The Great Shark Hunt Part 36

Oscar was one of G.o.d's own prototypes -- a high-powered mutant of some kind who was never even considered for ma.s.s production. He was too weird to live and too rare to die -- and as far as I'm concerned, that's just about all that needs to be said about him right now. I was tempted for a while to call that poor b.a.s.t.a.r.d Drake, down in Coconut Grove, to check a little deeper into that savage tale about Oscar and the Battle of Biscayne Bay -- the one that ended with at least one murder and the total destruction of Drake's $48,000 Cigarette boat -- but I just don't think I need it right now. . .

n.o.body needs it, in fact -- but then n.o.body really needed Oscar Zeta Acosta either. Or R ROLLING S STONE. Or Jimmy Carter or the Hindenberg. . . or even the Sloat Diamond. Or Jimmy Carter or the Hindenberg. . . or even the Sloat Diamond.

Jesus! Is there no respect in this world for the perfectly useless dead?

Apparently not. . . and Oscar was was a lawyer, however reluctant he might have been at the end to admit it. He had a lawyer's cynical view of the Truth -- which he felt was not nearly as important to other people as it was to him; and he was never more savage and dangerous than when he felt he was being lied to. He was never much interested in the a lawyer, however reluctant he might have been at the end to admit it. He had a lawyer's cynical view of the Truth -- which he felt was not nearly as important to other people as it was to him; and he was never more savage and dangerous than when he felt he was being lied to. He was never much interested in the concept concept of truth; he had no time for what he called "dumb Anglo abstracts." of truth; he had no time for what he called "dumb Anglo abstracts."

Condemn'd to drudge, the meanest of the mean and furbish falsehoods for a magazine.

-- L LORD B BYRON.

The truth, to Oscar, was a tool and even a weapon that he was convinced he could not do without -- if only because anybody who had more of it than he did would sooner or later try to beat on him with it. Truth was Power -- as tangible to Oscar as a fistful of $100 bills or an ounce of pure LSD-25. His formula for survival in a world full of rich Gabaucho fascists was a kind of circle that began at the top with the idea that truth would bring him power, which would buy freedom -- to crank his head full of acid so he could properly walk with the King, which would naturally put him even closer to more and finer truths. . . indeed, the full circle.

Oscar believed it, and that was what finally croaked him.

I tried to warn the greedy b.a.s.t.a.r.d, but he was too paranoid to pay any attention. . . Because he was actually a stupid, vicious quack with no morals at all and the soul of a hammerhead shark.

We are better off without him. Sooner or later he would have had to be put to sleep anyway. . . So the world is a better place, now that he's at least out of sight, if not certifiably dead.

He will not be missed -- except perhaps in Fat City, where every light in the town went dim when we heard that he'd finally cashed his check.

One owes respect to the living: To the Dead one owes only the truth.

-- VOLTAIRE.

Rolling Stone, #254, December 15, 1977 December 15, 1977 The Hoodlum Circus and the Statutory Rape of Ba.s.s Lake Man, when you were fifteen or sixteen years old did you ever think you'd end up as a h.e.l.l's Angel? How did I get screwed up with you guys anyway?. . . Christ, I got out of the Army and came back to Richmond, started ridin a bike around, wearin my chinos and clean sports shirts, even a crash helmet. . . And then 1 met you guys. I started gettin grubbier and grubbier, dirtier and dirtier, I couldn't believe it. . . Then I lost my job, started spendin all my time either goin on a run or gettin ready for one -- Christ, 1 still can't believe it.

-- Fat D., a Richmond h.e.l.l's Angel Whaddayou mean by that word "right"? The only thing we're concerned about is what's right for us. We got our own definition of "right."

-- A h.e.l.l's Angel sunk in philosophy According to Frenchy, the run would take off at eight A.M. from the El Adobe, a tavern on East Fourteenth Street in Oakland. (Until the autumn of 1965 the El Abode was the unofficial headquarters of the Oakland chapter and a focal point for all h.e.l.l's Angels acitivity in northern California -- but in October it was demolished to make way for a parking lot, and the Angels moved back to the Sinners Club.) Early weather forecasts said the whole state would be blazing hot that day, but dawn in San Francisco was typically foggy. I overslept, and in the rush to get moving I forgot my camera. There was no time for breakfast but I ate a peanut-b.u.t.ter sandwich while loading the car. . . sleeping bag and beer cooler in back, tape recorder in front, and under the driver's seat an unloaded Luger. I kept the clip in my pocket, thinking it might be useful if things got out of hand. Press cards are nice things to have, but in riot situations a pistol is the best kind of safe-conduct pa.s.s.

By the time I left my apartment it was almost eight, and somewhere on the fog-shrouded Bay Bridge between San Francisco and Oakland, I heard the first radio bulletin: The Sierra community of Ba.s.s Lake is bracing this morning for a reported invasion of the notorious h.e.l.l's Angels motorcycle gang. Heavily armed police and sheriff's deputies are stationed on all roads leading to Ba.s.s Lake. Madera County sheriff, Marlin Young, reports helicopters and other emergency forces standing by. Neighboring law enforcement agencies, including the Kern County sheriff's Canine Patrol, have been alerted and are ready to move. Recent reports say the h.e.l.l's Angels are ma.s.sing in Oakland and San Bernardino. Stay tuned for further details.

