by George Rowe
“Your job,” I said, snuffing out one cigarette and fishing for another.
“My job is homicide,” Kevin said sharply. “If you’re so concerned about the Vagos, maybe you should be doing something about it.”
“I’ve told you what I know.”
“Then find out more,” Kevin said. “You know most of those guys. Why don’t you talk to them?”
I paused from lighting the cigarette. Kevin saw the look of disbelief wash across my face.
“George, I’m spinning my tires here,” he continued. “This investigation isn’t going anywhere until I get a lead.”
“What the hell are you saying, Duff?”
“I’m saying I could use a lead.”
“What do you want me to do? Fuckin’ stroll into the Lady Luck and ask Roy if he’s killed anyone lately?”
Kevin smiled at the sarcasm and stood to leave.
“Just thought I’d put it out there.”
He stopped at the door and turned before going out.
“Thanks for your time, George. Be a good boy.”
Shooter’s Food and Brew in Hemet was a bar that a friend of mine had named in honor of himself. Shooter came to the San Jacinto Valley after his wife passed away and his entire world went upside down. To take his mind off his loss, the man had sunk everything he’d owned into the bar, and that’s where he’d first encountered the Vagos.
There was something about the outlaw mystique, of renegades refusing to be tied down, riding fast and free on the open road, that appealed to some men. Shooter was one of those men, and it wasn’t long before he was badgering Big Roy to join the Hemet chapter. Instead Roy took advantage of Shooter’s man-crush, stringing him along while his boys played free pool and drank booze on the house.
A few days after Detective Duffy’s visit, I was sitting in Shooter’s place and plying Big Todd with drinks at the bar. Guilt had gotten the best of me, and I’d decided the least I could do for my missing friend was ask a few questions that might jump-start Kevin’s investigation. Unfortunately the questions I asked put the Vagos vice president in a foul mood, and it wasn’t long before I ran that conversation straight into the ground.
Started out well, though, with Todd and me reminiscing about the good old days working for Hemet Tree Service, back when he was a seventeen-year-old ground man clearing the debris I chopped down. On the stool to the left of Todd sat a bearded Vago from the Norco chapter, who I didn’t know by name.
“This motherfucker is crazy,” Todd was telling the outlaw, jerking a thumb in my direction. “Climbs trees like a fuckin’ monkey. It’s unbelievable.” Then he turned back to me. “Hey, remember that asshole who stole the chain saw?”
It was the same tired story Todd brought up every time we bumped into each other.
“Yeah, I remember,” I told him. “I remember trying to warn you, but you had the chipper running.”
Todd turned back to his buddy. “George is up in this fuckin’ palm tree, like sixty feet off the ground, and he spots this prick lifting a chain saw off the company truck. So he pulls a gun and starts shooting at him.”
Todd was laughing now. “Believe this guy? He climbs trees with a fuckin’ Magnum strapped to his ankle.”
“Three eighty,” I corrected him.
“A three-fuckin’-eighty,” said Todd. “So the prick is running with the chain saw and George is blasting away from up in the tree and that fuckin’ kid is freaking out. He’s like, ziggin’ and zaggin’ and shit.”
Now Todd and his buddy were both laughing.
“He dropped the chain saw, though, didn’t he?” I said.
“Fuck yeah, he dropped that chain saw,” laughed Todd. “But you can’t shoot for shit, guy.”
“I wasn’t trying to hit him, asshole.”
“Well, you should have,” countered Todd before taking a drink. “You should have popped that motherfucker.”
I thought it was the height of fucking hypocrisy for Todd to bring that up. Hell, the man had been ripping off equipment from that company all the time to pay for his meth and cocaine habit long before I’d ever fired that .380 from the treetops.
Maybe I should have shot Todd instead.
Bullshit small talk followed until I finally steered the discussion toward my missing friend. I started trolling with some offhand remark like “Hey, whatever happened to that dude who gave you guys so much shit at Johnny’s? What was that all about anyway?”
“Who we talking about?” Todd asked.
