No Angel (20 page)

I gripped his arm. It was the first I’d heard of this, and I was sincerely grateful. I’d have Shawn Wood from the Arizona Department of Public Safety check on it the next day.

I stayed with the Bullhead gang for a few minutes, then excused myself to find my crew.

Timmy and Pops were hanging out with a Red Devil named James. Timmy told me later that they’d been discussing large-quantity marijuana buys, gun deals, and moving stolen cars. James had given Timmy his cell number and told him to call him the following week. Timmy said he most definitely would.

James wandered off, and we Solos were alone for a few minutes. We stood by the bar in the common area of the clubhouse. A topless stripper in gold bikini bottoms and another stripper in a tight, torn T-shirt with a screaming eagle on it giggled at the far end. Ghost, who’d broken his leg when he went OTB—over the bars—in a traffic accident, talked to these women along with Rockem and Sockem.

We were approached by Dennis, Dolly, and another couple in their early fifties. Dennis intro’d them as JoJo and Tracey Valenti. The guy was a monster. Weighed in around 300 pounds, his bald head smaller than his neck, which was smaller than his upper arm. He had a doughnut-sized Death Head tattooed above his right ear. His flared-out, bushy beard was as big as his face. His cheeks were clean-shaven. He had on black leather spiked cuffs that covered most of his tatted-out forearms. He sweated and breathed like a fat man. He was past his prime, but it was obvious that back in the day he was a flat-out wrecking ball.

JoJo was the Tucson vice president, one of the guys with Doug Dam and Fang. He was on crutches. One of his legs was in a cast. The other was a prosthetic. The story of his remaining leg had recently become infamous. JoJo’d broken his ankle in a motorcycle accident and gashed it pretty badly. They stitched him up, put him in a cast, gave him crutches, told him to keep off the leg. He didn’t listen. He should have. Considering he was diabetic, he really should have. He took bad care of the cast, let it get wet in the rain and in the shower, walked on it, rode, everything. Everyone noticed that JoJo had been smelling bad lately, but no one talked about why. He was a fat guy, fat guys don’t always smell like roses. JoJo complained of pain and severe itching. One day, as he sat on the toilet, blood started to ooze from the cast around his foot. His toes were as black as the leather of his cut. Tracey took him to the hospital. As they cracked the cast open, a swarm of young black flies buzzed out. The gash was full of maggots. The doctors cleaned them out, gave him a new cast, and told him to take better care of it. He said he would.

We moved on and met more Angels. One was Duane “Crow” Williams, a Mesa member who was old and senile, and mumbled everything he said. He was always armed, even though he barely seemed to register what went on around him. His wife led him around the party by the arm and propped him on bar stools and fetched him drink after drink. She was more of a chaperone than a spouse. From the first time I met Crow he called me Pruno. I insisted I was Bird, but he said that was bullshit, I was Pruno. He said that I was Pruno because I made the best jailhouse wine he’d ever tasted. Months after the anniversary party I bought a Taurus pistol from Crow. Before he handed over the piece, he pointed out blood splatter on the muzzle. In a burst of clarity he told me he’d tried to scrub it off, but could never get it all the way clean. I told him it didn’t matter, it was a gun, right? He smiled and told me he liked me, and gave me a little necklace with a dagger pendant. I asked him what it was for. He said, “Because you’re the real deal, Pruno.” I told him for the thousandth time that I was Bird. He shrugged and said, “Well, keep it anyway.” Months after
that
, as the case was coming to an end, Crow would be the last Hells Angel we’d have contact with.

We met Daniel “Hoover” Seybert, the president of Cave Creek. He told us to come visit him at his place, the RBC Tavern. We said we’d drop by for sure.

We met Robert “Mac” McKay. He was the Tucson member with the nonassociation clause in his probation—a probation he’d received for beating down the ex-president of the Tucson charter. He wore a phony long gray beard and a brown wig—two tones of hair that belonged on separate heads—so the cops wouldn’t mess with him. His real beard bled out from beneath the fake, and as the night went on and the beer kept flowing, he looked more and more ridiculous. I wasn’t sure why he wore the disguise inside the clubhouse, since there was no one there he had to fool. Like everyone else, Mac said he’d heard good things about us Solos. I was typically gracious and humble. He seemed to be a nice guy, and was, as I’d find out, a damn good tattoo artist.