Among those who made a point of staying tuned that morning were several thousand unarmed taxpayers en route to spend the holiday in the vicinity of Ba.s.s Lake and Yosemite. They had just got under way, most of them still irritable and sleepy from last-minute packing and hurrying the children through breakfast. . . when their car radios crackled a warning that they were headed right into the vortex of what might soon be a combat zone. They had read about Laconia and other h.e.l.l's Angels outbursts, but in print the menace had always seemed distant -- terrifying, to be sure, and real in its way, but with none of that sour-stomach fright that comes with the realization that this time it's you. you. Tomorrow's newspapers won't be talking about people being beaten and terrorized three thousand miles away, but right exactly where you and your family are planning to spend the weekend. Tomorrow's newspapers won't be talking about people being beaten and terrorized three thousand miles away, but right exactly where you and your family are planning to spend the weekend.

The bridge was crowded with vacationers getting an early start. I was running late by twenty or thirty minutes, and when I got to the toll plaza at the Oakland end of the bridge I asked the gatekeeper if any h.e.l.l's Angels had pa.s.sed through before me. "The dirty sonsab.i.t.c.hes are right over there," he said with a wave of his hand. I didn't know what he was talking about until some two hundred yards past the gate, when I suddenly pa.s.sed a large cl.u.s.ter of people and motorcycles grouped around a gray pickup truck with a swastika painted on the side. They seemed to materialize out of the fog, and the sight was having a bad effect on traffic. There are seventeen eastbound toll gates on the bridge, and traffic coming out of them is funneled into only three exits, with everyone scrambling for position in a short, high-speed run between the toll plaza and the traffic dividers about a half mile away. This stretch is hazardous on a clear afternoon, but in the fog of a holiday morning and with a Dread Spectacle suddenly looming beside the road the scramble was worse than usual. Horns sounded all around me as cars swerved and slowed down; heads snapped to the right; it was the same kind of traffic disruption that occurs near a serious accident, and many a driver went off on the wrong ramp that morning after staring too long at the monster rally that -- if he'd been listening to his radio -- he'd been warned about just moments before. And now here it was, in the stinking, tattooed flesh. . . the Menace.

I was close enough to recognize the Gypsy Jokers, about twenty of them, milling around the truck while they waited for late-running stragglers. They were paying no attention to the traffic but their appearance alone was enough to give anyone pause. Except for the colors, they looked exactly like any band of h.e.l.l's Angels: long hair, beards, black sleeveless vests. . . and the inevitable low-slung motorcycles, many with sleeping bags lashed to the handlebars and girls sitting lazily on the little pillion seats.

The outlaws are very comfortable with their inaccessibility. It saves them a lot of trouble with bill collectors, revenge seekers and routine police hara.s.sment. They are as insulated from society as they want to be, but they have no trouble locating each other. When Sonny flies down to Los Angeles, Otto meets him at the airport. When Terry goes to Fresno, he quickly locates the chapter president, Ray -- who exists in some kind of mysterious limbo and can only be found by means of a secret phone number, which changes constantly. The Oakland Angels find it convenient to use Barger*s number, checking now and then for messages. Some use various saloons where they are well known. An Angel who wants to be reached will make an appointment either to meet somewhere or to be at a certain phone at a designated time.

One night I tried to arrange a contact with a young Angel named Rodger, a one-time disc jockey. It proved to be impossible. He had no idea where he might be from one day to the next. "They don't call me Rodger the Lodger for nothing," he said. "I just make it wherever I can. It's all the same. Once you start worrying about it, you get hung up -- and that's the end, man, you're finished." If he'd been killed that night he'd have left no footprints in life, no evidence and no personal effects but his bike -- which the others would have raffled off immediately. h.e.l.l's Angels don't find it necessary to leave wills, and their deaths don't require much paperwork. . . A driver's license expires, a police record goes into the dead file, a motorcycle changes hands and usually a few "personal cards" will be taken out of wallets and dropped into wastebaskets.

Because of their gypsy style of life, their network has to be functional. A lost message can lead to serious trouble. An Angel who might have fled will be arrested; a freshly stolen bike will never reach the buyer; a pound of marijuana might miss a crucial connection; or at the very least, a whole chapter will never get word of a run or a big party.

The destination of a run is kept secret as long as possible -- hopefully, to keep the cops guessing. The chapter presidents will figure it out by long-distance telephone, then each will tell his people the night before the run, either at a meeting or by putting the word with a handful of bartenders, waitresses and plugged-in chicks who are known contacts. The system is highly efficient, but it has never been leakproof, and by 1966 the Angels had decided that the only hope was to keep the destination a secret until the run was actually under way. Barger tried it once, but the police were able to track the outlaws by radioing ahead from one point to another. Radio tracking is only a device to give the cops an edge, a sense of confidence and control. Which it does, as long as no lapses occur. . . but it is safe to predict that on one of these crowded holidays a convoy of Angels is going to disappear like a blip shooting off the edge of a radar screen. All it will take is one of those rare gigs the outlaws are forever seeking: a ranch or big farm with a friendly owner, a piece of rural turf beyond the reach of the fuzz, where they can all get drunk and naked and fall on each other like goats in the rut, until they all pa.s.s out from exhaustion.

It would be worth buying a police radio, just to hear the panic: "Group of eighty just pa.s.sed through Sacramento, going north on U.S. Fifty, no violence, thought to be headed for Lake Tahoe area. . ." Fifty miles north, in Placerville, the police chief gives his men a pep talk and deploys them with shotguns on both sides of the highway, south of the city limits. Two hours later they are still waiting and the dispatcher in Sacramento relays an impatient demand for a report on Placerville's handling of the crisis. The chief nervously reports no contact and asks if his restless troops can go home and enjoy the holiday. Fifty miles north, in Placerville, the police chief gives his men a pep talk and deploys them with shotguns on both sides of the highway, south of the city limits. Two hours later they are still waiting and the dispatcher in Sacramento relays an impatient demand for a report on Placerville's handling of the crisis. The chief nervously reports no contact and asks if his restless troops can go home and enjoy the holiday.

