Life Real Loud

by Bill Reynolds

  Not only was Proudfoot trying to distance himself from attitudes surrounding the war, he decided to cut off his ponytail because he was only a year away from the job market. The corporate world was beckoning and he wanted in. This seemingly strange combination of longhaired attitudes and capitalist moneymaking came to be the signature of this administration. It is easy to see now, looking back, that many baby boomers, despite their insistence on their freedoms, were just as hypnotized by getting rich as their parents—they simply wanted to do it their own way. Proudfoot found his way and became “a twenty-plus year veteran of big ticket technology environments,” according to a seminar blurb on the web.

  To make their mark, Lefebvre, Ramsay, and Proudfoot set their sights on Dinnie’s Den, the campus bar. It was open 3–6 p.m. Friday; that was it. Draft beers were three for a buck. The chairs were laminated plywood that stacked together, the sort used for exams in the gym. U of C was a commuter campus, and the administration didn’t see any reason to change that. Lefebvre and company had other ideas, but they had to fight through the usual arguments about drinking and driving if the bar were to remain open every night. The goal was to wrestle control of the drinking establishment from the university establishment. Indeed, not just the Den but MacEwan Hall itself, home to the student union, student media such as the Gauntlet and CJSW radio, dozens of clubs, and a bowling alley, pinball arcade, and poolroom rolled into one. “We wanted to create a community on campus,” says Proudfoot, “because there was no reason to be there other than the bowling alley.”

  The administration relented, finally. The student union poured $25,000 into the Den, opened it every day of the week, and put in a television. Naturally, it started to make money. Lefebvre told the Gauntlet the expanded bar would be the “best lounge between Sausalito and Montreal.” Other enticements to stay on campus were offered, such as dances in the Mac Hall Ballroom every Friday night. “Before that it was white bread sandwiches,” says Proudfoot. “There was no food that kids didn’t get from their mothers. On Friday there was beef dip. There was no reason to be there—it was all pretty grim.” Lefebvre also advocated—in a nod to future governments—that non-profit groups be allowed to hold casino nights to raise money.

  After this great success, the next problem became the student politicians who followed in the wake of this radical turnaround. To those who followed, these initiatives became only about making money—fleecing students for every buck they could get. Conservative, even neo-conservative, administrations became proud of the union’s yearly profit-taking. For example, the union’s attitude about the student radio station in Lefebvre’s year was “You do your thing, we’ll do ours.” The next year it was, “Hey, how about we shut you guys down and turn you into a pay-per-listen shop for students?”

  “In many ways, I’ve always thought John and Bruce and I started that process. We may have created a monster,” says Proudfoot.

  While the union battled university administrators for its own building, Lefebvre’s marriage no longer had a thread to hang by. After five years, in the midst of his first hectic term running the union, the final act took place in the campus pub. “I used to say it was because she was fucking around with musicians at Dinnie’s Den, but it probably had as much to do with the fact that I was fucking around with Angie and just about anybody else who paid attention to me.”

  What really irked Lefebvre was not so much that his wife was having an affair but that she was having an affair with a bass player who played music he could not tolerate:

  I got Janice a job at Dinnie’s Den, and she started fucking this guy in a rock ’n’ roll band that was playing Foreigner songs. I fucking hate Foreigner. This guy sits down beside me in the bar and says, ‘Okay, we’re all adults here. I’m sleeping with your wife.’ I looked at him and then took the heel of my hand and shoved his nose up into his brain, really hard. He went over backwards and fell on his back. I took a smoke and flicked it right in his face and then I poured some beer on it to put out the fire.

  At this point the bar manager came over and said, “John, enough’s been said,” and escorted the president out of the student bar. The next day, the university administrator in charge of campus services ran into Lefebvre on the sidewalk and told him, “John, we just can’t have the president of the student union beating up the patrons in the student union bars.”

