______
After the meeting in Blaine, I went back to Vancouver to figure out a plan while the DEA, as the “double A” (anchor agency) on this case, drew up the paperwork for my involvement.
One thing I knew for sure, bluffing my way in as a biker was not even a consideration. So the only real option in my mind was to appear on their turf as a regular crook and border runner.
Still, I figured that a bike would be a good thing to have, insofar as it would at least provide an excuse to make small talk with the Bandidos. There was no way I could handle a Harley—they are just too big and powerful for novices—so Andy had rounded me up a 900cc Norton Commando. It was a good choice. Back then, anything other than an American or European bike was considered “Jap scrap.” For example, Mongo, one of the more colorful—and color obsessed—Bandidos I was to meet, had a sticker on his bike that read “Better to have my sister in a whorehouse than my brother on a Honda.” Many of the hardcore bikers had started their careers on Nortons, Triumphs and BSAs, so the 900cc Commando would do fine.
Andy also had Scott Paterson register me for a one-day course given by the B.C. Motorcycle Safety Association. It took place at a municipal airport and I learned the basics—shifting, braking and handling—by bombing down a disused runway on a small Honda. I figured I’d learn the rest as I went. (And never told Mongo about the Honda.)
Scott also made arrangements for me to visit the RCMP “barn” in Victoria that week, where a new license was made up in my name, one that had a motorcycle permit added to it. I was almost ready to go.
The last thing to do was to move the Coachmen trailer stateside. Liz’s stepfather and a buddy of his from the fishing club took care of that, driving it to a trailer park off Highway 5 between Blaine and Ferndale. Frank wasn’t fully up to speed on exactly what I was doing, but he began to figure things out when Andy Smith greeted him at the border crossing and just waved him right through, the customs officers deferring to his DEA badge. It must have been reassuring to see that I was working with the good guys.
For the time being, Liz and Charlotte would move in with her mother and stepfather. I stayed with them for most of the first month and didn’t use the trailer across the border more than three or four nights a week. I knew the guaranteed way not to get in with a criminal group was to be pushy. If I was always around, they’d start wondering what my game was and question my motives. The best approach was to let them invite me into their world. So I had to get noticed without getting in their faces.
Andy and Co. had told me that the local Bellingham Bandidos chapter held their weekly “church” meetings every Tuesday evening, after which they would repair to the Pioneer Tavern in Ferndale for a round or ten. As far as the cops knew, that was the only routine that, as a group, the Bandidos kept to.
So, at dusk one late summer Monday, I went to the Pioneer to familiarize myself with the bar’s layout and say hello. I had brought over my new car, a souped-up Firebird, in an attempt to even the scales on the mechanical end. Bright purple with a red air breather on the hood (a hood, by the way, that was held down by padlocks), it was not a car meant to be subtle. Completing the muscle-car look were rear air shocks, wide tires made for pulling out in a squeal of burned rubber, and a chromed chain steering wheel. When the car idled, it vibrated and sounded like a snarling beast waiting to pounce—that is, if the deafening sound system wasn’t drowning out the engine noise.
Driving the Firebird into Ferndale, I felt like a Texas Ranger riding into town to take on the bad guy. Before pulling into the Pioneer’s lot, I did a little prowl and growl around town. It was sleepy quiet. The Pioneer wasn’t much more happening, which was fine by me. I ordered a Pepsi and hung out for a while, playing pool by myself until another customer came in and challenged me to a game. He was a huge man named Chuck who in due course told me that he owned the local bike repair shop. It was a good start—I figured there was no way he could operate such a business without being on good terms with the main bikers in town. I didn’t tell him anything about myself, in such a way that he could only suspect I did something shady.
“So, what’s it you do?” he asked at one point.
“The first thing I do is I mind my own business,” I said definitively. Then, having slammed a door on him, I opened a window, saying something friendly such as “Nice shot,” or “Hey man, it’s your turn.”
Gradually people started to drift in. Every Monday at the Pioneer they held what they called a Turkey Shoot—a small pool tournament. Chuck’s regular partner didn’t show, so he and I teamed up. We did okay but eventually were knocked out, at which point I called it a night.
The next evening I was back not long after eight, again drinking Pepsi and playing pool by myself. Toward nine or nine-thirty the Bandidos started to drift in in small groups. By ten o’clock there were almost a dozen members in the bar and me in the back by myself. It was suddenly a very lonely place to be.
When Chuck came in, I was relieved to see him. He said hi to most of the Bandidos but wasn’t invited to sit with them. Instead, he came and shot some more pool with me. I made a mental note of his status, or lack thereof.
I half expected one of the bikers to come up and challenge me, sneering, “Who the fuck are you?” So I made myself extra small and even avoided going to the bathroom. That would not be a good place to have to explain what I, a stranger, was doing on their turf. But they seemed to have decided on a wait-and-see approach. If they were really wondering who I was, they could always question Chuck later. They might also have noticed the Canadian plates on the Firebird, which may have made them more cautious; their relationship with Canadian bikers and crooks was their financial lifeline. Still, it didn’t make them any friendlier that first evening. If looks could kill, I would have died several times over.
I didn’t push my luck and slipped out before any of them got too drunk and decided to have some fun at the stranger’s expense. At least I’d got on their radar. Certainly, Andy was thrilled that I had been in the same place with so many of them and been able to walk out—even though it meant he had lost a friendly bet with one of the other cops that I wouldn’t make it through the night.
Over that first month, I’d go to the bar two, maybe three nights a week, and always on the Tuesday. Still, I didn’t exchange a single word with any of the Bandidos. I just played pool with Chuck or whoever and played it cool, chatting with the staff and the regulars, sipping my Pepsi in the back. The gang sat around a few tables in the front, ignoring me in their disdainful way.
I also took to visiting Chuck at his bike shop during the day and shooting the shit with him and whoever else was around. Often these were guys who had cordial relations with the Bandidos, so I knew that getting in good with them could help me penetrate the gang. On a couple of occasions I’d invite them back to my trailer for a beer or whatever. Increasingly I would make allusions to my work, which I let on to be smuggling and border running. “I was sneaking across the border a few days ago when this-or-that happened,” I would say. But going any further would have been silly—admitting, for instance, that I was moving drugs across in the trunk of my car or illegal immigrants across by foot; no self-respecting crook would have copped to that.
