No Angel: My undercover journey to the dark heart of the Hells Angels

by Nils Johnson-Shelton

  Timmy repeated it quietly. “Jesus Hates a Pussy.” Carlos and Pops said it together.

  Rudy said, “All right then, Jesus Hates a Pussy. Now let’s get the fuck out of here!”

  It worked. We rode out. To call what followed white-knuckle would be like calling a severed leg a scratch. Rudy put Pops and Timmy, both fearless, hard riders, at the back and told them to choke it up. Carlos and I held on for dear life. We stayed within two feet of the bike in front of us and rode like a chain through a jumbled crank box. Cars flew past at obscene angles as we banked our massive Harleys over the Phoenix freeways. Twilight gave way to nighttime. The lights coagulated in smears of orange, red, and white. The sound ate into our legs and asses and chests, and before we knew it, the machines clicked like they were breathing. It was my first real ride, there was no question about it.

  We pulled into a Circle K south of Mesa proper. Timmy and Pops went in to buy Red Bulls and cigarettes.

  Carlos said to no one in particular, “Muh-ther luh-ver! We’re gonna die on these fucking things. You know that, right?”

  It certainly felt that way. The hogs were exhilarating death traps.

  Period.

  Rudy said, “That was better.” He patted my thigh.

  Slats called and also said, “That was better.”

  I told him thanks and that we were getting ready to head over. He said the wire was running and the cover team was already in place. They could be at the clubhouse, Ithaca pump-action shotguns blazing, inside of forty-five seconds. I said cool and hung up.

  Civilians looked at us from the corners of their eyes. I smiled at one woman and her ten-year-old. She turned the boy’s shoulders away from the group of scary-looking men I was a part of, hustling him toward their car. For the first time in days I thought of my son, Jack.

  I’d missed a lot of my kids’ milestones. The worst was when I was working a casino bombing case in Vegas and I missed Jack’s first steps. Gwen called and left a message as soon as it happened. I couldn’t pick up the phone because I was in a piece-of-shit undercover car with our suspect and my partner, Vincent Cefalu, cruising around the Las Vegas fringe looking for a place to have tacos while we talked about a plastic explosives deal. That’s the kind of thing I’ve habitually traded the most precious moments of my life for.

  The woman with the little boy put her car in gear and pulled out in a quick, sharp arc, her axle whining. We hung around the parking lot a little while longer and Rudy said let’s go. We all said Jesus Hates a Pussy, and we went.

  9 FIRST NIGHT IN MESA

  AUGUST 1 AND 2 , 2002

  THE MESA CLUBHOUSE was in a residential neighborhood. A single-level ranch with a carport on the west side, fronted by a shoulder-high cinderblock wall painted white and topped with red roofing tiles. A large paloverde tree shot up from behind the wall. An open chain-link fence with red plastic strips woven into the links could be closed to seal the driveway. Twin Death Heads faced each other over the porch, engaged in a nonstop stare-down. Painted between them in the flared Hells Angels typeface was the red word MESA.

  Five Hells Angels came out to greet us. Rudy called them Ghost, Trigger, Bighead, Stroker Dave, and Rockem, who was a prospect. All were armed with guns, and each carried a favorite fighting tool: a Buck knife, hammer, sap, or set of brass knuckles. They led us to a side entrance. Rudy entered with Trigger, and I followed Ghost, who wore a ballistic vest. When he reached the door, he turned, put a hand on my chest, and said, “Sorry, Bird. Those gotta stay outside.” He pointed at my Glocks.

  We had to keep our guns; if the Angels wouldn’t allow us the freedom to carry, then the case simply could not progress. Our thinking was that if we relinquished our guns we’d be doing ourselves a disservice. If we said OK, we’ll leave them behind, but just this once, then they might have wondered if we were the badasses we claimed to be. That couldn’t happen. Every word and action had to be devoted to gaining credibility. We decided we’d insist on staying armed—the alternative wouldn’t just be foolish, it would look weak. It’s a cliché, but it’s especially true for undercover operators: You can only make one first impression.

  I said, “Ghost, no disrespect, man, but I don’t take my guns off for anyone, not even HA. It’s nothing personal, it’s just that we’re just like you.” Ghost looked over my shoulder. “My boys will say the same thing.” Carlos, Timmy, and Pops nodded solemnly.

