Gods of Mischief (28 page)

When Big Roy learned what had happened at The Bucket he wasn't happy. It was okay to beat the shit out of people, but beatings had to be authorized. It was either Roy's way or the highway. Todd and North saved their own skins, denying they'd told me to beat the kid down, so all the shit got flung my way. Those fuckers hung me out to dry, but what the hell could I do? They were patch holders, and I was just a lowly hang-around. So I played the good soldier and took one for the United States of America.

Now here I was
getting screwed by Todd once again. In less than twenty-four hours I'd earned my patch and lost it, which had to be some sort of record for ineptitude in the forty-plus-year history of the Vagos MC.

“This shit's going to national,” Roy promised as I left the Lady Luck. “And if Tramp and I find out you're lying, it's gonna be your ass that's run down the road.”

Fucking great.

So now I was faced with starting over as a prospect. Even worse, Big Roy was threatening to confiscate the ATF's bike and boot me out of the club, putting a stake through the heart of Operation 22 Green. When I called John Carr with the bad news, he couldn't believe it.

“You what?”

“I lost my patch.”

“But you just got it.”

“That's right. And now I've lost it.”

There was a moment's silence while my handler processed this.

“How could you let that happen?”

I was in no mood for a pissing contest, so I gathered myself and told John not to sweat it. Yes, I was angry and discouraged, but I had a way out of that mess—an ace in the hole.

The hand was played
a few days later when Big Roy called me back to the Lady Luck for a powwow with Todd and North. I didn't waste time bluffing when I got there.

“No more bullshit,” I barked at Todd. “You called a Code 69 and you fuckin' know it.”

That caught the bastard off guard. No matter what the circumstances, you didn't rat out a brother . . . which, believe it or not, didn't strike me as ironic at the time.

“That's what you say,” Todd managed. “I don't remember that.”

Now Big Roy broke in.

“If George is lying, what was he doing at that house with you?”

“How the fuck should I know?” Todd answered. “He just showed up. You know how he's always ridin' around and shit.”

Man, I would have demolished that sonofabitch if he hadn't been doing such a good job of it himself. You could have driven a Freight-liner through the holes in Todd's case. He looked to the jury for support, but North and Roy weren't buying his story either.

Big Todd wasn't what you'd call a sympathetic defendant anyway. He'd been hitting the meth pretty heavy and using club money to support his habit. All the lies, stealing and cheating had already got him busted from vice president down to sergeant at arms, and now he was one small step from joining the rest of us rank-and-file peons—or even worse for him, losing his patch and getting run down the road.

“You're going to take his word over mine?” Todd protested.

“Cut the shit, asshole!” I shouted.

“Fuck you!” Todd bellowed, giving me a shove. That Vago was used to barking like a tough dog and having people back down. But I wasn't a prospect anymore. I didn't have to take anyone's shit. I went nose-to-nose with that sonofabitch, daring him to throw a punch and put me in the mood to dance.

If Todd took the bait, I was ready to drill him. But the chicken-shit wouldn't bite. When he realized he was about to get a beat-down in front of Roy and North, he clucked once and stepped back.

And that's when I flipped my hole card.

Without realizing it at the time, I'd saved my own ass by getting lost on the way to Dave the dealer's house and stopping at Jack Fite's place for directions. I'd asked Jack to attend the meeting, and when he backed my version of the story, Todd was pretty much toast.

Next day Terry the Tramp handed down his ruling from on high in the desert. Big Roy was ordered to return my cut and pull Todd's patch. It was back to prospecting for the sergeant at arms. There was even talk of running Big Todd down the road because of all the chaos he'd been causing.

Few days later I drove back to the cul-de-sac and apologized to Dave the dealer for putting him in the hospital.

“I ain't mad at you,” said Dave, talking with stitches in his face and his arm in a sling. “I understand it was just one brother looking out for the other. But I sure want a piece of that other dude. I'm gonna get that motherfucker.”

I imagine there were quite a few people who felt that way about Big
Todd Brown. And odds were that someday one of them was going to follow through and “get that motherfucker.”

