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

by Nils Johnson-Shelton

  I became convinced that Jenna Maguire was the best alternative. Her contact with Smitty and Lydia had been impressive, and her youth, good humor, and attractiveness were solid pluses. The problem was getting her. Her superiors and more experienced co-workers had been warning her not to go with me, who had a reputation for wild impulsiveness, into the violent, misogynistic world of the Hells Angels. Her reply was that at least the Angels wore their sexism on their sleeves. JJ’s bosses didn’t much like that.

  There was nothing we could do about it before the Angels Nomads rally, so we suited up. I insisted we trailer the bikes to Flagstaff and ride the final few miles to the actual rally. Neither Timmy nor Pops put up much of a fight.

  Pops was our designated driver. He pulled the truck around to the back of the Patch. Timmy and I pushed the bikes into position. Pops got out of the truck and opened the trailer, not paying attention to where his bike was parked. As he dropped the truck’s gate, it hit the top of his bike’s front wheel and the bike fell over. Pops said shit, Timmy and I laughed. Pops pulled the truck forward and we picked his bike up and strapped it in. Timmy went to use the head while Pops and I finished. As we pushed my bike into the back, I turned my ankle slightly and momentarily let go of my side of the bike, suddenly transferring all the weight to Pops, who was not in a good enough position to hold it. The bike rolled back, over my other foot, and fell into Pops, who managed to keep it upright. I cursed and helped him out. He wasn’t amused. We strapped my bike in as Timmy began to roll his bike up the ramp. As I’ve said, Timmy was a big, strong man, but he’d misjudged the weight of his bike on an incline. He got it halfway up the ramp, lost momentum, and held it there. He asked for help.

  Slats watched the whole thing, chewing chaw like cud. Most of the task force agents stood behind him, shaking their heads.

  As we walked down the ramp, Slats spat and said, “You guys look like a bunch of zoo monkeys trying to fuck a football.” Everyone behind him howled. We did too.

  From then on, in all of our coded conversations, reports and correspondences, we were code-named the Monkeys. For brevity’s sake, I was M1, Timmy was M2, and Pops was M4. We reserved M3 for the dear departed Carlos, should he ever return.

  WE RODE TO Flagstaff, parked the trailer north of town in a Waffle House lot, got out of the truck, rubbed oil on our foreheads, and rolled around in the dirt to make it look like we’d just ridden 150 miles.

  The rally was at the Bellemont Harley dealership and Roadhouse Tavern. The cynic in me couldn’t help thinking that a bar and a bike dealership were the perfect combination of symbiotic enterprises— kind of like a jail and a bail bondsman, or a gun shop and a liquor store.

  Billy Schmidt, a hangaround who wanted to prospect for Dennis, worked the ticket gate with Dolly, Dennis’s platinum blond, neartoothless fiancée. We said hi to them and started to pay. Dolly told us not to worry about it, but I insisted. We went back and forth. Ultimately we each paid five bucks and got our hands stamped with the number 81 in blue ink.

  We sauntered into the parking lot where a few barbecues were smoking, a large tent was erected, and Hells Angels posters flapped in the breeze. The Harley dealership had lined up a phalanx of fresh floor models and the tavern end of the operation had set up several kegs in iced garbage cans. Everyone milled around drinking beer, smoking, and bullshitting. No one was openly armed, us included, as the warning had gone out to be clean for the rally.

  Smitty greeted us and led the way to a group that included Dennis and Turtle. Other clubs in attendance were the Red Devils, the Spartans, the Rough Riders, and the Desert Road Riders. Pops went and got as many beers as he could carry and we commenced drinking and standing around. Traffic whisked by on the adjacent I-40. There was a line of smoke-colored ponderosa pines to the north. I noticed two black vultures drawing lazy spirals in the sky.

  We were living the glorious, free life of the Hells Angels.

  I asked Smitty if there was anyone doing any business that day. He said no. He said this was a public rally and we couldn’t be sure of who was in attendance—the implication being informants or even, perish the thought, undercover cops. He said the uniforms were parked out on the interstate, waiting for an excuse to pounce. I agreed we shouldn’t give it to them.

