No Angel (43 page)

One thing was true, however: As Joby drove us into the hills, I expected, even wanted, to die. But it was not true that I’d killed. In the end, getting a bullet would have been too easy, and delivering one much too problematic.

The fire at Joby’s camp had smelled like lamb chops for good reason. The blood, skin, and brains that spattered the Mongol’s clothes had belonged to a lamb, not a man. While my loss of conscience had not been fun, the murder had been a game.

Our Mongol, who wore a genuine cut seized in another ATF case, had been played by Department of Public Safety detective Shawn Wood. He’d lain motionless in a ditch in the blazing sun while Jerry Laird, a Phoenix homicide dick, squirted blood and scattered brains over his head and torso. There he stayed while Timmy and I took pictures of each other pretending to kill him. Then he got up and we took trophy shots—me, Timmy, Woody, JJ—for posterity. Then we shot Pops’s cut—Pops was alive, off the case for good, catching up with his little girls back home—and piled into the truck, heading to a bar for Miller Time. All this took place about twenty miles outside of Phoenix.

Following the presentation and destruction of the evidence, there were a lot of phone calls between me and Bad Bob and Teddy and Bobby and Joby and Smitty. On the thirtieth, Timmy, JJ, and I went to Skull Valley to talk things over. Teddy and the others weren’t happy, but they weren’t very upset, either. We were told that we weren’t going to get patched, even though the local shot-callers had sided with us. The problem went back to Laughlin—it felt like all my problems went back to Laughlin—when some Angels had been fast-patched after the riot. This pissed off the European Angels. Those guys were over there fighting their rivals with RPGs, blowing up entire clubhouses, and none of them got patched early. We were told that Europe simply outnumbered the United States and none of our guys wanted to step on their European counterparts’ toes. We were told that it looked good for getting made at the Laconia World Run, just two months out, but that there was no guarantee; otherwise, we had nine months to go. Teddy said it didn’t matter to him—from then on Skull Valley and the rest of Arizona—Smitty, Bad Bob, Sonny, everyone—would consider us patches. He reiterated that, in his eyes, since we’d acted like Hells Angels, we
were
Hells Angels. He said, “Bird, we’re a club of rules and bylaws. You’re a Hells Angel and we’ll make it official by everyone in Laconia.”

I knew in that instant that the case was over. I’d managed to convince the ATF bosses of the value of running as a full patch, but without that status guaranteed, we wouldn’t get the full go-ahead. Our bosses wouldn’t wait for Laconia, let alone nine months. I thought, best case, that we had a month left.

But we didn’t. In the weeks leading up to the murder ruse, Slats had told our bosses how much continuing the case would cost. They’d flipped out, told him to shut it down. Slats started the process of issuing warrants, which included testifying before a federal grand jury. He got his indictments. The counts included drug trafficking, trafficking in stolen property, RICO conspiracy, and innumerable felons in possession of a firearm. Slats knew the case had a hard-out since early June. He didn’t tell me because he knew that as long as the case was still technically alive, there was nothing he could do to stop me from doing whatever I wanted. Like him, I was just too bullheaded.

But immediately after the murder ruse I was ignorant of all that. It was pointless, but we hung out at Skull Valley for a while on the thirtieth after we’d been told we’d have to wait for our Death Heads. I didn’t want to give up. I knew that one of these days I’d be hanging out with the guys for the last time, and while I wouldn’t miss the Hells Angels much, I’d miss Timmy and Pops and JJ and the weird life that we’d come to share. It was all I knew. I’d forgotten where I’d come from, and I wasn’t sure I could go back even if I wanted to. I wouldn’t let go of Bird so easily.

Bobby pulled me aside and told me more about his murder. Joby joined us and said he knew all about Bobby’s work. He said that if Bobby ever went down, then Joby would make public the things that Bobby had done. Bobby said, “Yeah, can’t let that shit out now or I’ll go away for life, you know?”

After a while we got ready to leave. As I walked out, Bobby told me he had a couple of AK-47s he wanted me to move for him. I told him no problem, I was still Bird, wasn’t I? He smiled, barely.

