Gods of Mischief (9 page)

In Crash's case, meth just made his incredibly inept riding even worse. The man would continue to be a terror in the saddle for as long as I knew him, but when I first hung with the Vagos, the bigger concern was the chapter's sergeant at arms. Right out of the gate, North was telling Big Roy I couldn't be trusted—that I just might be a snitch.

As true as that might have been, there wasn't a chance in hell that fuck could have known what I was up to. That closely kept secret was between me, John Carr and Kevin Duffy. Every precaution had been taken to safeguard my identity. Regardless, the word was out there now. North had started the rumor mill grinding. And once that snitch jacket
gets hung on a man, it's damn hard to remove. This was the worst possible start for someone in my situation, and my only defense was calling North out as a “fat, lying bastard” and demanding proof of my infidelity. The sergeant at arms promised he had a reliable source and would show his hand soon enough.

“If I find out this is true,” Big Roy warned me, “if it turns out you're a rat, I will personally fuck you up, George.”

Yup. North was going to be a problem.

I'd been hanging around the Vagos about a week when I finally told my buddy Old Joe that I was thinking about joining the Hemet chapter. The conversation came up during one of our early-morning chats on the drive out to a tree-trimming job.

“I don't get it,” said Joe. “You've been doing nothing but bitchin' and complaining about those people.”

“Just gonna try it. See where it goes,” I said.

“But why? Why would you do that? They're like a bunch of kids who never grew up. Why the devil would you want to hang out in bars and get into fights and all that other childish stuff?”

Fact was, there was no rational explanation. Nothing I could say would make a damn bit of sense, so I shut my buddy off with, “Don't worry about it.”

End of conversation.

Freight Train, who I'd stayed in contact with over the years, was even more upset—and that big Hells Angel didn't mince words telling me so. Both he and his brother Donny, who was a full-patch Vagos one generation ahead of Big Roy and the Hemet boys, unanimously agreed I was a “dumb motherfucker.”

Of course, they didn't know my true motive for hooking up with the Vagos. Nor would I have shared it with them. Regardless of our past history, there was zero tolerance for snitches among outlaws of any generation. Had the brothers known I was working on behalf of the feds, they would have tag-teamed my ass and kicked it from one end of Riverside County to the other.

Not long after I
first started hanging with the Hemet Vagos, I went on my first official “run” with Green Nation—the annual New Year's Run to Buffalo Bill's casino on the California-Nevada state line. Club runs—always a good excuse to gather members in one location—were usually organized at the chapter level, but the largest, like the New Year's Run, were handled by national and its top dog, Terry the Tramp.

Tramp was best known for plotting runs to a biker bar north of San Bernardino called The Screaming Chicken or farther south to Mexican border towns for cerveza and señoritas. But because the Vagos' international president had a hard-on for the slots, the largest runs were usually reserved for the Nevada casinos.

By New Year's 2003, the year of my first Vagos run, Tramp had reigned over Green Nation for seventeen years, governing his minions from his ranch-style home in Hesperia, a High Desert city in the Mojave. As testament to the devotion their international P inspired, many a Vago would have taken a bullet for Tramp. In fact, in their own way, many already had. Men had gone to jail on their leader's behalf. It was telling that the rank and file had a pet name of their own for the man.

They called Tramp “God.”

The fact that their supreme being had clung to power for nearly two decades was no small feat and certainly no accident. Terry Lee Orendorff was a survivor, bred with street smarts, a criminal's cunning and a gift for manipulation. Born in 1947, he was raised in El Monte, California, by his alcoholic stepfather, kept in a one-car garage like a caged dog. When Dad let little Terry out for some fresh air, the budding mechanic built himself a motorcycle, took off to raise hell and never looked back. He followed his stepbrother, Parts, into the Vagos and became the San Gabriel chapter president in the early 1970s.

While Tramp inspired a good deal of fear and awe among his subjects, those he terrified most were chapter presidents like Big Roy
Compton. Green Nation thrived on the weekly dues that members forked over at the chapter level, a percentage of which went to Tramp at national. But whenever a larger injection of cash was needed, Tramp found reasons to fine the chapters for every conceivable offense—fines that could run into thousands of dollars. For this reason, Big Roy was constantly on guard against pissing the international P off. Not only did he fear those hefty fines but Tramp had the power to confiscate a man's motorcycle and convert it into quick cash.

