A cold knock is when an operator approaches a violator cold, without an introduction. The technique entails finding a violator’s weakness of common interest so that the operator can exploit it to get close. You use cold knocks when the target is otherwise unapproachable. You don’t have a snitch or any way to get an introduction, so you invent one. This is a slow process and requires good intelligence gathering beforehand.
The violator may own a motorcycle shop or a pub. He or she may regularly frequent bars or hangouts, or street corners. You do your research, and you always measure the risk/reward value of running up on a violator cold. You can’t just walk up to a bad guy and say, “Hey, can I buy some drugs?” You have to use finesse. I always liked the approach of literally ignoring them, acting like I couldn’t give a fuck about what they had and getting them to come to me with the help of some well-choreographed street theater. Because their greed was always on my side.
At the beginning of the Iron Cross investigation, we had an informant who could introduce me to Lil Rat, but Lil Rat didn’t trust the informant all that much, so that was all he could do. The first time I met Lil Rat was at his tattoo parlor. From where I was, on the outside looking in, I knew a guaranteed way to get some alone time with him.
I knew if I asked the boss for three or four hundred dollars for a tattoo, he would laugh me out of his office. We were not allowed to use investigative funds that resulted in any personal gain. These were taxpayers’ dollars, and such an expense wouldn’t look good in a report. I damn sure wasn’t going to pay my own money to advance an investigation, so I hustled. Lo and behold, the local PD Special Investigations Unit boss said they would put up the money.
I milked the process for all it was worth. I was in and out of Lil Rat’s shop a dozen times while we discussed designs, and he redrew it several times until I liked it. I also wanted to make sure he knew what he was doing and I wasn’t going to get Hep C. I had him draw a four-headed dragon to honor the four ATF agents who died during the Waco raid. Of course, I didn’t tell Lil Rat that. After a couple weeks of chatting it up, it was time to get it done. I blocked out time at the end of his day, so no civilians would be coming in and out. I also brought a fifth of whiskey. In hindsight, that was more for me than for him. It wasn’t such a brilliant idea to get my tattoo artist drunk.
For the next three hours I sat there doing shots with Lil Rat while getting my free tattoo. He did tell me to slow down on the JD until we were done, because I was bleeding like a stuck pig. We talked about his club, dope, guns, women. I got closer to the president of the club than I could have in three months. When the art was done, he pulled out a spray bottle with a 5 percent alcohol solution in it to apply to my tattoo. He said, “This is gonna sting, brother.” He sprayed me, and it did sting. So of course, I said, “Dude, did you even put any alcohol in that, you cheap fucker? I don’t wanna catch the herpes or whatever is layin’ around this shop.”
Lil Rat laughed, pushed some ink bottles aside, and grabbed a spray bottle that had “Asshole” written on it. Before I could ask, he sprayed my still-bleeding tattoo. I came up out of that fucking chair like a rocket. Yep, this was the 100 percent alcohol solution.
From that day forward, I pretty much had unfettered access to the club and easily introduced Bird when he got to town.
It gets a little precarious if you’re out with your family and a violator approaches you, wanting to sell some dope. This happened many times to most of us—someone knew us from the street or we just looked like someone who might buy dope. Generally, you walk away. Sometimes, you just work the problem. One time my dad was visiting me in Las Vegas, and Bird enlisted him in a cold hit at the Silver Dollar bar.
At first, I was like, “Have you lost your fucking mind, Bird?” It was risky, not to mention we would be violating a buttload of ATF policies. Then when I met the violators at the bar with my dad at the table, I realized this was perfect. You’d have to know my pops. Let’s just say I was the first and maybe the only cop in my heavily Italian American family.
The deal was these two knuckleheads at the bar wanted to sell us some dope and a couple pistols. We went back to our table and briefed pops on the details. In classic Godfather form, we waved the violators over to the table, where my dad, barely looking up, said, “We will take the pistols.” Then he looked at me and Bird and said, “But you two know where I stand on that dope shit.” We both nodded to my dad in a compliant manner. The two violators damn near kissed his ring.