It was a whirlwind. At one point Pops stepped away to get some beer. As he crossed the room an older Angel—tan, trim, wearing eyeglasses—stepped into his path and grabbed his arm.

I immediately recognized him as Ralph “Sonny” Barger.

This was the first time I’d laid eyes on the man. He was around sixty-five, but looked to have the health of a vibrant man in his mid-fifties, a remarkable achievement considering the paces he’d put his body through over the decades. He had close-cropped white hair, was clean-shaven, and looked more like a Marine drill sergeant than a lifelong outlaw. He moved with all the confidence and sureness of a sultan in his harem.

For those who don’t know, this was the man—the legend, really—who molded the Hells Angels into what they are. It’s not a stretch to say that Sonny Barger is a visionary who essentially created the image of the outlaw biker as we know it. He had help, to be sure, and the names of his cohorts dating back to the late fifties through the present are legendary in the biker world: Johnny Angel, Terry the Tramp, Magoo, Junkie George, Mouldy Marvin, Cisco Valderama. Together and with a host of others, these men created the image—the leather, the hair, the grime, the hardness, the silence, the impenetrability, the bikes—everything that constitutes an outlaw biker.

Especially the bikes.

Without the Hells Angels we wouldn’t have floor-model Harleys that look like stripped-down scream machines. No ape hangers, no flared fenders, no bitch bars, no spool wheels, no front-end extenders. There’d be less chrome, less-creative paint jobs, less style. The HA were obsessed with going fast, and without this obsession bikes would be slower. They were relentless in stripping their bikes of all but the barest essentials. The formula was simple: Less weight plus bigger engines equaled more speed. Every pound they shed gained them two miles per hour. Thus, “choppers”—chopped-down motorcycles. What they did was mimicked by everyone who wanted to be a Hells Angel but couldn’t be. Their influence is seen today in bikes designed by Jessie James of West Coast Choppers and the Teutuls at Orange County Choppers.

Bikes aside, a world without Sonny Barger would look pretty much the same, but the world of the outlaw biker, if it even existed, would look a hell of a lot different. He is
the
iconic outlaw biker, and all members of every club look up to him as the godfather of their culture. He’s respected for who he is, but he’s also respected for his vision. He saw that the Angels could go international, that though American in origin, they needn’t be limited to America’s borders. As I’ve said before, I believe that the Hells Angels, and to a lesser extent all American-style biker gangs, are this country’s only organized-crime export. This is the doing of Ralph “Sonny” Barger. He embodies everything about the Hells Angels, from their unwavering image right on down to their contradictions.

Those contradictions fascinate me. The Hells Angels are separate from society, but they’re rooted in it; they’re nonconformists, but they all look the same; they’re a secret society, but also flamboyant exhibitionists; they flout the laws of the land, but they’re governed by a strict code; their name and their Death Head logo represent freedom, individualism, toughness, and lawlessness, but both name and logo are protected by legal trademarks.

The way these contradictions manifest in the real world is what really pisses me off. These guys shouldn’t be able to have it both ways. I mean, if you don’t respect the law, then why use certain laws to protect yourself? Why conduct toy runs and other charity drives to bolster your public image if you don’t care what the public thinks? Which is it? Are you misunderstood bike enthusiasts, or violent hoodlums? Why do you care if anyone likes you? When the Angels are at their criminal best, they embody everything an outlaw ought to: fight first and ask questions later. Better yet, don’t ask questions. Take what you want: turf, pussy, beer, bikes, drugs. Be violent and don’t apologize. I never apologized for being an undercover cop, even when it put me in life-threatening or ethically compromising positions. I never apologized for arresting people who deserved it, whether I liked them or not. I never apologized for being on the other side of the Hells Angels’ coin.

Like me, most of these guys had a chip on their shoulder—but unlike me, they all thought that society unjustly discriminated against them. Like me, they had no interest in a regular job or lifestyle. Maybe I cherished my family and friends more than they did—but didn’t they cherish their brothers and their club in the same way? They knew they were outcasts, so why not be outcasts together? Maybe the essence of their alienation was a question of nature versus nurture. Maybe, just maybe, they
did
get a raw deal. Did the Hells Angels shun the world, or did the world shun them?