The dispatcher, sitting in the radio room at Highway Patrol headquarters in Sacramento, says to sit tight while he checks around. . . and moments later his voice squawks out of the speaker: "Schwein! You lie! Vere are dey?"

"Don't call me no swine," says the Placerville chief. "They never got here."

The dispatcher checks all over northern California, with no result. Police cars scream up and down the highways, checking every bar. Nothing. Eighty of the state's most vicious hoodlums are roaming around drunk somewhere between Sacramento and Reno, hungry for rape and pillage. It will be another embarra.s.sment for California law enforcement. . . to simply lose the b.u.g.g.e.rs, a whole convoy, right out on a main highway. . . to simply lose the b.u.g.g.e.rs, a whole convoy, right out on a main highway. . . heads will surely roll. heads will surely roll.

By now, the outlaws are far up a private road, having left the highway at a sign saying: OWL FARM, NO VISITORS. They are beyond the reach of the law unless the owner complains. Meanwhile, another group of fifty disappears in the same vicinity. Police search parties stalk the highway, checking for traces of spittle, grime and blood. The dispatcher still rages over his mike; the duty officer's voice cracks as he answers urgent queries from radio newsmen in San Francisco and Los Angeles: "I'm sorry, that's all I can say. They seem to have. . . ah. . . our information is that they. . . they disappeared, yes, they're gone."

The only reason it hasn't happened is that the h.e.l.l's Angels have no access to private property in the boondocks. One or two claim to have relatives with farms, but there are no stories of the others being invited out for a picnic. The Angels don't have much contact with people who own land. They are city boys, economically and emotionally as well as physically. For at least one generation and sometimes two they come from people who never owned anything at all, not even a car.

The h.e.l.l's Angels are very definitely a lower-cla.s.s phenomenon, but their backgrounds are not necessarily poverty-stricken. Despite some grim moments, their parents seem to have had credit. Most of the outlaws are the sons of people who came to California either just before or during World War II. Many have lost contact with their families, and I have never met an Angel who claimed to have a home town in any sense that people who use that term might understand it. Terry the Tramp, for instance, is "from" Detroit, Norfolk, Long Island, Los Angeles, Fresno and Sacramento. As a child, he lived all over the country, not in poverty but in total mobility. Like most of the others, he has no roots. He relates entirely to the present, the moment, the action.

His longest bout with stability was a three-year hitch in the Coast Guard after finishing high school. Since then he has worked half-heartedly as a tree-trimmer, mechanic, bit actor, laborer and hustler of various commodities. He tried college for a few months but quit to get married. After two years, two children and numerous quarrels, the marriage ended in divorce. He had another child, by his second wife, but that union didn't last either. Now, after two hugely publicized rape arrests, he refers to himself as an "eligible bachelor."

Despite his spectacular rap sheet, he estimates his total jail time at about six months -- ninety days for trespa.s.sing and the rest for traffic offenses. Terry is one of the most arrest-p.r.o.ne of all the Angels; cops are offended by the very sight of him, In one stretch, covering 1964 and '65, he paid roughly $2,500 to bail bondsmen, lawyers and traffic courts. Like most of the other Angels he blames "the cops" for making him a full-time outlaw.

At least half the h.e.l.l's Angels are war babies, but that is a very broad term. There are also war babies in the Peace Corps, in corporate training programs, and fighting in Vietnam. World War II had a lot to do with the h.e.l.l's Angels' origins, but you have to stretch the war theory pretty thin to cover both Dirty Ed, in his early forties, and Clean Cut from Oakland, who is twenty years younger. Dirty Ed is old enough to be Clean Cut's father -- which is not likely, though he's planted more seeds than he cares to remember.

It is easy enough to trace the h.e.l.l's Angels' mystique -- and even their name and their emblems -- back to World War II and Hollywood. But their genes and real history go back a lot further. World War II was not the original California boom, but a rebirth of a thing that began in the thirties and was already tapering off when the war economy made California a new Valhalla. In 1937 Woody Guthrie wrote a song called "Do-Re-Mi." The chorus goes like this: California is a garden of Eden A Paradise for you and for me, But believe it or not, You won't think it's so hot, If you ain't got the Do-Re-Mi.

The song expressed the frustrated sentiments of more than a million Okies, Arkies and hillbillies who made a long trek to the Golden State and found it was just another hard dollar. By the time these gentlemen arrived, the Westward Movement was already beginning to solidify. The "California way of life" was the same old game to musical chairs -- but it took a while for this news to filter back East, and meanwhile the Gold Rush continued. Once here, the newcomers hung on for a few years, breeding prolifically -- until the war started. Then they either joined up or had their pick of jobs on a booming labor market. Either way, they were Californians when the war ended. The old way of life was scattered back along Route 66, and their children grew up in a new world. The Linkhorns had finally found a home.

Nelson Algren wrote about them in A Walk on the Wild Side, A Walk on the Wild Side, but that story was told before they crossed the Rockies. Dove Linkhorn, son of crazy Fitz, went to hustle for his fortune in New Orleans. Ten years later he would have gone to Los Angeles. but that story was told before they crossed the Rockies. Dove Linkhorn, son of crazy Fitz, went to hustle for his fortune in New Orleans. Ten years later he would have gone to Los Angeles.

Algren's book opens with one of the best historical descriptions of American white trash ever written.* He traces the Linkhorn ancestry back to the first wave of bonded servants to arrive on these sh.o.r.es. These were the dregs of society from all over the British Isles -- misfits, criminals, debtors, social bankrupts of every type and description -- all of them willing to sign oppressive work contracts with future employers in exchange for ocean pa.s.sage to the New World. Once here, they endured a form of slavery for a year or two -- during which they were fed and sheltered by the boss -- and when their time of bondage ended, they were turned loose to make their own way.

