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

by Nils Johnson-Shelton

  Bobby said, “Yes, sir.”

  Slats and Gayland laughed again.

  Lou said, “Jay tells me you might like to do some work for me.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Good.” He pulled a long Cohiba from inside his jacket and held it in his fist. “I like you, Hells Angel Bobby. You know when to talk and when to shut the fuck up. I’ll let Jay know when we can use you. And when we do use you, don’t fuck up.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Good.” He turned to me. “Jay, I got a mess of guns coming through tomorrow. You know me and guns—I won’t keep ’em around. I wanted you to have first crack at them. You want ’em, great, no, that’s no shakes either. I’ll give you a call.”

  “Thanks, Lou.”

  “No problemo. Well, that’s it, boys. Drinks and dinner are on me tonight. I gotta make a date.” He moved past us and walked up to JJ. “JJ, as always, I’m enchanted. I don’t know why you hang out with this guy, but he’s lucky for it. Take care of him.” And with that he left, his bodyguards silently drifting behind him.

  I sat down next to JJ, Bobby sat across from us. He was entranced.

  I asked, “Well, whaddaya think?”

  Bobby took a breath. “I think that guy’s just like the guys back East.

  I hadn’t seen one in so long I’d forgot.”

  “Forgot what?” JJ asked.

  “Those kinda guys are real fucking badasses. Yeah, I think it’s good. I hope when my time comes I can prove myself, make Lou proud.”

  I lit a cigarette. “I’m sure you will, Bobby, I’m sure you will.”

  I CALLED GAYLAND later on, after I’d seen Bobby to his room.

  Gayland asked, “So, how was our guy?”

  “He was good. Almost too good. Bobby bought the whole thing, though, said Lou was a real-deal gangster. I don’t know where you got him, last minute, but he was good.”

  “He better’ve been good. He’s New Jersey mob. He came out here and fucked up. We caught him and got him to flip. He wasn’t faking it, Jay. Unlike you, he is the real deal.”

  33 “GET ME THAT BROWN MUSTARD,

  NOT THAT YELLOW SHIT.”

  APRIL–MAY 2003

  BOBBY ACCOMPANIED ME on the completion of the ruse gun deal the next day. It was a nice little haul: an Uzi, two Mac-10s, a silencer, and two AK-47s, both of which were full autos. JJ paid our contact—the task force agent Buddha—five grand in cash and we went our separate ways. For his trouble, I gave Bobby a hundred bucks. I said, “Not bad for five minutes’ work, huh?”

  “Naw. Not at all.”

  I repeated what I’d told Mac: “That’s how easy it is to make money with me, dude.”

  He was impressed.

  Our last night in Vegas we decided to take the girls out to dinner at New York, New York. We hung around the casino floor while Staci and JJ decided where they wanted to eat. Bobby looked uneasy and asked me to take a walk. We strolled outside and stopped on the corner of Las Vegas and Flamingo Boulevards, surrounded by tourists, traffic, and a roller coaster. A blind hot dog vendor stood in front of his cart yelling, “Red hots, getchya red hots here!” It looked like Bobby wanted to get something off his chest but couldn’t find the words, or didn’t want his words overheard. I lit a cigarette and offered one to Bobby, lighting his. “Hey, Bobby, want a dog?”

  “Yeah, sure.”

  I ordered and gave Bobby his pre-dinner snack. He still wasn’t speaking. I tried to break the ice. “Bobby, you ever think about where you’re gonna be in a year, five years?”

  He looked at me like I’d insulted his mother. “How the fuck do I know? Shit, maybe I’ll take a pencil and poke my eyes out and sell hot dogs.”

  I paid for the dogs and we sauntered away. My icebreaker worked. He said that he’d felt a little awkward around Big Lou because he didn’t know how to tell him that he’d “done work” before—as he said those words he mimed firing a pistol. I was a little surprised. This was the first time Bobby had opened up regarding the alleged murder he’d committed for the club. I nodded gravely and didn’t interrupt. He said he’d gained the reputation of a rat-hunter—a guy who killed snitches or informants—and that “three can keep a secret if two are dead.” Normally this kind of talk is idle bullshit, but I believed Bobby. He was calm, matter-of-fact, and not boastful. He assumed I was in a similar position, an assumption I didn’t deny. He said that “some call it stupidity, but it takes balls to walk up and shoot someone between the eyes.” He said some other guys couldn’t live with themselves after the fact, which was a problem he didn’t have. “Me? I take care of business. Anyone crosses me, I’ll get payback. It may take me four or five years, but I’ll get it. I’ll be the guy standing by your pillow at three a.m. holding a two-by-four, waiting for your eyes to pop open.” The words weren’t hypothetical. They were meant for me. He said, “Remember that. You’re in and you’re with me, so don’t fuck up. Blood in, blood out.”