These armchair reflections never crossed my mind during the investigation. All I thought as I watched Sonny approach Pops was, Wow, there’s the Chief. The fucking Chief is here! With us! I’d told myself I wouldn’t be impressed by his presence, but I was wrong. I was starstruck.

Pops was too. All of Sonny’s movements and gestures were charming. I couldn’t hear him, but I could tell by the way Pops turned his ear to him that Sonny’s tracheostomy hole made no difference. There was nothing funny about Sonny’s cancer kazoo. In fact, it made him more formidable. They’d carved his throat out thirty years back and the guy hadn’t missed a beat. Sonny was the king of the outcasts and he knew it. We all did.

Sonny checked out Pops’s Solo cut and gave him a hearty hug and they parted.

Pops told me later that Sonny had said, “Thanks for coming out. Thanks for showing respect. You should come visit us at Cave Creek. We have a charter up there, too.”

The Solo Angeles Nomads had the blessing of the godfather, and it felt good.

We hung out. Bad Bob looked more like Barry Gibb than ever. His hair was immobile—perfectly frozen in place with a net of hair spray. Doug Dam wanted to know if I wanted “any of those things,” referring to more guns. I winked and told him we’d talk later. I hung out in the front yard and watched the members-only door swing wide. Inside, on a low table, I saw a rock of crystal the size of a baseball. Next to it was a mound of ground meth several inches high. Members came and went, their women came and went (women, exempt from ever being members, were allowed to enter the front house with permission from a patch). All leaned over the table to snort. All came up zooming.

At some point during the evening I remembered that I’d brought a donation. I found Bad Bob and handed it to him. He peeked inside at five crisp hundred-dollar bills and removed a Solo Angeles business card (we’d had a thousand printed—black and orange, fssf). On the back I’d written “Love and respect, Solos.” He put it in his vest. We shook hands and ended up hugging.

Everyone was happy. They were happy because they’d made it five years in the desert. We were happy because we thought they’d never make it to ten. Success and smoke and that dank smell of beer infused everything.

The haze never lifted. The party wasn’t going to end. I have no idea when we left.

NOVEMBER 2002

ANOTHER DEVELOPMENT ADDED
to our high-flying attitude. As promised, JJ was in Phoenix the night of the anniversary party, listening in with the cover team. On her way back to San Diego the following day she got a call from her ASAC. He said, “Maguire, you got what you wanted. You get to run with those crazy bastards in AZ. Have fun.”

Her part-time reassignment started on November 5. From then on, JJ would be available to Black Biscuit three glorious days a week.

I went home on Sunday, October 27, for a couple of days of R&R. I only went because Slats ordered me to. Had he said nothing, I would’ve stayed in Phoenix.

Pops’s wife and daughters lived in Tucson too. We decided to ride our bikes home, flying full Solo colors down I-10, running side by side through the Valley. I had my cut on over nothing—just my bare torso, the leather vest open and flapping in the wind, my Glocks sticking out of my waistband. Cold as hell but I didn’t care. I was showing off for anyone to see. Pops had on a long-sleeved orange T-shirt under his cut. We both had orange bandannas tied around our heads. I rode on the left, he rode on the right. I was getting better on a bike: We rode around 85 or 90 mph. Cars got out of our way. The country around us was wide open, the highway seemed to exist just for us. I felt free.

We peeled apart at the edge of metro Tucson. All we did was wave. We’d see each other soon enough.

I stopped at a flower farm owned by an old friend. He sold his goods on the honor system, leaving cut flowers in vases in the front of his house. You paid by dropping money in a little wooden box. I took three bouquets’ worth of flowers and stuffed a hundred bucks into the box. I strapped them to the backseat with black and orange bungee cords. Neighbors gave me sideways looks, trying not to be noticed by the badass biker with the flowers.

I pulled onto my street. It curved this way and that through the desert. A roadrunner sprang across the pavement, his tail pointed straight up. A long black snake slithered into a patch of cholla like an animated
S
. My bike was loud, people knew I was coming. Gwen stood by the front door when I pulled in.

I fired down. “What’s up, honey?”

She eyed me hard. Real hard, harder than any of the guys I’d been hanging out with could ever have hoped to. I didn’t like it. I unstrapped the flowers.