I wondered if Jake would send “Tennessee” and some other Pagans to visit me.
Tennessee was an enigmatic Pagan. I have no idea which chapter he rode with, and I rarely saw him, even on a motorcycle. Clean-cut, medium height and weight, the guy looked like a school teacher. He wore his blond hair straight and long and had a neatly trimmed beard. He was, in fact, an assassin for the Pagans—and someone who had completed many hits over the years. I had no idea how the guy amassed sufficient piles of cash to buy chromed choppers, oversized pickup trucks and a very comfortable house—and didn’t dare ask. People who knew this cat’s personal information usually died of lead poisoning.
Several months earlier, Tennessee had introduced me to another occupation that outlaw bikers were overqualified for: ripping off drug dealers. If you play for the legion of the damned, it can be an easy way to make spending money and have some laughs along the way. It all depends on who you target. If you rip off a Colombian cartel’s courier or mule, your family could be spending thousands on a funeral. But ripping off jerks who have no clue what they’re doing and see themselves as the stars in some TV crime drama is not so tough.
Absent the chance for one big score, we went for the soft targets. Odd as it sounds, my time in the Pagans spent ripping off drug dealers was actually good training for my later work in undercover narcotics. I damned sure had the right instructor. Tennessee and I didn’t talk about it much at all. We just did it for pocket money and kicks.
Often it started with a stripper calling Tennessee and tipping him off with the information needed to do the rip. The pole dancers were always heavily compensated for their work with him. My partner was adamant about treating them politely and fairly. He reasoned, and I agreed completely, that most dancers were not drug addicts or wanton sluts; most were very good company and knew how to enjoy life. The ones who stuck around were a cunning lot indeed. They were quite capable of extracting information from the well-lubricated gangster wannabes.
A small cadre of them genuinely liked Tennessee. He was clean, wealthy, handsome and most importantly, generous. He was a paragon of confidentiality. Meanwhile, the knuckle draggers feared him; he was the consummate bad boy.
Armed with the proper dancer-gleaned intelligence, we rarely broke a sweat. Typically we would visit the dealer like any narcotics user. We would take possession of the drugs, about $600 worth (usually a couple of eightballs). When it was time to pass over the payment, we would pocket the flash roll (wad of money) and threaten his life or the lives of anyone else present. The question the dealer needed to answer was: Is it worth going to war with the Pagan Nation over a couple of eightballs? Not once was the answer yes. Mainly because Tennessee was crafty and able to smell a rat with astonishing accuracy. Also, we scared the shit out of people. They wrote off the loss as shrinkage.
One day Tennessee called me for a meet. We had a much more lucrative score set up. This would likely net about two kilos of Colombian cocaine. That’s four and a half pounds of the precious powder, which sold at around $100 a gram at the time. This was an amount of product worth battling over, which was an anomaly for us—we usually ripped off amounts that gave our victims an out. This was different. I could have quit my day job, if I’d had one. Like Oscar Wilde said, “Work is the bane of the drinking class.” But if I had learned any lesson at all from this line of work, it was that there is no free ride in the drug business.
I met Tennessee at a shot-and-beer joint in Long Branch. The guy radiated poise. His face and demeanor betrayed no emotion. His eyes held as much compassion as a tiger shark’s; you had to look more closely to see the danger signals. I strutted in, all biceps, black boots and motorcycle helmet, wearing the face of doom. We sat at the bar, away from the craven drinkers, who seemed pickled and very much at home in this dreary, smoke-filled pub. The bartender knew to give certain customers a wide berth.
Tennessee explained the situation of the score, which was much like a military operation. A dancer named Nadine had positioned herself to overhear a cocaine dealer spill his secrets. Tennessee made a circle with his thumb and forefinger. “This cat is an asshole, a big asshole. His name is Miguel Vargas. Must have made a couple mid-level scores. Now he thinks he’s a player. We are doing the planet Earth a real favor, taking this shithead off the board. Anyone stupid enough to allow some split tail to overhear his play deserves to get clipped. We ought to send a bill for services rendered to the State Police.”
“Nadine, huh? Place outside Camden?” I asked.
“Yeah, the very one. Known her for years. Solid and fearless. This bitch knows how to keep a secret. Never let me down, not once,” he said.
Tennessee looked straight at me. “She’s special. Some drunken cat stepped over the line with her recently. Even threatened her husband, a man I respect. I heard the drunk took a terrific beating. Some biker types took axe-handle swinging practice on him. I’m told he may never experience sexual gratification again. Sad thing, that.”
“I can see the compassion dripping off you, brother. Maybe you can wash it back with some beer.”
“I have yet to recon the location, so this plan, limited as it is, is in play in all directions,” he said. “Clearly this rip deviates from the nickel-and-dime shit we play on occasion. The only reason I would consider this play is because of the target. Vargas is a soft target who thinks he’s hard as a rock. His confidence makes him vulnerable. He likes to brag about no one having the cajones to take him off. He’s a nail sticking up that needs hammering down. I don’t like the way he treats the girls, either. I ain’t no cop, and those girls got to fend for themselves, but this shitbird just rubs me the wrong way.”
