Free Jerry Langton Three-Book Bundle by Jerry Langton

he presented and instinctively tried to hide his weapon. As his handgun got caught in his jacket, Campbell (now closer to the bar’s exit than he was to Matiyek) drew his gun and fired three shots.
    The first passed through Matiyek’s thick neck, took a chunk out of his jaw, grazed his left arm and eventually lodged in Sauve’s arm. The second penetrated Matiyek’s skull and bounced around inside his cranium, killing him. The third also hit him in the head, but he was already dead.
    Pandemonium. Everyone who could, stampeded out of the bar. Somebody stopped to relieve Matiyek’s body of the cash and drugs stuffed in his pockets.
    Police arrived eventually, but not before the bar had been revisited and, according to the guys associated with Satan’s Choice, “cleaned up a little.” The body was removed by authorities, but not before the crime scene had been grossly contaminated.
    The trial was just as comical. Several witnesses changed their testimony three and even four times. One witness’s car was shot full of holes while parked in front of his house. The cops were confused. Nobody could explain why Matiyek’s gun was never fingerprinted. Much of the Crown’s evidence contradicted itself. The forensics were questioned.
    But it didn’t matter in the end. Six of the eight members of Satan’s Choice accused were found guilty of first- or second-degree murder. They received sentences ranging from 25 to 10 years. Campbell was not one of them. Sauve and Comeau each received twenty-five to life.
    But the pathetic spiral into oblivion the once-mighty Satan’s Choice went through was all just a sideshow to the real attraction. When the Outlaws patched over at least some of Satan’s Choice, it was a bold strategic and the first step in what would eventually become a war for organized crime supremacy in Canada fought between two rival American motorcycle gangs.
    The Outlaws had gotten there first and they eventually succeeded in Toronto. Almost as soon as McEwen announced that the 1977 edition of the Satan’s Choice annual party would be a patch-over ceremony, anti-Outlaws forces in the city mobilized. The members of the Toronto Satan’s Choice who did not want to become Outlaws teamed with other established gangs — most notably the Para-Dice Riders and the Vagabonds — to help keep the Outlaws out of their territories.
    It worked for a while. By the summer of 1984, both big American clubs had put a virtual embargo on drugs imported into Ontario. Through intimidation, they prevented the normal suppliers from selling to the Toronto clubs. Most of them — especially the Para-Dice Riders — began to feel a significant financial strain.
    One Toronto club, though, was enjoying business as usual. The Iron Hawgs, a large club with more than 30 full-patch members, were selling as much as they had before the big clubs put the hammer down. They had been handpicked a year earlier by the Outlaws to be their beachhead in Toronto. The Outlaws in Detroit supplied the Iron Hawgs with a decent supply of drugs when the rest of the city was practically dry.
    They were a wise choice. They were sworn enemies of the Para-Dice Riders because of a 1979 bar fight that got out of hand and ended when an innocent woman was injured when a Para-Dice Rider was beating the Iron Hawgs’ president with a loaded shotgun and it discharged. The perception at the time was that the Iron Hawgs were less cohesive and more easily led than many of the other local gangs.
    That summer, newly elected Iron Hawgs president Robert “Pumpkin” Marsh put the concept of a patch-over to the Outlaws before his collected club. Unlike McEwen’s dictatorial approach, he opened the prospect up to discussion.
    As with countless other clubs, the crowd quickly split into two factions. The younger, more ambitious Iron Hawgs were all for it. They had gotten used to the income from drug sales and