By day three of the run, just as the sun dipped over the lake and I had fetched my twenty-second beer and Terrible, looking wilted and sleep deprived, had danced on one leg for the last hour, Psycho, the chapter’s president, announced Head Butt’s advancement. We crammed inside the RV, members and prospects, and watched as Psycho handed Head Butt his center patch. He gave him fifteen minutes to sew it on his cut. Terrible reached into his fanny pack and produced a needle and thread. Psycho offered up his old motorcycle.
* * *
In the days following the Havasu run, Terrible invited me to the meth house he shared with Rhino and Twist. The cramped space teemed with half-naked women hovering in the doorframes like racks of ribs, waiting to trade sex for drugs. Bodies moaned against the wall, near bowls of meth propped on the floor, on the bald couch dusted with drug residue, and under the Nazi flag, the dark swastika cutting bladed shadows across the ceiling. Foil on the windows blocked the sunlight. The stench of wet stone and beer filled my nostrils. My eyes burned in the drug fog. AK-47s propped in plain view by the door; pit bulls lazed on the floor. Flies buzzed in their ears. Dog crap clumped near the drugs. Twist grunted at me and lit a glass pipe, his .380 caliber pistol in his belt.
I hugged the wall, listening to skin slapping, sucking sounds, and chatter like rare species of birds. In the semidarkness, Rhino’s shadow loomed large as he absently fondled a woman’s breasts, his Buck knife winking from his waist. He collected women the way some people collect weapons. His old lady in the corner looked like a stain. Pass-arounds lined up for his attention, rail thin with sunken eyes. They waited for him in the hallway, in the bedroom, on the couch, on the floor. Rhino’s girlfriend seemed unfazed. If I didn’t want to spend many more mindless nights watching bodies flop around me in a drug-induced fog, I needed to make my move.
Nerves shot through me. Fear sharpened my edge.
“I’ve seen you before.” Rhino nodded at me. Neither of us extended his hand. I would have committed my first affront had I initiated conversation with a full-patch as a mere hang-around.
“I’m getting my bike in a month. I’ve already paid for it,” I volunteered, and a strange stillness hung between us. Rhino’s bloodshot eyes penetrated mine, and for what seemed like several torturous seconds, neither of us blinked.
Then, as if I’d passed some invisible test, he announced, “I’d like to sponsor you.”
My tongue felt thick against the roof of my mouth. “I’d be honored.” Just like that. I was in. Maybe I looked too excited, too relieved, because a shadow crossed Rhino’s face and he lowered his voice, “Don’t ever make me look stupid.”
* * *
Terrible enlightened me later. “Stupid people,” he had heard, errant prospects, suspected informants, were dragged into the high desert, beaten, duct-taped, and shot execution-style. I promised not to be “stupid.” But becoming an official prospect, however, required a club vote at the next Church meeting. As a hang-around, I had already acquired a cursory education in the Vagos’ basic club hierarchy, codes, and Church protocol. The club masked criminal activities behind its bylaws and constitution as well as its perverse interpretation of biblical laws. Club meetings, for instance, reserved for members only, were known as Church. At these gatherings, full-patch Vagos took care of business.
* * *
A week later on a cool Sunday evening, Psycho held Church in his RV parked in his driveway. Rhino, Spoon, Powder, Sonny, and Chains disappeared inside with several other members to discuss my fate. I grabbed a corner curb, sifted gravel through my fingers, and reflected on my week. My days so far had blended into each other, hours and hours of boredom, beer, pool, and mindless banter, waiting for opportunity, introduction, something to advance the investigation. And now Terrible paced beside me, a hard-core gangster who would snap my neck in an instant if he knew my real identity.
A door banged open. Psycho, framed in the harsh glare of the RV’s porch bulb, waved me inside. The cramped space smelled of plastic and stale smoke. The camper, likely worth several hundred thousand dollars, served as a symbol of Psycho’s success in the drug world; trappings gave him the illusion of power. But I knew his haunted look too well: The paranoia that seized him in the dark made him perpetually cautious and restless and empty.
Several members dressed in green headbands and dirty cuts formed a semicircle around me. Machinelike soldiers, well trained, armed, and leached of emotion.
“So you want to be a prospect?” Psycho folded his arms across his chest, looking more like a Marine sergeant than a criminal. Sounds of crickets cut through the tension.
