Befriend and Betray

by Alex Caine

  “I thought you were gone to Texas,” he said. “Where are you?”

  “At home. I haven’t left yet,” I answered.

  “Well, you’ve got to stop by here to change your trailer hitch before you go,” Vinny said, completely out of the blue.

  Had I woken him up? Was he dreaming? There was some logic to his remark. When we drove to Texas, we often brought our bikes along on a rail trailer. Those trailers generally took a smaller ball on the hitch. But I wasn’t trailering anything down to Texas—if I was going, I was flying, and Vinny knew that.

  “Noooooo,” I said.

  He immediately lost his patience. “Anyway, I want you over here right now!” he barked.

  That’s when I knew it was well and truly over.

  “Yeah right!” I answered. “Not in this lifetime.”

  I hung up and called Andy. He had heard the whole conversation through the wire. It was time to get out, we agreed. I grabbed my colors, the club’s accounting books, a few clothes, three guns and a few other odds and ends, and headed down the alley.

  Back in the DEA office, we watched a half-dozen or so Bandidos arrive at my house—a couple on bikes, the rest in a car and a truck. Vinny, Gunk, Craig and a few others came into focus on the four small monitors. They kicked in the front door, and Grinder, the dog I had given Mongo a year or so earlier but which he had returned to me when he discovered it wasn’t purebred Rottweiler but half shepherd, attacked. Vinny shot him in mid-air. I was beside myself with anger and remorse that I’d neglected to bring the dog with me. Then they started going through the house, searching for anything that said Bandidos or was otherwise linked to the club. There wasn’t much.

  The tac squad used the gunshot as a reason to go in. Gunk was halfway up the ladder to the attic, where all the video and communications equipment was stored, when the team arrived. The Bandidos said that one of their members lived in the house and that they’d just been partying a bit heavily. The gun, they maintained, went off by accident. After being held and harassed for several hours by police, the bikers were let go. It was November 3, 1984. It wasn’t time yet for the big bust or to let them know I’d been working for the cops. But it was time for me to get out of Dodge.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  KKK to the Rock

  ______

  That night, I went home to North Vancouver. An agent drove me, as much to get my guns across the border by flashing his tin as to make sure I arrived safe and sound. I’d phoned Liz earlier in the evening and she was still up, expecting me and as relieved as I was that the investigation had finally come to an end.

  I stuck around Vancouver barely long enough to have a shower and do my laundry. During my therapy break a couple of days earlier we’d agreed that I’d take my family on a week-long Hawaiian vacation on the DEA dollar as soon as I was out of Blaine. It happened sooner than expected, but we weren’t complaining. The beach time was just like it was supposed to be—hot and sunny—but I’ve never been much of a tropical vacation kind of guy. I’ll swim if I have to—if I fall in or get pushed—but you won’t catch me taking a dip or splashing in the surf for pleasure. The kids and Liz loved it, however.

  Within a few days of returning to Vancouver, Liz and the kids were off to the sun and sand again, this time to visit Louise and Frank in Homestead, Florida, as we’d planned when I was still hoping to transfer my patch to Texas. Obviously, Texas wasn’t in the plans now. Still, Liz, the kids and her parents had been looking forward to getting together, so they went ahead with the visit. As far as I was concerned, the time alone would let me learn to be me again. I had always been on the more emotionally remote side of things; my time with the Bandidos had only made me more so. So while superficially things were fine with Liz, there was a distance there, a gulf, that I would have to work to get across.

  For a week or so I had relatively little contact with the outside world. I’d check in every day with Andy and the boys to see how the preparations for the arrests were going. The rest of the team had a lot of paperwork and bureaucracy to get through: unsealing indictments, writing up and swearing out affidavits, applying for warrants, determining whether charges would be federal or state—that kind of thing. It required constant back-and-forth between my handlers and the assistant district attorney. I, however, was just a spectator.