I’d never see any of the Skull Valley guys again.

We randomly hooked up with Duane “Crow” Williams, the old, senile Mesa Angel who used to call me Pruno, on that same day down in Phoenix. We went to his house and didn’t stay for long. He was a nonsensical mess. When I got to the Carroll Street undercover house later that night, I wrote the notes that Slats would ultimately translate into the lines of the last Black Biscuit Report of Incident:

THERE WAS A
Fourth of July party at Skull Valley that we didn’t show up for. We didn’t bother telling them we wouldn’t be there. We disappeared on July 1. I heard later, from suspect interviews, that our absence was a hot topic. Most thought we’d gotten called on a collection, or had gone to Mexico on business, but they couldn’t be sure. It was very unlike us not to stay in touch.

Slats had ordered all of us home. He’d gotten us all four weeks off, paid, and he intended for us to use it. It was important that we did, he said. I told him we still had work to do. He said, “No, you don’t. Your families need you much more than I do.” He said it to all of us, but he was looking at me. “All right? We’ve had our differences, and you’ve done a hell of a job. But this phase is over.” I followed his orders. On July 2, I headed home until after the Fourth, at which time I’d go back to Phoenix to help with the bust. Gwen was gone; she’d taken the kids on a driving tour back East. As I’d predicted, I was alone. No safe haven. No Hells Angels. No partners. No family. No peace. I had nothing and I deserved nothing.

Slats’s closing of the case felt like a complete betrayal. But he knew what he was doing. It’s now my belief that, from beginning to end, Slats served as Black Biscuit’s moral compass—God knows I didn’t—and acted as our collective conscience. It turns out that he really
was
dealing with the full 100 percent of the case, and I wasn’t. Whatever he may have wanted for selfish reasons, he knew that the case had to end when it did. He was able to make the decision I couldn’t.

By ending the case, Slats forced us all to return to ourselves before it was too late, before there’d be nothing to return to. He was, more than I or anyone else, looking out for his friend Jay Dobyns, who’d gone missing.

Black Biscuit’s search warrants were executed on July 8. Staci, Bobby’s girlfriend, called after we started knocking the Angels down and left a frantic message, saying, “Bird, it’s Staci. I don’t know where you are, but wherever it is, stay there. They’re coming for the guys. It looks like they’re coming for
all
the guys. I don’t know what the fuck’s going on. Hopefully I’ll see you soon …”

She wouldn’t.

What was going on was predawn SRT and SWAT raids, conducted in Arizona, Nevada, California, Washington, and Colorado. The total haul was impressive. More than 1,600 pieces of evidence were collected; over 650 guns, eighty of which were machine guns, sawed-off shotguns, and other prohibited weapons; dozens of silencers; explosives, including pipe bombs, napalm, blasting caps, dynamite, and grenades; and over 30,000 rounds of live ammunition. The drug haul, mostly meth or meth-related, was not huge, but it was significant. We also seized over $50,000 in U.S. currency. We served search-and-arrest warrants on fifty defendants, two of whom were death-penalty candidates. Later we’d charge sixteen of them, including Joby, Smitty, Dennis, Bad Bob, Teddy, and Bobby, with RICO conspiracy violations. Paul Eischeid and Kevin Augustiniak would be charged with the murder of Cynthia Garcia. A few more faced parole violations and were looking at immediate time. One of these was Dan Danza, who decided he’d had enough. He couldn’t be a member of a club that he felt no longer lived up to its reputation. He also wanted his teenage boys to have a shot at a better future. He agreed to work with the police. No one else cooperated. The rest awaited trial.

Owing to lack of evidence, Ralph “Sonny” Barger was left untouched.

LATE IN THE
summer of 2004, JJ and I assisted Slats by listening to surveillance material. The work was tedious and mind-numbing, but I remember one recording from mid-May 2003. I recognized the voices of Bobby, Teddy, and Joby, who were having a general conversation about how great it was to be Hells Angels. But there was a fourth voice I couldn’t place. He was a live wire, and his words hardly made sense. I hit Pause, passed my headphones to JJ, and played the conversation for her. After listening for a minute I hit Stop and asked, “Who the fuck is that asshole?”

