No Angel

by Jay Dobyns

  Joby walked by as I finished saying this. He nodded in my direction. Apparently he’d overheard everything and liked it.

  Good.

  A few minutes later Bad Bob announced that we were all going to Spirits.

  We rolled. It was the largest group of Angels we’d yet ridden with. The Mesa guys rode tight at the front, but down the line things were looser. We, being non-Angels, rode at the back, which suited me fine.

  We blew traffic lights, ignored laws and courtesies like signaling and yielding right-of-way, and roared into the parking lot at Spirits, forty strong. It felt damn good.

  As we walked in, a South Carolina Angel said, “Damn, these Arizona brothers press it hard. Shit, I ride like old people fuck: slow and sloppy.” That gave me some comfort. I wasn’t the only one who was scared of riding like Mesa.

  A VIP section was hastily cleared by prospects and bouncers, and free alcohol began to flow. Women popped up like mushrooms. Lynyrd Skynyrd’s “Freebird” played over the system.

  This has been my song since junior high school, a song I took to heart from the first time I heard it. There are songs you respond to because they tell you something about yourself that you already know but were maybe unable to articulate, and there are songs you respond to because they help mold your image of yourself. “Freebird” was both. As practically everyone knows, the lyrics talk about the impossibility of a stable love between a woman and the Freebird, who is a restless, wandering soul. This restlessness is what has always spoken to me. It recalls my inability to reach any kind of lasting satisfaction, and reaffirms, in a cruel twist, that I can only ever remember my failures and never my successes. Looking in on myself, especially since the case has ended, I regard this trait to be one of my weakest.

  The irony is that satisfaction is all I really want. This is where my restlessness comes from, and where it turns into action, into wandering, into searching, more often than not in the wrong places—I am an undercover cop, after all. Therefore, I’m just like the guy in “Freebird,” who cannot stay, who cannot change, and whose Lord knows he cannot change.

  Nothing changed at the bar, either. It was the usual scene. We left around eleven and rode back to the clubhouse, bringing a cache of women with us.

  The party never stopped. The jukebox was fired up and the sound system was turned to the front yard. I could only imagine what the neighbors thought.

  I went to take a piss and Joby, whom I was yet to formally meet, was standing at the urinal next to me. He nodded to me as we went about our business. He finished before me and went to the sink. Before I zipped up I let a drop of piss hit each of my boots. When I turned to wash up, he was looking at me quizzically.

  He said, “You’re Bird, right?”

  “Yep. It’s Joby, yeah?”

  “That’s right. What the fuck was that about?”

  “What? The boots? An old bullrider told me it was good luck.”

  He smiled wide, his buckteeth shining. “I like that.”

  “Hasn’t failed me yet.”

  We stepped back into the party and went our separate ways.

  I stood around the yard with a dozen other guys and half as many women. The Mesa clubhouse had a “front house” that was for members only. Occasionally its door would swing wide and one of us would get a glimpse inside. All we saw was more of the same.

  Joby came up to us. “Hey, Bird.”

  “Hey, Joby.” We shook hands. Timmy and Pops were with me. I introduced them.

  Joby said, “I heard a lot of good things about you guys. A lot of good things.”

  I said, “Glad to hear it. It means the world to us that you guys think well of us.”

  He nodded. I could see over Joby’s shoulder a little commotion breaking out. A drunken woman in high-waisted, too-tight, acid-washed jeans pestered two Mesa Angels. Joby glanced over his shoulder and looked back at us. He said, “Smitty and Bob both spoke to me. Dennis too.”

  Timmy said, “Cool. We love those guys.” Pops said nothing.

  “It sounds like the feeling’s mutual.” Joby spoke with a quick High Plains twang, but it didn’t change the feeling that he was a smooth customer. He sounded smart to boot.

  The woman in acid-washed jeans had moved on to a group of Angels standing next to us. She was begging for a bump of meth. Her voice was shrill and her words were pathetic. Bad Bob emerged from the front house, followed by the tattooed girl. His face was pinched and red. As he walked by, he looked at me and spurted, “Shit, Bird!” He sniffed hard and his eyes were tearing. The tattooed girl was laughing. Bob grabbed each of her butt cheeks.

