Under and Alone (20 page)

When we got to Rocky’s dad’s house, he was sitting out back, rolling a joint. Rocky took a long drag but didn’t pass it my way. By this time he knew that I wasn’t much into the drug scene. I had transported and sold drugs for Rocky. And after that drug test during the Laughlin run, Rocky was convinced that I’d do a line or smoke a joint if and when I really wanted to. That was good enough for him.

I followed Rocky to the back bedroom, where he bent down and started pulling guns out from under the bed. First the shotgun, followed by a couple of rifles, then an AK-47, but no machine gun. I was disappointed. Rocky handed me the shotgun and a couple of other rifles, then slid the rest of the guns back under the bed. We carried the guns outside and put them in the trunk of my car. Rocky’s connection, Richie, called on my cell phone and told Rocky we were good to go on four ounces of crank. Richie said that we should meet with him this evening around ten at the Wed, a bar in Pacoima.

We were late for the meet, but I’d reached Bob on his cell to tell him about the delay. No big deal—Bob operated on drug-dealer time anyway.

I told Rocky that I had to run home and pick up the money for the shotgun. I dropped him off at The Place. Broke as ever, he borrowed a few bucks from me for beer.

I hit Ciccone on his cell phone and told him to meet me just off Lowell Avenue. In a few minutes I was sitting in Ciccone’s Pontiac, laying out the details of the gun-and-methamphetamine deal. It was turning into a pretty unusual operation, and we didn’t want any unforeseen complications. I was carrying two recording devices just to be sure we got the whole thing on tape. I would be slipping Bob the cash to pay Rocky for the guns, but now I’d have to slip him a few thousand more for the drugs.

I sped back to The Place to pick up Rocky, then on to Coco’s. As I pulled into the restaurant parking lot, I spotted Bob and Sergio in their car. In the darkness, it wouldn’t be a problem to pull guns out of my trunk and transfer them to Bob’s. I reached into the glove compartment and released the trunk. Bob said he was satisfied with the guns as long as they were all in good working order. Rocky guaranteed that they were. All on tape. Sergio had a decoy conversation going with Rocky about the AK-47, and while Rocky was distracted, I slipped the ATF money into Bob’s hand. Mission accomplished. Now it was time to finish up the meth deal. We drove to a ratty hole-in-the-wall in Pacoima with an unlit gravel parking lot perfect for an outdoor drug deal. As I pulled in, I caught a glimpse of Ciccone’s black Pontiac parked in the rear of a business across the street.

Rocky quickly found his connection at the bar. Richie was in his late thirties, not a biker but rough-looking, heavyset and muscular, with a ponytail that reached three quarters of the way down his back. He wasn’t new to this game, and he eyed me with suspicion. Rocky assured Richie that he didn’t have to worry about any of us—I was a full-patch Mongol, and Bob and Sergio were friends of mine. Richie nodded. He and Rocky then made a quick run to his house to get the crank. Alone at the bar with Bob and Sergio, I took out a few thousand ATF dollars and passed them to Bob.

“Listen,” I said, “when the deal’s done, meet me at the intersection near Lowell and the 210. If you get there before me, just wait. I’ll drop Rocky off and meet you. We’ll voucher the shit then.”

When Rocky and Richie returned we all went out to Richie’s pickup truck. Richie handed the four ounces of meth to Bob. Bob handed the thick wad of cash to Richie.

My adrenaline was pumping throughout the transaction. I’d been involved in hundreds of similar drug-and-gun deals, and no matter how carefully they’re planned, there’s always the possibility of a last minute fuckup. Paranoia runs high among dealers, and a lot of good cops have been shot by some punk who freaks out at the last minute. But this deal went down without a hitch; everybody left the parking lot pleased. As I drove Rocky back to his place on Foothill Boulevard, I nodded to myself. Three guns and four ounces of meth in one smooth deal. ATF and the U.S. Attorney’s Office would be beside themselves.

I dropped Rocky off and headed for the meet with Bob and Sergio. Turning off Foothill onto Tujunga Canyon Boulevard, I saw a couple of Los Angeles County Sheriff’s deputies sitting in their car at the corner watching traffic.

