Free Business or Blood by Peter Edwards Page B

In the confusion, Joseph escaped out the back door. The attack marked at least the fourth time he had escaped a murder attempt.
    The assassins bolted down the cobblestone streets of the old quarter. They had doffed their masks and slowed down by the time they passed the nearby Intercontinental and Westin hotels, perhaps not realizing their movements were captured by video surveillance cameras as they continued on towards Saint-Antoine Street. Video cameras also recorded images of the black Dodge Caravan van in which they drove off.
    Within ninety minutes, Joseph was huddling with trusted associates—including a reputed assassin nicknamed “Gunman.” The meeting alone gave police enough to arrest Joseph; like so many of hispeers in the
milieu
, he was out on bail conditions that forbade any association with gang members. In his pockets, police found what they considered to be a to-do list and some voodoo prayers. A priority task on the list was finding photos of the men Joseph believed were trying to kill him.
    Jean-Claude Gauthier, a Montreal police street-gang specialist, told Joseph’s bail hearing that Joseph was suspected of a quarter century of misdeeds that included attempted murder, arson, assault, sexual assault, obstruction of justice, identity theft and inciting prostitution. Joseph only smiled when asked if he was worried for his life, replying “It’s part of life and there’s nothing I can do about that.”
    Police speculated that the attempted hit on Joseph was some sort of Rizzuto-sponsored payback for the murder of Nick Jr. There were some holes in that theory—which presumed that Joseph had either masterminded the hit on Nick Jr. or co-operated with the killers—but it was plausible. Hit men working for the Rizzutos were generally more efficient, economical shots than whoever sprayed Joseph’s Montreal boutique. Shoddy marksmanship was more of a Toronto street-gang thing. Also, Joseph had plenty of problems of his own that didn’t necessarily involve Vito and which made him eminently killable in the eyes of many others in the
milieu
who had little or nothing to do with the imprisoned godfather.
    Chatter emerged that Agostino Cuntrera would step in and try to calm things down. The Cuntreras had the reputation of being great moneymakers but not so good at the muscle end of crime. Sixty-six-year-old Cuntrera understandably preferred his mansion’s massive wine cellar to the chaos of playing street boss amidst the volatile likes of Joseph and Goodridge. The last time the public had seen him, he was a disco-age mobster, appearing in court wearing an Edwardian suit with an open shirt and a white man’s Afro, pleading guilty to conspiring to murder Paolo Violi. He was a tired senior citizen now, but someone had to stand up for Vito. Perhaps Cuntrera could at least gather some useful information and staunch the bleeding. In a world where information was power, Vito and his family were flying in the dark.

CHAPTER 8
Blood trail
    W hen Raynald Desjardins finally walked free on statutory release in June 2004 after a decade in prison for drug trafficking, he grandly announced to the press that he was no longer a criminal. From this point onwards, he was a “construction entrepreneur.” How he had mastered the building trades while behind bars was left unsaid, but there was no question that the former waiter had the money to launch a new career.
    By that time, Vito was already behind bars in Quebec, fighting extradition to the United States. Many years had passed since their golden days in Italy’s fashion capital of Milan, when the two men arranged multi-tonne drug deals for eye-popping sums of money. Desjardins and Vito had been like brothers, but now they didn’t even speak.
    Also walking free that summer was Desjardins’s old associate Salvatore Cazzetta, one of the few outlaw bikers without a nickname. Cazzetta was a founder of the Rock Machine