Gilbert scaled the nine-foot fence and ran to a nearby railroad line. He raced down the tracks for miles before he stopped to get his breath. Then he grabbed some clothes from a backyard clothes line, made a quick change and started running again. Seven miles down the track, he left it to find a phone booth. Though he didn’t know it, by then his escape was assured; his absence still hadn’t been discovered by the prison guards.
Gilbert phoned an old partner in crime who came and picked him up. The accomplice drove him to his apartment, gave him some clothing and a good pair of Greb boots. While Gilbert had a bite to eat, his buddy packed some more clothes and shaving equipment in a duffel bag for him. The two of them got back in the car and drove towards Detroit. Their destination was the tunnel to Windsor. Gilbert was too hot in the United States; it was time for him to leave the country and take his talents to Canada.
They reached the tunnel entrance just before midnight and crossed into downtown Windsor. Luckily for Gilbert the immigration officer didn’t ask to see any papers because Galvan had nothing to show. The border guard asked a few cursory questions and waved them on their way. Galvan and his friend drove directly to a downtown bar and celebrated Gilbert’s freedom into the wee hours of the morning. After the bar closed, they got a cheap motel room for the night.
It was four o’clock in the morning when embarrassed prison officials found that Galvan had escaped. A search party was formed but by then his trail was so cold even the tracking dogs could find no scent. The only positive result that came from Galvan’s escape was that it initiated an investigation into the laxity of security conditions at the Michigan prison.
The next morning, Gilbert’s friend gave him twenty-five dollars and left him on his own. Galvan wanted to get farther away from the border and decided to hitch-hike to Toronto. Getting rides on Highway 401 was difficult, and he had to spend the first night on the road sleeping beneath an overpass. When he arrived in Toronto he found a place to stay in a shelter for homeless men in the basement of the YMCA on College Street near Yonge.
During his stay there Gilbert had little to do with the people in the hostel. He spent most of his time on Yonge Street among the drifters and hookers who either wandered the sidewalks or gathered in front of the stores. Most of the day, he panhandled to get enough to buy his food; at night he slept with the homeless in the hostel.
His existence was better than life in jail, but still utterly unsatisfactory to him. Besides that, he was rapidly developing a distaste for Toronto; it was too big and too crowded. The prospects of work downtown were dismal. The only jobs available were menial tasks like washing dishes. Gilbert started going to the public library every day and reading all he could about Canada. The more he read, the more he was convinced he would like to live in either Ottawa or Vancouver.
Then one night something happened that set his course for the future. He met an alcoholic street drifter who had just come in from western Canada. The man was flat broke and needed a good meal and a bottle of wine so he offered to sell Gilbert his Alberta health insurance card. Since new identification was just what Gilbert had been looking for, without hesitating he gave the vagrant his last few dollars for the health card. From that moment on, Gilbert Galvan Jr. was Robert Lee Whiteman.
The next day he set out for Ottawa.
CHAPTER 4
Janice
The new Robert Whiteman got a subway token from the YMCA and rode the line up to the York Mills station. From there it was an easy walk to the highway. He had some trouble getting picked up but eventually managed to hitch a combination of rides that brought him to the southern outskirts of Ottawa. Unable to get any farther, he spent the night in the bush fighting a nasty onslaught of mosquitoes. The next morning, damp and dishevelled, he stumbled back out to the highway and hailed a ride that took him directly into Ottawa. The driver dropped him off on Wellington Street near a massive stone building with a green copper roof. When he discovered it was the Supreme Court of Canada, Robert was duly impressed and somewhat tickled by the irony that it was the first building an escaped convict should see upon his arrival in the nation’s capital.
After a number of inquiries, he located another hostel, the Shepherds of Good Hope, on Murray Street in downtown Ottawa. A typical men’s shelter, it was not much to look at on the outside but warm and clean on the inside. In the basement there was a rather spartan dormitory with rows of beds that could sleep about fifty men a night. Most of its tenants were winos and drifters and other unfortunates down on their luck. The rules of the hostel were tight and unbending; the men had to be in by 11:00 p.m. and had to check out by 8:30 a.m. If they wanted a bed for the next night they had to be back in good time, or do without. To the average person the shelter wouldn’t seem like much, but to Robert, at least for now, it was a sanctuary.
The day after he arrived in Ottawa Robert started hiking around the city looking for work. While sitting in front of the Museum of Man, he noticed an ice cream vendor on a bicycle and asked him how and where he could get a job like that. With the information the young man gave him Robert went to the “Frostee” building and talked to the manager, a university student named Brad Stafford. Since they were desperate for salesmen, Robert didn’t have to show any identification to get the job. He was hired on the spot to start the very next day. It wasn’t much of a job but it paid cash money, and this was important to Robert because he had no social insurance number.
