We knew that some of the more hard-core patch holders in the Pagans condescendingly referred to us as the Hollywood Pagans—banging uptown pussy and riding the Jersey Shore like we were living the lyrics from some Bruce Springsteen song. To prove we were more than that, we were committed to performing random acts of brutality. Slater was more than willing to make a bold statement, and I was 100 percent in support of this position at the time—provided that those random acts were showered down on other outlaw bikers. But Jake didn’t see a difference between the outlaws and normal citizens. That disagreement created a divide between us that I could see, feel and taste.
Jake also had a personal demon that compelled him to dominate all those around him. No matter how close to him you were, unless you were a higher-ranking member of the Pagans, he would at one time or another brutalize you. I saw full beer cans thrown with velocity into a member’s face and watched other members get slammed in the face with the metal-studded leather forearm guard that Slater habitually wore. Usually it happened only once. I knew my day would come.
At one point, Slater was charged with the brutal knife slaying of an African-American. The charges seemed ironclad until witnesses became ghosts and some very well-paid lawyers laid waste to the remainder of the evidence.
He was once the victim of an unprovoked attack in which he was seen beaten to the ground by a lone baseball-bat-wielding attacker. Witnesses later told me that Jake seemed all but dead, but suddenly he got off the ground and shook the beating off—a feat few of us could manage.
One of Slater’s rare but memorable losses was to “Black-Tar” Larry. A laconic roofer who liked to drink alone and wasn’t considered a tough guy, Larry was trying to enjoy a beer at Vacation Bar in Highlands when Slater and some of his friends made their drunken entrance. Larry put up with Jake’s boisterous intimidation for a while. Then he snapped and did the unthinkable, furiously attacking Jake with his fists. Jake was stunned and beaten senseless in short order; it was truly an old-fashioned ass-whipping. But beating the crap out of a Pagan legend is almost certain to trigger retribution, and death. Larry and his family disappeared. There were rumors that he had moved to South Carolina.
In truth, I was intimidated by Jake. Still, I never showed him any fear. I actually went out of my way to demonstrate a willingness to engage in a fight with him rather than hanging back. My time came at the Pagan farm in the Allegheny Mountains near Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
Under club law, every Pagan owned a share of the Pagan farm, a wooded and surprisingly bucolic piece of hilly property with a trout stream coursing through the middle, one small structure and a motorcycle track for those who dared. There was no sign out front, just a dirt road leading off into the wilderness. Members were allowed to camp out there anytime they wanted to. Pagans were expected to haul in whatever they needed and leave the property in pretty much the same condition they found it in.
Getting ready for a run with the Pagans MC, during the summer of 1977. That’s me on the left.
We rode in with Pagans from throughout the Northeast one hot summer weekend. It was a long, tough ride for us, on custom bikes with rigid frames that telegraphed each and every vibration and bump in the road.
As we cruised south into the Allegheny Mountains, my mind wandered and I started thinking about “Self-Reliance,” a Ralph Waldo Emerson essay that was one of my favorite pieces of writing at the time. Even during my years with the Pagans, I had continued my reading—quietly, of course, and when there was no chance that any other members of the club were around. I could only imagine the look of bewilderment, segueing into suspicion, that would accompany any sort of philosophic discussion. The simple fact that Emerson was loved by a lot of Special Forces types would have no bearing on the matter. Pagans don’t dance, and they don’t sit around reading old books. I didn’t hide my passion for reading, but I certainly didn’t flaunt it, either. The author’s words had real life in my head especially during protracted rides. I clearly remember passages such as: “I hope in these days we have heard the last of conformance and consistency. Let these words be gazette and ridiculous henceforward. Instead of the Gong for dinner, let us hear a whistle from the Spartan fife. Let us never bow and apologize more.”