*A story called "Barn Burning," by William Faulkner, is another white-trash cla.s.sic. It provides the dimensions of humanity that Algren's description lacks.

In theory and in the context of history the setup was mutually advantageous. Any man desperate enough to sell himself into bondage in the first place had pretty well shot his wad in the old country, so a chance for a foothold on a new continent was not to be taken lightly. After a period of hard labor and wretchedness he would then be free to seize whatever he might in a land of seemingly infinite natural wealth. Thousands of bonded servants came over, but by the time they earned their freedom the coastal strip was already settled. The unclaimed land was west, across the Alleghenies. So they drifted into the new states -- Kentucky and Tennessee; their sons drifted on to Missouri, Arkansas and Oklahoma.

Drifting became a habit; with dead roots in the Old World and none in the New, the Linkhorns were not of a mind to dig in and cultivate things. Bondage too became a habit, but it was only the temporary kind. They were not pioneers, but sleazy rearguard camp followers of the original westward movement. By the time the Linkhorns arrived anywhere the land was already taken -- so they worked for a while and moved on. Their world was a violent, boozing limbo between the pits of despair and the Big Rock Candy Mountain. They kept drifting west, chasing jobs, rumors, homestead grabs or the luck of some front-running kin. They lived off the surface of the land, like armyworms, stripping it of whatever they could before moving on. It was a day-to-day existence, and there was always more land to the west Some stayed behind and their lineal descendants are still there -- in the Carolinas, Kentucky, West Virginia and Tennessee. There were dropouts along the way: hillbillies, Okies, Arkies -- they're all the same people. Texas is a living monument to the breed. So is southern California. Algren called them "fierce craving boys" with "a feeling of having been cheated." Freebooters, armed and drunk -- a legion of gamblers, brawlers and wh.o.r.ehoppers. Blowing into town in a junk Model-A with bald tires, no m.u.f.fler and one headlight. . . looking for quick work, with no questions asked and preferably no tax deductions. Just get the cash, fill up at the cut-rate gas station and hit the road, with a pint on the seat and Eddy Arnold on the radio moaning good back-country tunes about home sweet home, that Bluegra.s.s sweetheart still waitin, and roses on Mama's grave.

Algren left the Linkhorns in Texas, but anyone who drives the Western highways knows they didn't stay there either. They kept moving until one day in the late 1930s they stood on the spine of a scrub-oak California hill and looked down on the Pacific Ocean -- the end of the road. Things were tough for a while, but no tougher than they were in a hundred other places. And then came the war -- fat city, big money even for Linkhorns.

When the war ended, California was full of veterans looking for ways to spend their separation bonuses. Many decided to stay on the Coast, and while their new radios played hillbilly music they went out and bought big motorcycles -- not knowing exactly why, but in the booming, rootless atmosphere of those times, it seemed like the thing to do. They were not all Linkhorns, but the forced democracy of four war years had erased so many old distinctions that even Linkhorns were confused. Their pattern of intermarriage was shattered, their children mixed freely and without violence. By 1950 many Linkhorns were partic.i.p.ating in the money economy; they owned decent cars, and even houses.

Others, however, broke down under the strain of respectability and answered the call of the genes. There is a story about a Linkhorn who became a wealthy car dealer in Los Angeles. He married a beautiful Spanish actress and bought a mansion in Beverly Hills. But after a decade of opulence he suffered from soaking sweats and was unable to sleep at night. He began to sneak out of the house through the servants' entrance and run a few blocks to a gas station where he kept a hopped-up '37 Ford with no fenders. . . and spend the rest of the night hanging around honky-tonk bars and truck stops, dressed in dirty overalls and a crusty green T-shirt with a Bardahl emblem on the back. He enjoyed cadging beers and belting wh.o.r.es around when they spurned his crude propositions. One night, after long haggling, he bought several mason jars full of home whiskey, which he drank while driving at high speed through the Beverly Hills area. When the old Ford finally threw a rod he abandoned it and called a taxi, which took him to his own automobile agency. He kicked down a side door, hot-wiped a convertible waiting for tune-up and drove out to Highway 101, where he got in a drag race with some hoodlums from Pasadena. He lost, and it so enraged him that he followed the other car until it stopped for a traffic light -- where he rammed it from the rear at seventy miles an hour.

The publicity ruined him, but influential friends kept him out of jail by paying a psychiatrist to call him insane. He spent a year in a rest home; and now, according to the stories, he has a motorcycle dealership near San Diego. People who know him say he's happy -- although his driver's license has been revoked for numerous violations, his business is verging on bankruptcy, and his new wife, a jaded ex-beauty queen from West Virginia, is a half-mad alcoholic.

It would not be fair to say that all motorcycle outlaws carry Linkhorn genes, but n.o.body who has ever spent time among the inbred Anglo-Saxon tribes of Appalachia would need more than a few hours with the h.e.l.l's Angels to work up a very strong sense of d deja vu. vu. There is the same sulking hostility toward "outsiders," the same extremes of temper and action, and even the same names, sharp faces and long-boned bodies that never look quite natural unless they are leaning on something. There is the same sulking hostility toward "outsiders," the same extremes of temper and action, and even the same names, sharp faces and long-boned bodies that never look quite natural unless they are leaning on something.

Most of the Angels are obvious Anglo-Saxons, but the Linkhorn att.i.tude is contagious. The few outlaws with Mexican or Italian names not only act like the others but somehow look like them. Even Chinese Mel from Frisco and Charley, a young Negro from Oakland, have the Linkhorn gait and mannerisms.

Ashes to Ashes & Dust to Dust: The Funeral of Mother Miles He who makes a beast of himself gets rid of the pain of being a man.