  Unsurprisingly, a couple of old buddies were in attendance too: Varvil and Abraham. Sugarbear hadn’t arrested them yet. I thoroughly and completely blew them off. I was hanging out with the Angels— with their local hero, Smitty—and they no longer deserved my attention. I could see them eyeing me jealously from across the parking lot and I fought the urge to fall down laughing.

  I told Smitty we weren’t staying long, that we had a job the next day and wanted to get back to Phoenix. He told us to stick around, spend the night, get a room at the Geronimo Inn.

  We made a snap decision and stayed.

  At some point Steve Helland, an Arizona Nomad and close friend of Smitty and Dennis, came over with his wife, Cheryl, and a couple of girls who looked to be about sixteen. The girls were attractive—both wore cutoff jean shorts and HA support T-shirts. They reminded me, as all young women did, of my daughter. Helland said to me, “Hey, Bird, this is my daughter, April, and her friend Michelle. They’ve been wanting to meet you.”

  Smitty said, “Yeah, Bird, you should hang out with these girls, get to know them.” Cheryl Helland nodded, a smile plastered on her face.

  I was being offered the flesh of a minor—and that of her friend—by her own father. I didn’t know whether to laugh at or simply assault the Hellands. In retrospect, I think they were offered to me because, while I was a biker and a debt collector and a gun runner and a supposed hit man, I had my act together, wasn’t a drug addict, and treated myself and others with some measure of respect. In the biker world I was a catch.

  Sad.

  I declined, saying I was plenty capable of getting in trouble without involving a fourteen-year-old. Everyone chuckled. April said she was eighteen, which gave me zero pause. She was still a girl. Helland leaned in and growled, “If she’s old enough to sit at the table, she’s old enough to eat.” He smiled at his wife, who shrugged. April and Michelle stood around for a couple minutes and then wandered away. Lydia, who’d heard the whole thing, asked if I’d spoken to JJ lately.

  I said I could speak to her right now. I flipped open my phone and dialed her up.

  She wasn’t expecting my call, but I didn’t have to speak any code to let her know what the story was. JJ immediately fell into role. Lydia demanded the phone. They gabbed about the rally, Bullhead, San Diego, and me. I heard Lydia say, “We love Bird.”

  That’s damn right.

  Lydia passed the phone to Smitty, who spoke to JJ for a few minutes.

  He mentioned his birthday and the cake she’d fed him, how he’d never forget it.

  Smitty handed me the phone. I said, “Take her easy, sweetheart. I’ll be seeing you soon.”

  17 GIMME A B! GIMME AN I!

  GIMME AN R! GIMME A D!

  OCTOBER 2002

  I’VE MAINTAINED A good relationship with Slats in the years since the case ended, and he’s recently likened my demeanor and intensity during Black Biscuit to that of a fight-trained pit bull with him as my handler, holding the leash as best he could. Any good dog handler knows that even when holding back, you have to let the dog get an occasional taste of blood in order to keep him fierce. He did a good job. I wanted to bite, bite, bite all the time. I wanted suspects. I wanted all of the Angels to be prosecutable. I wanted better evidence against the people we already had, and I wanted new evidence against those we didn’t. We’d gotten a lot of information that could be used against Smitty for both the Laughlin riot and a potential RICO charge. I’d continue to work on him, but I had to spread my wings and branch out.

  It was time to head south. To Phoenix. To Mesa.

  These were bigger hunting grounds—Mesa claimed at least twenty full patches with a large contingent of prospects and hangarounds— and thing
s were going to heat up. We expected to have women pushed on us more often than they had been in Bullhead. Timmy prepped a female Phoenix cop for action, while I waited for Slats to get JJ. Progress on this front was slow—JJ’s ASAC wanted her to attend an advanced undercover class before he released her. This was fine, except that the class started in January. We couldn’t wait that long.

  A return to Phoenix also meant we had to take a good look at Rudy, who was in the wind and useless. Every now and then we’d hear about him running around Apache Junction with Iwana, strung out or on the hustle. For Rudy, the worst had happened. His demons had re-sunk their addicted, criminal talons deep into the thick of his back. His nature had beaten his better intentions. Slats was figuring out what to do with Rudy—whether to cut him loose and pick him up later, or force the issue and sweep him away. It came down to whether or not we thought Rudy was dangerous to us—we weren’t convinced either way. Not yet.