“More than anything.” My heart pounded.
“You know what that means?” But before I could answer, he leaned close and whispered, “You’ll be a slave, on call for any Vago twenty-four/seven. You could be asked to do anything.” His tone implied business—sacrifice, prison, even death for the club.
“And if I decide one day I don’t like you, I could order you run down in the street.”
I nodded. I knew Psycho meant it; I had heard rumors of kidnapping and torture committed in other chapters.
“If we have to go to war”—Psycho paused, caught the eyes of the others—“you’d be expected to fight. You’d be expected to kill.” I said nothing, but my heart hammered in my chest.
Psycho handed me my bottom rocker. “Sew it on your cuts when you get one.”
* * *
Later that night, my hands shook on the steering wheel as I drove to The Slapshot Bar, where Spoon and other members had some “advice” for their new prospect. I couldn’t believe it. Barely four months into the investigation and I was accepted, no questions asked. I felt like I’d lost my virginity. I had no bike, no vest, nothing but raw promise. No one asked me to complete an application; no one checked my criminal credentials. Unlike undercover government operatives who formed fake identities, bogus arrest records, credit reports, vehicle registration, and work history, I actually had a legitimate criminal background, though for now I would have to play a fake real criminal.
Spoon ordered a beer and smoothed his long goatee; it skimmed his belly. A curtain of black hair draped around his shoulders. A bandanna hid the top of his bald head. In the dim green glow, Spoon recited the Prospect Song and made me repeat it.
I’m a Vago prospect, it’s plain for all to see,
I wish they’d hurry up and give me my patch
so everyone will quit fucking with me.
He gave me a notebook and a pencil, told me I should write it down and be prepared. I felt like a Boy Scout. He gave me a list of essentials, items I should carry in my “Prospect Survival Kit,” things like condoms, Tylenol, a sewing kit (in case a prospect suddenly patched over), tampons (to plug up blood from a bullet wound), shoelaces, lightbulbs, and Vicodin. Spoon ordered another beer, and the evening stretched well into the wee hours of the morning.
* * *
At dawn, I drove Terrible home. Exhausted but wired, I vaguely registered that in three hours I would have to report to Napa Auto Parts and begin my other job. Lizard and his entourage drove a few paces in front of us. Movement in the backseat distracted me as Lizard adjusted, wiggled, and exposed his bare ass in the rear window. What the hell was he doing? Of all the members I had met, Lizard seemed the most touched, the most out there, perpetually lost in an LSD flashback. In the “real world,” he probably would have been institutionalized, officially labeled “insane,” and heavily medicated, but the Vagos considered him eccentric and not at all sociopathic. They wouldn’t conceive of excising him for age or illness. And I quickly learned there were degrees of crazy; among gangsters, Lizard wore a perfect mask, blending with darkness, unable to see what swirled around him. It didn’t matter that he was lost … they all were. It didn’t matter that Lizard was sick … they all were, all of them misfits among misfits trying hard to maintain some semblance of order amid dysfunction.
Terrible opened the window. Wind rushed in. Lizard tossed something in
to the street; it landed with a splat. Spots slapped my windshield, brown and runny, like …
“Shit.” Terrible cupped a hand over his mouth and quickly rolled up his window. “That motherfucker threw his shit at us.” It took me a moment to process Terrible’s insight—not crazy or eccentric, but strangely, oddly appropriate.
* * *
Finally, I stumbled into bed, pausing long enough to stuff my head with earplugs. It had proved too draining to travel the forty miles from Upland to Victorville three or four times a week to hang out with the Vagos. So I secured a cheap apartment in Old Town Victorville, a Hispanic barrio close to the Vagos’ watering holes. But I had barely dozed off when I heard bam bam bam on my steel security door. Less than two months earlier, pretrial services had paid me impromptu visits. I never shook off the fear of night visitors.
Irritated, I tossed off my sheets, pulled on my shirt. Hercules zipped full speed the length of my apartment, barking maniacally at shadows and headlights. I glanced into the dark street expecting to see police Maglites and red flashing wigwags. Nothing. Stress zipped through me. I padded to the back door, cracked it open. Eerie silence unnerved me.