Bird and I walked them back to the bar and made arrangements to meet the next day. Bird said, “We’ll take the dope too. Just don’t ever tell the old man, or they’ll find us all in the desert.”
The more we found ways to expose their crimes, the more the violators developed new ways not to get caught. Jimm Langley and an agent named Cisco found themselves with a shitload of challenges when they received information about some Miami airport employees accepting pay to help drug dealers skirt security. Although Cisco was well seasoned and had been partnered up with Jimm for a while, working out of the Miami field division, neither he nor Jimm ever had experienced what was about to come. The two agents entered into an elaborate scheme with the violators, who would sneak guns and hand grenades past security. First, the agents would give the arms to the employee to take into the airport. Once the agents went through security, they would meet the violator at a specific terminal. The agents would hand a soda can with five hundred dollars in it to the violator, and the violator would hand them the firearms in a carry-on bag, presumably to carry onboard the aircraft.
Jimm and Cisco had two identical carry-on bags. After a violator handed off the firearms to Jimm, he would go to the restroom, where he and Cisco swapped bags under a stall. Cisco would take the bag containing the firearms and exit the airport, so none of the weapons ever made it onto an airplane.
This was before 9/11 and the formation of the Transportation Security Administration (TSA). Despite the precaution of not boarding an aircraft with the smuggled weapons, when the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) security apparatus found out what our guys were doing, they blew a gasket. The FAA was not comfortable with us operating within their jurisdiction, and the case was perfected and summarily shut down.
My earlier run-in with one of my old juvenile partners in crime was on my mind when I began working undercover in my home area. I knew the more I immersed myself in the local criminal world, the higher the probability I would be recognized. My father used to run the bar at Nave Lanes bowling alley, which was owned by an influential, wealthy family in Marin County. Several of the Nave brothers had served on the San Rafael city council and on local county commissions. Our families were friends, and the Naves treated my father very well for many years. Whenever I came to the bar to do my homework, I got free bowling games and ate free at the snack bar.
One of the Nave brothers’ sons, Paul, was a local boxing celebrity and fought some high-profile fights. Unfortunately for me, he also was a local cocaine dealer who had come directly into my sights. He ran a failing limousine service out of a hangar at the Novato airport. I suspected his business was failing because of his coke habit/dealing. I was working with the Marin County drug task force at the time, and they wanted me to take a cold run at Paul at his limo service. None of the other guys on the task force could do the undercover because they were too well known or just didn’t do undercover work. I’d jumped up and said, “I’ll do it,” at the time, not thinking of the possible ramifications.
I didn’t personally know Paul. He was several years older than me, and I presumably was just going to meet one of his employees. After scheduling a meeting with the violator at the hangar, under the pretext of wanting to check out his limos, the surveillance teams got in place and I walked into the hangar. To my surprise, I was greeted by Paul himself. Even though I hadn’t met him before, I knew his whole family and recognized him from his pictures in the paper.
Fuck, fuck, fuck.
I said, “Hey, how’s it going? I’m supposed to meet somebody here. Tony sent me.” He said, “Yeah, that’s me. Come on back to my office.” In truth, nobody had sent me. I’d been expecting to schmooze an employee to maybe sell me some coke.
As Paul sat down behind his desk, I noticed a sawed-off shotgun leaning against the wall. I’m sure I was supposed to see it. We started talking coke almost immediately, and he wanted to know how much I was looking for. Before answering, I made small talk about renting a limousine and directed the conversation to girls and partying in the limo. I was thinking, “What’s wrong with this picture? This is too easy.”
When we got back around to the coke, I fed him my usual line: “I’ll take all ya have, but I’ll settle for a half pound.”
He sat up, and I saw the greed light going off in his head. “Really, or are you fuckin’ with me?” he wanted to know.
I laughed and said, “No, but I’ll take a couple ounces. If it’s any good, I’ll be back.”
