Gods of Mischief (35 page)

The color changed. She was pregnant, all right.

I asked her point-blank if I was the father. It was a valid question, but despite the odds stacked against her, Jenna insisted the baby was mine. At that point I didn't know what the hell to do, so I asked her to get an abortion. When she refused, I went out and got shitfaced all over again.

That afternoon and into the early evening I sat on a barstool at Shooter's, drowning myself in Kentucky bourbon while trying to think through my latest predicament with a booze-addled brain. With a few more drinks under my belt I called John Carr and gave him the headline. I couldn't say he was thrilled by the news. There were no “Congratulations” or “Thatta boy's.” It was more like I'd punched my handler in the gut and knocked the wind out of him.

“George, you're killing me, dude,” he moaned. “You've basically sealed our fate with Jenna. I warned you a hundred times to get rid of her.”

“Spare me the lecture, okay? She says she's carrying my kid. What the fuck am I supposed to do?”

“Are you sure it's yours?”

“Thanks, pal,” I snapped. “That's just what I needed to hear.”

Truth be told, I already had one kid out in the world that I wasn't taking care of, and I didn't need another, especially one who might not be mine. But having been such a monumental piece of shit in the past, I felt an obligation to step up to the plate.

For better or worse, I had to do the right thing.

So after work the next evening I walked through the front door at Espirit Circle and tossed Jenna a box with an engagement ring.

“You're going to marry me, right?”

“Yeah, sure,” said Jenna.

“Cool,” I replied, then walked back out again.

Yes, sir, I was a romantic sonofabitch.

Not long after we
got engaged, a specter from Jenna's past walked through the open garage and appeared unexpectedly in our kitchen.

It was Billy, her old boyfriend—and the sight of him froze Jenna with fear. She didn't know what her ex was capable of. It wouldn't have surprised her if he'd pulled a gun and started blasting away. But the man had come with a different purpose in mind. He'd recently finished an eight-month stint in prison, and his sister had driven him over to visit Sierra. Billy was bound, drunk and determined to let that kid know who her real father was.

He strode through the house like he owned the place, saying, “Where's my daughter? I want to talk to my little girl.”

That's when I intercepted him.

“Whoa, whoa, whoa. You need to back the fuck up,” I warned him.

Billy had always been afraid of me in the past, but he was hammered that night and feeling his oats. I could also see he'd been lifting weights in the prison yard and was pretty jacked.

“Get out of my way, George.”

“Come back when you're sober, Billy.”

“Fuck you,” he spat back. “I'm her father, and I'm gonna talk to her.”

He pushed past me into the living room, where Sierra was watching television, and knelt in front of her.

“Don't screw it up, Billy,” I hissed at him under my breath.

“Hi, Sierra,” he said to her.

“Hi. Who are you?” Sierra wanted to know.

That's when I grabbed Billy and pulled him out of the room.

“In the garage. Now.”

As I followed him through the kitchen and into the garage, I remember thinking this was the same prick who'd beaten Jenna unconscious in Arizona and dangled Sierra out the window of his car, asking, “Anyone want a fuckin' baby?”

And now he wanted back into that baby's life?

I'd given that sonofabitch every opportunity to do the right thing by his little girl. He lived only half a mile away but had never come to see her until that day. I'd even offered him money to buy her birthday presents. I'd wanted Billy to be part of his daughter's life, but he'd blown it. Now it was too late. Sierra had adopted me as her daddy, and that arrangement was working out just fine.

“There's no way I'm gonna let you come back here and fuck with that kid's life,” I warned him, trying hard to keep my anger in check.

“I'm her father,” he growled at me.

“And I'm her dad.”

“Fuck you, George. Anyone can be a daddy, but Sierra's only got one father, and I'm gonna tell her that.”

He tried moving past me into the house. I pressed a hand against his chest.

“No, you're not. You're gonna come back when you're sober, and we'll talk then.”

“Fuck you,” he said, slapping my hand away.

That's when I hit him.

