Under and Alone (26 page)

After a quick round-trip to my UC pad for my medic’s gear, I prepped the bed and myself for the job. I had a couple of suture kits that allowed for a combat-acceptable sterile surgery environment. I had the appropriate suture materials for her face and the lidocaine that would make for a relatively painless procedure. I drew the lidocaine into a syringe and looked her in the eyes. I asked her if she was sure she wanted me to do this. She looked at Evel, then back at me, and nodded. She never flinched or blinked. I guess being Evel’s ol’ lady, she had developed the sort of mettle a lot of soldiers would admire.

I administered the lidocaine and went to work. It took five stitches on the outside and four on the inside to close the wound. When I was through, I looked at my handiwork, and I must say, it looked a hell of a lot better than the one-handed job I had done on myself. Not bad at all. Evel was amazed and kept thanking me emphatically. I told him that we weren’t out of the woods yet. She would need to be on Keflex, penicillin, or some other antibiotic for several days. Evel said he could get the drugs from Doc, a Mongol from the Pico Chapter who had some kind of pharmaceutical connection.

Evel hugged me. I turned and told Evel’s girl that I would be back in a couple of days to look at her. She didn’t open her eyes; she didn’t move. “Thanks,” she said.

I packed my medic’s bag and headed for home.

13

Domingo had come out of prison for his felony-assault conviction shortly before I met him. As a parolee, he couldn’t test positive for alcohol, let alone weed, coke, or crank. Any hint of illicit substances in his weekly piss test would send him back to prison immediately; he wouldn’t even hang around in a room where others were smoking pot for fear of inhaling enough residual stuff to show up on a test.

I had ridden my president’s coattails on the dope issue for a good portion of this investigation. When the drugs started coming out, I ran to find Domingo. As president, he was always offered any hits before I was, and when he turned them down, I was on board quick. “Hell no,” I would say. “If my pres ain’t doing it, then I ain’t doing it. I’m hangin’ with you, Pres.”

To reward this kind of loyalty, Domingo had entrusted me with a lot of responsibilities within the chapter. In addition to being the secretary-treasurer, I’d also been put in charge of selling off any surplus firearms the chapter had acquired.

When Domingo got off his parole, the level of violence and craziness around me intensified dramatically. I began to worry that the investigation was going to spiral out of control. It started to seem like we couldn’t go anywhere without getting into a fight. Domingo was drinking like a man desperate to make up for lost time. I watched his personality change with the alcohol consumption. Once a predictable and reasonably sensible person, he was now turning into an irrational, violent asshole.

It was a Saturday, and we had been invited to party with the Orange County Chapter at the Shack. The Shack was a nice little tavern that had the biker flavor but was still able to maintain a clean-enough image to draw a regular, law-abiding crowd. I was hoping to use the party as a chance to pick up some intel on the criminal activities of the Orange County Chapter. I’d told Ciccone I didn’t need him to ride backup on this one, as I didn’t expect there to be any violent activity. But I hadn’t factored in the variable of Domingo’s new postparole mood.

With all the administrative headaches in the ATF’s L.A. Division, I was looking forward to getting away with my Mongol brothers. In spite of their obvious criminality and character flaws, I’d started to care about them as human beings. It was beginning to pull me apart. I knew, on a conscious level, that I was only doing my job as an ATF agent, but the guilt from knowing I would someday have to testify against guys like Domingo and Evel and Rocky was becoming increasingly disorienting.

We rolled into the Shack, where more than fifty bikes sat in the parking lot. The wind carried the aroma of carne asada. We left the keys in our bikes, knowing they would be safe among our brothers. As we walked to the bar, our Orange County brothers warmly greeted us. Beer was quickly brought by the prospects, and we settled in for a day of partying. I shot pool with the guys and took their money most of the time.

With everyone full of Budweiser, the line at the little one-stall bathroom was deep. I was standing behind Domingo, who became vocally impatient at having to wait.