  Given how long the investigation had gone on, I didn’t have any friends in Vancouver anymore, and Liz’s friends sure weren’t going to drop by if she wasn’t there. I was still in biker mode—standoffish and then some—and that kept regular people at a distance. The only exceptions were Liz’s sister Sue and her husband, Phil, who lived just a few blocks away and dropped by almost every day. I suspect their visits were a favor to Liz, whom I spoke to daily, and who no doubt wanted someone keeping an eye on me. I didn’t mind. Phil was a Bob Dylan wannabe and would sometimes hang around and play guitar.

  Slowly, I could feel myself getting back to normal, or at least a workable facsimile of normal. One morning I woke up, had breakfast and then hauled all my biker stuff out and into the middle of the living room floor. There I packed it all up into two boxes, sealed them with duct tape and shoved them into the back of the closet. I was putting my Bandidos baggage away, literally and, I hoped, figuratively.

  The Bandidos, however, weren’t getting over me like I was getting over them. I found this out an evening or two later when Sue and Phil dropped by.

  The brother of a Mountie I knew owned a security company that kept a few guard dogs, and the day after Liz and the kids left I’d borrowed a Doberman from him. I wasn’t necessarily expecting trouble and, frankly, figured I’d appreciate the company, but I knew biker gangs didn’t take kindly to members disappearing on them, especially with their colors. As it turned out, the dog almost got Phil killed. Looked at another way, he may also have saved my life.

  Every night about eight, I would take the dog out into the yard and chain him up so he could do his business. The house we were renting was on a corner lot, so except for a thick hedge surrounding the backyard it was exposed to the street. That night Phil wanted a breath of night air and offered to take the dog out for me. He had just clipped the dog to his chain when a shot rang out. Phil went down. Luckily for him, he had been crouching down and the bullet went through his thigh rather than into his chest. Luckily for the shooter, the dog had just been attached to the chain—otherwise he would have had his teeth in the shooter’s ass in no time. The gunman had been on the other side of the hedge, only about fifteen feet from Phil, when he’d fired his .38 revolver.

  Police were on the scene in minutes, but they never caught anyone. The next day, after the Mounties swung into action on behalf of the DEA, I was driven to the airport, escorted through security and put on a flight to Florida, feeling more than a little rattled and leaving poor Phil in hospital to have a metal pin put in his leg.

  In Florida, Liz and I rented a place across the street from Frank and Louise. We were there indefinitely now, not simply for a prolonged pre-Christmas visit. I continued my regular calls to Andy and Co., helping out as much as I could with preparations for the busts. I made a trip or two back to Seattle and Texas to consult with police and prosecutors. As the big day approached and the arrest and search warrants were nailed down, the DEA’s attention turned toward the mechanics of the raids: who had the biggest arsenal or kept the meanest dogs, who was likely to go peacefully and who would probably act stupid and dangerous. I spent hours with different tac team leaders and analysts making drawings that showed exits and doorways, bedrooms (the raids would be made, as usual, in the early morning), possible hiding places and the like. I was thankful to have been trained by the Mounties when it came to making notes. On the inside of my notebooks I had sketches of all the houses I had entered.

  Finally, early in the morning of February 21, 1985, the hammer was brought down by more than a thousand cops in nine states and one Canadian province.

  The big show happened outside of Lubbock, where the ga
ng had a trailer compound ringed by two chain-link fences, which themselves were separated and topped with razor wire. Andy, wearing camo pants, an orange Bandido Busters T-shirt specially printed up for the occasion, a white silk scarf and a pair of goggles, rode a borrowed armored personnel carrier right through the fences, followed by legions of police. Behind the police, the press poured in. Guess whose picture made the evening news? For a long time after that, we referred to Andy as Rommel.

  In Lubbock and elsewhere, the busts went overwhelmingly smoothly. Most of the bad guys didn’t put up much resistance. Those who did were quickly subdued.

  I’d told the tac team rounding up the Bellingham chapter that Terry Jones would probably come through the living room from his bedroom with a gun cocked and ready. I also advised them to ignore Jones’s dog, the pit bull Binky. He was harmless and would hide. To avoid having to shoot Terry, the tac team hit his house in such a way that he was immediately surrounded, and he surrendered. Binky did indeed hide, after peeing on the floor.

