by Greg Aunapu
She asked Ned, "Is it our fault for pushing him to go to Tulsa? He got killed looking for Amy. I feel responsible."
Ned, on his second pack of cigarettes that day, blew an angry burst of smoke from his lungs. "He got killed because he's a nasty guy, Sue. I'm sorry, and God, you know I prayed he'd find Amy, but I have to wonder if he just wasn't leading us on the whole time." Like many New York musicians, Ned had always smoked too much, but since Amy's disappearance, he'd increased his intake. Sue could bear breathing the fumes, but she'd never smoked a cigarette in her life.
"He couldn't have been leading us on. Pompano Red was up in Orlando and remembers him with a girl fitting Amy's description. He said he got her from a guy named Bracket. What we have to do now is go up to the Florida State prison and speak to Bracket and show him Amy's picture. Paul isn't the only one with contacts. All these bikers know one another."
Rex Ryland made preparations to go to the large prison outside Raiford and interview Bracket, whose legal name was Dale Preston Webb. Another biker told him to make sure to track down a guy named Juan "Geronimo" Jerry, who knew "something about Amy," who was now known as "Little Bits." Geronimo, a co-defendant of Pompano Red's, was presently serving a lengthy murder sentence in Virginia. The Little Bits name had come up before, in connection with Branch. Something tied all these guys together.
But Bracket was an Outlaw, and meeting with an Outlaw in prison wasn't so easy. No one wanted to be labeled a snitch because the Outlaw creed was, "Snitches are a dying breed." Anybody who was going to talk had to get an okay from Big Jim Nolan. Big Jim, not presently in jail, was hard to get a hold of, but he did agree to go to Raiford with Rex, since he also wanted to see some of the brothers.
He did admit to one thing that Sue thought interesting:
"Yeah, I knew Paul Branch," he said on the phone.
"I understand he was an enforcer," Sue said.
"I'm not going to get into that," Big Jim told her. "But you don't know everything about that guy, and I think a lot of people may be lying to you. But, as I told you, I'll go to Raiford with Rex, and we'll see what we can find out."
The Billigs were now looking at their third holiday season without Amy. Josh had quit high school and was working in the kitchen in a Grove restaurant.
While Sue's mind was wrapped up in the day-to-day search, helping Ned with the gallery, or taking on a quick decorating job to bring in a much-needed cash infusion, in her heart she lived a Walter Mitty existence, imagining a life where none of this had happened; where Amy was doing great in college, was gushing about a new love in her life, had just been home, and the family had carved a turkey at the head of a feast-laden table lined with their best friends. In some parallel universe it was happening, and she was a silent voyeur to this other family's joy.
Sue was writing out some cards on the kitchen table when she received a call from Ina Shepard.
"Paul Branch is dead, right?" the officer queried.
"The Rogues killed him in Tulsa," Sue answered, the phone cradled against her neck as she continued to write.
"Well, then why did he just call Pompano Red's wife in Virginia to say he's on his way there to kill her? She's not into the biker scene at all, and I spoke with her before regarding Red, so she called me."
Sue dropped the pen. "Paul Branch is alive?"
"And mad about something," Ina said.
"I'll call Rex right away," Sue told her.
Rex was harried, and was just leaving his office to go to court when Sue caught him. "Still alive?" he muttered. "Well, I'm not surprised. He's a tough bastard to kill. You know, I had a call the other night at three A.M., and there wasn't anyone on the other end. Somehow I had the feeling it was Paul. But why would he want to kill Red's wife?"
"If he calls you again, I want you to ask him why he left me in Tulsa, and if he used to call Amy 'Little Bits.' "
"Okay," Rex said. "I'll make sure to ask him. In the meantime, see if Ina can track down Red. Time for court, Sue, we'll talk later."
Ina Shepard called the Virginia authorities about Dennis Kenny, aka Pompano Red, only to find out that no one knew where he was. She also checked Dade records to see if he was registered there. No Dennis Kenny anywhere.
On December 9, Rex called Sue. "Paul phoned me late last night," he told her.
"So it's really him?" Sue said. Up until then, she half expected to find out it was an imposter.
