We stood there, chrome from the bikes glinting in the sunlight. Members strolled past us; prospects ran errands. General commotion stirred the air. If Snuff had slashed our throats and dropped us like burlap sacks on the pavement, would anyone have noticed?
* * *
At last, we moved inside to bartend. As my eyes adjusted to the dim bulbs, a blast of heat and sweat hit me full force in the face. The bar stretched twenty feet long, framed by a wall scribbled with the names of fallen Outlaws. Dizzy and dehydrated, I pushed through the standing-room-only crowd to relieve Bobby. He pulled JD and me aside and reported his narrow escape. His shift had just started when Spot, a Florida Outlaw, spit into his mixed drink and ordered the four prospects behind the bar to “line up” in front of him. He had excused Bobby, whose shift had just begun. The other prospects apparently had spent the last three hours “fucking up.” They bristled at Spot’s command and stood shoulder to shoulder and flinched, already anticipating their punishment. Spot punched, and with each blow, blackened their eyes. Pop. Pop. Pop. Fist struck bone.
“Now make me a real drink.”
Shakily, I wiped beer steins with a damp towel as the beaten prospects resumed their posts. Alcohol sloshed over their hands; beer foam blew into their swollen eyes. They behaved like beaten dogs, cowered in the back of their cage, head bowed, paws forward, waiting for the kick, the scold, the burst of anger that racked their body with pain. They stayed for the reward, the promise of rank advancement. A flurry of women hustled past; most resembled hags, smashed-in faces, missing teeth, purple stains beneath their eyes. I couldn’t imagine why they stayed. Reduced to slaves, “property of Outlaws,” they lived to serve the men who beat them. I watched one drop a french fry. An Outlaw kicked the tray of food from her hand, smashed his boot into the mess, yanked her hair, and dragged her face to the floor. On her hands and knees, she lapped up the leftovers.
All around me casualties worked. Though the women “volunteered” for the job, I couldn’t imagine they bargained for such cruelty. Few of them stayed, and those who did survived as hollow, addicted shells. As long as they had utility, the Outlaws tolerated their presence. As a result, none of us worried much about dreaded “female tests”—Outlaws used women the way they used drugs, as a quick fix. And they didn’t much care whether we got high or not.
But they did care whether we fucked up. And I didn’t want a black eye. Gringo and I approached bartending like a military drill. We served every beer chilled, stocked the refrigerator with ice, emptied trash in the fields, and kept a frenzied pace. My rescue came an hour after my shift began. Outlaws rumbled about Hells Angels sightings. And the regional Outlaw boss, Les, asked, “Does anyone have a car?”
My hand shot up. Soon, Les, a bull named Johnny, a cunning gangster others called the Devil, and Gringo climbed into my van. In the cramped darkness, armed with revolvers, automatic handguns, and my collapsible baton, we scanned the busy streets for the Enemy. Heavy percussion beat the night air as bands competed for audiences. Les ordered me to double-park. Surrounded by attractive people and dizzy lights, we entered bar after bar, hunting for Hells Angels. To patrons we must have looked like beasts: oversized, dirty, grizzly. We moved with single-minded purpose. It felt like rehearsal for a strange road play. Dressed in costumes, grim masks, and battle armor, we prepared for confrontation. But in the end, we only faced ourselves.
The Devil complained we were “chasing ghosts.” He flashed me a wide grin and winked as he unveiled his plan to “kidnap me later” to party. But the only thing I wanted to do was sleep. At noon the next day, we finally had the chance. Though the van had no air-conditioning, temperatures soared over 100 degrees, and the humidity was cloying, Gringo and I crawled inside, sweaty, smelly, and exhausted. It was good to escape. It was good to have a van.
* * *
By day four, I needed a hospital. Feverish, blistered from sunburn, dizzy from sleep deprivation, I barely remembered the ride home. By day five, I had contracted pneumonia. Confined to a cot in a white room and plugged with IVs, I drifted off to my safe place, my subconscious. Soon I would welcome a son and once again explain to my wife why I had to leave.
