No Angel

by Jay Dobyns

  NOVEMBER 2, AND I was back on. I left the house wearing a tank top. Jack had given me two more rocks as I got ready to leave—both were gray—one looked like a fist, the other like a fish. I stuffed them into my pocket. As Gwen had requested, I did not wear my cut. I waited until I got a safe distance from my house, pulled over, unstrapped it from the backseat, and put it on. I tied on my bandanna. I got out my Glocks.

  I was Bird.

  I hooked up with Pops and went over to Doug Dam’s to buy more guns.

  We hung out with Doug, his girlfriend, and a prospect named Hank Watkins. Hank had been a Tucson Red Devil who’d been requested to patch over. He was in his late forties, more of an old-school guy than an up-and-comer. He’d had some preliminary dealings with Rudy, but since his Angels prospecting phase had begun, he’d been ordered to cool it: Prospects are not allowed to conduct any illegal activity without the express consent of their Angels superiors. Doug was his sponsor, and since they were together, nothing stopped them from selling us some iron.

  They had two choice pieces. An Intratec AB-10 9 mm Luger semiauto pistol and a Heckler & Koch blue steel semiauto 9 mm pistol. They wanted $1,600 for both. It was more than I thought they were worth, but I agreed to the price. The H&K was a very nice gun. I went to the bank to get some extra cash and paid them.

  Pops and I hit the road. We rode hard through the Valley once more, 90, 95 mph. Towers of red rock watched over us. Near Picacho an ostrich farm stretched out to the west. The bike felt good between my legs. She was humming along. I’d gotten some ape-hanger bars at the Motorcycle Shop in Kingman, and they were really comfortable to ride with.

  I thought about the case, about Bird, about being in role. I thought about what was coming later that day.

  Other than Jack’s rocks, I didn’t think about home much at all. The plain truth was that in those days I didn’t reflect much on my family. I knew they were there, at home, and that was enough. I knew I wasn’t there, but I believed in my reasons. Still, I couldn’t help thinking of Jack’s handwriting and how it frustrated him. I was frustrated too. I knew I had to do a better job on the Angels—not for ATF, not for Slats, not for Gwen—but for me. I knew I had to work harder. I knew I had to hang my ass out even more. I also knew I had lied to Jack when I told him that it was only his effort that mattered.

  But I didn’t dwell on it.

  We went to the Patch. We dropped Hank and Doug’s guns in the evidence vault. I filled out a voucher. Pops drank a Coke and fiddled with his fuel-intake valve, which had been giving him trouble. Slats told me that the Phoenix UC house was ready to go. He said I could spend the night there. He said it was over in Vattoland, South Central Phoenix. There were good taco stands out that way.

  Timmy showed up at the Patch with his female partner. They were in role. Timmy had been teaching me some martial-arts basics and we sparred lightly. This was a big part of his cover—a martial-arts instructor offering private lessons. He twisted me up, threw me on the ground, and choked me out. Fun stuff—for him. When the time came to leave, we all tied black bandannas around our biceps.

  We were off to a funeral.

  I DIDN’T KNOW the guy, but Rudy did. Some dude he rode with back when they were in a minor club called the Loners. Most recently the guy had been a Spartan Rider. He’d been hit by a semi while blowing a red light—all kinds of nasty things in the grille. Rudy had come to us for support, said we needed to go as a club, to show our respects to a fallen brother. We agreed, but not for his reasons. All we wanted was to draw Rudy out into the sunshine.

  The funeral was at the Church of the Sun in Cave Creek. There were Loners, Spartans, Lost Dutchmen, Bonded Slaves, and Limeys in attendance. There were three Hells Angels flying Phoenix tabs—none of whom we’d met.

  The ceremony was brief and unceremonious. Words on death quickly passed the lips of these men. There were the usual platitudes of a life lived the right way, of a loyal brother, of a man who might not have been a good son but who was a righteous outlaw. Eulogy was not their strong point. They grunted, they nodded, they hung their heads. They prayed—to what god one can only guess. They saluted. They all wore their cuts. They were good Americans, good friends. They believed in the soul. They believed in redemption, in ultimate relief from a world of judgment and harassment and incarceration. They prayed that he find a bike in the afterlife.