The Good Shepherd Hostel on Murray Street in Ottawa where Robert and Janice first met
(Knuckle)
A sign of ominous foreboding outside the Murray Street Hostel
(Knuckle)
The pay was poor and unreliable because it all depended on the weather. On a cool day Robert might make only $2 but on a hot day he could take home $30. The manager liked him because he was dependable. Every day he rode his bike from morning until dark all over downtown Ottawa. Pumping his way along, he went up and down the streets, through city parks, to baseball diamonds, to school yards. If he wasn’t making a lot of money, he was getting to know the city pretty well. The thing he liked best about the job was that he was his own boss; there was nobody looking over his shoulder. When people stopped him for an ice cream he enjoyed being pleasant and talkative with them. Staying at the hostel allowed him to keep most of what he made. His plan was to save his money and move on to Vancouver.
One of the workers at the Good Shepherds hostel was a young night assistant who had been recently hired after graduating from Algonquin College. Her name was Janice McKenzie and her job was to supervise the hostel after 11:00 p.m. and make sure nobody brought in any booze. Handling the rough, transient clientele that came to the door every night was a difficult job for a young woman but Janice seemed to have a knack for it. She used just the right combination of helpfulness and aggression to keep things running smoothly.
About a week after Robert came to the hostel, Janice McKenzie was taken off the midnight shift and promoted to social worker. One of her new responsibilities was to interview the hostel’s clients and record their family backgrounds and personal histories. While making the rounds among the men, she had completed her interviews with most of them but hadn’t, as yet, spoken to Robert.
When she approached him, he was sitting on his bunk untying his Greb boots. Her first impression was that he looked out of place. Not many of the men at the hostel cared about their appearance; Robert Whiteman did. He was always neatly dressed and well groomed. His thick black hair was trimmed and combed and he never went out without shaving. She thought he was handsome.
As she approached him, she noticed him lighting one cigarette from another with nicotine-stained fingers.
“Hi, my name is Janice McKenzie. I’m a social worker here and I’d like to get some background information on you if I could.”
Robert looked at her disdainfully.
“What for?”
Janice didn’t like the way he answered. Most of the men were more cooperative.
“Well, we need it for our records. According to this chart, you’ve been here for more than a week. We’d like some information about you for our files.”
“What type of information?”
Janice wouldn’t be deterred.
“Oh, just the routine stuff, like your birthplace, some family background, why you’re using the hostel, things like that.”
Robert didn’t reply so Janice went ahead.
“Your name please.”
“Robert Whiteman.”
“How do you spell that, sir?”
When she called him “sir”, Robert thought she was being snotty. He answered back sarcastically: “Whiteman. I’ll spell it for you nice and slowly. W-H-I-T-E-M-A-N. You know, like white man.”
“Listen, I’m just trying to do my job here and there’s no reason for you to be snarly.”
If Robert was snarly it was because he was caught unprepared. He hadn’t taken time to think through his story about Robert Whiteman’s background. It was something he should have done long ago. He knew that Whiteman was from Alberta, but all he knew about Alberta was that it had the Calgary Stampede. He only knew that because of his father’s love of rodeo. Robert was troubled because here he was sitting face-toface with this official, having to make up a whole life story on the spot.
“I’m sorry,” he said, “I didn’t mean to be snarly. What would you like to know?”
“Your birthplace?”
“Calgary, Alberta.”
“Father’s occupation?”
“He has his own security business.”
“Your reason for coming to Ottawa?”
“To get away from him.”
Such a curious answer stopped Janice for a moment, but she quickly regained her composure and continued her questions. As he answered, Robert wove a tangled web of lies. He told her he had been married before but his wife and child had been killed in a car accident. He had to get away from the bad memories of his father. His mother was an American and he had gone to school there.
There was some truth in everything he said. He did hate his father, his mother was an American. One of Gilbert Galvan’s old girlfriends and her daughter had been killed in a car crash years before. But none of it was really the truth.
As she asked more questions his answers became more reflective, more personal. He told her he didn’t think he belonged in the hostel. He felt it was for the lonely and the destitute. He didn’t feel that way about himself. He was sure that at this time in his life he was just on a momentary down turn. He was confident he would work his way out of it, and soon.
She agreed with him and said she believed him. She told him it was obvious he wasn’t a permanent down-and-outer or a hopeless alcoholic. She could see he was a person who was trying to forget his past; someone who wanted to start his life over.
Robert looked up at her with his soft brown eyes and told her that, although he appreciated her sentiments, he didn’t want to talk about it any more. She said she understood.
“I’m sorry I snapped at you,” he said. “You didn’t deserve that.”
His charm was starting to get through to her.
“That’s OK, don’t worry about it. I only have one more question.”
“Alright. Go ahead.”
“What’s your present occupation?”
Robert felt a rush of embarrassment come over him.
“I drive one of those ice cream bicycles for Mr. Frostee.” He saw her eyes searching his, wondering why he would be stuck with a job like that.
“Look,” he explained, “I just want to make it on my own. Without my father’s help, OK?”
“Sure.”
“I’ll find something better.”
“I’m sure you will, Robert.” She handed him his hostel identification card with the name Robert Whiteman written on it. “I’ll see you around. Probably tomorrow night.” Then she left to seek out another interviewee.
