Under and Alone (25 page)

When I first met Easy he was dealing with the death of his father. I was hanging out with him one night in an apartment near The Place. We sat in the dimly lit living area, and he talked about his father dying and I talked about losing my mom. Easy said he and his dad were very close and had spent a lot of time together before he died. I thought about my old man and how my relationship with him was quite the opposite. My father was hardly ever around, and when he was, he was usually drunk. But Easy missed his father dearly. He told me straight out that since his father died he didn’t care about living anymore. He really didn’t give a shit.

I began to realize that Easy was so brave in the face of danger because he wanted to die. Like a terrorist who straps explosives to his own body, Easy had that conflation of suicidal and homicidal impulses. He was ready to die, and he wanted to take whoever was in his way with him. I watched Easy snorting the remainder of his meth and listened to him talk in the most chilling and morbid manner.

I now learned that, prior to becoming a Mongol, Easy had been arrested for child molestation. His own sister had accused him of molesting her two small children. I was surprised to hear this, and surprised that the Mongols let him in the club. Child molesters are not well thought of in any society—including the most hard-core criminal elements. They’re the first ones to get stabbed when they get to prison, and often have to do their bids in protective custody.

The room seemed to get even darker when Easy told me how he was going to get revenge. He wanted his sister to really feel some pain, the kind of pain she had inflicted on him. He was going to kill her two children, and then he was going to kill himself. As I watched him talking in the half-lit living room, the hair on the back of my neck stood up.

Easy grew angrier and more animated. I’ve been around enough bad guys in my career to know that this wasn’t just idle talk. He was going to kill his sister’s two children slowly in front of her. Beside me, Easy pulled his knife out and gripped it tightly in one hand, saying that he was going to hold the kids by their hair and cut their throats while his sister watched them struggle for their lives.

I sat stone silent, stunned. I didn’t know what to say. Easy had worked himself into some kind of a trance while talking about it, and I wasn’t about to tell him he was fucking nuts.

I wanted to calm him down, so I told him that it would probably be better to just kill his sister, that the kids didn’t do anything to him. No, Easy said. Killing the kids first was the only way he could make his sister suffer enough.

I told Easy that I had plans to meet with someone else that evening and had to leave. As I rolled away, the picture of Easy grasping a small baby girl and cutting her throat kept running through my mind. I had to do something about it immediately. I wasn’t going to be able to sleep if I kept this to myself. I grabbed the phone as soon as I got home and dialed up Ciccone.

“Billy Boy, calm down,” he said. “What happened tonight?”

I told Ciccone about Easy’s plan, making sure that he understood it was not just angry, boastful talk. The next day Ciccone went to work on Easy’s background. He found out that Easy had indeed been arrested for child molestation. The question was what to do about his sister and her children. If they were warned about Easy’s plan and it got back to Easy, it would be obvious where the information came from and my own life would be in jeopardy. We had no grounds to arrest Easy, so the only solution was to have ATF put a tail on him 24/7 for as long as it took, making sure that he never had a chance to act on his plan to murder his sister and her children.

Rocky wasn’t as homicidal as Easy, but like most Mongols, he would gladly kill over money. As it turned out, his wife was a proficient thief. One day Vicky and a girlfriend, Pam, managed to steal a baby grand piano from a storage unit. But they had no one to fence the thing, and it was taking up their whole tiny living room.

I was lying in my bed in the undercover apartment, just starting to doze off, when the phone rang. It was Rocky, sounding upset.

“Yo, Billy, I need your help.”

“Sure, Rock. What d’ya need?”

Rocky and another Mongol had pawned their bikes to a drug dealer named Ruben who owned Mo-Hogs Motorcycle Shop in El Sereno. Time was running out for them to come up with the money; Ruben was threatening to sell the bikes if he didn’t get two thousand bucks. Rocky started to tell me of his plan to get his Harley back from Ruben.

“This is what we’re going to do,” he said. “You’re going to come over with your car and take me to Ruben’s. We’ll park in the alley behind his place and wait. I’ll go in and tell him that I wanna buy some dope. I’ll follow him back to where he keeps it, and when we’re back there I’m gonna blow his fuckin’ brains out. When the heat cools, we’ll go over and get our bikes. Simple as that.”

