that,” Smith laughed.
“They don’t complain too much,” Spraiger told him. “Sherbrooke’s got one of the lowest crime rates in Canada, in part because the Angels have done a number like the Mob in Boston’s North End-they’ve made it safer. The cops wish they weren’t there, of course, but they keep to themselves, run a tight operation, and make pretty sure everyone else stays out.”
“Doesn’t sound like the Hell’s Angels I know,” I murmured.
“They still have the guys with the Nazi helmets riding hogs,” Spraiger continued. “They’ve got an image to protect. But they’ve also got members who’re lawyers and accountants, wearing suits and driving Beemers. They’re big-time nowadays.”
“How do you know so much about them?” Smith asked.
“From my days at the Burlington PD. We used to bump into them coming down from Canada, selling drugs or moving weapons or money. They liked what Burlington had to offer. That got me started doing research-one thing led to another… I like digging into stuff like that.”
I returned to the topic at hand. “What do you make of there being a rival organization in Sherbrooke?”
Spraiger shrugged. “I guess we’ll find out, but I’d assume the word ‘rival’ doesn’t apply. If the Deschamps clan is a separate entity, then it probably means there’s a working arrangement of some kind. That’s the only thing the Angels would tolerate, especially there and especially now.”
“How so, ‘there and now’?” I asked.
“The Angels are in a squeeze. For years, they were pretty much kings of the hill. Then, several smaller competitor gangs formed an association called the Rock Machine. They’re hungry, big, and act like they’ve watched too many gangster movies. Rumors are a major power struggle is brewing, so it’s no time for the Angels to be skirmishing on their flanks. That’s what I meant about Sherbrooke-it’s behind the front lines. They’re going to be protective of that. If the Deschamps have been around awhile, like Gary was told, I’d bet their relations with the Angels are very cordial.”
As Gary worked his way through downtown Newport, there was a prolonged silence in the car while we pondered what all that might mean for us. Periodically visible between the buildings to our left, the huge, pale, frozen slab of Lake Memphremagog extended off between the mountains into Canada like a scarred cement airfield, long abandoned.
Reaching the far end of town and I-91 toward Derby Line and the border, Gary finally asked, “Why would Sherbrooke attract the Hell’s Angels?”
“Lots of reasons,” Spraiger answered him. “It’s big enough to give them something to do-strip joints, bars, discos, whatever-but not so big as to allow for much competition. It’s close to the border, but not on the priority list of the RCMP or Canadian Customs. It’s a low-profile town-working-class, industrial-not a place where too many tourists will raise a fuss about a motorcycle gang. And I suppose it doesn’t hurt that some very ritzy places, like Magog and Lake Massawipi and Mount Orford, are right nearby.
“Actually,” he added, leaning forward in his seat, his enthusiasm growing, “there’s historical precedent, too. The developers of the Sherbrooke area were American Loyalists who migrated after the Revolution turned against them-a Vermonter named Hyatt being the primary one. I suppose you could say that’s what the Angels did, too. The ones in Sherbrooke are Canadian now, but the first of them crossed the border thirty years ago or so because they thought the pickings would be easier-not to mention they wanted out of the draft during the Vietnam War.”
Gary Smith looked back over his shoulder at him. “Jesus, Paul, you’re full of bullshit, aren’t you?”
Spraiger smiled apologetically. “History major in college-made me chronically curious. Also drives my wife nuts.”
It no longer had anything to do with crime families and why we were on the road, but by now he’d caught my interest. “So if American Loyalists started Sherbrooke,” I asked, “why’s it totally French now?”
“The simple answer,” he said, “is railroads. Before eighteen-fifty, the town had a few hundred Anglos in it, running sawmills, tanneries, furniture factories, foundries-things that were largely powered by the hydro dams on the Magog River. But after the trains came in, the market exploded. Industry took off, workers were needed, and where the French had at first avoided the area, they now found themselves both crowded in their previous stomping grounds and attracted by the cash flow. They went from fifteen percent of the population to fifty in twenty years.
“Not that it is totally French now,” he added. “People think that, but there’re still small English pockets all over Québec. Lennoxville is one of them, and it’s Sherbrooke’s oldest suburb.”
“Fascinating,” Smith muttered, sounding bored. “Border’s coming up.”
The interstate ahead widened as we approached the customs check, which spanned the roadway like a line of toll booths, one of which housed a thin man with an oversized mustache.
“Good day, gentlemen,” he said in careful English. “What is your purpose in visiting Canada?”
“We’re police officers,” Gary answered for us. “Going to a meeting with the Sûreté in Sherbrooke.”
“Are any of you carrying weapons?” the man asked without further comment.
“Nope. Left ’em at home.”
He finally allowed a small smile. “Then welcome to Canada. Have a good meeting.”
Smith picked up speed, now traveling the Canadian version of I-91, Route 55. “I thought we’d have to show our badges, at least.”
“You never been over here?” I asked him.
“Nope. Never saw the need,” he said, as if to counteract Spraiger’s exuberance.
“Good place for a cheap vacation,” Paul said from the back seat, undaunted. “The U.S. dollar’s worth a bundle.”
Silence returned as we all three watched the countryside slowly change to something markedly foreign. Québec is where the Appalachians peter out in altitude, becoming a plateau that gently tilts back down toward the St. Lawrence River farther north. The sky, restricted in Vermont to whatever mountain stands nearest, here opens up, leaving the impression that you’re traveling not at the bottom of a series of geological cereal bowls, but instead across an enormous plate, bordered only in the far distance by a fringe of low hills.
And the occasional mountain.
As we drew abreast of Magog to our west and took the right fork where Route 55 hooks up with Route 10, we were struck by the enormity of Mount Orford, the area’s largest ski resort, made all the more impressive by its uniqueness amid the relatively flat terrain. Hulking like a sleeping monster, it was a reminder of the earth’s travails, and of the fire and ice that had made our planet habitable, if perhaps only briefly.
The final approach to Sherbrooke, by contrast, was subtlety itself. Apart from the snow-covered forested terrain’s being occasionally scored by high tension lines, there was no hint of the city until after Gary had turned off onto Route 410 and was just a few miles shy of downtown. Even then we saw only a vast, largely vacant industrial park to our right, with clusters of apartment buildings and shopping malls across from it. If the history lesson Paul Spraiger had given us was accurate, this introduction to Sherbrooke held true to its roots. It spoke of industry, of a worker’s town, of the interest of erstwhile pioneers to transform themselves into modern merchants.