Hercules whimpered as I climbed back into bed. But sleep eluded me. Something was out there, I just couldn’t see it. For the next two hours I listened to my heart thump. My alarm flashed at me, 6:30 A.M. I fumbled into my work clothes and opened my front door. Uniforms huddled in the street. One officer knelt and drew chalk circles through bloodstains on the pavement.
“What happened?” I managed. Relief shot through me. This wasn’t about me. Having lived so long as a criminal, it was hard to remember I was a good guy now.
“You tell me.” Sarcasm tugged at the officer’s upper lip.
“I didn’t see anything.” But I knew the officer didn’t believe me.
“Of course you didn’t.” The officer pointed to the slugs in my doorframe. “Some kid got shot in the ass.”
Then I realized. What I had thought was pounding had actually been gunfire.
3
Prospecting
My first month of prospecting differed little from my few weeks of hanging around the club except that now my initiation was round-the-clock and it became harder for me to move between my day job and my real world. The words “no,” “downtime,” and “in a minute” did not exist in the Vagos’ vocabulary. As Rhino’s slave, I fetched him lottery tickets and Taco Bell sometimes two and three times a night, at two in the morning on the opposite side of town, and sometimes he changed his order upon delivery. He wanted soft tacos without salsa, burritos without black beans, refried rice on the side. I returned the food, exchanged the orders, and did it all without complaint.
I lost my name, answered to “Prospect,” and scooped fresh dog poop from Twist’s living room floor. I stifled gags when offered half-eaten pizza and cleaned bikes over and over. When I didn’t do it right, I did it again. I watched Rhino drift in and out of a crank-fueled stupor, willing my legs to stand, propping my worn, exhausted body against the wall, next to the AK-47s.
In the evenings, after barhopping, I reported the weapons and dope I saw in plain view to Koz: the body armor, brass knuckles, and hooded effigy suspended from a hook on Rhino’s bathroom door, roped at the throat with a noose. And then one afternoon Twist surprised me. He called me up and in hushed tones told me about Rhino’s impromptu visit from a San Bernardino sheriff’s deputy.
“He was looking for Dominic, a Mexican drug dealer wanted for parole violations,” Twist said. “Rhino told him he wasn’t there.” The deputy muscled inside anyway.
“The place was loaded,” Twist reported. “Rifles, dope, knives … the dude told us to clean up our shit. We were about to be hit hard.”
In fact, unbeknownst to me, the ATF had planned to raid Rhino’s place. Corruption in the police force was nothing new. Still, I never understood veteran deputies who informed on their own or mixed with the criminals they aimed to arrest. The lines blurred, and apart from dirty cops, the Vagos, too, reportedly had moles inside, women who took jobs as dispatchers or administrative assistants, who had access to records and conversation. If Rhino had police informants leaking him information, what if his cop friends knew about me?
I lived in a state of veiled paranoia, mentally retracing my steps each night: Had I done anything to make them suspicious? Had I flinched? Had I said the wrong thing? Now I needed to prove my loyalty not only to Koz but to the Vagos as well. I vowed to be the best prospect the Vagos had ever seen. I hung out in bars until wee hours of morning, belted out lyrics from Madonna’s “Like a Virgin,” and participated in forced drinking contests, at times downing five shots in succession.
Head Butt, in particular, relished my new position and wasted little opportunity to test my resolve. He engaged me in games of pool, whacked me hard in the shins with his stick, and laughed cruelly as I winced. I knew how to play, but Head Butt invented his own rules. If I shot too well, he accused me of “disrespecting him”; if I scratched, I needed to be “corrected.”
When I recovered from his impromptu strikes with the pool stick, he punched me several times in the head—pow, pow, pow—like a windup toy, deriving pleasure from my torture. I felt like an amateur boxer preparing each night for his next match with no time to recover, no time to anticipate. Except for the rare moments I fed my dog and reported to Koz, I served at Rhino’s whim, accompanying him on human hunts to recover drug debts and confiscate motorcycles. Most escapades turned out to be false starts, lots of buildup and anticipation followed by ultimate letdown. We arrived at suspects’ doors, debated our entry, waffled, left, returned moments later, and eventually knocked on the front door. Rhino functioned like a cartoon villain, the threat of bodily harm spewing above his head in a giant bubble cloud until the victims paid up.