"Oh, it's him," Ryland said. "And mean as ever. And he's got a good excuse for walking out on you in Tulsa. Turns out the Rogues were just leading him on. A bunch of Harry's friends dragged him out of a bar, drove him across the state border, and worked him over pretty bad. Busted both his kneecaps, shot him twice in the abdomen, and left him for dead. Now he's almost crippled and walks with a cane. Been hiding out for months. He really must have been nearly killed. Takes a lot to put the fear of God into a guy like him!"
The second week of December 1976, Sue drove up to the Florida State prison with Rex and a biker named Leroy Poss. The penitentiary is often simply called Raiford by criminals, as it sits just outside the tiny town of that name, which boasts a population of less than two hundred. In contrast, the prison has a normal population just over 1,100, with more than six hundred personnel to make sure they stay there. It's a maximum security prison, with an active Death Row where they execute prisoners on the famous electric chair nicknamed "Old Sparky" because it has a tendency to fizz, and has actually set a victim's hair on fire. Poss had spent eighteen years in prison there for a crime he did not commit before Rex proved his innocence and got him released from jail. Make no mistake, though. A majority of the inmates housed there are the most brutal of Florida's prisoners. As Florida authorities cracked down on the biker population, many of them were now calling it their "government sponsored vacation."
The prison is located about thirty-five miles northeast of Gainesville, through pine forests and cattle ranches. The landscape looks more like Texas than Florida.
Ryland steered a rented sedan under a sign reading FLORIDA STATE PRISON that arched across the two-lane road. They encountered two guard checks and towering fences with huge rolls of razor wire on top. Leroy took a deep breath in the backseat. This wasn't bringing back pleasant memories.
The 1960s-era prison was blocky and nondescript, certainly not one of those Gothic brick prison buildings so famous up north. It was as practical and unadorned as a military base. They took a number, which corresponded with their previously requested reservation. Sue was searched roughly by a matron, while the men were searched by a guard in a separate room, and they were then led through locked doors to a visitors' room with a bare wooden table.
Sue's main impression of Bracket was that "he was tall and mean." He didn't have long hair or a beard in prison, though, since they weren't allowed. All biker individuality had been stripped from him but his tattoos.
Bracket and Poss had known each other during Poss's prison days, so Bracket trusted his friend and was glad to see him. But he wasn't so sure about Sue.
"I don't know why I should be talking to you," he said. "Does me no good at all."
"You never did anything nice for someone else?" Sue asked.
"Not good policy," Bracket replied.
Poss chimed in here. "She's cool," he told Bracket. "She really isn't the heat, and they're not going to use any information against you. She's just looking for her daughter, man."
"I could really use some cigarettes," Bracket said.
"We'll put some cash in your commissary account," Rex told him.
"Why don't I begin by telling you what I think I know," Sue said. "Mainly that Paul Branch says that in 1974 he bought my daughter Amy from you after he escaped from jail and was living in Orlando. She may have been called Little Bits at the time, I don't know. He said she had other identification. She was kid—" She bit her tongue. "She disappeared from Coconut Grove on March fifth, 1974, and we have been told that she was later seen with Outlaws. Paul said he had writt
en you here to ask what you knew about her, or if you knew what happened to her after he went back into jail.
He said he gave her to Dishrag Harry for safe keeping, but his friend ran off with her."
That got the biker to open up. "I never sold anyone to Branch," Bracket scoffed. "And Branch never escaped from anywhere! Sid Fast called me up here back in 1974 and I told him I knew the girl and she had been sold a few weeks earlier, but that's all I knew."
"Where? To who?" Sue wanted to know.
"I'm not naming names," Bracket said. "I'm only talking to you because Leroy says you're cool and I can see you're sincere, so I'm going to tell you something. Branch did write to someone here named Scar, but that's all I can tell you."
It took some cajoling before he volunteered the name of Rolando Vilandre, a little guy, only five-three, with an appendix scar—a Pagan who had been busted with two girls in Orlando. One of the girls had stayed with Branch when she was released. "I think her name was Candy. Candy or Cindy," he said. "I think she's in Jacksonville with the Outlaws."
