Vagos, Mongols, and Outlaws: My Infiltration of America's Deadliest Biker Gangs

by Charles Falco

  But how did I do that without a bike, protection, or money?

  After the incident at the Motherlode, the troll banned the Vagos from her bar. Vinny regrouped at Hustlers, a dive thirty miles from my apartment. The place resembled a sweaty cave. Smoke lingered in the air and cast a ghostly glow over the members’ faces as they huddled over beer and discussed their next motorcycle run. Their goal was always to “black out” police surveillance and to party uninhibited in deserted areas. But even serious discussion yielded to distraction, to Terrible, a neo-Nazi lowrider and longtime hang-around for the Victorville Vagos chapter. He personified violence: chiseled features, tattooed .22 on his neck, pierced forehead, and two protruding flesh devil horns. He had already consumed five beers in the span of an hour when he boasted that his brother, Robbery, had shot a man in the face. The confession sputtered out of him like a defective spark. My recorder clicked inside my jockstrap. I had removed the cup and tucked the device into the flap between my legs. My underwear secured it in place, and unless someone grabbed me in the crotch, I was fairly sure I was safe from detection.

  Terrible gave me a swift lesson in payback. “A guy owed him money. He fell asleep behind the wheel, wrecked his car, and spent two months in the hospital in back traction.” His laugh strangled out of him as if he were unused to talking. I nodded. Payback. Terrible twitched beside me, growing increasingly agitated by the sudden lull in the conversation, the irregular gaps. He seemed unaware that his story about his brother began in the middle, as if we had met before, as if I had asked, as if I knew that Terrible once belonged to a family. Lost in a drug fog, his world rushed at him in fragments, bits and pieces of speech, flashes of memory, wide desolate spaces that left him confused and panicked. He struggled to make sense of things that made no sense at all.

  Maybe it was tension that propelled him, maybe a need to restore order to his chaos that made him spring without warning from his stool, ball his hands into fists, and move like a wrecking ball through the bar, targeting any patron who looked at him sideways. His improvisational style had a cartoonish flair as he knocked bodies to the floor and slipped in rancid grease and broken glass. Warm beer spilled over my hands. My first test: Would I jump in or back off? Either way, I was screwed. If I punched too hard and hurt someone, I might gain the approval of the Vagos but the reprimand of the sheriff’s department. Not that I had a noose, really. I wasn’t bound by government strictures, but I had to stay clean, participate carefully, and weigh the pros and cons of being too much a gentleman. The government wanted measured success: arrests, kilos of dope, useful intelligence. But bait, like me, required patience.

  I was on the hook, in swift white water, waiting to be eaten.

  I swung. A patron rode Terrible’s back like a growth, his hands circling Terrible’s throat. I punched the man off. He hit the floor, staggered at the impact, caught his breath, and rebounded. I played fair, not mean, conscious that eyes watched me, judged me, and assessed my allegiance. And after several rounds of punch, wait, punch, wait, an invisible bell chimed and the boxing match ended. The back of my hand swelled red and glossy. Blood trickled through slits in my victim’s eyes as he crawled away in defeat. For what seemed like several moments, I heard nothing but heavy breathing. Then, like a stampede, full-patch members scrambled to the doors ready to continue the fight in the street.

  Terrible swatted me on the back, looking relieved. He snapped his fingers at the bartender, “Beer for the hang-around.” Just like that, I had advanced in rank, relegated one level above women and dogs. Like the Mafia, the Vagos and other OMGs had their circle of criminal followers called “prospects” and “hang-arounds,” mob associates willing and ready to carry out the gang’s dirty work, using the club as a conduit for criminal enterprises. Terrible made me his official chauffeur, grateful that someone else lacked the quintessential biker accessory, a motorcycle.

  * * *

  Days later, the Vagos reserved a bar in the middle of nowhere and planned their next run. The destination, always a secret among members to keep cops guessing, had more hype than delivery. In the end, surveillance always knew the Vagos’ locations. In fact, most law enforcement made a production of videotaping the gang, snapping their photos, recording intelligence. When we arrived at the bar, a crumbling shell of a structure against a black, empty landscape, the members straddled chairs and stools in the mostly blank space and looked at each other with glazed eyes. No one drank. Cops might be stationed along the stretch of dirt road, hidden in the sandy ditches, waiting to initiate arrests for drunk driving.

