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

by Nils Johnson-Shelton

  Beep.

  It’s me. Are you alive? For most wives I know this is a rhetorical question, but in our case . . . Please call.

  Beep.

  You’re being a real jerk, Jay. I called Joe so I know you’re still breathing. Jack’s fight was about him standing up for a mentally retarded girl with glasses. So in spite of the fact that his father is pretending to be a criminal, you must have done something right. The sprinkler is still busted. The lawn is going to die. It’s on you. Don’t bother calling.

  Beep.

  I deleted them all.

  Suddenly Timmy turned and said, “They’re coming.”

  I turned my phone off and stuffed it into a pocket. I stuck the gun under my leg and lit another cigarette.

  Timmy coughed quietly into one of his fists. The calm bastard.

  I heard two cars and a bike. The bike, coughing, fired down. The doors of the cars slammed shut. Footsteps in the gravel. Knock, knock, knock. Timmy opened the door and stepped aside.

  I didn’t get up.

  Teddy waddled in first, his oxygen tank in tow. He had an awkward time moving up the trailer’s narrow steps and getting through the small door. His eyes were serious-looking. He hugged Timmy and noisily kissed him on both cheeks.

  Rudy came in second. His face was red and his eyes were swollen. He’d been crying—he’d really loved Pops. He hugged Timmy and held on to his sleeves a little too long. The guy was contradiction incarnate: an HA bruiser reduced to tears.

  Bobby was next. Still wearing his shades. He hugged Timmy and kissed him on both cheeks. Next he stepped over to me and I got up, careful not to let the gun under my leg fall to the floor. My body obscured it. He gave me a big hug too.

  Joby came in last. He hugged and kissed Timmy and then he hugged me. I sat back down.

  We were six men—most of us quite large—in the living room of a single-wide trailer. The guys smelled of beer. I smelled of cigarettes. Teddy smelled of Devon, who smelled of cheap concealing powder and pussy. Put together, we smelled like the Pinion Pines strip club.

  Teddy sat down and lit a long, thin, brown cigarette. Timmy closed the door and stood behind everyone. Rudy vigorously rubbed the top of his shaved head, while Bobby rocked back and forth on his heels. Joby was stock-still.

  Teddy took a drag and exhaled through his nose. Smoke filled and surrounded the oxygen tubes that jutted from his nostrils. He said nothing, but he nodded curtly, signifying that he wanted to know what was up.

  I couldn’t believe it, but they were scared. I felt a flash of euphoria. Adrenaline and the threat of death concealed it.

  I picked up the FedEx box from the floor and placed it on the table between Teddy and me. Joby leaned in and picked it up.

  I told them Pops’s story, of how he was eager to prove himself and desperate to erase all the ball-busting he’d endured. I told them how he’d tried to take care of the Mongol on his own before we got down there, of how he got shot in a Mexican cantina. I told them how we buried his body with a bottle of Jack and a handwritten note that read, Pops, AFFA, Angels Forever, Forever Angels, we love you. I told them how Timmy and I waited for the Mongol bitch to return to his crappy motel room the next night. I told them how we took care of business: how we whispered the old Solo motto, Jesus Hates a Pussy, and then knocked on the guy’s door; how he opened it, fully dressed, Mongol cut and all, demanding, “Qué fucking es?”; how we beat him unconscious with my bat; how we broke his arms and knees like chicken wings; how we taped him up; how we gagged him with a pair of dirty underwear; how we wrapped him in the motel room rug and threw him in the trunk of the Cougar. I told how we drove and drove and drove and opened the trunk and dragged him to a dried wash in the desert. I said we told him the Hells Angels were killing him. I told them how Timmy leaned in and did the honors; how we stole the corpse’s cut and drove home, full of rage, revenge, and redemption. I told them how we disposed of the gun, piece by piece, in the Mexican Sonoran desert.

  I was Bird, and I could sing.

  Everyone listened intently. When I was done I nodded at the package.

  “We got proof. We knew we’d have to show something, but we weren’t gonna drive over the border with evidence of a murder in the trunk, so we sent that box up from Mexican Nogales.”

  Everyone remained quiet. Teddy looked at me with a lazy, intense stare, his head cocked slightly to one side. He’d finished smoking. My cigarette was down to a hot nub. I mashed it out and lit another. Joby opened the box.

  “Wow!”