  Timmy, Pops and I went with Mesa to a support party on the seventeenth at Spirits Lounge. We got the standard welcome—a booming intro over the PA by Good Time Charlie the DJ—with a special flourish for us Solos, who were by then a name-brand local club. That night Bad Bob offered Timmy a pretty blonde with hoop earrings, saying she liked to “blow out-of-town bikers.” Timmy said that sounded great but declined, telling Bob he had a woman and that she’d be coming to the support party on the twenty-forth. Bob let up.

  That same night, Mesa Angels Kevin Augustiniak, “Casino” Cal Schaefer, and Nick Nuzzo nudged a three-sheets-to-the-wind blonde at me. They’d fed her boilermakers, tequila, and beer and decided that I should have the pleasure of taking her home. She tottered up to me and did a little curtsy. I stood with Bad Bob, who was accompanied by a young, attractive blonde wearing glasses and overalls, and who was completely inked from her neck down. The curtsying woman was cute. I never caught her name, but I’ll never forget what she did next. She took three steps back, shook off the cloud of alcohol that surrounded her, and began to kick and pump her fists in the air.

  “Gimme a B! Gimme an I! Gimme an R! Gimme a D! What does it spell? BIRD! BIRD! That’s my man, if he can’t do me, no one can!” She was actually pretty good. She jumped high, her toes were always pointed, and her smile had the quality of being attached, like she was a Mrs. Potato Head toy.

  Casino Cal and Nuzzo nearly fell down laughing. Bad Bob grabbed the tattooed blonde’s slender waist and squeezed, toasting the cheerleader with his beer bottle. I smiled and shook my head.

  I took the cheerleader on. I let her sit on my lap and hang off my arms and shoulders. At one point I gave her a piggyback ride around the pool table.

  We all went back to the clubhouse and horsed around some more. The Angels fed her more booze.

  ATF had recently discovered the secret that Mesa Mike, the informant being run out of LA, had been keeping: He’d admitted and alleged that he and two of his Mesa brothers had beaten Cynthia Garcia on the clubhouse floor and killed her in the desert.

  We were at the clubhouse for fifteen minutes before I realized what I’d potentially done. By allowing this cheerleader to come back to the clubhouse, I’d delivered an arguably innocent, if foolish, woman into the mouth of the lion. The beast hadn’t bitten yet, but there was nothing saying he wouldn’t.

  I had to get both of us out of there. Pronto.

  I grabbed her and went up to Timmy, Nuzzo, Augustiniak, Bad Bob, and his skinny blonde. The cheerleader tugged at my arm. I said, “I gotta roll this honey outta here right now. She’s gonna be no good to me in thirty minutes.”

  Bob said, “Shit, Bird, stick around. Looks like the little girl wants to have some fun. The party’s just gettin’ started.” We had to go. If she passed out, I’d have been responsible for facilitating a gang bang.

  We turned to leave, and everyone gave us a hearty good-bye.

  Outside, I squeezed her for her home address, put her on my bike, and took off. She barely held on. I took it slow. When we got to her house she was asleep on the back of the bike. I hauled her off, fished her keys from her pocket, walked her upstairs, and dumped her into bed. She was very unconscious.

  My mind raced. Was this chick a setup? Who knew what else besides liquor was in her system? My paranoia said roofies. I looked at her lying in bed. She looked dead, but her chest rose and fell shallowly. I left her room convinced I was in a bad spot, that the Angels had followed me to make sure that I’d screw this woman and leave.

  Therefore, I couldn’t leave. I had to maintain my cover and play my role. I’d been in similar situations, and they raced through my mind.

  One stuck out.

  I was working the Iron Cross MC in Georgia with Vince Cefalu. Vince was one of the few UCs who outshone me in terms of performance and aggression. I learned a lot from him. In addition to being a hell of a UC, he’s got a PhD in psychology, which I can only assume has helped him in his undercover work a great deal.

  The leader of the Iron Cross MC was a guy named Li’l Rat. He was being bad-mouthed by a local nobody who owned a tattoo shop. Li’l Rat wanted us to work over this rival and tell him to shut up. We knew it was a mud check—a test of will to make sure we didn’t “drop our mud” in serious situations—and we knew we had to do it in order to maintain our cover story.