There were other phrases that resonated with me as well: “Let us enter into the state of war, and wake Thor and Woden … in our Saxon breasts.” Also: “And so the reliance on Property, including the reliance on governments who protect it, is the want of self-reliance …”
A loud bang suddenly brought me back to reality. The engine on Slater’s bike threw a connecting rod and literally blew apart. We were only a few miles away from the farm. Jake, who surprisingly wasn’t hurt in the incident, helped some of the guys push and lift the bike into the back of someone’s van. He rode the last few miles in a cage.
I was exhausted when we arrived and had a hard time just getting off my bike and walking around. None of us brought much along with us—a sleeping bag at best. Everyone was doing meth. Most people stayed awake, partying with a combination of drugs and alcohol. On the first night, I tried to catch a couple of hours of sleep on the ground, but someone tossed fireworks next to my head. On the second night, I slept in the trunk of someone’s car to get out of the pouring rain—but only after turning my colors inside out and putting them safely aside. You can never be in a cage with your colors on, and that includes in the middle of a rainstorm.
Jake decided to fuck with me during a mandatory club meeting near the trout stream. We were walking along the edge of the stream, bullshitting about something, when he gave me a violent shove. I turned my body sideways and slightly backward as I fell, and he, too, lost balance. I crashed down into the waist-deep water and put two hands down onto the rocks to steady myself. Slater swung at my head with his powerful right hand, but his balance was off and he missed. I lowered my body into a football lineman’s crouch and drove him sideways into the water.
Suddenly, Slater didn’t have the upper hand, and it was obvious that things weren’t going as planned. A nearby group of Pagans were intently watching the fight. I could have attacked and either beaten or drowned my adversary. Instead, I backed down and stood by his side. He seized on the face-saving gesture, and both of us laughingly got out of the creek. We headed off to the beer wagon, soaking wet and more wary of each other than ever.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
BLOODY FINGERS
Jake and I walked into an upscale bar and restaurant on Ocean Avenue in Sea Bright one Tuesday evening with another Pagan, whose street name was “Jet.” Because we were wearing colors, we immediately drew some raised eyebrows from patrons. We ignored the looks and headed for the bar, which was several steps down from the restaurant and offered views of the adjacent Navesink River through floor-to-ceiling windows. Sea Bright had numerous seafood restaurants and was crowded with a mix of tourists and locals throughout the summer.
We were just going to tie the load on, an uneventful evening of polite conversation. You know, our usual banter: Is the theater really dead? Is analysis really worthwhile? Is dark pink the new red? Which film will win Best Musical?
Jet looked like a biker, with long hair and a real thick beard. He was old for a Pagan, maybe 35, slender and about six feet tall. He vowed that he was going to buy a Harley soon (it was a requirement for club members), but I had my doubts. The only time I’d seen him riding a motorcycle, he’d lost his balance and crashed after about 50 feet.
A guy standing next to me at the bar started bullshitting with me about nothing and everything. He tossed some cash down on the bar and treated us to a round of drinks. Almost invariably, men seem to have this innate desire to try to impress bikers with stories of illegal activities or some prior incarceration. They try to paint themselves as “bad guys,” as if to gain our admiration. This guy, who called himself “Fingers,” told me that he’d boosted a few safes over the years. His tales of nefarious deeds went o
n from there. He had done time sparingly, but was a master thief—or so he claimed.
It was pretty clear that Fingers was fabricating the stories as he went. If a cat was real, you could see the respect he held for doing time like a solid con. Outlaw bikers were always part of any serious penal institution’s population. And outlaw bikers uniformly behaved as solid cons, always high up in any prison’s hierarchy. When I went to a prison to visit with Pagans who’d been locked down, I was always struck by the ease with which they assimilated into the prison’s way of doing things. Some seemed as happy as jaybirds. They drank, drugged, pumped iron (with the aid of anabolic steroids) and had sex both conjugal and of the kind that brings nightmares to law-abiding citizens. If you got nicked for more than a nickel (a five-year sentence), prison would be your home for a long while. So you learned the jailhouse patois, sharpened your shank, worked on your bench press and covered your body with ink. When you eventually got released, you would look and sound like one of Attila’s front line soldiers. A few violent incidents were all that you needed to complete the portrait of the ex-con outlaw biker.
