by George Rowe
First in line was Mickey. Someone in the chapter had been whispering to Roy that Mickey was the rat. After all, he’d shown up at the Lady Luck out of the clear blue one day asking to join the Vagos. So Big Roy ordered Todd and JB, the chapter’s resident computer whiz, to pull the man’s phone records.
The trigger was squeezed and . . .
Click.
Mickey checked out.
Big Todd himself was up next. Because of his past history with the ladies and all the drug abuse, nobody in the Hemet chapter trusted that bastard . . . nobody, that is, except Big Roy. The Hemet P loved Todd like a brother and remained his ally throughout. Roy didn’t believe for a second that his best friend would rat on the Vagos.
Click.
Jimbo was suspect for a few days. The man who supplied steroids to some of the crew, including Roy and Todd, got the third degree, but nothing panned out.
Click.
Loki’s turn.
Loki was a tattoo artist who worked for Roy at the Lady Luck, bought a Harley-Davidson on a payment plan from the chapter and became patched. His girlfriend, Krissy, was a porn queen from Orange County. When Krissy’s spurned ex-lover spread a rumor that Loki was a government snitch, some of the Orange County Vagos tried to take him on a one-way trip to the desert.
The attempt to abduct Loki happened on a club run to Lake Havasu on the California-Arizona border. Outside the motel where we were staying, I heard Loki’s cries for help. Five of the OC Vagos were trying to wrestle him into a van. I sounded the alarm and the Hemet crew came rushing to the rescue.
“He’s a fuckin’ snitch,” one of the Orange County boys protested to Big Roy.
“Got the paperwork to prove that?” Roy barked at him.
Turns out they didn’t. All they had was the word of some jealous ex-boyfriend.
“Loki is with Hemet,” Roy warned them. “Unless you’ve got something that proves he’s an informant, you’re going to leave him alone. If it turns out he’s a snitch, we’ll be the ones to take care of it.”
Click. Loki was spared.
Crash was next in line.
Crash had been living life as all true outlaws should: abusing crystal meth, failing to show up at church meetings and beating his old lady on a regular basis. And every time he whipped that rail of a woman, she called the cops on him. What made the Vagos suspicious was the fact that their brother never seemed to get hauled off to jail. And they didn’t trust his old lady either.
“Crash tells that bitch everything,” Todd pointed out at church. “Maybe she’s the one talking.”
Of course, I had to agree completely with the sergeant at arms’s assessment. You bet your ass I pushed the heat that way. I was like the drug addict who picked the baggie off the ground, put it in his pocket and said, “Let me help you look for that.”
Crash was always in trouble, man. I’d lost track of how many times that crazy bastard got busted from patch to prospect. Seemed like the dude was forever washing motorcycles. It was just a matter of time before the Vagos said enough.
The straw that broke it came at Shooters Food and Brew one night when some teenager accidentally spilled his drink on Jenna. Crash was really spun and went ballistic on the poor kid, beating and stomping him bloody. When Tramp found out about it, he called me and Crash up to his place in the High Desert for a little face-to-face. Sensing trouble, I put an urgent call in to John Carr, who sent Detective Shelli Kelly up from San Bernardino to cover my ass.
When Crash and I were escorted into Tramp’s kitchen, Rhino was there waiting. Right away the international sergeant at arms pointed a warning finger at me and snapped, “You stay out of this.” Then he proceeded to knock Crash off his chair and slapped him around the kitchen. I felt bad about it—like maybe I should have stood up for my Hemet brother. But getting between him and Rhino in Tramp’s kitchen would have been suicide.
When the beating was over and Crash was nursing a split lip, I noticed activity out the sliding glass doors. A couple of Vagos in Tramp’s backyard were wrapping what looked like a dead St. Bernard in a blanket. One of them hoisted the animal onto his shoulder and, swear to God, that thing looked just like a body. Then they headed around the side of the garage toward the front of the house.