Although I returned home more often than the undercover agents who saw their families only once a month, the transition proved stressful. Typically it took me two days to adjust to “normal.” As a rule, I never spoke about my experiences with my wife. The less she knew, the better for her psyche. And she didn’t want to know. Like a soldier returning from war, I learned to compartmentalize. When I was home, I shut down and shut out friends; it was too difficult to form and maintain relationships that necessarily revolved around lies. I could never tell people who I was, what I did for a living, why I couldn’t come to the church picnic.
Some experiences are too profound to translate: war, military service, and life undercover. My only friends all lived like me, all understood the trauma, the restless sleep, the need to watch mindless cartoons at night sprawled on the living room couch. I escaped through movies—mostly comedies, the dumber the better. At home, my day job crowded my thoughts. I was Chef 24/7 not because he was a fictional identity I created but because he was me. He had to be. I couldn’t turn off my role, couldn’t pretend that I became an Outlaw sometimes and then a husband others. Undercover was my identity. I not only acted like an Outlaw, I learned to think like one.
I had lived my whole life undercover; I didn’t know anything else. I thrived on high risk the way a snowboarder loves helicopter drops over fresh white cliffs. My wife thankfully accepted my addiction, my need for adrenaline and complete rejection of all things mundane. It didn’t matter whether she ever said a word to me when I was home, as long as she was there: Just looking at her quiet silhouette brought me comfort.
22
David and Goliath
Our Petersburg clubhouse, situated nearly two hundred miles from other Outlaws chapters, typically discouraged night visitors. But occasionally strays surprised us. It was Memorial Day weekend 2009, and we had spent the night celebrating at local bars in Richmond with Outlaws—Les; M & M, boss of the Rock Hill South Carolina chapter and Copper Region enforcer; Harry; and two stragglers, a probate named Bovine and a full-patch, Brett, a former wrestler who lived perpetually high on coke.
Well after midnight, we moved the partying to our clubhouse and simply rewound our night. Hospitality generated good business relations. Bobby and I rotated tending bar until Les finally drifted off to sleep on our couch. He looked mangled, damaged, like a doll without stuffing. In sleep, masks slipped off. Harry and Brett alternated between shots and spoons of coke. They snorted thick lines on our bar in plain view of the video cameras. Bovine served them like a mangy butler, answering to quick finger snaps, to his new name, Probate, and to indiscriminate expletives. He reminded me of Claw, anxious, twitchy, a distinct liability.
We used Claw sparingly. He satisfied our body count and tagged along mostly on mandatory runs. Otherwise, we kept him well hidden. He didn’t complain. In fact, I think he was relieved. Bovine lowered his gaze to the floor. He looked discolored, ashen, as if the strain of being a slave had already thinned his resolve. His left eye was ringed yellow with the end of a shiner.
Bobby bantered easily with Harry, regularly refilling his beer stein, feigning interest in his drug exploits, and behaving like a friend. An older gangster in his midfifties, Harry resembled a retired Nazi officer, sleek head, swastika tattoos on his biceps. His raucous laughter echoed in the clubhouse as he drank and picked cocaine residue from his nostrils. But as the night faded, newfound rage simmered beneath Harry’s demeanor and he sneered suddenly at Bobby, “I don’t like you.”
Bobby’s jaw slacked. His smile instantly vanished. A pall of apprehension hung in the air. Bovine jerked his head up, his neck corded with tension. He stiffened his legs apart, ready for his orders. Harry’s outburst rippled over the room like a vibration.
“I don’t like you,” he repeated.
Worry cr
eased Bobby’s face. None of us knew what had happened. One minute Harry and Bobby were engaged in collegial conversation, the next, Harry pounced.
“Who the fuck are you?” Harry spit and I knew it was the cocaine talking. He slid off the barstool, his hands balled to fists. We stashed AK-47s in our clubhouse with the pins deactivated. Harry’s gun protruded from his waistband. My knife blade chafed my shin. We poised for reaction. But Harry surprised us.
“Stand in that corner and don’t move until I say so.” He snapped his fingers at Bobby, motioned to the wall, and scolded him like an insolent child. “You can’t fucking talk to a full-patch like that. Who the fuck do you think you are?” Startled, Bobby stood, back to us, facing the wall. It was late. I was tired. I had been partying for hours and now I just wanted them all to leave. But Harry and Brett, wired from coke, stayed. And as long as they did, Bobby faced the wall.
