Gods of Mischief (31 page)

“What does national say?” Sparks wanted to know.

“Tramp's talking with the Berdoo Angels now,” Roy replied, “but they're backing the Sons of Hell like we back The Green Machine.”

“You really think the Angels will get involved?” asked Ready, visibly concerned.

“Fuck the Angels,” declared Big Todd.

“Hell, yeah. They're not gonna mess with us,” said a cocksure Roy. “We fuckin' own California.”

Man, I almost laughed out loud when I heard that one. Big Roy was delusional. If the Vagos went after the Sons of Hell, the Angels would almost certainly jump into the ring to defend their little brothers. And if that happened, a gang war could spread through the region like a brush fire whipped by the Santa Ana winds. I was keeping my fingers crossed.

After the meeting Roy took me aside.

“Remember that pistol I showed you a while back?”

“You mean the 7.62?” I said for posterity.

“Still want to buy it?”

The next afternoon I
walked into the Lady Luck with a pocket full of money and a microphone. Roy went behind the counter and brought out the Czech-made pistol he'd shown me the year before. He didn't explain
why he was selling it, and I didn't care. But the sale didn't come without stipulations.

“Here's the deal. I'll let you buy the gun, but I don't want you reselling it, understand? I don't want this thing coming back to bite me in the ass.”

“Understood,” I said. “Don't worry, man. I'll keep it safe.”

As I counted out the money, I couldn't thank Roy enough for that badass gun—and for selling it to a man with a felony who couldn't buy firearms on his own. And when the deal was done, and that 7.62 was mine, so was Big Roy's ass.

Gotcha, motherfucker. See you 'round the prison yard.

I took the pistol back to the house on Espirit Circle, where John Carr photographed it, slipped it into a bag, then told me he was taking the weapon back to ATF as evidence.

“You can't do that,” I said. “Roy told me to hang on to it.”

“I can't let you keep it, George.”

“Well what if he asks to see it? I'll be in so much shit.”

“We'll figure it out,” said John. “Maybe you can tell him you sold it.”

“He doesn't want the fuckin' thing floating around out there. That's the whole point.”

John shrugged. “Sorry, dude. I can't let you keep it.”

End of topic. We were on to gang war, and John seemed confident the Vagos were headed in that direction. Apparently the Victorville Vagos had been making noise about riding against the Sons of Hell. Victorville was Psycho's chapter, and that High Desert region was Terry the Tramp's stomping grounds, so you know those two had to be in touch.

“Psycho's been talking about hitting the Sons of Hell to make a statement,” John told me. “They're talking about pulling their patches and stealing motorcycles.”

This was news to me. I'd heard nothing at the Hemet church meetings.

“Where's that coming from?” I wanted to know.

John paused, then said, “We've got someone in Victorville.”

“What?”

“We've had someone under with Psycho's chapter since March.”

Another informant? No shit.

I can't really explain why, but it was an oddly comforting feeling knowing someone else was out there doing the same crazy shit I was. I wasn't alone anymore.

“Do I know this guy?” I asked.

“Might. His name's Charles. They call him Quick Draw.”

That didn't ring any bells. I might have bumped into this Quick Draw at the Screaming Chicken or any number of places, but I couldn't place him. Even so, once John gave me a little background, I felt like I had a pretty good handle on that government informant.

Charles was the classic CI, a man working off a plea deal to save his bacon.

He'd been convicted of armed robbery in Nevada, then busted by the DEA for running a meth lab in Pinon Hills, just over the San Bernardino Mountains. Charles had been facing serious federal time, as many as twenty years behind the walls, and hadn't been crazy about the idea. So he'd entered into a plea arrangement with the U.S. Attorney's Office in California. In return for his freedom, Charles had agreed to infiltrate the Mexican mafia for the DEA.

Once the DEA had finished with him, they'd turned him over to a sheriff's detective in San Bernardino. She was Shelli Kelly, a longtime veteran of the department who knew a thing or two about biker gangs. Detective Kelly's backyard was San Berdoo, considered the womb of outlaw country after delivering several infamous one percenter gangs like the Hells Angels and, some might claim, the Vagos.

