The Last Chicago Boss

by Kerrie Droban

  Cigarette butts littered the ground. We played no music, had no women to distract us, and if we did speak our voices echoed. Bodies formed silhouettes in the shadows. The stench of urine filled the night air from the rows of port-o-potties lining the perimeter. Every branch snap sounded like gunfire.

  Ho Jo drew a circle in the dirt with his cane.

  “Hey, Pete, what’s the plan?” He had been up all night with Butch, who was groggy from weed and booze.

  The plan, I wanted to tell him, was simple: Stay alive.

  Clusters of Outlaws stood in various parts of the campsite holding their cell phones in midair, hoping for a brief connection to the outside.

  “Hey.” Jaws ushered me over. He’d managed to get a signal. “Want to call Bun?”

  The mere mention of Debbie’s name calmed me. The news no doubt had broadcast an all-out biker war. She probably hadn’t slept. We had an understanding that, no matter what, I always checked in with her, always let her know I was safe. I snatched Jaws’s phone and dialed Debbie’s number. One ring, two, the phone crackled, three, please pick up, four, “Hello?” She sounded so far away.

  “Don’t worry, Bun, I’m okay.”

  Click. The line went dead.

  * * *

  By day three we had all tired of waiting to be silenced by high-powered rifles designed to drop us before we even heard a bang. Joker and Santa convinced the police to let us ride into Deadwood, the town that made Wild Bill Hickok infamous.

  We rode en masse, with our police escort looking like a human zoo on wheels. We dressed in full colors, grease-caked jeans, sleeveless black vests with top and bottom rockers, goggles, capes, bandannas, swastika tattoos, and twin lightning bolts, the letters OFFO5 and FTW6 inked on our arms just below the diamond one-percenter patch. We raced down the highway, some of us still drunk from the night before, traveling in unison at one speed—fast.

  We never made it into Deadwood. “This is far enough,” a state trooper said, then guided us into a parking lot half a mile from town and informed us we “had four hours to explore.”

  “Fuck this,” I said, and passed the time with Mr. Happy playing slots in a nearby pizza joint. We ordered slice after slice of soggy bread spread with tomato paste surrounded by a bar slick with grease and plastic checkered tablecloths. A young waitress with fluffy cheeks and wide hips skittered in and out of the kitchen; her wild-eyed stare reminded me of a psychotic rabbit’s.

  * * *

  At dusk, we mounted our bikes again and thundered out of the parking lot, gunning our engines, all of us acutely aware we were in hostile territory bordered by woods and shadows and stretches of highway that disappeared over hills and curves.

  Bob Dylan’s “Shelter from the Storm” beat in my head: “suddenly … she was standin’ there”—the mule deer. The animal came from out of nowhere, leaving me no time to brake or swerve. If I did I might be killed or mowed down as the hundreds of bikes behind me crashed, skidded into trees, decapitated limbs, crushed heads, splintered bones, and pierced muscle and flesh.

  I didn’t fear death; I feared a stupid death. And I certainly wasn’t going to be the cause of multiple fatalities involving my own men. A headline flashed in my mind’s eye: Boss and Regional Treasurer of The Chicago Outlaws Motorcyle Gang, Third-Largest City in U.S., Dead from a Deer.

  I accelerated, aiming to split the fucking thing in half. Suddenly I was in the mood to destroy something beautiful. I slammed into the animal at forty-five miles an hour. Blood spattered my front tire. Small specks hit my face. The deer soared into a roadside ditch. The impact jolted my bike and sent sharp pain through my arms, but I held on as bike after bike roared past me on the highway.

  Some Outlaws gave me the thumbs-up signal; others whooped and peeled their tires. Only Bull, a brother from the Springfield chapter, stopped as I pulled over to the side of the road with a busted brake.

  “You need help?”

  Wind blew through the pines. A prickly sensation hit the back of my neck just above my blue eye tattoo, the second of thirty-eight I had inked on my body in the last year.

  A Fed rolled down his window. “Hey, big man, are you okay?”

  “I’m fine. How’s the deer?”

  “Dead. How did you do that? You didn’t even tip your bike?”

  “Simple physics.”