  General paranoia settled in. And boredom led to recklessness: women.

  They flickered in the dark like dying bulbs, some partially nude, others barely dressed. Without rules or limits, men pawed them randomly, pinched a butt cheek, twisted a nipple, and sampled them as if they were snacks on the table. In a corner, Vagos climbed one after the other onto the pool table, straddled another nameless body. I saw legs quivering like slippery white meat. I was in trouble. It was one thing to knock the wind out of some unsuspecting victim, knowing the man might be sore for a few days, might bruise, but otherwise recover. It was another thing entirely to watch the brutalization of women or, worse, to be forced to participate. When the human auction began, I bolted for the bathroom.

  The foul-smelling urinals nearly made me gag. The walls, smeared with excrement and marked by graffiti, formed a tiny refuge. I splashed cold water on my face, afraid the bowl might breed bacteria. My reflection in the rusty mirror distorted. Dark circles surrounded my eyes. The emotional drain of being two people had taken its toll: I was no monster, no sociopath, nothing remotely like the Vagos I pretended to admire. Behind my mask of calm, I imploded, suddenly unsure whether I could really do this, become a bona fide member of an outlaw motorcycle gang. With no gun, no backup, and no relief, I had nothing but raw instinct to guide me.

  Would that be enough?

  I expected they would test me: Would I fight, do drugs, do women, do crimes, kill for the club? When I returned to the table, the members focused on a more pressing goal, red wings: cunnilingus with a menstruating woman. Surrounded by former Marines from both the Victor Valley and Victorville chapters of the Vagos, Rhino, the sergeant at arms, a stocky tank of a man with massive sleeved arms like loaves of bread and gauges in both ears, and Twist, his young sidekick and a hardened sociopath, selected their target. The woman, a club groupie, volunteered to be the prize, probably hoping afterward to advance in rank to “property” of or “old lady” of a full-patch member.

  She had a dirty beauty: I’d seen her earlier, flat against the wall, humped by three Vagos in succession. Her expression stoic, eyes closed, not enjoying the degradation but not protesting either. They mounted her like animals, oblivious of others in the bar, to their public environment. They grunted, covered her face with their large claw hands, and relieved themselves as mindlessly as if they were taking a piss. Her tangled blond hair fell across their shoulders.

  Red wings had a protocol, at least two full-patch witnesses. Rhino and Lizard volunteered for the job and I tagged along as a guard, not because I wanted to watch three men pin a poor woman’s head to the toilet rim and spread her legs wide, but because I needed to know she would be safe. Thin and pale, she looked as if she might blow away. Twist tugged her into the girls’ bathroom, a smelly black hole-in-the-wall with two stalls. The toilet bowls, peppered with caked urine, dried feces, and rust streaks, protruded from exposed pipes.

  The air stank of rot and stale water. Twist ordered the woman to strip. Lizard, a fifty-five-year-old drug addict, wore a crazed expression that made him look as if he were still lost in an LSD trip. He shut the door in my face. I waited in the sweaty dark listening for jeers, cries, banging. But I heard nothing, as if the room swallowed them, transported them to a dark unspeakable place. When they emerged minutes later, Twist spat several times into his bandanna, wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. Lizard and Rhino slapped him approvingly on
the back. The bathroom door creaked closed. I peeked inside, saw a shape curled at the base of the toilet, and heard a faint sniffle.

  Lizard lurked in the shadows, watching me, testing me, waiting for me to do something out of character, to react as anyone with a conscience would. But I didn’t. Instead I watched the woman struggle, the floor beneath her chest gritty with broken glass. Slivers of beer bottles winked like dark ice in the urinal. She crawled to the door where I stood, her jeans balled at her ankles, her torn panties stained with blood.

  I pressed into the wall, resisted the urge to help her up, knowing that if I showed any compassion, any human residue, I would be finished, my cover blown.

