by George Rowe
The only snags I seemed to hit came in the month of September, the end of the government’s fiscal year. That’s when the money dried up for ATF and deals could slip away—including a fully automatic AK-47 and some Mac 10s I could have bought for five grand. Operation 22 Green fell under OCDETF (Organized Crime Drug Enforcement Task Forces), a multiagency program that provides supplemental federal funds for approved cases like ours. But when spending limits were reached and the fiscal year was done, getting additional money from the government was like prying a gun from Charlton Heston’s cold dead hands.
John Carr was desperately trying to tear through bureaucratic red tape and put together the cash while I delayed the buy. But I couldn’t stall for long. A few days late, he called the Nextel. Our conversation went something like . . .
“George, I’ve got the five thousand. Get those Mac 10s.”
“What do you want me to do, shit them? Those Mac 10s are gone, jack.”
But lost opportunities were the exception.
In early August I was contacted by one of the Vagos who had a friend looking to move some stolen firearms. The guns were being kept at an old farmhouse in Winchester, a rural community nine miles west of Hemet. I called Uncle Johnny Law on the Nextel and let him know I was heading out for a look. No need to wire up just yet—I was just window shopping, establishing a price then getting right out again. But John wanted someone watching my ass anyway, so he dispatched his right-hand man, Special Agent Jeff Ryan.
As I limped toward the door wearing my walking boot—I’d recently had the cast removed from the leg Jack Fite had busted—Jenna hurried to intercept me.
“Where you going now?”
“Got some business.”
“Business, huh?” she sniped. “Business with who? Your Uncle John?”
She made sure to put the snide emphasis on “Uncle John.”
Jenna had obviously been eavesdropping again. For the past few weeks she’d been probing me on this mysterious uncle I kept talking to, and when I stonewalled her it only made the girl more suspicious.
“I want to come with you,” she insisted.
“You can’t leave Sierra alone.”
“I’ll bring her with me.”
I wasn’t about to waste my time with pointless conversation, so I limped out the door. Jenna followed me to the truck, pleading her case at my backside.
“Between work and the gambling and your motorcycle pals, you never have time for me anymore. You go off for days, and then you come back like nothing happened. And you can’t even tell me where you’ve been or what you’re doing.”
“We hang out plenty,” I told her as I climbed into the cab.
“No, you and Joe hang out. He’s another one,” she said, nodding toward the trailer. “Why is it you always have time for him? I’m jealous of that stinky-mouthed motherfucker.”
I slammed the truck door and snapped at her from the open window, “Watch what you say.”
Jenna was close to tears now. “Are you listening to me? Are you even listening? What about me, George? Pick me for once. Pick me.”
I turned the ignition and Jenna went wild.
“That’s right! You go meet your Uncle John!” she raged. “What’s that all about, huh?! You two a couple of faggots or something?!”
I backed the truck away, leaving her frothing at the mouth.
“Say hi to your faggot boyfriend for me!”
Later I found out Jenna was cruising the parking lots of gay bars in the San Jacinto Valley looking for my truck. She actually thought I might have gone homosexual. But what could I do? Better gay than dead, which is what I would have been had I told that girl the truth. Jenna was like nitroglycerin, man. One false move and . . . BA-BOOM!
About a quarter mile from the Winchester farmhouse I met up with Special Agent Ryan. Jeff always struck me as friendly but a little preoccupied. Might have been a reason for that. A couple of years earlier, just two weeks before the World Trade Center fell, he’d seen an L.A. County sheriff’s deputy get blown away right before his eyes.
Post-traumatic stress disorder wasn’t exclusive to the military.
The farmhouse where the guns were stored was completely isolated, set back in the woods at the end of a long dirt road. Special Agent Ryan wouldn’t be able to get close enough to back me up without attracting attention. At that point it wasn’t a huge concern. I wasn’t wired or making any deals, but things might get tricky when it came time to make the buy. This was shaping up as one of those complicated scenarios that gave an informant ulcers.
CIs worked alone on an island of hostile natives, often making critical life-and-death decisions on the fly. Many of those decisions involved proper behavior in felony-type situations. See, when you were playing outlaw, people expected you to behave as an outlaw, doing things any run-of-the-mill bad guy would do . . . from snorting meth to putting a bullet in someone’s ear. Difference is you were far from ordinary. You were working for the United States government. A real challenge for a CI was figuring out how to get around those pitfalls without exposing himself.
And there were no easy answers. Every situation was different.
John Carr once shared an anecdote about sitting in the back of a car with his informant, waiting on a drug buy, when a Mongol jumped in the front seat and cut three lines of coke. The biker snorted his line and handed the mirror to John, who pretended he was busy counting money for the transaction and passed the blow along to his informant. Well, that poor bastard wasn’t a drug user, but he took one for the team and snorted both lines. Looking to get higher still, the Mongol cut another three lines of coke and passed it around. John kept peeling bills, still stalling, and handed off to his informant, who hit both lines again.
“And now I see his eyes going wide,” John told me. “Then that fuckin’ Mongol cut another three lines.”
I was laughing pretty hard now.