“Look, I gotta piss,” he said, kicking open the door to find a seriously inebriated guy standing at the toilet holding his dick. He wasn’t pissing, just standing there staring at the graffiti-covered wall. We looked at him for maybe fifteen seconds, then Domingo snapped. “Dude, other people need to get in here.”

Too drunk for his own good, the guy turned and glared at Domingo. “Well, you’ll just have to wait, buddy.”

Without warning, Domingo charged in like Jack Lambert in the glory days of the Steelers, spearing the dude up against the wall
—thwack!
I charged in behind Domingo, trying to look like I was doing my loyal Mongol duty but in reality wanting to make sure that my president didn’t end up killing this drunk fool. I figured if I could maybe pin him against the wall, or put him in a half nelson, I could get him out of the bathroom before Do-mingo’s rage got out of control.

But Domingo was already kicking the guy in the ass and back, and his head had slammed hard against the tiled bathroom wall.

When I loosened my grip on his shirt, the guy lifted his head to reveal a frightening sight. Blood was streaming out of his ear. Had we given him a brain-damaging blow? Thankfully, he wasn’t unconscious, just seriously drunk and stunned. Suddenly enraged again, Domingo pinned him against the wall in a choke hold, threatening to finish the job. The guy was given the option of drinking the toilet water or losing his front teeth. But before Domingo could start smashing the guy’s head into the toilet bowl, I heard a group of Mongols calling through the bathroom door. “Hey, Domingo, hold it, dude! That’s Johnny’s brother!”

Domingo was unrelenting, ramming the guy tight against the wall. “You thirsty, motherfucker?”

“Domingo, brother, lighten up!”

Domingo loosened his grip. The guy stood motionless, blood pouring from his ear. I looked into his pupils, searching for further evidence of head trauma. I couldn’t help myself; the medic in me needed to know how badly he was hurt. I held his face in my hands and turned his head so I could see exactly where the blood was coming from. With relief, I saw that it was oozing from a gash in the top of his ear.

Domingo rammed the guy’s head down violently into the filthy toilet, until his face was half submerged in the water.

“Domingo!” called one of the Orange County Mongols, pushing his way into the tiny bathroom. “Billy! That’s my brother!”

Domingo eased his grip at last, yanked the drunk’s face out of the toilet. The guy staggered out of the bathroom. His face was blotchy and bright red, hair standing up in spikes from the toilet water and blood still pouring from his ear. He wanted out, but Domingo was determined to make him work for his freedom. He stayed in the guy’s face all the way to the front door, challenging him to make a move. The Orange County Mongols continued their effort to calm Domingo, but he was drunk and beyond talking to. Like a mad dog, he taunted the guy all the way out into the street, until he was on his bike and pulling away from the Shack.

Almost every time we went out drinking, Domingo got into some kind of fight. After about ten nights straight, I had finally decided to take a night off from the Mongols—I hadn’t had a decent father-son night in months. I’d called both of my “bosses,” Ciccone and Domingo, and told them that I had personal matters I had to take care of and that I’d be out of the loop for the evening. It worked fine with Ciccone, but not with Domingo. “Hell no, Billy,” he said. “Crazy Craig’s here from Georgia. We’re putting together a little operation.”

“What’s up, Pres?”

“You need to come over and bring your Mustang and your piece.”

“We ridin’ sixty-six?”

“Yeah, we ridin’ sixty-six.”

“Riding sixty-six” was Mongol code for traveling armed in civilian clothes—carrying a firearm while not flying your colors. It was a sign that something serious was going down: a murder, extortion, armed robbery. When engaging in a premeditated violent crime, the club wanted to attract as little attention from law enforcement as possible: no convoy of roaring Harleys, no telltale Mongol patches.

“Okay, bro. See ya in about an hour.”

I knew that Ciccone was up to his armpits typing up 3270s, and for a moment I wished I could give him a night off. But I knew I had to get him to rally the troops and have a surveillance team out in front of Domingo’s with zoom lenses for the evidence.

I prepped my NT recorder so I could be sure to get everything on tape. I picked up my UC gun, my blue-steel snub-nosed .38-caliber revolver, and opened the cylinder. Six shots. I closed it up and tucked it away under my shirt.