From a cop’s point of view, it was a no-brainer. Ratty-ass Mustang plus dirtbag operator equals one automatic field interrogation. The deputies lit me up before I had made it a quarter mile down Tujunga Canyon.

I didn’t have an updated registration sticker for my UC car and could only hope they hadn’t caught it. I slid my gun under the seat as their red lights began to glare in my rearview mirror. Clearly, I was in for a hassle, even though I wasn’t speeding and I hadn’t run any stoplights or signs. I eased over to the side of the road and shut the engine down. I knew the routine and kept my hands on the steering wheel as one of the deputies approached from each side of the car. I had rolled the window down to speak with the deputy when he approached. “Good evening,” he said. “May I see your driver’s license and registration?”

“Sure,” I said, leaning over to open the glove box. I was assisted by the flashlight from the deputy standing on the other side of the car. His hand was gripping his gun. I removed the registration and handed it over with my driver’s license. He looked at the license for a couple of seconds without speaking. Then he said, “Would you mind stepping out of the car, Mr. St. John?”

I did as the officer asked.

“Step back to the rear of the car for me.”

Again I complied immediately.

Then came the usual questions. “How much you had to drink tonight? Where’re you headed? Where’re you comin’ from? Got anything in the car you shouldn’t have?”

Then one officer asked a question that turned the next couple of hours upside down. “Do you mind if we search your car?”

“No, you can’t search my car.”

I asked him why he stopped me in the first place. He said that my registration had expired.
Shit.
He asked why I had a problem with him looking in the car. I told him that I just didn’t want him looking through my personal things. I told him that he had no right to look in the car and that if he searched it without my permission, anything he found wouldn’t be admissible in court anyway. The deputy glared at me and told me to have a seat on the curb. He said it wasn’t going to be an illegal search; he was going to legally tow my car in and then do an inventory of it.

I sat down on the curb and started cursing to myself, thinking about Bob and Sergio out there somewhere with four ounces of government-purchased meth and three guns that needed to be vouchered
now
or the whole goddamn deal was going to be inadmissible in court. It was crucial that we preserved the chain of custody for that evidence.

Frustrated, I decided to take a chance. I pulled my RAT phone out of my pocket and dialed up Ciccone. He answered the phone and I had just enough time to blurt out a quick “John, I’m on Tujunga Canyon Road and I need you down here ASAP—” before one of the deputies pulled the phone from my hand and turned it off. I watched the other deputy going through my car. When he got to the driver’s side, I saw him bend down as if he was looking under the seat. He’d have had to be blind not to see the handgun.

“Cuff him!”

The deputy’s orders were clear.

“Put your hands behind your back.”

He put the handcuffs on and locked them in place. Then he asked me about the phone call. “Who the hell were you calling? Who the hell is John?”

“Just a friend of mine.”

“If somebody drives by here and cranks off a round at me, you know I’m gonna shoot
you
first and then shoot your friend John.”

“That might look kind of bad, you shooting a prisoner in handcuffs.”

He told me not to worry. He would take the cuffs off me first. I was hoping that no cars or trucks let off a loud backfire near the area to spook these guys. The deputies had called for backup, which was now arriving on the scene with lights flashing. They were driving a black-and-white four-by-four, and I was promptly tucked away in the back with my hands cuffed behind me. I saw the hook arrive, and they started towing away the Mustang, complete with its expensive ATF surveillance system, which a routine inventory would surely expose.

It looked like I was going to be spending the night in jail. I knew that Bob and Sergio had to be getting anxious waiting for me. If the cops jammed them, they’d have our evidence and we’d
all
be spending the night in jail. Where the hell was Ciccone?

Just before I was driven off to jail, Ciccone pulled up driving his personal BMW. He stopped in the road right beside us. He badged one of the deputies. Two other deputies joined in the conversation. The deputies asked for Ciccone’s credentials again as he explained to them that I was a confidential informant for ATF and that I was on a very sensitive assignment. The deputies remained skeptical. As an ex-cop myself, I could see how they might think we were a couple of bad guys trying to run a scam. Ciccone did have what appeared to be legitimate ATF credentials (not a form of identification that patrolmen see often), but he wasn’t driving a federal-government car; and I had been so uncooperative, was so unwashed and unkempt and in possession of a handgun, that they had to assume I was probably a wanted criminal and the only prudent course of action was to make the collar and run my fingerprints through the system.