  Ghost frowned and cocked his head. I couldn’t get a bead on his eyes because, even though it was nighttime, he wore dark wraparound shades. I had on a pair of clear prescription wraparounds that were good for night riding. He took his hand off my chest and grunted, “Uh-huh.”

  I continued, “Hells Angels ain’t the only ones with enemies, dude. We got ’em too. If you insist we disarm, then we’ll gladly wait for our P out here. You know Rudy can’t carry, and if you guys were to get ambushed by those Mongol faggots, then we need to be with him to protect him.”

  Ghost said, “OK, Bird, I hear you, but I don’t make—”

  “—the rules.” The voice slithered from beyond the threshold. It was Bad Bob.

  Robert Johnston Jr., at six foot five and 230 pounds, took up the entire doorway. I recalled his rap sheet: arrests for extortion, assault, reckless endangerment, narcotics distribution, and felon in possession of a firearm; felony convictions for criminal enterprise, RICO, and, of course, felon in possession of a firearm. His appearance said something else. He had a neat, round, brown and yellow goatee and long, healthy brown hair that fell onto his shoulders in waves. You could tell he took pride in his grooming. He looked like Barry Gibb’s badass, long-lost brother. He had a barrel chest and catcher’s mitts for hands. His leather vest, which was tastefully adorned by dozens of patches, parted around his round torso. He looked down on us, beaming.

  He repeated, “I make the rules.” His drooping brown eyes looked like they’d seen enough. I sometimes thought I’d seen enough too, but I didn’t have drooping brown eyes. Mine were blue and lit-up. With Bad Bob I figured, He’s a Hells Angel, how many times has he really feared for his life? Not as many times as I had. Bad Bob said, “It’s OK, Ghost. These guys are OK. They’re our guests.” He opened his long arms and we all moved up the stairs.

  As we walked into the main room, Trigger latched a series of deadbolts behind us. It didn’t feel so much like we were being locked in, but that the rest of the world was being locked out. We’d taken steps that we’d never be able to take back. The sense of the unknown was almost crippling—almost. Sure, we’d kept our guns, but all that guaranteed was that we could fight back.

  I lit a cigarette to cloak my fear. I told myself that this was it. I didn’t know how yet, or who would do it, or if it would happen then or later, but I was suddenly convinced I’d die in a Hells Angels clubhouse.

  We were inside.

  There was a bar on one side with a small triangular stage wedged next to it. A twelve-foot-long Death Head painted on one wall, an adjacent wall covered with trophies and memorabilia. A jukebox, two TVs, and a red neon sign that buzzed HELLS ANGELS. The windows were either boarded or covered by red-and-white vertical blinds. The place smelled like a bar. Steppenwolf played on the juke.

  At least one person had already been killed on the floor of the Mesa clubhouse. In the following month, ATF would finally learn why Mesa Mike had decided to turn on his brothers. On October 25, 2001, a forty-something woman named Cynthia Garcia was partying with the boys at Mesa. During the course of that night she had the drunken balls to insult the Angels on their home turf—a major no-no. She was beaten unconscious by patched members Mesa Mike and Kevin Augustiniak and a prospect, Paul Eischeid. She lay sprawled out on the clubhouse floor while her assailants got drunker and higher. When she came to, she had the temerity to disrespect them again for beating up an unarmed woman. They lit into her, this time with steel-toed vigor. It was a textbook case of them feeding off each other for each other, as Slats so accurately put it.

  Mesa Mike
, Augustiniak, and Eischeid hauled the body, which was still technically alive, into the carport and dumped it in the trunk of a car. They drove Garcia out to the desert. They did some offroading. They dragged her into the brush. She grabbed a cuff of Mike’s pants. Eischeid had an old Buck knife. It wasn’t sharp. They stabbed her repeatedly. They took turns trying to cut off her head, which they wanted to leave on a fencepost for the vultures. Her spine gave them trouble. They hacked and wedged the knife’s point into the vertebra, but it remained stubborn.

  Cynthia Garcia, a mother of two, had made a bad decision, and she was dead for it.

  Unable to take the guilt, Mesa Mike flipped.

  I looked at the floor as we walked in. At the time, I knew that Mesa Mike had a secret, but I didn’t know what it was. The floor was clean and white. I told Bad Bob that I liked their place and that I liked that he kept it trim. He smoothed the front of his vest, thanked me, and directed us to the bar and told Rockem to serve drinks. Bud bottles and shots of Jack. We all did the shots, and the glasses got refilled. Bad Bob gave Rudy a piece of paper.