  2

  Punch-Drunk

  The Vagos needed to fight the way others needed a drug fix. It didn’t matter their target or their purpose; winning or losing, the act brought relief. My nights blended together in a fog of full nelsons and curled fists, my face rammed into the concrete floor until my teeth sliced open the flesh in my cheek, my eye swelled shut, and my boots left blood prints on the tile. Police never intervened because no victims called them. Amid the grunting and noise and hysterical shouting, I carefully punched until the violence became seamless, ordinary, and expected. Punch. Deflect. Punch. Deflect. My life existed in flashes, light in the after-midnight blackness. Any fear I had hardened with each mutual combat. And as sharp pain jolted through my right shoulder and my head thundered, I developed rapport.

  So much, in fact, that Terrible invited me to the Victor Valley chapter’s eighth anniversary party at the Screaming Chicken Saloon in Devore, an unincorporated area of San Bernardino County sandwiched between two freeways on Route 66. The bar, a renovated gas station from the 1940s, served only beer and wine, no hard liquor. Dust coated the inside; the bartenders looked weathered, like fixtures from another era in need of a good wash. Dollar bills fluttered on the walls. A mounted bike fender jutted from the bar next to the neon “V” twin beer sign. More than two hundred Vagos crammed into the hot space and mingled with members of other chapters and support clubs. The bar expanded onto an outside patio complete with a horseshoes game area. Weapons and chains blurred around me. The stench of beer and urine assaulted my nostrils. Pink flyers advertising a breast cancer fund-raiser littered the floor and stuck to the bottom of my boot. Women strutted around in bikinis.

  Some Vagos still wore their helmets, reminiscent of World War II storm troopers. Rows of bikes adorned with Valkyrie-like wings on the handlebars, mostly black, bronze, silver, red, and blue, lined the perimeter of the bar. Life for the one percenter focused on motorcycles and the cannibalization of stolen or junked bike parts. Terrible squeezed through the bodies and headed my way with a mug of cool beer. He seemed particularly charged. Words tumbled out of him in rapid succession. He spoke of payback for drug dealers who had purchased goods with counterfeit bills, human hunts he initiated on behalf of the Vagos to collect outstanding debts, assaults he’d committed, and the mangled faces and eye sockets he’d transformed into bloody pulp. I turned up the volume on my recorder.

  Terrible made me nervous not just because he looked demonic but also because he fought without provocation, forgot threads of stories, ended conversations midsentence, and, when he grew too stressed, punched his “shadow people.” But he presented opportunity, a way in to key players like Twist, a Vago from the Victor Valley chapter, and Rhino, the sergeant at arms of the Victorville chapter, who both emerged from the dark portals in the Screaming Chicken, toting bags of white powder and small-caliber pistols tucked into their front pockets. Mentally, I checked off their sleeved arms, massive strides, and the large gauges in Rhino’s lobes. Both penetrated me with flat, blank stares. I imagined they had suffered camouflaged childhoods, subjected to emotional poverty, drenched in television violence while their working-class parents struggled to put food on the table. I knew them, people like them. Conversation seemed futile. Neither was interested in discussing anything he didn’t initiate. And it didn’t matter anyway. Talking might only provoke them to punch. Besides, I was there to observe, record, and manipulate, not to fix them.

  I didn’t know it that night, but I had just met two of the Vagos’ most violent killers.

  * * *

  By early January 2004, the San Bernardino Sheriff’s Department Criminal Intelligence Division contacted Special Agent John Carr of the Van Nuys office of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives to inquire whether they might be able to use me in a more productive capacity. Carr and Special Agent Darrin “Koz” Kozlowski met with the DEA and me at the SBSD Intel office. Carr already had an informant working a Riverside County investigation into the Vagos. ATF and DEA reached an agreement and ATF signed me up. My handler would be the legendary Koz, a federal undercover agent who had infiltrated the Vagos in 1997 and attained the rank of full-patched member.

  He had used a CI like me to make the initial introduction into the gang, but only a month later, his investigation turned lethal. Koz’s CI had a fatal motorcycle accident on Hollywood Boulevard. The Vagos obtained the accident report from the LAPD and learned that the motorcycle’s vehicle identification number identified it as government issued. The Vagos interrogated the CI’s wife, demanding to know why her husband had crashed a federal bike. The wife, threatened with the slaughter of her family, revealed the CI’s identity and disclosed that he had worked as an ATF informant. At the same time, she disclosed to the Vagos Koz’s business card that marked him as a federal agent. The Vagos made it their mission to eliminate Koz. As the ATF scrambled to end the investigation in 1998, the Vagos learned Koz’s undercover address, terrorized him, and threatened to kill him. Eventually the ATF assigned members of its Special Response Team, armed with assault rifles, to stake out Koz’s home. The Vagos backed off but Koz, undeterred, resumed undercover work.

