The Bay Bulls Standoff

by Chris Ryan

  “Dutch, who told you that?”

  “I can’t say, Joe. They told it to me in confidence.”

  “Well, I know he wasn’t livid on that call. Would’ve loved to hear it.”

  “So, Sharon, did anything happen behind the house up to the time you left Ann Marie’s?”

  “No, other than the robot. I forget how many trips it made. I counted five up to the time I left.”

  “Joe, I forgot to ask you, did the cops stay by the side of the garage all night?”

  “No, they left shortly after you left.”

  “Joe, did you hear the robot banging on the back door?”

  “No, Sharon, why?”

  “The last two trips it made there was what looked like an arm sticking out from it. It would charge the door and all you could hear was a big bang. I’m surprised you never heard.”

  “The wind was blowing a good gale last night.”

  “You’re right, it was. Well, the robot would back up and go full steam ahead. And all you could hear was an almighty bang when it made contact with the screen door. After four or five bangs the sound got louder.”

  “Sharon, I’d say when the screen door was beat to fuck, it started making contact with the inside door. And those inside wooden doors, or steel doors, for that matter, are very thick and heavy. And that’s why, I’d say, it got louder.”

  “Never thought of that, Joe. That makes sense. What a bang it would make. I can’t believe you never heard it.”

  “I probably had the radio on.”

  “Anyway, it would stop and start repeating, ‘Leo, come out, we won’t hurt you, Leo. Leo, come out, we’ll repair your mother’s house.’ They said that over and over. How many fucking times have they said that since this started?”

  “I’d say in the hundreds.”

  “Dutch, I’d say more than that. They don’t shut up. Over and over and over. They start it at dark and keep it going off and on until we leave and probably long afterwards. It would drive a sane man nuts.”

  “I know he must have some head on him, listening to that over and over. That doesn’t bother him. Joe, that would drive me fucking cracked. I said it the other day that he is having a big laugh over all this. He’s in there sipping on a java and enjoying a smoke.”

  “Why do you think he got smokes?”

  “Sharon, I’m willing to bet he has cartons of smokes. And a propane stove to heat water for his coffee. He’s smarter than those cops think. And we know that. They don’t.

  “You’ll never guess who is sneaking down and staying in his own house every night.”

  “Who?”

  “Fox, Joe.”

  “What?”

  “Tommy O’Driscoll—Fox—yes, he sneaks down from below Francie Glynn’s and spends the night in the house.”

  “Holy fuck. If they catch him, he’ll be charged.”

  “Yes, because I know Fox gives a fuck about the RCMP. Or being charged, for that matter. You tell me with all the cops in that spot they don’t see him entering his house? No, apparently not. He’s been home every night since this started.”

  “He mustn’t turn on a light.”

  “Apparently he’s using a little flashlight to sneak around. All the curtains are drawn.”

  “How the fuck is he getting out of there in the morning when it’s daylight out? And the rest of the family staying elsewhere.”

  “Yes, they’re over to Rosemary’s in Witless Bay, Joe.”

  “Leave it up to Fox. He don’t give a fuck.”

  “Especially for the cops.”

  “Well, if they catch him they’ll lock him up until this is over.”

  “They won’t catch him, Joe. He’s too keen. The cops can’t get a man out of the house and don’t know when one enters where they’re not allowed. Now, don’t you see something wrong with this picture?”

  “Did he go home last night?”

  “Apparently he did.”

  “Really, Brenda? And with three sharpshooters virtually on his doorstep. Who told you that?”

  “I darted into Randy’s yesterday evening when I went home for supper, and Cat said it. He gets all the news around the harbour. Kind of a town crier. Keith Oates was at it, too, sneaking down and staying in his father’s house. But the cops commandeered their house yesterday evening. Apparently they’re setting up in it, also.” Keith Oates’s parents’ house is behind Leo’s.

  “So that will be two houses they’re in, Kevin Cahill’s and now Billy Oates’s. They’re not in Tobin’s, but they’re using the electrical outlets there to run cords.”

  “How many gunsights are bearing down on that house at any given moment, I wonder?”

  “If my memory is any good—not what it was—I’d say around eight, Brenda. Count them. Well, you got the two houses. Three in the grass behind Leo’s house. And I’m sure there are at least one or two on their bellies, between the garage and the yellow Dodge pickup, aiming at the back door. I’m sure they’re aiming from the games arcade as well.”

  “Did you forget the four cops in the two vehicles by Sharon’s house?”

  “Those cops are not aiming any guns at the house, just sitting there keeping an eye on the place so Leo won’t escape through one of the side windows.”

  “So, you’re telling me that they need four sets of eyes on that side of the house? How many windows are on that side, Joe?”

  “I think there are five, Brenda. Two in the basement, two on the first level, and one upstairs.”

  “Joe, I wonder why Dermott never put steps to his front door? Have you noticed? You can’t access the house through the front door. And the other door on the front, to the right of the main door, can’t be accessed. I have never seen it used. Joe, do you ever remember it being used?”

