Gods of Mischief (4 page)

The midget's old man agreed to the blackmail, then called the cops.

The next day I'm hauling mulch in my pickup when I see a curious sight. My buddy is sprinting down San Jacinto Street with four sheriff's deputies in hot pursuit. Within minutes sirens are wailing, I'm surrounded by cruisers and a young deputy is ordering me out of the cab at gunpoint.

“Don't move!” shouted Deputy Duffy as I emerged with my hands up.

I found the kid deputy's tone decidedly unfriendly.

“Don't you fuckin' move!” he repeated.

So I didn't move. Kevin cuffed my wrists, read me my Miranda Rights, then hauled my ass to jail on felony charges of extortion, attempted rape and attempted murder.

Now my name was known across the San Jacinto Valley for all the wrong reasons. The district attorney, up for reelection, was determined to prosecute—apparently with the aid of my cock-sucking friend, who'd cut a deal with the D.A.'s office and agreed to testify against me in exchange for leniency. I was eighteen years old and looking at serious hard time: three consecutive fifteen-year prison terms.

But the superior court judge, who happened to be the same magistrate who'd handled my adoption, took both parties into chambers and pushed through a plea bargain. Afraid of going to trial, I pled to extortion and got ninety weekends in jail and 120 hours of community service, which was spent picking up discarded cigarette butts outside the county courthouse.

Now here I was
twenty-four years later sitting in the shitshack across from Detective Duffy, who had become a good friend once he'd quit pointing
his gun at me. After discussing the assault at Johnny's Restaurant, I asked Kevin point-blank, “When are your people gonna do something about the Vagos?”

“What do you mean?”

“They're causing chaos all over town, man. And I know those fuckers did David. We both know it.”

“No, George, we don't. There's no proof they did it, and no one's talking. I haven't come up with a single lead.”

“Well, you'd better find one quick. Because if someone doesn't stop these assholes, I guarantee more people will get hurt.”

“And what do you expect me to do about it?”

“Your job,” I said, snuffing out one cigarette and fishing for another.

“My job is homicide,” Kevin said sharply. “If you're so concerned about the Vagos, maybe you should be doing something about it.”

“I've told you what I know.”

“Then find out more,” Kevin said. “You know most of those guys. Why don't you talk to them?”

I paused from lighting the cigarette. Kevin saw the look of disbelief wash across my face.

“George, I'm spinning my tires here,” he continued. “This investigation isn't going anywhere until I get a lead.”

“What the hell are you saying, Duff?”

“I'm saying I could use a lead.”

“What do you want me to do? Fuckin' stroll into the Lady Luck and ask Roy if he's killed anyone lately?”

Kevin smiled at the sarcasm and stood to leave.

“Just thought I'd put it out there.”

He stopped at the door and turned before going out.

“Thanks for your time, George. Be a good boy.”

Shooter's Food and Brew
in Hemet was a bar that a friend of mine had named in honor of himself. Shooter came to the San Jacinto Valley after
his wife passed away and his entire world went upside down. To take his mind off his loss, the man had sunk everything he'd owned into the bar, and that's where he'd first encountered the Vagos.

There was something about the outlaw mystique, of renegades refusing to be tied down, riding fast and free on the open road, that appealed to some men. Shooter was one of those men, and it wasn't long before he was badgering Big Roy to join the Hemet chapter. Instead Roy took advantage of Shooter's man-crush, stringing him along while his boys played free pool and drank booze on the house.

A few days after Detective Duffy's visit, I was sitting in Shooter's place and plying Big Todd with drinks at the bar. Guilt had gotten the best of me, and I'd decided the least I could do for my missing friend was ask a few questions that might jump-start Kevin's investigation. Unfortunately the questions I asked put the Vagos vice president in a foul mood, and it wasn't long before I ran that conversation straight into the ground.

Started out well, though, with Todd and me reminiscing about the good old days working for Hemet Tree Service, back when he was a seventeen-year-old ground man clearing the debris I chopped down. On the stool to the left of Todd sat a bearded Vago from the Norco chapter, who I didn't know by name.