In the back of my mind, I was thinking about how I would break this to my dad. This was going to be a personal disaster for his friendship with the Nave family as well as embarrassing to them.
Paul sold me a half ounce right then and there. He wrote his personal cell number on the back of his business card and said, “Go check it out, and if you like it, call me at this number.”
I stayed in touch with Paul over several days, and I made several buys while we kept him under constant surveillance, hoping to get to his source. I was a private pilot, and a San Rafael officer named Barbier and I flew the aerial surveillances on this case. I served as the safety pilot during those missions. Each time I entered the office in the hangar, the sawed-off shotgun was in arm’s reach.
I kept this all under my hat until it was over. I didn’t want to upset my dad, and I damn sure didn’t want him to be put in the position of deciding whether to warn his lifelong friends. I knew he never would knowingly put me or any of my fellow agents in danger, but like I said, I was the first cop in this family, and my dad was old-school. There was a reason my ATF friends called him the OG.*
In the end, I ordered up a kilo of coke,† and we arrested and federally charged Paul with the dope and a firearm. In the weeks to come, as I compiled the reports and evidence for the US Attorney’s Office, I noticed a seeming lack of interest in prosecuting this case. Back in those days, the San Francisco US Attorney’s office was notoriously weak when it came to bringing ATF cases to court. For whatever reason, there appeared to be bad blood and political forces that worked against us. But this seemed like a totally appropriate case for federal prosecution. The limo service was prime for seizure. We were talking a large amount of dope and a Title II weapon, which would add an extra ten years to a federal sentence.
I wanted to know why they weren’t interested in prosecuting the case. But what was there to understand? The violator’s name was Nave. The family had deep roots in Marin County. I was young and still thought the laws applied to everybody equally. I learned over the years that was not necessarily true. However, in this case, justice ultimately did prevail. The state prosecuted Paul and sentenced him to five or so years in San Quentin State Prison, right there on the bay in the county where we were raised.
He did his time like a man and later returned to Marin to revive his boxing career for a couple of fights. There never was any blowback on my dad or our family. In fact, several of the Naves attended my father’s wake.
Usually, cold knocks are initiated by an undercover agent, but not always. Sometimes the violator walks right through the front door. Traveling so close to the underworld on a regular basis exposes agents to some weird and unexplainable circumstances. During the Outlaws investigation, I was sitting in the office one day doing paperwork. Theresa, our investigative assistant, walked in and with a muffled voice said, “Hey, Vince, some guy is on the phone and wants to talk to our ‘motorcycle gang expert.’” Steve Kosch, my partner on this caper and my office mate, shot me a look. We’d been partners for a while, so we both just reacted and simultaneously picked up the same desk phone line. Steve covered his mouthpiece with his hand.
The caller asked if I was the biker expert in the ATF office. Criminal organizations had increased their own surveillance and operational security against the cops over the years. I’d be damned before I’d put out any information to an unknown voice on the phone, so I just asked, “How can I help you?”
The guy said he was a member of a “major” biker club in the area and wanted to sit down with me to discuss some things. He’d only do it in person. I told him to call me back in an hour. I needed some serious time to round table this one.
We corralled a bunch of agents and Bob, the boss. Bob already was hyperparanoid about everything we were doing on the case. He had a long history with the Outlaws gang and knew this case was the best bet of crushing them we’d had in years. We theorized that the unknown caller wanted to snitch. We tried to determine who it might be by his voice and mannerisms. We considered this might be a planned assassination attempt. We all believed it was an intelligence-gathering attempt by the bikers to get eyes on me.
After much consternation, it was agreed to buy some time, a day or so, and try to work the problem. When he called back, he could sense my suspiciousness and gave the one explanation that settled us down a bit: “Look, I’m an Outlaw, and I’m not playing you. I just want to explore some options, and I’m thinking of leaving the club. I’ll be in worse trouble than you if they find out, so I’m trusting you.”
