Jersey Tough

by Wayne Bradshaw

  I happened to know that the cop lived in a rented farmhouse on a large, run-down estate in southern Middletown; I’d been there for Grant’s bachelor party, years earlier. You had to drive down a long road—some parts gravel, and others just dirt—and go past the empty former manor house to get to Pressfield’s place. There was a sharp right-hand turn in the road, and then a quick left, which forced drivers to slow almost to a crawl. Large trees and thick brambles bordered the road on both sides. Past the sharp turn, there was a good 300 yards of gravel road before you reached Pressfield’s house. The entire property, and the road itself, were unlit.

  The south side of town was largely a cow pasture at the time; the north was far more populated (and well lit). I knew this part of town quite well because my parents’ home was only a mile away from Pressfield’s. It was common knowledge that most of the Middletown Police Department’s marked units were assigned to the northern half of town because that’s where most of the action was.

  Despite its remote location, Pressfield never worried about trouble anywhere near his house because he was six foot three, weighed 220 pounds and was a cop. By regulation, he was armed with at least a handgun 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

  My “plan” was simple: I intended to ambush Pressfield on the dark road to his house after the end of one of his four-to-midnight shifts. I was familiar with the Camaro he drove. There were two variables—timing and whether or not he’d be alone. I wondered if he would drive straight home or stop to suck down some free drinks at Mulrain’s Tavern on Route 35, right across the highway from the Middletown Police Department. If he picked up some chick in the bar on the way home, then I was going to abort. Otherwise, it was game on.

  Late one cloudy summer night, I walked the five miles to Pressfield’s house from my place in Belford and began planning my makeshift assault. There was no Comanche moon, and the place was both dark and silent. I found a couple of fallen tree limbs and placed them across the road to force the cop to stop his car and remove the obstruction. My years in the army had taught me a few things about tactics in the field. The obstruction didn’t seem that unnatural; it looked like the limbs had been knocked down by the wind. When he got out, I’d have an opportunity to see if there was anyone with him or not. From my vantage point behind a tree about 30 feet away, where I waited in the shadows, it would also be easy enough to see if he was being followed by a friend in another vehicle.

  As I sat in the darkness, I thought about a book I had read only a few weeks earlier, Beyond Good and Evil, by Friedrich Nietzsche: “One has to test oneself to see that one is destined for independence and command—and do it at the right time. One should not dodge one’s tests, though they may be the most dangerous game one could play and are tests that are taken in the end before no witness or judge but ourselves.”

  There was a part of me that was looking for an excuse not to assault Pressfield. The whole event was out of character for me, and I wondered time and again if I should just call the whole thing off and walk back home. But Nietzsche’s words kept echoing in my head. It was as if Nietzsche was telling me that this was one of life’s tests.

  By 12:30, there was no sign of Pressfield, and I settled in—it was going to be a while. Then, at about 2:20 a.m., the Camaro’s round headlights appeared in the distance. There was no indication of anyone following. I was sweating bullets. It was highly likely that Pressfield had spent the last couple of hours drinking, which meant that he’d be half in the bag and likely quite tired, too. Alcohol is not your friend when speed and split-second thinking are needed.

  I was wearing a long-sleeved dark sweatshirt and blue jeans. I wore a rubber mask—the face of a wizened and deformed bald old man—and black leather driving gloves. I carried two other things with me: a small flashlight and a roll of quarters. I had no real “weapons” with me that night—no knife and no gun. I wanted this to be a good old-fashioned beating and something he’d remember. For me, it was all about personal honor and justice.

  Pressfield slowed the car as soon as the headlights picked up the branches blocking the road. I could see the reflection of the car’s red brake lights coming on. He flicked on the high beams and slowed to a stop about six or eight feet from the obstruction. I heard the door pop open and watched as the overhead light inside the vehicle came on. There was only one person in the car: my intended target.

  He got out slowly, wearing a white T-shirt and his uniform pants—the outfit that cops generally wore when drinking publicly after a shift. The uniform shirt cannot be worn off duty. He sighed loudly and muttered a few curses as he walked toward the tree limbs.