“After we’d made the buy I opened the door and my guy fell right out of the car,” John continued. “I thought he’d OD’d. I called my cover team and said, ‘I think we’ve got to take this dude to the hospital. I don’t think he’s breathing.’ ”
I knew it was wrong, but I couldn’t stop laughing.
“You might think it’s funny,” John lectured me, “but get yourself in a tight spot and you’ll find out how tricky things can get. That’s what you need to understand, George. An informant who commits a felony hurts his case. Credibility goes right out the window, and the defense will jump all over that shit in court. We had a big problem with Hammer because of that—because of his drug use. So be careful. Don’t let yourself get cornered if you can help it.”
“What if I’m in a fight and weapons come out?”
“Just don’t lead the charge, dude. If you have to get into it, then that’s what you’ve got to do. But don’t lead the charge.”
That had my head spinning, but there was no point making myself crazy. I’d just have to figure it out as I went along.
I left Special Agent Ryan and headed down the long dirt road toward the farmhouse. The place was a shithole, and after I met the owner I immediately knew why. The man had been a carpenter once, but methamphetamine had taken control of his life and he couldn’t keep his own home from falling apart.
He led me into the living room, where four of his spun pals were crashed on the couch and chairs. The place was being used as a tweaker pad—a location where meth-heads gathered to get high. And, man, did that place stink. Garbage was strewn everywhere, and a dog (least I think it was a dog) had taken a dump in the corner, which nobody had bothered cleaning up.
The carpenter pointed out six rifles leaning against the wall next to a fish tank filled with green water. On an end table beside the rifles were a couple of handguns. All were stolen. We negotiated a price, and I told him I’d be back with the cash. Then I got the hell out of there.
A few days later I was headed back to Winchester to make the gun buy, this time with Old Joe riding shotgun.
I’d told him about the farmhouse and how ATF couldn’t get a cover team close enough to help out in a jam, so my buddy had volunteered to come along as lookout. Guess a gun buy was more exciting than feeding branches into a wood chipper.
We rendezvoused with Carr at a remote location far from the farmhouse. I left Old Joe in the truck and climbed into the front passenger’s seat of my handler’s cover car, the same rusted-out shitbox I’d seen him driving on the way to Yucca Valley. John was busy copying serial numbers from the hundred-dollar bills he was about to hand me.
“See you brought your boyfriend,” he said, pausing to glance out the window. “You two are thick as thieves.”
Joe returned a wave and smiled, which he rarely did because of the condition of his teeth. The front set looked like a picket fence missing most of the pickets, and the back ones were mostly gone, thanks to a topped tree that had come down, pole-vaulted into his head and blown out the molars.
“Listen, I’ve got a chopper coming in,” said John. “They have a telescopic lens that can pick out your moustache hairs.”
“Lot of fuckin’ good that’ll do me at ten thousand feet.”
John resumed jotting down serial numbers. “Yeah, well, you picked a hell of a spot to make a buy, dude. That lot’s almost twenty friggin’ acres.”
He finished copying the serial numbers, then counted each hundred-dollar bill out loud into a recorder. When he was done he slipped the two grand into an envelope.
“Let’s check your pockets,” he said to me.
Standard operating procedure was to make certain an informant had no money on his person before a buy. The only cash you could have was supplied by the agency. After a thorough search, John hooked me up with sound and picture. That wasn’t always the case, but with gun and drug buys my handler wanted all the coverage he could get.
“What’s the code?” I asked once he’d finished.
There was always a code word or sentence in case of trouble. Usually it was “Big John isn’t going to like this.” If my handler heard that over the mic, the cover team would come in guns blazing. Of course, by that time I’d probably be toast.
“How ’bout . . . Jenna,” John suggested instead.
I was instantly tongue-tied.
“Jenna?”
“Yeah, Jenna. As in thanks for the blow job, Jenna.”
I hadn’t told John about my girlfriend, mainly because I’d known he would disapprove. It was weird, man, but I felt like I was that special agent’s snot-nosed kid, and I didn’t want to let him down.
“How do you know about her?” I said sheepishly.
John pointed to the recording device.
“Do us both a favor and turn that thing off when you’re done for the day, okay?”
I couldn’t help the shit-eatin’ grin on my face. But my handler wasn’t amused.
“So who is she?”
“Just some chick who’s been living with me.”
“Is it serious?”
“She’s got a kid. I’d say that’s serious.”
John’s shoulders slumped and he turned away, shaking his head. “Christ, George.”
“Don’t worry about it, man. It’s cool.”
“Listen to me,” John responded with a touch of anger. “Women are dangerous for someone like you. Women can get a CI killed. Didn’t I explain about Hammer?”
“Yeah, you told me, but—”
“Dude. The girl is living with you.”
“I haven’t told her what I’m doing, and I don’t plan to.”
“Yeah, that’s what Hammer said. Get rid of her, George. Nothing good can come of this. You need to get rid of the girl.”
I wasn’t in the mood for a lecture from Dad, so I climbed out of the car.
“Hold on a second,” said John before I could close the door. He paused a moment before continuing. “Look, you’re a grown man. But I have to tell you, George—and this is coming from years of experience—a relationship while undercover is a really, really bad idea.”