-- Dr. Johnson The neighborhood suddenly exploded with excited, morbid crowds. Hysterical women surged forward in a frenzy, screeching in almost s.e.xual ecstasy, scratching and fighting the agents and police in their attempt to reach the body. One fat-breasted woman with stringy red hair broke through the cordon and dipped her handkerchief in the blood, clutched it to her sweaty dress and waddled off down the street. . .

-- From an account of the death of John Dillinger Toward Christmas the action slowed down and the Angels dropped out of the headlines. Tiny lost his job, Sonny got involved in a long jury trial on the attempted-murder charge, and the El Adobe was demolished by the wrecker's ball. The Angels drifted from one bar to another, but they found it harder to establish a hangout than to maintain one. In San Francisco it was just as slow. Frenchy spent three months in General Hospital when a can of gasoline blew up on him, and Puff went to jail after a fracas with two cops who raided an Angel birthday party. Winter is always slow for the outlaws. Many have to go to work to stay eligible for next summer's unemployment insurance, it is too cold for big outdoor parties, and the constant rain makes riding an uncomfortable hazard.

It seemed like a good time to get some work done, so I dropped off the circuit. Terry came by now and then to keep me posted. One day he showed up with a broken arm, saying he'd wrecked his bike, his old lady had left him and the n.i.g.g.e.rs had blown up his house. I'd heard about the house from Barger's wife, Elsie, who was handling the communications post at their home in Oakland. During one of the sporadic flare-ups between the h.e.l.l's Angels and the Oakland Negroes somebody had thrown a homemade bomb through the window of the house that Terry was renting in East Oakland. The fire destroyed the house and all of Marilyn's paintings. She was a pretty girl about nineteen, with long blond hair and a respectable family in one of the valley towns. She'd been living with Terry for nearly six months, covering the walls with her artwork, but she had no stomach for bombs. The divorce was effected soon after they moved to another dwelling. "I came back one night and she was gone," said Terry. "All she left was a note: 'Dear Terry, f.u.c.k it.'" And that was that.

Nothing else happened until January, when Mother Miles got snuffed. He was riding his bike through Berkeley when a truck came out of a side street and hit him head on, breaking both legs and fracturing his skull. He hung in a coma for six days, then died on a Sunday morning, less than twenty-four hours before his thirtieth birthday -- leaving a wife, two children and his righteous girl friend, Ann.

Miles had been president of the Sacramento chapter. His influence was so great that in 1965 he moved the whole club down to Oakland, claiming the police had made life intolerable for them by constant hara.s.sment. The outlaws simply picked up and moved, not questioning Miles' wisdom. His real name was James, but the Angels called him Mother.

"I guess it was because he was kind of motherly," said Gut. "Miles was great, great people. He took care of everybody. He worried. You could always depend on him."

I knew Miles in a distant kind of way. He didn't trust writers, but there was nothing mean about him, and once he decided I wasn't going to get him locked up somehow, he was friendly. He had the build of a pot-bellied stevedore, with a round face and a wide, flaring beard. I never thought of him as a hoodlum. He had the usual h.e.l.l's Angel police record: drunk, disorderly, fighting, vagrancy, loitering, petty larceny and a handful of ominous "suspicion of" charges that had never gone to trial. But he wasn't plagued by the same demons that motivate some of the others. He wasn't happy with the world, but he didn't brood about it, and his appet.i.te for revenge didn't extend beyond the specific wrongs done to the Angels or to him personally. You could drink with Miles without wondering when he was going to swing on somebody or lift your money off the bar. He wasn't that way. Booze seemed to make him more genial. Like most of the Angels' leaders, he had a quick mind and a quality of self-control which the others relied on.

When I heard he'd been killed I called Sonny to ask about the funeral, but by the time I finally got hold of him the details were already on the radio and in the newspapers. Miles' mother was arranging for the funeral in Sacramento. The outlaw caravan would form at Barger's house at eleven on Thursday morning. The Angels have gone to plenty of funerals for their own people, but until this one they had never tried to run the procession for ninety miles along a major highway. There was also a chance that the Sacramento police would try to keep them out of town.

The word went out on Monday and Tuesday by telephone. This was not going to be any Jay Gatsby funeral; the Angels wanted a full-dress rally. Miles' status was not the point; the death of any Angel requires a show of strength by the others. It is a form of affirmation -- not for the dead, but the living. There are no set penalties for not showing up, because none are necessary. In the cheap loneliness that is the overriding fact of every outlaw's life, a funeral is a bleak reminder that the tribe is smaller by one. The circle is one link shorter, the enemy jacks up the odds just a little bit more, and defenders of the faith need something to take off the chill. A funeral is a time for counting the loyal, for seeing how many are left. There is no question about skipping work, going without sleep or riding for hours in a cold wind to be there on time.

Early Thursday morning the bikes began arriving in Oakland. Most of the outlaws were already in the Bay Area, or at least within fifty or sixty miles, but a handful of Satan's Slaves rode all of Wednesday night, five hundred miles from Los Angeles, to join the main caravan. Others came from Fresno and San Jose and Santa Rosa. There were Hangmen, Misfits, Presidents, Nightriders, Grossmen and some with no colors at all. A hard-faced little man whom n.o.body spoke to wore an olive-drab bombardier's jacket with just the word "Loner" on the back, written in small, blue-inked letters that looked like a signature.

I was crossing the Bay Bridge when a dozen Gypsy Jokers came roaring past, ignoring the speed limit as they split up to go around me on both sides of the car. Seconds later they disappeared up ahead in the fog. The morning was cold and bridge traffic was slow except for motorcycles. Down in the Bay there were freighters lined up, waiting for open piers.