Oh, shit. Shelli Kelly was probably out there somewhere. What if she thinks it’s me wrapped in that blanket?
In fact, Detective Kelly told me later she was just seconds from drawing her service revolver as that dead dog was tossed into the bed of a pickup. But before she could pull the gun, Crash and I came strolling out of the house.
Far as Terry the Tramp was concerned, it should have been Crash wrapped in that blanket. Because following our meeting, he was as good as dead to the Vagos. Tramp called Big Roy and told him he wanted that fuckup run down the road—to take both his patch and his motorcycle. So at our next church, Big Todd cut the threads from Crash’s center patch and Roy booted him out the door, warning him they’d be coming for his bike.
Confiscating a member’s Harley-Davidson was like kicking a dead St. Bernard. What was the fucking point? Well, the point was money. Bikes could be bought, repaired and sold for a hefty profit, or leased to a member at a big interest rate. And if the member defaulted, he’d get run out and lose the bike. But in Crash’s case, Big Roy was just going to confiscate that stock Harley and sell it for cash. So a few days later Todd and I were dispatched to take possession.
Crash was expecting us. The man was tweaking when we got there and didn’t give a shit about much of anything in the condition he was in.
“Can I take your bike, Crash?” asked Todd apologetically.
“Over your dead body.” Crash grinned.
“Sorry. National told me to take it.”
“Oh, yeah? Well then why don’t you go in the garage and get it, motherfucker.”
When we entered the garage, we found the Harley lying in pieces across the floor. Crash had taken the whole damn machine apart.
What a piece of work.
In a strange sort of way, I was going to miss that crazy sonofabitch . . . maybe because he was no longer the man under Roy’s microscope.
Happy trails, Crash.
Click.
Finally, inevitably, with just one pull of the trigger left, it came around to me.
As he’d already done with Mickey, Big Roy ordered Todd and JB to check my phone records. And, of course, a hundred fuckin’ calls to Uncle Johnny Law immediately showed up.
“Oh, that’s just his uncle’s number,” Todd explained to JB. “I know that for a fact.”
Holy shit. That was close.
That Wednesday after church, at the end of a long and tiresome stretch of strip searches and paranoid accusations, Roy pressed his hand against my chest.
“If I ever find out you’re a rat . . .”
“Just kill me now then, Roy,” I said, remembering Bubba’s advice. “If you’re thinking I’m a rat, just kill me now and you won’t have to worry about it.”
Roy and I faced off for a long moment, but I never flinched. He finally broke it off and moved on. A few seconds later Big Todd approached me, looking anxious.
“Tell me it’s not you, George,” he said confidentially.
I looked him straight in the eye.
“It’s not me, Todd,” I told him.
He patted my shoulder, looking relieved. I think Todd just needed to hear me say it.
Shortly after that the inquisitions ended. Don’t ask me how—it defied logic—but the bullet with my name on it never did fire.
Click.
19
Something in the Oven
Must be nice to come home after a hard day at the office and find a sympathetic ear to bend . . . maybe get a few “poor baby’s” and a nice foot massage. I came home to a woman passed out on the floor, buck naked and spread-eagled with her face in her crotch.
Jenna had lost her job as a medical assistant when she and the head nurse had been caught writing each other pres
criptions. The DEA had gotten involved, and Jenna would have been prosecuted if the doctor had decided to press charges, but he’d just wanted her gone. So now she was bored at home and high all the time. And that girl didn’t just get high, man. She got really high. It wasn’t enough to do just a little heroin, or pop one or two pills like the Somas she’d been swallowing. With Jenna it was always a handful.
“What the fuck is wrong with you?” I asked when she was coherent enough to comprehend English.
“Guess I was bored,” she muttered.
“What the fuck, Jenna? You can’t keep using boredom as an excuse.”
“You sound like my dad.”
“Well maybe your dad’s right. Look, you either choose to get high or you don’t. It’s as simple as that. I had a problem and I quit.”
