by George Rowe
The one I was ignoring.
God help me.
Sometime before noon Big Roy called to say he was coming by to pick me up. Tramp wanted to see us at his place in the High Desert, and Roy was nervous.
“We’re in trouble, George,” he said ominously before hanging up.
Immediately I called John Carr. My handler already knew what had gone down at The Crossroads; I’d called him after returning from the bar. At first John seemed pleased. Great . . . George has stirred the pot. But as I described the aftermath, he began to understand the serious trouble I was facing.
“Roy’s on his way over. We’re headed for Tramp’s house,” I explained on the Nextel.
“Right now?”
“Right now, man.”
“I can’t get anyone over there that fast. Can you stall?”
“No way.”
There was a brief silence on the phone.
“Alright, listen. I’ve got someone in San Bernardino. She’s a detective with the county sheriff’s department, handles gangs. I’ll see if I can get hold of her. You call me as soon as you can and let me know you’re okay.”
A few minutes later Big Roy was honking for me in the parking lot. As I climbed into his truck I spotted Jenna standing in the open door of the apartment. I gave her a wave that she didn’t return. I thought that might be the last time I ever saw her.
It was a long, quiet ride in Big Roy’s truck as we headed for Hesperia—the longest ride of my life. When we pulled into Tramp’s property about ninety minutes later, it looked like we’d stumbled on a wake.
Beyond the chain-link gate, ten to fifteen Harleys were parked in front of a gray stucco ranch. Grim-faced men in gang colors milled about, every one of them a Vagos officer.
This was some serious shit.
Roy left me standing outside the truck and headed over to speak to one of the Vagos. I lit a cigarette, tucked the lighter away, then looked up to find those outlaws gawking at me like . . . well, like I was the wake’s guest of honor. Soon Big Roy started back again, trailed by Psycho, the P of the Victorville chapter. Those desert boys were insane. I think the heat boiled their brains.
“Alright, listen up,” Roy said. “Tramp, Ta Ta and Rhino are inside with the Angels.”
Fuck! The Angels are here?! I felt my chest grip.
“Tramp wants you to wait in the garage until you’re called,” Roy continued. “No one knows anything more than that, George.”
Psycho shook his head. “I’d hate to be in your shoes, brother,” he said. “Just don’t let them see you shaking when you walk in.”
“I ain’t shaking,” I replied as calmly as I could.
“Oh, no? Check out your cigarette.”
Psycho was right. That Marlboro was shaking between my fingers like a dog shittin’ tacks.
He and Big Roy escorted me into the attached garage, which was jammed with all kinds of well-organized tools and motorcycle parts.
“Good luck,” said Psycho, smiling beneath his droopy moustache as he slammed the garage door shut.
Right away I was looking for a way out, but the only exit was through a single door leading into the house. Beyond it, the Vagos national leadership and members of the San Bernardino Hells Angels had gathered to decide my fate—and the longer I sweated in that garage, the more convinced I was they’d gathered for a lynching.
“Lord, this is your work I’m doing,” I reminded the Man upstairs. “Keep me safe.”
I paced the floor, puffing my cigarette, and stopped to examine an enormous black-and-white photograph of Terry the Tramp that he’d blown maybe four feet high and hung on the garage wall. Every Vago has seen that picture. In it Tramp is posing with his 1950s-vintage coffin-tanked chopper “Lady and the Tramp,” while gripping a double-action western rifle in one hand like he’s John Fuckin’ Wayne. Tramp had reproduced that image on everything from T-shirts to playing cards and sold it at a hefty markup to his loyal subjects.
Christ. The man had an ego bigger than his beer gut. I was reminded of a night we’d spent in a hospital room playing dominoes a few months before as Tramp recovered from a heart condition. The man was a chain smoker and serial coffee drinker just like me, but what pushed his weakened heart over the edge was a blond bimbo that almost fucked him to death.
With Green Nation’s international P flat on his back and vulnerable to being smothered with his own pillow, Crash and I were called in to take one of the round-the-clock security shifts. I swear, it was like guarding Don Vito Corleone. The nurses were laughing at us standing in the hospital corridor, arms folded, protecting our president from would-be assassins.