Still, after a month or so I hadn’t made any real progress and something had to give. Especially since my regular absences from Ferndale had started to become an issue with Corky. Theoretically, he and all the other cops could appreciate that it would only hurt the infiltration if I was around the whole time. I wouldn’t have any mystery, I wouldn’t be away on my nebulous business. Still, Corky was a nine-to-fiver and some part of him deep down must have wanted me to be one too, especially since I was getting a salary that likely eclipsed his.
“We’ve noticed how many times you’ve crossed the border and how long you stay,” he said at one of our meetings. “This isn’t a part-time job, you know.”
“I can go home right now for good if you want,” I shot back at him. I wanted to force him to shut the fuck up. I was all they had, and even if by that point my work still hadn’t produced any useful evidence, I knew they were in no position to flush the probe.
In general, though, my relations with my handlers, Corky included, were solid right from the start. One reason: we were all Vietnam vets.
Andy Smith had been a captain in the Army Rangers, doing special operations that included ambushes and recovering POWs held by the Viet Cong. In fact, he occupied a notable place in the history of the war: he was one of the last eleven people helicoptered off the roof of the U.S. embassy in the early morning of April 30, 1975, during the fall of Saigon. He had a crushed hand to prove it—it had been slammed in a heavy door leading to the roof. Andy was an aggressive, get-it-done type of guy, the kind that moves ahead like a freight train. He’d recently been transferred from New York and his attitude wasn’t always appreciated by the more laid-back northwesterners, but it suited me fine.
Corky Cochrane, meanwhile, had been an Air Cavalry chopper pilot flying ammo in and body bags out. It had left him permanently wound up, borderline shell-shocked even. Once or twice I took cruel pleasure in sending him back into his past. On one occasion, after he’d left the office for coffee, I hid behind the door. When he came back in, I yelled: “Incoming!” He threw his coffee in the air and dove under the desk. I thought I’d split a gut.
For his part, Larry Brant was the quintessential administrator and go-between. He was so perfectly turned out in both manners and appearance that you knew he had been an officer and had stayed in the rear with the gear. Still, Larry had his place: he was our bridge between the street and head office, and a very good one.
Soon enough, however, I’d learn that not all vets were on the side of the good guys. I’d also find out that having smelled the same smoke could make for a strong bond with even the nastiest of people.
The thirty-day evaluation period was drawing to a close and I was still not much further along in penetrating the Bandidos than I’d been after that first Tuesday night. The terms of my employment were pretty loosey-goosey, little more than an understanding that after a month we would meet to assess the operation and take it from there. I still fully expected to be heading off to Bangkok to join Gary Kilgore and could have left the Bandidos behind in a heartbeat with no worries financially. Still, there was a certain professional pride involved. I wanted to impress the Americans and it was weighing on me that I hadn’t yet.
So, late one afternoon, sitting around at the Pioneer with Chuck, I made my move and asked him what the gang thought of me. He replied that the jury was still out.
“Some really don’t care one way or another. Others think you might be a cop.”
I exploded. “Me? A cop? Who the fuck is saying that?”
Chuck was taken aback. He said it wasn’t him, that the idea hadn’t even crossed his mind and he hadn’t doubted me for a second.
I kept up the theater, demanding to know where I could find the members of the gang that instant.
Chuck said that some of the guys were at his shop. In fact, that was why he was at the bar—they’d told him to make himself scarce while they used his facilities to work on their bikes.
I jumped into the Firebird, peeled out and drove the block and a half to the shop in a matter of seconds. Chuck’s shop was divided in two: in front was the retail section, at the back a garage. I screeched around back and into the open garage door, squealing my tires to a halt. Three Bandidos were standing around talking. To say they were surprised would be an understatement. I jumped out and walked up to them.
“Chuck told me you guys think I’m a fucking rat, or even a pig!”
They just looked at me as if I was totally nuts. Getting no response, I continued my rant.
“Where I come from, that’s done face to face!”
The same confrontational technique had worked well for me in Hong Kong. But for the act to work, you need a response from the bad guys that you can work with. In this case they just weren’t saying anything. Finally, though, one of the guys, who I later learned was Vinny Mann, the chapter president, took a few menacing steps in my direction. Well over six feet tall and solid, with a scraggly beard and unkempt hair, he pointed a finger at me.
“If I thought you were a pig, you would be dead already laying in a ditch,” he growled in his gravelly way.
Even if it didn’t provide much of a way out, it was at least a response. I jumped at it.
“That’s what I heard about you guys—you were solid and didn’t play around. That’s why I was so surprised when Chuck told me that.”
That led to more silence. I knew I was talking too much, but they weren’t helping. I relaxed my pose and added, “You can’t blame me for overreacting—in my business reputation is everything!”
Vinny muttered under his breath that Chuck talked too fucking much. Then he threw me a lifeline. “It takes balls to do what you just did. I would have done the same thing.” Another pause before he continued. “By the way, I am checking you out. In the meantime, be cool.”
A biker I would later know as Karate Bob—he had a couple inches on Vinny and a foot on me—added menacingly, “Who knows, you may still end up in the ditch.”
“It’s a hazard of the trade,” I said, getting a laugh out of them. Or at least a smirk. Then I went to my car, without a glance in their direction, pulled out—slowly this time—and went home.
Even if I had just scored a few points, I was extremely happy to be out of there. I couldn’t help but notice that my hands were shaking.
Back at the trailer, I wrote up my notes about the encounter and later left them in the night drop box behind the DEA building in Blaine. It was the routine procedure we’d agreed to when I’d signed on and wasn’t considered too much of a security risk in those more reckless days.
But the response I got from the handlers the next day wasn’t standard at all. Everyone had read my report by the time we got together for a meeting, and their reactions were all over the map. Corky was pissed, convinced that I had needlessly jeopardized the case with the confrontation. In my defense I argued that once Chuck had opened his mouth he had taken away my options—I had to act like a bad guy would act. Anything else would have been wimpy, I said. Andy, on the other hand, thought it was not only hilarious but likely the breakthrough we needed. It was in his rough-and-tumble character to appreciate that sort of rashness.