Sue showed him the picture of Amy. He nodded. "Looks like her, but she's very skinny, and has very skinny legs. What you do is get a picture of Scar and his fall buddies," the friends he was arrested with, "and get pictures of their old ladies. They're probably all in the same files."
Sue also showed Bracket photographs of several dark-haired biker women who, over the years had been checked out and dismissed as possible Amys, to make sure that the girl he was speaking about wasn't one of them.
"No," he said. He also gave them some other leads to check out, including another biker, incarcerated in another prison, named Cookie Monster Dave.
Breathing the stale prison air, feeling the dirty walls of indeterminate color closing in on her, absorbing the negative energy that seemed to imbue everything she touched, and being eyed by the soulless stares of men who had not seen a woman for too long, left Sue depressed.
There wasn't much upside to being a biker anymore, Sue thought, seeing how so many of them ended up dead or traded the open road and an endless horizon for inmate status and four walls. Indeed, this was the beginning of the end for the one percent biker gangs as they were then. By the 1980s, armed with new racketeering statutes originally passed by Congress to control the Mafia, prosecutors were going after bikers and drug smugglers with the same sort of fervor that had fueled earlier lawmen going after the likes of Al Capone.
When Sue returned to Coconut Grove, she attacked the phones again, calling the FBI and other authorities ostensibly to give them the latest leads, but really just to make sure they hadn't forgotten about her. Ina checked the prison records for Rolando "Scar" Vilandre and found, interestingly enough, that his most frequent visitor had been Pompano Red. Vilandre had been arrested on charges of false imprisonment of a girl named Donna Witt.
"You see," Sue told Ned, 'this is direct evidence these guys kidnap girls."
She hoped to get photographs of all of these women to see if any, especially a girl named "Donna Witt," might know Amy.
They were able to track down Red, who was now living back in his Homestead trailer. Sue also found out the names of Scar's girlfriends.
Again, another New Year's. Sue's first entry in her notebooks under the heading of 1977 says it all. Amy's birthday. 1/9/77—Amy is 20 years old.
Through the arrest records, Ina tracked down the mother of one of Scar's girls in St. Petersburg.
Sue called the mother, Martie, at her first opportunity. In a tired voice the woman said, "Yeah, she's one of Scar's girls, but Donna's hiding out because they're looking for her."
"I beg you," Sue said, 'the next time you talk to her, have her call me. I just need for her to give me some information about one of the other girls who might be my daughter."
Sue did not get the feeling that her call was going to have a great deal of importance in Martie's life. So after hanging up she drafted a letter to Donna, detailing how she had been in contact with Jim Nolan and Paul Branch, and a number of other bikers who had tried to help her, and said any information Donna could add might be of great importance. She included pictures of Amy to jog Donna's memory.
Sue received the return call from Donna two days later.
"I can't talk to you," Donna said. "I'm really scared they'll grab me again, you don't know what they do to snitches, and I have two kids, a girl and a boy, nine and eight years old…”
"If your information leads to Amy," Sue told her, "there's a very gracious reward. And even if it doesn't, I'll try to get you some money. I'm just looking for my daughter. Please—"
Donna interrupted. "I don't want any money. I looked at your pictures and think I worked with Amy in West Palm Beach about nine months ago. She called herself Susan Blakely, had short hair, and couldn't remember anything about her past except that she was from Miami. It wasn't the first time I met her, either. I worked with her in Orlando back in May or June of 1974. Then something happened and we all had to hide from the police. I went to jail and lost contact with her until West Palm Beach, like I said."
This fit in with the known facts about the Pagan killings in Orlando at that time.
"Would you please get in touch with Susan Blakely," Sue pleaded. "I'll even give you a calling card number so you don't have to pay for it."
Also, Sue knew, whatever number Donna called would appear on the Billigs' telephone bill. Donna also said she knew Paul Branch, and that he was also known as "Fat Rabbit." It was becoming obvious that Branch had many different aliases.
When Sue called Donna's mother again, a few days later, Martie told her, "Donna's very frightened, but is showing the pictures around and trying to get information for you. But she's very sure it was Amy, so maybe you should just be happy with that."
