No Angel (35 page)

He pushed me back and looked me over. I held him by the shoulders. Locked together, I said, “Mister Lou. It’s been too long since we’ve seen each other in the flesh.”

“You ain’t fuckin’ kiddin’. And look at this”—Lou was a “dis” and “dat” guy—“JJ. What’s it been—a year? More?”

“Yeah. More than that, Lou,” said JJ, tossing it out like Lou was her favorite uncle. “I can barely remember.”

“But I’ll never forget you. Never, my darling.” He moved toward her, took her right hand, and actually kissed it.

I thought we were done. The guy was too much. I wanted to look at Bobby or Slats or Gayland—anyone whose face would tell me if it was working—but I knew I couldn’t.

Lou graciously directed JJ to a reserved booth and snapped for a waitress. He told JJ we had business to discuss and suggested she take it easy. She sat down. I said, “Lou, this is that guy I was telling you about.”

Lou looked at Bobby as if for the first time. He squinted and said, “Yeah, all right,” like Bobby had asked him a question.

Bobby held out his hand and introduced himself. Lou took it and gave it a cursory shake. “How ya doin’.” Lou looked at me and gave me a small shrug. Then he let go of Bobby’s hand and stared him dead in the eye. “You said Bobby, right?”

“Yeah.”

“Good, good. Now listen here, Hells Angel Bobby, sit the fuck down!” The goons stepped forward menacingly. Bobby was so shocked he promptly sat. He must’ve been battling some strong urges to pound the old guy into the carpet—no one talks to a Hells Angel like that and gets away with it.

Lou stabbed a thick index finger at the air in front of Bobby and said, “Now listen good, Bobby,’ cause I only say things once. I don’t give a midnight fuck about the Hells Angels. I care about you as much as I care about fucking pussycats. You do what you do, I do what I do. Thing is, my gang is bigger than yours, badder than yours, and meaner than yours. And sure as shit, my gang is smarter than yours,’ cause we don’t walk around town with no fucking logo on our back that says ‘Wiseguy.’ You, I can see you coming a mile down the street. Me, you don’t know if I’m standing next to you at Mickey D’s. You capeesh?” He pointed at me. “Anything happens to this guy here while he’s doing this Hells Angel thing, you answer to me. He makes money for me. He carries money for me. I trust him to take more money across the country than you’ll see in ten years. He wants to ride bikes, do this motorcycle club
bull
shit, that’s his thing. But if that shit overlaps with
my
life, fucks me outta so much as a quarter—if he gets hurt or can’t come to work for me when I call, well … the Hells Angels are gonna be disappointed, I’ll tell you what. I’ll start burning down houses with the doors locked from the
out
side. Or maybe I go easy on your guys and one day they find you lying on the floor, all blue and gray, having had a little accident with a dry-cleaning bag. I’m sayin’ it to
you
, all right? Now, you’re a smart man, Hells Angel Bobby. Give me a minute with Jay.” He took me by the arm and led me to the back of the room, one of the bodyguards staying by Bobby and JJ, the other trailing us at a respectful distance.

I would’ve given every penny I had to see Bobby’s face. But we all had a part to play, and I played mine.

When we were out of earshot, I told the guy it was nice to meet him. He said the same, but that I was smaller than he’d imagined. He said he thought all bikers were built like linemen. I said not all. He asked me how we were doing. I said we were doing good, but maybe it was a little over the top? He held up his hand. “I know how a crime boss thinks. Made guys really
don’t
give a midnight fuck about Hells Angels or whatever they are. Wiseguys were making money before there was even such a thing as a motorcycle, and they’ll be making money when those guys are gone. Trust me, Jay, we’re doing good.”

“All right, dude, keep going. No point in changing course now.”

“That’s the spirit. Now go bring that guy over here, we’ll straighten him out.”

“OK.” I went and got Bobby. We went back to Lou. I could hear Slats and Gayland laughing their asses off, just two guys in a bar having a good time.

Lou said, “Sorry about that, Bobby, we just gotta understand each other.”

Bobby said, “Yes, sir.”

Slats and Gayland laughed again.

Lou said, “Jay tells me you might like to do some work for me.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Good.” He pulled a long Cohiba from inside his jacket and held it in his fist. “I like you, Hells Angel Bobby. You know when to talk and when to shut the fuck up. I’ll let Jay know when we can use you. And when we do use you, don’t fuck up.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Good.” He turned to me. “Jay, I got a mess of guns coming through tomorrow. You know me and guns—I won’t keep ’em around. I wanted you to have first crack at them. You want ’em, great, no, that’s no shakes either. I’ll give you a call.”