Now that I had
Loki, with all the rights and privileges that patch conveyed, I needed a Harley under my ass befitting my elevated status. I'd been complaining long and loud about that piece-of-shit Touring Classic that ATF had stuck me with, and finally Carr was able to wrangle me a new set of wheels. My second ride was a Harley-Davidson Heritage the government had confiscated from the Warlocks MC. Those outlaws must have said “Thank you, Jesus!” and laughed their asses off as that eyesore was rolled away. The bike came from Washington, D.C., looking like it had been left out in the weather for ten years.

But I didn't care. Even rust-covered, that machine was a damn sight better than the rat bike I'd been saddled with for nine months. As I loaded the Heritage into the bed of the pickup, I informed John Carr I intended to make a few alterations.

“My boss won't like that,” warned John.

“Oh, yeah? Well then tell your boss to ride this piece of shit.”

Soon as I got back to Valle Vista I went to work, stripping that Harley down to the frame. I threw on some ape hangers and got rid of the saddlebags. I retooled the motor and tranny, did a bunch of little tweaks, then rolled it back out again. Any one percenter would have been proud to ride that motorcycle. I'd built her outlaw through and through.

Now that I had myself a patch and a decent bike, I could finally take my girlfriend on some of the club runs. Jenna was actually happy with the idea of spending quality time with her suspiciously gay boyfriend. Our first opportunity to ride together came on a Vagos run down to San Diego. Hemet intended to make a show of force outside the Hells Angels' clubhouse, and a few of the VOLs were coming along for the ride.

A one percenter motorcycle club was a “men only” organization, and most members treated their old ladies as little more than meat.
Some even considered them communal property to be shared among brothers like a toolbox. But my experience with the Vagos was different. In Green Nation a man didn't touch another patch's property. Violating that sacred trust could get a member stripped of his patch and run down the road.

The patch on the back of a VOL's jacket told the world exactly who she belonged to. Jenna's jacket, for instance, would have said “Property of Big George” had she chosen to wear one. But in the early days that little rebel was fighting Green Nation all the way, so fiercely protective of her independence that she wore pink instead of green.

Jenna wasn't a fan of the Vagos Old Ladies at first either. She was barhopping one night with some of the VOLs when North's wife—a big woman Jenna called “Marmaduke”—started giving one of Jenna's old school pals a ration of shit for “brushing against her hair.” My girlfriend didn't care much for Marmaduke's bluster, and she absolutely despised her lard-assed husband. North had once peppered an addict friend of Jenna's with a shotgun. The kid had survived the blast only to die later in a Chevron gas station bathroom from a heroin overdose.

Jenna fought against becoming
a VOL for several months, but gradually she came to the conclusion that if she couldn't beat the green, she might as well wear it. In time she hung up the pink threads and threw on a denim jacket that announced “Property of Big George.”

Of course, that didn't matter to a dirtbag like Big Todd. Property or not, that sonofabitch had a hard-on for Jenna from the moment I began dating her. Must have been some kind of ego trip trolling for another brother's woman, because he'd cruised that way before. Todd claimed to have fucked Crash's old lady and bragged that he knew Roy's wife inside out—and Big Roy was supposed to have been his bosom buddy.

During the months I was prospecting, Big Todd would send me on wild-goose chases for hours at a time just so he could snag some alone
time with Jenna. And once he had her to himself, he'd whisper that I was cheating on her. Not only did that slippery bastard want to nail my girlfriend, he wanted to drive a wedge between us too. I knew what that snake was up to, but since Jenna swore up and down she wasn't interested in fucking Todd, I kept my mouth shut.

And that was my mistake.

As the Harleys were revving up for the run down to San Diego, I was informed by our road captain, Sparks, that Jenna couldn't ride with me, since the Heritage didn't have a sissy bar. The road captain was responsible for rider safety, and Sparks didn't want Jenna falling out of the saddle and bouncing down the I-15. If my girlfriend was coming to San Diego, she'd have to ride in the chase truck with Big Todd.

