Under and Alone (13 page)

It was obvious that Curd had no clue what outlaw motorcycle gangs were all about, that he couldn’t fathom the risk I was placed in or the magnitude of this investigation.

Ciccone and Brandon attempted to explain the gravity of my situation to Curd and Torres. All the while, I sat biting my tongue. At the minimum, Ciccone explained, I’d be physically beaten, quite possibly severely, if I didn’t show up this weekend.

“If Queen doesn’t have his backstops in place,” the SAC said with a shrug, “then shame on him. This meeting is over.”

Brandon, Ciccone, and I got up and left the office. Ciccone and I knew what we had to do. Following the SAC’s direct order was not an option.
Fuck him.
I left downtown L.A. and went home to my undercover apartment, did a little mechanical work on my Harley, and got ready for another night out with the Mongols. We’d been put in the paradoxical position of disobeying a superior’s direct order in order to do our jobs properly. Being a stand-up guy, Tom Brandon paged Dick Curd in an effort to make things right. The SAC didn’t return the call. Ciccone and I didn’t mention anything to Brandon about what we knew we had to do. We just did it.

To keep the operation alive, I knew I had to start showing some tangible results, get some irrefutable evidence on the Mongols, so that the stream of reports heading to Washington showed our level of progress. We knew that the club was engaged in a variety of violent crimes, but the hard evidence was always hard to come by. As luck would have it, not long after I’d earned my center patch, the Mongols made a run to Phoenix to christen the newly established Arizona Chapter.

The Mother Chapter in Commerce had issued an order that the Arizona run was mandatory for all California Mongols. It was going to be a tough run for the SFV Chapter. Even among bikers, these guys were a bunch of misfits. At the time, I had the only bike in the chapter that actually ran for more than twenty miles at a stretch.

Domingo had just sold his late-model Sportster to keep it from being repossessed by Harley-Davidson. That left him riding a bike taken by force from a member who’d recently been thrown out of the gang. Acquiring an ex-member’s motorcycle is common practice in outlaw motorcycle gangs. A member kicked out in “bad standing” loses almost all his worldly possessions to the gang—sometimes even his woman, who, in the outlaw universe, of course, is just another object in the inventory of his property.

Rocky would be riding his piece-of-shit Harley, which was both stolen and mechanically questionable. Rancid owned an older, rigid-frame Shovelhead, open primary, with ape-hanger handlebars tall enough to make him look like he was damn near standing up while he rode. Bucket Head would be on an equally ragged Panhead that he’d put together in his backyard a couple of hours before the trip. God knows, we were going to need a flatbed truck to pick up the bike remnants falling off our convoy along the way.

Although I was an official Mongol prospect, I was never trusted with any more details than I needed; I vaguely knew we were going to Arizona but wasn’t told the specifics of the run. I’d have to be a good, obedient Mongol prospect and fall in at the back of the pack, keep up, hang on. Ciccone and the boys on backup duty would just have to shadow the run. I was to meet up with the SFV Chapter at a McDonald’s off the San Bernardino Freeway at the Fairplex exit in Pomona, at seven
P.M.
As a prospect, you don’t dare show up late. I was in the parking lot at twenty to seven. It was dark as I sat there wondering if the SFV Chapter was going to show up at all. It could well have been some prospect hoop they wanted me to jump through simply for their entertainment pleasure. I heard one pack of bikes after another pass by. I knew that they were Mongols from other chapters headed for Arizona. I was just about to call Ciccone to see if he had any word as to the fate of my distinguished SFV brethren when the pitiful bunch rolled into the parking lot, bikes roaring and belching smoke. No one shut down their engines for fear they wouldn’t get them started again, plus we were already an hour and a half late. We headed out, and I assumed my assigned position at the rear of the pack.

To my surprise, we made it all the way to the Palm Springs exit without anyone breaking down. Then Rancid went to downshift, only to find that his shift lever had separated from the bike sometime in the last hundred miles. I was certain he’d been too high to remember to tighten it back on. Rancid limped his bike to a service station. No sooner had we parked our motorcycles at the gas station than someone yelled, “Prospect!”

I was ordered to find the nearest 7-Eleven and pick up some Budweiser. First things first under these trying circumstances. When I returned from my beer run, Rancid dropped down to one knee next to my bike. “Prospect,” he said, “take the back shift lever off your bike.”

