Under and Alone (14 page)

“You know what I fuckin’ need, Prospect.”

I fetched Red Dog a Budweiser and continued doing my prospect duties for another hour until Domingo told me to take a break and fix myself a plate. As I moved to a picnic table, I got my first glimpse of the stuff from which an ATF agent’s dreams are made. A group of Mongols were sitting in a semicircle admiring an open lockbox and briefcase. Both were full of firearms, including a MAC-10 submachine gun. I’d been sitting there for only a minute, trying as inconspicuously as possible to eavesdrop, when I heard Red Dog yelling at me again. “What the fuck you sittin’ down for, Prospect? You better move your ass!”

I got back to my feet. Seeing those guns, the reason I was putting up with this abuse, fueled my resolve. How could I get word to Ciccone? Jamming a group of Mongols with a cache of high-powered guns, including a MAC-10 submachine gun, would be a home run for our side.

Red Dog walked up and punched me hard in the chest. “Go out front and see if the guys standing guard need anything.”

In silence and a bit out of breath, I turned and walked away. I was, however, keeping score, confident that Red Dog would get his due in a court of law one day.

I ran hard for the rest of the day. But as I answered one Mongol call after another, in my mind I was already starting to list and describe the makes of those guns for my 3270 ROIs (Report of Incident), paperwork that would certainly counter any move by the SAC and ASAC to shut the investigation down.

Around six in the evening, the party began to break up. Mongols began to head out, ten or twenty to a pack. I wanted to be in the first group that left, but I soon found myself flat on my back, tools in hand, fixing Rocky’s bike. His headlight was out, and it would be dark soon.

We caught a break when Domingo said that we would all be riding back with the Mother Chapter. Since the Mother Chapter had its shit infinitely more together than the SFV Chapter, this was welcome news.

We could see black thunderheads building on the horizon. The rain began to pelt down hard on us, beating a frenzied drumbeat on my helmet. But riding in the heavy rain, though dangerous, was a hell of a lot better than hanging around and taking a Mongol prospect beating from Red Dog. A dozen Mongols, including a guy named Mansion Mike, waited out the rain in Phoenix and left after dark.

Somewhere in the desert between Phoenix and the California line, a truck driver came up too fast behind a pack of Mongols, plowing his eighteen-wheeler straight into the pack of Harleys. Mansion Mike was pulling up the rear and didn’t even see the truck coming. The eighteen-wheeler smashed into his bike, dragging him and his Harley down the highway. Sometime before the truck was able to stop Mike had lost one of his legs. The Mongols’ follow truck—driven by AK and Cowboy and filled with the stash of illegal guns I’d observed at the campsite—stopped and pulled Mike from the wreck.

After the paramedics had stabilized Mike at the scene, Cowboy and AK threw his bloody clothes—which the paramedics had been forced to cut off his body—in the back of the truck and headed for the hospital along with ten or twelve other Mongols. Later, assured that Mike would live, AK and Cowboy took the truck with the guns and continued toward L.A. It was early in the morning when they reached West Covina, east of L.A. Cowboy pulled over to take a leak. They weren’t parked for more than a minute when a West Covina patrol car pulled up. Two outlaw bikers driving a beat-up pickup truck warranted a closer look. The first thing the cops saw was a blood-soaked shirt in the back of the truck. The explanation about Mansion Mike’s tragic accident didn’t make any difference; the cops treated the truck like a crime scene.

It wasn’t a good night for the Mongols. Mansion Mike lost his leg, and the cops nabbed AK and Cowboy along with that lockbox full of high-powered guns, including the MAC-10.

Unfortunately, the DA’s office had a big problem with the search. The Mongols retained some pretty sharp defense attorneys for Cowboy and AK, and they managed to get the seizure thrown out of court as an illegal search. Behind the scenes, Ciccone went to talk to the DA as well as the West Covina Police Department and, without divulging my role as a deep cover agent, told them that ATF had a strong interest in making this case stick. The DA dropped the state charges against Cowboy and AK so that we had a green light to charge them in a federal prosecution.

