Befriend and Betray

by Alex Caine

  I did, however, begin to cultivate the members whom I recognized as being the most influential. A prospect has to be unanimously approved by all the full members of a chapter, so theoretically everyone has an equal say. But as in any organization, some swing more lead than others, and these were the guys I worked, very discreetly, at winning over.

  Vinny Mann was the chapter president and obviously someone I needed in my corner, but I wasn’t too worried about him. On the one hand, I felt he was already on my side; on the other, I didn’t see him as the real power in the club. Officially, he was outranked by Jersey Jerry—John Jerome Francis—the northwestern regional officer and the national secretary-treasurer. But Jerry was aloof to the proceedings of the local chapter, more interested in the bigger national picture and his own various business interests, which included a video store, the Village Vidiot, and moving some pretty substantial quantities of cocaine and speed.

  The real leader of the chapter—and the man I worked most to curry favor with that summer—was George Wegers. He was the vice-president and a force to be reckoned with. Boisterous, outgoing, opinionated, extremely intelligent and very funny, George also had a very serious dark side that could transform him in an instant from a laughing, charming companion to a raging animal. This made him the most unpredictable and violent member of the chapter—and one who generally got his way.

  Another reason I needed him behind me was that his best friend and business partner in the club was Mongo (Pete Price), and it became clear that summer that if there was one member of the Bellingham Bandidos who didn’t like me much, it was him.

  Initially, Mongo had been reasonably friendly, chatting with me at the bar and such. But from one day to the next he stopped saying hello and began shooting dirty looks at me, when he acknowledged my existence at all. The change was dramatic enough that eventually, while hanging around the bike shop, I asked Gunk what Mongo’s issue was. “It’s as if I pissed in his cornflakes,” I said.

  “The man had a dream,” Gunk said. “He dreamed that you have come to destroy the club. Like you’re a curse on us.”

  I was immediately alarmed. “What, he thinks I’m a cop?”

  “No. He just thinks you’re here to destroy the club. Stay out of his way and he’ll get over it.”

  Gunk’s nonchalance was reassuring—it suggested Mongo had had these kinds of dreams before and no one had ended up in a shallow grave as a result. But I would definitely follow Gunk’s advice; I didn’t have a problem with staying out of Mongo’s way. The Bellingham chapter was known as the Chapter of Giants because of the size of its members, and none was as big as Mongo. He was 350 pounds if he was an ounce, and at least six-four. Top him off with a huge mane of matted flaming orange hair and he made for an imposing package.

  No Bellingham Bandido was half as quirky as Mongo, either. In many ways he was almost cuddly and teddy-bear-like, and few members were as loyal. He was also the most philosophical Bandido I’d met, and the only one I knew to meditate. Few, if any, were as highly skilled—he worked in jet engine development at the Boeing plant in Seattle. At the same time, Mongo was intensely irrational. He hated non-whites in general and blacks and anyone in a mixed relationship in particular. He loved the color yellow, but in a proprietorial way—only on himself and his things. (His orange hair was actually the result of a botched dye job; it was intended to be bright yellow.) And he despised anyone riding a bike while wearing running shoes. It all made for an ugly scene when, on a run, we saw a black guy on a yellow Honda with a white girl on the back—and she was wearing sneakers. The couple were very lucky that there was a concrete median between them and Mongo—and that there were a half-dozen Bandidos holding him back.

  Steering a wide berth around Mongo that summer, I cultivated George Wegers while also working on Dr. Jack—who was Jersey Jerry’s partner and also a fun and sensible guy—and, of course, Gunk, whom I saw more than any other Bandido because of the shop.

  It all seemed to be progressing reasonably well when, one evening around Labor Day, Vinny phoned me and ordered me over to his house. His tone of voice and curtness made it clear I had no say in the matter. The whole chapter, along with Bobby Lund and a few other members from Bremerton, were gathered there when I arrived about eight. No one said a word, and whatever misgivings I’d felt when Vinny called were only increasing. I was beginning to think that maybe I should have called Andy and Corky to tell them what was happening. Too late now.