When John Carr swore he'd send backup the day I went to Tramp's place to face the Hells Angels, it was Shelli Kelly who hustled up to Hesperia to cover me. Now she had a CI of her own to handle . . . and that was asking a lot.

John once described handling informants as “worse than having a
kid.” Being one of those kids, I wouldn't disagree. I sometimes called ten times a day looking for words of wisdom from Uncle Johnny Law. Over the course of a long-term investigation like 22 Green, there might be thousands of calls and meetings.

Shelli Kelly wasn't prepared to shoulder that kind of load by herself, and her department lacked the resources to babysit an informant 24-7, so she turned to the ATF's Los Angeles field office and Special Agent Darrin Kozlowski for help. For Koz it must have felt like old home week, coming back to the Vagos to handle Charles. Only a few years before he'd been on the inside looking out as a patched member of the Hollywood chapter.

Getting patched hadn't nearly been the ordeal for Koz's CI as it had been for me. Those desert chapters were like the Wild West, man, and infiltrating was as easy as hanging around the same bars. From there it was a quick run up the ladder. Charles, aka Quick Draw, had been under a year less than me and was already a sergeant at arms in Victorville. And according to John Carr, those desert boys had already given Quick Draw plenty of indictable material.

In July, just a few months earlier, two Victorville Vagos had walked into a meth dealer's home in the Lucerne Valley intent on robbery. Both those boys were spun on crank, armed with revolvers and acting on a tip that a buyer with six grand in his pocket was coming over to score some dope. But the only person in the house was a forty-three-year-old tweaker named Little Jimmy, who freaked out when the Vagos walked in and ran for the door. One of the Vagos, a twenty-six-year-old dimwit named Twist, turned his gun sideways gangsta-style and pulled the trigger. The bullet tore through Jimmy's back, then his heart. He made it out to the front steps, where he died.

The two Vagos fled the town and thought they'd gotten away with murder. And they would have too, except a few nights later Twist was cruising the High Desert with his new buddy, Quick Draw. And Quick Draw, it turns out, was an excellent listener. He wanted to hear every
thrilling detail of Twist's robbery gone bad, and that dumb-ass Vago was only too happy to put it on the record.

But now ATF had a dilemma. Charging those two Vagos with murder would mean revealing Quick Draw as the undercover source, and that informant was too productive to lose. For the long-term sake of the mission, John Carr and ATF made the decision to hold the evidence and keep fingers crossed that nobody else got hurt while those killers roamed free. It was a gamble. A big fuckin' gamble. Eventually when Operation 22 Green wrapped and the takedown happened, Twist and his partner would answer for Little Jimmy, a dead man who only wanted to get high.

“It's a checks and balances thing,” John told me. “We can get information from Charles that we check off with you and vice versa. This way one hand knows what the other is doing. Koz and I think it would be smart to get you two together and coordinate our efforts. What would you think about meeting him?”

“You want me to meet the CI?”

“Yeah.”

“Does he know who I am?”

“Not yet.”

“Good. Because that's the way I want to keep it. He's a doper, John. And I don't trust dopers. That's all I fuckin' need is for this guy to flip on me. It ain't happening, man.”

My handler tried to convince me the Victorville CI had cleaned up, just as I had. But I wasn't going for it. In my experience addicts rarely changed. Sooner or later the old Charles would rear his ugly head and I'd be fucked. Like I told John, it came down to trust, and I didn't trust that ex-tweaker CI. No. I wanted to keep the circle as tight as possible. Already with Detective Shelli Kelly aboard, it had widened more than I was comfortable with. Those in the know now included Detectives Kelly and Duffy, John Carr and some of his ATF colleagues, my buddy Old Joe and, last but not least, the mysterious undercover cop from
the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department who rode outlaw but my handler refused to identify.

Terry the Tramp didn't
want any part of a gang war. Wars cost money, which meant fewer funds in the club account, which meant fewer coins for the slot machines. The Vagos international P was anxious to find a way around Hemet's call to battle, which was why he was busy trying to talk through the impasse with the Hells Angels in San Bernardino. But the natives of Green Nation were restless, and as the drumbeat for war grew louder, Tramp had no choice but to act.