  We went to the guy’s shop. It was dusk, and the guys Li’l Rat sent to follow us did a poor job of concealing it. We’d have to have big words with the guy, maybe knock him down and rough him up a little.

  We pulled into the parking lot. The guy’s shop looked shut down. Vince walked up to the door and pounded it with the fleshy side of his fist. He dragged hard on a cigarette before pulling it from his mouth to shout, “Open up!”

  No answer. Another drag as he pounded some more. He yelled, “Open up, get out here, and take your ass-whooping, you chickenshit cocksucker!” Vince put on a good show for Li’l Rat’s spies.

  Eyes appeared through some blinds. A voice said, “Give me a minute.” Vince turned to me and winked.

  The door opened, and before either of us could react, the Tat Man had lowered a double-barreled crack-back shotgun in Vince’s chest. I thought, Shit. I also thought, Shotguns throw a wide pattern, I better step to the side. I did. I put my hand on my pistol but didn’t draw.

  Later on Vince told me all he could think was that he should’ve been a fireman.

  Tat Man was clearly scared and tweaking. All three of us were in a jam. Vince was dead and so was Tat Man, as I was going to kill him right before I stooped to the blasted body of a dear friend in a futile attempt to save his life. Also, the case was as dead as Vince.

  Then Vince did one of those things only Vince would do.

  He took a final drag on his smoke and let the hot, pinched butt drop to the ground. He grabbed the bad end of the shotgun, removed it from his chest, and guided it onto his forehead, keeping his hands on the barrel. As he did this he turned to me slightly and winked again. The message was clear: If I die tonight it won’t be like a punk. Tell my sons I died like a man, not like some loser begging a drug addict to spare his life.

  The Tat Man didn’t know what to think. Truthfully, neither did I.

  Vince spoke clearly and calmly. “Few things. One: If you’re gonna shoot someone, shoot them in the head. Two: You put a gun on me, you better intend to use it. And three: Fuck you, do it now or I’m going to beat you with your own gun and fuck you in the ass over the hood of my car.”

  As Vince finished his words, he quickly jacked the gun into the shoulder of the Tat Man. Then he yanked it back. In less than a second Vince had reversed roles. He was holding the gun and Tat Man was looking for a place to hide. I thought, How did he do that?

  Vince broke open the breach and pulled the shells out, putting them in a pocket. Then he did something else only Vince would do: He didn’t beat the guy. He handed him back the gun, still open, and said, “You can’t bad-mouth Li’l Rat anymore. He’s my friend and I won’t have it. The next time you open your mouth and ‘Li’
l Rat’ comes out, you better start with ‘I’m sorry’ or ‘Forgive me.’ You got a pass tonight, but you’ll only get one.”

  With that he turned and left. I followed him like a shocked puppy dog. The Tat Man just stood there, trembling lightly. He was probably pissing himself.

  The guys Li’l Rat had sent to see how we handled ourselves had already scurried off to report what they’d just witnessed.

  This episode ran through my mind as I wandered through the cheerleader’s apartment. I knew that mud checks came in many forms, and that when given one, one should always, at minimum, give the impression that one has followed through. The Angels still made me insecure. Was this a test because I’d been avoiding women? Was it Cal, Nick, and Kevin’s joke on me? Was she the old lady of an enemy and I a pawn in some payback game?

  I wandered into her kitchen, not turning on any lights. I phoned Tom “Teabag” Mangan, a task force member and close friend who was on the cover team that night, and told him the situation. He broke off from the team covering Mesa and cruised over to the cheerleader’s neighborhood. He looked around and gave the all-clear. He asked how she was doing. I said she looked fine. Teabag asked, “That girl got lucky tonight, huh?”

  “Yeah. Real lucky. Instead of one of those assholes fucking her, she gets me pretending to fuck her.”

  Teabag laughed a little.

  I told him I was going to hang around for a while, just in case. He said OK and hung up. I opened the fridge, made myself a turkey sandwich with some slightly moldy cheese and brand-X ketchup, and settled down in the living room in the dark. I ate quietly, and when I was finished I closed my eyes.