Under and Alone (32 page)

The day after the takedown, I was on my way out of Los Angeles with my Special Response Team escort when I received a call on my cell phone. It was Top Hat, a Mongol who lived just outside Daytona Beach, Florida. Top Hat had a legitimate job driving a truck long-distance, and throughout the years of the investigation he’d often been out in California. I first met him at Domingo’s house during a get-together, and we hit it off immediately. He was an older biker, around my age, and we used to sit around and shoot the shit. During one of these conversations I learned that, prior to patching in with the Mongols, Top Hat had ridden with the Warlocks Motorcycle Club when my ATF buddy Steve Martin went undercover with them. Top Hat rattled off the names of 1 percenters, who ended up going to prison because of Martin’s undercover work. “No shit, Top?” I said. “Boy, you just never know.”

In the frenzy of the previous day’s raids, no one in the club was exactly sure what had happened: Had the Mongol leadership been infiltrated by a federal agent or a cop? Had one of the patches been cooperating? Had the gang simply been targeted in a conventional surveillance and wiretap case?

From the backseat of the SRT’s Chevrolet Suburban, I gestured for all the other agents to keep silent. Top Hat had just gotten word of the California raids and wanted to make sure I was okay.

“Yeah, Top. I’m okay. Can you believe this shit?”

“I been through this before, Billy. I can’t believe it’s happening again.” He got quiet for a second, then said: “Look, we know who rolled on us.”

I prepared for him to unload on me, but what he said next threw me completely off-guard. “It’s that big fat fucker in the South Bay Chapter.” I knew who he was referring to—a new patch we called Preacher. I knew that many of the Mongols had never trusted Preacher, partly because he had “patched over” from another outlaw club, partly because his attitude was far too laid-back for most of the boys.

But Preacher was going to be dealt with very shortly, Top Hat assured me. The Mongols had dispatched four guys to his home to kill him
today.
“They’re on their way now,” he said.

“They sure it’s him, Top? ’Cause I don’t think so.”

“Yeah, Billy, they know it’s him. That fucker’s gonna be dead in short order.”

I made the kind of snap decision that had become second nature to me during my years of undercover life: I was going to tell Top Hat who I really was, let the entire Mongol Nation know the truth about Billy St. John. I had no other choice; as a law-enforcement officer, my first sworn duty was to protect an innocent life. And if the hit team was already in motion, then it was only about an hour before they’d be at Preacher’s place. There was no way I could stall and bullshit Top Hat, dilly-dally with excuses, try to get Ciccone on the phone and put together an ATF operation to stop the murder. The only guy who could save Preacher now was Billy St. John.

I took a deep breath and glanced out the tinted window of the SUV as the freeway flew past. “Top, that South Bay Mongol didn’t roll,” I said.

“Yeah, he did, Billy. Now it’s just a matter of taking him out.”

“Listen to me carefully, Top. He didn’t roll. You know how I know he didn’t roll? ’Cause it was me, Top Hat. I’m an agent for ATF. You hear me? So you need to call whoever’s in charge of that murder detail and tell ’em the truth. Billy St. John rolled. If they kill that dude, they’ll be killing the wrong guy, and I’ll make sure they spend a long fuckin’ time in prison for it.”

Top Hat didn’t say another word. I heard his breathing for a few seconds, then he hung up.

I called Ciccone to tell him that the Mongols now knew the truth about me. He immediately dispatched ATF agents to make certain that Preacher wasn’t harmed.

As we drove out of Los Angeles, I didn’t know just how to feel. My world seemed to be crashing down on me.

My testimony against the Mongols stretched on for two more years, through more than two dozen hearings and trials in different jurisdictions. Long before my first court appearance, I was permanently relocated to a safe house in Plano, Texas. As I was driven to my new temporary home by a Special Response Team, the reality hit me: I was leaving my whole life behind. My ex-wife and my sons had been moved to Florida, set up under new legal names. It was now going to be nearly impossible for me to spend any regular time with my children. The nighttimes in Texas were the worst. I missed my kids, missed Southern California, missed my friends. I had thousands of hours of undercover taped conversations to be transcribed, and although I was assigned to the Dallas Field Division, I had little to no contact with them. The only people I saw on occasion were members of the Dallas ATF SRT charged with my security.