“This motherfucker is crazy,” Todd was telling the outlaw, jerking a thumb in my direction. “Climbs trees like a fuckin' monkey. It's unbelievable.” Then he turned back to me. “Hey, remember that asshole who stole the chain saw?”

It was the same tired story Todd brought up every time we bumped into each other.

“Yeah, I remember,” I told him. “I remember trying to warn you, but you had the chipper running.”

Todd turned back to his buddy. “George is up in this fuckin' palm tree, like sixty feet off the ground, and he spots this prick lifting a chain saw off the company truck. So he pulls a gun and starts shooting at him.”

Todd was laughing now. “Believe this guy? He climbs trees with a fuckin' Magnum strapped to his ankle.”

“Three eighty,” I corrected him.

“A three-fuckin'-eighty,” said Todd. “So the prick is running with the chain saw and George is blasting away from up in the tree and that fuckin' kid is freaking out. He's like, ziggin' and zaggin' and shit.”

Now Todd and his buddy were both laughing.

“He dropped the chain saw, though, didn't he?” I said.

“Fuck yeah, he dropped that chain saw,” laughed Todd. “But you can't shoot for shit, guy.”

“I wasn't trying to hit him, asshole.”

“Well, you should have,” countered Todd before taking a drink. “You should have popped that motherfucker.”

I thought it was the height of fucking hypocrisy for Todd to bring that up. Hell, the man had been ripping off equipment from that company all the time to pay for his meth and cocaine habit long before I'd ever fired that .380 from the treetops.

Maybe I should have shot Todd instead.

Bullshit small talk followed until I finally steered the discussion toward my missing friend. I started trolling with some offhand remark like “Hey, whatever happened to that dude who gave you guys so much shit at Johnny's? What was that all about anyway?”

“Who we talking about?” Todd asked.

“About a month ago. The dude at the pool table. The one who knocked Roy on his ass.”

Apparently that particular topic was a real buzz kill, because Todd immediately clammed up.

“Fuck that punk,” he muttered.

“Hell, yeah,” I said with a grin. “You messed him up pretty good.” Then I threw in a casual “What the fuck happened to him anyway?”

It was a ham-fisted move that I immediately regretted. Big Todd took a long pull on his bottle, then turned with a smoldering look.

“Don't worry about it.”

“Why would I?”

“That's right,” he replied tersely. “Why would you? It's been handled.”

I'd jerked the hook too hard, and let my fish get away. Big Todd was through talking. David had been handled, end of story. After that misplay there was nowhere to go but home, ending my brief and failed career as an inside man.

Or so I thought.

A week or two
later Kevin Duffy called to ask for a private rendezvous out on Warren Road, an isolated two-lane stretch that hugs the western edge of the city. With the benefit of hindsight, I would have been better off leaving my truck keys on the counter and going to bed. Instead I headed out around 10:00 p.m., drove through town on Florida Avenue, then turned north on Warren.

There were no streetlamps along that straight stretch of worn-out asphalt, nothing but high-tension poles and open farmland. I continued through the dark landscape until the headlights found Kevin's unmarked SUV idling by the edge of a potato field.

I pulled beside him and spoke through the open window.

“So what are we doing, Duff?”

“Park your truck and climb in.”

I squinted past him. There was a dark figure in plainclothes sitting in the front passenger's seat. I couldn't see him clearly, but I knew who he was. This was the lawman Kevin had asked me to meet, a young hard-charger who headed the newly formed special investigations unit with the Riverside County Sheriff's Department.

I climbed into the backseat of Kevin's SUV and he swung back onto Warren Road and continued heading north. Before long we'd left asphalt and started down a rutted dirt track that terminated at an old dump. Kevin killed the engine but left the dome light burning.
The sheriff turned to look at me over his shoulder and introduced himself.

“Mr. Rowe, I asked for this meeting because Detective Duffy seems to think you'd be a good man to know.”

I tapped out a cigarette and glanced at Kevin. “That right?”

“I understand you're friendly with Roy Compton.”

“Well, you'd be wrong.”

“I've seen you at the Lady Luck.”

“I get tats there,” I explained, displaying the ink on my forearm. “That doesn't mean we're buddies. I think Roy's a fuckin' prick if you want to know the truth.”