The procession rolled at exactly eleven -- a hundred and fifty bikes and about twenty cars. A few miles north of Oakland, at the Carquinez Bridge, the outlaws picked up a police escort a.s.signed to keep them under control. A Highway Patrol car led the caravan all the way to Sacramento. The lead Angels rode two abreast in the right lane, holding a steady sixty-five miles an hour. At the head, with Barger, was the scruffy Praetorian Guard: Magoo, Tommy, Jimmy, Skip, Tiny, Zorro, Terry and Charger Charley the Child Molester. The spectacle disrupted traffic all along the way. It looked like something from another world. Here was the "sc.u.m of the earth," the "lowest form of animals," an army of unwashed gang rapists. . . being escorted toward the state capital by a Highway Patrol car with a flashing yellow light. The steady pace of the procession made it unnaturally solemn. Not even Senator Murphy could have mistaken it for a dangerous run. There were the same bearded faces; the same earrings, emblems, swastikas and grinning death's-heads flapping in the wind -- but this time there were no party clothes, no hamming it up for the squares. They were still playing the role, but all the humor was missing. The only trouble en route came when the procession was halted after a filling-station owner complained that somebody had stolen fourteen quarts of oil at the last gas stop. Barger quickly took up a collection to pay the man off, muttering that whoever stole the oil was due for a chain-whipping later on. The Angles a.s.sured each other that it must have been a punk in one of the cars at the rear of the caravan, some s.h.i.thead without any cla.s.s.

In Sacramento there was no sign of hara.s.sment. Hundreds of curious spectators lined the route between the funeral home and the cemetery. Inside the chapel a handful of Jim Miles' childhood friends and relatives waited with his body, a hired minister and three nervous attendants. They knew what was coming -- Mother Miles' "people," hundreds of thugs, wild brawlers and bizarre-looking girls in tight Levis, scarves and waist-length platinum-colored wigs. Miles' mother, a heavy middle-aged woman in a black suit, wept quietly in a front pew, facing the open casket.

At one-thirty the outlaw caravan arrived. The slow rumble of motorcycle engines rattled gla.s.s in the mortuary windows. Police tried to keep traffic moving as TV cameras followed Barger and perhaps a hundred others toward the door of the chapel. Many outlaws waited outside during the service. They stood in quiet groups, leaning against the bikes and killing time with lazy conversation. There was hardly any talk about Miles. In one group a pint of whiskey made the rounds. Some of the outlaws talked to bystanders, trying to explain what was happening. "Yeah, the guy was one of our leaders," said an Angel to an elderly man in a baseball cap. "He was good people. Some punk ran a stop sign and snuffed him. We came to bury him with the colors."

Inside the pine-paneled chapel the minister was telling his weird congregation that "the wages of sin is death." He looked like a Norman Rockwell druggist and was obviously repelled by the whole scene. Not all the pews were full, but standing room in the rear was crowded all the way back to the door. The minister talked about "sin" and "justification," pausing now and then as if he expected a reb.u.t.tal from the crowd. "It's not my business to pa.s.s judgment on anybody," he continued. "Nor is it my business to eulogize anybody. But it is my business to speak out a warning that it will happen to you! it will happen to you! I don't know what philosophy some of you have about death, but I know the Scriptures tell us that G.o.d takes no pleasure in the death of the wicked. . . Jesus didn't die for an animal, he died for a man. . . What I say about Jim won't change anything, but I can preach the gospel to you and I have a responsibility to warn you that you will all have to I don't know what philosophy some of you have about death, but I know the Scriptures tell us that G.o.d takes no pleasure in the death of the wicked. . . Jesus didn't die for an animal, he died for a man. . . What I say about Jim won't change anything, but I can preach the gospel to you and I have a responsibility to warn you that you will all have to answer to G.o.d!" answer to G.o.d!"

The crowd was shifting and sweating. The chapel was so hot that it seemed like the Devil himself was waiting in one of the anterooms, ready to claim the wicked just as soon as the sermon was over.

"How many of you --" asked the minister, "how many of you asked yourselves on the way up here. 'Who is next?' " 'Who is next?' "

At this point several Angels in the pews rose and walked out, cursing quietly at a way of life they had long ago left behind. The minister ignored these mutinous signs and launched into a story about a Philippian jailer.

"Holy s.h.i.t!" mumbled Tiny. He'd been standing quietly in the rear for about thirty minutes, pouring sweat and eying the minister as if he meant to hunt him down later in the day and extract all his teeth. Tiny's departure caused five or six others to leave. The minister sensed he was losing his audience, so he brought the Philippian story to a quick end.

There was no music as the crowd filed out. I pa.s.sed by the casket and was shocked to see Mother Miles clean-shaven, lying peacefully on his back in a blue suit, white shirt and a wide maroon tie. His h.e.l.l's Angels jacket, covered with exotic emblems, was mounted on a stand at the foot of the casket. Behind it were thirteen wreaths, some bearing names of other outlaw clubs.

I barely recognized Miles. He looked younger than twenty-nine and very ordinary. But his face was calm, as though he were not at all surprised to find himself there in a box. He wouldn't have liked the clothes he was wearing, but since the Angels weren't paying for the funeral, the best they could do was make sure the colors went into the casket before it was sealed. Barger stayed behind with the pallbearers to make sure the thing was done right After the funeral more than two hundred motorcycles followed the hea.r.s.e to the cemetery. Behind the Angels rode all the other clubs, including a half dozen East Bay Dragons -- and, according to a radio commentator, "dozens of teen-age riders who looked so solemn that you'd think Robin Hood had just died."

