The Flying Bandit Page 16
What she didn’t say was that she hoped that in Pembroke, Robert would be far enough away from his alcoholic, low-life friends that he would spend more time at home with the new baby. That way, maybe they could have a normal family life.
At first, Robert wanted no part of moving to Pembroke. It represented everything he didn’t want. It was small and provincial and boring. He would be completely cut off from all the friends he’d made in Ottawa. His whole lifestyle would be turned upside-down. He wasn’t interested.
Janice wouldn’t give in. She saw the move as the only way to save their marriage. By now Robert was drinking a twenty-six-ounce bottle of rye a day and staying out all hours of the night with Tommy Craig and his crowd.
Janice wasn’t going to take it any more. She became more and more scathing in her attacks. When he came home late reeking of booze, she’d scream at him.
“Why the hell are you wasting your time with those losers? What the hell is your problem anyway?”
He’d scream back at her and the battle was on. Twice she threw him out of the house, but he’d only be gone a day when he’d come back asking to be let in. He was such a charmer that Janice couldn’t resist him. As soon as things were peaceful between them Janice would bring up the idea of moving back to Pembroke again. Robert continued to resist, but eventually, it began to dawn on him that this might not be such a bad idea after all.
He’d been on the loose for two years now and he knew that the longer he stayed with the crowd at the Playmate the greater were his chances of being sent back to jail. Besides, he was getting tired of his work and knew he couldn’t keep up the pace much longer. He found himself thinking more and more of having that little bar in the Bahamas. He had to start saving some money so he could buy one.
Pembroke would provide a nice change of venue where he would be out of the spotlight, away from the heat of the Playmate Club. From Pembroke he could continue his work for a little while longer, and then, when he had some money put aside, he could move his whole family down to the Caribbean and they could all live the life of Riley.
One night he suddenly said, “OK. If you want to move to Pembroke, let’s go.”
“You mean it?” she replied.
“Sure I mean it. It’ll be a better place for all of us. Let’s start looking for a place to live and as soon as we find something decent there we’ll give our notice here.”
Janice was ecstatic. She couldn’t believe that Robert had agreed to move. It was a big step for him and she loved him for it.
“You won’t regret it,” she said, “just you wait and see. You’re going to love it there.”
CHAPTER 11
Flying High
It didn’t take long for Janice to find a place in Pembroke. When Robert looked it over, it suited his purposes to a tee. Located on Dominion Street on the southern edge of the city, the house wasn’t very impressive but it was clean and cosy. A small, frame, two-bedroom bungalow, it had a huge old maple tree shading most of the front lawn. Although there was no garage, an unpaved driveway ran beside the house. Towards the rear there was a small attached shed that could be used for storing bikes or lawn equipment.
What Robert liked most about the place was that it was private. It sat on a short block with only five houses at the end of an unpaved dead-end street. At most, the house was a fifteen-minute drive to the local airport which could easily connect him with the big airports in Montreal or Toronto. What’s more, his friends at the Playmate Club were only an hour and a half away by car and a lot less than that should he choose to fly.
Robert believed his relationship with Janice would improve in Pembroke. He knew she would be more content here. Janice was very close with her mother, and now that the two of them lived within walking distance they could spend lots of time together. Both were thrilled that a new baby was coming into the family. It was all they seemed to talk about. Robert figured if that was what made her happy, he was willing to give it a try.
There was one big problem with the Whitemans moving to Pembroke. Janice had quit her job and was on unemployment insurance. This meant that Robert was going to have to do more to support them until Janice had the baby and started working again. Robert assured her that his income would carry the load. But it put extra demands on him because he was spending his money as fast as he could steal it. He squandered much of it on cocaine. By now, he was buying several ounces a week at $1,400 to $1,800 an ounce.
He wasn’t using it all for himself. He shared a lot with his friends. Cocaine is a very social drug; people have more fun doing it in groups. What’s more, cocaine provides an instantaneous high. Users go up and come down quickly. In an attempt to stay up, they generally use all they have at one sitting. So if a person is both as generous and as reckless as Robert was, his money will soon disappear.