Carrying a gun meant that I didn’t just have to worry about what might happen with the Mongols, I also had to worry about getting stopped by the cops and arrested on an illegal gun charge. I considered hiding the .38 in the trunk or under the hood, but then I thought,
So fuckin’ what? If I do get popped, it’ll be for the club. From the Mongols’ point of view, it’s just another feather in Billy St. John’s cap.

As I rolled up to Domingo’s residence I was greeted by Bucket Head and Crazy Craig lounging in the backyard.

Crazy Craig was a country white boy out of the Georgia Chapter. He had a straight job driving a tractor trailer for Old Dominion and was the proudest brother who had killed for the club. He wore an extra-large set of skull and bones on his colors as testament to that fact. The size of that patch actually rubbed some of the other brothers the wrong way.

Those skull-and-bones patches interested me more than I could safely let on. I was always eager to learn who had been murdered, where, and when the crime had occurred, valuable intel that could be used in an eventual homicide prosecution. But the first thing you learn upon patching into the gang is to not ask questions about matters that don’t concern you. Criminal bravado notwithstanding, every member of the Mongols knows that the more people who know about what you’ve done, the more likely it is that you’re going to get caught. They’ll brag about their bar fights and other outlaw mayhem, but for the most part they keep their mouths shut about murders. There’s no statute of limitations on homicide, and California still has the death penalty on the books. I did once get an older Mongol named Glazer to tell me, in a conversation I secretly recorded, how he’d earned his skull and bones by shooting a Hells Angel during the big war back in the seventies, but that was only because Glazer was too drunk to care about what he was saying.

In the bright sunlight of Domingo’s yard, Crazy Craig looked like he was ready to commit another murder, showing off his shiny Smith & Wesson .357 Magnum to Bucket Head. Domingo walked out of the house with his own gun in hand. Rancid came next, tucking his gun under his shirt. Domingo walked up to me with the Mongol handshake and a hug and started laying out the scenario.

The trouble had all started a few months before I began hanging out with the Mongols at The Place. Before Little Dave took over the reins of power in the Mother Chapter, the national president of the Mongols was an old-time biker called Junior. One night at Armond’s Tavern in Tujunga, Junior assaulted another patron with a beer bottle and was arrested by the LAPD.

One of the most insidious qualities of the Mongol organization is its willingness to engage in the crime of witness intimidation. No one ever gets away with testifying against a Mongol in open court. As Junior’s assault case moved forward on the court calendar, Lud, who had been president of the SFV Chapter before Domingo, and a Mongol named Rodney Hipp were given the assignment of making sure that none of the witnesses against Junior actually made it to court. Although Lud and Hipp had made their best effort at witness tampering, they couldn’t locate the victim, who came to court under police protection, testified against Junior, and helped the prosecution send the Mongols’ national president to prison for sixteen years.

It was an unpardonable fuckup, and the rage of the Mongol Nation focused on Lud and Hipp. After a hearing they were formally expelled from the club and ordered to surrender their colors. They were also sentenced to take a beating, have any Mongol tattoos burned off their bodies, and give their motorcycles and other valuable personal property to the club. Lud accepted his sentence, but Rodney Hipp fled the state.

The Mongols’ national officers decided that if they couldn’t find Hipp, they would extort his older brother, Andy, who was not an outlaw biker, merely a regular guy working a mechanic’s job.

Domingo had put together a well-coordinated extortion plan. We even had a set of two-way radios, so that Domingo could go in first on a recon mission and then radio us with the okay.

What would be my chances against the four armed Mongols if I had to stop a murder and shoot it out with them? I couldn’t let them kill Andy Hipp. But if he resisted—hell, if he so much as talked shit to Domingo—I had little doubt they would beat the shit out of him, if not put a few bullets in his brain. We loaded into two pickup trucks and headed to Andy Hipp’s place. I adjusted the snub-nosed .38 in my waistband and smiled. I picked out Crazy Craig, my fellow country white boy, as the first Mongol I’d shoot if things went bad. Then I’d take care of Rancid.