We still were skeptical, but I told him I’d meet him, and I’d give him a time, location, and a day, and that he better come alone or I was going to shoot him in the face and everyone with him. I told him when to call me back and to be prepared when he called to then meet me within thirty minutes. We needed to limit the time he/they had to plan, if they were in fact planning something nefarious.
Fast-forward to the meeting. We had an informant inside the club, so we’d been somewhat able to narrow down the possible member who might be reaching out. We had surveillance on all of the members we could find when I made the call. The plan we agreed on was that, at least initially, Kosch would meet him at the restaurant. If one of us was going to be compromised, it would be best if it was him, as I was traveling very close to the club from day to day.
We swapped out our vehicles for ones we didn’t care might be compromised. We already were in the restaurant when I made the call, and there were backup agents outside. This deal was so weird that the SAC attended our pre-operational briefing.
When the long-haired, tattooed, greasy, unbathed Outlaw arrived, it was exactly who we had surmised it would be.* Kosch made eye contact and signaled the biker over to his booth. I was three booths away, and he didn’t notice me when he walked by. Being a good, no, great cop, Steve casually and discreetly patted him down before letting him sit. They talked for about five minutes, and then Kosch gave me the prearranged signal to come over. We had agreed that Kosch would try to determine what this member’s true intent was and then decide if I would come in. I had to trust his read, because I couldn’t hear the conversation. I had confirmed via cell phone that the outside guys hadn’t seen anything or anyone suspicious.
The gist of the conversation was that the biker wanted to leave the club. He wanted me to exert some federal pressure to line him up with a good job back in his home state and maybe some traveling money to get established in his new life. He immediately followed that with, “But I ain’t snitching on my brothers.”
I almost came up out of my seat and responded in my not-indoor voice, “Have you hit your fucking head?”
Under the table, Kosch squeezed my thigh in an attempt to chill me out.
When I asked what was in this for me, the biker said that in exchange I would have one less Outlaw to worry about and there would be another productive member of society.
Kosch squeezed my leg so hard I winced.
I said, “Number one, asshole, I don’t worry about Outlaws, ever. Number two, I don’t give even one fuck if you stay an Outlaw or not. If you do, I’m going to end up sending you to prison anyway. You have obviously confused me with the fucking welfare department. You better hope I never let this shit slip out to your club. They’ll kill you just for being a pussy. Don’t ever waste my time again.”
And with that, Kosch and I got up and walked out.
Gundo was the king of cold knocks.
In the 1990s, toward the end of his career with ATF, Gundo transferred back to Missoula, in western Montana, in the same jurisdiction where he’d been a police deputy decades earlier. He was the lone ATF agent in a satellite office, and soon after arriving, he was recruited by the local FBI office to assist them as an informant handler. ATF, and more specifically Gundo, was far better suited to deal with a street-level informant than the suits over at the FBI office, and they knew it. The FBI wanted to use this informant to infiltrate the Montana contingency of the Bandidos Motorcycle Club, one of the big four biker gangs in the United States.
The CI was a gigantic pain in the ass to supervise. Gundo had learned over the years that these are just the type of people who can be the most successful in extreme situations and investigations. He quickly found out—which at this time in his career was no surprise—that the highly structured FBI and the agents on the case had no clue how to accomplish the infiltration and had very quickly tired of putting up with this outspoken and stubborn informant. Gundo told me he felt like a hostage negotiator between the FBI and the CI.