Billy bounced off the cement floor and somehow got wedged between the washer and dryer. Wasn't much of a fight after that. I went crazy on the sonofabitch, kicking him in the head until he was nearly unconscious. Far as I was concerned, I was dealing with one of those “shit talkers” from my bareknuckle fighting days and was putting the boot to him. I didn't want that abusive bastard ever coming back into our lives again, and I was making damn sure he got the message.

When the lesson was over, Billy's own sister didn't recognize him. She pushed his bloody wreckage into her truck and hauled it away.

That was the last time Jenna and I ever saw him.

I
n September of 2005, the ATF paid my way to Hawaii for the annual Labor Day run to Kona on the big island of Hawaii. It was supposed to be a working vacation on the government tit, traveling to make a gun buy from a member of the Vagos chapter in Puna. But after buying weapons from a patch named Woodstock, I ate bad shellfish and spent the next five days with my ass and head in the toilet.

If I was going to be sick and flat on my back for a week, though, at least the room was nice. The four-star hotel overlooked the beach, while the rest of Green Nation were slumming it in the cheap seats farther inland, forced to endure the clatter of tired air conditioners.

Only one other Vago shared my luxurious accommodations on the Kona coastline, some big ol' goober-looking dude I spotted kicking around the parking lot. I thought it was curious that we were the only two greenies in that particular hotel, but I didn't bother thinking it through. I was more concerned with running out of toilet paper.

Problems had followed Green Nation across the ocean. The Puna Hawaii Vagos were having issues with another motorcycle club on the island called the Kinsmen. You would've thought with soft sandy
beaches and tropical breezes those Hawaii boys would have been a mellower brand of outlaw. But no. They were making plans to remove the Kinsmen's patches by force. What seemed to bother the Vagos most was the “81” patch the Kinsmen wore on their cuts; the eighth letter in the alphabet is
H,
and
A
is the first. That would be the Hells Angels.

It was always about those fucking Angels. Not sure why there was so much contempt for the mighty red and white. Could be the Vagos saw them as a bunch of prima donnas who walked around thinking their shit didn't stink. Or it just might have been a chronic case of Angel envy. There are a ton of one percenters out there who get a stiffy at the mere thought of an Angel's death's head on their back. Big Todd, for one, had himself a huge man-crush on that outlaw club.

Whatever the reason, because the Kinsmen were advertising support for Green Nation's archenemies, Tramp had given those Puna boys the green light to rip the patch off any Kinsmen that crossed their path. I got that same order direct from the big kahuna himself, who told me I could keep the patches as battle trophies.

But taking scalps was the furthest thing from my mind as I lay room-bound with my stomach cramping and nasty shit blasting from every orifice. John Carr had come knocking . . . and he'd brought company. Standing with him on the second-floor walkway was ATF Special Agent Kozlowski and that big ol' goober-looking Vago from the parking lot.

Fuck!

“No way, man. No fuckin' way,” I cursed at John. “This ain't happening.”

“Just listen to me a minute,” he said, extending his hand to stop Koz from following him into the room.

“I don't fuckin' appreciate what you're doing, man. You know how I felt about this.”

“George, I'm sorry. But this had to happen. You and Charles have seen each other around the hotel. Koz and I thought it'd be best to have you two meet instead of looking at each other sideways the whole time you're here.”

That smelled like bullshit. I just sat on the bed and slow cooked.

“You know I would never jeopardize your safety. I wouldn't do that to you,” John insisted before gesturing toward the door. “I'm just telling you Charles is a good guy.”

I looked past him to the CI from Victorville. Quick Draw didn't seem particularly thrilled to see me either. I knew right away this was one of those arranged marriages, and already it wasn't working.

“Have I ever steered you wrong, dude?” asked John.

“Not until now,” I told him.

It took me a
while to warm up to Charles. Like I said, I didn't trust dopers, reformed or otherwise. We finally ended up having a long phone conversation the day before I headed back to the States. I'd been undercover a year longer than him, but a lot had happened up there in the High Desert. Those boys were crazy, and Psycho, the Victorville P, let his inmates run wild.

Charles had stories to tell.

