The Flying Bandit Page 17

  Like Robert, Danny was very personable. He enjoyed talking to Robert and looked forward to him coming in every day. One of the things they had in common was that Danny was a boat enthusiast too. They talked a lot about their exploits on the water and swapped tales about their favourite spots along the shore and the secret fishing holes they’d found.

  Unlike Robert, Danny was an honest businessman and straight as an arrow. At no time did he have the slightest suspicion that Robert Whiteman was an armed robber. He believed what Robert told him: he was a security analyst who worked for his father in Calgary, travelling across the country on an irregular schedule. Danny had no reason to suspect him of being anything else. He never saw Robert flash his money around or act like he was someone important. Eventually Robert’s spending in Wally’s rose to over $800 a month. Although Danny thought that was a lot for one customer to spend in a bar, he had no complaints. Robert always paid his bill, usually by credit card. And he always left a reasonable tip for the waitresses. As far as Danny was concerned Robert was just a pleasant guy who was a good, steady customer.

  With Robert’s addiction, his liberal spending and his new responsibility as sole provider for the family, it wasn’t long before he needed to bring in some more cash. He told Janice that he had to go on a four-day business trip to southern Ontario for his father. She was happy to hear this because it gave her a good excuse to stay with her mother during the time he was away. For her, it was like going on a mini holiday. She and her mother could spend the next few days talking and shopping.

  Robert drove to Toronto on July 14, stayed overnight and then went on to Hamilton. While Janice and her mother were busy in the K-Mart in Pembroke, Robert was robbing the Bank of Montreal in Jackson Square. It was the same branch that he’d robbed only three and a half months ago. His routine was identical and he had no problems whatsoever.

  Only two people in the crowded bank even knew that a robbery was taking place. One was the teller, Jane Rice, who did what she was told, dumping the cash from the tellers’ drawers into Robert’s white plastic bag. The other person who saw what happened was a customer named Anh Tai Doan who needed a Vietnamese interpreter to tell the police what he saw. By the time this was arranged, Robert was driving merrily back to Mississauga with a total take of $4,396, almost $3,000 more than the last time he was in Hamilton. Although some of the money was in British pounds, which could prove to be inconvenient to exchange, much of it was American money. Robert was delighted with the unexpected bonus.

  While driving up Dixie Road, Robert looked for another bank to rob. Several appealed to him, but the one he liked best was the Bank of Nova Scotia on the ground floor of the Constellation Hotel near Pearson Airport. In order to case the bank, Robert took a room in the Constellation for the night. Before going to bed he took a trip down to the lobby to assess the layout of the building. Liking what he saw, he made a mental note to come back real soon.

  The day after that, he was back at Wally’s living the other side of his double life. Danny Belland was glad to see him. As usual, Robert was immaculately dressed in slacks and a shirt, with his hair neatly trimmed and his face clean shaven. As always, he was standing at the bar laughing and regaling a little group with his lively stories. The folks at Wally’s had missed him.

  As the summer wore on, Danny was ordering two or three bottles of Crown Royal a week just for Robert. As much as Robert drank, Danny never saw him become argumentative or belligerent. If someone else in the bar became obnoxious or started to bother Robert, he would just pick up his drink and find another place to stand.

  By now Robert was beginning to get comfortable in Pembroke. He still tried to keep in touch with Tommy and the boys at the Playmate by telephone, but only went into Ottawa to see them when it was necessary.

  He and Janice were getting along fairly well but still had major spats from time to time. Usually this happened before he left on a business trip. He would get anxious and drink more heavily, and invariably, Janice would chastise him for his drinking and an angry argument would break out. One night, late in July, they got into a wild screaming match that ended with him walking out. He spent the night in a cabin at the Pineridge Resort along the river. But, true to form, he was back the next day with a dozen roses in his hand and an apology that got him back into the house.