The first time I flew back to L.A. to testify was in the prosecution of Junior, who’d been the national president of the Mongols before Little Dave. When I had left California, I was still in Billy St. John mode, with my stringy hair hanging down my back, my beard long and straggly and turning white. Everyone in ATF had gotten used to that version of me.

When I landed at LAX for Junior’s trial, I was clean-cut, clean-shaven, and looked like any other cop. I could see Special Agent John Jacques, in the company of several heavily armed Special Response Team agents, waiting to meet me as I got off the plane. Jacques and I had gone through several ATF medic schools together and even administered IVs to each other in training. I waved to him, but he just stared past me. “Hey!” I yelled. “Are you guys looking for me, or are you here to pick up somebody else?”

Jacques let out a huge laugh when he finally recognized me. “Jesus,” he said. “I was looking for Billy the Biker.”

I shook hands with Jacques and the members of my protection detail, and they hustled me out of LAX to a clandestine hotel in the Covina area. I had worked on a lot of ATF protection details throughout my career, guarding the president of the United States and various dignitaries from around the world. I knew the procedures, but it was odd to be the one protected.

I knew there was good reason for the protection. If the Mongols could get away with it, I knew they would try to kill me. I’d heard them talk about it in Church; I’d heard proven murderers talking matter-of-factly about cop killing. I remembered the night when Domingo had told me that he’d like to go out in a blaze of glory, killing a bunch of cops. He’d go down in Mongol legend as a great hero, the biggest murderer in a club filled with murderers. I thought about the gang members who had military backgrounds and the possibility of a sniper shot outside the courthouse.

I tried to calm myself down as we rode to the courthouse in the San Fernando Valley. I had ATF agents in front of me and behind me. Deputies from the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department, charged with security at all Los Angeles courthouses, had a massive presence there that day. If the Mongols wanted to take a shot at me, they would have their work cut out for them. We pulled into the back of the courthouse near a loading dock. ATF agents checked and double-checked the area for suspicious vehicles and people. Several deputies waited at the back door as I was escorted up the loading ramp. The hallways were carefully cleared and secured as I entered them. I was quickly rushed to a secure room where I waited to be escorted by agents into the courtroom.

Early on in my undercover role, Junior had been convicted of assault with a deadly weapon and sentenced to sixteen years in state prison. But his attorneys managed to get his conviction overturned on a technicality and win him a new trial. I was being called as an expert witness to demonstrate that the Mongols had been engaged in the crime of witness tampering. I had been privy to a number of conversations with Domingo and Red Dog that involved the gang’s intimidating the witnesses scheduled to testify against Junior as well as trying to find other witnesses willing to falsely testify on his behalf.

The psychological ordeal of looking a Mongol in the eye for the first time since I emerged from the undercover role was tempered by the fact that I hardly knew Junior. I had only met him once during my first Laughlin River Run with the gang, so there weren’t many personal feelings between us. Junior was a very violent man and a lifelong criminal, and I knew that he needed to be in prison.

Mongols who wanted to be in the courtroom while I gave my testimony were being strip-searched. There were several in attendance. But the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department was taking no chances, and they weren’t going to let any intimidation tactics by Mongols go unchallenged.

Over the years, testifying against my former Mongol brothers became a kind of personal purgatory. I came to dread those court dates almost as much as I dreaded my time as a Mongol prospect. Red Dog, much to my relief, pleaded guilty to a federal firearms violation, and was sentenced to three years in prison without my having to give eyewitness testimony against him in open court.

I hated the anticipation of making eye contact with the Mongols I had come to know well in my years undercover. My mind would play tricks on me as I sat in my Texas house, playing with Winchester, my golden retriever, and reviewing my tape transcripts before each court date. I was their friend. I was their brother. I drank with them. I partied with them. I rode with them and fought for them. I knew their kids’ names and they told me they loved me. Jesus, I had no doubt that guys like Domingo, Rocky, and Evel would have died for me.