  We left in a single-file column. We roared our engines, sending his spirit to wherever it was destined to go with a final flourish, with an announcement.

  Maybe it was pathetic, maybe it was profound, maybe it was nothing. I watched it all, but didn’t much care. I had other things on my mind.

  Rudy looked like shit. He’d completed his journey home to Methopotamia, the cradle of crystallization. I’d told Bad Bob that his nose was deep in the bag. From the look of his eyes, that wasn’t all. He’d put his whole head and body into the shit.

  We went to the Spartan Riders’ clubhouse on East Van Buren in Central Phoenix. More of the same, this time with beer and smoke.

  We Solos left close to 7:00 p.m. We rode down Van Buren and turned onto Seventh Street, headed toward I-10 and the Bank One Ballpark, where the Diamondbacks play. We were in standard formation, Rudy and I up front, Timmy and Pops directly behind us.

  Two marked units pulled nose-to-nose onto Seventh Street in front of us. Rudy slowed to a stop, and I followed his lead. A helicopter came in from the west, dipping low fast, a million-candlepower “night sun” spot illuminating the scene. The marked units’ doors opened. Rudy was backing up in a three-point turn, telling me to follow him. I said, “Today ain’t my day to die, Rude. These dudes don’t look to be fucking around.” I glanced over my shoulder. Three more marked units blocked our rear. We were trapped in the middle of the block.

  The police moved quickly. I knew their orders. Knock down the Solo Angeles Nomads, execute the warrant on one Rudy Kramer, a felon in possession of a firearm.

  From a side street, two tactical SWAT members jogged toward us, all in black, helmets with blacked-out eye shields, muzzles pointed down, the Darth Vaders of law enforcement. The uniforms got out and approached quickly. We were ordered off our bikes. We got off. Guns were drawn, but not ours. In fact, none of us was armed that night.

  Heston Silbert, a Phoenix SWAT lieutenant who knew our status, ran the op, but the officers who carried it out knew nothing about us. They were very professional, surgical, and speedy. They concentrated on Rudy.

  They laid us out—facedown, hands on the neck, ankles crossed—in neat rows. Rudy was next to me. I looked at him. He didn’t look at me. He looked calm—it wasn’t the first time he’d been through this. As they pulled Rudy to his feet, I said, “I love you.” He looked at me and said, “I know.” I held back a burst of laughter. He thought I meant it. Irony was lost on the old addict. I looked back at the ground. I wasn’t sorry it hadn’t worked out for him. It was my job to put guys like Rudy away, even if I had to use them first. Still, I would’ve thanked him if I could.

  They cuffed him and hauled him up. He spat on the ground, not out of rage but just because he had to spit. He was taking it easy. A good perp. The guys found a loaded pistol and a three-ounce bag of meth in his saddlebags. They put these into separate evidence Baggies, then stuffed Rudy into one of the units. A panel truck pulled onto the block. Two guys loaded Rudy’s bike into it. The truck left. The SWATs disappeared. The car doors shut, the units backed up and drove away. The helicopter banked to the north and peeled toward the highway interchange. We got up.

  The strike was so convincing that, years later, defense attorneys insisted Rudy Kramer’s arrest was a routine, if elaborate, traffic stop that bagged our P right out from under us. They couldn’t believe it was a premeditated part of Slats’s plan to cut the weak link from our chain.

  Rudy had been removed from Black Biscuit.

  I’d never see him face-to-face again.

  20

  HELLO, JJ

  NOVEMBER 2002
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br />   I CALLED TEACHER, the Solo Angeles U. S. president in L. A., the night of Rudy’s arrest and told him what was up. I said the second the cuffs got clamped on Rudy’s wrists, I’d become the Solo president in Arizona. He said it was fine with him, so long as we kept up with dues and all. I told him not to worry. Then I called Bad Bob and Smitty and told each of them I was interim P until Rudy’s situation cleared up. I had to play it like his fate was uncertain, and as his supposed ally, I had to sound like I hoped he’d beat the rap.

  I knew he wouldn’t. And I knew my new post was permanent.