  The room was so small that no one could see around Joby’s back.

  Bobby jockeyed to get a look. “Well, what is it?”

  “It’s a Mongol cut.”

  Joby turned. He held the vest by the shoulders. He huffed incredulously and shook his head. He turned the jacket around so everyone could get a better look. There it was: a Mongols top rocker, a California bottom rocker, the cartoonish center patch of the ponytailed Mongol rider on his chopper. The leather showed its wear—it was encrusted with sand and salt, grease and grit. And there was blood all over it, thickest around the neck and over the shoulders. Little streams of blood had dried all the way down to the hemline, front and back.

  Teddy took three quick stabs off the tank. For a brief moment he was visibly nervous. There was no turning back. He knew that everyone in that small room was a murderer, an accomplice, or both. He stood and joined the group huddled around the jacket. I knew then that we were in control. I’d planted a seed of uncertainty, and it had blossomed into fear. Timmy and I looked at each other somberly, but I wanted to scream YES! and pump my fist at him.

  Maybe I wouldn’t die after all.

  “There’s pictures, too.”

  Joby reached into the box again. He pulled out an envelope, opened it, and removed a thin stack of photographs.

  “They’re digital. I downloaded them onto a flash card and printed them on a portable printer while we were down there. Those are the only copies. We burned the printer and the flash card.”

  The photos showed a graying white male laying facedown in a small ditch, his torso twisted in an uncomfortable position, his wrists taped behind his back and his ankles taped together. A hairy flap of skin opened at the back of his head. In the sand above his shoulder was a stain of blood and a pile of brains. Blood droplets had splattered into the sand and dirt, making small, dark constellations. His blue jeans were dotted with purple, quarter-sized splotches. His hands were limp.

  Joby passed the Mongol cut to Bobby. Bobby inspected it and passed it to Teddy. Rudy watched the vest move around the room with contempt in his eyes.

  When the pictures made their way into Rudy’s hands, he pointed at the bloody pile and asked, “Those his brains?”

  Timmy stepped in and said, “Don’t know. I hit him point-blank. His head was all swollen like a balloon. He looked real stupid. When I shot him it made a popping sound like you dropped a bagful of water. Then it hissed.”

  Rudy chuckled and said, “Looks like grape jelly.”

  Joby said with an air of authority, “Those ain’t his brains, Rudy.

  That’s blood that coagulated when Bird hit him upside the head with his bat. Couldn’t get out until he got popped.”

  “Oh,” Rudy said.

  Teddy turned around, breathing with effort. He sat down. I hadn’t moved. I thought, They’ll have to come to me now.

  Teddy placed his terrifying hands palm-down on the table between us. They were fat and sun-baked, freckled with age. His fingers were covered with Death Head rings commemorating Hells Angels anniversaries. Some had been there for decades and were now simply a part of his hand.

  He looked me dead in the eye and continued to say nothing. The room was silent. Everyone was staged up behind him, and Timmy was staged up behind them. If for some reason I’d misconstrued their cues and now they were going to try to pop us, my biggest worry was that Timmy and I would shoot each other from opposite ends of the trailer.

  I
put my hands on the table and laced my fingers together. My hands weren’t fat like Teddy’s. I kicked my feet out to the side, revealing that I was wearing flip-flops. Teddy didn’t seem to notice. I’d worn them for him as a little fuck-you.

  He reached up and pulled the tubes out of his nose. A thin bead of snot attached the tube to his nostril like a spider’s web. He wiped it away with the back of his hand.

  His voice was as steady as a rock. He said, “I don’t like it when we lose one of our own.”

  I said, “Pops was one of my best friends. A true warrior.”

  “It’s like when a parent loses a child.” Teddy looked longingly at the surface of the table. We were silent for several moments.

  He looked back into my eyes. “But ya did what it takes. Sometimes a Hells Angel has to fight and kill. We’ll remember Pops as a hero, hang his cut on the wall. After we patch it, of course.”

  “That’s great, but what about Timmy and me?”

  “What about ya?”

  “We took care of business, just like you always say. That Mongol was a bitch and he died like a bitch, courtesy of us. Courtesy of you, the Hells Angels.”

  “Bird, ya weren’t listening. I said, ‘Sometimes a Hells Angel has to fight and kill.’ Congratulations, brothers. Ya Hells Angels now.”