  As the summer wore on, Robert and Danny Belland were becoming friends. They went out fishing several times on Danny’s big boat and had a lot of fun on the river. Robert was thinking of inviting him on one of his business trips. Not one of those trips where he would be doing a robbery but one where he flew to a city to case a job. He liked Danny too much to cause him any grief by implicating him in a robbery.

  Although Robert enjoyed fishing with Danny, most of the time he preferred going out by himself. He’d slip down to the local marina and take his boat out once or twice a week. With his mickey of rye and something to read, he’d head out into the current and spend the day exploring the little coves and inlets along the shoreline. When he found a place he liked, he’d throw out a line and sit back to bask in the rugged beauty of the northern setting that surrounded him. Any fish he caught were an unexpected reward.

  That was his idyllic world. His harsh reality was that he was trapped in an ugly double life. The imminent birth of his baby brought his charade into sharper focus and made him all the more anxious. His feelings were ambivalent; he wanted to stop doing cocaine and robbing banks, he wanted to live a normal, happy, family life, but he couldn’t. Not yet, at least. He rationalized that he’d quit after a few more jobs when he had put enough money aside to get him started in a legitimate business. In essence he was kidding himself because, from all indications, he wasn’t strong enough to overcome his addiction to cocaine, let alone his dependance on easy money.

  Even more, he was addicted to the thrill of robbing banks. The money he stole seemed to be secondary to the enjoyment he got out of pulling off the job. It was almost as if he squandered his money so he would have a good reason to go out and rob some more. It appeared he wasn’t satisfied unless he had a holdup to look forward to, a robbery to plan and execute.

  Nothing he cherished could make him stop, not his future, his freedom, his wife or his coming child. He couldn’t stop even though he knew that someday it was going to cost him everything. And everything he now had was more than he’d ever hoped for. Whenever those kinds of thoughts threatened to overwhelm him, Robert forced them out of his mind. He couldn’t function thinking things like that.

  Now it was time to rob again. According to his plan, he was going back to Toronto to do the Bank of Nova Scotia in the Constellation Hotel, the place he had cased on his last trip to Hamilton. The bank was so close to Pearson Airport he decided to fly.

  On July 31 Robert took a room in the Marriott Hotel on the airport strip near the Constellation Hotel and relaxed in the bar for the evening. As was his custom, he called Janice that evening and they chatted briefly before he wished her good night. The next day at 11:00 a.m. he walked through the lobby of the Constellation and entered the bank. With his gun drawn, he went behind the service counter and emptied $13,000 into his trademark plastic bag. As he scooped the money from the cash drawers he kept repeating, “Don’t move anyone, and no one will get hurt.” The robbery was over in minutes.

  Robert checked out of the Marriott that afternoon. With his briefcase and pockets bulging with money, he hired an airport limousine to take him to the Square One Mall in Mississauga where he made a $2,300 cash payment against his American Express bill. Then he took the limousine to the Toronto Island Airport, and flew to Ottawa on a City Express commuter plane. From Ottawa he hired a cab for the 100-mile trip home to Pembroke.

  The rest of the month he resumed his normal schedule. He watched videos late into the night, got up early and did the dishes and some house cleaning, then headed over to Wally’s around noon. Some days, instead of going straight to Wally’s, he went fishing first. At Wally’s he’d have a few drinks, p
ick up some more videos at Paul’s Variety down the street from his house and then head home to make Janice some supper.

  The neighbours on Dominion Street liked the Whitemans but wondered about their strange lifestyle. Robert had told them about his travelling job, but they still thought it was strange that he worked so few days a month. And every day he was home, he either went for a walk to Wally’s or took his car down to the marina to go fishing.

  With his big Chrysler and his dapper clothes, some of them assumed Robert was some kind of important executive. A few of them, because of his black car and his police band radio, thought he might be an undercover cop. Another reason they thought he was a cop was that a known drug dealer was living at the end of Dominion Street and they wondered if Robert was watching him.