  The acid-washed tweaker, instinctively aware of the proximity of some good crank, begged more. Joby cringed but otherwise ignored her. He said, “The Chief moved me out to Kingman a few months ago. We need more numbers in that area.” The Chief, I assumed, referred to none other than Ralph “Sonny” Barger.

  I said, “Yeah, I’ve been hearing some shit about Mongols in Kingman.” “Heard that too. Heard there’s four or five of those motherfuckers around there.”

  Timmy said, “Well, there shouldn’t be.”

  “Goddamn right,” Joby sputtered. He got angry just thinking about them.

  The tweaker squealed, “I need a rail! Who’s got a rail?”

  Joby said, “I’ll kill those motherfuckers on sight. I don’t give a fuck. Courthouse steps or out in the desert, I see a Mongol bitch and I’m shooting her off her bike and selling it for scrap. I don’t give a solid fuck.”

  I believed him.

  The tweaker, failing with everyone, turned to us. Joby eyed her peripherally. She bent her knees slightly and bounced, bringing her hands together in a plea. Her face was red and tired-looking. She had shopping-bag eyes and rotten teeth. It looked like she’d been pretty before the crystal. Pops turned to go inside. I could tell he was disgusted. He’d seen this kind of woman one too many times. Timmy and I watched Joby.

  The woman got out two words: I need. Then, in a fluid motion, Joby turned on her, unholstered a hip-belt .380 semiauto, and pushed it into her forehead. She stopped talking and went cross-eyed.

  Joby barked in a sudden, deep tenor, “Bitch, I will kill you if you do not leave me and my brothers alone right now!”

  The only sound was music. Time crept. Some nearby Angels looked at Joby, others didn’t even bother. The woman had already ceased to exist for all of them. It was like Joby had drawn-down on a ghost, or a patch of sunlight in a living room.

  Joby was serious and, by the look of it, acquainted with homicide. The woman had to leave or he’d keep his promise. I took note of it.

  As cops, neither Timmy nor I could let this happen. I made a snap decision to grab Joby and stop him if necessary. I’d have to tell him she wasn’t worth it, which she clearly wasn’t. I hoped he’d have sense enough to hear my words and forgive me the offense of touching a Hells Angel without permission. Joby continued, “You’re talking to a Hells Angel, bitch. Lesson number one: We don’t give, we get. You ever ask me or my brothers for anything ever again”—Joby pressed the gun harder into her forehead—“and you’ll find out in a real bad way what happens.”

  Luckily for us and the tweaker, another woman materialized, grabbed her arm, and pulled her away. She disappeared and I never saw her again.

  The music hadn’t stopped and everyone resumed whatever they were doing.

  The woman gone, Joby turned to us and holstered his gun. He said calmly, “Let me give you my cell. Next time you’re up Kingman way, you give me a shout.”

  We said we would.

  Joby left us. We stood around in the yard. A girl I hadn’t noticed strutted out from the clubhouse. She was followed by five Angels I couldn’t ID. Bringing up the rear was Bad Bob, who wagged his tongue at us. He pumped his fist in the air, pulling that imaginary train whistle.

  That night’s gang bang was on.

  We left not too long after that.

  18

  FIVE YEARS IN THE DESERT
r />   OCTOBER 25 AND 26, 2002

  THE TWENTY-FIFTH WAS a hotwash day. Hotwash is when you try to take everything that’s “hot” in your memory and “wash” it out clean into reports. Slats knew our nighttime activities were hectic. He insisted we reset our memory banks to zero before going out for more.

  The Patch was buzzing with activity. Cricket and Buddha worked on our bikes. Our tech guy did routine maintenance on our temperamental recording devices. Other guys processed mugshots and rap sheets and added surveillance photos to the suspect matrix. Timmy and I typed reports and went over op plans with Slats. Slats had some good news: He’d been able to secure JJ for a couple nights. She’d sit in the surveillance van and get a bead on what we were up to. She hadn’t been approved for action, but Slats said he was getting closer to a green light. I said, “Great.”

  The overall mood at Black Biscuit headquarters was euphoric. Our plan was working well. This was the first time in the case when we started to overachieve as a unit. My confidence was rising, and since I was one of the case’s chief barometers, the whole team’s confidence rose too.