  Bad Bob went behind the bar and rummaged through a shoebox. He found what he was looking for and closed the box and put it back under the bar. He fanned out a handful of HAMC support stickers and patches.

  “I want you guys to take these. Put them on your bikes, your vests.”

  We took them and said thank you.

  Carlos asked Rockem why they called him that. He said I got a brother called Sockem. Carlos asked so you’re Rockem and Sockem? Rockem said yeah. He said we like to fight. Carlos said I like to fight too.

  Bad Bob said Rockem was an America West pilot, a dude with a warped mind devoted to free pussy. Bad Bob lamented that we hadn’t been there the night before. Rockem, whose name was Ralph, had brought a female flight crew to the clubhouse so they could put on a show. He said they rolled in with their pencil skirts and bad stockings and before anyone knew it they were all-the-way drunk and twirling around in their underwear. Pops said he would’ve liked to have seen that. Bad Bob said stick around and you will. He said one of the girls did a lot more than work the floor. Ghost and Trigger giggled like schoolboys. Trigger pumped his fist in the air as if he were pulling the cord that sounded the horn of a big rig.

  This is the universal biker sign for gang bang.

  My phone rang. I had the ringtone set to Nelly’s “E.I.,” which confused the Angels. To put it lightly, Hells Angels don’t like black people or rap music. The only Nelly they know is Willie Nelson.

  I ignored them. I flipped open as Nelly spat, Somebody probably jealous cause they bitch got hit— “Yeah, Bird.” I answered the phone the same way every time.

  It was Jack. “Hi, Daddy.”

  I said, “Whassup? Big Lou there?” That was our code for “Put your mother on the phone.”

  Jack said, “Hold on.”

  “Cool, dude. Let me talk to him.”

  Gwen got on the line. I heard Jack running away, yelling something to the dog. Gwen said, “You’re busy.”

  “Hellooo. What’s shakin’?” I mashed out my smoke in a glass ashtray and lit another. I got a perverse enjoyment from talking to Gwen when I shouldn’t have been. Like the bullet that had once punctured my chest, Gwen’s voice gave me a feeling of invincibility.

  Gwen said, “You’re smoking.”

  I didn’t say anything. I took another pull and exhaled into the mouthpiece.

  “I wish you wouldn’t do that. It’s disgusting.” Her dad had succumbed to smoking-induced emphysema. She was serious.

  “I know. What’s up?”

  “Nothing. Jack and Dale just wanted to make sure you were coming home this weekend.”

  I paused to make it seem like I was getting instructions. I nodded and said, “Right.” On the other end, Gwen hummed the Jeopardy tune.

  Then I said, “You got it, Big Lou. Nothing I’d rather do more. Nothing at all. You can count on me.”

  “Good. See you then. I love you.”

  “Right. Me too.” Gwen made a kissing noise and hung up. “Right.

  They won’t know what hit ’em. I’ll contact you when the gig is up.

  Right. Later.”

  I flipped shut and put the phone on the bar. As I turned back to the boys, Trigger passed me a joint. I took it, but didn’t put it to my lips. My cigarette was still going. Trigger asked, “Who was that?”

  I told them about Big Lou and went into my Imperial Financial debt-collecting spiel. As I talked, I pulled hits from my cigarette and waved my arms around so much they mostly forgot about the joint. We were all various degrees of drunk, anyway. I stuffed the joint in my mouth, not inhaling, and drew out a business card. I handed it to Rudy, who handed it to Bad Bob. He looked at it and slid it into an inside pocket. Pops’s eyes craved the weed. He said, “Bird, you gonna Bogart that roach all night or you gonna share?” I pulled the joint from my mouth, exhaled the remainder of some Marlboro smoke, and passed it to Pops, who covered me by coolly taking a long pull.

  Real cops can’t do drugs unless our lives depend on it. If, down the line, a defense attorney got wind of any drug use—or any sexual misconduct, or a short temper, or anything that might make us look like assholes—then they could discredit us as witnesses. We were, after all, professional liars who constantly misrepresented ourselves—a fact every half-witted defense attorney never let a jury forget. But Pops, our paid informant who was in no way a bona fide law enforcement officer, was our narcotic exception. He was in a gray area, and he partook sparingly to serve our purposes.