The plan Gundo sold to the FBI was that they were not going to run this guy straight at the Bandidos. They would get him into one of the farm clubs, a less important but affiliated motorcycle club united under the so-called Bandido Nation. Then the CI would attempt to move up the food chain. After six or eight months of Gundo handling the CI, the informant became an officer in the Hermanos Motorcycle Club in Kalispell and was ingratiating himself with members of the Bandidos, who supervised the farm clubs. Although as the informant continued his successful infiltration, Gundo saw little professional gain for ATF jurisdictional cases coming out of his continued involvement. It was time for the FBI to sink or swim with their case, and they would have to take back supervision of their CI, who rose within the Bandido chapter and started to meet up with different club chapters in Texas and Colorado. He began uncovering drug trafficking members in the gang. But the FBI’s interstate divisional separation ultimately destroyed the continuity of managing the Montana case or the informant.* After years of time and investigative funds had been spent, FBI management halted the investigation with not one arrest or criminal case filed. That was depressing for Gundo because of all the hard work that had been done. They’d been ready to start picking off defendants and uncovering criminal conspiracies, but now it was not meant to be. Or was it?
If the FBI didn’t have the stomach to see this through, ATF did. Or at least, Gundo did.
While working the case, Gundo had brought in one of his long-term informants from his days working in Washington State. This CI had worked with Gundo for almost twenty years. Gundo kept thinking about how the Hermanos club had been so easily infiltrated. He wanted to take another run at them with the help of his old informant. The new plan would be to infiltrate locally and stay right there in that part of Montana and start perfecting federal and state criminal cases involving firearms, drugs, and whatever other crimes might arise.
One of Gundo’s encounters during this time involved a female drug trafficker in northwest Montana. He had identified many of the players in this conspiracy and was looking to charge one of the minor players and flip them. This is a common practice in long-term cases, in an effort to assist in prosecuting the major players and to help identify the source of their illicit drugs—in this case, methamphetamine. Gundo recently had perfected evidence showing her in possession of a firearm, but she lacked any felony convictions to charge her as a felon in possession. Gundo didn’t let that slow him down. He confronted the lady with the firearm evidence—“evidence” might be a strong word in this instance, but it was at least information of firearms possession. He then invoked the little-used federal violation involving a known drug user being prohibited from possessing firearms. This tactic was rarely employed because it was hard to prove to a jury when the illegal drugs actually were used in relation to the firearms possession.
Gundo’s suspect had been around the block and was not intimidated, so he amped up his tactics. He stated that he wanted to take some hair samples from her head that would be tested for the presence of illegal narcotics in her system. This was total bullshit, but the curveball threw her off her game. She complied, and he obtained the hair samples, which, he told her, would be submitted to the ATF and Montana state forensic laboratories for a relatively new examination process. He hoped his made-up bullshit gave him enough leverage to pressure her into cooperating with his investigation. She declined.
The next two years were spent in northwest Montana, infiltrating the Hermanos gang with the help of Gundo’s old CI. Gundo had set up the undercover operation with the assistance of the Montana Narcotics Bureau office in Kalispell. They provided cover/surveillance agents for Gundo’s team as well as drug-purchase funds. Many of the cases did not meet the threshold of the US Attorney’s Office, but the local district attorney’s office gladly would take them on. Many state charges are perfected by ATF UCs.
The closest ATF office was two hundred miles away, so partnering with local narcotics agents was more cost-effective than bringing in a bunch of ATF undercovers. Plus, the local narcotics agents were familiar with the area and criminal players. Gundo did obtain one volunteer from the Helena ATF field office who was willing to work long distance and long hours. Christi Van Werden was a special agent trainee who would have to work with a senior agent until her training period was completed. Gundo would write his investigative activity reports, submit all electronic surveillance tapes, and turn in purchased evidence. Christi would tag all the evidence and place it into custody and keep up on the extensive ATF paperwork. They set up an undercover residence for Gundo’s CI in Kalispell, and Gundo would bounce around motel rooms in the area. The state Narcotics Bureau loaned them a couple undercover motorcycles, and they set up their UC identities with backstopping orchestrated out of the Helena ATF field office.
Gundo’s prior involvement with the FBI case got him familiar with the Hermanos club, especially the Flathead Crew, named after the surrounding county. He knew that the national president of the Hermanos lived close to Kalispell and originally had been a Flathead chapter member. Now the gang president oversaw all Hermanos chapters located in Montana, Washington, Idaho, and South Dakota. Gundo and the CI made a cold call visit to the president’s legitimate business, situated near the picturesque town of Bigfork. They arrived on their undercover motorcycles, and Gundo being Gundo, that visit led to their association with the club.
