Under and Alone (23 page)

The deputy maintained his professionalism, not losing his cool in spite of the way Rancid was testing him. He took Rancid by the arm and helped him walk to the rear of the car. He told Rancid to sit on the curb. Rancid tried but fell over into the grass. The second deputy asked me to step to the rear of the car, then off the street and onto the grass. “Have you been drinking, sir?”

“I had a few beers earlier in the evening, but none in the last two or three hours.”

He proceeded to give me the field sobriety test.

“Sir, stand on one leg. Put your arms out by your side, lean your head back, and close your eyes. With your arms extended bring your right hand in and touch your nose with your index finger. Now your left . . .”

I wasn’t worried about the sobriety test. I wasn’t legally drunk, and I was being as cooperative as Rancid was being belligerent. Behind me, I could see Rancid sitting on the curb, spewing profanities, demanding his attorney, even as he began to list twenty degrees to the left, nearly falling into the grass again. The deputy asked for his name. Rancid threw out a bogus one: Richard Clay. I listened intently because I knew they would be asking me to repeat my friend’s name. The deputy asked Rancid to repeat his name. This time he answered with a different name: John Martinez.

A backup black-and-white arrived at the scene with two more deputies. One of the deputies went immediately to the Mustang and began to look through it with his flashlight. When he opened the console, he found two 9mm bullets. He came back and showed the bullets to the other deputies, who then asked both of us if we had any weapons on us. I kept thinking about the switchblade in my pocket.

“Fuck you!” Rancid yelled.

Rancid’s outburst provided me with a perfect diversion. While the deputies were focused on him, I pulled the knife from my pocket and tossed it silently into the grass. Too late—one eagle-eyed deputy had seen exactly what I’d done. Our eyes met in a moment of silent recognition. I wished more than anything I could tell this officer who I really was.

He didn’t walk over to the switchblade immediately; he began to question me about guns. I swore that I didn’t have any on me. He led me to the curb to sit next to Rancid, who was now listing another ten degrees to port. I leaned over to Rancid and whispered in his ear: “What the fuck is wrong with you? You need to cooperate or we’re fuckin’ going to jail.”

“Yeah? Fuck it. I’m going to jail anyway.”

Two deputies were now going through the car, asking me how to get into the trunk. I almost visibly shook when I remembered that I had my government NT tape recorder in my jacket pocket. If they pulled that out in front of Rancid, I’d have some serious explaining to do. I told the deputy that the trunk had been damaged some time ago and was permanently shut. He wasn’t stupid enough to go for that. Meanwhile, another deputy had opened the glove compartment and was trying to open the trunk with the electronic release button.

The ignition switch had to be on for that release button to work, but soon enough one of the deputies figured this out. He turned the ignition and then hit the trunk release.

The trunk popped open, revealing two carefully folded sets of Mongol colors. The deputies didn’t touch a thing in the trunk. They yanked us to our feet, then threw the handcuffs on. I was escorted to the black-and-white parked directly behind my car, and Rancid was taken to the second black-and-white behind that. Deputies now tore apart everything in my bullet-riddled undercover Mustang.

One deputy pulled out my jacket and went through the pockets. In no time, out came the NT recorder. An NT is not some standard tape recorder that Joe Citizen can pick up at the nearest RadioShack. It’s a tiny, sophisticated, very expensive digital surveillance device that only a member of law enforcement would use. I was horrified as I watched him toss it roughly on the roof of the Mustang.

I looked back to see if Rancid had observed what just happened. But I couldn’t get a good look at his face. As we waited in our cuffs, the deputies continued to tear the car apart. One deputy even took a screwdriver and lifted up the floor panels by the seats. The Mustang had been hardwired by ATF technicians, and these unsuspecting deputies were about to expose an even more expensive and sophisticated recording setup.

I’d been in the back of the black-and-white for about thirty minutes when I was approached by a sergeant for the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department. He opened the front door and peered at me through the metal separator. “What’s with all the recording equipment? You wanna tell me what’s going on?”

It was time for me to try some fancy Ciccone-style tap dancing. I told the sergeant that I worked for an avionics company and that we bought and sold high-priced equipment that was all serialized. Any mistakes in model numbers and serial numbers could cost the company tens of thousands of dollars. I told him whenever I bought anything, I put the whole transaction on digital tape. If he wanted, he could even listen to the tapes right now.

The sergeant didn’t call my bluff. He didn’t say another word to me. He went back and talked with the other deputies.

I’ll never know if these cops bought my far-fetched alibi or if they suspected I was an undercover cop and were smart enough to let it alone. They had us stopped for more than two hours when they decided to let us go. One deputy hauled me from the backseat, whirled me around, and unlocked the handcuffs. He told me that he was going to write me a ticket for a taillight being out and that he was going to write my friend up for an open liquor container.

I couldn’t believe they were letting us walk, not after all the obscene abuse Rancid had spewed at them. But these officers were the polar opposite of the two goons who’d leveled their service pistols at me.

The deputy told me that he’d put my knife in the trunk of the car and warned me that carrying a switchblade was illegal. I nodded, then went immediately to my car, retrieved the NT tape recorder sitting on the roof, and quickly tucked it away in my pocket, turning to look at Rancid. Fortunately, he was still cuffed inside the other black-and-white and was now practically comatose. Two deputies walked back to the car and opened the back door to let Rancid fall out like a big sack of dirty laundry.

I could hear one of them shouting: “Okay, buddy! Get up! Hey, get up!” They laid him on the ground and then told me to get my buddy on his feet and out of there.