  I found myself standing in the middle of the living room wondering why I’d been beckoned. Then Vinny stood up.

  “You remember that day when I told you I was checking you out?” he said gruffly.

  “Yeah, I remember,” I replied warily.

  Karate Bob spoke up. “Remember I said you might still end up in the ditch.”

  “Yaaaaaaa . . .” I began to mentally gauge my distance to the door. Too far.

  Then Vinny threw me a denim cut-off with a prospect patch on the back. “Put this on.”

  I did what I was told in record time. Everybody then stood up and gathered around to congratulate me. Everybody, that is, but Mongo. He just stayed on the couch and moped. As per instructions from Gunk, I stayed away from him. During the next few hours of partying, most of the other guys came around and gave me encouragement and advice for the year I could expect to remain a prospect.

  “I’m going to be real hard on you, but if you come through it, you’ll be stronger for it,” George told me.

  Terry Jones came over to me. He gave me a P-38—a small Marine Corps–issue can opener about an inch and a half long with a folding sharp edge and a small hole for a key ring. Every prospect got one. He said I would have to learn how to use it; not being the sharpest knife in the drawer, Terry hadn’t figured out that I’d been in Vietnam and would know how to use it already. I didn’t say anything. Terry took me to the kitchen and grabbed a can of peas. Within seconds he had it opened. I feigned concentrated interest. You could earn more respect being a fast learner than by boasting that you already knew something. Afterward he gave me a can and I opened it, saying, “Like this?” and “Is this right?” Terry was proud and slapped me on the back. “You’ll do all right!”

  When I rejoined the crowd, it was Dr. Jack’s turn. He gave me my Maglite flashlight. Every Bandido wore one on his belt. They were useful if your bike broke down on the side of the road at night and you couldn’t see to fix it. Not that that was likely to happen. Their real purpose was as an intimidating club. All the Bellingham members had the long and heavy D-cell battery version. Dr. Jack gave me a smaller, four-battery C-cell flashlight, which better fit my grip and size.

  Then Vinny gave me a leather belt insert to slide my flashlight into. On it were the letters BFFB: Bandidos Forever—Forever Bandidos. When I put it on and slipped the Maglite in, it felt like a gun belt. It felt good.

  That night was not one of orders or menial tasks, it was a welcoming event. The other shit would start soon enough.

  The morning after I was given my prospect patch, I called Andy Smith at nine o’clock sharp.

  “I have to see you, and see you right now!” I said to him.

  He asked me what was wrong, his voice almost panicky.

  “Nothing!” I snapped. “But I have to see you now!”

  He told me to come on over. The DEA offices were maybe a hundred yards away from my house beside Peace Arch Park. I walked down the alley sporting my new patch and knocked at the back door. The secretary let me in.

  “They’re in Larry’s office,” she said.

  I walked in and their jaws dropped as soon as they took in the small prospect patch above the left pocket of my leather vest (or cut, as it was called). I then turned around to shut the office door, in the process showing off the larger patch on my back. It was the first time I’d ever seen Andy speechless. Together with Larry and Corky, he just sat there for a few seconds, stunned. Then all hell broke loose. I spent two hours in the office that morning as we talked about e
verything my patch would allow us to do.

  During that time, Andy had got on the phone and sent the word out to the regional DEA office in Seattle as well as Washington. My acceptance as a prospect was a major deal. For the cops, it was the sign of real, tangible progress that was needed to finally open the vault. Money for the operation would never be a problem again.

  Once a prospect, I began buying anything from anyone in and around the gang. Besides drugs—coke and meth, as pot and hash weren’t worth the hassle—I bought guns, stolen vehicles and even expensive furniture that had been stolen from an immigration officer’s house. My contacts in Canada were insatiable, I let on.

  I went into overdrive after playing it so cautiously for so long because the team felt that the investigation could now be derailed that much more easily. Being a “hanger-on,” an “associate,” a “friend” or whatever I was exactly before being made a prospect meant that I could keep a certain distance. I saw the Bandidos when I wanted, for as long as I wanted. As a prospect, I was at their beck and call, and my presence and services were compulsory at every gang gathering. It created that much more opportunity for me to be exposed, or simply to fall out of favor. And if I was bounced as a prospect from the club, I’d have to make myself scarce—there was no going back to my former status.

