Under and Alone (17 page)

Billy and Easy, who told Billy, in detail, how he planned to kill his own sister and her children.

Billy in a sea of outlaw Mongols.

Billy, Domingo, and Evel in Florida at Daytona Bike Week.

Billy St. John (left) at Daytona Bike Week, where the Mongols were hosted by the Outlaws motorcycle gang. Like the Mongols, the Outlaws are also enemies of the Hells Angels.

One of many times Billy St. John was stopped by the police.

Panhead (right, standing with the Pekoe Chapter president) was convicted of a murder that was committed while Bill Queen was undercover with the gang.

Billy, near the end of the investigation.
(Courtesy of the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department)

9

I vowed that I wouldn’t be spending another night with Red Dog. I was so fed up with my prospect life, running around all over the place for the Mongols, following the commands of a group of criminals whose collective IQ didn’t add up to the median temperature, and being in constant fear for my life, that I was ready to phone Ciccone first thing in the morning and tell him the investigation was over. The ATF brass had wanted to shut the case down anyway. Why not let them?

The call was solely mine to make; no case agent can talk an undercover into continuing an investigation if he feels it’s become too dangerous.

But after my head cleared and my fury at Red Dog’s abuse had subsided, I felt I had a better handle on the night’s events. It was probably just another of Red Dog’s mind games, another sadistic attempt to fuck with my sanity; if he’d truly known something, or had some solid reason to believe I was a cop, he would have had C.J. kill me right there with no witnesses besides those Mongols.

The week following Visalia, I was staring at myself in the full-length living room mirror.
Hang in there, Billy. You can’t be too far from becoming a full patch.

But hang in there for what? So Red Dog could finally dig up some dirt on me? So the Mongols could leave me in a deserted ditch somewhere with a bullet in my head? My ATF bosses had made it abundantly clear that they didn’t give a shit about either Billy St. John or Bill Queen. I could so easily go back to my desk job in the Van Nuys office, making routine one-man, one-gun cases until my retirement day.

But I prided myself on being more than a typical agent. I prided myself on following in the footsteps of ATF men who put their lives on the line doing undercover work, men like Steve Martin, Darrin Kozlowski, Darrell Edwards, and Blake Boteler. The list was long and distinguished, and it kept rolling through my head, along with images of John Ciccone having to eat a teaspoon of administrative shit every day in the L.A. office and then hanging out on the streets watching my back until all hours of the morning. Images of my brother coming back from Vietnam on a stretcher. Images of some fifty-eight thousand soldiers who didn’t come back at all. I saw my work as part of a tradition of service to this country, and as I fastened my black bandana around my neck, that sense of tradition began to overwhelm the thought of Red Dog or C.J. shooting me. Yes, I’d hang in there, and I’d beat Red Dog and the rest of the Mongols.

As I sat in the passenger seat of Ciccone’s Pontiac after Visalia, John came at me straight out: “You think you can go forward, Billy? You think you can go back in there?”

“Yeah, I do. If I can steer clear of Red Dog, I think I can patch in. We’ve put too much time into the case, and I think I’m maybe a month or two away from that top rocker.” By this point, I had been riding with the Mongols for about six months.

Ciccone and I were both surprised that we had gotten this far, given the gang’s erratic behavior and propensity for hair-trigger violence. We had been able to skirt all the case-ending events that had arisen during the investigation, some thanks to correct decisions on our part, and some—like the target practice in the orange grove—thanks to pure luck.

On a hot Thursday night in August, Rocky, Domingo, and I planned to do the bar scene in the Valley. Rocky and Domingo were bringing their wives, and I was a fifth wheel, tagging along to do security for the chapter president. We weren’t riding our bikes, and we weren’t wearing any patches.

Domingo, despite his tough-guy persona, was quite the lively entertainer. He had a good baritone voice and enjoyed singing at several karaoke bars in the Valley. Many bar owners were justifiably nervous about Mongols being in their establishments, but I suppose some enjoyed the mystique of having outlaws as patrons.

Despite being chronically unemployed, Rocky’s wife, Vicky, had managed to buy a new car on credit, and Rocky wanted to show it off.

I had called Ciccone and told him that it was going to be an uneventful night of karaoke singing. “Just me, Domingo, and Rocky with their ol’ ladies hitting a few bars in the Valley. No bikes, no patches.”

“So none of the other backup guys needed?”

“No backup. Tell the boys to take the night off.”

Ciccone would be following me on solo surveillance duty in his Pontiac. The plan was for me to park my bike over at Domingo’s, and we would all drive in Vicky’s new car. I left the UC apartment at six
P.M.
I rolled into Domingo’s place and parked my bike in the back. Domingo’s wife, Terry, met me at the door, sporting a fresh black eye. “Come on in, Billy. Domingo’s taking a shower. You want a beer?”

“You bet.” As usual, I helped myself. They had nothing but beer in the fridge anyway.

I had never seen Domingo beat Terry before, and it was a bit of a surprise to see her with a black eye. Like a lot of biker women, Terry was an embodiment of the battered woman syndrome, and on some level, I suppose, she had confused that kind of negative attention from Domingo with genuine love. Maybe she’d never known any other kind in her life. It sickened me to see any woman get beaten up by a man, but I was in no position to moralize on the subject. I was living the life of an outlaw, and in their world, there were very few ol’ ladies who I didn’t see regularly sporting the signs of domestic abuse.

Domingo now bounded from the bathroom, a towel wrapped around him. Still dripping, he walked up to me and did the Mongol handshake. I hugged him tight, and the water from his chest soaked through my shirt.

It was the first time I had seen Domingo without all his biker gear on. Not only were his arms tatted up, but his legs sported a couple of barrio tattoos as well.

Rocky and Vicky arrived with their newly financed car. Domingo finished getting dressed and told Terry to hurry up, then we all headed out for our night on the town.

As he got in the car, Rocky pulled a revolver from his waist and tucked it under the front seat. I had never seen this gun before. It was a blue-steel revolver that looked—from the quick glimpse I caught—to be a .38-caliber. I made note of that detail for the ROI I’d be typing up in my UC apartment sometime before sunrise.

We hit a couple of karaoke bars in the Valley until ten
P.M.,
when Domingo, bored with belting out Santana tunes, changed the plan.