The problem, from our point of view, was that we couldn’t make the local cops’ gun seizure any more admissible in a federal court—not without me getting some incriminating statements on tape.

It took me a few months to find the appropriate way to approach Cowboy and AK. I didn’t see them on a regular basis in the San Fernando Valley, and there was no plausible way to seek them out and try to get them to make blatant criminal admissions while I was wearing a wire. This is part of the improvisational nature of undercover work; you can strategize all you want with your case agent, but sometimes you just have to have a gut feeling for when the time is right to make a move. In this case, I waited a few months until the greater Mongol Nation was making a run to Palm Springs.

By this point, I had become comfortable enough in the gang to carry a concealed recording device if I thought I’d have a chance to gather pertinent information. I was still extremely anxious about carrying a wire, but at least I had access to the best digital technology the federal government had to offer in the late 1990s. When I began my career, undercover agents used to have to tape clunky old Nagra recorders and microphones to their groins and their shaved chests. I could never have risked doing that with the Mongols, as we were often together for days at a time, camping out and sleeping in tight quarters.

With the Mongols, I would carry a tiny, sophisticated NT microcassette recording device that I could easily hide in my coat pocket or inside my motorcycle boot. The NT made a crystal-clear recording, but it had a somewhat complicated activation procedure. Another device I used was a standard Motorola pager that had been fitted with a digital recorder, which I could wear in plain view. It functioned as a working pager—the Mongols believed that I had to wear a beeper for my avionics job—and had a capability of recording up to six hours on a computer chip.

We were all relaxing at a big outdoor party in Palm Springs; the music was loud and the beer was flowing freely when I saw my opening. As nonchalantly as possible, I sat down with Cowboy and a few other Mongols.

We bullshitted for a while, and then I leaned over and asked Cowboy how in hell he had beaten that machine-gun rap in West Covina. Without any hesitation, Cowboy said the search was bad because the cops couldn’t put the box of guns to anyone. He added that the cops were idiots, and if they would have searched him better, they would have found the key for the lockbox in the little front pocket of his Levi’s. After they had transported him to the police jail, when the cops weren’t looking, he’d pulled the key from his pants and swallowed it.

I was carrying my tiny hidden NT digital recorder during this Palm Springs party, and Cowboy’s incriminating conversation was on tape. In spite of the blaring rock music, the conversation was clear and irrefutable. It was just what the U.S. Attorney’s Office was hoping for. Coupled with my eyewitness testimony, we were confident of sending Cowboy and AK away to federal prison on illegal-firearms charges.

It also helped Ciccone and me placate the brass in ATF. Getting proof of this kind of gun violation satisfied the bosses that when we eventually broke through to daylight—if I could make it to daylight—we’d be bringing down a massive racketeering case against one of the most dangerous outlaw motorcycle gangs in the country.

Even among outlaw clubs, the Mongols were known as a gun-crazy bunch. Before you could become a full patch, they wanted proof that you owned at least one firearm and that you knew how to use it. Part of the application process stipulated that you had qualified with firearms under the supervision of the national sergeant at arms.

Domingo had called me and told me to pick him up that afternoon and bring my handgun with me. Ciccone and I assumed they were going to take me to a legitimate firing range somewhere north of L.A.

My undercover car was a dull red, oxidized, four-speed Mustang convertible. It was fast as hell, had a half dozen bullet holes in the hood and doors from a previous ATF investigation—the chassis perforated by semiautomatic gunfire in the gang heartland of South Central L.A. Like war wounds, these pockmarks lent real credibility to my supposed badass background. The Mustang was also wired for audio, with a secret little switch I could activate under my seat. I would end up with some very incriminating conversations taped in the car before the end of this case.

