Following his arrest, he agitated in custody, paced the confined interview room.
“We know about the murder,” the lead homicide investigator prompted him.
“Fuck you,” Rhino spat back.
“We know you were with Daniel Foreman [Twist].”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“No?” The detective played him Rhino’s recorded confession. He told me later that the blood drained from Rhino’s face.
“What do I have to do?” He relented and accepted fifteen years in prison in exchange for his testimony. The prosecution reduced his charges to voluntary manslaughter and attempted burglary with a gang affiliation.
* * *
The raids marked the end of my undercover role and the beginning of my new invisible life. I felt conflicted, not because I had any regret about my impending betrayal of the Vagos, but because I was about to leave the familiar. For three years I knew my role, and the culmination of my life’s work was about to unfold. Hard-core, violent gangsters would be subdued, led away in chains and handcuffs, their rank and stature in the criminal world suddenly emasculated, reduced to rubber sandals, pastel jumpsuits, and faded memories.
They were nothing behind bars.
They would never be anything again.
17
Vanilla
After the raids, an ATF SWAT team gave me twenty-four hours to fold my life into one suitcase. At least in the interim I could choose my temporary relocation, a nondescript Residence Inn in Oxnard, the strawberry and lima bean capital of California. Situated a hundred miles from Victorville, the area was still considered Ventura County, and as far as I knew only one other Vago lived in Oxnard. I needed to stay fairly close to Koz in order to collect money from him, since I could no longer work. Koz assured me my limbo status was temporary, “three months max,” but Koz had never before placed an informant into the WSP.
George arrived that same day and settled into a suite next to mine. The transition was no doubt more difficult for him since he had a family and a baby due. I couldn’t imagine burdening a loved one with such secrecy. Not only did he have to become temporarily invisible, she did too. At first it was strange living out of a suitcase, buying groceries, cooking meals in my room that transformed into a miniature apartment, saluting the hotel concierge each morning as I headed for the gym or walked Hercules. Several military personnel also occupied the suites at government expense; some had lived there for years.
We were warehoused people, in limbo, waiting for our lives to restart.
By summer, the football field behind the Residence Inn converted into the Dallas Cowboys’ training camp and I was fortunate enough to receive VIP passes to the practices. George’s routine differed considerably as he tempered his wife’s growing restlessness and concerns about the impending birth of their first child. With nothing to occupy my time, I enrolled in online classes through Liberty University and decided in my new life I would be well educated and well employed. I worked toward my bachelor’s in biblical studies.
But I was restless. I didn’t know how to still my mind. Working the Vagos had been an addiction. Living in the hotel, cut off from myself, was like withdrawal. I needed something to revive my inner core, to fuel my sense of purpose. I knew why I had infiltrated the Vagos, not to work off charges (although that had been my initial reason) but to contribute, to do good in the world, to be part of a solution, not a problem. The hotel was safe, but it was killing me. I didn’t know how to be done. I imagined that cops forced to retire felt similar angst. I panicked. What would life after the Vagos look like? I had nightmares of stocking shelves in Walmart, working the graveyard shift, adjusting, adapting, accepting my new vanilla life.
And I couldn’t stand it.
* * *
The specter of prison also loomed large. Now that the Vagos case had ended, I fully expected to be sentenced pursuant to my 2002 plea agreement for drug conspiracy charges. And while I hoped I would receive probation, I had no expectations. So when Koz called me one morning with the good news that he and John Carr had convinced the U.S. Attorney’s Office to drop all charges against me, I thought I had won the lottery. I was free, my life a complete do-over.
I wanted so badly to get it right. No mistakes, no lapses, no apologies. Like the lone survivor of a deadly plane crash, I had been given a gift, a second lease. I couldn’t live vanilla. I needed to be involved in something big. I had read about the bloody history of the Quebec Biker War between the Hells Angels and the Rock Machine. The Canadian Hells Angels operated like drug cartels and ran a billion-dollar business. The turf war between the two claimed hundreds of lives, including an eleven-year-old boy’s who died when a car bomb exploded outside a biker hangout. It also bred one of Canada’s most prolific contract killers.