“I would give anything to have seen the look on their faces,” he kept saying, laughing.
The confrontation did end up being an icebreaker. The next time I went to the Pioneer, I got a little conversation from Vinny. Once he acknowledged me, the others followed suit.
I inadvertently scored a second major coup with Vinny not long afterward. One night we were at the bar as closing time approached and he told me that I had to give him a ride home. His wife had his truck and their house wasn’t far from the trailer park where I was living. There was a Marty Robbins tape in the Firebird’s deck and the song that came on as we drove away from the Pioneer was “Ballad of the Alamo.” It was a favorite of mine. The story of fewer than two hundred men holding off a force more than twenty times as strong was a special inspiration to me. I knew most every detail about it. What I didn’t know at the time was that the Alamo was a very, very special inspiration to the Bandidos. Vinny was surprised to hear the song but said nothing. I sang along and then went on about how, if the Alamo happened today, we would be those guys, standing tall until the end, whatever the odds.
I laid it on thick and Vinny’s reaction was hard to read. He just looked at me in a perplexed but not hostile way. I suppose he was trying to figure me out. The song couldn’t be a setup because there was no way I could have known he would be in the car. He never said a word about it that I knew of, and when we arrived at his place he just got out of the car and closed the door, barely mumbling a thank you. But the story got around, as I would learn two years later in Sturgis, South Dakota.
The first thirty days were up and there had been no word on the Thailand gig, so we all decided to give the Bandidos job another thirty days. I was getting into my role and the agency was starting to get a view of the local chapter they didn’t have before. They gave me a $500-per-month raise and upgraded my Norton, which I’d been riding around more and more, to a Sportster, the smallest of the Harley family.
Shortly thereafter, I went home for a week of R & R. While in Vancouver, Scott phoned and congratulated me on how things were going. He also gave me an inside perspective on the conversations inside the DEA. It seemed an FBI agent, not Corky, thought the whole case was futile and was convinced there was no way I could get in. This second thirty-day stab had to produce, beyond any doubt, a sense of advancement and actual progress. It was time to approach one of the Bandidos for a business venture.
I picked Karate Bob—I’d learned that he was a state heavyweight champion—thinking that our common interest in martial arts would make us natural partners. Back in Ferndale, I waited until I saw him alone in the bar and made my move. Sitting down, I laid out a plan whereby I would bankroll him to open a high-end martial arts club in nearby Bellingham for which he would be the public face, while I would handle the business end. Without putting any money down, he could have the use of a top-notch facility and make a good chunk of cash from lessons and the like. Money wasn’t really an issue for me, I let on; I was interested in the club primarily as a money-laundering vehicle.
Karate Bob heard me out, but to my surprise he didn’t bite. He turned out to be a purist and felt martial arts should not be a for-profit business. I was taken aback and, to tell the truth, felt shamed. In some ways it was a setback, insofar as I had lost respect in the eyes of a prominent member. Still, it opened Bob up to further conversation.
My next target was a Bandido named George Sherman, known to all as Gunk. The name suited him well—he was a grease monkey, although he hadn’t found any steady work as a mechanic since leaving Florida and coming to Washington a few years previously. He and I had become friendly over a pinball game in the Pioneer called the Black Knight, to which he was addicted. He told me that he was living at the home of another Bandido, Jersey Jerry, but hoping to get his own place once he got some cash.
One evening at the Pioneer I took him aside and asked if he wanted to make a little quick money. He was all ears. I explained that I had a deal happening and I wanted to make sure everything went right. If he would accompany me as protection, I would give him two hundred dollars. He agreed in a second.
A few days later, he and I were in my car in a rest area off Highway 5 between Ferndale and Blaine. I had arranged for an unmarked DEA car to arrive from one direction and an unmarked RCMP car from the other. They showed up right on cue, and a woman got out of the Canadian car and into the DEA vehicle.
I had told Gunk that if she was in there for more than two minutes, it would mean we had a problem and would have to pull her out of the car. He would be paid more if that happened, I’d added. Gunk took the prospect of extracting the woman very seriously, pulling a gun from inside his coat and looking very tense. “Holy fuck, this guy is whacked out,” I thought.
It was a very long two minutes and the Mountie used almost all of it. With five seconds remaining, the DEA car’s door opened and she stepped out. She walked to her car and pulled out a large package that she then placed in the American’s trunk. Both cars pulled out and were gone. It was the easiest two hundred bucks Gunk had ever made and I knew he would soon want more.
It didn’t take long for Gunk to come to me with a business proposal of his own. Chuck was closing his bike shop, ostensibly for lack of business. In fact, the gang had decided they wanted complete control over it, so had boycotted it and also warned other bike owners in the area not to patronize the place. Eventually, Chuck just read the writing on the wall, locked the door and left town. Enter Gunk. He had been telling his fellow Bandidos about the job he did with me and saying that I was a big-time crook. So Jerry suggested to Gunk that he hit me up to finance the shop. He did, and I agreed.
It cost the DEA five grand, but it was money well spent. Within a week the store was filling up with stolen parts and Gunk had his own garage and all the work he could handle as a mechanic. The gang’s business strategy was at times almost comical: Gunk would hire punks to steal parts off bikes in the area, parts he would then sell over the counter back to their rightful owners.
I played the silent partner and stayed at arm’s length. Soon enough, other members started to hover around me, vultures around a cash cow. This led to closer socializing, and before too long gang members began inviting me on small runs—group rides to predetermined locations. These were mostly local affairs—barbecues, parties, bar crawls—but it was clearly a big step into the gang’s good graces. Not more than two or three people at a time were invited to join the gang on these runs, and they were usually guys the gang was thinking of recruiting.
More often than not, the other potential recruits would fall out of favor after pissing off a member of the gang somehow or other, usually over a ridiculously minor infraction. For instance, one guy wore a helmet while riding his bike. After a lot of drinking at a campsite we had ridden to, Dr. Jack, a Bandido so named because he worked as a blood separator in a medical lab and was relatively refined and intelligent, asked the poor sap to pass him the helmet. When he handed it over, Jack promptly puked in it. Then he passed it back to the guy with the instruction, “Put it on now if you like your helmet so much.”