When Tramp called us into the room, we found Fearless Leader propped up in bed, hooked to a heart monitor and an intravenous drip. Immediately he pointed at Crash, who he must have overheard on the phone complaining to his wife about the shit-ass detail.
“Not you,” Tramp growled. “You get the fuck out of here.”
Crash ducked out fast, and Tramp smiled.
“Hey, George. What’s going on?”
“Nothing much. Just here to watch you, Tramp.”
“Well, sit the fuck down and let’s play some dominoes.”
Nothing bonds two grown men quite like playing bones into the wee hours. As we laid those tiles down, Tramp shared his war stories of the good ol’ days, including how he came to be international P of Green Nation back in 1986.
At the time, the Vagos were a dying club, he explained, led ineffectually by a motorcycle outlaw named Leonard Berella. As membership withered, Tramp’s older brother, Parts, heard of an upcoming officers meeting in Desert Hot Springs. Parts told his little bro—who was P of the San Gabriel chapter at the time—that he was just the man to turn things around and lead the Vagos back to glory.
“Lenny Berella sucked balls,” Tramp continued. “Made a lot of bad decisions for the club. So I told my two buddies, Sonny and Jerry the Jew, that I was gonna take over the leadership, and we rode out to the officer’s meeting. The Hot Springs chapter had parked all these shit-ass trailers in a big circle around the fire pit, and Lenny and I met in the middle to decide who would be the next international P.”
Visions of classic Western showdowns danced in my sleep-starved brain, with Terry the Tramp as Clint Eastwood and Lenny Berella as Lee Van Cleef.
“I’d already warned Jerry the Jew, if that bastard comes at me, I’m gonna kill him,” Tramp said.
“So did you kill the bastard?” I’d mumbled, barely awake.
“Didn’t have to. Leonard stood up to me at first, but then all his support bailed out. Once that happened he was done. He left the club and never came back.”
Tramp paused to sniff the air.
“Oh, fuck,” he said. “I think I shit myself.”
Standing in Tramp’s garage, waiting on my moment of reckoning with the Hells Angels, I understood just how the man had felt in that hospital bed . . . because I was about to shit myself too.
I thought about calling John to see if that San Bernardino detective had made it up to Hesperia, but before I could reach for the Nextel the door to the house opened and Rhino appeared.
Fuck me. This was the same brutal bastard who’d zip-tied poor Shorty, that Vagos hang-around from Berdoo, then blown his brains out.
And goddamn was he big.
“Let’s go,” said Rhino, stone-faced.
I crushed the cigarette underfoot and followed that monster like a condemned man headed for the gallows. Holy shit, Lord. This is where you’ve led me? What the hell’s the matter with you? Why didn’t you make me listen? I should have got off at the last exit, dammit. I should have turned right!
I stepped into Tramp’s kitchen—sauna hot and reeking of musty sweat and body odor. Jammed inside that cramped space and the adjoining dining room were seven grim-faced outlaws flying their colors, four of them wearing the red and white. A trio of Hells Angels was seated at the dining room table, each with a revolver resting in front of him.
<
br /> Not good.
The fourth Angel was leaning his shoulder against the kitchen wall with a cocky grin on his face. It was the same asshole I’d decked at The Crossroads Bar and Grill.
“Take a seat, prospect.”
Terry the Tramp was speaking. He motioned to the empty seat between him and Ta Ta. The moment I sat down, Rhino took a standing position directly behind me, blocking my exit.
Definitely not good.
“You know why you’re here?” Tramp asked me right off.
I was about to open my mouth when one of the Hells Angels leaned over the table.
“Fuck this asshole. He ain’t even patched.”
“Don’t matter,” Ta Ta shot back. “He rides with us.”
“He’s a fuckin’ prospect,” spat the Angel. “Give him to us and we’ll settle this right now.”
I felt my heart jump. The Angels were going to drag me into the Mojave and do me right there. But I wouldn’t go easy. Hell, no. Not without a fight. Now my brain went into overdrive. I needed an escape plan. I’d have to take Rhino down first. No easy trick. Maybe a quick upward thrust into that thick neck might pop the carotid. And if the man-mountain falls . . .
