No Angel (39 page)

Later on, out in the fields down from the clubhouse, Timmy asked, “Was that Dale on the phone in there?”

“Yeah. It was.”

“You have some fucking nerve.”

“What was I supposed to do? Go lovey-dovey on her right after getting mud-checked? I don’t think so. Those guys like shit like that, you know that.”

“I don’t give a fuck what they like. Call her back.”

“I’ll talk to her later.”

“I’m not asking you. Call her back.”

I knew he was right. I also knew he could kick my ass in about two seconds. I said, “OK, OK.”

I called. Dale was still crying. I apologized and tried to explain my situation. Gwen grabbed the phone and laid into me. “Jay, do not ever, ever speak to our children like that again! They’re not props. Do you understand?” I told her I did, though I didn’t believe it. Fuck her, she had no idea what I was into. She asked me again if I understood. I said I did. Why Gwen didn’t say she was leaving me right then, I don’t know. I asked to speak with Dale. I suddenly realized what I’d done. For a moment I reverted to Jay Dobyns. I told her the guy who said those things wasn’t me, he was someone else, I didn’t mean those things, I loved her so much, I was glad she liked the guitar. She settled down but was still upset. I promised her I’d make it up to her. I asked her if she could forgive me. She was a child, what was she supposed to say other than yes?

I hung up. Anger bubbled inside me, but I didn’t know where to direct it. I hated the Angels, I hated ATF, I hated Timmy for making me apologize, I hated my wife, I hated my family, I hated myself, then I hated the Angels again and repeated the cycle. I tamped my hatred down and tried to stay cool. I told Timmy that Dale was all right. I sounded convincing, he believed me. Or pretended to. I apologized to Timmy and he said it was OK, we were all under a lot of stress. I wanted someone to blame for what I’d become and every person I knew raced through my brain, but it was me. I was to blame.

The truth, however, was that I’d been all too willing to sell my family down the river if I thought it would curry some favor with the Hells Angels. I thought, perhaps foolishly, that my family would ultimately understand, that if given an inch it was OK, even expected, for me to take a mile. The truth was that by then I wouldn’t have hesitated in doing what I did to Dale again. Bobby’s words came back to me: “You have to give up everything to become a Hells Angel.” His words had sounded ridiculous to me, but suddenly they made a grotesque kind of sense. I felt pathetic. No. I
was
pathetic.

I was more Bird than Jay Dobyns. My transformation was almost complete.

When we were called back to the house, Bobby wanted to know who I was talking to on the phone. I told him I was lining up a big deal in Culiacán, Mexico, for later that week. I said we’d have to be out of town for a little while, but that we’d be back for the next church meeting on June 6. Bobby said OK, they’d known what they were getting into when they brought us up, and they’d promised us our freedom when it came to business. I said thanks. Joby told me to be on the lookout for thirty or so handguns he could distribute to the San Francisco charter so they could arm local and sympathetic street gangs. I told him I would. The following day, June 1, we left Prescott for a breather.

Slats was not at all enthused with the bottom rockers, but I could’ve given a fuck. If I was prepared to write off my family, I wouldn’t bat an eye doing the same to a co-worker, even one of Slats’s stature. This was a golden opportunity I had worked too hard to accomplish. There was nothing Slats could do to stop me. I’d developed a hero syndrome: I was bound and determined to save the day, no matter the cost and against all odds. I felt like it was up to me and only me to make all of it work.

By then, the task force was solidly split into two groups, one headed by Slats and the other by Timmy and me. For Slats’s group the bottom rockers represented a new, exhausting phase in the investigation. They meant months—maybe years—of additional work. They meant that the pace we’d been running at over the past several weeks would continue and, in all likelihood, intensify. My group believed that once we got patched, the evidence would get better; we’d be brought into the Hells Angels’ inner circle. Joby’s request for thirty firearms was a good indication of this belief. If we could do a sale of that size—across state lines, no less—then we’d have a nice addition to the RICO. I knew it was just the tip of the iceberg. Timmy was becoming more demonstrative with Slats. He lobbied passionately to see this through to its utmost ending. The Black Biscuit pot hadn’t boiled over, but it was foaming and bouncing on the burner.