The guy laughed awkwardly, thinking, praying, that Jack was joking. He wasn’t.
“Put it on,” Jack repeated. “Now!”
The guy eventually did. And never came on another ride.
One of my most valuable skills on runs and at other gatherings was being able to anticipate when the festivities might turn ugly so that I could slip away unnoticed. Early on I learned that when Vinny began to dance in the campfire with a gun in one hand and a bottle of peach schnapps in the other, it was time to find a hole to hide in. Members weren’t allowed to hit other members, and that meant non-members often ended up as punching bags. Since I had no status, I figured “out of sight, out of mind” was the best approach, and it worked.
Not being a drinker helped keep me alert to changes in the atmosphere. It also allowed me to do a lot of observing, even if from a distance. I was especially interested in the treatment of “prospects”—the recruits going through an extended hazing period to see if they had the stuff for full membership—not so much because I was hoping to become one but because they were often my best source of information. Still, once I started getting invited on rides, becoming a prospect myself became an enticing possibility. It wasn’t something Andy, Corky and Co. had really dared hope for when I was first hired; just becoming a friend of the gang was a tall-enough order already. But when my being invited to prospect for the club became a realistic consideration, my handlers were seized by the idea.
This occurred about two and a half or three months into the investigation, in the fall of 1981. Thailand, Scott said, was still hung up in paperwork. Meanwhile, Andy was telling me our investigation in Ferndale needed a longer commitment from me to get the funding we required to continue. So, I signed on with the DEA for another three months. In retrospect, I think the funding excuse was a ruse to force my hand and make me forget about Thailand.
Truth be told, even if I’d been given the option of packing my bags and heading off to Bangkok at that point, it would have been hard to do. The more I got to know the Bandidos, the more fascinated I became with them and, by extension, the case. Like me—and like Andy, Corky and Larry—they had almost all served in Vietnam. In fact, like the Hells Angels, their rivals (and occasional business partners), the Bandidos had been formed by disenchanted, recently discharged vets. But whereas the Hells Angels came out of WWII and got started in California, the Bandidos were conceived in the disaster of Vietnam and born on the docks of San Leon, Texas. In this way, I discovered, I had just as much of a bond with most of the Bandidos as I did with the cops. More, in fact, if you took into account my delinquent youth.
All that said, I didn’t know if I could put up with the treatment meted out to prospects. It was not only demanding and humiliating—whether it was standing watch all night at clubs and parties, or fetching beers for full-patch members—but also downright dangerous. So I began to study which members to avoid and which ones to stay close to. There was hope: Ronnie Hodge, the Bandidos’ national president, had recently ordered all chapters to minimize the brutality on prospects, saying it was deterring a lot of good people from joining. Still, many old-timers saw the old approach as the only way to test the mettle of a man. Nonetheless, beatings were generally kept at a level of punches, no boots allowed. Jobs such as cleaning members’ basements and running errands for them had increasingly become the order of the day.
As I drew closer to the gang, I drifted further from my life in Vancouver. My trips became less frequent; rather than visiting a couple of times a week, I would go once every couple of weeks. I didn’t have the time, I told Liz—but that was only partly true. A more important reason was that I found going from one life to another just too difficult to keep track of. With the Bandidos, even the slightest slip-up could cost me my life.
Liz wasn’t the type to complain or nag, but it was obvious she wasn’t very happy with my lengthier absences. Around the time the investigation had got under way, we’d found out she was pregnant again, which only made matters worse. And just before Christmas 1981, when the Mounties finally scrapped any remaining idea of sending me to Thailand—I was obviously no longer available—the strain on our relationship became that much greater. Even if she’d never been keen on moving to Bangkok—and despite the fact that Ferndale was a hell of a lot closer to Vancouver than Thailand—she thought I should have taken the job with the Mounties. Bikers scared her.
Still, we talked on the phone most nights, especially after the DEA moved me from the trailer into a house in Blaine. The house was quite literally a stone’s throw from the border, right next to Peace Arch Park—perfect, almost too perfect, for an ostensible smuggler. Liz also appreciated the fact that, if nothing else, I had become a very steady supply of money. The DEA paid me in cash—big piles of cash, about US$4,000 per month—and all my expenses were covered, so I didn’t have much use for the money. That meant it all went to Liz. At one point we figured out that the money we were making on the exchange rate alone was enough to cover our household bills.
Once I began going on rides with the gang and socializing with them more closely, the door to actually building a case against them opened up: I started buying drugs from them. Not much in terms of either volume or frequency, at least not to begin with. Rather, a small purchase one day, then, a couple of months later perhaps, another from a different member.
The first Bandido I bought from was Craig, a longtime but low-profile member who worked unloading fishing boats at Blaine’s small port. He was always at the Pioneer and was always selling—not small quantities, but not big either, anything from an eighth to a full ounce of coke. He barely bothered to hide it, which was my main reason for picking him. Seeing him at the bar one day, I approached as if I’d been hunting high and low for him.
“Hey, I’ve been looking for you,” I said. “I need an eight ball. Or how much would it be for a quarter?”
My strategy was not to ask him if he would sell to me but rather how much he would sell, thereby making it that much harder for him to say no. Not that “no” even seemed a consideration for him. He simply reached into his pocket, pulled out a quarter ounce and said “Four-fifty” or some figure like that.
A month or two later, I walked into another biker bar in Blaine and saw Bobby Lund, a member of the Bremerton Bandidos, along with a few of the Bellingham gang members. Even if he belonged to the other Washington State chapter, he seemed to like our company more and spent most of his time in the Ferndale area. He was known as a dealer of relatively small quantities. I cornered him and asked, “Is Craig with you guys?”
I already knew the answer: no.
“Have you seen him?” I asked.
Again, no.
“I’m looking for him because I need to pick up,” I continued. “Can you do it?”
I ended up buying half an ounce from him then and there.