“You ain’t takin’ our brother nowhere,” came Rhino’s voice like a bullhorn above my head.
Man, I could’ve kissed that mullet-headed sonofabitch.
“He’s no brother,” the Angel snapped.
“I said it ain’t happening,” snarled Rhino, glaring down at him.
The kitchen grew pin-drop quiet. Strike a match in that tension and the whole damn room might’ve gone off like Mount St. Helens.
“Everybody just calm the fuck down.”
This was the biggest and hairiest of the Hells Angels who spoke.
“Alright, prospect,” he said to me, “why’d you hit him?”
I nodded toward the smirking Angel leaning against the wall.
“That dude said, ‘Why don’t you get some real colors.’ I took that as disrespect, so I popped him.”
All eyes now swung toward my accuser.
“That how it happened?” the big Angel asked.
“Fuck no. Like I told you. That prick swung for no good reason.”
“You lyin’ sack of shit!” I exploded.
“Fuck you, prospect!” he barked back.
“We ain’t gettin’ nowhere like this,” interrupted Tramp. “Let’s just stick ’em both in the backyard and let ’em fight it out.”
Rhino clapped a meaty paw on my shoulder. “What about it, prospect? You good with that?”
“Yeah, I’m good with that,” I said without hesitation.
“What about you?” Tramp asked my opponent.
The smirk was already wavering on that lying bastard’s face. He squirmed for a moment, then shifted a nervous glance toward his brothers at the table.
“Check it out,” said Rhino with contempt. “He’s a goddamn pussy.”
“I’ll fight him,” volunteered the Angel who wanted me buried in the desert.
“Fuck you will,” bellowed Rhino. “If that’s the way it’s gonna be, let’s just go four on four and settle it that way.”
The Hells Angels weren’t so hot on that idea, especially with Rhino fighting for the other team, so the two clubs bickered for the next few minutes—just like the good old days—until my gutless opponent finally caved under pressure and copped to the lie.
Now his three amigos were pissed. They’d put their asses on the line and been embarrassed.
As the Angels mounted their choppers and rumbled off toward San Bernardino, Rhino, Ta Ta and Tramp were grinning clear back to the molars. Tramp even wrapped me in a bear hug and asked if I wanted a drink.
Hell, yeah, I wanted a drink. Hand me the whole fuckin’ bottle. I was a nervous wreck.
Not too long after that, the unofficial truce between the Vagos and Hells Angels began to unravel. The first crack appeared when the red and white jumped some greenies in Hollywood. Then, a few weeks later the Sons of Hell were turned loose on Green Nation in the San Jacinto Valley.
Of course, I couldn’t give a rat’s ass. If those two old enemies wanted to take turns pounding each other, that was fine with me. I was just happy to be alive and relieved 22 Green was still on track.
As an added bonus, I’d managed to get the best of the mighty Hells Angels—first at The Crossroads Bar and Grill, then again in Tramp’s kitchen. As far as the Vagos were concerned, I was their flavor-of-the-month golden boy. Tramp later awarded me the “V” patch for my cut, emblematic of a member who brings honor to the club.
For seven long months my time as a Vagos prospect had been a humiliating and hellish ride—a stretch longer than most candidates were forced to endure. But within a week of that meeting in the High Desert, I was patched into Green Nation.
16
Riding with the Devil
On a Wednesday night toward the end of August 2003, about eight months after I’d first gone under, Crash and I were standing guard over the motorcycles when Big Todd called us into JB’s garage. JB was a thirty-year-old army veteran and sales manager at Caterpillar, and he had offered his beautiful home for church meetings. And even though he kept us penned with the garden tools, that garage was a damn sight better than most of the places where the Vagos held church.
The patches were waiting when Crash and I entered. Besides Big Roy, Todd and JB, there was Doc, Sparks, Slinger, Buckshot, Swede, Jimbo, Ready, North and Chopper. And every one of those boys was looking grim.
What’s wrong now? I thought. And did it have anything to do with the knucklehead standing next to me—my fellow prospect and personal albatross, Crash?
Right away Big Roy was in my grill.