  Since everything I bought went into the black hole of the police evidence warehouse (or up to Canada, as far as the bikers were concerned), I didn’t present any competition to local dealers. That was an upside, especially since George Wegers controlled much of the local trade. At the same time, however, the fact that everything I bought disappeared (except, that is, for the fancy furniture—it was displayed prominently around my house) became a bit of a problem. It seemed unnatural, particularly to someone as hypersuspicious and cautious as George. My not being big on ostentation—no flashing of bulging wads of cash, no big spending on a harem of mistresses—despite my apparently thriving and profitable business, only fed any suspicions George may have had.

  Dr. Jack conveyed these concerns to me through an idle conversation we had in his shed while he was fixing his bike. So, after consulting with Andy, we decided to use Jack and his partner Jersey Jerry in our plan to put George’s mind at rest. I’d already made one coke buy from them and we were looking for a second. Unfortunately, Jack told me, they were dry. In fact, he added, he wouldn’t mind buying a pound or so from me if I happened to find some.

  I subsequently approached George and he reluctantly agreed to sell me the drugs I needed. We arranged a time for him to come over to my house. Andy followed George’s car from the air in the company chopper as he took a roundabout route to my house. He even drove down a country road and just stopped, waiting to see if anybody was following him. Luckily, he never looked up. When he arrived, I bought the uncut pound for thirty thousand dollars. George honored me by not counting the money in my presence—a faux pas when dealing with a brother. The deal was done in minutes, and I told George I didn’t want to be rude but I couldn’t hang out with him. My customer was on his way over; George had to leave.

  My customer arrived right on time, just a few minutes after George had departed. Or not. Surveillance told us that George didn’t leave the area—he just parked at the other end of the alley and waited to see who came by. He must have been surprised when Dr. Jack pulled up to my house. I resold the pound to the doctor for $32,500. He was gone in ten minutes. In case word ever got to George, I wanted to show I had made a profit.

  George saw the deal go down and, as he told me later, was very impressed both with my business acumen—buying from one member to sell to another was no problem for him or any other Bandido—and with my maneuvering. The drugs were in my house less than half an hour and I had turned a handsome profit. That started my business relationship with George. It took a long time for him to trust a person, but when he did, it was total trust. The deal also brought Dr. Jack closer to me. And it made a shelter for abused women in Bellingham happier as well: the team donated my $2,500 profit to it and put the receipt in our file.

  Another incident that might have made the gang suspicious of me cost me my purple Firebird. One day Jersey Jerry was driving past the Ferndale police station when he saw an identical Firebird parked in the lot. Needless to say, mine was a unique-looking ride and Jerry had to wonder at the likelihood of seeing another just like it. His attitude toward me, I noticed, began to change. Other members in the gang, however, chilled him out. If I were an undercover cop, would I be so stupid as to park my car in full view of everyone in town? It was even more ironic given that the team had decided that the local cops, whether from Ferndale, Bellingham or Blaine, weren’t trustworthy and couldn’t know of our investigation.

  When Gunk told me of the incident and Jersey Jerry’s initial suspicions, he was laughing. “You know how we knew you weren’t a cop?” he said, referring to discussions the club had had before making me a prospect.

  “How?”

  “Because if you were a cop, you would have been the worst fucking cop in history. You would have been fired by now.”

  Clearly, my strategy of not asking questions and minding my own business had worked. And to keep any further sightings of that car from reigniting potentially deadly suspicions, I had to say goodbye to my Firebird. Ferndale’s not a big town, but I never did learn whose car that was.

  Still, thanks to his dream, Mongo still wasn’t convinced about me. Winning him over only occurred when we “tombstoned” an uppity Seattle gang.