  Next order of business was our new partner. Pops and I picked her up at the Phoenix airport on November 5. We drove the Merc and met her at baggage claim. She wore black jeans, a white T-shirt, and a California smile. Her blond hair was pulled back in a ponytail with a large black scrunchy, her bangs brushed the tops of her eyebrows. A nice-looking, healthy young American woman, equal parts innocence, enthusiasm, and confidence. It wasn’t a disguise—JJ was a good woman, and a good woman was what I needed. We felt it would be less convincing if she looked too much like a biker tramp. A cardinal rule of undercover work is to tell as few lies as possible and, in spite of what you think, to be yourself. JJ was genuine, I could see it and I was banking that the Angels would see it too.

  Pops waited for her bag while we chitchatted. I said, “You’re a sight for sore eyes.”

  She smiled and said, “You look like shit.”

  I was in the standard getup, minus my Solo cut and guns. We were inside, but my sunglasses were still on. I had on a black knit ski cap with the words serial killer stitched across the forehead. I said, “Great. You’re gonna fit right in.”

  “I hope so,” she said.

  We’d been briefing her over the phone since Rudy’s arrest. She’d gotten the general rundown: our areas of operation, the names of principals, what kinds of deals we’d been doing. During one of the calls, Slats commented that we needed to be bringing in more drugs. I interjected that we’d been doing all right on guns and basic RICO stuff, but that our drug buys were mostly small: teeners of meth, dimes and nicks of marijuana, a few dozen pills. Slats told JJ that he hoped she’d be able to help us secure more junk.

  “No problem,” she said.

  We went over her cover story. We kept it consistent with what Smitty and Lydia knew about her: that we used to date a few years back, and that since we’d run into each other in La Jolla, she’d done a couple runs south of the border for me. The runs had gone well, and we’d hooked back up. We weren’t sure we were going to be spending all of our time together, but we were into each other enough that she was going to start spending weekends in the desert, going back west during the week to take care of business for me and my SoCal associates. To lend all of this some credibility and make it look like she wasn’t popping out of the woodwork, we decided to run a little longer in Bullhead, where the people who already knew her could get to know her better, and then vouch for her sudden appearance on the scene across the state.

  Once she got established, she’d get more operational responsibility. She said she wanted to be treated more like Bird’s business partner than arm-candy. We agreed. I knew that if she stood around acting like she was waiting for me to take her home every night, she’d get bored quickly, and she wouldn’t be as valuable to the case. We decided to treat her like one of the guys—she’d carry a gun, too—in the hopes that the Angels would respect her as much as we did.

  I told her, however, that there would be times when she’d have to act like one of the Old Ladies. It was still a man’s world, and she couldn’t appear to be privy to everything. She understood—it wouldn’t look real if she was always some kind of super-female. I told her not to worry, though, that unlike a real old lady, she’d never be beaten for forgetting to bring home some Taco Bell for dinner or whatever. She laughed and said, “I hope not. Remember, I got a gun too.”

  We left the airport and drove to the new undercover house on Romley Road.

  Timmy was there hanging out with Casino Cal and a Mesa Angel named Mark Krupa, a monster who weighed 260 at just under six feet tall.

  I showed JJ to her room and went to use the bathroom. When I got out she’d changed into a black tank top and let her hair down. I shook my head and she said, “OK, I’m ready.”

  “Lead the way, ma’am.” She passed me in the hall and walked toward the living room.

  I was ecstatic.

  Once in the living room, she asked if anyone wanted anything to drink. Everyone said beer. She turned to Timmy and asked, “We got beer, right, Timmy?”

  Timmy, who’d never met JJ in the flesh, said, “Yeah, in the fridge.”

  She got up, floated into the kitchen, and brought back four cold cans of Bud Light. She handed Timmy one, stuffed two cans under her arm, opened one, handed it to Cal, opened another, handed it to Mark, opened another, and handed it to me. She went back to the kitchen, came back with two more beers, both open, and handed one to Pops. She took a long sip of hers and said, in a measured deadpan, “Well, boys, you do whatever it was you were doing. I’m gonna go unpack.”

  And she disappeared.

  No one said anything for a moment. We all drank. Cal looked at me, eyebrows raised, corners of his mouth turned down, and nodded.

  What a difference a woman makes.

  WE WENT TO the Patch the next day and loaded the trailer with the bikes. Timmy and I climbed into the backseat. I lit a cigarette and told Pops to drive. Pops told JJ to drive. JJ looked at the trailer and said, “I’ve never driven a trailer before.”