Well, shit, that was like walking a horny chicken into the fox's den. I should have sent her home right then and there, but Jenna had her little heart set on coming, so I made the trip solo while she rode with Todd behind the pack. On our way south we picked up some Vagos members from the Corona and Norco chapters, then rolled en masse toward San Diego.

When we reached the Angels' clubhouse, the Vagos revved their throttles, posed and postured and flexed their steroid-pumped muscles for the red and white, but that provoked a few bored yawns and little else. That was usually how these little club soirees ended—with a bunch of empty bluster. Yes, outlaws clashed, and yes, people got beat up—some even got killed. But more often than not, when it came to crunch time, those macho men turned into limp-dick pansies.

So after cruising impotently back and forth in front of the Angels, the Vagos left the city and roared north again. On the outskirts of San Diego the pack came across a biker-friendly bar, and everyone piled inside to slake their thirst. Jenna joined the VOLs at their own table while I took a seat with Iron Mike. In a few minutes Big Todd joined us, and we got to drinking.

“Hey, I've been meaning to talk to you,” said Todd, leaning toward  me.

I figured he wanted to borrow money again, but for once that wasn't the case.

“All that shit that went down between us? That was totally my bad, dude.”

Well, no shit, asshole.

Instead of answering him, though, I took a pull on my bottle and said, “How you doing with Jenna? She giving you any trouble?”

“Jenna? Naw, everything's cool,” said Todd, giving me that big horsey grin of his.

He paused to look around, then leaned back in again. “Listen, Big George, I've been thinkin'. You know about the guys in Van Nuys, right? They're making a killing off the dope dealers over there.”

This was true. The drug-dealing entrepreneurs in that San Fernando Valley community were being shaken down by the local Vagos chapter.

“Well, why not us?” Todd continued. “Hemet's our home turf, right? So why shouldn't we take a cut of what the dealers are making in our backyard? We should own a piece of that action, don't you think?”

“I'm not so sure about that,” said Iron Mike, shaking his head.

“What the fuck are you talking about, Mike? Think how much bank the club would make. We've got the numbers. Let's fuckin' use 'em, dude.”

I have to say this about Big Todd. The man had great ideas for indictments. Shaking down drug dealers was called racketeering, and that was RICO, baby. As you can probably guess, I was a big supporter of Todd's stupid idea, but Iron Mike didn't share my enthusiasm. He left the table, leaving the two of us to work out the details.

“It's a good idea, don't you think?” muttered Todd, discouraged about losing Iron Mike's vote.

“Fuckin' A right,” I said. “It's a
great
idea.”

Todd took a drink. “Those pricks are making a fortune off us. I say fuck 'em all.”

“I'm with you, brother.”

“That's why we did Spun,” Todd said. “Fuck that cocksucker.”

My antennae immediately shot up.

“Spun” was James Butler, a forty-two-year-old heroin addict famous in the valley for leading cops on wild stolen-car chases. Typically, crazy Jim would either bring the one-hundred-mile-per-hour pursuit back to where it started or run out of gas trying. And then, just like my old high school buddy David, the man suddenly vanished.

The night Jim disappeared, his old man received an anonymous call claiming his son had been burned and buried in the desert. There were those who believed La Eme, the Mexican Mafia, was involved—Jimmy's girlfriend was a Hispanic dope addict with ties to that notorious prison gang—but the junkies in Hemet who knew the man best were telling a different tale.

They said two Vagos from the Hemet chapter had snatched Jim from Lake Elsinore. They'd driven him into the desert near the Southern California town of Anza, robbed him, put a bullet in his head, then torched the remains. James Butler was a drug addict and a fuckup, but he didn't deserve to go out like that. No one does.

Kevin Duffy, my detective friend from Riverside, had contacted me about Jimmy's disappearance. He'd wanted to know if I'd heard anything from the Vagos. But at the time I'd had nothing to offer him. I figured Jim was dead and buried in the Mojave, just like David, and no one would ever know what had become of him . . . until Big Todd got a little spun, poured a few drinks down his gullet and let slip the bombshell.