  Because no one said anything to the Whitemans about the presence of the drug dealer, Robert was terrified one night when he saw the glaring red lights of police cars whirling in the street in front of his house. Cops were running everywhere in a raid on the dealer’s place. It was only after Robert realized the police weren’t coming to his house that his breathing and his pulse rate returned to normal.

  On August 25, with the baby due any day, Robert came home completely drunk. Janice was so furious, the neighbours could hear her screaming. The fight ended with Robert charging out of the house and heading for the cabins at the Pineridge Resort again. This time he stayed for two nights. When he finally went home, Janice let him back in.

  Five days after this skirmish, early in the morning of September 2, Janice woke up with pain.

  “Robert, wake up,” she said.

  He had come to bed late and had just fallen asleep so didn’t respond intelligently to her summons.

  “Wake up, Robert, I’m going to have the baby.”

  “Are you sure?” he murmured.

  “I think so,” she said.

  They lay there awake for a while until her contractions seemed to go away and then both of them fell asleep again. Three hours later it was the real thing and Robert took her to the hospital. He waited with her, holding her hand as the pain increased and the contractions got closer. Then, when it was time, he went into the delivery room and watched his daughter being born. The experience was overwhelming. It made him happier than anything he’d ever experienced at any time in his life. Janice was equally thrilled. She had wanted a child for a long time and was happy to see that her little girl was so healthy and beautiful.

  Robert took photographs and couldn’t wait to get them developed. He also ordered a $90 bottle of Dom Perignon Champagne that had to be shipped into Pembroke because the local liquor store didn’t carry it. The champagne arrived in time for a family celebration when they brought the baby home to Dominion Street.

  The birth of the baby made Robert feel so proud that he wanted to tell his mother. He waited until he could speak privately to her then tried to get her on the phone. Since he hadn’t contacted her in over two years, he had to make a number of calls just to find out where she was located. Robert wasn’t surprised to discover she was now married to another man. They were running a trailer park in Oregon. Robert told her about his new daughter and brought her up to date on the other aspects of his life. He told her that he had gone straight, had a good job, and had gotten married to a wonderful woman that she would really like. His mother was delighted by his news, but she had difficulty believing he wasn’t involved in some sort of criminal activity.

  “You’re too much like your father for me to believe that,” she said.

  Robert ignored her comment and pressed on.

  “Ma,” he said, “once the baby’s settled in a little, a couple of weeks from now, I want you to fly up here to Canada to see for yourself.”

  “Oh, I don’t know,” she replied. “It’s a long way to go and I’ve got lots to do here.”

  “Ma, if you come up here to Toronto, I’ll pay for the flight and I’ll pick you up at the airport and drive you to Ottawa. It’s beautiful here. You can stay with us for a week.”

  “Oh, I don’t know. We’ll see,” she answered.

  It was strange how the birth of the baby made Robert feel closer to his mother. It seemed to give him a renewed sense of family. Through the years his relationship with his mother had been filled with anger and rejection. For a long time, Robert had no positive feelings for his mother at all. But that all seemed to be forgotten now. Somehow, in his new-found joy, Robert managed to put all those terrible, unstable years out of his mind.

  For the next two weeks Robert was the perfect father and husband, helpful and considerate in every way. The baby demanded constant attention and Robert did what he could to help Janice get her rest. He curtailed his afternoon visits to Wally’s and eased up on his drinking around the house. As soon as he saw that Janice was strong enough to get around and handle the baby on her own, he started making plans to go on the road again. It had been six weeks since he last robbed a bank.

  This time he flew first class to Vancouver and held up the CIBC at 1036 West Georgia Street. By now he had perfected the more lucrative method of walking behind the service counter, pulling his gun and emptying the cash drawers. This time he got over $8,000.

  But it was a close call. The police arrived moments after he left the bank and several witnesses told them he’d run down the stairwell into the parking garage. The police charged after him and immediately found his wig, black rimmed glasses, blue coveralls and green cap in the stairwell. But as quick as they’d been, they couldn’t find him, and had to settle for some statements from the witnesses. A number of them described Robert as being 200 lbs., with a heavy build, a body-builder type.