The next Bandido I bought from was Terry Jones—the only member of the Bellingham chapter to actually reside in Bellingham. The rest lived in Ferndale, Blaine, the tiny town of Custer, halfway between the two, or scattered around the countryside of Whatcom County.
Early one summer evening, I dropped by Terry’s house. After a bit of small talk and some playing with his sweet-tempered pit bull, Binky, I said, “I dropped by to see if you had anything.”
He didn’t blink. By then I was quite sure he was beyond having any suspicions about me. I had been moving very slowly and in a deliberately aloof manner. Had I been full of questions and always trying to buy drugs from any and all, it would have been a dead giveaway. But I kept my business to myself and avoided anything that might have been construed as nosiness. So Terry just asked, “How much were you looking for?” It led to my buying an ounce of coke.
Over the summer I bought again from Craig, Bobby and Terry, each time while wearing a wire. The police always wanted at least two buys in case one was ruled legally inadmissible on some technicality and, more importantly, to prove that the target sold drugs repeatedly and as a business, not just to help out a friend who wanted to score.
I also continued to get closer to the gang, in my non-ingratiating, non-pushy way. I’d go on most of the smaller, local runs but wasn’t invited on the mandatory, Bandidos-organized runs—the Four Corners Run, any of the regular summer trips to Texas or to visit other club chapters; they were for members and prospects only. Many I wasn’t even aware of: the guys would simply tell me, “We’ll be out of town for the next week or so.”
That would give me a chance to go back up north and visit Liz and the kids—my son had been born at the end of March. I hadn’t been around for the birth; Liz wasn’t able to get word to me when she went into labor. Instead, Frank had had to come to Blaine and get me.
“Come on, Twinkletoes—time to dance,” he said, and off we headed to the hospital in North Vancouver, where Liz was recovering.
I did go on one major run that summer, to Sturgis, South Dakota. It’s an annual gathering that attracts tens of thousands of bikers—all the major gangs but also any number of independents, including such groups as Bikers for Christ and the Blue Knights, which is made up exclusively of active and retired cops. I rode with different packs of Bandidos all the way but wasn’t invited to stay with them at the gang’s exclusive—and isolated—campground. Which was fine by me, even if it would have pleased my handlers no end. Hanging out with the Bellingham and Bremerton Bandidos was one thing—they all knew me and generally thought well of me. But to be patchless, not even a prospect, amid hundreds of hard-partying, unpredictable, possibly psychopathic outlaw bikers was a risk I wasn’t about to take.
Even if I wasn’t staying in the Bandidos campground, thus reducing the likelihood of any useful intelligence coming out of the ride, it didn’t stop Andy, Corky and three or four other backroom cops from coming along for the fun. Cops are always happy to take a free trip.
As summer progressed, it was clear to everyone in the gang that I was edging toward prospect status, though never, ever was it explicitly acknowledged. I never brought it up—that would have undermined my chances almost as quickly as pulling out a police badge or admitting a fondness for young boys. If you were cool enough to be a Bandido, you had to be cool enough not to be in a hurry, and certainly not whine or nag.
I did, however, begin to cultivate the members whom I recognized as being the most influential. A prospect has to be unanimously approved by all the full members of a chapter, so theoretically everyone has an equal say. But as in any organization, some swing more lead than others, and these were the guys I worked, very discreetly, at winning over.
Vinny Mann was the chapter president and obviously someone I needed in my corner, but I wasn’t too worried about him. On the one hand, I felt he was already on my side; on the other, I didn’t see him as the real power in the club. Officially, he was outranked by Jersey Jerry—John Jerome Francis—the northwestern regional officer and the national secretary-treasurer. But Jerry was aloof to the proceedings of the local chapter, more interested in the bigger national picture and his own various business interests, which included a video store, the Village Vidiot, and moving some pretty substantial quantities of cocaine and speed.
The real leader of the chapter—and the man I worked most to curry favor with that summer—was George Wegers. He was the vice-president and a force to be reckoned with. Boisterous, outgoing, opinionated, extremely intelligent and very funny, George also had a very serious dark side that could transform him in an instant from a laughing, charming companion to a raging animal. This made him the most unpredictable and violent member of the chapter—and one who generally got his way.
Another reason I needed him behind me was that his best friend and business partner in the club was Mongo (Pete Price), and it became clear that summer that if there was one member of the Bellingham Bandidos who didn’t like me much, it was him.
Initially, Mongo had been reasonably friendly, chatting with me at the bar and such. But from one day to the next he stopped saying hello and began shooting dirty looks at me, when he acknowledged my existence at all. The change was dramatic enough that eventually, while hanging around the bike shop, I asked Gunk what Mongo’s issue was. “It’s as if I pissed in his cornflakes,” I said.
“The man had a dream,” Gunk said. “He dreamed that you have come to destroy the club. Like you’re a curse on us.”
I was immediately alarmed. “What, he thinks I’m a cop?”
“No. He just thinks you’re here to destroy the club. Stay out of his way and he’ll get over it.”
Gunk’s nonchalance was reassuring—it suggested Mongo had had these kinds of dreams before and no one had ended up in a shallow grave as a result. But I would definitely follow Gunk’s advice; I didn’t have a problem with staying out of Mongo’s way. The Bellingham chapter was known as the Chapter of Giants because of the size of its members, and none was as big as Mongo. He was 350 pounds if he was an ounce, and at least six-four. Top him off with a huge mane of matted flaming orange hair and he made for an imposing package.
No Bellingham Bandido was half as quirky as Mongo, either. In many ways he was almost cuddly and teddy-bear-like, and few members were as loyal. He was also the most philosophical Bandido I’d met, and the only one I knew to meditate. Few, if any, were as highly skilled—he worked in jet engine development at the Boeing plant in Seattle. At the same time, Mongo was intensely irrational. He hated non-whites in general and blacks and anyone in a mixed relationship in particular. He loved the color yellow, but in a proprietorial way—only on himself and his things. (His orange hair was actually the result of a botched dye job; it was intended to be bright yellow.) And he despised anyone riding a bike while wearing running shoes. It all made for an ugly scene when, on a run, we saw a black guy on a yellow Honda with a white girl on the back—and she was wearing sneakers. The couple were very lucky that there was a concrete median between them and Mongo—and that there were a half-dozen Bandidos holding him back.