As they became familiar with the club members, it also became obvious to Gundo that there were no significant identifiable criminal activities taking place within the local chapter. Oftentimes, motorcycle gangs/clubs are made up of all kinds of members. There are sociopaths and psychopaths, but there also are just plain motorcyclists looking for association, and sometimes even God-fearing churchgoers are members (although in my experience, not so much of the latter).* As Gundo and the CI began to meet the other Hermanos, they found themselves in Libby, ninety miles northwest of Kalispell, where a number of the members lived. They rode up to see “Dollar Bill,” and about four “brothers” were standing in the driveway of his house. Gundo’s focus shifted to one man. “Oh, shit. I know this guy,” he thought. He and the gang member had played on the same high school football team. They spent the entire afternoon with this crew, and Gundo’s sphincter was slammed shut, worrying that his old acquaintance would identify him by his real name and burn his alias. For the next month, Gundo held his breath, but no questions came out of that meet and greet.
In the mid-2000s, in April, the Hermanos had a spring opener run to Idaho to meet up with other chapters. Riding a motorcycle in the Rocky Mountains that time of year can be dicey. The pack comprised seven Hermanos patched members and Gundo. The informant already had become a prospect (similar to a pledge in a fraternity, but much nastier) but could not make the run. Gundo was considered a “hang around,” an accepted associate but not a member. He was riding at the back of the pack with a newer member. As they started into the mountains, it began to snow heavily, and they had another eighty miles to Libby.
When on a run, a club pairs two motorcycles side by side, with the whole pack bunched up together. This is dangerous in good weather but damn near suicidal in snow. Halfway to Libby, the Hermanos member riding next to Gundo lost control of his bike and overcorrected, which threw him toward Gundo’s motorcycle, both going about fifty miles per hour. The bikes collided, but both riders were able to keep their rides upright and slowly come to a stop on the highway. The rest of the crew kept going, unaware that their member had collided with Gundo. The two riders gathered themselves and continued on up the highway to rejoin the pack.
Gundo never said a word to any member about the collision, and as the days went by, he saw a change in how they treated him. The gang members obviously had learned what happened and realized that Gundo knew how to “hold his mud.”
Using the street cred of their Hermanos association, Gundo and the CI were able to get close with a midlevel meth dealer in Libby. She liked the CI and thought her association with bikers would give her more security in dealing with her clientele. For Gundo and the CI, the relationship with “Robin” could lead to drug-house security gigs and deliveries. That in turn would produce prosecutable drug and firearms cases.
Just as they were identifying her customers and possible drug source in Washington State, Gundo received a late-night call from the informant. Robin had been found dead in her bathroom from a combination of methamphetamine intoxication and out-of-control diabetes. Gundo hung up the phone and sat wondering, “What the fuck are we gonna do now?” They had just reached the point of a real productive investigation, and it instantly disappeared.
Several days after Robin’s death, Gundo was trying to decide if he should close out the case after a year of work. Suddenly, it hit him. They had identified all the dealers associated with Robin in Montana and also had identified several traffickers out of Washington related to her. He just needed to adjust the investigation from a proactive undercover case to a methodical, historical drug-conspiracy case.
Gundo left the informant, still active in the Hermanos, and went looking for evidence to assist in the drug case and any other cases that might pop up. He and his trainee, Christi, started the tedious process of developing the drug-conspiracy case, again identifying low-level members with criminal involvement who could be flipped as witnesses to help develop hard evidence acceptable in court. The state Narcotics Bureau agents helped immensely by dropping a call to Gundo when one of the group got arrested on other charges. Gundo and Christi would go debrief the violator and try to flip them.