We talked about “Twist” Foreman, the asshole who'd shot Little Jimmy in the back during that home invasion in Lucerne Valley and how Charles was moving significant quantities of marijuana for Psycho. Just before coming to Hawaii, in fact, he'd bought fifty pounds of it on the P's dime.

By the time we were done talking I decided I actually liked that CI. And I have to admit it felt pretty good having someone in similar shoes, sharing an experience only a handful of people will ever know.

But I still didn't trust him.

The next day I was at the airport, and my perfectly miserable Hawaiian vacation ended as it began. As I stood in line with other Vagos waiting to fly off the island, I met a businessman who wanted to get home worse than I did. So I told the gate attendant I was willing to switch to the next flight. She took one look at my paperwork, then said something that nearly buckled my knees.

“I'm sorry, sir, I can't help you. This ticket was bought at a government rate.”

Ho-lee shit.

“Let me see that,” said a Vagos national officer behind me.

I handed him the ticket and pulled the starter cord on my brain.

“Where'd you get this?” he wanted to know, trying to figure out what he was looking at.

Hard to believe, but the first thing that popped out of my mouth was, “ATF bought it for me.”

I don't know where the fuck that came from. I just blurted it out. But I have to tell you, man, that comeback saved my ass. All those Vagos started laughing, which bought me just enough time to scramble out of that mess.

“Got an uncle in the military who gets that discount for me. Couldn't fly without it.”

Thank God those brutes weren't rocket scientists. Still chuckling, the Vago handed back the ticket and I got on that plane and settled into my government-discounted seat as fast as I could. I'm not sure if it was the remnants of shellfish poisoning or that near fiasco at the gate, but my guts were on spin cycle. I checked the seat pocket in front of me for a barf bag . . . just in case.

When I returned from
Hawaii I learned Buckshot was near the end of his road, dying of cancer. This wasn't a surprise; for months the poor bastard had looked like death warmed over. But as he was exiting Green Nation that ol' Vago left me a parting gift, recommending that I replace him as the Hemet chapter's secretary-treasurer. With my business experience it was a good fit . . . especially for the ATF. Now I had access to the chapter's books, and that made Special Agent Carr a happy handler.

Before he dropped out of the club, Buckshot warned that Big Roy's hand would be in the strongbox on a regular basis and that he'd never pay back a dime of what he borrowed. The chapter's books would get
wiped clean three times while I was treasurer. Each time the bank was empty, Roy would badger members to get their dues paid up. For a patch holder that added up to eighty bucks a month. With twenty members in the chapter, as much as sixteen hundred dollars was going into the strongbox every thirty days. Far as I could tell, Big Roy built his new, custom chopper without a word of thanks to the schmucks who paid for his parts. And you know what? That was cool with me. I wasn't saying nothin' to no one. Who was I but a lowly treasurer, and he the mighty P?

On the flip side of the hyphen I was also the chapter's secretary. Go figure. Me, the guy who couldn't read or write in high school, was now a secretary. Once a month every Vagos secretary, maybe twenty to thirty guys, would gather in a Fontana restaurant to hear Ta Ta hand down the latest commandments from God of the High Desert. Charles was Victorville's secretary-treasurer at the time, so we'd sit together at those boring-ass meetings, just a couple of federal informants kicking back and recording whatever leadership decreed, including where runs were headed and any snitch alerts.

As Ta Ta was
droning on, Charles gave me a kick under the table and leaned closer.

“Did you hear that?” he said under his breath.

“No. What?”

“We're looking for an informant with the initials JR.”

I sat up straight and was mentally sorting through the possibilities when I suddenly realized they got the first initial wrong. I believed it then and I still believe it now. Those two letters were close enough to GR to shrivel my sphincter to the size of a BB . . . and how anyone could get that close I haven't a fuckin' clue.

So now I'm swallowing hard and Charles is nervous because, since returning from Hawaii, he's been seen hanging around a lot with this guy GR. I called Big Roy on the ride back to Hemet and shared the
initials with him, which he relayed to the membership at our next Wednesday-night social.