“I got it,” I said tersely and slammed the door.
As I headed for my truck I heard the window rolling down behind me, followed by John’s mocking voice.
“Suck it, baby. Oh, baby, suck my cock.”
I flipped the middle finger over my shoulder and climbed into the pickup. Then Joe and I drove off toward the farmhouse.
“So what should I do?” asked Joe as we headed down the dirt driveway.
“Don’t do anything. Just stay in the truck. If there’s trouble, honk the horn.”
“Does it work?”
“Yes, it works.”
We pulled up to the farmhouse and I crossed onto the porch and knocked at the front door. The carpenter answered, looking ragged, like he hadn’t slept in a week. As we were about to head inside he spotted Joe sitting in the pickup. The man stepped out on the porch for a better look.
“Who’s that in the truck?”
“Friend of mine. He’s cool.”
The carpenter considered Joe a long moment, then turned to me.
“I’m not sure we’re gonna do this,” he said. “Least not today.”
This wouldn’t have been the first time a seller got cold feet, and certainly not the last.
“Might not have the cash tomorrow,” I warned him, waving the envelope.
The carpenter said nothing. I stood on the porch a few seconds longer, then started back down the stairs.
“Okay. Give me a shout if you change your mind,” I told him.
When I was halfway to the truck, he called, “Hey, come on back!” and waved me into the house.
The rifles and handguns were arranged across the kitchen table. I checked each one to make sure they weren’t loaded.
“Got something I can wrap these in?” I asked him.
The carpenter disappeared, and I took the opportunity to light a cigarette and look around. The house was quiet and appeared empty. All those tweakers had either cleared out or passed out, but the place still looked and smelled like a pigsty. The carpenter reentered the kitchen carrying some old bath towels.
“Man, I appreciate this,” I told him as I rolled the rifles up. “When you’ve got a felony like I do, you can’t buy these in a fuckin’ store.”
“What are you gonna do with ’em?” asked the carpenter.
“Flip ’em and make a little profit,” I answered. “That’s what I do. So if you’ve got more, just let me know, man. Anything you’ve got I’ll be glad to take off your hands.”
I pulled the envelope and started counting out the money on the table.
“One hundred, two hundred, three hundred . . .”
Every bill I counted was going on the record, and it was all adding up to a big fat bust.
A few minutes later we walked out the front door together, with the rifles bundled under our arms. The instant I stepped on the porch, I heard that ATF helicopter buzzing high overhead. Halfway to the truck, the carpenter checked his step and squinted into the bright noonday sky.
“What’s that I’m hearing?”
I followed his gaze. You couldn’t see the chopper up there—must’ve been at a pretty high altitude—but the sound of its rotor was unmistakable.
“You hearin’ that?” he asked me.
What was I going to do? Deny it?
“Yeah, I hear it. Could be a water pump. Or maybe someone’s got a generator running at one of the farms around here.”
This seemed to satisfy the man, because he shrugged it off and continued toward the pickup. We dumped the rifles into the bed, shook hands, and Joe and I drove away.
I would return three times to that farmhouse to buy weapons. And each time that carpenter pounded another nail into his own coffin.
When I got back from Winchester, I dropped by Shooter’s Food and Brew to have a few beers. By this time Shooter had figured out that Big Roy was never going to let him join the Hemet Vagos, so he’d signed on with The Green Machine, the support club run by Sergeant Crusher
, the crooked Cathedral City cop.
I was feeling sorry for myself that afternoon, which might explain why a few beers turned into a few drinks, which led to a fucking fiasco. Almost seven months into my time undercover I was starting to realize John Carr had been right all along. There would be no quick solution to Hemet’s gang problem. Any illusions I had about cleaning up my hometown were vanishing with each month that dropped off the calendar. Yes, I was making the occasional gun buy, but Operation 22 Green was slogging along as if through waist-deep mud. Not to mention I was still a friggin’ prospect, still stuck in that no-man’s-land where I couldn’t fight back, couldn’t sit in on church meetings, couldn’t gather the inside evidence I needed to get out from under the mission that was dragging my ass down. Some kind of spark was needed to get 22 Green’s engine cranking, and before long I was convinced it was my responsibility, and mine alone, to make that happen.
For this I blame the whiskey.
There was a time, in my early days undercover, when I was drinking a whole lot of that rotgut. And once I started on Kentucky bourbon, I was going to finish Kentucky bourbon. I’d take a fifth of Wild Turkey and turn it right up . . . and still it wasn’t enough. Once I got to where I was going, though, ol’ Georgie didn’t give a shit about nothin’. Things were even worse with tequila. Two shots of that devil water and I was looking to fight anyone, including my best friends.
Nobody wanted me drinking tequila.
A few beers led to lots of bourbon, and before I knew it the bar was crowded, a lousy band was rocking the joint and Crash and his wife had joined me for drinks. As I sat knocking back Wild Turkey and trying to ignore bad rock ’n’ roll, an insane plan began to form in my booze-addled brain.
“I got an idea,” I yelled at Crash over the din.