Not coincidentally, the largest fines seemed to hit the membership around the holiday season—right after Thanksgiving and during the weeks leading up to the New Year's Run. There was good reason for this. Tramp had a big gambler's itch, and to scratch it that high roller needed lots of cash. God's ignorant flock didn't have a clue back then, but their shepherd was pocketing tens of thousands of dollars and blowing it on slots and blackjack.

The New Year's Run to Buffalo Bill's offered even greater opportunity for Tramp to line his pockets. As members arrived after a long day of riding through the Mojave Desert, they'd find stands set up with all kinds of Vagos merchandise for sale—from Green Nation T-shirts to Vagos-branded jewelry. And every member was encouraged to spend freely. After all, it was for the good of the club . . . and what was good for the club was even better for Terry the Tramp.

Buffalo Bill's casino stands on the California-Nevada border in a town identified on maps as Primm but which we called “State Line.” Buffalo Bill's and two other casinos had been erected in that desert wasteland for a singular purpose—to snag Southern California gamblers before they could spend all their money in Las Vegas, forty miles to the north.

Nevada's dens of iniquity were always popular destinations for motorcycle gangs like the Vagos, and huge magnets for trouble. Only eight months earlier, members of the Mongols and Hells Angels found themselves rubbing elbows at Harrah's Laughlin. Wasn't long before that elbow-rubbing led to brawling, which led to killing. When the
chips stopped flying, two Angels and a Mongol lay dead. Just to even the score, a third Hell's Angel was murdered on his way back to California. Meanwhile at Harrah's the cops doing cleanup recovered nine guns, sixty-five knives, and assorted bats, hammers and wrenches.

On Tramp's orders, the
Vagos descended on Buffalo Bill's from all directions: Northern California, Oregon, Nevada, Arizona, Mexico—even Hawaii. I knew for a fact a lot of those boys hated making that New Year's Run, especially the poor bastards from the Northwest, who froze their nuts off, forced to ride their Harleys through snow and ice.

Terry the Tramp wasn't about to suffer that kind of discomfort. No fuckin' way, man. Braving the elements was strictly for the peons. Instead the international P came motoring into State Line behind the wheel of his big ol' Cadillac. And when Tramp wasn't driving that boat, chances were you'd find him cruising along in a brand-new Corvette the suckers of Green Nation had bought him for his birthday.

Without a motorcycle to call my own, I was also four-wheeling it to Buffalo Bill's that afternoon, same as Tramp. And that was just fine with the Hemet chapter. Whenever one of their bikes broke down they knew George would be there to roll it into his truck bed and haul it home. Besides, no fuckin' way did I want to ride a bike through the Mojave in late December. The desert was cold as a penguin's cooch that time of year. So I piled into my pickup, cranked up the heat until the cab was nice and toasty, then followed the Hemet Vagos as they rode out of town and started north on the I-15, bundled against the cold with their cuts worn over leather jackets.

A few more chapters joined the pack as it rumbled through Victorville and roared toward Barstow in the High Desert. From there it was a frosty two-hour grind through the empty Mojave all the way to State Line.

The Primm casinos came into view miles before you arrived, rising like mirages above the desert landscape. And you couldn't miss Buffalo
Bill's. The place had this crazy amusement park vibe going, with a giant roller coaster twisting around the hotel and a Ferris wheel off to one side. Walk through the hotel and head out back and you'd even find a giant buffalo-shaped swimming pool.

As I stepped onto the casino floor, I could feel the fever coming over me again. In those days I had a gambling addiction that could have gone toe-to-toe with Terry the Tramp's. Entering a casino was goddamn intoxicating: the cheers from the craps tables, the flashing lights, those ringing bells.

Ding. Ding. Ding. Ding. Ding.

Man, it was like the Sirens calling Ulysses to the rocks.