Eventually I grew tired of listening to Fingers’s fictional stories. To see how far he’d go, I asked the guy if he happened to know a biker named Jake Slater.
“Yeah, I know Slater,” Fingers said, going on to describe how he’d once committed an armed robbery with him.
Somehow, Fingers didn’t recognize his former co-conspirator, even though he was standing right next to me and could easily overhear the conversation. I turned to face Jake and quietly asked if he knew our drinking buddy. Slater stared at Fingers the way a Doberman pinscher does before attacking its prey and confirmed that he’d never seen this guy before.
Oblivious to what was happening around him, Fingers then talked about how he’d ridden on the back of Jake’s Harley—“riding bitch.” I knew that had never happened, and would never happen, because Jake never carried an extra helmet. The only way he’d ever have another guy on the back of his bike was if it were a Pagan who’d been shot and desperately needed to go to the hospital. But Jake seemed willing to give this bullshit artist a pass and not call him on his lies. We decided to call it a night and head for the door. Jet needed to use the men’s room and said he’d meet us outside.
As Jake and I waited in the parking lot, we heard an old pickup starting up in the darkness. Its engine revved, and the driver whipped the Chevy Silverado around 90 degrees and started heading in our direction. The truck’s rear tires were spitting gravel as it gained speed. It was Fingers—and he was looking for a trifecta, taking out three Pagans in one drive-by.
I glanced over at the bar and saw Jet emerging, carrying an empty half-gallon wine bottle in his right hand. He took a couple of steps toward us and then fired the wine bottle at the driver’s side window with near-perfect speed and aim. The window exploded, spraying Fingers’s face with broken glass. The truck slid sideways to a halt, with Fingers dazed and bloodied.
Jake walked to the truck, opened the door and beat the shit out of the guy with his fists.
The three of us drove away together in Jake’s cage as if we had not a care in the world. We never talked about the incident again.
Now, I look back and wonder if that guy in the parking lot was really me.
It wasn’t long afterward that five of us were arrested by the Middletown Police Department on weapons charges.
Around 3:30 a.m. one summer Tuesday, Jake and I walked into the Sandy Hook Diner on Highway 36 in Middletown along with three other Pagans—Sandy Hook George, Asbury Park George and a prospect. We chowed down on steak, eggs and burgers. There was no doubt that we were loud and boisterous, but we left the handful of other customers alone. Jake picked up the tab for all of us, as usual.
We were just getting into our cages when five marked units from the Middletown Police Department screeched to a halt in the diner’s parking lot—all with their emergency lights on. The cops jumped out of their cars and shouted at us to shut the engines off and get out of the cars—immediately. All of us were forcefully tossed up against the cars and patted down. The flashing red lights from the police cars nearby made it hard to see in the early morning light.
The police searched all three cars, even though they didn’t have any legal reason to do so. At worst, we’d disrupted the peace inside the diner. But it was highly unlikely that the waitress would have had any problems with us, given the huge tip that Jake left for her. The cops found a hunting knife and a piece of a tree limb in the trunk of my car. In one of the others, they found a front strut off a Harley. They identified yet another “deadly weapon” in the back of the third car.
Soon enough, all five of us were in handcuffs and tossed into the back seat of the waiting police cars for the short trip to the Middletown Police headquarters, where we were fingerprinted and tossed in the small gray cells. Jake placed a call to a bail bondsman that he knew, and we were released before lunch.
Whether the charges were serious or not, the bust put us on the defensive and made it quite apparent that the Middletown Police Department was not going to stand for any activity from the Sandy Hook Pagans. Their tactic was successful, too; we wound up steering clear of Middletown after that incident—even before the charges were adjudicated in the Monmouth County courthouse.