The h.e.l.l's Angels knew better. Not all of them had read about Robin Hood, but they understood that the parallel was complimentary. Perhaps the younger outlaws believed it, but there is room in their margin for one or two friendly illusions. Those who are almost thirty, or more than that, have been living too long with their own scurvy image to think of themselves as heroes. They understand that heroes are always "good guys," and they have seen enough cowboy movies to know that good guys win in the end. The myth didn't seem to include Miles, who was "one of the best." But all he got in the end was two broken legs, a smashed head and a tongue-lashing from the preacher. Only his h.e.l.l's Angels ident.i.ty kept him from going to the grave as anonymously as any ribbon clerk. As it was, his funeral got nationwide press coverage: Life Life had a picture of the procession entering the cemetery, TV newscasts gave the funeral a solemn priority, and the had a picture of the procession entering the cemetery, TV newscasts gave the funeral a solemn priority, and the Chronicle Chronicle headline said: headline said: h.e.l.l'S ANGELS BURY THEIR OWN-- BLACK JACKETS AND AN ODD DIGNITY h.e.l.l'S ANGELS BURY THEIR OWN-- BLACK JACKETS AND AN ODD DIGNITY. Mother Miles would have been pleased.

Moments after the burial the caravan was escorted out of town by a phalanx of police cars, with sirens howling. The brief truce was ended. At the city limits the Angels screwed it on and roared back to Richmond, across the Bay from San Francisco, where they held an all-night wake that kept police on edge until long after dawn. On Sunday night there was a meeting in Oakland to confirm Miles' successor, Big Al. It was a quiet affair, but without the grimness of the funeral.

The banshee's wail that had seemed so loud on Thursday was already fading away. After the meeting there was a beer party at the Sinners Club, and by the time the place closed they had already set the date for the next run. The Angels would gather in Bakersfield, on the first day of Spring.

All my life my heart has sought a thing I cannot name.

-- Remembered line from a long-forgotten poem Months later, when I rarely saw the Angels, I still had the legacy of the big machine -- four hundred pounds of chrome and deep red noise to take out on the Coast Highway and cut loose at three in the morning, when all the cops were lurking over on 101. My first crash had wrecked the bike completely and it took several months to have it rebuilt. After that I decided to ride it differently: I would stop pushing my luck on curves, always wear a helmet and try to keep within range of the nearest speed limit. . . my insurance had already been canceled and my driver's license was hanging by a thread.

So it was always at night, like a werewolf, that I would take the thing out for an honest run down the coast. I would start in Golden Gate Park, thinking only to run a few long curves to clear my head. . . but in a matter of minutes I'd be out at the beach with the sound of the engine in my ears, the surf booming up on the sea wall and a fine empty road stretching all the way down to Santa Cruz. . . not even a gas station in the whole seventy miles; the only public light along the way is an all-night diner down around Rockaway Beach.

There was no helmet on those nights, no speed limit, and no cooling it down on the curves. The momentary freedom of the park was like the one unlucky drink that shoves a wavering alcoholic off the wagon. I would come out of the park near the soccer field and pause for a moment at the stop sign, wondering if I knew anyone parked out there on the midnight humping strip.

Then into first gear, forgetting the cars and letting the beast wind out. . . thirty-five, forty-five. . . then into second and wailing through the light at Lincoln Way, not worried about green or red signals, but only some other werewolf loony-who might be pulling out, too slowly, to start his own run. Not many of these. . . and with three lanes on a wide curve, a bike coming hard has plenty of room to get around almost anything. . . then into third, the boomer gear, pushing seventy-five and the beginning of a windscream in the ears, a pressure on the eyeb.a.l.l.s like diving into water off a high board.

Bent forward, far back on the seat, and a rigid grip on the handlebars as the bike starts jumping and wavering in the wind. Taillights far up ahead coming closer, faster, and suddenly -- zaaapppp -- going past and leaning down for a curve near the zoo, where the road swings out to sea.

The dunes are flatter here, and on windy nights sand blows across the highway, piling up in thick drifts as deadly as any oil-slick. . . instant loss of control, a crashing, cartwheeling slide and maybe one of those two-inch notices in the paper the next day: "An unidentified motorcyclist was killed last night when he failed to negotiate a turn on Highway I."

Indeed. . . but no sand this time, so the lever goes up into fourth, and now there's no sound except wind. Screw it all the way over, reach through the handlebars to raise the headlight beam, the needle leans down on a hundred, and wind-burned eyeb.a.l.l.s strain to see down the centerline, trying to provide a margin for the reflexes.

But with the throttle screwed on there is only the barest margin, and no room at all for mistakes. It has to be done right. . . and that's when the strange music starts, when you stretch your luck so far that fear becomes exhilaration and vibrates along your arms. You can barely see at a hundred; the tears blow back so fast that they vaporize before they get to your ears. The only sounds are wind and a dull roar floating back from the m.u.f.flers. You watch the white line and try to lean with it. . . howling through a turn to the right, then to the left and down the long hill to Pacifica. . . letting off now, watching for cops, but only until the next dark stretch and another few seconds on the edge. . . The Edge. . . There is no honest way to explain it because the only people who really know where it is are the ones who have gone over. The others -- the living -- are those who pushed their control as far as they felt they could handle it, and then pulled back, or slowed down, or did whatever they had to when it came time to choose between Now and Later.

But the edge is still Out there. Or maybe it's In. The a.s.sociation of motorcycles with LSD is no accident of publicity. They are both a means to an end, to the place of definitions.

h.e.l.l's Angels: A Strange and Terrible Saga, Random House, 1966 Random House, 1966 Welcome to Las Vegas: When the Going gets Weird, the Weird Turn Pro We were somewhere around Barstow on the edge of the desert when the drugs began to take hold. I remember saying something like "I feel a bit lightheaded; maybe you should drive. . ." And suddenly there was a terrible roar all around us and the sky was full of what looked like huge bats, all swooping and screeching and diving around the car, which was going about a hundred miles an hour with the top down to Las Vegas. And a voice was screaming: "Holy Jesus! What are these G.o.dd.a.m.n animals?"

