For motorcycle clubs that engage in activities intended to be under the radar of law enforcement there is always the suspicion that a new prospect might be an undercover cop of some sort. There is no way to be certain about it, since no amount of checking the background of a prospect can yield anything other than a sense of authenticity ("This dude's all right") or of deception ("I don't trust this bastard").
I sat there and talked with Whitey and Squaw (hardly a word with Johnny Bee) for three hours. I really had no particular desire to join their club or any other, and by the time we were pretty well drunk but still coherent Whitey and Squaw believed it; I was just having a good time and didn't give much of a shit whether they bumped fists with me in friendship or shut me out. Whitey told me months later that it was my unwillingness to discuss certain private matters that won me over to him. An undercover cop doesn't want to give the impression that he's hiding something. But I was no choir boy then or now, and there are some things I keep in my back pocket, not on my sleeve.
It was while I was munching through my second burger that Whitey opened up about Top and his game with an M.C. called the Undertakers. There was a time when Top had just one group of two-wheeler tramps. But being the crazy eccentric he was, he divided the guys into two separate groups; the Roadents and the Undertakers. The latter was under the leadership of a man Top had come to hate, for a reason I might explain later. This man, like Top, was more or less rich. I mean he had enough money in savings and investments to live any way he chose to live, with money to burn any way he wanted to burn it. His name was Shovel, which implied a guy who shoves people around and digs a nice little hole for them to lie down in. He lived in Prescott Arizona. At that time he had, Whitey thought, six or seven hardcore members, and several more who were not to be counted on to play the game, and dropped in and out. Not so with Top. He would rather have just one bonafide Roadent than a hundred halfhearted wanna-be's.
And so we numbered four, counting myself, on that July evening in '95. There was one other prospect, a bar bouncer named Reb; but he hadn't quite made up his mind yet and was maybe a little too attached to the strip scene in Tucson and, it was thought, a little too close to Prescott and the lure of the Undertakers. But he favored Top over Shovel, so hope still lingered that Reb would opt for the Roadents.
Top had an older sister who lived in Pittsburg. She owned two properties in Morgantown. At her house near Cheat Lake, in 1981, Top met with Shovel to iron out the rules of the game. The best way to explain it is to put myself in the picture.
Once every month I send word to Shovel that I'm in a certain place, say, Redding California, or wherever I happen to be at the time. Shovel then gets the word out to his Undertakers that a Roadent has challenged them, and which of you bastards wants to meet with Hangman and beat his ass? The window of opportunity is ten days. If no Undertaker shows up to face me, Shovel must wire me two hundred dollars within four days after the deadline. If an Undertaker comes to fight me and I beat him into submission, Shovel must pay me a thousand. If I lose, then Top must pay the victor a thousand. If I kill the guy, I get only a hundred. That's the theory. What usually happens is this: Let's say I take up the challenge and face off with an Undertaker in, say, Billings Montana. He throws an intimate party, we swap bitches and play three rounds of poker. If I win, word is sent to Shovel that I whipped his boy's ass. I get the thousand and pay the poker losses to the Undertaker. Everybody goes away happy.
But sometimes the theory becomes the practical. That was the case with Johnny Bee. He knew his challenger. There was bad blood between them. He had been waiting in Laramie five days for this asshole to show up. Word was, the Undertaker would arrive in time. My problem with Johnny Bee was that he strongly suspected that I was an Undertaker who had come in place of the asshole. Whitey and Squaw tried to disabuse him of this suspicion. I simply said that no, I had never heard of the Undertakers, nor of the Roadents either, until that day. He kept staring at me. I stared back.
What temporarily diffused the situation was a call Whitey got from Top. I was to go to Top's house for the final interview and the initiation. I was to be there within the hour.
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