The five of us spent thousands of dollars on attorneys’ fees, the bail bondsman and lost work. The trial lasted a full week, in part because five trial attorneys were involved (one for each of the defendants). Fortunately for us, the judge barred the prosecutor from discussing our membership in the Sandy Hook Pagans. The prosecution had to make its case solely on the basis of what happened in that parking lot outside the diner. With the attorney unable to paint us as “dangerous” members of an outlaw motorcycle gang, it was next to impossible to prove that a tree limb or a motorcycle strut was, in fact, “a dangerous weapon.” The case quickly fell apart and the charges were ultimately tossed out.
Ironically, before the case went to court, I’d wanted to just plead guilty and be done with the matter. I was willing to pay a fine, or maybe do some community service. But the Monmouth County prosecutor refused to plead the case out without a mandatory jail term, which I was unwilling to accept.
Had I pleaded guilty, I would have had a felony conviction on my record and been barred from ever becoming a police officer. The prosecutor had no idea at the time that he was actually doing me a favor. He might have seen things differently if he’d known that I would become a sworn member of that Middletown Police Department five short years later.
The manner in which the cops handled themselves at the Sandy Hook Diner that night made a lasting impression on me. Those officers were tough guys. Indeed, they were downright nasty to the five of us. But they were professional, and they didn’t overstep their bounds. As Pagans, we respected strength and guts in men. Those officers embodied both of those traits. There were equal numbers of officers and Pagans at the diner, and the cops stood tough and took care of business. Nobody was sent to the hospital, and nobody had their colors stolen on the way to the police lockup.
Years later, when I was a patrolman in Middletown, I sat down for coffee with a group of veteran cops in headquarters and listened quietly as two of them told war stories. They described how they’d confronted a large group of hostile Pagans and arrested them, ripping up their colors with buck knives and beating the shit out of a couple of the biggest ones. I was fascinated by the story, and believed it, at first. But then they described how the whole thing had gone down at the Sandy Hook Diner. I suddenly realized that I was one of the Pagans they were talking about. I laughed quietly to myself as the embellished storytelling continued; I never did disclose that I was one of those arrested—though my mug shot was probably still on file somewhere in police headquarters.
Over time, Jake grew increasingly unpredictable—maybe because he’d been drinking more. No doubt he was adding some drugs to the
mix as well. He would erupt like an Indonesian volcano for no apparent reason. His mood swings seemed random, and people tended to avoid giving him bad news of any sort.
One night, Jake and I were out at his favorite watering hole—Joey Miles, on First Avenue in Atlantic Highlands. Jake was always in this bucket-of-blood-and-beer joint just a few blocks away from the Sandy Hook Pagans’ clubhouse—and down the street from the Atlantic Highlands Police Department. Somehow, it didn’t matter that the police department was literally within walking distance. Indeed, Jake was just one of a number of ferocious guys who hung out at Joey Miles. Jake was in rare form this evening, surprising even some of the tough guys by choking and slapping around a couple of the regulars hanging at the bar.
Suddenly, I heard a commotion and turned around to see Jake getting into it with one of the guys at a pool table, Alexi Plotnikova.
Jake grabbed a cue ball off the table and, holding it in the palm of his hand, started pounding Alexi’s face with it over and over. I could hear the breaking of soft cartilage and bones in the man’s face from where I stood, some 20 feet away at the bar. Women in the bar started screaming as Alexi fell to the floor, his face a bloody mess.
Fearing that Slater would kill the guy, I walked over and shouldered myself between Jake and his victim. Alexi was trying to stand up, and Jake was leaning over him, ready to continue the beating. I grabbed Plotnikova by his arm and hauled him to the bar’s back door. He was groggy and could barely see where he was walking as blood poured from his nose and face. I walked him outside and released his arm, letting him slowly drop to the ground.
“Don’t fucking come back in,” I told him. “Leave now. Leave or that guy will fucking kill you.”
Jersey Tough Page 21