  I called Gwen after completing reports. She didn’t want to hear from me. Dale was having a tough time in the beginning of the school year. Some problem with math that I didn’t take the time to understand. Jack was doing fine, but he was still a kid who wanted his old man more than he got him. Gwen was pissed because she was tired of playing Mom and Dad. She was stressed. I tried to explain to her that I was too. I told her a little bit about what I was doing—she knew I was trying to get in on the Angels—but she thought all I did was party all the time, hang out with loose women, ride a bike, and have fun. That pissed me off and the conversation ended quickly. She said she needed some time to herself. I said that I did too, that it wasn’t like my life was all roses. Gwen couldn’t hear that. She was holding our family together with dedication and spit and I was being ungrateful. We didn’t quite hang up on each other, but we didn’t quite say good-bye, either. I didn’t speak to the kids.

  After that, Timmy, Slats, Cricket, and I discussed Rudy. At one point during the festivities of the twenty-fourth, Bad Bob had asked me if I’d heard from Rudy. I’d done what every undercover operator should endeavor to do whenever possible: I’d told him the truth, that I hadn’t heard from Rudy and that it was worrying me. I told Bob he’d gotten his nose deep in the bag and had gone off the map. Bad Bob asked me if he was cooking, and I said I didn’t know but if I had to guess I’d say yes. Bob’s concerns were mixed. There were security issues, but he was also being opportunistic: Bad Bob was always looking for a tweak. Regardless, he acted concerned about Rudy. He asked if I was using and I said no way. By that time Bad Bob had seen a set of tattoos emblazoned across my pecs: GDJ on the right and DOA on the left. He knew that GDJ stood for God Damned Junkie (actually, it stood for Gwen, Dale, Jack), and that DOA stood for what DOA always stands for; in my case it commemorated the fact that Brent Provestgaard had essentially rendered me DOA back when I got shot as a rookie agent. It’s located over the exact spot that his bullet exited my chest. I’d told Bad Bob, however, that DOA referred to the time I’d overdosed and nearly killed myself. I said these tattoos were constant reminders to stay clean. No one doubted my story one inch, including Bad Bob.

  But we were talking about Rudy. Bad Bob laid it out simple: “You gotta bring Rudy back in.”

  We decided to take Bad Bob’s advice literally. As soon as we got a chance, we were going to arrest Rudy Kramer.

  * * *

  PARTY NIGHT. SERIOUS Hells Angels heaven.

  The local cops secured the street. It was a comical scene. On one side of the barricade were marked units with twirling cherry lights and uniforms posing tensely. These cops were outnumbered on the other side of the barricade by relaxed Hells Angels, prospects, and hangarounds. The guys lounged in folding lawn chairs and drank beer, leaned on their bikes, and sat on the curb. It was, from the Angels’ point of view, a perfect example of their existence beyond the system, a picture of their out-of-bounds status. The cops were there to protect the outside world from the Hells Angels, but they were also there to protect the Angels from the outside world. In a sense, the cops were working for the Angels that night.

  I arrived forty-five minutes after Pops, Timmy, and Timmy’s female partner. A prospect I’d never met stopped me at the police barricade at the end of the block. The cops looked at me sideways. I nodded to them, openly mocking them. They were used to it. They’d been getting it all night.

  I showed the prospect my invite and he let me in. I was stamped in at the clubhouse gate.

  It was a bona fide convention. Bikes constantly hummed, music constantly pounded. You could have resurrected a herd of cows with all the leather in evidence, or created the world’s largest pair of jeans with all the denim. Every shape, color, and length of beard was present, from the ZZ Top to the flavor-saver. The pungent smell of marijuana hung over the whole place, as if smoke rose from the storm drains on the street and the vents in the house, as if every step taken was on an inch-thick carpet of perfumed buds. Women laughed, men scowled; men laughed, women scowled. Beer was the water of life, whiskey man’s surest elixir. A circus tent their neighbor had allowed them to place in his backyard underscored the party’s surrealism.

  Smitty was near the entry gate when I walked in. He gave me a big hug. I congratulated him and the Angels and said it looked like everything was going well. He pulled me aside.

  “Bird. Gotta tell you something I just found out. One of my contacts in the Bullhead police told me that they’re looking into you guys up there. They wanna know what you’re up to, bad. They’ve assigned a gang task force to you, they’re handing out flyers with your picture on it and everything. So, you know, be careful, all right?”