Another year rolled by, and they had traced the methamphetamine source to Mexican cartel connections in Yakima, Washington. Earlier in the investigation, Gundo had taken a trophy picture with Hermanos members. The member who took the picture put it in the club’s newsletter.
While Christi and Gundo were putting the finishing touches on the criminal case and bringing witnesses to the federal grand jury in Missoula, Gundo received a panicked call from his CI. The national president had been informed by Libby members that a female associate—the same woman Gundo had tried to flip several years earlier—had identified Gundo’s picture in the newsletter. Gundo was burned, and that meant his informant was burned too. To add insult to injury, the bitch identified Gundo as a well-known FBI agent.
The next week was stressful, trying to get the CI out of Kalispell and moved and hidden. They had to confront the national president about the allegations, and after talking with him, Gundo didn’t think the president believed he was working for the cops. But with an eyewitness and the whole hair-sample thing looming out there, Gundo could not take the chance of meeting any of the club members face-to-face again.
All was not lost, by any means. The proactive part of the case was done. They had compiled a drug-conspiracy case with ten suspects in Montana and Washington. They also had made numerous purchases of controlled prescription opiates from various suspects. (This case unfolded toward the beginning of the nationwide opiate crisis.) They had made several gun cases and completed firearms purchases from a Federal Firearms Licensee (FFL) in violation of federal firearms laws. All of the cases were followed by guilty pleas, no trials, and the FFL lost his firearms license. They also uncovered details of three motorcycle thefts in Missoula by the local chapter of the Hermanos.
Not bad for an ex-deputy, huh?
One thing you can be sure of: Undercover work is never convenient and never predictable. It interferes with scheduled investigative activities and personal commitments. In the late 1980s, the father of my lifelong friend and next-door neighbor was terminally ill with cancer. I mentioned Jack earlier as the first man to use the term T-Man in relation to me. He was under hospice care. I wanted to be there for my friend Cathy and her family. I intended to leave work early and race to the family home in Petaluma to pay my last respects to Jack.
The phone rang at my desk. It was Randy in Oakland. He was a fairly new agent to ATF, having come from Stockton PD. He was a competent investigator and had a good reputation. He said, “Look, I got a caper you may be interested in. Right up your alley, so to speak.”
California Highway Patrol had called Randy after someone lobbed a few grenades at their parked patrol cars. “They never detonated, but they are getting worried that their luck might run out,” Randy told me.
I explained that I was busy and asked if he could reach out to one of the other guys.
He said, “I would, dude, but the boss told me to use you.”
“Shit,” I thought. I wouldn’t be going to Petaluma just yet.
I asked if Randy had any suspects. He said, “Kinda.” I asked, “What the fuck is a kinda suspect?” He had some leads, he said. “Come over to Oakland and I’ll fill you in.”
Randy had done his homework. We didn’t have enough for a warrant, and any attempt to interview the suspect surely would result in him lawyering up or changing his practices. The suspect was a longtime felon, well acquainted with the system. The only information we had at the time was who he was and where he lived. A jailhouse snitch had suggested to Randy that this guy might have been involved in the attacks, but street talk wasn’t evidence. So, our only hope was a chance encounter, tricky because most criminals are inherently suspicious of new faces. The strategy here would be to somehow make him want to get to know me, and it had to appear to be natural and his idea.
We discovered a house under construction at the entrance to the old country road where this guy’s trailer was located. Lo and behold, the house was being built for an assistant district attorney. He was more than willing to let us use his construction site for a couple days. Enter Vinny, the plumber. It was slow and tedious at first. A couple guys would come in under cover of darkness with long-range surveillance equipment. Then, in the daytime, whenever this guy went outside for smokes, I would be out front swinging a hammer, looking busy. I’d wave. He’d wave back.