Steering a wide berth around Mongo that summer, I cultivated George Wegers while also working on Dr. Jack—who was Jersey Jerry’s partner and also a fun and sensible guy—and, of course, Gunk, whom I saw more than any other Bandido because of the shop.
It all seemed to be progressing reasonably well when, one evening around Labor Day, Vinny phoned me and ordered me over to his house. His tone of voice and curtness made it clear I had no say in the matter. The whole chapter, along with Bobby Lund and a few other members from Bremerton, were gathered there when I arrived about eight. No one said a word, and whatever misgivings I’d felt when Vinny called were only increasing. I was beginning to think that maybe I should have called Andy and Corky to tell them what was happening. Too late now.
I found myself standing in the middle of the living room wondering why I’d been beckoned. Then Vinny stood up.
“You remember that day when I told you I was checking you out?” he said gruffly.
“Yeah, I remember,” I replied warily.
Karate Bob spoke up. “Remember I said you might still end up in the ditch.”
“Yaaaaaaa . . .” I began to mentally gauge my distance to the door. Too far.
Then Vinny threw me a denim cut-off with a prospect patch on the back. “Put this on.”
I did what I was told in record time. Everybody then stood up and gathered around to congratulate me. Everybody, that is, but Mongo. He just stayed on the couch and moped. As per instructions from Gunk, I stayed away from him. During the next few hours of partying, most of the other guys came around and gave me encouragement and advice for the year I could expect to remain a prospect.
“I’m going to be real hard on you, but if you come through it, you’ll be stronger for it,” George told me.
Terry Jones came over to me. He gave me a P-38—a small Marine Corps–issue can opener about an inch and a half long with a folding sharp edge and a small hole for a key ring. Every prospect got one. He said I would have to learn how to use it; not being the sharpest knife in the drawer, Terry hadn’t figured out that I’d been in Vietnam and would know how to use it already. I didn’t say anything. Terry took me to the kitchen and grabbed a can of peas. Within seconds he had it opened. I feigned concentrated interest. You could earn more respect being a fast learner than by boasting that you already knew something. Afterward he gave me a can and I opened it, saying, “Like this?” and “Is this right?” Terry was proud and slapped me on the back. “You’ll do all right!”
When I rejoined the crowd, it was Dr. Jack’s turn. He gave me my Maglite flashlight. Every Bandido wore one on his belt. They were useful if your bike broke down on the side of the road at night and you couldn’t see to fix it. Not that that was likely to happen. Their real purpose was as an intimidating club. All the Bellingham members had the long and heavy D-cell battery version. Dr. Jack gave me a smaller, four-battery C-cell flashlight, which better fit my grip and size.
Then Vinny gave me a leather belt insert to slide my flashlight into. On it were the letters BFFB: Bandidos Forever—Forever Bandidos. When I put it on and slipped the Maglite in, it felt like a gun belt. It felt good.
That night was not one of orders or menial tasks, it was a welcoming event. The other shit would start soon enough.
The morning after I was given my prospect patch, I called Andy Smith at nine o’clock sharp.
“I have to see you, and see you right now!” I said to him.
He asked me what was wrong, his voice almost panicky.
“Nothing!” I snapped. “But I have to see you now!”
He told me to come on over. The DEA offices were maybe a hundred yards away from my house beside Peace Arch Park. I walked down the alley sporting my new patch and knocked at the back door. The secretary let me in.
“They’re in Larry’s office,” she said.
I walked in and their jaws dropped as soon as they took in the small prospect patch above the left pocket of my leather vest (or cut, as it was called). I then turned around to shut the office door, in the process showing off the larger patch on my back. It was the first time I’d ever seen Andy speechless. Together with Larry and Corky, he just sat there for a few seconds, stunned. Then all hell broke loose. I spent two hours in the office that morning as we talked about everything my patch would allow us to do.
During that time, Andy had got on the phone and sent the word out to the regional DEA office in Seattle as well as Washington. My acceptance as a prospect was a major deal. For the cops, it was the sign of real, tangible progress that was needed to finally open the vault. Money for the operation would never be a problem again.
Once a prospect, I began buying anything from anyone in and around the gang. Besides drugs—coke and meth, as pot and hash weren’t worth the hassle—I bought guns, stolen vehicles and even expensive furniture that had been stolen from an immigration officer’s house. My contacts in Canada were insatiable, I let on.
I went into overdrive after playing it so cautiously for so long because the team felt that the investigation could now be derailed that much more easily. Being a “hanger-on,” an “associate,” a “friend” or whatever I was exactly before being made a prospect meant that I could keep a certain distance. I saw the Bandidos when I wanted, for as long as I wanted. As a prospect, I was at their beck and call, and my presence and services were compulsory at every gang gathering. It created that much more opportunity for me to be exposed, or simply to fall out of favor. And if I was bounced as a prospect from the club, I’d have to make myself scarce—there was no going back to my former status.
Since everything I bought went into the black hole of the police evidence warehouse (or up to Canada, as far as the bikers were concerned), I didn’t present any competition to local dealers. That was an upside, especially since George Wegers controlled much of the local trade. At the same time, however, the fact that everything I bought disappeared (except, that is, for the fancy furniture—it was displayed prominently around my house) became a bit of a problem. It seemed unnatural, particularly to someone as hypersuspicious and cautious as George. My not being big on ostentation—no flashing of bulging wads of cash, no big spending on a harem of mistresses—despite my apparently thriving and profitable business, only fed any suspicions George may have had.
Dr. Jack conveyed these concerns to me through an idle conversation we had in his shed while he was fixing his bike. So, after consulting with Andy, we decided to use Jack and his partner Jersey Jerry in our plan to put George’s mind at rest. I’d already made one coke buy from them and we were looking for a second. Unfortunately, Jack told me, they were dry. In fact, he added, he wouldn’t mind buying a pound or so from me if I happened to find some.