  I’d also predicted that Dr. Jack would cooperate so long as the cops treated his wife with respect. When they hit his house, they were polite, and didn’t enter the bedroom until his wife had a chance to dress. There, and most other places, things went well. There were a few cuts and bruises, and in Fort Worth, Texas, a trooper was shot but not seriously wounded by one particularly hotheaded biker. Beyond that, nothing too dire. No dead bikers or associates. Other than Binky, however, the dogs weren’t so lucky.

  At the end of the day—actually, probably before noon—law enforcement agencies had arrested ninety-three patched Bandidos, two British Columbia Hells Angels and dozens of gang associates. Seized were some drugs and an impressive arsenal of weaponry: more than one hundred machine guns, three hundred other firearms and a bunch of explosives. In terms of arrests and charges it was—and remains—the biggest bust of outlaw bikers in U.S. history.

  All the bikers faced multiple charges, some federal and some state, some RICO. In certain jurisdictions—Washington, Texas and Louisiana included—the law gives an accused the right to confront the person who has denounced him, in this case me. So, following the takedown, I spent about a week flying across the country facing my old friends in small interrogation rooms. They or their lawyers were allowed to ask me questions relating to their charges.

  Vinny was the first up. He stared menacingly at me as his lawyer asked stupid questions such as, “Are you sure that this is indeed the man who sold you cocaine?” At one point Vinny abruptly reached for the ashtray and the two cops in the room jumped in surprise. I just thought it was lame. I looked at my erstwhile chapter president and felt nothing—no pity, no allegiance, no anger. Yes, he had tried to kill me, but he was just doing what was expected of him. I didn’t take it personally. For his part, he didn’t say a word. He just glared.

  When it came to Dr. Jack, all he wanted to know was why I turned. The club could have helped me through whatever problems I had, he said.

  “Jack, I didn’t turn,” I told him. “I was hired from the start to get you guys. I was never the guy you thought I was. That guy never existed.” As I was saying it, I realized it was as much to reassure myself as to convince him. He picked up on it.

  “Sure he does,” he said. “Somewhere inside you’re still Bandido, and you’ll never change that.”

  Jack ended up taking a plea and got four years. I never had to testify against him. Most others also took the easy way out, pleading guilty to reduced charges either before or after preliminary hearings, and got similar terms: Vinny, George Wegers (who was in prison at the time of the takedown), Jersey Jerry, Terry Jones, Sly Willie.

  As is almost always the case, the soft sentences were a bit of a letdown after all the work. Even those, such as Gunk, who pleaded not guilty got off lightly. They were almost all out of jail by 1988 or 1989.

  A couple of things, however, made me happy. Everyone we charged went down, with the exception of the wife of Rex Endicott. That was fine with me, because as far as I knew she was innocent. At her trial, her lawyer asked me if I thought she was involved. I testified that I had never said anything in front of her and didn’t think she knew anything.

  It also pleased me that Mongo was never charged with anything. At one point in the investigation he needed money and had offered to sell me some coke that George had given him. I passed on it and lent him some cash instead. Even if he had a psychopathic streak, I knew he was in the Bandidos because of the brotherhood, not the criminal opportunities it presented. I also felt a sincere affection for him and his quirky ways, despite his racism and occasional viciousness.

  From almost any way you looked at it, the investigation was an unmitigated success. We might not have gone in the direction we’d originally intended—rather than getting the goods on the dealings between the Washington State Bandidos and bikers in Canada we’d infiltrated the American gang nationwide—but we far exceeded any expectations we had when we started out. All the bad guys we arrested were convicted and sent to prison. And, special bonus, no one had been killed or maimed.

  Still, in terms of dealing a real blow to the Bandidos, it’s hard to find evidence that we made much of a difference. When I arrived on the scene, there were two chapters in Washington, in Bellingham and Bremerton; while I was there, two more were created, in Seattle and Yakima, by co-opting the Resurrection and the Ghost Riders. These days Washington boasts at least a dozen Bandidos chapters. Elsewhere their expansion has been just as impressive. At best our investigation slowed them down a bit—that’s all.