There are tweny-eight grams in an ounce and approximately three lines of cocaine in a gram. If Robert bought a gram for $50, he and two friends could have a line each. If he bought five grams for $250, a lot more people could have a lot more coke. And they would use it until it all ran out. The same basic math applied if he was buying rocks of crack (cooked cocaine) and smoking it. Either way the costs were excessive and increased exponentially.
To keep the cocaine coming in, Robert had to intensify his thievery. Before moving to Pembroke he apparently made a conscious decision to go on a robbery rampage. One month before their moving date, he went to Quebec City. As was his custom, he registered at the fortresslike Chateau Frontenac, insisting on an elegant room overlooking the St. Lawrence River. This was his third trip to the city, and it was his intention to rob the Royal Bank on Anne Street for a third consecutive time.
While checking out the bank on his first day in town, Robert saw that a large construction crew was working directly in front of it. This gave him the idea of changing his disguise drastically. He spent the rest of the day procuring a yellow hard-hat and some coveralls that he could use as his outer clothing. The following day, he went to the stairwell in the City Hall parking garage across from the bank and donned his construction clothes along with his wig and moustache. When he walked into the bank, he pulled out his 9 mm Browning, went behind the counter and cleaned out the cash drawers for a total of $4,500.
One of the tellers seemed to realize that Robert was the same man who had robbed them twice before in 1985. As Robert was leaving, the teller looked directly at him and shook his head in sad disbelief.
After the robbery, Robert indulged his extravagance once again by taking a taxi to Montreal. The cabbie never had so much fun. During the 160-mile trip, Robert sat up front with him and they shared a bottle of rye. Robert was in rare form with one hilarious story following another. Before they knew it, the cabbie was pulling up in front of the Queen Elizabeth Hotel in downtown Montreal. The fare was $215 and Robert threw in a healthy tip. The train trip to Ottawa was much quieter and Robert fell asleep.
Two weeks after Quebec City, Robert struck again. He drove to Peterborough, and as he had done before, took a room in the Holiday Inn. He called his wife to make sure everything was all right, then went out to have a few soothing drinks. The one thing he loved about this motel was the outdoor patio bar overlooking Little Lake. With the moon glistening off the water, the ambiance was so pleasant Robert considered it one of the nicest drinking spots in the entire country. He spent a quiet evening talking to the bartender in the gazebo and stayed until he closed up.
The next afternoon Robert went to the alleyway beside his favourite Peterborough bank, the Toronto Dominion at George and Hunter. Irritated to find a derelict loitering there, Robert gave him a five dollar bill to move along. Once the vagrant departed, Robert donned his disguise.
When he went into the bank he moved up to the counter and stood by one of the customers, Arlene Willcock, who was being served by teller, Kathy Marler. As soon as Robert threw his white plastic shopping bag over the counter and told Kathy Marler to give him the money, she recognized his disguise.
This time Robert wasn’t as cool as usual. He waved his gun around. He yelled and agitatedly prowled back and forth behind the counter among the tellers, telling them to empty their drawers in his shopping bag. At one point he aimed his gun at one of the bank employees, Betty Rooney, and said, “You too!”
Betty protested, “I’m not a teller. I don’t have a drawer.”
“Well keep quiet then,” he barked.
While he charged about giving orders, he even momentarily misplaced his shopping bag that was being filled with the stolen money. When he discovered it was missing, he hollered to Kathy Marler, “All right, where’s my bag?”
As soon as she pointed it out to him, he scooped it up and left. The holdup took him over three minutes, which by his standards was far too long. By the time he went out the door a number of silent alarms had been sounded and the police were on their way. Robert barely had time to remove his disguise and discard his outer clothes before a crowd of on-lookers was gathering outside the bank. As if to tempt fate, Robert walked through the crowd and past the police with $4,300 of the bank’s money in his brief case. From Hunter Street, he enjoyed a very pleasant seven-block stroll to his hotel and followed that with a leisurely threehour drive back to Ottawa.