“Thanks, Lou.”

“No problemo. Well, that’s it, boys. Drinks and dinner are on me tonight. I gotta make a date.” He moved past us and walked up to JJ. “JJ, as always, I’m enchanted. I don’t know why you hang out with this guy, but he’s lucky for it. Take care of him.” And with that he left, his bodyguards silently drifting behind him.

I sat down next to JJ, Bobby sat across from us. He was entranced.

I asked, “Well, whaddaya think?”

Bobby took a breath. “I think that guy’s just like the guys back East. I hadn’t seen one in so long I’d forgot.”

“Forgot what?” JJ asked.

“Those kinda guys are real fucking badasses. Yeah, I think it’s good. I hope when my time comes I can prove myself, make Lou proud.”

I lit a cigarette. “I’m sure you will, Bobby, I’m sure you will.”

I CALLED GAYLAND
later on, after I’d seen Bobby to his room.

Gayland asked, “So, how was our guy?”

“He was good. Almost too good. Bobby bought the whole thing, though, said Lou was a real-deal gangster. I don’t know where you got him, last minute, but he was good.”

“He better’ve been good. He’s New Jersey mob. He came out here and fucked up. We caught him and got him to flip. He wasn’t faking it, Jay. Unlike you, he
is
the real deal.”

APRIL–MAY 2003

BOBBY ACCOMPANIED ME
on the completion of the ruse gun deal the next day. It was a nice little haul: an Uzi, two Mac-10s, a silencer, and two AK-47s, both of which were full autos. JJ paid our contact—the task force agent Buddha—five grand in cash and we went our separate ways. For his trouble, I gave Bobby a hundred bucks. I said, “Not bad for five minutes’ work, huh?”

“Naw. Not at all.”

I repeated what I’d told Mac: “That’s how easy it is to make money with me, dude.”

He was impressed.

Our last night in Vegas we decided to take the girls out to dinner at New York, New York. We hung around the casino floor while Staci and JJ decided where they wanted to eat. Bobby looked uneasy and asked me to take a walk. We strolled outside and stopped on the corner of Las Vegas and Flamingo Boulevards, surrounded by tourists, traffic, and a roller coaster. A blind hot dog vendor stood in front of his cart yelling, “Red hots, getchya red hots here!” It looked like Bobby wanted to get something off his chest but couldn’t find the words, or didn’t want his words overheard. I lit a cigarette and offered one to Bobby, lighting his. “Hey, Bobby, want a dog?”

“Yeah, sure.”

I ordered and gave Bobby his pre-dinner snack. He still wasn’t speaking. I tried to break the ice. “Bobby, you ever think about where you’re gonna be in a year, five years?”

He looked at me like I’d insulted his mother. “How the fuck do I know? Shit, maybe I’ll take a pencil and poke my eyes out and sell hot dogs.”

I paid for the dogs and we sauntered away. My icebreaker worked. He said that he’d felt a little awkward around Big Lou because he didn’t know how to tell him that he’d “done work” before—as he said those words he mimed firing a pistol. I was a little surprised. This was the first time Bobby had opened up regarding the alleged murder he’d committed for the club. I nodded gravely and didn’t interrupt. He said he’d gained the reputation of a rat-hunter—a guy who killed snitches or informants—and that “three can keep a secret if two are dead.” Normally this kind of talk is idle bullshit, but I believed Bobby. He was calm, matter-of-fact, and not boastful. He assumed I was in a similar position, an assumption I didn’t deny. He said that “some call it stupidity, but it takes balls to walk up and shoot someone between the eyes.” He said some other guys couldn’t live with themselves after the fact, which was a problem he didn’t have. “Me? I take care of business. Anyone crosses me, I’ll get payback. It may take me four or five years, but I’ll get it. I’ll be the guy standing by your pillow at three a.m. holding a two-by-four, waiting for your eyes to pop open.” The words weren’t hypothetical. They were meant for me. He said, “Remember that. You’re in and you’re with me, so don’t fuck up. Blood in, blood out.”