I contacted a biker expert in Canada and offered my skills. He connected me to the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (similar to our FBI). A suit met me in a diner near the beach in California. We spoke in hushed tones over steak and eggs. He said I impressed him. He might be able to use me. But as the weeks wore on, he grew discouraged. His agency suffered from budget cuts due to the recession and the Olympics. “There are other provinces looking for similar help,” he said and suggested Ontario. “You should resubmit next year.”
After nine months of hotel life, I proposed, as Koz handed me my $3,000 cash for expenses, that I find something cheaper nearby. I didn’t see the point in wasting government funds for a hotel room I might occupy indefinitely. I quickly found a condo in Oceanside in San Diego, two blocks from the beach. Fresh paint coated the walls. A wooden deck overlooked the swells. George moved into a house next door. We fished on the docks each night at sunset. Even if we caught nothing, the lapping of the waves, the salt air wet on our faces, and the sand on our clothes enveloped us with calm. Those quiet moments, Hercules’ head on my lap, were some of the happiest of my life.
Three more months passed, and one early evening George’s face glowed bright in the golden dusk. He plunked his poles and bait on the dock and grinned. “I got a kid now,” a baby born to legally invisible parents.
Life was good. Life was really good. But I knew it wouldn’t last.
* * *
A few days later, George left. It was hard saying good-bye to him, my only friend, the only witness to my life. I would never see him again, never know where he lived, how his child developed, how his life evolved. I would never know the ending. Mine was a cutoff life. Koz gave me a week’s notice I was leaving, and I planned my exit. I found a prime kennel for my dog, one that boasted a swimming pool, gourmet meals, and a large play area for “proper socialization.” Hercules rested his large head in my lap, his dark eyes overbright, expectant, our connection to one another almost spiritual. He trusted me, knew without a doubt I would return for him.
After midnight, with wind howling through the vents, there was a knock at my front door. I tossed off my sheets and pulled on jeans and a T-shirt, my heart pounding. This was it.
Koz smiled as I padded into the hallway. I still didn’t feel ready. I had no idea if my destination was cold, warm, or rainy.
“Pack layers,” Koz had suggested.
* * *
What followed was a blur: We drove in silence to LAX, a mixture of fear and excitement coursing through me as I watched headlights smear the darkness. The deputy marshal who met us at security smiled warmly at us, extended her hand to Koz, and nodded to the duffel bags. “You have your things?” An awkward moment passed as she mistook Koz for me. I understood her confusion; Koz looked every bit the informant, with his chiseled features, blond goatee and mustache, bedraggled clothes. I cleared my throat. “I’m the one you’re here to take.” She absorbed my clean-cut style and fresh-washed tan with some hesitation, unsure whether we had played a trick on her.
“This is the end of the line.” Koz shook my hand and I felt my lifeline sever. The deputy escorted me quickly through the metal detectors. I had no identificatio
n, no credit cards, no photo. Guards looked through me like I was a ghost already. I boarded a plane as a fake person and settled next to a woman who bloomed like a flower in a red blouse with yellow spots. The black runway dazzled with pin lights. Turbulence rocked the plane as we flew through thick clouds and lightning. Flight attendants scurried down the aisles and placed miniature cans of Sprite and club soda on my fold-out tray. I stared into the black night alert and more focused than I’d ever been in my life.
And as dawn bruised the sky, we landed in Minneapolis. My heart raced. Cold blew into the plane. Was this to be my new home? Although it was early March, snow dusted the runway. Another deputy marshal met me in the waiting area. He smiled, shook my hand, and hurried me through another security gate. Weather postponed my next flight, this time to Albany, New York.
“We’re going to have to put you up in a hotel until the blizzard passes,” the marshal said.