  Lefebvre was kicked out of liquor serving establishments on campus. “That was before Christmas. I negotiated them down to the rest of the fall term, six weeks, but I could still go to the faculty lounge. I would take a whole bunch of my friends up to the faculty lounge. I’d buy the drinks, they’d pay me the cash, and then I wouldn’t pay the faculty lounge back for three or four months. It was a good way of making money for the weekend.”

  Lefebvre had his troubles—controlling his temper in his personal dealings, arguing for more union autonomy—but he also had the foresight to help student media gain independence from student politicians. A newspaper or radio station reporting on student government that isn’t at arm’s length from that government is never effective:

  It wasn’t an idea that I had to conceive. The Gauntlet had already figured that out. They’d come and talk to me and I’d say, that makes sense, of course that makes sense.

  That’s one of the things I learned being the student council president, was that as president you don’t really have to know that much, you just have to know what’s what when you hear it. I know fuck-all about the internet. I know fuck-all about money transfers or finance, but when the idea was presented I thought, Hmm, that sounds to me like a good idea.

  After his tenure as president, Lefebvre felt the need for a break before tackling law school: “I decided to take the summer off because I’d heard the Stones were playing at Angels Stadium.” He phoned down and ordered ten tickets from a U.S. agency. A gang of student union people went, along with his old pals John Babick and Gloria and Angie Parker. The Some Girls tour dates for Anaheim were July 23–24, and they were going the second night. The historical reports about the tour suggest that while the band’s rhythm tandem was in form (as usual), the guys upfront, Jagger, Richards, and Wood, were a mess from continuous substance abuse (coke, smack, drink). The performances were lackluster, many agreed, and the Anaheim shows in particular were reportedly epics of boredom. Not that Lefebvre or his Calgary contingent cared—“It’s the Stones, man!”—or agreed. Lefebvre wrote a rave review for the Gauntlet: “Every note was perfectly clear with a dose of the Stones’ characteristic sloppiness … they’re simply amazing.” And anyway, well, for Lefebvre there was also a major distraction.

  Angie was total gas. When we were driving down through Salt Lake she’d be lying across the front seat of the car, suntanning through the windshield, with her feet out the window, wearing these tiny cutoffs and that’s all. And I’d pass this semi, and the semi guy’s going Honk! Honk! And I’m going eighty miles an hour and all of a sudden I look in the rearview mirror and this semi comes hi-ballin’ past me about 100 miles an hour, honking, staring down at Angie again. So I pulled in front of him and slowed down to make him pass us again. That was sort of fun. People in Los Angeles, who were used to seeing beautiful chicks, their jaws were dropping.

  We had all these great adventures in L.A. When we were coming home we were at San Luis Obispo—we’d been up all night—we went down to the beach. Angie stole a blanket from the motel we were in. I said, “You’re gonna get me in shit. We gotta take that blanket back.”

  “Well, first let’s go sleep on it on the beach.”

  So we’re lying on the beach. She’s lying on her stomach but she’s undone her top so her tan would have no lines on her back. The next thing you know, our feet are pointed towards the water, and this wave has crashed upon us. We wake up, and I look up, and immediately in front of us—Angie’s beside me and she looks up too—are four little adolescent guys, sitting there, staring, just waiting, and you knew in
a instant that they were just waiting for Angie to get up, just waiting and waiting and waiting, watching each wave. And then they finally got their eyeful. Angie ran up to those four little guys and got the one that was the slowest. She grabbed him by the hair and said, “You want a look? Here, have a look.” She was rubbing his face in her chest. She was really kind of forward.

  After his wild California adventure, the president floated back down to the mundane. He retained his membership on the Review Board at the U of C Student Union, but his buddy Ramsay was now president and in charge. Lefebvre was out of politics, just another guy looking to get back into school. It was a bit of a leap—the law? Lefebvre?—but he needed to take that leap. He was getting serious with a woman he had met in Dinnie’s Den back in January (in the new year he’d been allowed back into the bar run by his own administration).