One night Rhino broke the monotony. He was slumped half dazed on his couch draped on either side by women he had swapped for sex. Propped against a far wall, my eyes smarting from smoke, I watched like a voyeur in some carnival freak show, the only one standing still in the center of a merry-go-round. Then, as if awakened suddenly, Rhino tore his lips from his latest conquest, snapped his fingers, and a shadow emerged from the bedroom. Big Guy, whom Rhino had introduced to me as his designated “gun source,” appeared in the darkness and produced a shiny Beretta .25 caliber pistol. He was a stubby man with baggy eyes and a hooked nose. Rhino grunted his approval, peeled the woman from his arms, dropped her to the floor, and nearly stepped on her head. It was then that I noticed she had no legs. She had stumps, a slim torso, and a muted face. I vaguely wondered if the Vagos had a patch for that kind of conquest: missing wings?
Rhino stroked the barrel of the gun and announced, “We’re taking a road trip. Bullhead City.”
I knew better than to ask for details. Still, a chill coursed through me. What was in Bullhead City, an armpit nearly two hundred miles away on the Colorado River in Mohave County, Arizona? And what did Rhino plan to do with the gun? He ordered me to store the Beretta in the trunk of my car and “separate the magazine and ammo” in case cops pulled us over. Then Rhino mounted his motorcycle, high as a kite, his hands shaking, and started the throttle.
“I can’t see shit at night,” he said and sped into the darkness. I followed close behind him. Bikes, as a rule, had one speed—fast, sixty-five in a residential zone, over one hundred miles per hour on the freeway and plenty of fishtailing. But this was worse, flying down miles of dark, empty desert road.
After a few minutes, Rhino pulled over. “I’m tired, man,” he said and handed me his keys.
Now was not the time to announce I had ridden dirt bikes only as a youth and still waited for my government ride. I slid onto the warm leather seat, flashed Rhino a weak smile, and watched him climb into my car. As I maneuvered the bike back onto the pitch-black road, inhaled exhaust, and burned motorcycle oil, I prayed that no other motorists had ventured out this morning. Wind tore my face. I had poor depth perception as a result o
f astigmatism in my right eye. I needed glasses. My heart thundered in my chest. The most danger I ever faced was death by motorcycle. Rhino swerved behind me. Gold headlights traveled too close to my back tire. My arms ached from gripping the bike handles, and I mentally repeated, Avoid pavement. Avoid road rash. Do not peel skin back to the bone.
A thousand mental tragedies replayed in my imagination as gravel and rock rattled my frame. Fear, like a cold ball, knocked at my conscience. What if something happened to the motorcycle—a piston seized, a head cracked, a tire blew? What if I capsized and broke an arm or a leg?
Inside Bullhead City’s limits, Rhino flashed his lights at me. I pulled over and he ordered me to remove the Beretta from the trunk of my car and hand it to him. My legs felt like rubber as I hit the fob. Rhino’s face, slicked with sweat, looked like it might burst. Unease itched up my spine as Rhino loaded his gun and mumbled something about payback and surprise. His old lady lived in Bullhead City; he suspected her of cheating on him and he intended to “take care of business.”
As I slipped into my car and started the engine, nausea overcame me. My nerves taut, I dialed Koz and reported my midnight excursion, hoping Rhino’s bike might break down.
* * *
“We’ve been at this for six hours.” My voice cracked with fatigue. It was two o’clock in the morning. A light drizzle splashed my windshield. Terrible agitated in the passenger seat, his eyes overbright and glassy. I knew they saw nothing, like looking through thick ice. If there was life inside them, it was hidden beneath a cold, frozen shell.
We drove down wet streets, the scene skipping like a scratched film. I parked, idled the engine, waited as Terrible huddled with shadows in the doorway, in side alleys, on the curb, satisfying his fix. Once I had lived like him. That, more than the boredom and fatigue, was the worst part about being with Terrible, seeing my past in his present. He had lost what made him human, his dignity. Without that, he tumbled down a dark hole where he lived in arteries of hard, packed black dirt, wasted and lost. It was the big lie perpetuated over and over through dope, club, code. The promise of being transformed left those who followed empty and scared.
Vagos, Mongols, and Outlaws: My Infiltration of America's Deadliest Biker Gangs Page 3