On his next visit to the Playmate Club he shared a few of his recent exploits with some of the boys but told them he still needed more moving money. This time he was going to make it easy on himself and stay in Ottawa. Six days before moving to Pembroke he went out and robbed the CIBC at 254 Elgin Street of $5,022.
The day before the move, Robert had his last few drinks with the boys down at the Playmate Club. He spent most of the night talking to Tommy Craig.
“So, you going into retirement in Pembroke?” Tommy asked.
“I wouldn’t bet on it,” Robert replied. “But I wouldn’t mind slowing down for a while.”
“Well, that’s the place to do it. It’s nice out there. Maybe I’ll come and see you sometimes.”
“Yeah. We can have a few drinks or something. For sure, we got to keep in touch by phone.”
“You given up on the Big Vancouver?” Tommy wondered.
“No way! Who said that?”
“Nobody”
“Why’d you say that?”
“Just wondered.”
“No way man. I think about it all the time.” Robert took another sip on his drink. “I got to get settled first, but Vancouver is definitely in my plans.”
The following day, June 18, Robert and Janice said a quick goodbye to their neighbours and, using a rental truck, completed their move to Pembroke. Janice’s family all pitched in to help with the furniture. By nightfall, the Whitemans were settled into their new home on Dominion Street.
The Whiteman’s house in Pembroke at 450 Dominion Street
(Knuckle)
Wally’s Restaurant, Robert Whiteman’s favourite hangout in Pembroke
(Knuckle)
Two days later, Robert drove to Sudbury with another accomplice and held up the Montreal Trust on Durham Street for the third time. The partner he used this time was also a regular member of the Playmate fraternity. Witnesses described his new partner as short at 5’7”, like his other partner, but much stockier, weighing between 170 and 180 lbs. He was also observed to be right-handed when he handled his gun. Robert’s first accomplice was known to be left-handed.
The method used in the holdup was definitely Robert’s style. Robert went behind the counter emptying $5,000 in cash from the tellers’ drawers while his partner stood guard at the door. The only thing out of the ordinary that happened in this robbery was that one of the bank employees, Helen Laundry, followed Robert and his pal out of the bank and into the parking lot. As their car sped away, she was able to see that it bore an Ontario tag ending in 760. Unfortunately, her brave attempt at getting the licence number proved to be of no value in identifying the car.
Two weeks after that, Robert pulled off a robbery he hadn’t planned. He had gone to Ottawa to see the boys at the Playmate. When he walked in he received his usual warm welcome from all corners of the room. Shaking hands and chatting with his friends, he worked his way over to Tommy Craig. They were glad to see each other and sat together for some drinks at the bar. Their conversation wandered over a number of topics but quite predictably ended up focusing on the layout of a number of jewellery stores in the Ottawa area. Without any ulterior motive, the Fat Man said how difficult he thought it would be for anyone to rob Alyea’s Jewellery Store in the Rideau Centre in downtown Ottawa.
“What are you talking about?” Robert said, “I’ve seen the place. It wouldn’t be that tough.”
“Ah, bullshit. It’s too wide open. It would be like holding up a guy in the middle of the street in broad daylight. Shit, everybody would see what you’re doing. The cops would be on you like a hawk.”
“No fucking way,” Robert said. “I’d be in and out of there before anyone knew it. It’d be a piece of cake.”
“Yeah, sure,” Tommy said.
“You don’t think so?” Robert challenged.
“No. I don’t think so,” Tommy replied.
“I’ll bet you a hundred dollars, I can do it.”
Tommy turned his head and waved his hand in derision.
“Is it a bet?” Robert asked.
“Yeah, sure, it’s a bet. Now let’s drop it and talk about something sensible.”