  He stared at me for a few seconds as if waiting for further explanation. And then off he went, stranding me on the side of the road dressed in my Outlaw vest with a deer carcass stinking up the space around me.

  “Why don’t you head back to camp,” I said to Bull. I wasn’t being a martyr; I just didn’t want to be responsible for another person’s life. He nodded and sped off, looking all too eager to leave. I put my bike in neutral and rolled down the hill, through the next stop sign, and past a row of South Dakota state troopers.

  “Hey,” one yelled. Though the moon shined in the night sky, he still wore his mirrored sunglasses.

  “Brake’s busted,” I said. “I just hit a fucking deer.”

  “Did you report it?”

  “I think I just did.”

  “It’s a criminal offense in these parts to strike an animal and leave it rotting in a ditch without reporting the kill.” The trooper stared at me, hands on his hips, tall, skinny, looking every bit like a kid who’d spent his youth stuffed inside a locker.

  I couldn’t believe it—all this for a fucking deer? I caught my reflection in his glasses; I could have swallowed him whole, gun belt and all.

  “Do you have a permit?” another trooper interrupted my thoughts.

  “For what?”

  “Weapons.”

  “Sure,” I lied.

  “Empty your pockets.”

  I smothered a smile: My snub-nosed .38 was safely tucked inside a hidden liner in my vest.

  “I’m going to run you.”

  I felt like I had been dropped into some weird cartoon. Run me? I knew he wouldn’t find anything. I waited silently for him to go through the motions.

  “He checks out.” The trooper looked disappointed. “No warrants. You’re free to go.”

  “I want protection.”

  “You want—”

  “I’m from Chicago,” I cut him off. “I’m lost in these woods. I’m being hunted. You’re the cops. Protect me.”

  I could tell I had really stumped them.

  “You want an escort back to your campsite?” Skinny Locker Kid said, stumbling over his words. By now he had removed his sunglasses.

  “Yes,” I said. “You wouldn’t want to be an accessory to murder, would you?”

  The cops took me as far as Custer National Park and sped off. As I rolled into camp with my broken bike, throbbing wrists, and blood-spattered beard, Joker trotted up and demanded cash; they needed “limes for the Bloody Marys.”

  “Someone needs to go grocery shopping,” he said.

  * * *

  Dick, the caretaker, stood on his porch, hands in his pockets, perfectly deformed, like a wooded night creature. He grinned as I approached, as if the very smell of me made him salivate money.

  “Jack Daniel’s for everyone,” I said. If this was going to be it, we were going to go down in style.

  “You want a tab?” Dick chuckled.

  “Yeah, open bar.”

  * * *

  Day four was a blur. Most of the Outlaws slept (hungover from the night before), smoked, and started inane conversations about rule interpretations. I really disliked camping. The thought of sleeping on twigs and rocks on a tent floor had about as much appeal to me as swatting flies at a hot summer picnic. I had had enough. Some brothers from the Florida chapter decided to shoot footage for a documentary they were making—The Outlaws at Sturgis. The event, after all, was a big deal, they stressed: two years in the making, requiring lots of planning. Joker and Santa spent hours reviewing with “the Commission” options and logistics and food. Without a National Boss, Joker and Santa had to convince five hundred members to ride (n
o small feat, since most didn’t even like motorcycles) across the country for five days to attend a venue where they weren’t even welcome. In the end, Milwaukee Jack destroyed the footage, fearful the film actually made the Outlaws look bad and not just badass.

  PS: This was after he announced on day five that he was running for office. PPS: He thought he was well qualified (he was a trucker). PPPS: During his reign he befriended Charles Falco,7 the only informant to ever successfully bring down a patched member on RICO charges.

  “Let’s get the fuck out of here,” I said. I helped Mr. Happy load the bikes onto trailers and cover them with tarps, then climbed into my mobile home with Ho Jo and Animal (a member of Ho Jo’s chapter) and let Mr. Happy navigate the narrow roads home.

  “Hey, Pete,” Ho Jo asked after a while.

  “What’s up?”

  “You think we could stop somewhere for food?”

  I glanced out my window. State troopers had pulled over a cluster of Outlaws, no doubt because their bikes still broadcast the club’s insignia.