I felt like displaced luggage.
The next day I flew to Albany, where winter lasted another month and I waited in the Hilton for my next flight. Snow covered the streets. Day blended into night. I stood at my window, steaming coffee in hand, absorbed in a white, quiet world, my life suspended again. The television flickered behind me, my only window to the world, my only human contact. Albany was not my final destination.
“Any preferences?” Koz had asked me early on where I thought I might want to end up. I liked Virginia. My online university had a campus in Lynchburg and I thought it would be nice to attend live classes. But of course I had no control over where I would finally live. I might have enjoyed the wait more had I not been so stressed about my dog. Hercules had been with me since he was six weeks old. He was my only family. An indoor dog, he was accustomed to sleeping in my bed, curling in piles of blankets at my feet. If I lost him, I really didn’t think I could survive this new loneliness.
“I promise I’ll take care of him for you,” Koz assured me, even offering to split the kennel cost. He must have heard the panic in my voice. Koz had always been kind to me, decent, a real human being, but when he offered to look after Hercules for me, he saved my life. No one had ever showed me such kindness. He called to report Hercules’ antics, his sleeping and eating patterns, and his general mood. He was like a concerned parent with a new infant. And as I cradled the phone to my ear, I relaxed.
I chose a new name in Albany. But it would take another month to get identification with that name and a new Social Security number. In early May, with wind whipping around my coat collar, I boarded a plane for my final destination. Deputy marshals escorted me once more through the metal detectors, up the ramp, through the final gate. As passengers found their seats, I tried to guess by their attire where I was headed. Some wore floppy straw hats, striped shorts, suits. Then the flight attendant announced over the speaker: Norfolk, Virginia.
When I landed, I had no formal identity, no driver’s license, birth certificate, or passport, nothing to prove my existence. My challenge: to find a place that would accept an invisible man. Illegals accomplished as much every day. After much searching and rejection, I settled on a quiet crime-ridden black neighborhood in Portsmouth, near the beach. The one-bedroom house had a den and a fenced yard and plenty of room for Hercules.
“He has to fly out before June,” I told Koz. “Once the temperatures climb over eighty degrees, it’ll be too hot for him.” There were no flights in the middle of the night to Norfolk. Hercules had to be crated and placed in cargo long enough to make it across the country and not melt. As the days ticked by, I grew more and more concerned. If Hercules didn’t board a plane in the next couple of days, I would have to wait until the fall, and by then …
My heart raced as Hercules emerged from cargo. He had lost fifteen pounds, but his eyes lit up when he saw me. He practically slid across the tiles into my arms. It was the first time I thought I might make it.
18
Once Upon a Time
Deputy marshals warned me early on that most who entered the Witness Security Program could not survive the isolation, could not perpetuate the lies. Typically, participants lasted two years before they voluntarily reentered the world and lived exposed. As an informant and a Vago, I had an identity: I was either a good guy or a badass. My costumes generated respect and fear, sometimes a mixture of both. I slipped effortlessly between my two personas, and in “off” hours I dissolved into myself. But in the WSP I was no one.
Strangely, the lying bothered me the most even though I had been deceptive about my life since I was nineteen years old: first as a drug dealer, then as an informant, and now as a completely revised person. I never imagined that lying could be so stressful. In the WSP I survived; I didn’t live exactly. In the end, I really lied only about why I relocated from Southern California to Virginia. The rest was the truth. I had legally changed my name to Charles. I was a college graduate. I did leave Southern California to start anew in Virginia. I stayed as close to the truth as possible. But disclosing only limited information made it difficult to form friendships, and I realized that I had unwittingly entered another kind of prison with new rules and codes of conduct. I was not free and I never would be.