“About a month ago. The dude at the pool table. The one who knocked Roy on his ass.”
Apparently that particular topic was a real buzz kill, because Todd immediately clammed up.
“Fuck that punk,” he muttered.
“Hell, yeah,” I said with a grin. “You messed him up pretty good.” Then I threw in a casual “What the fuck happened to him anyway?”
It was a ham-fisted move that I immediately regretted. Big Todd took a long pull on his bottle, then turned with a smoldering look.
“Don’t worry about it.”
“Why would I?”
“That’s right,” he replied tersely. “Why would you? It’s been handled.”
I’d jerked the hook too hard, and let my fish get away. Big Todd was through talking. David had been handled, end of story. After that misplay there was nowhere to go but home, ending my brief and failed career as an inside man.
Or so I thought.
A week or two later Kevin Duffy called to ask for a private rendezvous out on Warren Road, an isolated two-lane stretch that hugs the western edge of the city. With the benefit of hindsight, I would have been better off leaving my truck keys on the counter and going to bed. Instead I headed out around 10:00 p.m., drove through town on Florida Avenue, then turned north on Warren.
There were no streetlamps along that straight stretch of worn-out asphalt, nothing but high-tension poles and open farmland. I continued through the dark landscape until the headlights found Kevin’s unmarked SUV idling by the edge of a potato field.
I pulled beside him and spoke through the open window.
“So what are we doing, Duff?”
“Park your truck and climb in.”
I squinted past him. There was a dark figure in plainclothes sitting in the front passenger’s seat. I couldn’t see him clearly, but I knew who he was. This was the lawman Kevin had asked me to meet, a young hard-charger who headed the newly formed special investigations unit with the Riverside County Sheriff’s Department.
I climbed into the backseat of Kevin’s SUV and he swung back onto Warren Road and continued heading north. Before long we’d left asphalt and started down a rutted dirt track that terminated at an old dump. Kevin killed the engine but left the dome light burning. The sheriff turned to look at me over his shoulder and introduced himself.
“Mr. Rowe, I asked for this meeting because Detective Duffy seems to think you’d be a good man to know.”
I tapped out a cigarette and glanced at Kevin. “That right?”
“I understand you’re friendly with Roy Compton.”
“Well, you’d be wrong.”
“I’ve seen you at the Lady Luck.”
“I get tats there,” I explained, displaying the ink on my forearm. “That doesn’t mean we’re buddies. I think Roy’s a fuckin’ prick if you want to know the truth.”
Kevin and the lawman exchanged a look. I lit the cigarette and cracked the window.
“What’s this about?” I said.
After a moment’s hesitation, the lawman said, “Mind if I call you George?”
Before I could answer he called me George anyway.
“This is confidential, George. I need to know that what we discuss here stays between you, me and the detective. Can I have your word on that?”
I glanced at Kevin Duffy.
“Alright, fine.”
“Okay, then,” said the sheriff, pausing only briefly before launching his spiel. “For the past few months we’ve
been running surveillance on the Lady Luck. We believe the Vagos have been violating state and federal laws in Hemet. Selling drugs. Maybe even firearms.”
“How about murder?” I added.
“Maybe that too,” said Kevin.
“We want to shut down the Vagos,” the sheriff continued, “starting with Hemet. But to do that we need eyes and ears on the inside.”
This took a few seconds to register, but once it clicked I looked at Kevin and said, “You gotta be shittin’ me, Duff.”
I’d been sandbagged.
“Just listen to the man, George,” begged Kevin.
“Here’s our problem,” the sheriff quickly continued. “Any time we conduct surveillance on the Lady Luck, the Vagos behave like Boy Scouts. And every time we’ve raided the place it’s been squeaky clean. No guns. No drugs. Nothing. We think someone’s tipping them off. We’re just not sure who.”
I had a pretty good idea. Among the Lady Luck’s clientele were a couple of Hemet cops who never seemed to pay for their tattoos. Free ink was Big Roy’s way of saying thanks for the heads-up. That kind of relationship wasn’t uncommon in the outlaw world. There were lots of biker wannabes posing as lawmen. One percenters tolerated this because a lawman in the pocket could be worthwhile. But truth was most outlaws would as soon spit on a cop as look at one.