“Rocky, are you fuckin’ nuts? We’ll get caught. Somebody’ll hear the gunshots, go outside, and see you getting in my car. I’ll go to jail for murder right along with you.”

“That ain’t gonna happen. You’ll be in the alley. Nobody’s gonna see anything. Now get in your fuckin’ car and get over here.”

“You’re gonna dust him for two thousand bucks?”

“Sure, he’s a piece of shit anyway.”

“Maybe. But he ain’t worth spending the rest of your life in prison over.”

Rocky was not going to be easily dissuaded. He was sure that we weren’t going to get caught, and wanted me to hurry and get over there so we could put the murder plan in motion. I tried to talk him out of it, but he only grew more angry and insistent. Finally, I told Rocky to hold on for a few minutes and I’d call him back.

Ciccone had left for the weekend with his fiancée, so I put in a call to Special Agent John Carr and laid Rocky’s crazy story on him.

“Wow, Billy,” Carr said. “That’s a good one. I don’t think ATF’s gonna go along with you driving the getaway car on a murder.”

I told Carr that Rocky was hell-bent on killing Ruben that night and I was afraid that if I didn’t stay on top of him, he would take off and do it without me. From a legal standpoint, acquiescing to a murder was tantamount to participating, and neither was a viable option for a federal agent. Carr and I tried to figure a way out of this one. We could have an LAPD cop waiting in a black-and-white to stop us on the street for some traffic violation, come up with a bogus warrant on some chickenshit charge, and arrest me, Rocky, or both of us. Or maybe I could fake a car crash on the way over.

Then I remembered the grand piano that Rocky’s wife had boosted. I knew it wasn’t going to be easy to fence a stolen grand piano in outlaw biker circles. I told Carr I’d offer to buy the piano for two thousand dollars so Rocky would have the money to get his bike and the murder would be off. Carr said that it sounded pretty crazy but it was worth a try. I called Rocky back.

“Let’s go, Billy!” he said. He was getting impatient, and I’d never heard him sound so intense.

I told Rocky that I’d just talked to Bob, the guy we’d done the guns-and-meth deal with, and that Bob wanted to buy the piano for two grand. “You can take the two grand and get your bike back and you don’t have to worry about spending the rest of your life in jail. And neither do I. What d’ya think?”

I was expecting the idea to get shot down immediately, but Rocky was silent for a good ten seconds. Then he said, “See if you can get Bob to give you twenty-five for it.”

“Okay, Rock. Get right back to you.”

I hung up and tried to catch my breath. Here I was trying to keep both of us out of prison—or so Rocky thought—and he wanted to haggle over stolen-property prices. That’s the true criminal mentality.

There was no time to screw around, trying to call the ASAC to see if he’d approve the twenty-five hundred. I would have to foot the bill myself and put the paperwork in later.

“Rocky, brother, it’s a go. Bob’s sending me the money, and you’ll have it tomorrow.”

“Yeah, okay, cool. But I still wanna dust Ruben’s ass.”

“Lighten up, Rock. Ruben’ll get his.”

He paused to think it over. “Fuck it,” he said at last. “You’re right. Adios, brother.”

I hung up and slumped back into bed, trying to figure out how I was going to write up an ROI explaining that the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms had come into possession of a natural-wood-finish Wurlitzer baby grand piano.*
 
⁸

In addition to taking the position of secretary-treasurer of the San Fernando Valley Chapter, I also became the club’s unofficial doctor. I’d never intended for the gang to learn about my medical training. While serving with the Los Angeles ATF Special Response Team, I’d become a licensed medic and still had a bag with my surgical tools, syringes, and anesthetic.

One night back when I was prospecting, we’d been trying to break into the house of a Mongol associate in order to party with some girls. I was working on the window with Evel when suddenly his knife slipped and sliced my palm deeply, nearly to the bone. I could see that it was going to be good for at least three or four stitches.