  Now, as Koz shook my hand, he laughed easily and warned, “You do realize this is all improvisation?” He carefully explained my mission—to work deep cover in Operation 22 Green. My goal: Target the Vagos under the federal VICAR statute (Violent Crime in Aid of Racketeering) and identify the club’s international officers as well as the officers for each chapter.

  “What’s your rank?”

  “My rank?”

  “What do you do for the Vagos?”

  “Hang around with them?”

  “Do you even know what that means?” A flicker of doubt flashed across Koz’s face as he explained the club’s rank-and-file structure: The goal of every hang-around was to advance to prospect and eventually to full-patch. The real talent assumed leadership roles: president, vice president, secretary, treasurer, sergeant at arms. A gift of brute force might qualify a person for the club’s elite enforcement unit; the guy could be a hit man or a fixer. Every outlaw club had such talent, Koz explained: the SS for the Outlaws, the Filthy Few or Death Squad for the Hells Angels, the Black T-Shirt Squad for the Pagans, and the Nomad Chapter for the Bandidos.

  “The Vagos are different,” Koz warned. “They prefer discretion.”

  They wouldn’t be as easy to identify. And they would be impossible to infiltrate without a bike.

  “We’ll work on that,” Koz assured me.

  * * *

  Meanwhile, the Vagos’ next planned run occurred at Lake Havasu in Arizona, located on the Colorado River sixty miles south of Bullhead City. The desert lake, surrounded by red ocher mountains and cliff walls, was actually a Colorado River reservoir created when the Parker Dam was completed in 1938. Home to the famed London Bridge and English Village of shops and restaurants, the quaint resort town attracted a dangerous mix of college students and outlaws. Palm trees and lakeshore contrasted with hard-edged partying. The Havasu run was a uniquely Vago event and coincided with the Laughlin run.

  Still without a motorcycle, I rode in the RV with members of the Victorville chapter. We towed the bikes behind us. At least the RV provided some shelter from the blazing heat, temperatures that could soar over one hundred degrees. The Hells Ang
els claimed Arizona and a large portion of the West Coast, but the club had not yet absorbed the Vagos, who dominated Southern California. Lake Havasu represented a significant territorial goal; presence mattered more than strategy. But as a mere hang-around, I had little access to any important conversations. Instead I spent long hours fetching beer and cigarettes for members, inflating, deflating, and inflating again Head Butt’s rubber bed, and providing instant entertainment. After a while, “Down on the ground, twenty-two push-ups,” took its toll. Exhausted and dehydrated and surrounded by crank-fueled bikers and prospects who blew meth in my face, I considered if prison might be a relief.

  The Vagos had commandeered an entire hotel, spilling into the parking lot with makeshift tents. Terrible, who just weeks before the run had been dubbed an “official Vago prospect,” melted in the heat. I shadowed him, hoping to learn what prospecting entailed, though the distinction between our two roles was marginal. I enjoyed slightly more sleep and could drink beer without permission. I dropped hints when I could that I had purchased a bike, a prize I knew would instantly elevate me in the members’ eyes and make me eligible for promotion. Head Butt especially perked up at the announcement. He didn’t need to know that it would be weeks before the ATF could wade through the bureaucratic red tape to deliver my bike.

  For days I grabbed any space I could—patches of exposed tile, a curb, a couch, even a wall, and attempted restless sleep. Foot traffic jostled me awake; elevated voices and sounds of sex rumbled through the RV and outside. Snippets of conversation floated my way—drug and gun trafficking, brewing trouble with the Hells Angels—but I could never actively listen. Instead I blended into the gray walls, up before dawn, my world a fuzzy distortion. Terrible guarded the camper, looking like some kind of lake creature—devil horns, slitted eyes, ink markings, an addict who could survive days without sleep or food, a model soldier motivated by a warped sense of mission and duty. He emitted a kind of dangerous energy that left me unsettled and tense. And as much as I hated the thought of spending more time with him, he could introduce me to key players.