They chatted for a while longer, until Robert finished his drink. Then he got up to leave.
“Where you going?” Tommy asked.
“I got to pick up something,” Robert said. “I’ll be right back.
He left the club and drove directly down Montreal Road to the Rideau Centre, a huge indoor mall in the heart of the city. Upon arriving, he parked in the mall’s parking garage, found a dark stairwell, changed into a disguise, left his briefcase in the stairwell and walked to Alyea’s Jewellery Store.
Without hesitating, Robert walked into the store, pulled out his gun, handed Derek Neufeld, the clerk, a white plastic bag and told him to give him all the rings in the display case. Robert couldn’t believe his eyes when he saw how many rings were being dumped into the bag. When the clerk was finished, Robert grabbed the bag, walked out of the store, retraced his steps and in minutes was driving out of the parking garage. As he headed back out Montreal Road he started laughing out loud at how easy it had been. It was like going to the store for a loaf of bread, except his heart was pounding more.
Just as Robert was pulling back into the Playmate’s parking lot, Tommy was starting to leave.
“Hey, where you going?” Robert yelled at him.
“I’m going home for a while. I got something I got to do.”
“Yeah, well, I want my $100 before you leave.”
“What are you talking about?” Tommy shouted.
Robert held up his briefcase and opened it to show him the rings inside. There were over sixty of them, with a retail value of $66,395.
Tommy’s jaw dropped. “Are you fucking crazy?” he said. He couldn’t believe what Robert had done. The number of rings in the briefcase was astounding. “You ARE fucking crazy,” he yelled at him.
Crazy or not, Robert insisted that Tommy come back inside the club and pay him his one hundred dollars. On top of the hundred, the rings brought him a big payday of over $13,000.
Janice was under the impression that Robert had gone to Ottawa on his father’s business and was surprised to see him home so soon. She was even happier when he said that his father had reduced his work load for the summer so that he could stay closer to home. For the next few weeks Robert was very helpful around the house. During the day, he washed floors, did the laundry, mowed the lawn. After dinner he stayed home and sat out on the porch listening to his new police-band radio. The radio served a dual purpose. He enjoyed the police calls but would also be alerted to any important information they might broadcast.
When Janice went
to bed, he’d stay up watching videos well into the next morning. When he finally crawled to bed it was usually around 4:00 a.m. but he’d still be up bright and early before Janice at 9:00. She wondered how he could pack so much into a day and still be able to function the following day.
As Robert suspected, Pembroke was a quiet place where there was little to do. He got a kick out of the fact that one of the big events of the year was the Swallow Festival and Wildlife Show.
Although he wasn’t much interested in birds and wildlife, he had always wanted to do some fishing. So, with a lot of time on his hands and the big Ottawa River at his disposal, he figured it was a good time to go out and buy himself a little speed boat and some fishing gear.
When he bought the boat and demonstrated an interest in fishing, Janice was delighted. It seemed like such a wholesome thing to do compared with the way he had been spending his time. Even though a speed boat and a fishing rod seemed to make a peculiar combination, Robert thought the two of them gave him the best of both worlds. He could have fun roaring around on the river with the throttle wide open, or if he felt like taking it easy, he could stop in a quiet cove, throw a fishing line over the side and relax.
It didn’t take Robert long to find a new drinking spot in Pembroke. Almost every day while Janice had her afternoon nap he strolled down to Wally’s, a small bar and restaurant located on the Boundary Road only three blocks from his house. Robert liked to go in and stand at the bar for a few doubles and some quiet conversation. When he first started going into Wally’s, they didn’t carry his Crown Royal because it was too expensive. But once Robert became a regular they made sure they always had some on hand. He didn’t stay too long in the afternoon because he’d always go home in time to help Janice make supper. But sometimes he’d come back at night, have a few more drinks and order a pizza to take home for a midnight snack. It wasn’t long before Robert knew every waitress in the place by her first name. And he was soon friends with the owner, Danny Belland.