I did my best to lift him. But Rancid weighed a good 220 pounds. There was no way I was going to get him up and into my car. I turned to the deputies. “Can you at least help me get him back to my car?”

They said nothing, but two deputies walked over to Rancid and grabbed him by his arms, pulling him first up to his knees, then to his feet. I thought that Rancid would walk with them to the car, but when they took one step he collapsed on his face again. The deputies held on, dragging him to the car. They tossed him in headfirst and told me again to get him the hell out of there.

I wrestled and shoved Rancid until I got him completely in the car. I couldn’t believe we were leaving the scene with only a couple of tickets. We made it to Rancid’s place in just a couple of minutes, and I thought that I was going to have to leave him propped up against the apartment-building wall. But much to my surprise, when I hollered for him to wake up, he started blinking at me. He didn’t remember a thing about being stopped by the cops. He didn’t even remember leaving The Place. He just thanked me for the ride home and got out of the car.

As I drove home, I put myself in these deputies’ shoes and realized that they
must
have known what was going on. I figured that they didn’t want to be responsible for blowing some undercover deal.

12

There was one thing I didn’t realize when I accepted this undercover assignment: how much it was going to change me. I’d been all fired up to infiltrate the Mongols and do the grueling investigative work; I’d been mentally prepared for the danger, the violence, the guns and drugs, the challenges to my undercover identity.

What I hadn’t fully anticipated was the emotional turmoil. I really had to abandon all semblance of my personal life for the duration of the undercover role. The scrutiny was bad enough when I was a lowly prospect, but it got worse once I became a patched-in member and club officer. Before you can become a full patch, they make copies of your picture and distribute it to every other chapter in the club; every patch studies your face closely and considers whether they have a problem with you or may have known you at some point. Every patch stares hard at you and weighs the possibility that you might be a cop trying to infiltrate the club.

There are several hundred Mongols and known associates just in Southern California. So when you’re out on the street, there’s always a chance of running into them. You realize that even in a state the size of California, you’re trapped in a kind of prison of your own making—you can no longer pick up your kids and go to a movie or an amusement park; you can’t walk into a restaurant because you might run into some of the most violent criminals in the nation, psychopaths who are supposedly your closest friends.

Now that I was living the life of Billy St. John of the Mongols, my visits with my sons became less and less frequent. Holidays, weekends, birthday parties, baseball games, soccer games, the weekly “Dad time”—I had to give it all up.

As the months of the investigation rolled on, my hair got longer, my beard got longer, my sleepless nights got longer. There was no such thing as downtime or being off-duty. Because of my appearance, I couldn’t go anywhere and be considered a member of mainstream America. In my mind, of course, I remained a federal agent, a decorated military veteran, a clean, caring, conscientious parent. But my offensive appearance announced something quite different to the world.

Everywhere I went—shopping for groceries, getting gas—people looked at me with disgust or fear.

My ex-wife, Cari, and our kids were living in a modest suburban Southern California neighborhood. Our boys were attending a good public school. Cari called me one day to see if I could take the boys to parents’ night.

“Of course, Cari,” I said.

Regardless of everything else that I was pretending to be in my Mongol undercover investigation, I decided I was a parent first. I wanted to look nice for my kids; I still had a closet full of suits, dress shirts, and ties, though I hadn’t worn them in several years. But as I looked at myself knotting my tie in the bedroom mirror, it was obvious that I looked more like a homeless person who’d had his first bath in months rather than a conservative, concerned dad. I knew I wouldn’t fool anyone in that suit and tie; I took them off and put on my jeans and a white T-shirt.

I told myself that appearances weren’t everything; I would speak to my kids’ teachers like an educated government agent. I would carry myself with dignity, and people would be as accepting of me as they were of the next parent.

As I parked my car at the school and my sons got out I watched all the other parents and kids recoiling from me with a reaction just short of panic. Before I could even offer a friendly “Good evening,” everyone turned away. I wanted to put my arms over my kids’ shoulders and walk them into the school, but I was worried that it might not be in their best interest. It took me a moment to gather my composure and remind myself that I was not the scumbag outlaw biker I appeared to be.

The kids and I made our way to my older son’s classroom. There were only a couple of parents sitting with the teacher while the kids played together. My kids joined the others as I made my way toward the teacher. I moved right up and introduced myself. The other parents were civil but obviously disturbed by my appearance.

The other parents said their good-byes to the teacher, gathered their children, and left without exchanging any pleasantries or making eye contact with me.

There was no one else left in the classroom now. I turned to the teacher. “Listen,” I said, “so that you don’t get the wrong impression, I want to tell you who I am.”

She stared at me with some confusion. I reached into my jacket pocket and produced my ATF credentials. “I’m a special agent for the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms. I’m forbidden to tell you the details of my job, but I’m working an undercover assignment and that’s why I look the way I do. I know my appearance is alarming, but it shouldn’t reflect badly on my kids. It’s important to me that you know the truth.”

I don’t think she had any idea how badly I needed to get that off my chest. It was more than just the stigma of being judged at parents’ night; I was trying to regain some sense of my
real
self. I could see the immediate relief in her face, but she didn’t fully relax. We talked about my older son, then she thanked me for stopping by and ushered me to the door. She looked around for someone else to converse with, for some form of polite escape. She excused herself and hurried off to the room next door.

It was one thing to give my all to an investigation. I had given up plenty of my own life, but my kids’ lives were never part of the bargain. They shouldn’t have had to sacrifice anything on my behalf. They knew who their father was and loved me in spite of how I looked. But the last thing I wanted was for them to be victims of any ugliness.