His punishment bothered me the most. It seemed so basic, so uninspired, so … strangely ordinary. Here we had endured sudden punches, cuts to the throat, veiled threats, action/reaction, what seemed to be the natural order of things in the Outlaws’ world. And now, for the briefest of moments, their masks slipped and we saw them, who they really were, not actors at all, not tough, not one percenters who maimed and killed for fun, not anything at all. It was hard to fear the known.
* * *
Soon boredom inspired cruelty. Brett charged spontaneously like an elephant, wrapping his thick arms around Gringo’s throat and pinning him to the scratchy green carpet, his elbows and knees pressing into Gringo’s chest and groin. Forced to wrestle for several minutes, sweat dripped from Gringo’s eyes as he grappled with Brett and pinned him down for the count. Brett sprang from the ground and immediately choked me from behind. “Get out of this one, fucker.” He laughed, a ball of muscle, half my size, but strong. He played dirty and loose. And though at one time I had trained in Brazilian jujitsu, I succumbed, white spots punching my eyelids.
M & M whistled, clapped loudly, and Brett released.
“How about a rematch?” He squatted, breathed in my face.
I scrambled to my feet, still dressed in my cuts, and tackled Brett to the ground. I pressed my forearm into his throat. He wriggled beneath me, struggling like a wild boar. My weight crushed him. No one cheered or grunted. No one dared. His sour breath in my face came in quick bursts. I tugged at his vest, pinned his elbows to the carpet. Shadows circled me. Feud-frenzy, feud-frenzy: Chants repeated like percussion. But the rounds lasted too long, three to four minutes. Our limbs tangled together, we grunted like animals. Finally M & M called time.
We broke apart. Brett rolled to his feet. His sweat stained the carpet. Dizzy and spent, I struggled to stand. Then I saw M & M’s right hand shoot up. Round two, his voice boomed through the clubhouse. We were the entertainment, expected to perform like gladiators in an arena: prospect against full-patch. I had no choice. I lunged at Brett, grappled him to the ground, body-slammed him into the thin carpet. His face flushed, shiny wet. We sparred for several minutes, ground fighting until wind rushed from Brett’s lungs. My body burned with strain. Dawn seeped through the windows. Fleetingly, I worried about repercussions. If I beat Brett, would I then be forced to fight the others—Gringo, JD, Bobby? Would the matches continue without relief?
M & M, perpetually high on coke, called time. Brett stumbled to the bar and vomited into the sink. He grabbed an ice pack from the freezer and shoved it against his head. Shock slid behind his eyes. I dropped into the couch, dizzy and exhausted, my body numb with fatigue. M & M worked the room. He next paired Gringo with the probate and Bobby with JD. The latter pair went easy on each other. On M & M’s orders, they stripped their cuts. Chains and rings glittered on the counter. The match began. Mock wrestling, the agents circled the carpet, lunged, pinned each other in joint locks. They wrestled for several minutes: grunts, moans, pants. The fighting continued. I didn’t move, didn’t think the matches would ever end. Every muscle in my body tensed. Two hours later, spent and needing rest, I stumbled outside into bright sun and left the others to fight well into morning.
Guilt shuddered through me. Their day had just begun. Not only would they continue to wrestle each other, but they would also contend with the ATF as they were debriefed and justified Operation Black Diamond. The investigation demanded massive outlays of money, electronic surveillance, mountains of paperwork, and dependent cover teams. Not only did the agents balance a split life between being mock gangsters and family men, but they also placated the brass, including top officials in Washington, D.C., who wanted nothing better than to shut down the investigation. Pressure to produce results added to the agents’ strain.
Though I participated in none of the internal negotiations, I imagined the conversations. Tensions erupted between cover crew and agents as each accused the other of being unsympathetic. We weren’t “partying,” we were building trust. Rapport necessarily produced drugs, confessions, conspiracies to kill. Even so, surveillance teams quit regularly, tired of the hours and what they considered reckless disregard for their time. But the nature of undercover work sometimes made it impossible to warn them of sudden plans, impromptu visits … wrestling matches that extended far beyond their shifts.
* * *
Exhausted, I needed to get home to my family. I passed the cover team parked across the street. Steaming coffee rested on the dash. I called them as a courtesy, otherwise they might sit indefinitely in the street waiting for their exit cue.
“What’s going on in there?” one piped over the line, sounding a little too eager.