  I said, “Well, trial by fire.” JJ tried to get out of it. I said, “Pops was at the bottom of the totem pole, but now that you’re here he’s moved up a notch. Shit runs downhill, sweetheart.” Standard rookie hazing.

  She drove. Pops warned her not to get caught in any situations where she’d have to put it in reverse, which is exactly what she did in a Denny’s parking lot near Prescott. We all laughed as she learned how to back up a vehicle with a trailer hitched to it. As with everything, JJ learned quickly.

  We checked into the house on Verano Circle. I made a few calls to the Bullhead locals, telling them we were around and wanted to hang out. I told them JJ was with me. We agreed to meet around nine that night at the Inferno.

  Party, party, Bullhead-style. Smitty was happy to see us, Lydia was happy to see JJ. JJ met Dennis and Dolly. We bought a few rounds and toasted the imminent marriage of Dolly and Dennis. Smitty grilled me for more Vegas grand jury info. I said I hadn’t heard anything specific, other than that the prosecutors were definitely seeking RICO charges. I assured him I’d told my source to dig deeper for information pertaining to HAMC member Donald Smith. He nodded solemnly, satisfied that I’d kept him in mind.

  JJ kept quiet company with Lydia and Dolly. She actually invited them and the boys over for dinner the next night.

  STEAK AND BEER and Crown Royal and Cokes and potatoes and a couple pounds of bacon, half of it cooked black and crunchy.

  It was Smitty, Lydia, Dennis, Dolly, and Joby, plus all of us Solos and JJ.

  It was a fun night. It felt real. I kicked back and bullshitted with the Angels I’d known the longest. Timmy and I arm-wrestled. He won. Joby and Smitty started off talking about Laughlin and spiraled into war stories of fights, beatings, shootings, and near misses. The house was wired and we recorded everything, but it was so much biker smack that it wouldn’t have amounted to a hill of beans in court.

  Some local biker politics were a high order of business. There was an OMG called the Vagos, a small but strong club that had an on-again, off-again relationship with the Angels. They were commonly called the Green, since their lettering and the background of their center patch was a bright toxic green. In the middle of their center patch was a red devil riding the single winged wheel of a motorcycle, like a genie rising from a lamp.

  A few Greens had recently been hanging around Bullhead without the Angels’ permission. The main guy was a ba
rrio chollo by the name of Nick Prano. Prano was in his mid-forties and had spent about twenty years in prison. Timmy and I had befriended him back in August, when he’d boasted that he’d just gotten off a nine-year stint for shooting a CHiPs cop in the head. He was one of those guys who took real pride in being a criminal, a man for whom time spent in prison was not time wasted but time proven. He’d say, “All I like to do is work, drink, fight, chase pussy, and be an asshole.”

  Typical biker dreamboat.

  It was a condition of his probation that he no longer reside in California, where the Vagos were most prominent. So he’d moved to Arizona. There’d been some beef between him and Smitty, because Prano wanted to put an Arizona bottom rocker on his cut. Smitty wouldn’t have it. Timmy and I both witnessed the time Smitty took Prano aside and told him how it was going to be.

  It was in late August, and Timmy, Prano, and I were hanging out at a thug bar by the river called Lazy Harry’s. Smitty and Dennis came in and walked up to Timmy, who stood by the door talking on the phone. Smitty looked my way and asked Timmy if I was hanging out with “that Greenie, Prano.” Timmy confirmed I was. Smitty huffed. He and Dennis came up to us. Neither of them said anything to me. Smitty put his arm around Prano and asked him to step aside. They went and talked for about five minutes by the jukebox. They came back and we all hung out for a couple hours like old buddies.

  That was when Prano was informed that he’d never be permitted to stitch an Arizona bottom rocker on his cut, and that the HA would never tolerate the opening of an Arizona Vagos charter. The concession was that Prano would be able to ride freely in the state flying his full colors. Apparently that was acceptable.

  This was significant to us for a couple of reasons. First, it showed once again that the HA were in control in Arizona. This would be good for the RICO charges. Second, it proved that we’d done our due diligence, since the Solos had been permitted to operate an Arizona charter, even if we, like the Vagos, also weren’t permitted to fly Arizona rockers.