Ciccone said that if they didn’t believe his ATF credentials were legit, then they should call Paul,*
 
⁴
an L.A. County Sheriff’s deputy who would vouch for us. Paul was one of the few law-enforcement people outside ATF who knew about my undercover role. He and his partner, Cleetus,*
 
⁵
were deputies who, though not undercover, worked the OMG scene as plainclothesmen, dressed in jeans and motorcycle jackets, riding Harleys. We sometimes crossed paths at various biker bars and parties. Ciccone had let Cleetus and Paul know about my undercover role several months before. In the beginning, I was dead set against it. I didn’t trust them, just as I didn’t trust anyone outside our tight-knit ATF core. But Cleetus and Paul both proved to be true-blue law-enforcement brothers, and an invaluable intelligence asset to the investigation.

The deputies reached Paul on the phone and asked if he knew about a guy named Billy St. John who was working with ATF. Paul told them that he knew me. They asked him what kind of car Billy St. John drove, and Paul replied that Billy drove a rusted-out red Mustang with a black top.

I could see that the deputies still had no idea what to think of the dirtbag biker they had in the backseat of their black-and-white. It didn’t look like anyone was reaching for the handcuff key. They kept grilling Ciccone about the firearm they’d found in my Mustang. “Okay, did you know your informant was carrying a gun?”

It had turned into one of those interagency standoffs that are all too common in the murky world of undercover work. Partly, it’s just the nature of the law-enforcement beast: No cop wants to be responsible for a fuckup he’ll have to answer for down the line.

Our real quandary stemmed from one of the dirty little secrets of undercover life, a fact that no training program can prepare you for. When you’re deep undercover, you simply cannot trust your fellow law-enforcement officers. You never know who might blow your cover, and in order to survive on the street you must live by the rule that divulging your true identity to a cop— any cop—can get you killed. Outlaw biker gangs, like the Mafia, have often bribed cops and developed long-term informants inside various local and federal law-enforcement agencies. In fact, in the course of our investigation, we discovered that the Mongols had turned a California Highway Patrol dispatcher into an informant. He was working for Domingo and the guys in my own San Fernando Valley Chapter, hanging out at The Place and feeding the Mongols anything they wanted from the highway patrol’s computer system—information on vehicle registrations, outstanding warrants, and confidential addresses.*
 
⁶

These sheriff’s deputies weren’t about to uncuff me and turn me loose with an unlicensed handgun until they’d checked with a superior officer. More sheriff’s department cars pulled up, and out of one stepped a sergeant. The deputies pulled me from their black-and-white and took the cuffs off. They wouldn’t give me back my gun, so they handed it to Ciccone—at least he’d shown law-enforcement credentials.

As they drove away, I reminded Ciccone that Bob and Sergio were waiting for me with four ounces of meth and three guns that needed to be vouchered immediately. I put in a call to Bob and told him to meet us on a side street just off Tujunga Canyon Boulevard.

A couple of minutes later we were parked next to each other and Ciccone had vouchered the four ounces of meth and the three illegal guns. What could have turned into a long night in jail was now looking like one of the better undercover scores in the case.

I was still in my first few weeks as a full patch when Domingo approached me with an unexpected proposition. “Billy, you’re gonna be the secretary-treasurer of the chapter.”

Rocky had been acting as the chapter’s secretary-treasurer, handling the books and dues, when I first starting hanging around the club. He wasn’t a good choice as anyone’s bookkeeper; not only was he functionally illiterate, but he’d regularly allowed money to be taken from the till. Rocky had to answer to the national secretary-treasurer, Leno Luna, patched in with the Mother Chapter down in Commerce. Mother was getting upset with the SFV Chapter’s late dues and other missed financial obligations. Domingo was taking constant flak from Mother because of Rocky’s irresponsibility, and he wanted someone as secretary-treasurer who could actually handle the job.

I was the most logical candidate. I had a steady job—or so the gang thought—in the avionics industry. They knew I had a military background, which meant I was more disciplined than the typical gangster running on meth. Normally, you had to be in the gang for at least one year before you could become an officer. Domingo said that he would get an exception made from the national officers in Mother.