Nightmares invaded my sleep; Bernard’s shadow loomed above my bed. I felt his presence like eyes watching me, far ahead of me, controlling me. I still had no idea whether he had paid someone to end my life. The unknown was more unsettling than the known. At least if I knew, I had a chance. I could prepare. In limbo I had real fear, even in the program. And it wasn’t just Bernard’s darkness I felt; the Vagos, too, filled my room with a heaviness.
Church became my peace. I found energy in its walls. And though I told no one at first that I participated in the WSP or had infiltrated the Vagos, I did confide in my pastor. He felt safe, like a conduit to God. The pastor absorbed my secrets, absolved my darkness, and slowly gave me permission to exhale. It took a year for the nightmares to dissipate. Simple tasks like purchasing groceries sometimes made my hands shake and my heart race. If the cashier frowned or cleared his throat or looked at me sideways, familiar rage bubbled to the surface. I wanted to punch him for no reason, to react on raw impulse. I felt like a soldier returning from war, and I imagined I experienced similar post-traumatic stress.
I had trouble dating. I wore a costume and a mask and mostly listened to the pretty fixtures across the table, watched their delicate hands lift wineglasses to their lips, push food around their plates with shiny forks. But then one night I had dinner with Monet6 and I knew I was in trouble. The last woman I had let into my circle nearly had me killed. But Monet presented a lesson in trust. Strikingly pretty, reserved, and intelligent, she tested my commitment to the program. I had to let my guard down, to believe she would protect me. Slowly, I let her into my world.
* * *
In early December 2007, I received word that Twist’s murder trial was scheduled to begin. I had been in the Witness Security Program for seven months. Deputy marshals made arrangements for me to fly from Virginia to Los Angeles. They booked multiple planes routed through various cities across the United States so that no one could track my movements. When I finally landed at LAX, several deputy marshals ushered me into a nondescript Suburban sandwiched between a convoy. For the briefest of moments I felt what a celebrity must, only my paparazzi were dark snipers hidden in courthouse towers or abandoned buildings, waiting to put a bullet in my brain. I thought of the Vagos, who had military and Special Ops training, and my heart pounded. Murdering an informant would put a notch in their belt. But I was well protected; the Suburban had bulletproof glass and I was surrounded by U.S. marshals and ATF agents.
At the federal courthouse, I followed several deputies through the judge’s secure entrance to the underground rooms beneath the jail. Mine, similar to a hotel suite, had no windows, no phone, just a speaker button I could push when I needed to communicate. Koz supplied me with a bottle of cold water and wished me luck. After giving me preliminary instructions, the doors closed and I sank, e
xhausted, into plush blue sofa cushions.
Time passed slowly while I waited for my turn to testify. I had no reservations about betraying Twist. In fact, I felt relief; because of me, a violent sociopath would finally be removed from the community. Twist killed like a machine, indiscriminately, impulsively, and left a trail of human debris. It would feel good to nail his coffin. People warned me that I might feel conflicted when I testified, might hesitate to turn against a “friend,” someone who respected me and vouched for me. But I had no regret, no remorse. I had conviction.
Neither Twist nor the Vagos loved me or each other; they loved the idea of me and their brotherhood.
* * *
Rhino testified in his jail clothes. He looked scared and pale, a far cry from his Vagos persona. The courtroom overflowed with Vagos and curious spectators. Kiles sat next to Twist’s family. She blended in easily, unassuming, coy, amazing. They had no idea she was a detective, no idea she had been so instrumental in orchestrating the success of Operation 22 Green, no idea that she had so much to do with Twist being on trial for murder. Rhino’s mother came to watch, too, perhaps to support her son, perhaps to support the club. She entwined her arms through her young husband’s, Head Butt. Thirty years her junior, she connected with him mentally even though by day she worked as a bank president and power player in the city council. She wore her costumes well. Perhaps she needed both identities, yearned to live life on the edge, with risk. Maybe she needed to wake from her numb existence and feel something again, however misguided and confused.
Vagos, Mongols, and Outlaws: My Infiltration of America's Deadliest Biker Gangs Page 13