“Just so I understand what you’re asking,” I said, trying to stay calm, “you want me to hang around Roy’s shop and feed you information. That about right?”
“Close enough,” said the sheriff.
“And can you explain just how the fuck I’m supposed to pull that off?”
The sheriff and Kevin exchanged a look. I knew what was coming, so I saved them the trouble.
“You’re asking me to fucking join the Vagos, aren’t you?” I said point-blank.
“We know it’s asking a lot,” said Kevin.
I shot him a hard look. “You think?”
“Let me ask you something, George,” said the sheriff evenly. “If you had the ability to get rid of the Vagos in Hemet, would you do it?”
I looked him straight in the eye.
“You’re asking me to snitch, pal.”
“He’s asking for your help,” chimed in Kevin.
Tossing Big Todd a few leading questions was one thing, but this was the kind of help that could get a man killed. It was a known fact that the only thing an outlaw hated worse than cops was a snitch working for cops. Within the brotherhood, betrayal was considered the worst of sins, and the sentence for that ultimate sin was death. That was what these lawmen were asking that night; to raise my hand and volunteer for a possible death sentence. The more I tried to wrap my head around it, the more pissed off I got.
“Listen to me,” I said, biting back anger, “nobody wants the Vagos gone more than I do. But that’s your fuckin’ job, not mine. I don’t get paid for that.”
“Would you like to get paid?” asked the sheriff. “Because I can arrange that. I could get you a motorcycle too. Anything you need.”
He reached into his pocket and pulled out a cell phone.
“It’s a throwaway,” he said, extending it toward me. “The minutes are prepaid, won’t cost you a dime. My number’s already in it. You can call me directly any time, day or night.”
I let the phone hang there. This slick sonofabitch was moving fast.
“I don’t want your phone, Sheriff, and I don’t want your money. I just want you people to stop all the fuckin’ chaos.”
“That’s why we’re talking to you,” replied the sheriff. “Right now we’re deaf and blind when it comes to the Vagos. If we’re ever going to stop this, we need some inside help. Can you do that for us, George?” he said, proffering the phone again. “Will you help us get these guys?”
That question was still unanswered as we left the dump and headed back to Warren Road. I sat quietly in the backseat, smoking a cigarette and staring out the window at the dark outline of the San Jacinto Mountains. My friend’s body was probably buried somewhere in the desert beyond those shadows. So who would speak for him?
Not me. Not yet, anyway. I trusted Kevin Duffy, but I wasn’t so sure about his colleague. Something about that gung-ho lawman just didn’t sit right with me—a nagging gut-sense that somehow, someway, he’d get my ass buried next to David.
No, I wasn’t ready to answer that sheriff’s call for help.
But I did take his phone.
4
The Devil’s Trade
A much wiser man than me once said that every saint has a past and every sinner a future. Well, this sinner knows the exact moment his future began. It’s scorched into my brain like a cattle brand. And it wasn’t that night on Warren Road, nor was it David’s disappearance. Nope. The game-changer came years before that, when an eight-year-old boy asked a question that shook me to the core.
“Daddy, are you a drug dealer?”
Was I a drug dealer?
Are you shittin’ me? Is a frog’s ass watertight?
I was twenty years old when I discovered drugs, a late bloomer, but once I got rolling there was no stopping me. A habit that started as recreation soon became a full-time occupation. I went from smoking pot and snorting cocaine to dealing it on the streets, then shifted into cooking methamphetamine in the desert.
Nasty stuff, crystal meth. Crazy addictive. Eats you alive. I was over six feet tall and weighed 148 pounds back then, a walking corpse that never slept, lit up and buzzing like a neon light. During one particularly brutal binge I was spun for a month straight before finally crashing out. After that I got myself a tattoo on my left arm of a grotesquely distorted face: the face of crystal meth.