  The next day, after I’d downed a handful of Hydroxys, we rode back to Arizona. Timmy and Pops had gone home the night before to see their families, so it was just me and Bobby. Right after crossing the dam, Bobby’s bike broke down and we loaded both bikes into the trailer. JJ and Staci got in the back and I drove. The road hypnotized me. I tried to picture the day Bobby would find out I was a cop, tried to guess what his expression would be. I wanted to gauge his level of shock, because I didn’t have any problem imagining what he’d look like standing over my bed at 3:00 a.m., grasping a rough-hewn two-by-four.

  SLATS LIKED THE Big Lou ruse. He wasn’t sure what it gained us, but he had a good time watching it go down. Still, it made him nervous. He said our plays were getting too intricate and too risky. “Tone it down. Play it out with these guys, don’t play it up.” He reminded me that he could pull the plug whenever he wanted. He said, “You guys get too close to the fire and I will stamp it out.”

  “All right, fine.” Slats wanted to hear the words, so I said them.

  I knew I was lying, though. Being HA hangarounds—and soon-to-be prospects—was not easy. I thought March had seen the worst, that my days and nights had reached their saturation points. I was wrong.

  Since we’d become hangarounds, each day’s obligations had mushroomed. If it wasn’t Slats, it was the Hells Angels. If it wasn’t either of them, it was my family. If it wasn’t my family, it was me. I couldn’t shut down.

  Every morning started with my Hydroxys. I swallowed them down with coffee or Red Bull and took more in the afternoon, and if I was out with anyone at night, more after dark. I drank alcohol while on them; worked out on them, wrote reports on them. My spelling suffered, my bike riding actually got better. My ability to gab endlessly also improved—something I thought impossible. I felt edgy and my stomach shook all the time. When the pills wore off, I plunged into a deep chemical—or lack-of-chemical—depression. Most nights, after scribbling reports and hiding them in the safe under my mattress, I’d lie down and pray for sleep that seldom came. It was not uncommon in those days for me to cry while trying to get a few hours of physical rest. The tears were born of exhaustion and the stress of leading a double life. Anyone looking at me would always see the same Bird: Bird the debt collector; Bird the cop; Bird the bullshitting-a-mile-a-minute hustler. On the inside, I thought I was something else, something I’d never been before. I sometimes swung completely, and quickly, from confidence to doubt, from righteousness to guilt. If I’d had the capacity for self-reflection I might have noticed the changes being wrought on me, but I had none. All I could do in those days was feel and react and think about ways to succeed with the Angels.

  I’d look in the mirror, shaving my gaunt cheeks with a straight razor, and the only things that stared back at me were the cold blue eyes of Jay “Bird” Davis.

  Anyway, we got a residence in Prescott. We got our hands on a single-wide trailer and put it in the corner of a trailer park, aspen trees and a patch of grass out back, a picnic table by the steps. It was way too smal
l and anything but homey.

  I hated to give it to him, but Slats was dead-on about one thing: We weren’t freelancers anymore. We had new responsibilities to our brothers, responsibilities that required a lot of hanging out with Angels. What was even worse was that, given our desire to gain real membership, we actually wanted to hang out with the guys. Time bled into a continuum of pills, bikes, riding, guns, guard duty, lectures on rules, and general monotony. Rarely did one day seem much different from another. The only way I could remember anything was by listening to recordings and reading and writing daily reports.

  April 24, church at the clubhouse. The Skull Valley house was on a nice country road surrounded by farms and crop fields. Bobby and Staci lived in a first-floor apartment, Teddy lived upstairs. Joby had turned a large closet into a bedroom to crash out in. The main room was a storage facility.