  “Dutch, I’m like you. I have never seen anyone go through it. And I spent a fair bit of time at the Crockwells’ when I was young. They hardly think Leo is going to escape. How the fuck do they think he is going to get past ten or twelve sets of eyes? And if he did happen to escape, where do they think he is going? Leo escaping—that’s laughable.”

  “Okay, getting back to Fox. When did he get home? I thought he was in Gloucester, Massachusetts, fishing with Skipper Scott Drabinowicz on the Eagle Eye II.”

  “No, Dutch, he fished with Linda Greenlaw this season on the Seahawk.”

  “I didn’t know he was back fishing with Linda, Brenda.”

  “When they finished up fishing swordfish out of Bay Bulls he steamed back to Gloucester with her to go winter fishing. That was the plan, but apparently they couldn’t agree on a price to be paid.”

  “You would think that they would have had that ironed out before they left here.”

  “Apparently they did, but the price of fish has dropped drastically in the states because of the economy. So Fox said fuck it and came home. Said he was just as well off home here drawing his pogey for the winter.”

  “Any of you read any of her books?”

  “Who?”

  “Linda’s. What a writer! I read every one of her books last winter. One is called Slipknot and another is called Fisherman’s Bend. One is quite the laugh, I think it’s called All Fishermen Are Liars. She has four or five others that I can’t think of the names of right now. A couple of them are about her life on the water as a swordfisher. She wrote one, a cookbook, with her mother, Martha. All seafood recipes from where she lives, Isle au Haut, Maine. Linda, she cannot only catch fish, but she can cook it, too. If any of you are big readers, pick them up. You won’t be disappointed. When I started reading them I couldn’t put them down.”

  “Dutch, I never knew she wrote books.”

  “I didn’t either until I came across one in Chapters. Went home and googled her name and was shocked to see seve
n or eight books in total.”

  “Where does she get time to write books?”

  “I guess she does it in her downtime, Joe. In the off season, the winter months. Well, she’s as good an author as she is a swordfish fisher. And us Newfoundlanders know how good she is on the water. She can pull her weight against any man, pound for pound.

  “The actor Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio played her in the movie The Perfect Storm. I thought she was an excellent choice to portray Linda Greenlaw. With the baseball hat on, from side on she looked almost identical to Linda. She was almost spot-on when she was screaming into the mike from her boat, the Hannah Boden, to Billy Tyne, the captain of her boat’s sister ship, the Andrea Gail, to warn him to get the hell out of the way of the oncoming storm. I thought it was a very good movie. Reviews weren’t so good.

  “I read that book about a month after it came out in 1997. I got a loan of it from Jed Puddester. I couldn’t put it down. What an awesome read. Sebastian Junger did a great job writing it. The book was far superior to the movie, as most books are. The part I enjoyed the most was the part where the Air National Guard helicopter was trying to rescue the three people aboard the sailboat. I guess where I flew in choppers a lot in my offshore career, and was trained in how to exit a chopper in an egress situation, I guess that was what piqued my interest in that part of the book and movie.

  “I don’t know how Greenlaw handles that swordfishing. That is one hard racket to be at. Working eighteen to twenty hours a day. Fox don’t mind it. He’s tough as nails. He looks the part on TV, doesn’t he?” Fox and Kenny Puddester used to be on a Discovery Channel TV show about swordfishing, called Swords: Life on the Line.

  “Who ever thought that Tommy O’Driscoll and Kenny Puddester from Bay Bulls, Newfoundland, would end up being TV personalities? Man, we’re famous.”

  “Sure, a Bay Bulls man sang for the queen of England.”

  “Who?”

  “Con O’Brien, with his band, the Irish Descendants. In Bonavista, for the 500-year anniversary of the landing of John Cabot, in 1997.”

  “That’s right, I forgot about that. Like I said . . . we’re famous. I can’t wait to talk to Fox on how he’s getting past all those cops without being seen. I’m sure he’ll have a story. Fox always has a story.

  “So here we are, five days into it. What have we not talked about since this started? Everything from swordfishing to birdwatching.”

  “We haven’t discussed politics yet.”

  “No good of me bringing anything up on politics. It would be me, a diehard Liberal, against all you blue-arsed Tories. Especially you, Sharon, with your nephew Jan working for a Tory MP in Ottawa, Greg Rickford in Kenora riding.”

  “Dutch, how did you know that?”

  “Sharon, you know I live and breathe politics.”

  “How did you end up being a Liberal when your father was one of the biggest Tories on the Shore? A former president of the PC District Association in Ferryland for years. And all your brothers and sisters Tory as well.”

  “We’ve been Tory in Ferryland District since 1971. Aiden Maloney was the last Liberal MHA for Ferryland, other than Martin O’Brien, who sat for a few short months for the Liberals in the fall of ’75 and the spring of ’76. Well, when I got interested in politics I wasn’t impressed with either our MHA or our MP. And then when Clyde Wells came on the scene, he impressed me so much I just started following the Liberals, going to conventions and organization meetings, and it just grew from there.”

  “Think you’ll ever run on the Shore?”

  “Sharon, every election for the past twenty years or so I get a call from the Party president, or someone high up in the Party, asking me to run.”

  “So do you ever think you’ll do it?”

