Under and Alone (22 page)

I told Buddy to order up the frame and that I would bring him the money by the end of the week. He knew I was good for it.

The next morning I was up early waiting for Evel to call. I hadn’t slept much the previous night. My girlfriend wanted to do nothing but argue. It was seven in the morning, and instead of a cup of coffee, I reached in the fridge and grabbed a beer. A true Mongol breakfast. I popped the top just when the phone rang. It was Evel. He said that J.R., the new prospect, was on his way over to help get the bike in the apartment. J.R. was a big boy, but two guys wrestling a six-hundred-pound bike up a set of stairs with a ninety-degree turn was going to be a job.

J.R. showed up at about ten. We stripped the gas tank, the fenders, and a few other parts off the bike to make it lighter. Then we rolled the bike to the edge of the stairs and began to push and pull it up. The front wheel was no problem, and the first couple of steps went easy. Then the back wheel hit and everything changed. The bike wasn’t built to match the staircase building code. The front wheel was one third of the way up when the back wheel hit. Now we couldn’t stop to rest because either the front wheel or the back wheel would always be trying to run back downstairs. Tough going, but we were making progress until we hit the turn. I was huffing and sweating like a bull when I called for a time-out. J.R. was in no better shape. We held on to the bike as we caught our breath. We looked at each other without saying a word, panting away and wondering where the hell all the help from the SFV Chapter was.

I told J.R. that we were going to have to lift the bike up into a wheelie to round the corner. He looked at me with resignation. We gathered all our remaining strength and in one mighty effort pulled the bike up on the rear wheel and swung it around the corner. The front wheel came crashing down, and the bike ran back down the stairs until it smashed into the turn. We rested for a couple of minutes before finally wrestling the bike all the way to the top. To my amazement, no one had seen us.

We pushed the bike through the doorway and into the living room, where I was planning to do the tear-down operation. Exhausted, J.R. and I collapsed on the couch. I looked at the motorcycle that now adorned the living room floor. Now I truly had a biker pad.

For the next few weeks I spent my time maneuvering around the stolen-motorcycle trade. Evel did most of the work rebuilding my bike on my living room floor and in his garage. Buddy helped by filing off VINs and furnishing parts. Buddy’s wife used her name and business to cover the stolen-bike conversion and to get the bike registered. Finally, after about four weeks, the Softail Springer was finished. It turned out to be just about everything I’d ever wanted in a motorcycle. It still couldn’t outrun Evel’s machine, but then no one’s could.

Most important, now we had the hard evidence to back up everything we’d surmised about the “special construction” bikes that were so common among the Mongols and the other OMGs. We no longer had vague theories to take to court about how these bikes were made. We had done it ourselves. We’d documented it all for later prosecution. “Special construction” in the Mongols’ world translated to “stolen motorcycle.”

11

Living full-time as an outlaw gave me a perspective few law-enforcement officers ever get to experience. I was often more at risk from my supposed brothers in blue than from my adopted brothers in the gang. Just as there were some decent qualities—loyalty, love, respect—among the outlaw bikers, there were some law-enforcement officers who were little more than outlaws with badges.

It first happened on a crystal-clear afternoon in Los Angeles. I’d just paid a visit to Evel down at the South Pacific Motorcycle Shop in El Monte to work on a stolen-motorcycle angle of the investigation. I was on my Harley, ripping up the highway, thinking of slipping away for a few hours to see my kids. We hadn’t had any decent father-son time in months. I was gangstered out in Mongol attire: black jeans; long-sleeved, logo-emblazoned black T-shirt; black bandana; Mongol scarf pulled up over my face; and my now well-worn Mongol patch.

I eased my bike onto Lower Azusa Road, cruising eastbound through the city of El Monte. I had gone only a quarter of a mile or so when I pulled up behind an El Monte black-and-white police car. It wasn’t a big deal to me; it was broad daylight and I was behind the cops, not in front of them. I eased up to the rear of the patrol car, trying not to bring any undue attention to myself.

I was waiting for the light to change, daydreaming about my boys, when a screaming voice caught my attention. I looked to both sides, checked my rearview in an attempt to zero in on the disturbance. I didn’t see anything to my left, right, or behind. I figured there must be some sort of ruckus going on in front of the police car. Then I realized that it was the officer in the black-and-white, and that he was hollering at me.

This police officer was acting like I’d just run over his firstborn male. His arm was out the window, waving and flailing at me to pass him. “Go around me, you fuckin’ piece of shit! Pull around me, you motherfucker!”

The light had turned green, and the cars in front of him proceeded through the intersection. The black-and-white sat stationary at the green light, and the cop kept screaming out the window. I rolled on the throttle, pulled into the lane to the left of the patrol car, and skirted by. The black-and-white dropped in behind me. My mirror was completely filled with the front grill of the police car, inches from my back fender.

I motored on, trying not to make any sudden moves and wondering what the hell this poor excuse for a cop was up to. This wasn’t standard police procedure in anyone’s handbook. The black-and-white swung over and pulled up alongside me on the right. I glanced over and saw a scarlet-faced cop glaring at me, intense hatred in his eyes. “Get the fuck off my street, you motherfucker. You hear me? Get the fuck outta my town, you sorry piece of shit!”

I was too stunned to respond. And what could I possibly say to this guy that wouldn’t get him more fired up? I just moved on toward the next intersection and stopped for the light. When I looked at the black-and-white again, my eyes locked on the barrel of the cop’s service gun.

“You see this, you motherfuckin’ piece of shit? Get the fuck out of my town. Now.”

The light turned green. Getting the fuck out of town now sounded like an outstanding idea to me. I rolled the throttle. The cop car moved with equal haste.