She put her hands in her lap and said, “You don’t know?”

“No.”

She smiled slightly and said, “That’s you, Jay.”

It was a revelation.

That night I wrote an e-mail to everyone on the task force, apologizing for being Bird. I’d let our mission get the better of me, and I’d mistaken their duty for their support.

It was at that moment that I started to realize all that I’d wrought. My damage had gone far beyond my co-workers. I knew I’d accomplished what was perceived to be an impossible task—even Sonny Barger boasted that his club would never be infiltrated by law enforcement. But I was naïve. I knew I’d damaged my family, my peers, and my friends, but in the end I thought that, precisely because my task was perceived as impossible, I’d have their ultimate support. I was flat-out wrong. The night I reached the pinnacle—when Joby draped a cut over my shoulders and I refused it—should have been the night that everyone I knew to be on my side would be celebrating. But instead of being there to back me up they were distant and injured, pleading for me to return to the man I’d once been. I felt like I’d dropped a payload of napalm on them. The night I got what I’d wanted so badly was not a night of celebration. Instead, it was the loneliest night of my life.

By the summer of 2004 the Hells Angels had issued two death threats against my family and me. Over the following years they would issue three more. The things they claimed to want to do to us weren’t pretty, and they put me on edge. The nightmare of Bobby and Teddy pulling out my tongue recurred often. When the boys came to visit me, there was nothing I could do but wake up, go to the bathroom, and splash water on my face.

I’d inherited the Hells Angels’ deep paranoia. I perceived threats everywhere. A man sitting in a car that was parked too long on our corner became a biker spy. Animals in our backyard became a Hells Angels hit squad. More than once I jumped out of bed, grabbed my shotgun, and cleared the house and yard in my underwear.

ATF didn’t take the threats seriously. Feeling unsafe and abandoned by my employer, I moved my family around the West Coast. Running was fruitless. My paranoia grew, and was only made worse by ATF’s refusal to recognize what I knew was a mortal situation. They belittled my concerns and downplayed my accomplishments. I began to engage ATF in a drawn-out battle for compensations—to my bank account, my reputation, and my psyche. It was a dreary business, both heartbreaking and eye-opening. I’d expected to be betrayed by the Hells Angels, but not by the people I’d worked so incredibly hard for.

Another thing I didn’t expect was for the Black Biscuit case ultimately to fail.

Sadly, disputes over evidence and tensions between ATF and the U.S. attorneys killed our case. Most of the serious charges were dismissed in early 2006, and as a result, hardly any of the guys who were charged with RICO violations saw the inside of a courtroom. A few, such as Smitty, Joby, and Pete, were still prosecutable for their actions at Laughlin, but aside from the guns and contraband we’d taken off the street, it felt as though most of our work had been for nothing. Sure, we’d sent several guys away for short sentences and forced many into probation, but these accomplishments were nothing compared to the backbreaking case we’d envisioned leveling against the Hells Angels.

Those were dark days. The press and the defense attorneys, not privy to the turf battles fought between the case agents and the prosecutors, hung the blame on the undercover operation. We were called rogue actors, reckless and impulsive, and the Hells Angels’ legal representation publicly yoked us, confident the case would never go before a jury. Blaming undercovers is the easiest course in these situations. Sometimes it’s the truth, but in our case it was a lie. The worst part for me was that, precisely because neither ATF nor the prosecutors revealed the full truth, I couldn’t defend myself. My real name traveled through the papers as my unlikely story was told, and to some I became a pariah. Black Biscuit’s failure became my own, and thus one of my greatest fears—failure—was realized.

It was ironic that some of my best undercover work had sealed my fate. My cover was blown and I’d never again be able to work the streets. I was so tired in those days—from fighting with Slats and Gwen, the Hells Angels and ATF—that I didn’t really care about my blown cover, but it had some interesting consequences. My friends and extended family suddenly knew what I’d been doing my whole life, and they wanted to know everything about it. Principally, they wanted to know the answers to two questions: Was it worth it, and would I do it again?