“Well good for you, George,” she snapped at me. “Why don’t you tell me another thousand times how fucking amazing you are? That’s you, isn’t it? I choose to get high.”
“Then I guess you choose to die young.”
“Maybe so.”
“And you don’t care, do you?”
“I guess not.”
“Well, fuck you then, bitch. If you don’t care, why should I?”
I flushed all her pills at the end of that argument, and Jenna spit in my face. When I grabbed her by the ponytail and told her never to do it again, she called the cops on me. That was Jenna’s way. Get her pissed off enough and you were pretty much guaranteed a visit from the local PD.
After the cops heard both sides, decided it was bullshit and left, I made a decision of my own. I was going to leave Jenna. Truth was, if it hadn’t been for little Sierra, I probably would have bailed months before. For two years I’d dealt with the addictions, the cheating and the mood swings. But now I was done with that crazy bitch, and not even her little girl could save Mommy now.
I dropped the bomb that night after Jenna finished her shower. I was waiting for her when she came into the bedroom, tying off a robe.
“I just wanted to tell you that I’m leaving,” I said.
“What are you talking about? Where are you going?”
“Doesn’t matter. Away from you.”
My friend Shooter had an extra bedroom he’d offered me. I’d crash at his place until I could figure out my next move. Jenna chased me out of the bedroom, telling me how much she loved me and how sorry she was for calling the cops. But I knew that desperate apology was only temporary, and that her addictions were stronger than love. I understood this because I’d been the same animal in the days when I’d been abusing coke and meth.
Jenna trailed me through the house and into the garage, now cursing me every step of the way. I guess when “I love you” fails, the next best thing is “Come back here, cocksucker.” I opened the garage door, strapped on my brain bucket and fired up the Harley. Even the roar of that 96-cubic-inch engine did little to drown out Jenna’s wild ranting. She got in front of the bike and grabbed the handlebars.
“You can’t leave me!”
“Get the fuck out of my way!”
“You can’t go!”
“I’m done. Move your ass!”
“George, I’m pregnant!”
My brain seized. I eased off the throttle.
“Bullshit” was all I could think to say.
“It’s not,” swore Jenna. “I missed my period. I did the test. I’m pregnant.”
Goddammit! I kicked the Heritage into gear and nearly knocked Jenna over as I blasted out of the garage. In my mirrors I saw that pissed-off woman chasing me down the street with her bathrobe flying open and her naked body out there for the entire neighborhood to see.
I’d been trying to get off the hard booze back then, but I figured this was one of those special occasions that called for a good old-fashioned drinking binge. So I bought a bottle of Wild Turkey and blew past my limit in no time. Then I stumbled into Shooter’s Food and Brew, where I bumped into Big Todd and Iron Mike. Even in the drunken state I was in, I recognized the irony of having Todd on the stool next to me, but at that point I figured why not buy a few rounds for the proud papa.
Of course, my girlfriend could have been tapped by any number of guys, given her history, including a part-time fuck buddy named Spike from tweaker days. Hell, for all I knew it could have been Pedro down the block who’d knocked her up. I just couldn’t imagine that baby being mine. Never mind all the dicks that had been shoved between Jenna’s legs, there were the doctors who’d told me I was probably sterile after all the chemo and radiation cancer treatments I’d been forced to endure. I’d never bothered to use protection after that, and none of my girlfriends had ever gotten pregnant . . . until now.
I found myself flashing back to my old man. There had always been a nagging doubt in my mind whether I was really his kid. Dad was a pure-blooded redskin, and my mother was dark-skinned too. My older sister, Carol, had their same coloring, but my little sister and I were both lily white. Lin Ann insisted we were the by-product of artificial insemination, but I always figured I was spawned by one of Mother’s boyfriends from her bar-crawling days. Whatever the pedigree, I’d lived my life with the cloud of illegitimacy hanging over my head, and I didn’t want any part of that with Jenna.