I subsequently approached George and he reluctantly agreed to sell me the drugs I needed. We arranged a time for him to come over to my house. Andy followed George’s car from the air in the company chopper as he took a roundabout route to my house. He even drove down a country road and just stopped, waiting to see if anybody was following him. Luckily, he never looked up. When he arrived, I bought the uncut pound for thirty thousand dollars. George honored me by not counting the money in my presence—a faux pas when dealing with a brother. The deal was done in minutes, and I told George I didn’t want to be rude but I couldn’t hang out with him. My customer was on his way over; George had to leave.
My customer arrived right on time, just a few minutes after George had departed. Or not. Surveillance told us that George didn’t leave the area—he just parked at the other end of the alley and waited to see who came by. He must have been surprised when Dr. Jack pulled up to my house. I resold the pound to the doctor for $32,500. He was gone in ten minutes. In case word ever got to George, I wanted to show I had made a profit.
George saw the deal go down and, as he told me later, was very impressed both with my business acumen—buying from one member to sell to another was no problem for him or any other Bandido—and with my maneuvering. The drugs were in my house less than half an hour and I had turned a handsome profit. That started my business relationship with George. It took a long time for him to trust a person, but when he did, it was total trust. The deal also brought Dr. Jack closer to me. And it made a shelter for abused women in Bellingham happier as well: the team donated my $2,500 profit to it and put the receipt in our file.
Another incident that might have made the gang suspicious of me cost me my purple Firebird. One day Jersey Jerry was driving past the Ferndale police station when he saw an identical Firebird parked in the lot. Needless to say, mine was a unique-looking ride and Jerry had to wonder at the likelihood of seeing another just like it. His attitude toward me, I noticed, began to change. Other members in the gang, however, chilled him out. If I were an undercover cop, would I be so stupid as to park my car in full view of everyone in town? It was even more ironic given that the team had decided that the local cops, whether from Ferndale, Bellingham or Blaine, weren’t trustworthy and couldn’t know of our investigation.
When Gunk told me of the incident and Jersey Jerry’s initial suspicions, he was laughing. “You know how we knew you weren’t a cop?” he said, referring to discussions the club had had before making me a prospect.
“How?”
“Because if you were a cop, you would have been the worst fucking cop in history. You would have been fired by now.”
Clearly, my strategy of not asking questions and minding my own business had worked. And to keep any further sightings of that car from reigniting potentially deadly suspicions, I had to say goodbye to my Firebird. Ferndale’s not a big town, but I never did learn whose car that was.
Still, thanks to his dream, Mongo still wasn’t convinced about me. Winning him over only occurred when we “tombstoned” an uppity Seattle gang.
The Resurrection was an independent club that was beginning to take up just a little too much space in the area. They’d been around for years, but in the early 1980s they made a few decisions that convinced the Washington State Bandidos that the Resurrection needed dealing with. One was their going from a one-piece patch—with logo, name and city on a single piece of fabric—to a three-piece patch. It sounds ridiculous, but in the arcane politics and symbolism of the biker world, this was a big deal. Three-piece patches—with a central logo, an upper “rocker” with the club’s name and a lower rocker with their home city—were the domain of “one-percenter” gangs—that is, outlaw gangs. One-piece patches were for everybody else. One-percenters could happily coexist with non-one-percenters, but not with other outlaw gangs.
Another misstep was a simple result of their growth: the Resurrection were discussing a split into two chapters, one south Seattle, one north. This expansion just couldn’t be stomached by the Bandidos.
Their final gaffe—the one that made Vinny say, “Something has to be done about the Resurrection, and now”—was an ill-advised show of disrespect and arrogance. Vinny had made overtures to the Resurrection about becoming a support club. They had not responded. It was time for a visit to make them understand that an enthusiastic answer was required, not to mention polite.
Early on a cold, damp November evening, about thirty Bandidos members and prospects hit the highway to Seattle, mostly in trucks and cars. Twenty members of the Ghost Riders, a support club from southeast Washington State, met us in north Seattle. They pulled the tail end of the procession. Even the president of a support club is lesser in status than a Bandidos prospect and must ride behind him. It was my first taste of power over other bikers.
The Resurrection clubhouse was in a garage-like building in the middle of an industrial park on Seattle’s south side. It allowed them to party hard and keep their privacy. It also made them vulnerable. Vinny, who obviously had his spies in their midst, knew that it was their church night and that the subject on the table was the split into two chapters.
We arrived and lost no time. Mongo was our vanguard. He yanked up the garage door, which opened right into the middle of their clubhouse. The Resurrection members—there were at least as many of them as us—were spread around on couches and chairs or just sitting on the floor. They looked at Mongo, as the rest of us lined up behind him, in shock. Bandidos then filed in along both walls and along the back, surrounding them. Three Bremerton prospects and I stood in the open doorway with the Ghost Riders behind us and clearly visible. All the Bandidos pulled out guns and pointed them at the group. Most of the Resurrection guys were terrified. So was I. “Holy fuck,” I thought, “they’re going to kill them.”
Terry Jones had given me a gun when we arrived, so there I was, gun drawn, sweating bullets. I still wonder what I would have done if a member of the Resurrection had made a move and the shooting had started. Standing there with a gun in my hand, I didn’t feel like an imposter, an infiltrator or a police agent—I was a Bandido. A very nervous Bandido, but a Bandido all the same.
Vinny walked into the middle of the Resurrection. “I have a list here,” he growled. “Everyone on that list sits down. So all of you stand up.”
They did as they were told and Vinny started reading names. One by one, about fifteen members of the Resurrection sat down.
“Okay, that’s it. The rest of you are to leave, right now. Leave your patch on the floor.” The psych-out was masterful. Those told to leave must have thought they were survivors and were only too happy to get out of there. Except for one guy. He looked at Vinny and said, “Fuck you. You can have my patch, but I’m not leaving my bros.” Vinny told him to sit down too.
After the rejects were gone, Vinny told the rest they had been chosen to be a prospect chapter of the Bandidos. If all went well, after a year, Seattle would have its own Bandidos chapter.
George Wegers, who hadn’t said anything up to now, pointed to the guy who had refused to leave. “And you’re the new president.”