  Before church convened I asked Joby what we should do if any of us came across a Mongol. “Kill or otherwise fuck that bitch up. Ask Teddy.” I did. He said, “Yeah, it’s your duty to kill him and not get caught.”

  Bobby announced that church that day was members only. We were ordered outside to secure the perimeter. It was cold—around forty degrees—and we were underdressed. We blew on our hands and stamped our feet. Pops and I crossed paths every ten or fifteen minutes. The moon was up, invisible things scurried through the grass. At one point Pops asked, “Who are we guarding these guys from?”

  “Bunny rabbits, dude. They’re full of rabies around here.”

  Pops laughed. “Maybe we should fire off a round, just to scare them.” I wasn’t sure whether he meant the rabid rabbits, the Hells Angels, or both. It didn’t matter. I laughed too. The boys finally had some hangarounds to pull guard duty, just like the other charters. I laughed some more. It felt like a big joke. The boys were probably in the clubhouse laughing too, knowing no one was going to interrupt church at Skull Valley.

  After an hour they whistled from the house. We trudged up in the moonlight and went inside. There was an empty bucket of fried chicken on the table, and dirty plates strewn with bones. There were three unopened containers of coleslaw. They asked if we’d had any recent run-ins with the law, when they knew we hadn’t. Asked if we were wearing wires. We lied. We said fuck no, thinking, What are we supposed to say if we are? Yes? They lectured us again on being hangarounds and prospects, though we were reminded that we weren’t prospects yet. They said for the time being we were basically bodyguards for full members, and that each member had his own way of dealing with guys in our position and that whatever that was, we had to respect it. They said no drinking, no drugs, no fucking around unless given permission. We said we understood. They dismissed us back to the cold and continued with their heavy “members only” shit.

  We went up to Bullhead at the end of the month to check on Smitty and Lydia. Smitty invited us to their place. It was nice to see them, nice to see Lydia’s glass-strewn yard. There was a hominess there that all of us had been missing. Not long after we got in, Lydia microwaved us a meal of beef stew—the kind with the creamy gravy, potatoes, and carrots. I thought, Wow, this is how real people live. I’d gotten so used to the Waffle House, I’d forgotten what a real meal was like, even one that came from a can. After she fed us she said she was going to bed. It wasn’t late, Lydia was turning in at a decent hour—something I hadn’t done in months. Smitty lit up a Red, I lit up a Newport—I’d recently switched to menthols for no reason—and he proceeded to bitch and moan about his problems. He was having trouble getting backing for the Mohave Valley charter he was trying to set up. He felt like guys in his own charter—the Angels Nomads—were pulling their support and he couldn’t understand why. Compounding these troubles were the persistent rumors of Mongols over the hill in Kingman, guys who’d miraculously avoided detection for months. He told me he was looking for untraceable guns so he could pop some of those guys off.

  On May 1, I sailed back into Prescott on warm spring winds and the chemical loft of weight-loss energy pills. JJ and I met the boys at the broke-dick strip club they owned, the Pinion Pines. Teddy sat in a booth with his tanks of oxygen and his girlfriend, Devon, who was taking a break from pole-dancing. She sat on his knee, her perfect ass concealing his thigh in mounds of bikinied flesh. Bobby lounged across from them smoking a Marlboro Light. JJ slid in and I sat next to her. They wanted to know how Bullhead was and, again, if we’d had any trouble with the law. I said no, not this time, but JJ and I told them the story of our traffic stop back in November. They said they’d heard something about that. Teddy wheezed, “I keep my eye on them, ya know? We’re trying to get started up here and we don’t want no fucking trouble but we want respect too, ya know?”

  Bobby said, “Anyway, Bird, you let us know if anything happens to you with them, even a ticket. I mean, a cop so much as says hello to you, tell us.” I said OK.

  I told them Smitty was having problems starting the Mohave Valley charter and that I wanted to talk to Joby about it. Bobby said, “Don’t concern yourself with that shit. It’s nice Smitty’s opening up to you and all, but that’s none of your business.” I said OK.

  Teddy said through a smile, “Everyone’s green, I’m tellin’ ya.” I asked him what he meant. “I mean they’re jealous we’re the ones that got ya.”

  Bobby said, “That’s right. But don’t talk to anyone about it, all right?”

  Once again, I said OK.