  Katharine Armitage was a nursing student at the Foothills Hospital. They met one evening in the bar because she and some friends had come to the Den to “get tanked and meet guys,” according to Lefebvre. A real “wild girl.” Her friend Nancy followed him into the men’s washroom with her top stuffed with white buns swiped from the banquet counter, but it was Armitage who ultimately caught Lefebvre’s eye. She stood five-foot-six or -seven, lean, with long, dark hair, an angular face, piercing eyes, and a wicked, smart-ass sense of humor. His timing was good—at that point, he says, he was a “Big Man on Campus, and that sufficed for lack of personality, musculature, and money.”

  By the summer Lefebvre and Armitage were a couple, by the fall they were living together, and by the following February she was pregnant. At that point, in Lefebvre’s mind, any reluctance about getting his head into studying law—and he did feel a deep unease in his gut about the field—had to be ignored. Emily was coming in November, and he wanted to be a stand-up guy. They were married in October. The union worked for a while, but not long. By fall 1983, after four years, they were kaput. Lefebvre thinks the divorce went through in the mid-eighties, after he and another lawyer, Jane Bergman, had become an item.

  First-year law was stressful, so one pastime Lefebvre picked up, which relieved some of the pressure, was to play the piano on campus. Here’s how it would work. He’d get up at six, get to the university around seven, smoke a joint on the way in, find an empty piano room in Craigie Hall, where the Music Department was located, and play until a music student knocked on the door and said, “Hey, my turn.” Otherwise, no one ever hassled him. Lefebvre would remember the Faculty of Art’s hospitality when he got rich.

  IV (January 2007)

  My Bail’s Bigger Than Your Bail, Part 1

  Day One, Monday, January 15, 2007, Malibu, California, 9 a.m.: Lefebvre is up and about, puttering around in blue jeans, a white T-shirt, and sandals, answering some early morning email. Mostly he’s thinking about his love life, about his lunch date with Lisa, his Malibu girlfriend. Thinking about how today is the day he’s going to have to tell her about Hilary, the girl from Salt Spring Island. How it’s serious. How he’s committing. How he’s not playing the field anymore. How they’ve got to revert to being buddies. Lisa will be fine with that. She’ll be California cool. He’s certain.

  Lefebvre has been steeping his English breakfast tea. He’s about to take a sip.

  Rinnngggg!

  Now who the fuck would come around here at 9 a.m. on a holiday Monday?

  Mid-January is a strange time for a holiday. Many people are in post-bacchanal recovery mode from credit card overload and weight gain. Some are in the middle of “Juiceless January,” repenting excessive behavior, trying to get right with their bodies. But back in 1983, President Ronald Reagan, not the staunchest of defender of civil rights himself, signed into law an official holiday for Martin Luther King, Jr., fifteen years after the African-American activist and religious leader’s assassination in Memphis. It took seventeen more years, but by the millennium, all fifty states united in celebrating the life of the revered orator and civil rights crusader every third Monday in January. And now, seven years later, January 15, 2007, four men and one woman stand on John Lefebvre’s front door step at 25030 Malibu Road, Malibu, California, 90265. The female officer rings the doorbell. “This is the FBI,” she states in a firm monotone. “You must come to the door immediately.”

  Lefebvre stands frozen for a second. Holy shit, now what? He runs around the house in a panic trying to locate the bag of pot he was toking from last night. He’s got to stash it somewhere quickly, but he can’t find it!

  He hears the ring again. Fuck! He walks up the spiral stairs. The house, because it backs onto the ocean, is at a higher elevation at street level. From Malibu Road and up the walkway to the entrance and vestibule and then to the guest room and adjacent washroom is all one version of reality. But then there are two spiral staircases. One ascends to the master bedroom, with its outdoor shower unit on the roof, its large sauna for warming the body after a dip in the ocean, its pearl inlay chest of five drawers, and the second bedroom. The other descends unimpressively at first then grandly to the main living space. To walk down these steps is to enter another world—the full majesty of the ocean view comes into play, the din of crashing surf a jolting but welcome visual and aural sensation. The sumptuous living room on the right—with its Bösendorfer grand piano and centuries-old Mongolian rug—dominate the foreground. To the left, in the middle of the space, the dining area, with its massive, dark, ancient-looking table for sixteen, suggests conversation, frivolity, fine wine, and dining in a casual environment. Panning left, the stainless-steel trophy kitchen, kept immaculately clean by Lefebvre’s housekeeper, Luisa Esquivel, has the standard kitchen table near the floor-to-ceiling glass windows for tea, for breakfast, for writing, for emailing, and for other less formal occasions and tasks. Along the entire west face of the house runs a deck filled with come-hither lounge furniture. The probability that Lefebvre will invite the FBI outside to sit on chaises longues is low. He answers the door.