After a few days of not much more than that, I decided to approach his trailer to use his phone or ask for a light or something. Of course, he didn’t have a phone. So, I made small talk until he offered me a beer. Of course, I expected, and was not disappointed, when he offered to smoke a joint. I didn’t agree, and I didn’t disagree. Simulating doing drugs is never a good idea for an undercover. Get caught doing it by the bad guy, and you’re toast. If you are being video- or audiotaped, it might not be apparent to a jury that you were simulating. In this case, I was watching the guy intently, and he was so stoned he wasn’t paying attention to me. So, I took the joint, made a few puffing sounds, and we were instant friends. I went back to my nonconstruction job. A couple days of this, and me buying the beer, and we were best buddies.
Our mutual dislike for the po-po quickly led to him bragging of his criminal escapades. Soon he was telling me how he was gonna “fuck up” some highway patrol cops, and how he had them scared. When he elaborated on his hand grenade–making skills, I acted appropriately impressed. He was pissed because the first couple grenades had failed to find their target. I led him to believe I had an ex-wife (which I did), whom I would like to meet the same fate (which I didn’t), but I did not have his expertise. He told me he had to take off but to be back at noon tomorrow, and he would have what I needed.
We hustled to get search warrants. We had twenty-four hours to put together a raid plan and to have Explosive Ordinance Disposal (EOD) on-site. The long, deserted dirt road leading to the violator’s trailer made an approach difficult. He also was going to be in possession of explosives. The plan would require me to separate him from the explosives at the moment of execution and to distract him long enough for the arrest team to breach the front door.
At noon the next day, after checking the transmitter and alternate signals, I arrived at the trailer. The violator looked down the road both directions, and then invited me in. Heart pounding but knowing I was minutes away from undercover stardom, I walked into the living room. Scattered everywhere, I could see black powder, fuses, and empty hand grenade hulls—the kind you buy as souvenirs at an Army/Navy surplus store. I felt panic race through my brain: The son of a bitch was smoking a cigarette. To make matters as bad as they could be, he was drilling into the top of a hand grenade body that he already had filled with gunpowder. Black powder is extremely volatile and subject to igniting from heat, shock, or friction.
My heart felt like it was pounding up my throat. All the plans went out the window. I not so ceremoniously muttered the bust signal two or three times. He looked at me as if asking “What?” I gave him a jittery smile and made some silly comment. Then I reached across the coffee table and grabbed the grenade and drill out of his hand, saying something like, “Wow, that’s cool.”
At that very minute, I heard a loud crash and a bunch of screaming. It was the greatest sound I ever could have imagined. I hit the floor, and the cover team was on the violator like stink on shit. We all backed the hell out of there quick. Let EOD go in and blow themselves up. We were just agents.
When the scene settled down, I approached the violator, who was in cuffs, and tried to talk to him, advise him of his rights, et cetera. He just looked up at me, stunned. He thought we were friends and brothers and was shocked that I was a cop. It never bothered me in thirty years, but that sort of betrayal rightly has a tendency to cause conflict in many agents.
I asked Randy, “You got this?” He said, “Yeah, go.”
I turned on my pager, and my friend Cathy and my mom and dad had been paging me all morning. I called Cathy, and she just said, “He’s gone.”
* Original gangster.
† When you were ready to take a violator down, a common practice was to order up the highest amount of dope you could without making the dealer nervous. To state simply, what you are buying dictates the system of measurement. A pound of coke is simpler to weigh than .4536 kilograms.
* I cannot identify the specific gang member in this story because the Outlaws have long memories, and I’m not in the business of getting snitches killed.
* Admittedly, these antiquated systems existed with ATF as well. The boss of one field division, when asked to help another field division, invariably would ask, “What’s in this for my field division?”
* Gundo remembered working undercover to assist an ATF friend on a case in Arizona. The UCs were at a party at a Hells Angels clubhouse that had been the beginning site of a grotesque murder of a female guest of the club. Gundo was standing with other undercover agents, surrounded by Hells Angels, in the same room where this woman had been savagely beaten and later stabbed to death. Right there a Hells Angel nicknamed Lonely Lonnie told how he recently had returned from taking his daughters to Bible camp.