The place where I'd blown most of my money was an Indian-owned casino that sat a few hundred yards from the banks of a cement river channel north of Hemet. To reach Soboba Casino, I used to drive off-road, charging eight miles up that channel when the water ran low just so I could spend my money faster.

Ding. Ding. Ding. Ding. Ding.

I have no idea how much wampum I donated to that tribal den, but it was a shitload. There were Fridays I couldn't meet the Family Tree Service payroll because I'd blown it all on slots. I'd have to tell my six-man crew, “Sorry fellas, I'm flat busted this week . . . see you on Monday.” All those poor bastards could do was shrug their shoulders and pray I wouldn't blow their paychecks again the following week. Sure, I'd occasionally hit the jackpot, but more often than not I'd walk out of Soboba like a whipped dog with my tail between my legs.

The situation wasn't much better at home. I was with Darlene when the gambling bug first bit, and that poor woman did everything but chain me to the bedpost to keep me from donating her life's savings to the Indians. I remember one day when I was supposed to be at work but snuck over to Soboba with Old Joe instead. When we finally left the casino, the sun was down and I was in deep shit.

I needed a good excuse to hand Darlene, but the best I could come up with was some lame-ass tale about my truck getting stuck in the
mud. To sell that ridiculous lie—and despite Joe's angry protests—I had us both rolling around in the river muck like a couple of moon-touched fools. At one point the current caught my shitfaced partner and swept him half the length of a football field, which really messed with his vodka buzz. In the end it was all wasted time because Darlene had already come out to the casino's parking lot and found Joe passed out in the truck.

As I wandered through Buffalo Bill's, I noticed a Vagos entourage surging across the casino floor. This was the first time I laid eyes on Terry the Tramp, the big man himself. The club's international president was being escorted through the warren of slot machines by six patched bodyguards. I remember thinking the man looked nothing like I'd pictured him—nothing like a commander in chief.

Tramp was short and rotund, with an ample beer gut and shoulder-length white hair sprouting from either side of his bald noggin. To me the head Vago looked more like a circus clown than the leader of California's largest outlaw motorcycle gang. But Tramp was not a man you laughed at. Who knows how many badass hombres underestimated Terry the Tramp in his time and learned the hard way that looks could be deceiving.

I stood and observed the man they called God, watching as he paused to feed coins into a slot machine while his security team stood dutifully at their posts, ever vigilant for would-be assassins.

It was goddamn ridiculous.

When Tramp ran short of coins, he would tap the shoulder of the monstrous, mullet-headed human being that headed security. This was a signal for Rhino, the Vagos international sergeant at arms, to start gathering donations from the various chapters so his boss could continue feeding the slots.

But Rhino was more than Tramp's faithful change chimp. The forty-year-old was a feared ex-con who'd earned his road name for an obvious reason. The man was constructed like one of those four-legged African tanks, with a powerful body and a neck as thick as
his head. As chief enforcer for all of Green Nation, Rhino was the baddest motherfucker in the neighborhood. Nobody was safe from that brute, not even those closest to him. Rhino had shot and killed his first wife “accidentally.” I'm sure wife number two was understandably nervous.

As I watched Rhino hurry through the casino collecting tribute for his boss, Big Roy appeared and kicked me off the casino floor. Because I was a hang-around I wasn't supposed to be having fun like the big boys. My job was a supporting role, and for the rest of my time at Buffalo Bill's that meant I would be babysitting one of the patched members who was bedridden in his hotel room.

R&D Steve was an Army vet who worked as a designer for R&D Motorcycles in Hemet. He was close to fifty years old when I met him but looked twice that age—that's how bad cancer had beat the man up. So there we were, me and Steve in that hotel room with the heat cranking full bore. My ass was sweating, but that poor bastard was shivering like we were in Nome, coughing up chunks of mucus the size of golf balls.

I swear you could smell death in that room.

Poor R&D. I could almost relate to what that man was going through. I had experienced my own personal hell with the big C. Almost ten years earlier, after I was diagnosed with colon cancer, the surgeons snipped out thirteen feet of my intestines. Then they ran me through that particularly brutal brand of medieval torture called chemotherapy and radiation.