Kevin and the lawman exchanged a look. I lit the cigarette and cracked the window.

“What's this about?” I said.

After a moment's hesitation, the lawman said, “Mind if I call you George?”

Before I could answer he called me George anyway.

“This is confidential, George. I need to know that what we discuss here stays between you, me and the detective. Can I have your word on that?”

I glanced at Kevin Duffy.

“Alright, fine.”

“Okay, then,” said the sheriff, pausing only briefly before launching his spiel. “For the past few months we've been running surveillance on the Lady Luck. We believe the Vagos have been violating state and federal laws in Hemet. Selling drugs. Maybe even firearms.”

“How about murder?” I added.

“Maybe that too,” said Kevin.

“We want to shut down the Vagos,” the sheriff continued, “starting with Hemet. But to do that we need eyes and ears on the inside.”

This took a few seconds to register, but once it clicked I looked at Kevin and said, “You gotta be shittin' me, Duff.”

I'd been sandbagged.

“Just listen to the man, George,” begged Kevin.

“Here's our problem,” the sheriff quickly continued. “Any time we conduct surveillance on the Lady Luck, the Vagos behave like Boy Scouts. And every time we've raided the place it's been squeaky clean. No guns. No drugs. Nothing. We think someone's tipping them off. We're just not sure who.”

I had a pretty good idea. Among the Lady Luck's clientele were a couple of Hemet cops who never seemed to pay for their tattoos. Free ink was Big Roy's way of saying thanks for the heads-up. That kind of relationship wasn't uncommon in the outlaw world. There were lots of biker wannabes posing as lawmen. One percenters tolerated this because a lawman in the pocket could be worthwhile. But truth was most outlaws would as soon spit on a cop as look at one.

“Just so I understand what you're asking,” I said, trying to stay calm, “you want me to hang around Roy's shop and feed you information. That about right?”

“Close enough,” said the sheriff.

“And can you explain just how the fuck I'm supposed to pull that off?”

The sheriff and Kevin exchanged a look. I knew what was coming, so I saved them the trouble.

“You're asking me to fucking join the Vagos, aren't you?” I said point-blank.

“We know it's asking a lot,” said Kevin.

I shot him a hard look. “You think?”

“Let me ask you something, George,” said the sheriff evenly. “If you had the ability to get rid of the Vagos in Hemet, would you do it?”

I looked him straight in the eye.

“You're asking me to snitch, pal.”

“He's asking for your help,” chimed in Kevin.

Tossing Big Todd a few leading questions was one thing, but this
was the kind of help that could get a man killed. It was a known fact that the only thing an outlaw hated worse than cops was a snitch working for cops. Within the brotherhood, betrayal was considered the worst of sins, and the sentence for that ultimate sin was death. That was what these lawmen were asking that night; to raise my hand and volunteer for a possible death sentence. The more I tried to wrap my head around it, the more pissed off I got.

“Listen to me,” I said, biting back anger, “nobody wants the Vagos gone more than I do. But that's your fuckin' job, not mine. I don't get paid for that.”

“Would you like to get paid?” asked the sheriff. “Because I can arrange that. I could get you a motorcycle too. Anything you need.”

He reached into his pocket and pulled out a cell phone.

“It's a throwaway,” he said, extending it toward me. “The minutes are prepaid, won't cost you a dime. My number's already in it. You can call me directly any time, day or night.”

I let the phone hang there. This slick sonofabitch was moving fast.

“I don't want your phone, Sheriff, and I don't want your money. I just want you people to stop all the fuckin' chaos.”

“That's why we're talking to you,” replied the sheriff. “Right now we're deaf and blind when it comes to the Vagos. If we're ever going to stop this, we need some inside help. Can you do that for us, George?” he said, proffering the phone again. “Will you help us get these guys?”

That question was still
unanswered as we left the dump and headed back to Warren Road. I sat quietly in the backseat, smoking a cigarette and staring out the window at the dark outline of the San Jacinto Mountains. My friend's body was probably buried somewhere in the desert beyond those shadows. So who would speak for him?