  Bad Bob said, “Sounds like a good job, Bird.”

  “Yeah, well, pays the bills. Keeps the lawn green and all of that.”

  “Good stuff. I got a good job too.” We knew Bad Bob worked at a car dealership. Trigger passed Bad Bob the joint and he inhaled sharply. He looked bored. Out of the blue he said, “Hey, let’s hit Spirits.” We went outside, assed up, and started our engines.

  Rudy wasn’t lying; the Mesa boys rode like fearless banshees on crack. Jesus Christ himself could not have ridden a motorcycle better, faster, or tighter than Mesa. True to Rudy’s warning, they kept no more than eighteen inches off the wheel in front of them—and they were often closer than that. By the time the lead riders had banked into a turn, the guy three bikes back had already leaned his shoulder into the thin air. They moved like a snake chasing a rabbit through its burrow. They blew lights and ignored traffic. The rabbits—everyone who wasn’t on a chromed-out Harley-Davidson, everyone who was ensconced in the “cage” of a car or truck, everyone unfortunate enough to be a pedestrian, everyone who was not a Hells Angel—ran scared. We rode like no one’s business but our own mattered, which is the way the Hells Angels always ride, because no one else’s business does matter.

  Spirits, in northern Gilbert, was Mesa’s spot. There were parking spots permanently reserved for the boys, right near the entrance where the bouncers—two lumps built like ice cream trucks—could keep an eye on them.

  Bad Bob led us in. I wasn’t quite inside, but I could hear the music come to an abrupt halt. Then a bad Michael Buffer impersonator boomed over the PA:

  “This is Good Time Charlie the Outlaw DeeJay here to tell you we got more Heeeeeellllllsssssss Angeeeeeelllllllssss in the Houssssssssssseah!” Spotlights hit the entrance as we walked in. “Baaaaaaad Bahhhhhhhhhhhb! And his Angels broooooohhhhhhhhhsssss!!!!!!” The crowd, which was respectable but not enormous, parted like the Red Sea for Moses. As we Solos walked in, the DJ added, “And guests!!!!!!”

  The music—“Enter Sandman” by Metallica—fired back up. It was like stage night, and I thought, All that’s missing is the smoke pots.

  Even for a guy who’d played to stadiums full of screaming football fans, I had to admit that this ceremony felt good. It must’ve felt incredible to the Angels. These were guys who, if they didn’t have the Death Head stitched to their backs, would be broke-dick drifters sitting alone at the end of the bar counting quarters to see if they co
uld afford another can of Bud. Instead, the drinks were free and the women lined up. This goes a long way toward explaining the appeal of joining the Hells Angels: It’s where guys of a certain stripe go to feel good about themselves. Once members, they are offered universal respect—which they undoubtedly deserve since they are, as a group, a fearsome bunch. They get treated like kings because in their world they are the kings. And since they are instantly recognizable wherever they go, they get this respect everywhere. Their world travels with them and for them, a bubble made of leather and motorcycles.

  We were led to a VIP area that was occupied by a few other Angels and a snarl of scantily clad women. Some were attractive, some looked like mudflaps on a snowy day in March. We were introduced.

  After the intros, we broke up. Timmy periodically checked on our bikes and talked with the bouncers, Pops hung with Ghost, and I huddled with Rudy and Bad Bob.

  “I know you been doing business with Cruze down in Tucson,” said Bad Bob.

  Rudy said, “I’m glad you do. If you didn’t, it’d mean he wasn’t on the level, and that’d mean I’d have to stop working with him.”

  “It’s my business to know these things.”

  I said, “It sure as shit is.”

  Bad Bob puffed up. “That’s right.” He turned to me. “I want you to know you can do your thing with Cruze and whoever else with my permission. So long’s I know about it, it’s cool. Man’s gotta put bread on the table.” An unknown prospect brought each of us a brown bottle of beer. The bottles were sweating, their labels peeling.

  Bad Bob swigged his beer. He was reading from the script. We all were. He said, “I hear good things about you, Bird. Only good things.” A little ball formed in my stomach, but Bad Bob smiled and it went away. He appeared to trust us. A more astute criminal might have caught the implication of those words: Sometimes the personas we undercover cops create are too good. I hoped this wasn’t the case. I hoped we weren’t moving too quickly. Bad Bob said, “I gave Rudy a list of phone numbers. We can help you. You can help us.”