  Next day was church, again for members only. Timmy, Pops, and I arrived early and I walked up to Teddy holding an envelope containing $500. Before I got close enough to hand it to him, he barked, “What the fuck with those?” He pointed at my feet.

  I was wearing flip-flops.

  “I got stinky toes, Teddy, I like to air them out.”

  “Fuck that. Whaddaya think this is, a fucking hobby? Something you do for fun? Naw. Get rid of those fucking things. I catch you wearing those again, I’ll run you on errands for tampons and Barbie dolls. I mean really, Bird, flip-flops ?” I considered the complaint and decided I’d wear boots more often, if for no other reason than not to have to hear it.

  I handed him the envelope, hoping it would change his mood.

  He took it, holding it like a dirty piece of toilet paper. “I’ll accept this, Bird, but ya can’t buy yer way into the club.”

  “I know that, Teddy, I’m just doing what I think is right. We made a lot of money off Big Lou’s guns. I thought you’d appreciate it.”

  “I do, I do. Thanks.”

  “’Sides, Teddy, I wouldn’t want to be a member if I could buy my way in.”

  Timmy and Pops seconded that, and Teddy said OK.

  Bobby then told us we had to go get them sandwiches from Subway. Teddy stuffed the envelope in his back pocket and growled, “Right.

  I’m hungry. Subway sounds good. I wanna hot cappy sandwich, provolone, lettuce—and tomatoes if they’re red. They got any white or green in them, or they look mealy, forget the tomatoes. And get me that brown mustard, not that yellow shit. No fucking mayo.” Bobby said he changed his mind and felt like a burger and a black-and-white milkshake. He said we’d have to get that somewhere else, maybe TGI Fridays. Joey wasn’t there yet, but they told us to get him a small salad, no dressing, since he was on a “bullshit health kick.” As we were leaving, Teddy yelled, “And get a variety of beverages!”

  We filled their order and came back. As Teddy chewed his sandwich he said, “Good job on the mustard.”

  Bobby slurped his milkshake and said, “Yeah, yeah. That’s good shit, hangarounds. You just earned yourself some beers.” We got some cold ones. Joey showed up, they gave him his salad, which was also from Subway, and laughed at him. He ignored them and told them it was actually what he wanted. He went to the fridge and drenched it in ranch. He didn’t thank us. We were told to go outside and secure the perimeter.

  We walked the fence again. While outside, Pops told us he’d wiped all of their straws with his dick. We tried not to laugh too hard.

&
nbsp; We went down to Phoenix on May 3 and spent the next couple days catching up on paperwork. Gwen called and asked me to cut the grass. Things hadn’t been going well with us—I looked more and more like a biker, and even though I insisted she was making things up, she refused to believe I wasn’t having an affair with JJ. I told her I needed to avoid the kids because I didn’t want them to see me in my current condition. She said they planned to be busy on the sixth, to come by then. OK. I’d make it a quick trip.

  I got to my place, hopped off my bike, and went out back.

  The yard needed a serious trim. I fired up the mower, took my shirt off, and started pushing. I couldn’t have cared less about that lawn, but I wouldn’t give Gwen any additional ammo to use against me—I wouldn’t do it unevenly or leave any mohawks. In times past, my greenthumb perfection had come from a place that would only accept the best—now it came from hatred. I’d built that house with my own hands, planted the yard with my own hands. I used to love both, but now I hated them. I cut the lawn short and neat.

  Halfway through, my mom and dad showed up. I hadn’t seen either of them in months. They must’ve heard the mower because they came around back and watched me. I didn’t see them. They didn’t call to me, or if they did, I didn’t hear. I turned. I killed the motor. My mom was crying.

  “Hey guys, what’s wrong?”

  “What’s wrong?” my dad asked.

  “Yeah, why’s Mom crying?” I could tell my dad knew, almost telepathically, exactly why it was his wife was crying.

  She wiped her tears with her arm and pointed at me. “What did you do to your arms?”

  My tattoos. She hadn’t seen them. My parents had gotten used to my other tattoos, but each time I added one, I think they prayed that would be it. At least I think my mom prayed for that.

  I sighed and said, “You have no idea what I’m going through. I’m doing what I have to do. Let me finish this and we can talk.” I fired the mower back up. I didn’t care about my mom’s tears. They went inside, but when I was done they were long gone.