  I immediately left my hiding spot and took several quick strides toward him. I grabbed the roll of quarters out of my pants pocket and held it tightly in the palm of my right hand. The weight of the coins would make my punch even more powerful. Next, I pulled the flashlight from my sweatshirt, flicked it on and held it so that it would illuminate the mask from below and make me appear even more threatening. Even the topography worked in my favor: the field by the edge of the rutted road was six or eight inches higher than the dirt tracks, forcing Pressfield to look up at me.

  The cop saw me the instant I turned the flashlight on, but he seemed unable to move or otherwise react, at least for a second or two. I could hear his breathing become labored. He inhaled and exhaled in fits and starts. Slowly his eyes rose to meet mine, and he began to shout—not for help but out of fear. James the rat realized that he was alone and would have no choice but to fend for himself. His house, his refuge, was barely a thousand feet away. But it didn’t make any difference how far it was, because there was no way he could make it there. Oddly, he made no effort to reach for his gun.

  With one more stride, I closed the distance and punched Pressfield in the nose. I could feel the soft cartilage break from the blow, made heavier by the roll of quarters, and watched as he fell back and landed on his ass.

  I immediately straddled him and struck him time and again in the area around his left eye. I wanted him to be flying his “look, world, I got the shit kicked out of me” flag for an extended period.

  Pressfield started blubbering like some preschool child who’d just been bitten by a pit viper. His pathetic demeanor only fueled my adrenaline and made the blows come harder and faster.

  He was broken, both mentally and physically.

  With my boot across his throat, I pulled Pressfield’s off-duty .38-caliber revolver from his waistband and threw it into the darkened, overgrown field. I made sure he could see the area where I’d tossed his gun so that he wouldn’t be able to claim it was stolen. Then I reached inside the Camaro to shut the engine off, removed the keys and tossed them into the field.

  I gave Pressfield a kick in the balls with my black engineer boot, picked up the flashlight that I’d dropped a few feet away, and walked into the dark night. I stopped by the creek at Poricy Park to toss the flashlight into the black water. I held on to my $10 worth of quarters, intent on using them over the next few days. Money was money.

  I have little doubt that Pressfield claimed to his fellow officers and anyone else who would listen to him that he’d been sucker punched and beaten by a gang of 10 or more men. Being such a tough cop, he likely claimed that some of his former arrestees were possible suspects.

  I learned from Grant that he was briefly questioned about the assault, but he literally knew nothing about it and the cops had no evidence of any sort. All they had to go by was the partial description from Pressfield and maybe some boot prints left in the soil—but there was nothing else, and no apparent motive.

  I have long believed that you cannot reveal what you don’t know, and so I never told Grant what I did.

  Big tough James Pressfield quit his job with the Middletown Police Department shortly after the beating. Years later, after I joined the very same police department, I heard from some of the guys that Pressfield had never seemed to recov
er from the savage beating he’d taken that night from a cowardly mob of young thugs. It seems Pressfield couldn’t find the light at the end of the tunnel. Too bad. If he does find it someday, I hope it’s a train.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  WHISKEY JOE & THE BREED

  A few months later, I started renting a bungalow with a former army buddy, Steve Comer, in the blue-collar community of Keansburg. The ’Burg offered great water views north toward Manhattan, a cheap little amusement park that was popular with summer tourists, and not much else. Many houses there were not much more than summer bungalows that had been converted into year-round homes, and more than a few were in dire need of maintenance. Old cars and the occasional motorcycle sat outside them. Our place was down by the water, in a neighborhood with tiny yards.

  Comer and I were hanging at a local bar one night in the late fall of 1976 when we saw “Whiskey Joe,” a member of the Breed Motorcycle Club, sitting at the bar, drinking—no surprise—straight whiskey. Steve had been “rehabilitated” of his once-violent nature during a brief stint in military prison following a fight. After we shared a few drinks, he suggested that we ask Whiskey Joe about riding with his outlaw club, which had been formed in Asbury Park in 1965 and was at one time among the strongest and most feared biker gangs in the Northeast.