That was the monster that lived inside me.
On crank my ego was out of control. I thought I was God Almighty, and to the customers I serviced maybe I was. After all, Ol’ George had the big bag—everything those tweakers needed. I was making a ton of money off their addiction and spending even more. My pockets would be stuffed with twenty grand one day and empty the next. I’d blow it all on toys or loan it out to friends and customers. Sometimes the money came back, sometimes not. And when it didn’t there was hell to pay.
I became a feared man around town. An amped-up beast with a chip on his shoulder and a .380 strapped to his ankle. A friend once told me that he loved to see me coming but couldn’t wait for me to leave. Yup. I was a real badass motherfucker. Couldn’t pay me? Fine. I’d screw your old lady. And believe me, I screwed plenty. Methamphetamine will turn a righteous woman into a whore. She’ll trade what’s between her legs in a heartbeat if it means a dealer in her pocket.
Sex for drugs. Don’t mind if I do.
And if I didn’t want the pussy, I’d haul everything you owned until I got paid. Around the valley they had a name for me; the U-Haul Bandit. If a customer stiffed me, I’d back a U-Haul truck to his front door and strip the house right to the walls.
Hell, I’d even take the cat.
There was a time when I had close to seventy U-Haul storage units jammed with the personal belongings of customers who owed me money. Imagine the cost to rent those units every month and you’ll get some idea of the cash I was banking as a drug dealer.
Over in neighboring San Jacinto stood a little nondenominational church called the Pottery House. During my years selling dope, the preacher there was bound and determined to salvage my soul, railing against the evil of my drug-dealing ways. Well, that preacher might have been a man of God, but he was also a man with a serious heroin addiction. Doctors were pulling veins from his legs to rewire his neck, because all his main cables had collapsed and he had only that one place left to slam the junk. This Bible-thumping hypocrite knew all about the U-Haul Bandit, knew about those storage units packed with property I’d confiscated. He called it “Satan’s stuff” and warned I’d suffer eternal damnation unless I purged myself of those ill-gotten gains.
I wasn’t concerned about eternal damnation at the time, but I do know my life as a dealer
was hell on earth. All I have to do is stand naked in front of a mirror to be reminded of those dark days. There’s a bullet scar on my left shin, put there by a nervous tweaker who shot me through his car door, and old knife wounds on my bicep, hand and left forearm, which is where a blade got stuck in bone and had to be surgically removed. Turn me around and there’s even a scar on my ass where a buck knife went through my buttock and into the scrotum, tearing my testicle in half.
I was never afraid of knives. Any man who showed a big knife on his belt was usually a coward. I kept mine hidden on my backside, a 120 buck in a custom sheath that went crossways across the belt and pulled from the side. I seldom used it. Whenever someone came at me with a blade, I got inside of him quick, grabbed the wrist and broke his fuckin’ arm.
In the drug world I stood out because I knew how to make money. But there were people just as ruthless as me who wanted to take away what I had. It was a stressful way to live, constantly watching your back, and after a while I started thinking that maybe the better play was to turn to manufacturing and leave the slinging to others. Cooking was where the real money was, anyway. Hell, I was already snorting the shit, why not profit on that nasty habit?
It was a Hells Angel who first taught me the Devil’s trade. He was a friend of my buddy Freight Train, and I badgered that Angel for two years until he finally agreed to take me under his wing and teach me how to cook meth.
Our first classes were held in a garage, where the dude had his equipment set up like a small laboratory. There was a large glass globe with nipplelike cooling towers used to cook and separate ephedrine, the prime ingredient in the manufacture of meth. Nowadays methheads are forced to boil down Sudafed to extract the same shit, but in those days I could get my hands on big drums of it. Breeders actually mixed ephedrine with chicken feed to make their birds crank out the eggs faster. The nation’s henhouses were clucking with hopped-up chickens.
After seventy-two hours of cooking, when the brew had finally boiled down and separated, the garbage was skimmed off the top and the choice stuff harvested from the bottom. That’s where the money was. That’s what I was after.