  They were right. Over the last few years Robert’s body had grown bigger. With all his rye and pizza, he’d put on thirty pounds and had developed a small paunch. Robert himself had noticed he was getting fat and he didn’t like it. To lose some weight, he’d taken out a threemonth membership at a fitness club in Pembroke. He’d only attended once.

  When Robert got home from Vancouver he found that life with baby was wonderful. Every day something new and marvellous happened. His attention, and Janice’s, was so intensely focused on the baby they had little time to find fault with each other. But as time went on, Robert gradually began working his way back into his old routine. He started going out for walks in the afternoon and dropping into Wally’s for a few drinks. For now Janice was too happy and too preoccupied to notice or complain.

  Two weeks after doing the Vancouver CIBC, Robert held up the CIBC on University Avenue in Toronto. He had been here before in 1985 and taken less than $3,000. This time he flew in with an accomplice, a small man whose identity cannot be proven. While his partner guarded the door, Robert managed to empty four of the tellers’ cash trays and make off with $16,233. Their disguises and coveralls were found in the stairwell of a nearby parking garage.

  On October 17 Robert went back to the Bank of Montreal in Hamilton’s Jackson Square for the third time. This time he took a small moustachioed accomplice with him. Both of them were wearing disguises and brand-new green coveralls over their suits. As Robert went behind the counter and emptied the contents of three cash drawers into an IGA shopping bag, his partner took up a position beside the swinging door that led behind the service counter.

  An unsuspecting female bank employee mistook the partner for a repair man and said, “Hi.”

  The partner showed her his hand gun and growled, “This is a holdup.”

  She was alarmed at the sight of his gun and frightened by the mean tone of his voice. She was also surprised at how quickly the two thieves got out of the bank and disappeared into the stairwell to the underground parking garage.

  Robert’s two previous engagements at this branch had netted him a total of $6,845. This robbery was worth almost twice as much at $12,681. If Robert knew how the witnesses in the bank described him, he would have been upset. One said he looked to be 215 lbs.; another said he had a puffy face and eyes; another said he looked
as if he was suffering from Down’s Syndrome.

  Although the Hamilton police came nowhere near catching Robert and his friend, they did manage to make an arrest in the immediate aftermath of the bank robbery. Two suspicious-looking men were pulled over in their car not far from the bank. When their vehicle was searched, the police found a sufficient quantity of cocaine to charge them with trafficking. An illegal handgun was also found in their possession which led to further charges.

  When Robert got back to Pembroke he was satisfied with his share of the take but he still couldn’t get his mind off Birks in Vancouver.

  It had become an obsession with him. He liked his life in Pembroke. He liked boating and fishing and drinking at Wally’s. He loved being home with Janice and the baby. But he couldn’t stop thinking about Vancouver.

  So he called Lee Baptiste in Ottawa.

  CHAPTER 12

  The Big Vancouver

  When Robert and Baptiste talked on the phone, they used a code. Robert was “Kid,” Lee was “Ink” because of his nine tattoos, Toronto was “Needle” for the CN Tower, and Vancouver was the “Bay.” The date they set for doing the Big Vancouver was October 29, a Friday. Robert liked working on Fridays because the malls were usually more crowded and that made it easier for him to disappear.

  A week before they were to leave for the west, Tommy Craig came to Pembroke for a visit. Janice was furious when she found out that Tommy was in town and didn’t want him coming anywhere near the house. Robert took the Fat Man into Wally’s for a drink and introduced him to Danny Belland.

  Danny thought they made a strange looking pair: big old Tommy, rough-looking with his busted face and gaudy jewellery; debonair Robert, suave and dapper in his expensive slacks and tasselled loafers. Finding them talkative and pleasant, Danny enjoyed their company. It never once crossed his mind that they were a couple of crooks. After an hour or so, they paid their bill and left in Tommy’s car.