Gods of Mischief (17 page)

The Prospect Song.

Fuck.

Like I've said, when a patched member gives a prospect an order, you follow it—no matter how humiliating. I climbed onto a boulder, then pulled myself onto the roof of one of the portable toilets scattered throughout the property. And there, atop my magnificent Porta Potty stage, I faced an audience of two to three hundred bikers and began to sing . . .

“I am a Vagos prospect, as you can clearly see . . .”

As I sang atop that portable toilet I recall thinking that Old Joe had been right: signing up with ATF had been a really dumbass move.

That's about when the shed began to tip.

I shifted my weight quickly, but it was already too late. Gravity had me. All of a sudden I was going one way, the shit-shed was headed the other, and what had been dumped from hundreds of bowels and bladders went splashing across the desert. The audience must've loved it, though, judging by the cheers and applause that followed my big finish.

I needed a fucking drink.

As the bikers cleared a wide path to the bar, I spotted a familiar face among them. It was that young sheriff from Riverside, my stalker with a badge who'd flown a helicopter all the way to Los Angeles to win me over. The lawman was trying to blend in with the crowd, but the
scowl aimed my way was pretty obvious. John Carr had told the sheriff I'd decided against becoming an informant. Yet here I was riding with the Vagos, and the bloom was off the rose. I ignored my spurned lover, wiped shit from my shoes and entered the bar.

The interior was crammed shoulder to shoulder with Vagos, vets, biker cops and women—and by women I mean Vagos old ladies and chicks wearing low-cut shirts and high-cut shorts. Oh, those groupies. Guess the patch and the Harley must have been some kind of aphrodisiac that made good girls want the bad boys. I swear you could take the ugliest motherfucker on the planet, stick a patch on his back and a motorcycle under his ass, and he'd have the hottest chicks in the bar hanging off his arm. Unfortunately in the outlaw world it wasn't uncommon for some of those young ladies to get pimped by the club. Females were little more than property to most of these guys, and they'd pass 'em around like puff pastries and chicken wings.

Over near the bar, Big Todd was engaged in conversation with a barrel-chested dude sporting thick, tattooed arms. This was Crusher, the sergeant detective from Cathedral City and president of the Vagos support club, The Green Machine. Todd waved me over, but I wasn't prepared to mingle just yet. My recording device had yet to be activated.

Besides, Sergeant Crusher made me nervous.

My prospect application had sailed through when that crooked cop had run it for red flags—the ATF had plenty of safeguards in place—but that didn't make me any more comfortable being around him. I was fine with Crusher busting his Mexican drug dealers and taking their money, but that fucker was part of the law enforcement fraternity, and cops talk to cops. There was always that chance—however slim—that somehow, someway, something might slip.

When I'd first mentioned Crusher to John Carr, he was surprised the sergeant and the other lawmen holding hands with the Vagos hadn't shown up on ATF's radar. John wanted to nail those dirty bastards in the worst way, especially Crusher. But the situation was tricky. If word got
out that the sergeant was being internally investigated, the Vagos might get suspicious and start hunting for another snitch like Hammer. It was a serious operational security issue that John had yet to fully resolve.

I waved Todd off, then pushed through the packed house to the bathroom, where I waited in line for a toilet to open. Once inside the stall I activated the recording device, flushed the toilet and headed out again.

Slipping back into the crowd, I was having flashbacks to that nerve-wracking day I walked into the Lady Luck wearing that big-ass recorder strapped to my chest. But the nervousness evaporated as confidence grew. The recording device was practically undetectable, I realized, and no one was paying attention to me anyway. They couldn't care less about George Rowe. I was just another bald-headed, tattooed sonofabitch in a room crawling with them. Before long I found myself pleasantly relaxed . . . maybe even a little bit cocky.

I headed with newfound confidence toward the bar. Crusher must have grown tired of buying Todd drinks and moved on, because Todd was looking around for his next victim. I swear, I don't think that sonofabitch ever bought a round in his life. He couldn't hold a job, so his hands were always in someone else's pocket. Especially mine. I was Todd's personal ATM, constantly spitting cash. And it was all withdrawals, man, never a deposit. For every buck that went out, not a damn cent came back. In the old days I would have backed a U-Haul to Big Todd's front door and cleaned house.

“Hey, Big George. Got twenty bucks I can borrow?”

“Make mine a Corona,” I told him, handing over the Jackson.

I scanned the crowded bar as I waited on my beer and spotted Terry the Tramp sitting at a table in the far corner with some of the national officers. Sitting next to the international P was his secretary-treasurer, a burly Chicano with the name Ta Ta stitched over the right pocket of his cut. Ta Ta was a tough thirty-nine-year-old hombre who wouldn't hesitate to beat down another patch if he had it coming—even one of his own. But as far as I could tell, the man also had respect for the
civilian world. At one of the big national runs, some no-class Vago had ripped off a vendor selling custom knives. Ta Ta ordered every patch to buy a knife from that civilian and apologize on behalf of the brother who'd ripped him off. I think if Ta Ta had been the man in charge, and known how Big Roy and his thugs were harassing the people of Hemet, he might have pulled their patches.

“Here you go, prospect.”

Big Todd handed the bottle across to me—without change—and I wandered off toward Tramp's table for a closer look at “God.” Standing guard over the club officers was Rhino. I felt that giant's gaze boring into me as I approached, but I avoided eye contact and found a wall to lean on. I was just close enough to overhear conversation at the table and figured the recording device would pick it up. John Carr told me the thing could snatch a whisper from across the room.