Timmy and I met with the task force on the fourth, back at the Patch. I told them not to worry, that I had a plan to get us in quick. I said it was risky and that we might not pull it off, but that if we did, it would ensure our position. Naturally, they wanted to know what it was. I told them I couldn’t go into details yet, but that I’d do so the following week—that was a promise.

After the meeting I headed out to the Dumpsters for a cigarette. There was no moon, no clouds, nothing to reflect the night lights of Phoenix. The sky was a limitless pool of ink suspended overhead. Slats wandered out. He spat a wad of chaw. It exploded on the pavement. He opened a beer and handed it to me. He had another one for himself. He asked me what I was thinking of doing.

I drank a few sips of beer and said, “That’s simple, Joe. We’re going to kill a Mongol.”

JUNE 2003

SLATS DIDN’T LIKE
it. He didn’t like it one bit. I didn’t like his not liking it. He said it didn’t make any sense. I said it made perfect sense. He told me that wasn’t what he meant—it
did
make perfect sense to the Angels, but it didn’t make sense to us. He reminded me, “
We’re the good guys
.” He said it wasn’t going to happen. He implied that he’d end everything before it came to pass.

I said, “Fuck you. It’s happening, and it’s happening soon.”

He took a breath, spat another wad of chaw, and crushed his beer can between his hands. An eerie calmness overcame him. He said, “Jay, murder gets murder.
It’s just too risky
. Maybe you die, maybe you don’t—shit, maybe you don’t care if you die—but showing these guys a murder? I don’t know. You run the risk of igniting a biker war, a war you could be right in the middle of.”

He was right, I didn’t care. I said, “Dude, that’s a risk I’m willing to take.” I mashed out my cigarette and walked away.

I don’t know why Slats didn’t shut down the case right then—in the same way I didn’t know why Gwen hadn’t filed for divorce after I was such a jerk to Dale—but he didn’t. The only thing I can think of now is that he wasn’t ready. He needed more time to get his warrants together. Just a little more time. We both did.

The race was on.

I SPOKE TO
my old partner Chris. I spoke to Timmy. I spoke to Shawn Wood, a task force agent who was very supportive of our attempting to get patched. I spoke to Chris some more.

We got a nice little conspiracy going.

The plan
was
simple, and the more I thought about it, the more I was convinced it was foolproof. We’d ask the Hells Angels for permission to kill a Mongol, and then we would. We’d do it down in Mexico, where the Angels could corroborate practically nothing. Chris wondered how I could get them to contribute. He asked if I could get a gun from them.

“Hell fucking yes,” I said.

Here’s why the plan was foolproof: They couldn’t object. Since Laughlin, the guys were obsessed with killing Mongols. But though they were capable of it, they never went out and hunted them down. Like Dan Danza, the wired Angel whose toughness and aggressiveness I felt a kinship for, I thought this was ludicrous; Mongols weren’t hard to find. They weren’t like Osama bin Laden hiding in Tora Bora—these guys had clubhouses just like the Angels. So I decided I’d become their killer. If Steve Helland, the Angel Nomad, was willing to discuss hiring me to kill his son’s murderer, then why couldn’t I discuss killing a Mongol for the club? And how could they refuse? If they balked I could ask, “What part of ‘If you see a Mongol, kill him’ did I not understand?” If I did it, I’d fulfill their dreams and my potential.

We’d go through with our plan and either Slats would hastily end the case, or the Angels would kill me for overstepping, or I’d get fired, or I’d get patched. Having had the opportunity to take my best, most violent stab at becoming a Hells Angel, I’d have been happy to accept any of these outcomes, even death. At times, especially death. It was June in Arizona, and my willingness to die increased with the escalation of the mercury. There were even days when I woke up wanting to die. It was never something I was going to do to myself, but it
was
something I came to expect. It would’ve been so simple, and simplifying. I wouldn’t be around to screw up my family anymore, they’d get a nice insurance check, and the nightmare that had become my life would be over. I knew I’d never quit on my own—this had to be decided for me—so what better way to do that than to die? Without knowing it, my old partner Koz’s joking desire had become my own: I was now the guy who wanted to be duct-taped to a chair and shotgunned in the face. I wanted a good undercover death in the heat of my biggest battle. I wanted to die as the badass I’d become.

I thought, Fuck it. Maybe it would happen, maybe it wouldn’t. I was a cop, but I was also a Hells Angel. All that was left to do was to take care of business.