  “It’s on my bucket list of things to do. But you know as well as me it would be an uphill battle, trying to unseat a Tory here in Ferryland District. If you ran a dead goat from Mobile for the Tories on the Shore it would get elected. And I’m serious when I say that.

  “Anyway, nothing has changed since this all began on Saturday. We should have started a betting pool the day this started. The person who came closest to the hour that Leo walked out of the house would win.”

  “How would you do that, Dutch?”

  “Break it down to eight quarters, four being a.m. and four being p.m. So everyone would pick a quarter on a given day. And if we had more than eight people interested, all we’d have to do is split the quarters. Ninety-minute slots. So we’d have sixteen slots. Heave five, ten, or twenty bucks in the pot each.”

  “Where would we get the people to play?”

  “Wouldn’t be hard. I can name fifteen or twenty that would be interested.”

  “Too bad we didn’t think of it.”

  “Yes, but who would ever think that the standoff would take this long? I was online last night when I went home. The newest rumour is that there were more RCMP officers brought in from New Brunswick and PEI. That’s hard to believe, having to bring cops in from the three Atlantic provinces to get one man out of a house.”

  “That makes sense, because there definitely are more cops in the harbour today than any other day since this started. I know that the town hall is not full. I’d say there are thirty-five officers in there. There must be twenty hanging around Foodland. And then you have four by Sharon’s. Four by the church, blocking access to St. John’s Road. And then there’s a car at the top of St. John’s Road by Foodland. And don’t forget the car by the old Foodland, the old Tin Can. The one Donna slipped by.”

  “I watched the National last night when I went home. They carried a much longer story on Leo. They kind of got into his arrest and detention in ’98. The Telegram is starting to write longer stories, too. And their pictures of Leo’s house and surrounding areas are getting much larger. Have you noticed the reporter here in the harbour for the Telegram? He is here full-time. All the others are coming and going, but he shows up at seven or eight and leaves coming on dark.”

  “Have you been paying much attention to what the spokesman for the RCMP is saying? What’s his name?”

  “I can never think of it, Joe. Tina’s father was called by the RCMP yesterday.”

  “For what, Dutch?”

  “They want two, maybe three trailers to block off roads. I guess it’s to free up cops. I guess this is starting to take its toll on them. They need to rest. They’re only human.”

  “Where are they putting the trailers?”

  “One at the top of St. John’s Road, another by the old Foodland where you access the pub. He doesn’t know where they want the third one. They told him they would call him back tonight or tomorrow morning and tell him where to drop them. They also asked if he had an excavator on hand. Michael asked why and the cop said we may need one. That’s all he said.”

  “What? Holy fuck. I wonder what their plans are, if they want an excavator?”

  “They never said they wanted one. They just wanted to know if he had one. Why don’t we all go to Vincie Crane’s for lunch?”

  “Good idea, Dutch.”

  “That will serve two purposes. We get to eat and we can also get a look at all the cops that are eating there. Joe, leave your rig here. All hands can jump in with me.”

  “No, Dutch, I’ll take my own car. I know how much you complain about second-hand smoke.”

  “That’s very nice of you, Sharon. See you in there.”

  We drove the two kilometres to Vincie’s. The parking lot was full of police vehicles, marked and unmarked.

  “What a crowd here.”

  “They said my order would take twenty-five to thirty minutes. When you put in your order, tell the girl we’re all together.”

  “We going to grab a seat?”

  “No, let’s go outside while we’re waiting for our or
der.”

  We sat on the benches outside Vincie’s. “Guys, did you notice the two tables in the corner? No less than eight cops stuffing their faces. And look, another two carloads of them just hauled in.

  “Vincie Crane is making a killing. He should share the profit with Leo. He would be getting none of this business, only for Leo.”

  “I wonder what Leo is having for lunch?”

  “I bet he got something decent to eat, Joe, and I assure you it’s a hot meal. I can’t wait for him to get out of that house. I can’t wait to hear his story of what he did during all this. Joe, girls, we going to eat here or in the car?”

  “I’d rather eat here.”

  “Okay, fine with me. I can eat anywhere.” We all piled back into Vincie’s. Our orders were ready.

  “The fish is deadly.”

  “Always is, here.”

  “Keith Ward’s is my favourite spot for fish and chips.”

  “Fish and chips is the same everywhere, Joe.”

  “I’ll give those Wards credit, they can cook with the best of them.”

  “How can you fuck up deep frying a codfish fillet?”

  “There are lots of people who can’t cook for beans.”

  “Any of you try the moose burgers up to Ricky Hayden’s at Riverside? They’re to die for.”

  “Moose burgers?”

  “He started serving them a few years ago, Joe. Said he would try them for a few weeks. And now he can’t make them fast enough. They’re deadly!

  “I counted nine cops eating while we were there.

  “Who’s going back to the pit right away? I’m going home to get some painkillers for my back. I forgot them this morning when I left. Joe, you get a run back to the pit with Sharon. You may as well, you all smoke.”

  “All right, see you when you get back.”

  I got back to the pit about forty-five minutes later.

  “Dutch, what took you so long to get your pills?”