I knew that going eyeball to eyeball with Evel in court was going to be painful. (Domingo had pled guilty, so I never had to testify against him.) In February 2001 I was subpoenaed to testify against Evel. Once again, on a bright Monday morning I found myself staring anxiously out the window of a Boeing 777 on my way to Los Angeles. My protection detail was there to meet me, and the trip from LAX to a hideout hotel went smoothly. I had a few days in which to sit down with the prosecuting attorney whittling out a strategy. It was no big deal, as far as trials go, except that I really did not want to see Evel get hammered again. He had already taken a couple of hits—convicted in separate assault and theft cases—and now he was looking at spending more years in the penitentiary.

He was on trial for his role in the Mongols’ stolen-motorcycle ring, but I just didn’t see the benefit of adding another dozen years to Evel’s prison time. But it wasn’t my call to make. I was just a small cog in a much larger machine. Besides, I said to myself, Evel had no one to blame but himself. I kept telling myself that I was on the right side here, that I was doing what needed to be done.

But I’d been in the law-enforcement business for a long time, and I’d seen the outrageous occur in court. I’d seen the most vicious criminals, murderers who should be doing life in prison, walk away scot-free. I had to tell myself over and over that it wasn’t
me
that Evel loved; it wasn’t
me
that Evel would have given his life for. Evel loved my persona; he loved a shadow I’d created in his mind: Billy St. John, the hard-core Mongol out-law. Evel wouldn’t have hesitated to kill Special Agent William Queen.

Wednesday rolled around, and I found myself sitting outside the courtroom in that horrible limbo, waiting to testify, to face Evel. Ciccone was already inside the courtroom sitting next to the assistant United States attorney.

I was trying to calm my nerves by making small talk with Zack from the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department, who was a friend as well as a member of my protection detail. I kept drifting back and forth between the present and the past. I could see myself laughing and drinking beer with Evel up in my undercover apartment as we broke down that stolen Softail Springer. I could see myself doing better than 130 miles per hour on the 210 freeway as Evel blew past me with plenty of throttle to spare. Then I remembered the awful scene in his house when he’d split his wife’s face wide open and I’d done my damnedest to stitch her back up.

God, I wished I could be a regular cop like Zack. It was all black and white to him. There were no personal issues; it was simply a matter of right or wrong.

But things weren’t so clear-cut to me. The cop in me knew that the Mongols were serious bad guys who needed to be prosecuted and put away. But there was another factor that cops like Zack and Ciccone could never understand. I’d not only witnessed it and lived it—I had
felt
it.

When my mom died and no one from ATF had so much as offered their condolences, but the whole of the Mongol Nation embraced me, and guys like Evel had hugged me and told me, “I love you, Billy,” I felt and understood the bond holding together these outlaw motorcycle gangs.

We could take down their gun-trafficking networks, bust their drug-dealing operations, prosecute them for extortion and armed robbery and rape and homicide. The thing we could never attack was the love these guys felt for their brothers; in many cases it was a love stronger than for their blood relations. It was stronger than the most addictive narcotic.

The door swung open suddenly. It was Ciccone, and his expression was resolute. “Billy, you’re up,” he said.

I walked into the courtroom and caught a quick glimpse of Evel as I made my way to the witness stand, stopping short to be sworn in by the clerk.

“Do you solemnly swear that the testimony you are about to give will be the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, so help you God?”

The
whole
truth?
I thought. The court was in no way interested in hearing the whole truth. “I do,” I said, then took the witness stand.

At first I tried not to look at Evel, but it was like some invisible force, some gravitational pull, wrenching my eyes toward him. I glanced over to see him staring right at me. He wasn’t mad-dogging me. He wasn’t giving me that Mongol murder glare like we’d given the Angels in Laughlin. If anything, Evel’s eyes looked hurt and plaintive.
Billy, what the hell are you doing? Can’t you see it’s me? It’s Evel!

Just then I heard the judge’s voice echoing in the hollow-sounding courtroom. “Would you state your full name for the court, and spell the last name, please?”