  “John Lefebvre?”

  “Yes.”

  “John Lefebvre involved in Neteller Inc.?”

  “Yes.”

  “We’re here to arrest you on charges of money laundering, racketeering, and conspiracy.”

  “Oh.”

  “Please put your hands behind your back.”

  Lefebvre is cuffed. They don’t have to tell him his life is about to change. He understands what’s about to happen is no good—no fucking good at all—and it’s going to take strength, quite a bit of strength. He grasps this, absorbs this, this hardcore, visceral feeling that gnaws at him. Beyond the gnawing, though, above all else, he knows what he really needs to do right here and now, in this particular instant, is to be cool. Be cool.

  Whatever happens, you’ve been to jail before. Except this time, he realizes, he’ll be going to a jail in Los Angeles. This freaks him out more than anything else at the moment—he’ll be spending some indeterminate period of time in a spooky situation—so he repeats a little mantra to himself: Be cool, just be cool. Be cool. Just be cool …

  The two FBI agents and three U.S. marshals escort Lefebvre down his spiral staircase and into his kitchen. They ask him to sit down at his kitchen table. He looks at his tea and it takes Lefebvre a few milliseconds to think, How the fuck do these guys expect me to drink my tea? There’s no way …

  “Hey you guys, I’ve just made myself a cup of tea and I can’t drink it with my hands cuffed behind my back. Do we need it to be this way?”

  “Yes.”

  “I’m not trying to be argumentative, but help me to understand why my hands need to be cuffed behind my back. I don’t think you know who you’re dealing with here. I’m a gentleman. What is your concern? Maybe we can allay it.”

  “We don’t know you’re a gentleman. We don’t know if you have guns here somewhere. We don’t know that you’re going to pop one of us in the head and run for it down the beach or …”

&nbs
p; “Look, guys, I own twenty million worth of property on this beach. I have a daughter, I have family, I have a home, I have a mother. I’m not, you know … I’m a gentleman.”

  “I’ll put your cuffs on in front of you if you make me one promise,” says the federal marshal, “that you’ll not rise from your chair.”

  “Why? I will make that promise, but I’m just interested.”

  “We have to do it that way, it’s a security matter. We don’t know what you might be tempted to do.”

  “Okay, you have my promise.”

  The marshals and FBI decide he won’t make a break for his weapons stash and off them before jumping on his Ducati and making a break for the border. They decide he is what he says he is—a gentleman. A marshal un-cuffs Lefebvre’s hands. He asks Lefebvre to put his hands out in front out him. He cuffs Lefebvre’s hands in front of him. Both of Lefebvre’s hands are now on his table.

  Not only can Lefebvre now drink his morning tea in his chair at his kitchen table in his house, surrounded by five guests who have invited themselves in on a holiday Monday morning just after 9 a.m., he can also use his cell phone.

  Lefebvre talks his way into being allowed to make more than the standard one phone call. He needs to make two calls, right? For sure one call has to go to Lisa, his lunch partner. He’s a gentleman. He doesn’t want to stand up his friend and blow off their date. More important, he needs to explain to her about Hilary, about how they’ve been hanging out for three or four weeks now, a couple of times in Canada, a couple of days at Christmas, and how even from a distance, Malibu to Salt Spring, something indeed has been stirring over the phone and back and forth on email, and how he’s about to enter into what he likes to call an accommodation with another lady, and this lunch date they were to have, it had an agenda, breaking up—not that they were ever “together” together but, well, you know what he means.