I thought about it for a couple of seconds. It seemed unusual for Tennessee to go after someone in this fashion—and that made it all the more intriguing for me. “Okay, I’m in,” I said.
“Why did I know you would feel that way? Onward. Asshole is set to meet a couple of Colombians at a set location. It’s a sprawling and isolated horse farm in Colts Neck. What’s unique is the exit/egress. There’s a one-mile dirt road that is the only way in or out. Unless you know about the feeder road. The entrance and exit to this drivable track is obstructed by brush. If you don’t know it’s there, it’s all but hidden. Asshole thinks he’s the only person on earth who knows about it. Probably right, if he could shut the fuck up. Now we know. We watch the Colombians make the deal, then watch them split. If we can get to the asshole with the Colombians gone, we do the rip. We abort if we cannot spend alone time with Vargas. We can solid this up when we recon the area of operations. So, tough guy, is this your cup of poison?”
“Pass me the hemlock.”
The night we set up for the rip, it was summertime warm. Nadine learned not just the location but the time the sale was to be made. She was in her own car, and Tennessee and I were using his pickup truck. We were parked on the feeder road, safely away from the shotgun shack where the deal was going down. We needed Nadine to help us. She was going to drive to a pay phone after the Colombians left via the main road, and—using a disguised voice—tell Vargas that the cops were headed his way. Tennessee and I would take him down when he went for his wheels. If he had the blow with him, we would rip him on the spot. If he secreted it in the shack, we could be reasonably assured no real surprises awaited us inside.
Tennessee was a real believer in the concept that you can never gain enough intelligence when doing a job. He would rather wait and risk losing a takedown than go in hoping everything would be okay. He must have given the Viet Cong some real headaches during his tour of duty. It was as if he’d never left southern Asia.
I was armed with a 12-gauge street sweeper. Tennessee had a .44-caliber pistol like the one Dirty Harry carried, complete with a shoulder holster, and a razor-sharp bowie knife. He explained that if the location of the drugs became an issue and Vargas was going to play it tough and not give it up, we had to get the info right away
. He was going to make Vargas sing castrato if necessary. Tennessee felt that every second we spent dealing with the job brought us closer to a bust or the arrival of unforeseen circumstances.
There were plenty of things to hide behind out near the shack, and we had both found good cubbyholes from which to view the targeted area and stay well concealed. We arrived an hour before the meet time and settled in. The Colombians, who were about 15 minutes late, cruised up in a freshly waxed El Camino. Two swarthy middle-aged men wearing casual clothes sauntered up to the shack and knocked politely. One held what looked like a bowling ball bag. The door opened and they walked inside. Five minutes later, they exited the building, walked back to their vehicle and drove off.
Though we couldn’t see her, we were confident that Nadine would have seen the two men exit and gone to make her call from the pay phone. At the same time, Tennessee crouched down and started moving low and fast like a jungle cat toward Vargas’s pimp-mobile. Pulling his bowie knife from its sleeve, he shredded the front and rear tires on his side of the vehicle. He then crept off toward his hiding spot close by.
All we had to do was wait for Vargas to split after Nadine’s tip—or so we thought. Tennessee suddenly stopped mid-stride and went prone and pressed his ear to the ground. He then lifted his head and looked over at me. He shot his arm straight up with his fist clenched, telegraphing that he wanted me to stay absolutely still. I signaled back. He pointed to his ear with his forefinger, then pointed to the dirt road. We could hear the approach of a vehicle way in the distance.
The vehicle emerged. It was a late-model beige ragtop Cadillac. It stopped nose-to-nose with Vargas’s pride and joy. All four doors opened and out popped four very heavily armed African-American men looking very serious indeed. Tennessee and I didn’t need a scorecard. Our rip was getting ripped! Two gangsters went to the front door, two went around back. I ran and dove into Tennessee’s hiding spot.
Tennessee was grinning and shaking his head. “Can you believe this shit?”
“What do we do, rip the rippers?”
He was quick to reply: “No. Fuck no. Those cats are fucking stone cold. We have to write it the fuck off.”
“Should we just make a dash for the feeder road?” I asked.
“Yeah, but first I have to kick the tiger’s balls. Head for the road, I need a couple seconds more.”
There was a lot of shouting going on in the shack. As I ran, I kept an eye on Tennessee. That son of a bitch. He ran over to the Cadillac and ripped all four tires with the bowie knife. Now no one at the party could drive away. It was sure to make for some very interesting conversation. We split before the festivities began.
Later at the bar with Nadine, we did some shots and beers and laughed like hell about the whole thing. We were all disappointed about the money, but as Tennessee said, “Sometimes you eat the bear and sometimes the bear eats you.”
There was another time, one warm day in Shark River Hills, some three miles southwest of Asbury Park, that I had a chance to speak with Tennessee. We were there for a meeting between my chapter of the Pagans and the North Jersey guys. Quiet and soft-spoken, he seemed to never display anger or toughness. The others seemed enemies of the strength he drew from deep within. We were standing apart from the group when I asked him a question about some mundane club matter. He ignored it.
“Did you know some people think you might be a Fed?” Tennessee asked.