LIFE IS PRETTY
disrespectful of obsessions. As I spent all my time calculating and rehashing information and visualizing a crime scene, life went on. On June 6 we got called to guard duty in Dago for the funeral of another fallen Angel.

There’d been rumors that Timmy, Pops, and I would be guarding Sonny Barger at the World Run to Laconia, New Hampshire, in August—that weekend in Dago was a test run. The big heads were in the house—Sonny, Johnny Angel, and Chuck Zito, along with almost a dozen charter presidents from around the West Coast. I’d been assigned the back door. There was a high wall between the clubhouse and the street and I couldn’t see anything beyond it. Mongols paranoia had rubbed off on me: The whole time I expected a pipe bomb to sail over the wall and blow me and the back of the building to kingdom come.

But nothing happened. Boredom was my main enemy. But after standing around for about eight hours I got a little surprise. Out of nowhere, standing on the back porch, appeared Sonny Barger. He carried a plate covered with food, and two bottles of beer. He put the food on a folding card table and pushed the cancer kazoo to his trach hole.

His voice buzzed, “Hot out here, huh?”

“Sure is, sir.”

“You can call me Sonny, Bird.”

“No offense, but until I get my stripes, I’ll call you ‘sir,’ sir.”

He smiled. He said, “I brought you some food if you want it. You can take a break, I’ll cover for you while you eat.”

No. There was no way in hell I was going to let Sonny Barger sub for me.

“I’m all right, sir, I just finished a candy bar.”

“How about a beer, then?”

That was an easy one, one that convinced me he was playing a mud-check on me.

“I appreciate it, but I can’t do that while I’m on duty. My sponsor would set me on fire if he found out.”

“Suit yourself.” He picked up a roasted chicken leg and bit into it. He drank half a bottle of beer, making a point of sounding refreshed. His electronic voice told me he’d continued to hear good things about me and that we were on the right track. He said he was pleased that we’d decided to come over, to leave that two-bit club behind. I told him I was happy about that too. Then he finished his food and beer in silence.

He left as suddenly as he’d appeared. He picked up the plates, put one under the other, and said, “Later, Bird,” without the voice box. It was like a gale-force whisper. He was a strong old dude.

He left the full, ice-cold bottle of beer on the table. I didn’t dare touch it.
Was
it a mud-check? I wasn’t sure. I knew Sonny genuinely cared about his people. Maybe Sonny even cared for me.

ON JUNE 12
, Joby called in a state of panic. He said we needed to meet ASAP in the Prescott Wal-Mart parking lot.

When we got there I asked him what was up.

“We got called in.”

“Whaddaya mean?”

“I mean Teddy’s sending us on a mission. We’re going to Vegas tonight on a protection gig.”

Pops said, “More guard duty, huh?”

“This ain’t fucking guard duty, guys. It was, I wouldn’t be going now, would I?” I shrugged. He said, “Listen, we’re going up to support our brothers. Call Timmy, tell him to get all your guns in the Jeep and meet you at the clubhouse. Pops, you stay with me. Bird, go meet Bobby and Timmy and we’ll meet for lunch. I’ll tell you about it then.”

I buzzed Timmy and told him to meet me at the clubhouse and that we were being invited to a party that was BYOG. He asked, “BYOG?”

I explained, “Bring your own gun.”

He said enthusiastically, “It’s about time. See ya there.”

I rode to the clubhouse, breaking one of Teddy’s rules: I was a Hells Angel riding alone. Timmy was there when I pulled up. I left him by the Jeep as I went to get Bobby. He was inside his apartment. I waited for him in the entryway. He emerged from the bedroom stuffing a Bersa .38 into his pocket. He yelled to Staci that he was leaving a .22 for her on the kitchen counter.

Over cheap Mexican food we learned what we were up against. From the minute they started to give details I thought of only one person: Slats.

There was a coalition meeting in Vegas that night that the Banditos, another rival gang, one much more powerful than the Mongols, had promised to bust up. The Vegas Angels couldn’t allow this, so they’d called in the cavalry. Bobby and Joby both complained that there probably weren’t enough guys willing to answer the call—but that wasn’t us. Skull Valley, along with some guys from Mesa, would represent. Bobby had been ordered to hang back. Rudy wasn’t even considered. It would be me, Pops, Timmy, and Joby, and we’d be armed to the teeth.