I slept off the drunk in Shooter’s spare bedroom, then popped some aspirin in the morning and made a beeline for the pharmacy. I bought one of those home pregnancy test kits and headed for Espirit Circle so Jenna could piss on the stick. I wanted to see for myself. I had to be certain.
The color changed. She was pregnant, all right.
I asked her point-blank if I was the father. It was a valid question, but despite the odds stacked against her, Jenna insisted the baby was mine. At that point I didn’t know what the hell to do, so I asked her to get an abortion. When she refused, I went out and got shitfaced all over again.
That afternoon and into the early evening I sat on a barstool at Shooter’s, drowning myself in Kentucky bourbon while trying to think through my latest predicament with a booze-addled brain. With a few more drinks under my belt I called John Carr and gave him the headline. I couldn’t say he was thrilled by the news. There were no “Congratulations” or “Thatta boy’s.” It was more like I’d punched my handler in the gut and knocked the wind out of him.
“George, you’re killing me, dude,” he moaned. “You’ve basically sealed our fate with Jenna. I warned you a hundred times to get rid of her.”
“Spare me the lecture, okay? She says she’s carrying my kid. What the fuck am I supposed to do?”
“Are you sure it’s yours?”
“Thanks, pal,” I snapped. “That’s just what I needed to hear.”
Truth be told, I already had one kid out in the world that I wasn’t taking care of, and I didn’t need another, especially one who might not be mine. But having been such a monumental piece of shit in the past, I felt an obligation to step up to the plate.
For better or worse, I had to do the right thing.
So after work the next evening I walked through the front door at Espirit Circle and tossed Jenna a box with an engagement ring.
“You’re going to marry me, right?”
“Yeah, sure,” said Jenna.
“Cool,” I replied, then walked back out again.
Yes, sir, I was a romantic sonofabitch.
Not long after we got engaged, a specter from Jenna’s past walked through the open garage and appeared unexpectedly in our kitchen.
It was Billy, her old boyfriend—and the sight of him froze Jenna with fear. She didn’t know what her ex was capable of. It wouldn’t have surprised her if he’d pulled a gun and started blasting away. But the man had come with a different purpose in mind. He’d recently finished an eight-month stint in prison, and his sister had driven him over to visit Sierra. Billy was bound, drunk and determined to let that kid know who her real father was.
He strode through the house like he owned the place, saying, “Where’s my daughter? I want to talk to my little
girl.”
That’s when I intercepted him.
“Whoa, whoa, whoa. You need to back the fuck up,” I warned him.
Billy had always been afraid of me in the past, but he was hammered that night and feeling his oats. I could also see he’d been lifting weights in the prison yard and was pretty jacked.
“Get out of my way, George.”
“Come back when you’re sober, Billy.”
“Fuck you,” he spat back. “I’m her father, and I’m gonna talk to her.”
He pushed past me into the living room, where Sierra was watching television, and knelt in front of her.
“Don’t screw it up, Billy,” I hissed at him under my breath.
“Hi, Sierra,” he said to her.
“Hi. Who are you?” Sierra wanted to know.
That’s when I grabbed Billy and pulled him out of the room.
“In the garage. Now.”
As I followed him through the kitchen and into the garage, I remember thinking this was the same prick who’d beaten Jenna unconscious in Arizona and dangled Sierra out the window of his car, asking, “Anyone want a fuckin’ baby?”
And now he wanted back into that baby’s life?
I’d given that sonofabitch every opportunity to do the right thing by his little girl. He lived only half a mile away but had never come to see her until that day. I’d even offered him money to buy her birthday presents. I’d wanted Billy to be part of his daughter’s life, but he’d blown it. Now it was too late. Sierra had adopted me as her daddy, and that arrangement was working out just fine.
“There’s no way I’m gonna let you come back here and fuck with that kid’s life,” I warned him, trying hard to keep my anger in check.
“I’m her father,” he growled at me.