“Some people aren’t exactly friendly, but I never thought anyone would think that,” I said.
“I know you’re not.”
“Good, because I’m not,” I shot back.
“If you were, I would know,” Tennessee said. “There’s no Feds in this club, yet.”
“I seriously doubt anyone with a badge is going to prospect. I know I didn’t, and it may look bad. But a cop prospecting, I don’t see it.”
“You will,” Tennessee continued. “The federal government is not going to put up with barbarians howling through the streets.”
I backed up a step and shifted my stance a bit. I looked at him and asked, “Why are you telling me this?”
“Because I see a person who has no idea how deep the pit is that you jumped into,” he said, looking off into the distance. “Listen closely. There are two things that fuck you up good around here. One is you getting all filled up with yourself. You start believing in your own myths. A Pagan gets his ass kissed all the time out there. Getting your ass kissed leads to blindness. Do not run afoul of club business, and pay your debts inside the club. In this club there is a machine within the machine. Understand?”
“Yeah, I think so,” I said.
“Two, a lot of people conduct business and let club people know all about it. They will only work with club people. Me? I never deal with club people in business. I do what I am asked by the right people. But no one, I mean no one, knows how I operate. Lucky you, bro, I am going to do some business with you. But today let’s just enjoy some cold beer.”
I’d gotten into the habit of calling people “bro” during my years with the Pagans, and for good reason: it meant that you didn’t need to learn a fellow Pagan’s name. Club members often used the term, and only another Pagan was a bro. No one else was ever referred to in that manner. Not getting familiar with, or close to, others in the club was part of my personal strategy to survive. I’d decided that the less I knew about my associates, the better. Some guys in the club had nicknames sewn onto their colors. Nicknames ran the gamut from amusing to not-so-amusing. You didn’t choose your nickname, nor did you have to have one. No one in my chapter used one. Still, the nicknames of Pagans I knew included “Sir Lancelot,” “Terrible Ted,” “Boob” and “Boo.” A couple of other guys went by “Grizzly” and “Dogman.” But generally Pagans generally referred to other club members simply as “bro.” There was one Pagan I never got along with, for reasons that I could never figure out; his name was “Bandit.” He was tall, heavyset and had a bad attitude. Every time the two of us got together, he was on my case. Maybe it was because I’d never prospected and he resented me for it.
I had one question for Tennessee. “Bro, I been looking to straighten things out between me and Bandit, but I can’t seem to find him. Can you reach out for this cat?”
“If you want to talk to him, you need to conduct a séance,” Tennessee said. “He had a really hot night a few days back. His fucking house burned straight to the ground. Aren’t you glad you asked?”
We walked over to a van that was playing some Pink Floyd and had a cooler filled with beer. We each grabbed one, and Tennessee gestured for me to follow him. When we were out of earshot he said, “I am going to tell you something. If you ask me how I know what happened, we will never talk business of any kind again. Got it?”
“I read you lima charlie,” I said. Loud and clear.
“Good. When I was in Vietnam I kept a fragmentation grenade on the top strap of my web gear. If capture seemed likely, I was going to pull the pin on the motherfucker. I don’t do cages, not in Asia and not here. You need to hear this in case you feel like just quitting this club or cutting a deal with the cops some day.
“Bandit didn’t have problems with just you,” Tennessee continued. “He had problems period. Too much hitting the green. He owed money all over the club, and when anyone asked him about it, the response was the same: ‘Go Fuck Yourself.’ Bandit was big and bad and had a nasty temper. But that describes most everybody around here. But he stood out, and not in a good way. The guys made one last attempt at reason that resulted in another string of F-bombs. So one night just after dark a group of Pagans showed up at Bandit’s house. They kicked in the back door and walked in. Bandit was married, but he was alone that night. They started the party without her.”
Tennessee described how Bandit was overpowered and then smashed to the floor face-first, screaming and cursing. One of the guys pulled Bandit’s belt off
and used it to bind the man’s hands behind his back. Another grabbed a kitchen towel and shoved it into his mouth, muffling his screams. Someone grabbed a large glass Pepsi bottle off the kitchen counter.
“Two of the guys pulled Bandit’s pants down to his knees while his upper body was still pinned to the floor,” Tennessee said. “The guy with the glass bottle starts screaming at Bandit. “‘Fuck me, huh? Fuck me? No. Fuck YOU! Now let’s see who is getting fucked here.’”
The Pagan slammed the top of the bottle into the biker’s ass. Then he stepped a couple of feet away and kicked the bottle in even deeper with the heel of his boot.
“Bandit started shrieking, but the towel absorbed most of the noise,” Tennessee said. The bottle-wielding Pagan then lifted his right leg high and slammed his boot down onto Bandit’s tailbone, causing the bottle to shatter in his rectum. A puddle of blood began to form beneath the prone figure, who was writhing in agony.
“Hey, Bandit, a pain in the ass for a pain in the ass,” Tennessee recalled. “We are going to give your wife a pain in the ass, too. We’ll save the bitch for dessert.”
Tennessee continued: “The group doused the first floor of the house with gasoline and torched the place, with Bandit still on the kitchen floor.
“So, you still happy to be part of the band?” he asked.
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