The next day, after I’d downed a handful of Hydroxys, we rode back to Arizona. Timmy and Pops had gone home the night before to see their families, so it was just me and Bobby. Right after crossing the dam, Bobby’s bike broke down and we loaded both bikes into the trailer. JJ and Staci got in the back and I drove. The road hypnotized me. I tried to picture the day Bobby would find out I was a cop, tried to guess what his expression would be. I wanted to gauge his level of shock, because I didn’t have any problem imagining what he’d look like standing over my bed at 3:00 a.m., grasping a rough-hewn two-by-four.

SLATS LIKED THE
Big Lou ruse. He wasn’t sure what it gained us, but he had a good time watching it go down. Still, it made him nervous. He said our plays were getting too intricate and too risky. “Tone it down. Play it out with these guys, don’t play it up.” He reminded me that he could pull the plug whenever he wanted. He said, “You guys get too close to the fire and I
will
stamp it out.”

“All right, fine.” Slats wanted to hear the words, so I said them.

I knew I was lying, though. Being HA hangarounds—and soon-tobe prospects—was not easy. I thought March had seen the worst, that my days and nights had reached their saturation points. I was wrong. Since we’d become hangarounds, each day’s obligations had mushroomed. If it wasn’t Slats, it was the Hells Angels. If it wasn’t either of them, it was my family. If it wasn’t my family, it was me. I couldn’t shut down.

Every morning started with my Hydroxys. I swallowed them down with coffee or Red Bull and took more in the afternoon, and if I was out with anyone at night, more after dark. I drank alcohol while on them; worked out on them, wrote reports on them. My spelling suffered, my bike riding actually got better. My ability to gab endlessly also improved—something I thought impossible. I felt edgy and my stomach shook all the time. When the pills wore off, I plunged into a deep chemical—or lack-of-chemical—depression. Most nights, after scribbling reports and hiding them in the safe under my mattress, I’d lie down and pray for sleep that seldom came. It was not uncommon in those days for me to cry while trying to get a few hours of physical rest. The tears were born of exhaustion and the stress of leading a double life. Anyone looking at me would always see the same Bird: Bird the debt collector; Bird the cop; Bird the bullshitting-a-mile-a-minute hustler. On the inside, I thought I was something else, something I’d never been before. I sometimes swung completely, and quickly, from confidence to doubt, from righteousness to guilt. If I’d had the capacity for self-reflection I might have noticed the changes being wrought on me, but I had none. All I could do in those days was feel and react and think about ways to succeed with the Angels.

I’d look in the mirror, shaving my gaunt cheeks with a straight razor, and the only things that stared back at me were the cold blue eyes of Jay “Bird” Davis.

Anyway, we got a residence in Prescott. We got our hands on a single-wide trailer and put it in the corner of a trailer park, aspen trees and a patch of grass out back, a picnic table by the steps. It was way too small and anything but homey.

I hated to give it to him, but Slats was dead-on about one thing: We weren’t freelancers anymore. We had new responsibilities to our brothers, responsibilities that required a lot of hanging out with Angels. What was even worse was that, given our desire to gain real membership, we actually
wanted
to hang out with the guys. Time bled into a continuum of pills, bikes, riding, guns, guard duty, lectures on rules, and general monotony. Rarely did one day seem much different from another. The only way I could remember anything was by listening to recordings and reading and writing daily reports.

April 24, church at the clubhouse. The Skull Valley house was on a nice country road surrounded by farms and crop fields. Bobby and Staci lived in a first-floor apartment, Teddy lived upstairs. Joby had turned a large closet into a bedroom to crash out in. The main room was a storage facility.

Before church convened I asked Joby what we should do if any of us came across a Mongol. “Kill or otherwise fuck that bitch up. Ask Teddy.” I did. He said, “Yeah, it’s your duty to kill him and not get caught.”

Bobby announced that church that day was members only. We were ordered outside to secure the perimeter. It was cold—around forty degrees—and we were underdressed. We blew on our hands and stamped our feet. Pops and I crossed paths every ten or fifteen minutes. The moon was up, invisible things scurried through the grass. At one point Pops asked, “Who are we guarding these guys from?”

“Bunny rabbits, dude. They’re full of rabies around here.”

Pops laughed. “Maybe we should fire off a round, just to scare them.” I wasn’t sure whether he meant the rabid rabbits, the Hells Angels, or both. It didn’t matter. I laughed too. The boys finally had some hangarounds to pull guard duty, just like the other charters. I laughed some more. It felt like a big joke. The boys were probably in the clubhouse laughing too, knowing no one was going to interrupt church at Skull Valley.