  And for me, on a personal level, the case was a mixed blessing. Sure I made good money and had a lifetime’s worth of excitement and crazy experiences. Sure it provided no shortage of good stories for grandkids (if I ever have them) or bar-stool neighbors (if I ever take up drinking). But I’ve never seen my “victory” over the Bandidos as a triumph of good over evil. They changed me more than I did them. In many ways, they were the closest thing I’d ever had to a family. Maybe that’s why, after more than twenty years, I still have my patch and my Bandidos membership card. So I guess Dr. Jack was right.

  I remained on the DEA payroll through all of 1985 and into 1986, until the case’s last court date was over. This was before the days of direct deposit, so while I was in Florida, collecting my pay involved going into the DEA office in Miami. There I made the acquaintance of Frank Eaton and Tom Rice, two agents who had their hands full trying to keep Florida from becoming completely snowbound thanks to the Colombian cocaine cartels.

  They quite quickly saw what was clear to everyone: neither Florida nor inactivity was for me. They tried to interest me in working with them on the Colombians. Even if I was bored with the beach and mall routine, I didn’t bite. I had heard some very nasty things about Colombians. I may have been out of the Bandidos frying pan, but I wasn’t yet ready for the Colombian fire.

  I was then offered an FBI–ATF job infiltrating the Ku Klux Klan in Mobile, Alabama, and finding out if there was any truth to rumors that members were not only involved in illegal weapons and drug dealing but also had what the feds called “subversion”—what today might just be labeled terrorism—on their minds. A bunch of good ole boys dressed in white hoods and swigging bourbon sounded more my speed at the time than Uzi-toting Colombians, so I took the gig. I didn’t ask Liz what she felt about it, but I doubt she was displeased to have me out of her hair.

  All I was given was the address of a pawnshop on Dauphin Street in Mobile and the name of its owner, Willie, who had been identified as a prominent member of the local KKK chapter. So, using a different name as a precaution, I rented a room at a motel two blocks away from the store and started hanging around the neighborhood. In particular, I became a regular at a little greasy spoon next door to Willie’s store. I did that for two weeks or so, until I was reasonably sure Willie had noticed me. Then I finally went into the pawnshop. It was a cramped but neat place, with a pronounced specialty in guns and other weapons, including cross
bows, bayonets and knives. There were the other staples of the trade—guitars, amps and other electronics, a jewelery counter—but Wille’s money was evidently in firearms. A bunch of military memorabilia—badges mostly—testified to his personal interests.

  Willie was friendly in a Southern way, and solicitous in a store-owner kind of way. But he wasn’t unguarded. Initially our conversations were superficial, hardly more revealing than chats about the weather. We’d talk about fishing, guns, music. I also made it clear right from the start that I was a rabid racist, something that clearly put him at ease.

  “There are a lot of fucking niggers in this town!” was one of my first observations.

  “There sure is,” he answered. “You can’t get away from them.”

  After that, almost every chance I got I would hint at a hatred of blacks. A school bus would drive by and I’d remark, “You got busing in this town?” Or we’d be talking about cars and I’d say that I used to own a Delta 88.

  “That’s a good car,” he’d say.

  “And a big one. You can stack ten niggers back to back in the trunk.”

  After maybe three increasingly lengthy visits, he felt that he knew me well enough to spout off with his own racist views. He wasn’t like some of the nutcases I met on the job who still had ambitions of “cleansing” the United States. His was a more pessimistic view: blacks were everywhere and would remain so; all whites could do was keep apart from them and stand their ground.

  At the back of the store there was a TV and a chair on the merchant side of the counter and a couple of stools on the customer side. I would sit back there with him and just hang out. Willie wasn’t overly inquisitive about my origins or reasons for being in Mobile. I just let on that I was a drifter, a bit of a ne’er-do-well, someone who couldn’t find a place to fit in. Having just come off the Bandidos case, I suppose I emanated enough hardness that Willie didn’t need much convincing.