Bile rose in Sue's throat. Why did everyone think it was just enough to know your daughter was alive somewhere, living some miserable existence? "I have to see her," Sue said. "What would you do in my situation?”
Martie took a moment. "I'm just worried about my own daughter. But I do understand. Donna is trying to help you."
The next day a girl named Linda called collect from St. Petersburg. She had a sweet, mildly southern accent and sounded desperate, worried. "I have some information about Amy, Mrs. Billig," she said. "And I'd like to meet you. But there can't be any heat around and you absolutely can't tell anyone—especially Big Jim Nolan. I read your letter to Donna, and you dropped some heavy names, and it scares me."
Sue tried to soothe the upset girl. "Don't worry, I won't tell anyone. I had to drop the names to get Donna to answer me, let her know that if she talked to me she wouldn't be labeled a snitch."
"Okay," the girl said, whispering, as if there was someone in the next room who she didn't want to overhear her. "Donna doesn't want any part of this. You have to deal only with me. And it'll cost you $2,000."
Here we go again, Sue thought. "There's a $2,000 reward," Sue said, "but we must physically see Amy. It's not just for some information about a girl you say you saw in a bar!"
"I'm taking a bus down to Miami tomorrow," Linda said. "Meet me at the station in Miami. I'll call you and let you know what time I arrive."
Sue felt energized. The girl must have felt she had concrete information if she was taking such a long bus ride. It was a five-hour car trip!
When Sue and Ned picked Linda up at the Greyhound station the next night at eleven-forty, they found a nervous girl in her mid-twenties wearing sandals, hip-hugger Levi jeans, a flowered peasant blouse and strings of beads hanging between large breasts with no bra. She was attractive, with dark flowing hair, but skittish eyes, which didn't like to land on yours. Sue figured that with Linda's figure, and considering her friendship with Donna, she was probably a stripper, too.
For all her talk over the phone, however, Linda had a case of lockjaw when she arrived. She barely said more than her name, and seemed to be having second thoughts as they drove her immediately over to Rex Ryland's house.
The young informant sat on the couch and accepted a beer. Looking between them furtively, and down at the carpet, she took a deep breath.
"You came all this way," Sue said. "You must have something important to say!”
"I wouldn't have rode seven hours on a bus if I didn't," Linda retorted. "It's just that Donna's scared stiff that she'll get arrested on a kidnapping charge. She was already put away for a similar charge, unlawful bondage, with Scar."
"Yes, we know," Sue said, the point person for the small group. "Anything you tell us is in confidence," Sue assured her.
Linda gritted her teeth and came to some inner decision. "See, I'm in the group—the Outlaws," she said, "so I think I can find Amy for you, especially 'cause I'm not a biker's girl. There's a lot of talk about her, that she was taken off the road, and guys are worried that if she's ever found they'll get put away for kidnapping."
"Speaking as the Billigs' attorney," Rex said, "we're not going to press charges. All they want is to get Amy back."
"Yeah, I know," Linda said. "I'm going to need some expense money. Like . . . ah, $200 to get started."
Rex held off. "We'll be happy to give you money after we get positive proof of Amy. Two thousand reward money. More maybe."
"I'm broke," Linda said. "If I gotta go make money, I can't be looking for Amy. I'm not asking for much. Why would I sit on a seven-hour bus ride and another one back, just to get $200? I'm serious about this."
When Rex finally peeled off $200, he took an extra $100 bill and added it. "For good luck," he said.
Linda agreed to call them every forty-eight hours to check in. "I think she may still be dancing in West Palm Beach," she told them. "I'll go there tomorrow. She may have an old man by the name of Spooky or Spongy, something like that."
When Sue got home, she wrote in her notebook, “Now we wait!”
What the Billigs did not expect, however, was that Linda would be the catalyst for a whole new series of investigations that would weave yet another layer in the tapestry of lies and deceit. Was it because of the small amount of reward money involved, or was there something larger afoot? It seemed there was an entire underworld conspiracy intent on keeping the Billigs from finding their daughter.