In a matter of one hour, the Resurrection motorcycle club had gone the way of the dodo. All the “colors”—the jackets and vests on which the Resurrection patches were sewn and which had been dumped on the floor by the departing members—were burned in a steel drum. All except two sets. One would be sent to Bandidos headquarters in Lubbock, Texas; the other would go to Vinny’s house to be hung upside down on his wall. The chosen ones were given their Bandidos prospect patches and the Ghost Riders were sent home with thanks. The Bremerton Bandidos also soon departed. The Bellingham crew were the only invaders left. We stood around a bit awkwardly with the remains of the Resurrection, who didn’t know whether to be grateful or hostile.
After a while, Vinny came up to me and said, “Hey, you were our only prospect here, and you did good.”
“He’s not my prospect,” interjected Mongo.
Vinny saw this as a personal challenge. “He’s the whole chapter’s prospect, you got that?” He wasn’t so much protecting me as asserting his own authority.
Mongo nodded grudgingly, like a kid who’d been chastised by his father. Still, it wasn’t enough, and Vinny decided to deal with the issue once and for all.
“You guys go off and straighten this out and don’t come back until you do.”
Mongo looked at me and told me to follow him. I got in my truck—before getting rid of the Firebird, I’d bought a 1965 Ford Twin I-Beam pickup—and followed his bike to the back end of the industrial park. I was afraid that some of my cover team might be lurking around, but we didn’t see anyone. Or maybe I was actually hoping they would be there. After all, this was a monster of a man with wild orange hair and beard and enough leather on him to dress several cows. The chain going from his belt to his wallet was a real chain, the type you use to lock up fences with. In the other corner—the “how the fuck do I get out of this?” corner—me: a 135-pound, five-foot-six runt.
We parked and Mongo told me that I had one chance to drive out of there and not come back. I told him I wasn’t going away. If he wanted to rock ’n’ roll, I might not win, but I would never back down. All he said was, “No guns, no knives.”
I watched as Mongo took two guns and two knives from various hiding places. He also detached the chain. I just took off my coat and hung it on my mirror. Then he said, “Oh, I almost forgot,” pulled up the leg of his jeans and took a small .22 from his boot. Even with Mongo disarmed, I knew I was in a very bad position. The only way I could win was to hurt him very badly, very quickly, and I hadn’t figured out how to do that yet.
He looked at me. “You know I can tear you a new asshole,” he said.
I said I knew that. Then I added, “It’s a hazard of the trade.” The line had worked at my first encounter with Vinny and Karate Bob, so why not use it again?
It hadn’t lost its charm. Mongo’s tone softened.
“Since we’re probably spending the night here, we’re not in any hurry,” he said. “Let’s go for a beer first and we can plan this out.”
“Sounds good to me,” I replied, with obvious relief.
Off we went to the nearest bar. Mongo had got over his dream, but he had a new concern. He thought I saw the Bandidos as nothing but organized crime instead of as a motorcycle club built on brotherhood. That caught me completely off guard. It was like the time Karate Bob refused my offer to bankroll the martial arts club for him. There was more to the Bandidos than just the criminality of some of its members, I was slowly learning. I sat and let Mongo teach and preach to me.
After a few hours we went back to the Resurrection’s clubhouse. Some of the gang were sleeping, others were drinking, the remnants of the Resurrection fetching their beers for them. Vinny saw us arrive and looked very pleased with himself. Gunk was still my sponsor as a prospect, but from then on Mongo was my mentor in the gang.
The next day, Andy called me in. During my verbal debrief, I told him and Corky about what Mongo had said. The cops thought it was funny and put no store in it. Though I didn’t say anything, I found myself taking Mongo’s side. I was beginning to feel that underneath all the violence and leather there was a certain nobility to the bikers. In retrospect, that kind of thinking should have been a warning sign.
It wouldn’t have been the only one. Andy also told me I needed to get in touch with my wife. Liz, I think, had phoned him to discuss what this investigation, especially now that I was a prospect, was doing to our family life. I hadn’t talked to her in a week or had time to send any money home. And I hadn’t visited in at least twice that long. My life in Vancouver seemed to be slipping away. It could have been seen as my work taking over my personal life; in fact, it was my new Bandidos family usurping my real one.
I was starting to rationalize my thinking, saying to myself things like, “She doesn’t know what I’m going through.” In truth, she didn’t know mainly because I wouldn’t share the job—its details or its stresses—with her. I now see how unfair and tough it must have been for Liz. Still, even though I made an effort to phone and send money more often, I pressed on with my work.
In early December, a few weeks after the Resurrection takeover, I was supposed to go home for a day or two. My thirty-fourth birthday was coming up and Liz had something planned. But toward noon I got a call from Vinny saying there was a party at his house that night and that I needed to show up. I considered making up an excuse but instead said, “I’ll be there.” I called Liz and disappointed her again, though she sounded as if she had been expecting it. Then I called Andy and told him about the party. He asked me if I expected any trouble. I said no, so he decided not to put cover on me; as a prospect, I might have to be there all night. I agreed with him.
When I arrived at Vinny’s, I helped him set things up, moving furniture around to make room and that kind of thing. Then, just before nine o’clock, Vinny told me to go on a beer run. I jumped in his truck and went down to the local liquor store.
I pulled in just as its employees were pulling out: it had closed for the night. I had to return to Vinny’s empty-handed. When I got there, most people had arrived.
“Where’s the beer?” Vinny asked.
I explained that I’d got to the store too late. Vinny wasn’t pleased. All conversation stopped.
“You don’t deserve your prospect patch. Give me that cut,” he said.
I was taken aback—I’d expected a reprimand, but not the loss of the patch. I took it off and handed it to him. Then George came out of the kitchen toward me, scowling. “Fuck, here we go,” I thought. Things were going from bad to worse.
He said: “Since you’re not wearing your patch, here, try this one on.” He handed me a leather cut with a full patch on it.
I just stood there holding the patch, looking from one guy to another.
“Put the fucking thing on before we change our mind,” Vinny shouted.
Everybody crowded around to congratulate and hug me. Even if I’ve always hated hugging, it felt great. Vinny asked me if I had anything to say.
“Prospectttttt! Get me a fucking Pepsi,” I bellowed at an aspiring member in the room. Everybody cracked up.