Gods of Mischief (22 page)

“Clean my bike, prospect.”

Man, if not for the mission I would have ripped that squatty little fuck a new asshole. Instead I swallowed my pride and did what any true prospect would: I bent over and took it like the club whore I'd become. As I walked around begging more water, Big Roy intercepted me and slapped the bottle from my hand.

“Get your ass back over here with us,” he snapped at me. “You serve Hemet, not Norco.”

Now Quickie John came charging. In no time he and Roy were in a heated debate over whether one chapter had the right to tell another chapter's prospect what to do.

“He's club property,” Quickie argued. “If I want him washing my bike, that's my right.”

“He only washes our bikes,” countered Big Roy.

“Oh, yeah?” Quickie retorted.

I could see this kicking all the way up to the Supreme Court. I almost laughed out loud it was so fucking stupid.

“We'll take this up with national when we get to State Line,” concluded Quickie. “And we'll see what Tramp has to say about it.”

And that's exactly what happened. The great bike-washing debate came to Buffalo Bill's when Terry the Tramp pulled me, Big Roy, Quickie John and several of the national officers into a room to hash out the whole childish mess. After Roy's opening statement it was Quickie's turn.

“This prospect's gotta pay his dues just like every other motherfucker in the club,” he argued. “He's gotta earn his patch.”

“Better back off, Quickie,” Tramp warned. “Don't talk to me about earning it. Half the members in this club say your chapter's all decked out in patches they didn't earn. Hell, I've got guys that have been in for twenty years and don't have those patches.”

It was thumbs-up for me and Big Roy, thumbs-down on Quickie John. Instead of Tramp's blessing, Quickie found himself lining up his chapter to face inspection. Then a couple of Vagos old-timers began cutting patches off those Norco boys faster than they could answer questions like, How'd you earn this one? and What the hell does that one stand for?

It had all backfired on Quickie. To add to the indignity, Tramp slapped the Norco P with another thousand-dollar fine and warned him to stay clear of me. Quickie John was never a fan of mine, but now he'd become an enemy. Which was fine with me. I couldn't give two shits whether that little bastard invited me to his birthday parties. Of greater importance was the valuable connection I was making with Terry the Tramp.

The emperor of the Nation invited me onto the casino floor with
him and we played the slots together as Rhino stood guard with whatever chapter had been tapped for security that day. I watched Tramp load coin after coin after coin into those bandits, then I'd jump up and shout whenever he hit the jackpot. Tramp loved it, man. He called me his “lucky charm.”

But the international P's true lucky charm was the club he'd been sucking dry for years. The Vagos MC was his bread and butter . . . his very livelihood. Tramp was fond of saying how he lived as a Vago and would die as a Vago. What he failed to mention was that he lived off the Vagos too. Tramp had recently shuttered Triple T Choppers, the motorcycle repair shop he'd owned for fifteen years, but there was no pension plan waiting when he retired. His only means of support was the club he ruled. The man had become a parasite, surviving on the sweat and blood of his brothers—a breach of trust that would go undetected for another seven years.

In theory, loyalty to the brotherhood was a commandment that ran neck and neck with respect. It was the glue that bound a club together. But there was little loyalty and no honor to be found among those thieves. For Terry the Tramp—as it was with the leadership of most outlaw clubs—the only true loyalty was to the almighty dollar. In fact, it was that same misplaced sense of loyalty that helped drive Hammer into the arms of the ATF a few years earlier.

Most outlaw clubs maintained a defense fund for members in trouble with the law. Sonny Barger and the Hells Angels, for instance, provided funds to bail their brothers out of jail. They ran a tight ship over there. You'd never see an Angel hung out to dry.

Not so the Vagos.

At a time when Hammer needed financial rescue, Tramp was too preoccupied on the casino floor to notice. Even Hammer's own chapter ignored him. From the moment the man was locked up, his brothers were out to rip him off—including a sleazy grab for his Harley and his old lady. So Hammer turned for the feds and stabbed them all in the back. His fear of the Nazi Low Riders might have driven his decision,
but it was the disloyalty of his Vagos brothers that made Hammer's choice a no-brainer.

Eventually I got bored watching Terry the Tramp feeding club money into the casino slots and wandered outside for fresh air and a cigarette. But before I could fish the smokes from my pocket, I heard those two words I'd come to dread.

“Hey, prospect!”

Across the way a bearded asshole, standing with a knot of Vagos patches, was pointing me toward the giant Ferris wheel.

“Get on that thing and sing us the prospect song!”

Man, I was so sick and tired of hearing myself sing that stupid song that I'd actually started improvising, adding my own middle-finger salute to Green Nation that ended with “. . . and all you patch holders quit fucking with me,” which Tramp liked so much he asked me to write it down.

So there I was, going round and round on the Ferris wheel, belting out the new-and-improved prospect song as hundreds of casino goers laughed, pointed and scratched their heads below.

No sooner had I finished than my Nextel was ringing.

Uncle Johnny Law was on the line.

I'd made it a habit of calling my handler whenever Green Nation moved as a herd. Before rolling for Buffalo Bill's, I'd followed the same protocol. And now John was somewhere down below, watching my back and judging my golden voice.

“You look like a pussy up there,” was the first thing he said.

I scanned the sea of faces below.

“Where the hell are you?”

“Close enough to know you can't sing for shit, prospect.”

The bastard was still laughing as I hung up on him.

Meanwhile all hell was breaking loose inside the casino. A former member of the Vagos Orange County chapter had shown up uninvited to Tramp's party. Weeks earlier the man had been run down the road, which meant the Vagos had confiscated his patch and motorcycle, then
booted him out of Green Nation. Now his former brothers were stomping the party crasher between the slot machines as little old ladies leapt for their lives.