Gathering my wits, I remembered the digital ATF recorder on my belt and reached down to activate it just before having to stop at the next light. I found myself directly next to the black-and-white again. This time I was looking down the barrel not only of the driver’s gun but of his partner’s also. The cop’s red face was turning purple. I looked up from the gun barrel and stared directly into his eyes this time as he screamed, “I’ll fuckin’ shoot you off that bike, you motherfucker!”

I began to think that he might really do it.

I yelled to the car next to me to look at what these cops were doing to me. The officers reacted by dropping their guns out of sight. The light turned green and I pulled away, making it obvious that I was getting the number on their cruiser.

At the next red light, the black-and-white stopped short of the intersection. I began to walk my bike backward in order to get a better recording. My move was met by an immediate and armed response. “You push that bike back here, and I’ll shoot your ass right off of it, you motherfucker!”

It was a credible threat, and I stopped rolling. The light turned green. The cruiser turned right, and I opened up the throttle. With my blood pressure and heart rate going through the roof, I sped on with a mixture of incredulity, anger, and disbelief. I thought of going straight to the El Monte police building and giving it all up—admitting that I was a deep-cover federal agent—just to be able to confront these assholes defaming the reputation of decent cops. I knew that I couldn’t do it, but I could fantasize. I rolled on and took some comfort in the fact that it hadn’t been nighttime. Under the cover of darkness, in the absence of any witnesses, there was no telling what might have happened. As pissed as I was, we would have to wait to deal with the dirty-cop issue until the undercover investigation was over.

The SFV Chapter was holding Church at Domingo’s place, followed by the standard night out barhopping in the San Fernando Valley. I had just gathered some information that a few Mongols had stabbed an individual during a confrontation at a bar in the Hollywood area. I didn’t yet know which patches were involved, so I was carrying my NT recorder in my jacket pocket, hoping to capture a conversation about who was responsible for the attempted murder.

I went into my secretary-treasurer mode, taking notes during Church. Domingo, being a savvy criminal, kept the details vague, but he said that the Mongols needed to stay out of the Hollywood area for a while because of something bad that went down at one of the bars. The cops would be looking for any Mongol patches. The victim was too afraid to press charges, but still the Hollywood area would be hot for a while.

After Church, we hit The Place for the usual pool shooting and beer drinking. Everyone was used to me taking off around midnight; they all believed I had to be at my avionics job early in the morning. Rancid asked for a lift home, and like a true Mongol brother, I told him to pack up and we’d roll.

I popped the trunk on the car and put my jacket with the digital recorder in the trunk along with my Mongol colors. Rancid took off his colors, folded them neatly, and threw them in the trunk. In OMG protocol, cars are called “cages,” and you never wear your colors while riding in a cage. One of the bullet holes my Mustang had acquired during its earlier undercover life had damaged the locking mechanism in the trunk. Now the only way to pop the trunk was by using the electrical release inside the glove compartment.

Just when we were pulling away from The Place, Rancid said he wanted to stop at the liquor store. I went inside with him to pick up something to eat. Although Rancid had already downed a pint, he grabbed a fifth of JD and opened it in the store. He downed about a quarter of the bottle while standing in the checkout line. I was always astounded by Rancid’s ability to drink. We made our way off The Rock to the El Monte area, Rancid continuing to work on that bottle of JD. We were on Lower Azusa Road in El Monte when I passed a black-and-white sitting at an intersection with its headlights off.

The memory of those two El Monte cops leveling their guns at me and threatening to shoot me was fresh in my mind. I damn sure didn’t want to see what these cops might do if they saw the likes of a drunken Rancid, who clearly hadn’t had a bath or shower in over a month, a guy who at this moment made Charles Manson look like a choirboy.

I mentioned to Rancid what I had just seen.

“Shit,” he said, groaning. “I can’t take a shakedown, Billy.”

A few days earlier Rancid had gotten into a pretty fierce fight with his wife. She’d called the cops, and Rancid had taken off and hadn’t seen her since. He knew that the cops had seized a gun from his pad and that they’d been back to his place, and he thought they likely had a warrant out for his arrest. “I know they got paper on me,” he said.

I looked up in the mirror and saw headlights come on. The black-and-white pulled out and began tailing me. I wasn’t speeding, and I hadn’t done anything wrong. “They’re right on our tail.”

“Man, I can’t go to jail right now.”

We heard the whooping of the black-and-white as they lit us up.

“Shit,” Rancid said. “Don’t stop.”

I shot him an incredulous glance. “Brother, there’s no way we’re going to outrun these guys.”

Rancid turned and looked out the back window. We were passing by a school that had a large chain-link fence surrounding it. “Pull over, brother, I’m gonna jump out and run.”

I stopped the Mustang and looked over at Rancid, who was now clearly wasted. He couldn’t even find the door handle. I didn’t want to give these trigger-happy boys any excuses. I opened my door and got out, putting my hands over my head. It was two L.A. County deputy sheriffs who had jammed us. With a sudden shudder, I remembered that I still had my switchblade in my pocket. Now I was sure that I was going to jail. One deputy approached me, and the other went to the passenger side of the Mustang. Rancid was still oblivious, drunkenly trying to open the door. No need; the deputy opened it for him.

Just be cool,
I kept telling myself.
Just cooperate. They have nothing on us. They’ll shake us down and let us go.

I saw the deputy reach in and remove the open bottle of JD from between Rancid’s legs. “What’s your name?” he asked.

I almost crapped in my pants when I heard Rancid’s response: “Fuck you!”

“Out of the car!”

As Rancid got out, he lost what was left of his balance, falling to one knee and holding on to the car. He pulled himself to his feet but was too drunk to stand straight. The deputy asked Rancid for his identification.

“I don’t have any fuckin’ identification.”