  The Resurrection was an independent club that was beginning to take up just a little too much space in the area. They’d been around for years, but in the early 1980s they made a few decisions that convinced the Washington State Bandidos that the Resurrection needed dealing with. One was their going from a one-piece patch—with logo, name and city on a single piece of fabric—to a three-piece patch. It sounds ridiculous, but in the arcane politics and symbolism of the biker world, this was a big deal. Three-piece patches—with a central logo, an upper “rocker” with the club’s name and a lower rocker with their home city—were the domain of “one-percenter” gangs—that is, outlaw gangs. One-piece patches were for everybody else. One-percenters could happily coexist with non-one-percenters, but not with other outlaw gangs.

  Another misstep was a simple result of their growth: the Resurrection were discussing a split into two chapters, one south Seattle, one north. This expansion just couldn’t be stomached by the Bandidos.

  Their final gaffe—the one that made Vinny say, “Something has to be done about the Resurrection, and now”—was an ill-advised show of disrespect and arrogance. Vinny had made overtures to the Resurrection about becoming a support club. They had not responded. It was time for a visit to make them understand that an enthusiastic answer was required, not to mention polite.

  Early on a cold, damp November evening, about thirty Bandidos members and prospects hit the highway to Seattle, mostly in trucks and cars. Twenty members of the Ghost Riders, a support club from southeast Washington State, met us in north Seattle. They pulled the tail end of the procession. Even the president of a support club is lesser in status than a Bandidos prospect and must ride behind him. It was my first taste of power over other bikers.

  The Resurrection clubhouse was in a garage-like building in the middle of an industrial park on Seattle’s south side. It allowed them to party hard and keep their privacy. It also made them vulnerable. Vinny, who obviously had his spies in their midst, knew that it was their church night and that the subject on the table was the split into two chapters.

  We arrived and lost no time. Mongo was our vanguard. He yanked up the garage door, which opened right into the middle of their clubhouse. The Resurrection members—there were at least as many of them as us—were spread around on couches and chairs or just sitting on the floor. They looked at Mongo, as the rest of us lined up behind him, in shock. Bandidos then filed in along both walls and along the back, surrounding them. Three Bremerton prospects and
I stood in the open doorway with the Ghost Riders behind us and clearly visible. All the Bandidos pulled out guns and pointed them at the group. Most of the Resurrection guys were terrified. So was I. “Holy fuck,” I thought, “they’re going to kill them.”

  Terry Jones had given me a gun when we arrived, so there I was, gun drawn, sweating bullets. I still wonder what I would have done if a member of the Resurrection had made a move and the shooting had started. Standing there with a gun in my hand, I didn’t feel like an imposter, an infiltrator or a police agent—I was a Bandido. A very nervous Bandido, but a Bandido all the same.

  Vinny walked into the middle of the Resurrection. “I have a list here,” he growled. “Everyone on that list sits down. So all of you stand up.”

  They did as they were told and Vinny started reading names. One by one, about fifteen members of the Resurrection sat down.

  “Okay, that’s it. The rest of you are to leave, right now. Leave your patch on the floor.” The psych-out was masterful. Those told to leave must have thought they were survivors and were only too happy to get out of there. Except for one guy. He looked at Vinny and said, “Fuck you. You can have my patch, but I’m not leaving my bros.” Vinny told him to sit down too.

  After the rejects were gone, Vinny told the rest they had been chosen to be a prospect chapter of the Bandidos. If all went well, after a year, Seattle would have its own Bandidos chapter.

  George Wegers, who hadn’t said anything up to now, pointed to the guy who had refused to leave. “And you’re the new president.”

  In a matter of one hour, the Resurrection motorcycle club had gone the way of the dodo. All the “colors”—the jackets and vests on which the Resurrection patches were sewn and which had been dumped on the floor by the departing members—were burned in a steel drum. All except two sets. One would be sent to Bandidos headquarters in Lubbock, Texas; the other would go to Vinny’s house to be hung upside down on his wall. The chosen ones were given their Bandidos prospect patches and the Ghost Riders were sent home with thanks. The Bremerton Bandidos also soon departed. The Bellingham crew were the only invaders left. We stood around a bit awkwardly with the remains of the Resurrection, who didn’t know whether to be grateful or hostile.