After that fiasco, Buffalo Bill's management banned the Vagos from their casino forever . . . which lasted right up until the next time the Vagos were banned forever.

When I arrived back
at the apartment that evening, Jenna was waiting for me at the door. Guess she must've missed me, because I was barely inside before she pulled down my pants, dropped to her knees and got down to business.

Yup, that was a pretty satisfying welcome home. And it would have been even better had I remembered to turn off the recorder—an oversight I would later regret.

Jenna polished me off and I staggered weak-kneed for the kitchen, hitching my pants up along the way. As I reached in the fridge for a cold beer, there was a pounding at the door. Before Jenna could open it, Jack Fite came barging through.

Jack Fite.

Those who knew Jack best used to call him Satan, and everyone said he would die in prison. The man was a local legend when I was a teenager growing up in Hemet, a brutal sonofabitch who lived up to his name and had the long rap sheet to prove it. There was a time, before I got my head straight, when I was an admirer of Jack's, but the day he beat the knees off a blind man with a ball-peen hammer was the day my infatuation ended.

The Hemet Vagos knew Fite's reputation, but Todd thought the chapter could use more muscle, so he convinced Roy to patch Jack into the club straightaway. Wasn't long before Big Roy realized his mistake. Jack Fite wasn't what you'd call a team player. He was a dangerous force of nature that did as he pleased, and nobody—not even the chapter president—could control such a man.

I was caught in the eye of that storm the day Jack came looking to kill someone. He knew I owned a .380 and wanted to use it to settle a score for a drug deal gone bad.

“Where's the gun?” he demanded, cornering me in the kitchen.

I looked past him to the living room, where Jenna stood frozen. She was well aware of Fite's reputation too. Billy, the father of her child, was related to Jack.

“Get the gun,” I told her.

Jenna was smarter than me, though, and wasn't about to become an accessory to murder.

“I don't know where it is,” she said.

Jack immediately sniffed the lie. “Give me the gun, bitch!” he exploded at her.

“I swear I don't know, Jack.”

He pulled a pair of handcuffs from his jacket pocket.

“You don't know?” Jack fumed, wrapping the cuffs around his hand. “You're going to tell me you don't fuckin' know?!”

He took a threatening step toward her.

“Hold on, Jack,” I blurted out.

The man spun quickly and hit me in the face with the cuffs, a blow felt in my back teeth.

“Run, Jenna!” I shouted.

The girl didn't have to be told twice. She bolted out the front door, and now that crazed Vago's anger was focused squarely on me.

“I want that gun!” Jack raged. “Give me the fuckin' gun!”

As he was saying this, the fucker was pummeling the snot out of me,
splitting my head open and knocking me to the kitchen floor. Now I was lying helpless on bloody linoleum and Jack was stomping my legs. I couldn't defend myself, either. Jack Fite was a patch holder and I was nothing but a lowly prospect. Under the Vagos rules of engagement, a patched member had the right to kick a prospect's ass whenever he felt like it.

Of course, once I heard the bone snap in my leg all bets were off. Fuck the code, the bastard was trying to kill me. I managed to stand and escape out the back door, hopping and stumbling my way toward the backyard fence. There was no vaulting it like the bad old days. The best I could do was claw my way over the top and fall down the other side to safety.

A few days later Jack drove his panel truck over to the Soboba reservation to settle the score and got shot in the head by a terrified Indian. The bullet entered above one ear, traveled around his skull and blew out the other side. Jack got back in his truck, drove three miles and collapsed on a sidewalk in San Jacinto.

When I learned the sonofabitch who put my leg in a cast had been taken to the hospital with a bullet wound in the head, my first thought was
Gee, I hope he dies.

No such luck. The man was out in two days.

It would take more than a bullet to kill Satan.

That ugly encounter with Jack Fite raised some alarming truths about this strange new world I'd signed up for. If I wanted Operation 22 Green to succeed, I had to play by outlaw rules. Trouble was those rules could get me killed. I was operating in a weird no-man's-land with my hands tied and a big target slapped on my back, one that invited any patched member to kick my ass.

And not only had I crossed into the Vagos' world . . . the Vagos had crossed into mine. Jack Fite was just one frightening example of that. Iron Mike took the apartment two doors down from me at the chicken shack. Big Todd would drop in uninvited at any hour to bend my ear
and flirt with Jenna. And Todd's brother, Big Doug, was bunking in Old Joe's trailer. That wildman had appeared one day looking for a place to stay, and my buddy hadn't had the balls to turn him away. Poor Joe. He was so spooked by crazy Doug that he wouldn't even sleep in his own bed, crashing instead on a couch he'd dragged into the parking lot and left beside the trailer.

I'm not sure what the hell went on behind the walls of the Brown family home, but clearly something screwy happened with Todd and Doug; one was a certified asshole and the other was certifiably nuts. Big Doug was one of those dudes you tried not to make eye contact with, because if you stare into the eyes of a crazy fuck too long, they can do crazy fuck things.

He was among the first recruits patched into the Hemet chapter thanks to his little brother, but it wasn't long before the man became more trouble than he was worth. Doug was going around town beating people up, taking their dope and saying the Vagos were backing him up. The rest of the time he was high on meth, which, from Big Roy's standpoint, made him about as useless as tits on a bull. Fed up with Big Doug's erratic behavior, Roy finally dispatched Todd to pull his brother's patch.

When Todd showed up at the trailer to give his big brother the news, Doug didn't take it very well. He showed his displeasure by pulling a revolver and firing several rounds at Todd's feet. Once his brother was through dancing, Doug slipped through a hole in a chain-link fence and bolted into the Santa Rosa Hills. He returned a few hours later, lifted Joe's set of keys and stole my truck.