It was before eleven
A.M.
when I eased my Mustang off the Ventura Freeway and made my way to Ciccone’s house. The more I talked to myself about what the day might bring, the more nervous I became. I was trying hard to shake the fear and reluctance I felt about wearing a wire.

It was a tough call, balancing the risk of carrying a recorder against the unmistakable value of the hard evidence it could provide. Especially today, knowing that I’d be with a group of Mongols who were all convicted felons and who would all be in possession of firearms. Of course, Ciccone and the U.S. Attorney’s Office wanted me to get the evidence on tape.

I sat in front of Ciccone’s house in a daze.

“Billy Boy, talk to me,” he said.

“Hey, bud, I need to gas up. I’ll meet you at the gas station down the street.”

In the short distance between Ciccone’s place and the gas station, something hit me in the pit of my stomach. I don’t know if it was cop intuition, plain fear, or a real guardian angel, but it came to me nonetheless—and without ambiguity:
Don’t carry a fucking tape recorder today, Billy.

I knew Ciccone and the U.S. Attorney’s Office would be disappointed. Hell, I wanted to get the whole day’s activities on tape myself. But I wanted to stay alive more. At the gas station I got out of the car, bent down, and removed the tiny recording device from my boot. Ciccone screeched to a stop in his Pontiac.

“I don’t have a good feeling about the recorder, dude. I’m not gonna carry it.”

I braced myself for the company line, but to my relief Ciccone looked at me and nodded. “Go with your gut,” he said. “Tell you the truth, I don’t have a good feeling about it either.”

The plan was to pick up Domingo at his house and then he and I would ride up to Visalia in my car. We’d meet Red Dog and the rest of the boys when we got up there. I tossed the tape recorder to Ciccone like it was a live hand grenade and sped off to Domingo’s place.

Ciccone followed close behind me. I watched my speedometer passing 85, 90, then 100 miles per hour. I switched lanes repeatedly, but Johnny was keeping right up. Ciccone and I had a thing about following each other on freeways. It wasn’t exactly how you’d expect two on-duty feds to drive. It was more like a NASCAR race than an official ATF trip to an undercover operation. Again, I had to say a silent prayer for all the hapless civilians caught in the crossfire of our driving. But it was worth the potential risk of the speeding tickets. Running at 110 miles per hour with Ciccone on my tail always helped to take my mind off things.

As I pulled into Domingo’s driveway, I looked in my rearview mirror to see if Ciccone would pass by, but he didn’t. I smiled to myself. He was finally learning how to play the surveillance game.

I was feeling better about the day now. I didn’t have the added mental baggage of the wire in my boot, and I followed the driveway into the backyard, which was protocol for Mongol doings at Domingo’s place. Domingo came out of his house, happy to see me. “Yo, Billy, what’s happenin’, dude?”

“I’m ready, Pres. Let’s do it.”

Then my good feeling took a quick and decisive dump. Out of nowhere, Domingo said: “Raise the hood on your car, Billy.”

As a Mongol prospect, I was well indoctrinated not to ask questions. A chill came over me. The car was hardwired for a recorder. Was there anything under the hood that would give me away? I was taking a mental inventory of the Mustang. What possible reason could Domingo have for wanting to check under my hood? He had to be looking for evidence of police recording equipment. Did something happen last night? Did they find something in their background checks? Was this whole day going to be a ruse to ambush and kill a federal agent?

“Where’s your gun, Billy?” Domingo asked.

I thought for a moment before replying. “Under the seat.”

“Give it to me.”

I stopped dead. For the first time that day, I thought back to that Onion Field case, in which both cops had complied with an order to surrender their handguns. Should I give up my piece to Domingo? Should I at least ask why? Should I take the bullets out first? Why the hell would he want my gun?

I watched as Domingo, head under the hood, took the Mustang’s air filter apart. With all the pride of a master criminal, he grinned up at me. “Great hiding place, huh?”