  He smiled and reached across the table, grabbing the back of my neck with his meaty hands.

  That was it.

  We’d done the impossible. I felt like Lewis and Clark when they laid eyes on the Pacific, or Neil Armstrong when his boot hit moon dirt. I did what I had to do. I took care of business.

  That’s what a Hells Angel does.

  WE WENT BACK to the Pinion Pines to celebrate, but since Pops was dead, it wasn’t much of a celebration. Bobby cleared a corner of the club and ordered the bouncer, the bartender, and the manager not to let anyone near us. We got a round of shots. Even Joby and Bobby joined the toast. I said, “To Pops. At least he died in a bar.” That drew a few smiles. We threw back and sat around. Teddy huddled us together and said we’d have to burn the evidence that night. He said with quiet terror, “No one fucking knows about this.” He finished his drink and then he whispered, “We’re gonna do what we can to get ya stitched up, but be patient.”

  I blurted, “Teddy—what do you mean, ‘Be patient’?”

  “Yeah, what the fuck do you mean?” asked Timmy.

  “Look, ya full-up as far as me or any these guys is concerned. But we gotta run shit by the board, we can’t act alone. Ya know how it is. We got rules.”

  Joby said, “Don’t worry. I’ll leave town tomorrow to lobby for you guys. I’ll hit Vegas, Berdoo, Dago, San Fernando, Oakland, and call all the guys around here. I told Sonny what you were up to and he said he hoped you kill that motherfucker. So don’t worry, you won’t have any problems.”

  I said, “The fuck we won’t. We did this because it had to be done, I don’t give a shit about that Mongol, but I also did it to get in, and now that Pops is gone, I really want in.” I was genuinely pissed. I could see everything drifting away as the guys hedged their promises. “I want my fucking patch.”

  Timmy growled, “I do too. We earned them.”

  Bobby put an arm around me and said, “Let’s go outside.” We did. He said, “Go put your phone in the truck,” pointing at the pickup. I did. He led me to a secluded corner of the parking lot. “Calm down, Bird. You’ve had a rough couple days.” He lit a cigarette and talked again about the murder he’d supposedly committed for his club. “When I did mine I was fucking jacked. He was a rat—I told you that—he’d put away some old-timers and I took it upon myself to even the score—but man, I was jacked.” He chuckled. “Cruising down the road to where I was gonna meet the guy, pumping that Metallica song, ‘Nothing Else Matters.’” He paused, lost in blood-thick memories. “Anyway, I did it and it took months for me to get my Filthy Few tab. Months. Even though it was in the paper the next day. Point is, you can’t rush these things. Don’t worry. You’re gonna get your shit. We gotta see how it shakes down, is all.”

  “I’ll be damned if I have to wait six months.”

  “We gotta see what happens. You know the feds, ATF, the Department of Public Safety, all those fucks are watching us. We give you a patch tonight, you roll out in it tomorrow, and they’re gonna want to know what the fuck. We can’t have that kind of attention.” I didn’t say anything. I lit another cigarette. “Look, even if the whole West Coast— even if the whole U.S.—wanted to vote you in, we might get overruled by the World Council. Those Euro fuckers been railing against us for years, and they don’t always look lightly on fast patches. We gotta stay cool. You gotta stay cool.”

  “Fuck that, Bobby.”

  “Just be patient.”

  “Fuck that.” I said the words with less conviction. Why was Bobby telling me this? To comfort me? To impress me? We’d been trying to pin this murder on him since he ’fessed up to it back in Vegas, but we’d never found an unsolved case that met the requirements. That didn’t mean it wasn’t true, but I couldn’t help wondering—was Bobby Reinstra full of shit?

  I decided that it didn’t matter. Bobby put his hand on my shoulder and we went back inside. He guided me to the bar and I sat down and pounded a neat Jack Daniel’s. I felt defeated. I’d gone from confidence to fear to euphoria to disappointment to nausea in less than two hours. These guys made me sick. I felt like yelling, “HYPOCRITE!” in Bobby’s face. There I was, doing what I was supposed to do as a Hells Angel, and instead of getting patched—which, having all but signed off on my family and disobeyed Slats, was all that mattered to me—I was getting jacked up by politics. I felt like asking Bobby, “What are we, outlaws or lawyers, because I know a lot about both.” I felt like screaming, “Fuck the cops, and fuck the World Council, and fuck the other charters!” I realized in that single moment that the brotherhood the Hells Angels claimed to be a part of was nothing more than a support group for misunderstood loners held together by hate and money. Everything revolved around money-hustling and protecting the club against those we hated. We hated all the other clubs, the public, the police. We hated work, our wives, our girlfriends, our kids. Occasionally we hated ourselves. We hated everyone that wasn’t a Hells Angel, and even then we often hated each other. I say ‘we,’ because these were the people and things that I had come to hate too.