  Whiskey, who had long, thick black hair combed straight back and a thick black beard that covered much of his face, was easy to talk to. He was wearing typical biker clothes—blue jeans, a T-shirt and engineer boots. After some casual banter, I asked him if he and the Breed were looking for more riders. He chuckled and said yes. Over a few more drinks, Steve and I agreed to pick up Whiskey in our car, or “cage,” and make the half-hour drive up to a bar in Perth Amboy to meet some of the guys.

  The Breed had a well-deserved reputation as a nasty bunch, aligned with the Hells Angels. The club colors—the jackets bearing the club’s emblems—displayed a red-and-white American flag with a circle of stars in the area where the blue field and 50 stars would normally be. The Breed was about as patriotic as Sherman’s burning down of Atlanta and Columbia was a demonstration of zealous patriotic duty. They were a bona fide one-percent outlaw gang, and they made no effort to conceal that fact in any manner.

  Motorcycle clubs in the U.S. are considered “outlaw” clubs when they aren’t sanctioned by the American Motorcyclist Association, or AMA, and don’t adhere to the association’s rules. Rather, outlaw clubs have their own set of bylaws that provides the foundation of the outlaw biker culture. Story has it that at some point the AMA said that 99 percent of all motorcyclists are law-abiding citizens. That gave rise to the notion of “one-percenters,” the outlaws who didn’t follow the rules.

  The one-percent patch, typically sewn onto the sleeveless jacket worn by members of outlaw clubs, is one to be taken seriously. Only a bona fide outlaw biker would dare display it. It is earned, not bought. One-percenters play the game for keeps.

  I cringe these days when I see movies and TV shows depicting outlaw bikers as buffoons, latent queens, cretins or swollen-bellied drunks who can’t get out of their own way. Bikers may lack book smarts, but they are street-savvy and fearless. Day in and day out, they wear their Breed or Pagan colors, billboards displaying their membership to all they come into contact with. Making that bold statement, and walking the line on it, makes for a cunning and oftentimes vicious category of being. To dismiss any bona fide outlaw biker as pathetic loser or mental lightweight is a dangerous underestimation.

  Flying the colors is a gigantic “fuck you” to all citizens and every cop. The outlaw may individually like some citizens and even certain cops. But for the rest of the non-outlaw world and most non-aligned clubs, the insignia, be it a winged death’s head (Hells Angels), a Fire God (Pagans), a skull with crossed pistons (Outlaws) or a sombrero-wearing gunslinger (Bandidos) is a massive and heartfelt “go fuck yourself.”

  Most outlaw bikers see themselves as modern versions of the 19th-century mountain man—dangerous, tougher-than-life anachronisms, forced to put up with modern laws that need not apply to them. They live life on their own terms. They have no need for government, police or other societal norms. They need only their bikes, brothers, women and the open road. As to women, the ditty “My bike’s number one, you’re number two. Don’t call me, I’ll call you” is roundly applauded.

  Anyone foolish enough to take on a member of any outlaw club will find the club’s wrath coming down on them. Club members stand for each other unconditionally. A club member is a member for life, and never forgotten or unfairly dismissed. They’ll tell you that they would rot in jail before ratting to the Man about any club business or other club member. Why, then, would a young guy from Middletown be interested in joining the Breed? For me, joining an outlaw club was the ultimate act of defiance. Like Thomas Carlyle. Grim Fire-Eyed Defiance.

  I had neither grievance with nor hatred for any specific entity or person. The circumstances of my life had left me with an overwhelming emotion: defiance. And the bikers were its true outward essence. The average American male who pays his taxes and plays the game, follows the rules and plays it safe at all times, seeking security at every turn, knows this in his heart: What I wouldn’t give, he thinks, for one day telling everyone that I feel like telling it to: “FUCK YOU. What I wouldn’t give to have one day when I can grab that woman who is batting her eyelashes at me, throw her down on the floor and have a wild pile-driver fuck. What I wouldn’t give for one day with the wind in my face, surrounded by my comrades in arms, taking what we want and doing what we want, as our just due.