Unlike his bike, mine had a front and rear shift lever. This allowed me to shift gears using my toe or my heel. My companions had apparently decided that I only needed one. I knelt down and began taking apart my bike. I knew I’d never get the lever back. Everyone carried a sufficient quantity of tools, which was prudent considering the frequent disrepair of the bikes. Getting the lever off was an easy task, and in no time at all, Rancid’s bike sported a new shift lever compliments of the ATF.

After downing our beer and gassing up, we left for Arizona. Although it was dark, I had no problem seeing, or smelling, the smoke from the bikes in front of me. Fifty miles flew by. Sixty miles, then seventy, then
boom!
Bucket Head’s engine blew like a hand grenade. Off the highway and onto the shoulder we went. It couldn’t have happened at a more convenient place—seventy miles from the middle of nowhere, right next to two miles of guardrail. We had only four or five feet to work in, and fifty thousand pounds of speeding eighteen-wheeled tractor trailers were constantly blowing by at eighty-five miles per hour. Bucket Head’s rear piston—what was left of it anyway—was sticking completely out of the crankcase. The prognosis was grim, probably terminal.

But how to get the shell of a bike off the highway? We decided Bucket Head would take my bike and ride back to the nearest phone. He’d have his ol’ lady come out from the Valley with his pickup truck. That should only take about two or three hours. As a prospect, I had no vote in the proposed plan. So Bucket Head took off on my bike, and the rest of the SFV Chapter settled in for a night of highway camping.

The temperature was dipping below fifty, but it was a beautiful desert night with a star-filled sky. As I lay under a guardrail, I enviously wondered what motel Ciccone and the backup boys were in right now. I had conjured up all kinds of scenarios for what might happen during this Arizona operation, but spending the night on the side of an interstate in the middle of the desert wasn’t one of them.

Bucket Head didn’t return until about six o’clock the next morning. Domingo was furious and didn’t waste any time jumping into Bucket Head’s shit. Bucket Head’s tale of woe was that by the time he’d actually gotten hold of his ol’ lady it was somewhere around two in the morning, so he’d decided to just spend a few hours lying around at the service station where he stopped to call. Domingo was pissed off and decided to leave Bucket Head behind. But someone was going to have to stay with him and help load his bike into the back of the pickup his ol’ lady was bringing out. Guess who?

The plan was for Domingo, Rocky, and Rancid to ride to Arizona while I stayed with Bucket Head and helped load the bike. To my surprise, some two hours later, Bucket Head’s ol’ lady actually showed up. Bucket Head and I wrestled the bike into the back of the truck. I got ready to start up my bike so we could continue our trek, but Bucket Head decided he didn’t like the way Domingo had gotten in his face, and he decided to take his ol’ lady, his truck, and his dead Panhead motorcycle back to L.A. and pass on Arizona altogether. I would have to ride the rest of the way alone. Bucket Head gave me a map showing the way to the motel in Phoenix where the Mongols would be staying.

Phoenix?
I’d never been told our exact destination in Arizona, but Ciccone was sure that we were going to Four Corners. Not only had I wasted a day and spent a night not fit for a desert coyote, but now I was on my own in the middle of nowhere with my ATF backup on their way to a completely different destination. Arizona was Hells Angels territory. A lone biker wearing a Mongol prospect patch here was going to be risky business.

I had to get to the nearest pay phone to let Ciccone know that the run was headed for Phoenix. I stopped at the first service station I came to. Ciccone actually answered his cell phone; it was obvious that my call had awakened him. He and the boys had made it to Flagstaff, Arizona, before they decided to find a motel and call it a night.

“Guess what, ol’ buddy? The run’s goin’ to Phoenix, not Four Corners.”

“Shit.”

I gave Ciccone directions to the motel in Phoenix and a brief rundown of my night with the guys, and then I headed out.

As I reached the Phoenix city limit I caught up to Domingo and the boys. They were on the side of the road, loading Domingo’s broken-down bike in the back of a trailer the Mongols had had to rent as soon as they hit Phoenix. Well, at least I was going to be riding into town with a pack of sorts.