  I’d been undercover for almost two years as Jay “Bird” Davis. That whole time I’d thought I was the one in control, I was the one making myself into a Hells Angel. I’d thought I was the one infiltrating them.

  I had it backward. They were the ones who had infiltrated me.

  We were all hypocrites.

  Teddy lumbered up behind us and said, “C’mon. Let’s get the fuck outta here.”

  WE RODE TO the clubhouse for another drink. As Rudy handed out beers, Joby put something over my shoulders. It was a cut—it was his cut. He draped it over me like I was a prince. I looked at him. He said apologetically, “Bird, you’re in, man. You’re a Hells Angel. Wear this one till you get yours.” He looked at Timmy. “Teddy’s got a spare that’ll fit you.”

  I took the vest off, turned to Joby, and handed it to him. “Fuck that, Joby. I’m not wearing another man’s cut.” Timmy walked up to us. I said, “We came through the front door and I’ll be damned if I go out the back to get my shit. I’ll take my Death Head when it’s mine. No offense, but I earned it and I don’t intend to share.” Joby stepped back, looking at me hard. He said OK. He knew I was right. They all did. HA cuts are not transferable.

  As Joby put his cut back on, Teddy and Bobby started to grill us on how we’d handled the evidence. Joby went to fetch a fifty-gallon steel drum from behind the house. Bobby wanted to know what we’d done with the clothes we did it in. I said we’d burned them on-site. Bobby said good, you guys are thinking like us. My mood was in constant flux. I said, “Dude, we are like you,” but I said it lightly. He laughed. Joby came up with the drum and two pairs of hedge clip
pers. Teddy told us to cut the Mongol cut into little strips and put them in the drum.

  I was still pissed. I said, “Fuck this. I’ll burn this shit, but I’m not waiting for my patch.” No one said anything to that.

  Timmy sheared the vest in half and we cut it up. Bobby and Teddy watched. Joby paced, went inside for a while, and then came out. He told us he’d called Bad Bob and Sonny. Bad Bob couldn’t believe what had happened to Pops, but was glad Timmy and I were back in one piece.

  When we were done with the cut, Joby covered the drum, hauled it into the bed of his truck, and strapped it into place. He got in his truck and started it up. Teddy pulled Timmy and me close to him. He looked back and forth at our faces. His smile was the biggest I’d seen, his eyes were sad. He said solemnly, “Welcome to the family, brothers.”

  We each hugged him and climbed into Joby’s pickup.

  I sat in the back. Joby drove into the hills around Chino Valley. The cover team, who had been listening and following us around, lost us. I knew, as we went higher and higher on unpaved roads, that Timmy and I were alone with Joby Walters, himself a Filthy Few tab-wearer. The bumps of the road rocked me into an uneasy sleep. I was bone-tired. I thought, Maybe now I’ll die. I thought, Maybe this is what Teddy had in mind, have Joby take us and the evidence out to the hills, out to where Jesus lost his sandals, and get rid of us, nice and quiet. After all, weren’t we a kind of evidence too? It seemed fitting. I’d abandoned Jay Dobyns and I was tired of being Bird. I thought, Wouldn’t it be nice never to wake up again?

  But I did. The truck skidded to a dusty halt and my eyes popped open. Joby said, “We’re here.” We were in the clearing of an aspen grove. One of Joby’s campsites. We got out. I rubbed my face while Timmy helped Joby with the drum. Joby told me to get the jug of gas out of the truck. I brought it over and handed it to him. He doused the contents of the barrel and told me to light it up. I clicked my Zippo, lit a twig, and threw it in. The fire went right up. Joby’s long face turned orange. He clicked his tongue like the plains farmer he’d always reminded me of, his buckteeth sticking out. I smiled, thinking of the first time I’d seen him, at the Laughlin Harrah’s, the night of the riot so many months ago. The Nestlé Quik Rabbit.