  That was how the Pagans lived life. Fuck the cops, tell your woman—your “bitch,” as they would say—to shut the fuck up, and drink, drug and fight as you see fit. No guilt, no remorse, just outright defiance. Well, like the Jamaicans say: everyone want go Heaven, nobody want die.

  All outlaw clubs have a system allowing “hang-arounds,” guys who tag along with gang members with an eye toward eventually getting into the club. They are generally treated respectfully if they act properly. Each hang-around has to be sponsored by a bona fide club member, who is responsible for him. If the hang-around doesn’t piss people off, he’s allowed to become a “prospect,” the next step toward becoming an actual member. Prospects are like recruits in the military: they go through a training period before being accepted. Military recruits and biker gang prospects are both treated like shit—ordered around and humiliated on a regular basis. But that’s where the similarity ends. One is training to be a member of the legions defending the U.S. Constitution. The other is training to be a cutthroat member of the legions of the damned.

  If you are a prospect for a bona fide outlaw motorcycle club, you’re obligated to follow any order given to you by a superior—no matter what. I knew how to take orders from my time in the army. I had tough-guy killers like Sergeants Koncha, Mallard, Jackson and others who gave me orders. Those men earned the right to issue orders in the crucible of battle. I was honored to do what I was told by those men, who had survived combat and come back whole to show others how to do the same. But I had a problem being pushed around by someone whose greatest accomplishment in life was knowing how to use a socket wrench—at best. That seemed dishonorable to me, and I wasn’t willing to do it. If I was going to get into a motorcycle club, it would be on my terms.

  Steve, Whiskey and I drove in my cage to Perth Amboy, a blue-collar city with a feeling of rot. It was bitterly cold outside when we arrived at a workingman’s bar, the type where there’s a hearty crowd even at 6 a.m., enjoying that liquid breakfast of champions, a shot of Fleischmann’s rye whiskey with a beer back.

  With Whiskey leading the way, Steve and I met a couple of guys from the Breed and heard of another who was on the way. All three of them went by their nicknames—“Grip,” “Crimes” and “Cisco.”

  I would come to find out that Grip earned his nickname because, after he drank enough wine, there was ab
solutely no crime he would not commit; he would lose his “grip.” The guy had a pinched face and a swarthy complexion and seemed perpetually dyspeptic. If I had a daughter, I would chain her up rather than let her spend time in this guy’s company. Crimes had one leg missing and was quite adept at moving with a prosthetic. The story was that he’d lost the leg in some kind of motorcycle accident. But the perpetual angry look on his face, coupled with his demeanor, made me wonder if he’d eaten the missing appendage. Cisco would have cast perfectly for a prison drama in need of Aryan Brotherhood stand-ins. Whiskey was the life of the party. His speed-and-whiskey-induced charm kept the action rolling.

  A loud crashing sound came from the bar’s front door. Enter “Wild Billy,” who chose to smash the door open with a kick rather than use the knob. Billy was a snazzy dresser—bare-chested, his black leather jacket open so all could admire his triple-canopy chest hair. The guy seemed pissed off about something. But Whiskey assured me that Billy was always pissed off because he worked on a garbage truck—and hated it.

  The six of us grabbed a table and started doing some drinking together. Since Steve and I could not be trusted with any information about club business, the banter was light. Whiskey even got some laughs from the group. This was not the kind of discussion where you gave your opinion on the latest popular books or offered insightful commentary on political issues. Steve and I kept a low profile, nodded when appropriate and answered the few questions posed to us truthfully. Getting caught in a lie with any once-percenter was not a smart thing to do.

  I was trying to get the guys to drink to the point where things would get interesting. They, in turn, were looking for signs of whether we had the “chops” to be part of the Breed. They were also suspicious that we might be Pagans trying to infiltrate their group. If that had been the case, we would have been risking serious bloodshed—or death. There was reason to believe that we could be Pagans, because Keansburg, where Steve and I lived, was considered Pagan turf.