Robert gave a sigh of relief. He was glad the interview was over and was especially pleased to have another piece of identification with his new name on it.
Robert stayed at the hostel for about three weeks. It wasn’t much of a life for him. To save his money, he seldom went out anywhere. Every night he checked in before eleven and spent most of his free time reading and sleeping. One morning he woke to find that somebody had stolen all the money he had earned from the day before.
That finished him with the shelter. He was thoroughly disgusted that in a situation like this, where everybody was down on their luck, trying to get back on their feet, someone would steal the little bit he had earned. Besides that, there was no privacy. New people were always coming and going; he didn’t know anybody. Robert couldn’t stand the place any longer; he wanted out of there.
A man in a wheelchair named Joe who did volunteer work at the hostel had befriended Robert. He knew he was saving his money to go to Vancouver. When he heard that Robert had been ripped off, he offered to let him move into his apartment with him. Robert appreciated his invitation and accepted. Joe’s place wasn’t much, a subsidized apartment with barely any furniture, but it was better than the hostel. Robert helped to furnish the place by retrieving some cast-off furniture from the sidewalk and lugging it up to their living room. He helped keep the apartment clean and contributed his share of the modest rent. For a while, the two men got along well.
Robert hadn’t been living in the apartment very long when Joe asked him if he remembered a girl at the hostel named Janice. Robert told him he vaguely remembered her as the one who did the personal interview with him.
“She wants to know where you’ve gone,” Joe told him.
“Oh, yeah?”
“I told her you were staying with me.”
Robert wondered where all this was leading.
Joe said, “She wants you to give her a call.”
“What for?”
“I don’t know. She didn’t say.”
When Robert phoned Janice, they exchanged pleasantries briefly before she asked him if he would like to go out for a beer. That surprised him, but he hadn’t been out with a woman in such a long time, so he was happy to oblige.
That night they strolled around the Byward Market, a nighttime gathering spot of bars and restaurants in downtown Ottawa. The streets were jammed with people. It was a fun place to be. Robert was concerned because he only had twenty dollars. He had earned ten dollars that day and borrowed another ten from his young boss, Bradley Stafford.
He and Janice walked and talked and dropped into a number of different bars for a drink. Robert enjoyed her company right from the start. Although Janice was almost as tall as he was, Robert thought she was attractive. He particularly liked her shoulder length hair and the way it bounced when she walked.
Janice had thought he was handsome from the first time she met him in the hostel. He was always so clean cut and neat, he never looked scruffy like the others. Now she was finding him amusing and interesting. With his wholesome good looks and his pleasant personality, there was a lot to like about Robert Whiteman.
Both of them enjoyed drinking. Robert loved Canadian rye; Janice preferred cold draft beer. When he ran out of money, Janice put her money on the table. Although he was embarrassed by it, she handled it so well he soon got over it. Once their inhibitions were reduced, they went to the dance floor and let themselves go. They both loved to dance.
Between dances, Janice told him that she had wanted to ask him out when he was staying at the hostel but that was against regulations because he was a client. Now that he was no longer there, it was permissible. Robert enjoyed her directness. They were soon very comfortable together and talked the night away.
Robert revealed his intention to leave for B.C. in a few weeks to find work. He wanted to be up front and honest about that. He also told her some lies. He said he had a rich grandmother in England and retold his story about having a wealthy father in Alberta.
He embellished his experiences about going to military
school in Texas and exaggerated his attendance at university in pursuit of a degree in political science. Janice found him fascinating. Before they knew it, the evening was ending, the bars were closing. When Robert walked her home, they agreed to see each other again.
Whiteman quit pedaling the ice cream bicycle when he got a better job with a firm on Gladstone Avenue called The Handyman. Here he was employed to do maintenance and repair work on a day-by-day basis. The money was better and he still got paid in cash.
He and Janice were now seeing each other regularly. This put him in a rather difficult position. He really liked her but didn’t want to get too involved because as soon as he had saved enough money he intended to leave Ottawa and go out west. This was his plan. He wanted a secure and permanent life in Vancouver where his true identity would never be discovered.
Before long, those plans were in jeopardy. His feelings for Janice began to cloud his thinking. By now they were going out every night of the week. Neither of them had a lot of money but they loved being together. If they didn’t meet at Noddy’s Bar on Bank Street, they went to the movies or walked along the Rideau Canal. It was a beautiful summer for both of them. By August their hand holding turned into lovemaking. Although their relationship was progressing beyond what Robert had intended, he still proposed to follow his plan and make his move out west.
While things were going so well with Janice, Robert was having trouble with Joe, his roommate. Joe was a lonely soul who had hoped he and Robert could be close friends. When Robert started to spend all his free time with Janice, Joe resented it. He gradually became more and more difficult until, finally, he asked Robert to move out. Since Robert was trying to save as much money as possible, his eviction posed a big financial problem. Janice resolved the situation very quickly; she invited him to move in with her.
The Flying Bandit Page 5