It took me a minute to answer, vaguely wondering what it would take for them to charge inside and rescue us.
“You looked like you were having fun.”
I hung up.
* * *
Apart from the physical exertion prospecting demanded, I worried about ambush and lone snipers from the Hells Angels. Even the act of pumping gas stirred anxiety: We traveled in pairs, making sure one of us always kept a lookout for strays, for shadows, for things out of place. Each time I left the clubhouse, I scanned the cameras angled toward the street and driveway looking for dark cars parked askew, for silhouettes on the corner, for abandoned bikes. I altered my routes home and checked for tails, worried gangsters might discover my real home. If I parked my van overnight at the undercover house, in the morning I checked underneath for bombs.
The Hells Angel who owned a tattoo shop a mile from our clubhouse posed a perpetual threat. He served as the puppet master for the Hells Angels’ supporters like the Desperados and the Merciless Souls. And he let it slip where the agents lived in their undercover house. The Merciless Souls taunted us, left us flyers and cards in our mailbox: “Come play with us, faggots.” They challenged the agents to a brawl a week later in the Southern Star, a bar situated a few miles from our clubhouse. They arrived on their bikes, a pack of twenty armed with bats and mouthpieces.
They dismounted, paced the curb, already agitated. One, who looked like the club’s leader, swaggered up to the glass where the agents were drinking inside, tapped his bat on the window, and said, “Come outside, fuckers.” When JD didn’t budge, the leader marched inside and hovered menacingly at the agents’ table. Dressed in black cuts and orange piping, he wore embroidered hammers and a skull with red-devil eyes. MERCILESS SOULS blazed across the top rocker; RICHMOND adorned the bottom. Gringo swallowed a sip of beer, shook his head. “You come inside.” He slid his gun on the table. The leader’s face contorted. He looked constipated as he clicked his tongue over his mouthpiece. As he left, he swung his bat hard, shattering a beer bottle into the street.
Neither side moved. Each played the other’s bluff, knowing the slightest provocation would ignite a firestorm. Like a chess game, the players lined up their pawns, positioned their bishops, and debated whether to storm the castle. The agents worried that the Merciless Souls might summon reinforcements, might enter the Southern Star smashing posts and patrons searching for deliverance.
Tension punctuated the air. But after an hour of posturing, the gang relented, secured their bats to their bikes, and sped into the darkness like demons.
* * *
The Merciless Souls spread rumors that our chapter was composed of government agents; real outlaws, after all, would have shot them by now. Probably right. Over the next few weeks they tested us, appearing suddenly at eateries and bars in our neighborhood like dark ghouls, until one day the threat increased.
Summer heat drifted through the open windows in our clubhouse. Red lanterns flickered inside the Italian restaurant across the street. Quiet swelled with strange foreboding. We heard them first, the roar of bikes rumbling in like a storm. The token Hells Angel in our area led the pack. He parked in front of Louie’s, trailed by three prospects and a dozen Merciless Souls. They dismounted, bedraggled, unkempt, long hair blowing away from their faces.
“What are they up to?” Bobby racked his shotgun and ran onto the sidewalk. Wind swirled around us. Gringo moved inside, grabbed his revolver, and said, “They want to play.” JD produced his Glock, and I stroked my machete, my breathing heavy. This was it. I waved the lone Hells Angel over with my blade and no doubt made the cover team squirm. But I knew what I was doing. If we were going to survive an ambush, we had to deflect fear, beat them at their own game, put them in check first.
The Hells Angel smirked at the gesture and ordered his minions to remain outside while he devoured a pizza. He took his time. The Merciless Souls paced on the curb, wielding bats and guns. They moved in bursts, like charged bolts, and I had no doubt that if commanded, they would rush at us. The three Hells Angels prospects stood apart, perfectly still, loyal as dogs. After an hour, a patrol car swished through the street.
The uniform zipped down his window. “Everything all right?” I guessed the cover team had called him. His presence was hardly a comfort. He came alone. No helicopters whirred overhead. There would be no takedown, no tumbles, all very civilized and orderly. He was no doubt as scared of us as we were for him, each of us helpless to stop the other from ambush.
Vagos, Mongols, and Outlaws: My Infiltration of America's Deadliest Biker Gangs Page 16