The party was off as far as I was concerned. As I fired up the Harley, making a tourniquet of my bloody shirt, I was faced with an undercover dilemma: I could go to the hospital as a Mongol biker, sit there until sunrise, and deal with the no-insurance bullshit. Or I could take the risk and go as an ATF agent and use my government medical insurance. But not only would that be a dangerous security breach, I knew that if the ATF administration ever found out about the injury, the SAC and ASAC would have a pretext to shut the case down. I decided to go home, and sew the wound up myself. I broke out my suture equipment and the lidocaine, gritted my teeth, and pumped up my hand with a syringe big enough to start an IV. When it was numb, I went to work. With only one hand to pull the needle and surgical thread, I did a pretty lousy job, but it was good enough for government work.

When Domingo and the rest of the chapter heard how I’d sewn myself up, they all started calling me Dr. St. John. And they didn’t hesitate to call me when they needed some emergency medical care. One night, somewhere after four
A.M.,
the phone woke me. I heard Domingo shouting frantically: “Billy, get up and get over here!”

“Over where?”

“Evel’s. He beat the shit out of his ol’ lady, and we need your help. She’s gonna need some stitches.”

I shook the sleep from my head and sat up. “Hey, Domingo,” I said, “just take her to the emergency room.”

“Fuck no, Billy. Evel just got out of the joint for beatin’ his ol’ lady. If we take her to the emergency room, they’ll call the cops and he’ll be right back in. Now get over here, brother!”

I told Domingo to hold on, that I would be there as soon as possible.

Four o’clock in the morning. Jesus Christ. I climbed out of bed, threw some water on my face, and got dressed. I called Ciccone and told him that Evel had beaten up his girlfriend and that Domingo wanted me to go over and see what I could do to fix her up. “Good boy,” he said. “Lemme know how it goes.”

I grabbed my helmet and leathers and headed for the door. I didn’t take my medic bag. There was no way I was going to sew up this girl. It was dark, I was tired, and I couldn’t believe I was headed back to hook up with the Mongols at this hour. At least I wasn’t going to have to deal with any traffic, and there wouldn’t be many cops out. I hit the street and hauled ass to Evel’s place.

Evel met me at the door, freaking out.

“I fucked up, Billy,” he said. “I fucked up bad. I don’t even know how it happened, I didn’t hit her that hard . . .”

We walked back to the bedroom. I saw his girlfriend lying on the bed. Over and above her upper lip were several small pieces of Scotch tape that were obviously holding that part of her face together. I felt like Marcus Welby making a house call, leaning over her and asking how she was feeling.

She didn’t answer. Given that the man who allegedly loved her had just beaten her to a bloody pulp, I don’t know what answer I was expecting.

I sat down beside her and began removing the tape. Once I got it all off, it was obvious what had to be done. I had seen the results of Evel beating on his girlfriend before. A few bruises here and there, maybe a fat lip, but this was bad. Evel had opened her up completely, from her lip almost all the way to her nostril. The gash was going to have to be sewn on the inside as well as the outside. I had never done that kind of intricate stitching before.

I told Evel that I couldn’t do it, that she would have to go to a doctor.

“No way!” Evel shouted. He made it clear that he wasn’t going back to the joint for this one. I told him to make up some story for the emergency-room doctors. Tell them she fell down the stairs. Evel said he’d told them that story the last time, and they didn’t go for it. “Just please sew her up!” he implored.

I told him that even if I did sew her up, there was a great likelihood of infection with this kind of wound—an infection that could easily prove fatal. I told him that she would have to go to the doctor for antibiotics anyhow. He said he could handle that, he could get his hands on the drugs, and that I should just go ahead and sew her up. I told him again that I had never sewn up anyone from inside out, that I just couldn’t do it. She really needed to go to the doctor. With resignation in his voice, Evel said: “Okay, fuck it, I’ll just tape her up.”

He began to tape the wound closed again. It was obvious they weren’t going to take this poor girl to any hospital. I knew that the time for sewing wounds closed was limited and that if that period ran out, surgery was required. She was a pretty girl, and they were willing to scar her face for life, or let her die of an infection, just to keep Evel out of jail. Knowing that they weren’t going to take her to get any medical attention, I relented.

I told Evel that I would have to go back home to get my equipment. I headed for the door, thinking about the consequences of sewing her up. Then about the consequences of not sewing her up. Time was running out. I made up my mind and put my face in the wind.