Then it was quiet again. My attorney had taken his shirt off and was pouring beer on his chest, to facilitate the tanning process. "What the h.e.l.l are you yelling about?" he muttered, staring up at the sun with his eyes closed and covered with wraparound Spanish sungla.s.ses. "Never mind," I said. "It's your turn to drive." I hit the brakes and aimed the Great Red Shark toward the shoulder of the highway. No point mentioning those bats, I thought. The poor b.a.s.t.a.r.d will see them soon enough.

It was almost noon, and we still had more than a hundred miles to go. They would be tough miles. Very soon, I knew, we would both be completely twisted. But there was no going back, and no time to rest. We would have to ride it out. Press registration for the fabulous Mint 400 was already underway, and we had to get there by four to claim our sound-proof suite. A fashionable sporting magazine in New York had taken care of the reservations, along with this huge red Chevy convertible we'd just rented off a lot on the Sunset Strip. . . and I was, after all, a professional journalist; so I had an obligation to cover the story cover the story, for good or ill.

The sporting editors had also given me $300 in cash, most of which was already spent on extremely dangerous drugs. The trunk of the car looked like a mobile police narcotics lab. We had two bags of gra.s.s, seventy-five pellets of mescaline, five sheets of high-powered blotter acid, a salt shaker half full of cocaine, and a whole galaxy of multi-colored uppers, downers, screamers, laughers. . . and also a quart of tequila, a quart of rum, a case of Budweiser, a pint of raw ether and two dozen amyls.

All this had been rounded up the night before, in a frenzy of high-speed driving all over Los Angeles County -- from Topanga to Watts, we picked up everything we could get our hands on. Not that we needed needed all that for the trip, but once you locked into a serious drug connection, the tendency is to push it as far as you can. all that for the trip, but once you locked into a serious drug connection, the tendency is to push it as far as you can.

The only thing that really worried me was the ether. There is nothing in the world more helpless and irresponsible and depraved than a man in the depths of an ether binge. And I knew we'd get into that rotten stuff pretty soon. Probably at the next gas station. We had sampled almost everything else, and now -- yes, it was time for a long snort of ether. And then do the next hundred miles in a horrible, s...o...b..ring sort of spastic stupor. The only way to keep alert on ether is to do up a lot of amyls -- not all at once, but steadily, just enough to maintain the focus at ninety miles an hour through Barstow.

"Man, this is the way to travel," said my attorney. He leaned over to turn the volume up on the radio, humming along with the rhythm section and kind of moaning the words: "One toke over the line, Sweet Jesus. . . One toke over the line. . ."

One toke? You poor fool! Wait till you see those G.o.dd.a.m.n bats. I could barely hear the radio. . . slumped over on the far side of the seat, grappling with a tape recorder turned all the way up on "Sympathy for the Devil." That was the only tape we had, so we played it constantly, over and over, as a kind of demented counterpoint to the radio. And also to maintain our rhythm on the road. A constant speed is good for gas mileage -- and for some reason that seemed important at the time. Indeed. On a trip like this one must must be careful about gas consumption. Avoid those quick bursts of acceleration that drag blood to the back of the brain. be careful about gas consumption. Avoid those quick bursts of acceleration that drag blood to the back of the brain.

My attorney saw the hitchhiker long before I did. "Let's give this boy a lift," he said, and before I could mount any argument he was stopped and this poor Okie kid was running up to the car with a big grin on his face, saying, "Hot d.a.m.n! I never rode in a convertible before!"

"Is that right?" I said. "Well, I guess you're about ready, eh?"

The kid nodded eagerly as we roared off.

"We're your friends," said my attorney. "We're not like the others."

O Christ, I thought, he's gone around the bend. "No more of that talk," I said sharply. "Or I'll put the leeches on you." He grinned, seemed to understand. Luckily, the noise in the car was so awful -- between the wind and the radio and the tape machine -- that the kid in the back seat couldn't hear a word we were saying. Or could he?

How long can we maintain? maintain? I wondered. How long before one of us starts raving and jabbering at this boy? What will he think then? This same lonely desert was the last known home of the Manson family. Will he make that grim connection when my attorney starts screaming about bats and huge manta rays coming down on the car? If so -- well, we'll just have to cut his head off and bury him somewhere. Because it goes without saying that we can't turn him loose. He'll report us at once to some kind of outback n.a.z.i law enforcement agency, and they'll run us down like dogs. I wondered. How long before one of us starts raving and jabbering at this boy? What will he think then? This same lonely desert was the last known home of the Manson family. Will he make that grim connection when my attorney starts screaming about bats and huge manta rays coming down on the car? If so -- well, we'll just have to cut his head off and bury him somewhere. Because it goes without saying that we can't turn him loose. He'll report us at once to some kind of outback n.a.z.i law enforcement agency, and they'll run us down like dogs.

Jesus! Did I say say that? Or just think it? Was I talking? Did they hear me? I glanced over at my attorney, but he seemed oblivious -- watching the road, driving our Great Red Shark along at a hundred and ten or so. There was no sound from the back seat. that? Or just think it? Was I talking? Did they hear me? I glanced over at my attorney, but he seemed oblivious -- watching the road, driving our Great Red Shark along at a hundred and ten or so. There was no sound from the back seat.

Maybe I'd better have a chat with this boy, I thought. Perhaps if I explain explain things, he'll rest easy. things, he'll rest easy.

Of course. I leaned around in the seat and gave him a fine big smile. . . admiring the shape of his skull.

"By the way," I said. "There's one thing you should probably understand."