So he threw Big Roy a bone. He green-lit a hit on Bro himself. It was a move that risked pissing off the Sons of Hell and the Angels anyway, but it was a risk Tramp had to take.

When Roy informed the chapter that Tramp had given a thumbs-up on Bro, they were immediately into it—all revved up and ready to go.

“We going to Bro's house to handle this?” asked Chopper, a husky young Mexican. He was a former high school classmate of Jenna's and Doc's stepson—the dentist I'd sold my bike to for gambling money.

“I think we should get him when he's leaving for work in the morning,” offered Big Todd. “We could use baseball bats.”

Better get a sledgehammer if you plan on taking down Bro, I wanted to say. That boilermaker was a huge, no-necked motherfucker—the kind of guy you'd have to shoot to stop, as Freight Train used to say. I was hoping that wouldn't happen, though. I liked Bro. That big boy could get along with just about anybody. But because he'd stood up to Todd and Roy (and got a chain wrapped around his head for his trouble) he was number one on the Vagos shit list.

Roy decided whacking Bro with Louisville Sluggers was a pretty good idea. So he directed Big Todd, Iron Mike and Chopper to grab some lumber, ambush Bro on his way to work, and take batting practice on his head.

This is what Big Roy was good at, firing up the troops and sending them into battle while he watched the carnage from yonder distant hill. Hemet's P was one of those generals who led from behind, and in my book that made him a pussy. But it also made him smart—smart enough to understand the danger of leading a charge where laws were being broken. Club officers were prime targets for the feds, who saw cutting off the heads of leadership as an effective way to cripple outlaw gangs like the Vagos. If Big Roy wasn't careful, the United States Justice Department could take away everything.

Including Big Roy.

Better the peons go down, he figured.

But at the end of the day, as was usually the case, nothing happened. The hit squad hung around Bro's house a few times but always returned dragging their baseball bats, claiming their target never showed up or they couldn't find him. So as the summer months waned, Bro was still out there flying the Sons of Hell colors, and it was driving Roy to distraction. Bro was an itch he just couldn't scratch.

Big Roy wanted to go after the Sons of Hell, and Tramp had run out of time to broker a deal. In mid-October of 2004, the Vagos international P sanctioned a war against the Sons, notifying Vagos chapters in Venice, Southside, Victorville, Pomona, Norco and Corona to stand by with Hemet for the coming fight.

Tramp also warned his rank and file they should be prepared to go toe-to-toe with the mighty Hells Angels if they wanted to remain in the club. If they weren't prepared for bloodshed, he told them, they should turn in their patch immediately or face physical punishment.

“Tramp says we're gonna roll on those motherfuckers,” Big Roy announced during church at his home in San Jacinto.

“Are we talking guns . . . knives?” North wanted to know.

“It would be guns, knives, bats, chains, everything,” Todd chimed in. “If they have their gunners, we'll have our gunners on the side.”

“The Sons and the Angels are gonna be in war mode,” Roy warned. “Tramp may roll us in club strong to Hells Angels and Sons of Hell
functions. This won't be like a bar fight. You could be in a situation where you have to decide if you're going to take a life.”

Big Roy then refreshed memories by laying down the guidelines again for a Code 69. He was wasting his breath, because while Code 69s sounded cool in theory, they seldom came off the way they were drawn up. Maybe it was just too involved for those geniuses. If a member received a Code 69 on his cell phone, he was expected to immediately drop whatever he was doing. He had to wear dark shoes and dark clothes (no club colors), and pack an extra shirt and Levi jeans (in case one pair got bloody and had to be tossed). Gloves would be required, either rubber or the cotton gardening variety. Members also had to travel alone in a private vehicle (no motorcycles) and without weapons of any kind. Everyone had one hour to show up at Buckshot's barn, where the war chest was stored. Instructions would follow.

How 'bout instructions for the fuckin' instructions?

“This is serious Vagos shit,” Roy reminded the troops, as if they were headed for the shores of Normandy. “A Code sixty-nine comes before everything else. And you'd better fuckin' show up at Buckshot's place. If not, you'd better have a damn good reason.”