  I gripped his arm. It was the first I’d heard of this, and I was sincerely grateful. I’d have Shawn Wood from the Arizona Department of Public Safety check on it the next day.

  I stayed with the Bullhead gang for a few minutes, then excused myself to find my crew.

  Timmy and Pops were hanging out with a Red Devil named James. Timmy told me later that they’d been discussing large-quantity marijuana buys, gun deals, and moving stolen cars. James had given Timmy his cell number and told him to call him the following week. Timmy said he most definitely would.

  James wandered off, and we Solos were alone for a few minutes. We stood by the bar in the common area of the clubhouse. A topless stripper in gold bikini bottoms and another stripper in a tight, torn T-shirt with a screaming eagle on it giggled at the far end. Ghost, who’d broken his leg when he went OTB—over the bars—in a traffic accident, talked to these women along with Rockem and Sockem.

  We were approached by Dennis, Dolly, and another couple in their early fifties. Dennis intro’d them as JoJo and Tracey Valenti. The guy was a monster. Weighed in around 300 pounds, his bald head smaller than his neck, which was smaller than his upper arm. He had a doughnut-sized Death Head tattooed above his right ear. His flared-out, bushy beard was as big as his face. His cheeks were clean-shaven. He had on black leather spiked cuffs that covered most of his tatted-out forearms. He sweated and breathed like a fat man. He was past his prime, but it was obvious that back in the day he was a flat-out wrecking ball.

  JoJo was the Tucson vice president, one of the guys with Doug Dam and Fang. He was on crutches. One of his legs was in a cast. The other was a prosthetic. The story of his remaining leg had recently become infamous. JoJo’d broken his ankle in a motorcycle accident and gashed it pretty badly. They stitched him up, put him in a cast, gave him crutches, told him to keep off the leg. He didn’t listen. He should have. Considering he was diabetic, he really should have. He took bad care of the cast, let it get wet in the rain and in the shower, walked on it, rode, everything. Everyone noticed that JoJo had been smelling bad lately, but no one talked about why. He was a fat guy, fat guys don’t always smell like roses. JoJo complained of pain and severe itching. One day, as he sat
on the toilet, blood started to ooze from the cast around his foot. His toes were as black as the leather of his cut. Tracey took him to the hospital. As they cracked the cast open, a swarm of young black flies buzzed out. The gash was full of maggots. The doctors cleaned them out, gave him a new cast, and told him to take better care of it. He said he would.

  We moved on and met more Angels. One was Duane “Crow” Williams, a Mesa member who was old and senile, and mumbled everything he said. He was always armed, even though he barely seemed to register what went on around him. His wife led him around the party by the arm and propped him on bar stools and fetched him drink after drink. She was more of a chaperone than a spouse. From the first time I met Crow he called me Pruno. I insisted I was Bird, but he said that was bullshit, I was Pruno. He said that I was Pruno because I made the best jailhouse wine he’d ever tasted. Months after the anniversary party I bought a Taurus pistol from Crow. Before he handed over the piece, he pointed out blood splatter on the muzzle. In a burst of clarity he told me he’d tried to scrub it off, but could never get it all the way clean. I told him it didn’t matter, it was a gun, right? He smiled and told me he liked me, and gave me a little necklace with a dagger pendant. I asked him what it was for. He said, “Because you’re the real deal, Pruno.” I told him for the thousandth time that I was Bird. He shrugged and said, “Well, keep it anyway.” Months after that, as the case was coming to an end, Crow would be the last Hells Angel we’d have contact with.

  We met Daniel “Hoover” Seybert, the president of Cave Creek. He told us to come visit him at his place, the RBC Tavern. We said we’d drop by for sure.

  We met Robert “Mac” McKay. He was the Tucson member with the nonassociation clause in his probation—a probation he’d received for beating down the ex-president of the Tucson charter. He wore a phony long gray beard and a brown wig—two tones of hair that belonged on separate heads—so the cops wouldn’t mess with him. His real beard bled out from beneath the fake, and as the night went on and the beer kept flowing, he looked more and more ridiculous. I wasn’t sure why he wore the disguise inside the clubhouse, since there was no one there he had to fool. Like everyone else, Mac said he’d heard good things about us Solos. I was typically gracious and humble. He seemed to be a nice guy, and was, as I’d find out, a damn good tattoo artist.