“You motherfucker, I know what you did!” he bellowed at me.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about, Roy,” I said, my mind racing through the possibilities.
“You don’t know, huh?” Now Roy shifted his ire to Crash. “What about you, asshole?!”
“Uh, umm . . .,” stammered Crash before shrugging his shoulders.
“Swear to God, Roy,” I said. “We don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Is that right?” Roy fumed, then turned and commanded, “Show ’em, North.”
North, who had recently been promoted to vice president after Todd had gotten sacked for screwing up again, stepped forward with two manila envelopes.
“Here’s what I’m talking about, motherfuckers,” Roy growled. He reached into one of the envelopes and pulled out Loki, the Vagos center patch.
Hell, yeah!
Big Roy slapped the patch against my chest, then punched the spot as hard as he could. North did the same to Crash, and a cheer went up from the patches.
“Welcome to the club, brothers,” laughed Roy.
The members swarmed us, hugging, slapping backs, shaking hands and kissing cheeks.
“Alright, assholes,” Roy interrupted. “You know the drill. You’ve got five minutes to sew those patches on or lose ’em forever.”
As I stitched Loki to the back of my cut, it began to dawn on me that the long and grueling march from prospect to patch was finally over. The door to the outlaw world had swung wide open. I’d be allowed to attend church meetings now, maybe even take over one of the leadership positions like sergeant at arms or treasurer. Man, there were real possibilities there for doing damage.
I followed the Vagos from JB’s garage, then we mounted our bikes and headed out on a San Jacinto Valley bar crawl to celebrate the chapter’s newest patches, Crash and Big George.
That’s right. I had a road name now: Big George Rowe.
That’s the nickname Big Todd had always hung on me, and that’s how he’d phoned it in to national without Big Roy’s permission. Roy wasn’t happy about it, either. The man was of the opinion that two “Bigs” in his chapter was more than enough. He’d just gotten rid of Big Doug; now he had to deal with Big George. Far as Big Roy was concerned, I was one “Big”
over the limit.
For now, though, it would be Big George making the rounds and showing off his new colors to a public that couldn’t care less. They just wanted me gone with the rest of the Vagos. By the time we landed at Johnny’s Restaurant, our final stop, we’d picked up a handful of patched members from some of the neighboring chapters, including a few boys from Norco—Quickie John’s crew. The restaurant was practically empty when we walked in. In the year since the Vagos had taken over the place, business had dried up. The few patrons that remained watched us with nervous eyes and whispered urgently among themselves.
Look. The barbarians have arrived. Hide the women and children.
There were one percenters who would claim those civilians were showing respect for the patch. But that’s not the way I saw it. If anything, what I saw in those faces was fear—fear of the patch. Of course, that was the seduction for many who joined motorcycle gangs like the Vagos. Punks like Roy and Big Todd got their rocks off on that power trip.
But there was something else I was aware of while laughing and drinking with the boys at Johnny’s that night. Odd as it sounds, I felt their sense of brotherhood. I don’t know. Maybe it had something to do with my past. I’d spent a good deal of it orphaned or adopted—never quite fitting in—and the Vagos offered a family where the misfit toys could find common ground and belong to something greater than themselves.
John Carr had warned me not to get chummy with that brutish clique. That’s exactly what happened to Special Agent Billy Queen when he went under with the Mongols in 1998. The lawman got swept up in the motorcycle culture and found himself drifting over the line.
“Lot of times guys go under and start calling each other brother, and before you know it your focus gets lost,” John cautioned during one of our Friday-night meetings at the Little Luau.
Sparks (top) and Buckshot, who left the Bros MC to join the Hemet Vagos.
“Never gonna happen,” I assured him. “I know the reason I’m here.”
And I meant it too. I never lost sight of why I’d gone under with the Vagos. Why I’d worked so hard, risked so much and put up with such bullshit for that Loki on my back. I think it helped that I was never a greenie at heart. Guys like Hammer, who was a patch holder and bled green before turning for the feds, had a hard time breaking clean once the mission ended. For them it was gut-ripping to let go of their past, to permanently sever the closest relationships many of them would ever know.