  “Yeah, sure.” Mr. Happy pulled into the next gas station.

  “Hey, Pete.” Ho Jo was grinning. “What kind of cookies do you like?”

  Cookies?

  “Surprise me.”

  Ho Jo returned carrying grocery bags full of cookies.

  He climbed in, pulled out his favorite, Windmills, and offered me one.

  “I couldn’t decide,” he said. Crumbs spotted his T-shirt. “I bought every brand they had. ‘Heaven Scent’ looked pretty cool.”

  And that was the last image I had of Ho Jo before he was murdered.

  22

  HO JO

  Newspapers reported his senseless death as if he were some nameless Outlaw “gunned down as he locked up his tattoo shop.” Journalists glossed over the detail about Ho Jo’s bodyguard, who followed behind him into the street and somehow “narrowly missed the gunshots.”

  In the last year I had been to nineteen funerals; odds were pretty good that someone was going to die on the way home from a National, or a funeral—fifty-fifty chance. Ho Jo’s funeral, a massive tribute that drew Outlaws from several regions, was held on a blustery February morning in the Red Region several miles from the Waterbury clubhouse in Connecticut and nearly eleven hundred miles from Chicago. My whole chapter attended, along with the Black Pistons. I had given each a button with Ho Jo’s face on it to wear on their vests.

  At a chilly thirty-five degrees, I rode as a passenger in Bastardo’s truck. And, since closed spaces made me claustrophobic, I dressed light, in a sleeveless T-shirt and hoodie, and left behind my leather trench.

  Before leaving for the funeral home, Jake, the Regional Boss of the Red Region, rapped his knuckles on my window.

  I opened it a crack.

  “Ho Jo would have wanted you to ride his bike and lead the procession.” His breath blew white.

  Wind cut into my cheeks like glass. Ho Jo and I had always been close, but never could I have anticipated he would relinquish his bike; Outlaws were sometimes buried with their motorcycles, the cremated remains stored in a Harley gas tank, spread over a favorite stretch of road, or dumped at a bike rally. Ho Jo had just bestowed the highest honor on me, and all I could think about was finding a coat.

  “Sounds great,” I said.

  Bastardo peeled off his gloves and slapped them in my hands as I stepped into the frigid temperatures.

  Motherfucker. I straddled Ho Jo’s Harley Softail Fat Boy and shoved the key into the ignition. Come on, Ho Jo, you’ve always come through for me. Don’t fail me now. Hundreds of Outlaws idled behind me, anxiously waiting for the bike to respond to the accelerator like a bucking horse to a whip and scorch the pavement with a fiery blast from the chrome tailpipes.

  My teeth chattered; my hoodie blew like a thin layer of skin. It was easily a twenty-mile ride from the clubhouse to the funeral home and another twenty-five miles to the cemetery. Motherfucker. I shoved the key in the ignition. Click.

  Santa roared up, his bandanna covering his mouth just below his eyes. “What’s the matter?”

  “She won’t start.”

  “Can we jump her?” Santa waved over Bastardo.

  “Make sure you turn that fucker off first.”

  Santa looked confused.

  “If the car engine is on it will ruin the bike’s regulator.” Members of Ho Jo’s chapter hooked cables from the car to the bike’s battery. Come on, Ho Jo. The light flashed on. Nothing.

  They fiddled with the cables a few minutes more, trying different angles, stepping back, hands on hips, caucusing the problem before I finally interjected, “Time’s up. We need to get to the funeral home so we can lead the hearse to the cemetery.”

  Santa mounted his bike. “You know where you’re going?”

  “Yeah, sure,” I lied. At this point all I cared about was defrosting.

  I folded like a lawn chair into Bastardo’s truck. “You know where you’re going?”

  He grinned at me and followed Animal’s pack, the noise deafening, like bombers passing overhead. The Outlaws commandeered the freeway like Genghis Khan, Morgan’s Raiders, and The Wild One all at once. Several miles later, Animal pulled into a gas station; he was following closely behind another pack.

  “What’s going on?” I buzzed down the window, and a blast of cold air smacked my face.

  “One of the brothers ran out of gas.” Animal watched as the member “topped off.” Soon the whole pack had lined up and one by one filled up.