As I sipped beer and pretended not to listen, a burst of laughter from the table announced the arrival of a massive biker wearing a greasy T-shirt that read I SUPPORT THE VAGOS. This man-giant who strode from the crowd was probably late fifties, well over six feet tall and three hundred pounds, with a fat, bushy beard and hair flowing to the middle of his back.

Tramp shouted at him, “Hey, Bubba!” and stood to greet the big biker.

“How you been, Tramp?” boomed Bubba as the two clasped hands and hugged.

“When you comin' into the green?” Tramp chided him.

“Yeah, brother, you need to take a full patch,” added Ta Ta from his seat.

“No disrespect, you know I love you guys, but that's not my bag,” said the big biker, who then threw out his arms and said, “I want to ride the way I want to ride, when I want to ride.”

“Fuckin' A,” laughed Ta Ta as he clasped Bubba's meaty hand, adding, “no disrespect.”

By asking around I learned Bubba was well known and well liked
among the one percenters, just a friendly ol' bastard who loved to ride motorcycles. The big biker was tight with practically every stripe of Southern California outlaw: Vagos, Hells Angels, Mongols, Devil's Disciples—completely color blind when it came to the patch.

As Bubba bullshitted with Tramp I noticed Rhino watching me more closely, so I stopped holding up the wall and pushed my way back toward the bar. Big Todd was gone when I arrived, no doubt chasing his next free drink, but there was someone sitting at the far end that interested me: a Vago named Sammy who rode with the San Bernardino crew. Sammy was good buddies with North, the Hemet chapter's sergeant at arms, who was fencing stolen property for his brother from Berdoo.

I greeted him with a friendly “Hey, Sammy, how you doing, man?”

He was already half in the bag and didn't seem to recognize me at first. I squeezed in beside his stool and slapped a fraternal hand on his shoulder.

“It's George Rowe from Hemet, man.”

“Oh, sure,” said Sammy. “How you doin', brother?”

“I'm good. Heard you guys had some excitement in Berdoo, huh?”

“That right?”

“Yeah, I heard Hulk got busted.”

Sammy turned away and resumed drinking.

“Don't know much about that.”

I'd learn later that in fact Sammy knew everything about that. He'd paid three grand to Shorty for a stolen motorcycle that was never delivered, and ultimately that's what got that hang-around executed. Turned out Sammy was also in the truck with Rhino and Kilo as they drove toward Landers with poor Shorty rolled in a carpet like a bloody burrito. Sammy never made it, though. On the way to the execution he got cold feet and asked to be dropped off at a biker bar called The Crossroads.

Now here he sat as an unindicted accessory to murder.

Of course, I didn't know any of that at the time, but Sammy sure was fidgeting on his stool like he'd been a naughty boy.

“Yeah, man,” I said after taking another swig of beer. “Think the cops busted Hulk for killing that hang-around in Landers.”

I swear Sammy went white when he heard that.

“Don't know anything about it,” he answered abruptly. Then he knocked back the rest of his drink and cleared the stool. As I watched Sammy disappear into the packed room, a muffled
pop
came from somewhere outside the bar.

Apparently everyone else heard it too, because heads snapped to attention like a herd of nervous antelope. All those outlaws, cops and vets knew exactly what that sound was.

A gunshot.

I fell in with the crowd as they funneled through the front door and emerged in the brilliant desert sunlight. I was drawn with the others toward a commotion in the parking lot but found myself blocked by a knot of pissed-off bikers. As I squeezed past them, I saw the reason for their anger—a wounded Vietnam vet lying bloody on the ground, cradled by one of his buddies. Some of the biker cops were surrounding the pair with guns drawn, and a bunch of revenge-minded vets were edging closer.

Rhino, Green Nation's international sergeant at arms.

I asked the Vago next to me what happened.

“Fuckin' pig shot him.”

“Why? What'd he do?”

“Not a goddamn thing,” said a vet standing to my left. “The cop was disrespecting our brother, so he went after him. That's when the cop pulled his fuckin' gun.”

“Pig gets a gun and a badge and thinks he's above the law,” groused the Vago.

This was nervous time, man. There were a lot of angry bikers concealing weapons in that parking lot, and those cops were on the verge of reenacting Custer's Last Stand.

Within minutes there were sirens wailing over the desert. A line of cruisers soon appeared, roaring up the dirt road toward the bar, a cloud of dust boiling in their wake.

These were local police, and when they arrived on the tense scene their instincts were to give their fraternal brothers the benefit of the doubt. They had the biker cops put away their weapons, then cuffed the wounded vet on the ground.

An angry murmur spread through the crowd.

“You cocksuckers!” one outlaw shouted.

“They shit on our Constitution and wipe their friggin' asses with the Bill of Rights,” grumbled another.

I'd heard that outlaw's lament before, but now I had it recorded. Special Agent Carr might appreciate that one.

A few days after
the desert run, in what would become our weekly Friday ritual, John and I met at the Little Luau Hawaiian BBQ in Beaumont. I asked about the vet who got shot, but John hadn't heard any news. When lunch was over we headed out to his Expedition to download the recordings and switch out to a fresh device.

Kilo, the San Bernardino chapter officer who assisted in the murder of “Shorty” Daoussis.