It must have been about ten in the morning when what was left of the SFV Chapter rolled into the parking lot of the Quality Inn. I was dead tired, but there would be no sleep for me. I was immediately assigned guard duty in the hallway where the Mongols’ national officers were sleeping. It reminded me of the times when I’d been ordered by ATF to back up the Secret Service, except that when pulling Secret Service duty, you knew you were going to be relieved like clockwork in an hour. Here I was just hoping to be relieved before I fell asleep in my motorcycle boots.

Somewhere around one o’clock that afternoon the national officers decided to get out of bed for something to eat. Finally, Domingo took pity on me and sent me to the room to get some sleep. When I got there, I found Rancid curled up fast asleep on the only bed. He was snoring at the same decibel level at which his hog idled. But I was too tired to see any humor in it. I took my appointed place on the floor and fell right asleep.

Rancid got up around four
P.M.,
agitated that I was sleeping and not out prospecting as he felt I should be. I woke up to find him kicking me in the back and screaming: “Prospect, get your lazy ass up and go across the street and get us a pint of Jack Daniel’s.”

Like a punch-drunk fighter, I stumbled to my feet. I was feeling way too old for this shit. Fueled by crank, these guys thought nothing of partying for three days straight, catching two hours of sleep, doing more crank, and then running for another three days. It was standard operating procedure for a Mongol on meth. At least I didn’t have to worry about taking a shower, changing clothes, or brushing my teeth.

By the time Ciccone and company got a fix on where the Mongols were staying in Phoenix, we had ridden to a Hells Angels watering hole to make a Mongol “statement.” It didn’t result in any violence, just some tense barroom staring between us and several Arizona-based Angels. But by two in the morning, when headed back to the Quality Inn, the Mongols fully expected retaliation for the incident and were on high alert. A well-armed Mongol contingent was assigned to stand guard all night outside the motel. Around three in the morning, Ciccone, Carr, and Koz drove up to the Quality Inn and saw a parking lot full of Mongol bikes. Although they noticed several black-clad figures in the parking lot and ordinarily would have steered clear, they needed to know if my bike was among them. The welfare of their brother agent outweighed the risk of a Mongol confrontation.

The three backup agents unsnapped their holsters and started to cruise through the parking lot. As they eased forward, scanning the rows of Harley-Davidsons, Ciccone spotted my bike. This was precisely the same time that the Mongols spotted them. The outlaws quickly closed in. Dirty Ernie was the first to step in front of Ciccone’s headlights. He had one hand behind his back, no doubt gripping a gun. Two other Mongols blocked their retreat. Rancid approached one side of the car, and two other Mongols approached the opposite side. All three Mongols held their gun hand behind their back. Carr, Koz, and Ciccone readied themselves. They knew the Mongols had them cornered. Each side pretended to hide the fact that they’d gone to “ready-to-shoot” mode, nervous palms tight around the grips, and fingers on the triggers. It was a standoff. In Vietnam, the worst-case scenario for a small operational unit was to get 360’d. That’s where Carr, Koz, and Ciccone found themselves. Dirty Ernie circled the car, stuck his head in through the window, and glared at the agents. “That you, Johnny?” he said.

The three ATF agents weren’t fooled by Dirty Ernie’s ruse—though his random choice of first names was ironic. The verbal jockeying went back and forth until both sides were satisfied that a shoot-out might not be the most prudent course of action. The Mongols let the three agents drive on.

Later on, we were all going to party in Scottsdale, at the residence of the president of the new Arizona Chapter. As I left the Quality Inn, I caught a glimpse of a sight for sore eyes—another prospect. Domingo pointed him out to me. “That’s AK,” he said (as in AK-47), “a new prospect from the East L.A. Chapter.”

More than a hundred strong, we Mongols made our way through the streets of Phoenix until we came to a surprisingly upscale community. We parked our bikes in the driveway, in the yard, and up and down the street. Then everyone adjourned to the backyard for the festivities. I hadn’t even gotten my kickstand down when I heard “Prospect!” As if just the word wasn’t bad enough, I realized the call was coming from Red Dog. Then he got right in my face. “I better see you running your ass off all day, Prospect. You got that?”

What I wanted to say was,
You’ve got the right to remain silent, you piece of shit. You got that?
But I replied with the required deference. “Sure, what do you need, Red Dog?”