  “What the fuck is wrong with all of you?” My mind raced with sniper scenarios. After all, we were trespassing through Hells Angels territory. Who the fuck gets gas on the way to a funeral?

  “Get back on your bike,” I barked to Animal. “Let’s move.”

  None of us knew where we were going. We followed Animal, who followed another pack who led us in circles, zooming four abreast through the curves, exceeding the speed limit, until finally we arrived at the funeral home, cresting the hill like a large mass … too late. We parked six blocks away in the only available spaces. I hobbled the distance, shivering, wind beating against me, just in time to watch the processional of Outlaws exit the service.

  Later, at the cemetery, I pulled Ho Jo’s Boss, Lumpy, aside and told him the gas story. He nodded, his windburned cheeks turned a brighter shade of red, and within minutes he’d dispatched enforcers to “handle Gas Man.” And while Ho Jo’s casket was being lowered into the ground, chapter soldiers dragged Gas Man behind a stone slab and pummeled both his eyes. When the Outlaw emerged minutes later to rejoin the service, he looked bruised and bloody.

  Hundreds of bikes rolled by two at a time in procession to pay their respects, sounding like dirty thunder washing over tombstones. Arms initiated the rifle volley, the twenty-one-gun salute reserved for veterans. A bugler played Taps. Jack presented me with one of the discharged shells and returned Ho Jo’s gold medallion, the one I had given to him as a Christmas gift.

  He was buried in his vest, and although he was a member of the Red Region, he had embroidered on his bottom rocker, “Chicago North Side Crew.”

  “He was at my clubhouse so often I actually gave him keys,” I said to Lumpy.

  Later, in the quiet of my hotel room, I honored Ho Jo too. I placed his buttoned face on the tiny desk reserved for businessmen and cut a perfect line of cocaine across his smiling eyes.

  * * *

  The financial fallout from Sturgis continued with Dick’s final bill.

  “What the fuck is this? Twelve thousand dollars for cigarette butts, seventy-five dollars apiece for picnic tables?”

  “It’s pretty busy in the garage today.” Santa wheezed. “I’m putting in a transmission.” I had lost count of the number of transmissions Santa had repaired.

  “Why am I still talking?”

  “We signed a contract.”

  No, you signed a contract, you fuck.

  “We’re paying for littering now?” I felt my blood pressure rise. />
  “Can we meet about this?”—Santa’s solution to conflict.

  “I don’t want to meet,” one of the Bosses complained. “He just rambles for hours and hours about nothing.”

  “Have an agenda,” I warned Santa. “No one has time to sit around for six or seven hours.”

  The following week, thirteen chapter Bosses crowded in my office and complained about Sturgis. Santa scribbled pages and pages of notes about his own ineptitude.

  After a couple of hours, I grabbed a sandwich from the cooler.

  More scribbling, and then Santa’s apology: “At least the food was good.”

  23

  THE COSMIC RIDERS

  Apology was not enough. The Sturgis debacle reinforced for me the perils of being part of an organization and not in charge of the organization. And while I considered plans to recoup my own financial losses, opportunity came quite unexpectedly, almost like a sign from the cosmos (I believed in that shit). I awoke one morning from a rare nap and answered a call on my house phone from an unknown number (something I never did on principle). The heavily accented voice on the other end immediately got my attention: “I understand you’re the chairman of the COC?”

  I sat bolt upright in bed and felt the blood drain from my body. “How did you get this number?” My heart raced.

  “I found it off the Web site—off the COC page?”

  I relaxed a little. “What do you want?”

  “I’m with the American Cruisers in Southern Illinois.”

  “What do you want?” I repeated.

  “Is it okay for us to fly our colors here?”

  “Who told you that you could?”

  “Sonny.”

  “Sonny?”

  “Yeah.”

  “As in Sonny Barger?”

  “Yeah.”

  I was now wide awake. I threw the covers off and looked at the caller ID again. “You actually spoke to him?”

  “Well, not exactly,” the caller faltered.

  “You do realize Illinois is not an Angel state.” I cradled the phone to my ear. “Sonny has nothing to do with what goes on in Chicago.”