Chased by Mean Bikers, Former Agent Sheds His Cover to Chase Fame and Fortune
By CHARLIE LeDUFF
The New York Times
March 23, 2005
LOS ANGELES, March 19 - Billy Queen has a bounty on his head, a bounty on his kneecaps, a bounty on his mustache.
Word has worked its way from the biker underworld to the precinct houses in Los Angeles that the Mongols, the most cutthroat biker gang in America, would be happy to see him dead. Working as an undercover federal agent, Mr. Queen sent 54 of its members to prison after he infiltrated their club and remained for 28 months.
Retired now, Mr. Queen is supposed to be hiding in a witness protection program, but he popped up in Hollywood, in the heart of Mongols territory, swaggering around in a ball cap with A.T.F. spelled out in big white letters.
"Maybe I'm a little bit crazy," he supposed at an outdoor cafe and laughed in a sadistic little way, as if he were thinking of using his companion's eye for an ashtray just because it might be funny.
From the way he talks, Mr. Queen has not fully extricated his real life from his undercover persona of Billy St. John. He speaks fondly of those days, the parties, the camaraderie, the bullying of the Hell's Angels. He said that even though he was an undercover agent, he preferred to pal around with the Mongols on his days off because he was fond of them.
"I had a good time," he said. "It wasn't all bad. I wish now and then I could talk to some of them guys. I saw the club president, Doc, at court. He said: 'Billy, I know you want to be back. You liked us.'
"And you know what? Yeah, I did."
Billy Queen is a vainglorious, roosterlike man with a knack for storytelling. At 5-foot-7 and 55 years old, Mr. Queen has a personality that towers above him. He is the sort who frightens weak men, repels normal men and attracts the brutish ones. The son of an A.T.F. man who made his stripes running down bootleggers, Mr. Queen said there was a fine line between a lawman and an outlaw. "They're both gangs in their own way," he said.
Mr. Queen said he was in Los Angeles to green-light the movie script based on his story, for which he was paid a million dollars. He was hanging out in plain sight after flying his own plane from an unidentified state where he now lives. Mr. Queen is doing quite well, the Mongols might like to know.
The fantastical real-life book that he wrote is scheduled for release in April, chronicling his work as a rat. The title is "Under and Alone: The True Story of the Undercover Agent Who Infiltrated America's Most Violent Outlaw Motorcycle Gang" (Random House).
Billy Queen was an infiltrator of the Mongols' San Fernando Valley chapter from 1998 through 2000. He was so successful, was taken in so fully, that he was elected chapter treasurer.
There were times, plenty of times, he said, when he crossed the thin blue line to protect himself and his investigation. He beat people, was beaten himself. He was nearly stabbed to death, broke into houses, stole motorbikes, mishandled women, carried weapons, drove a stickup car and eventually lost his wife and children to the undercover life.
It is possible that he has pumped up details of his undercover period. The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives has said that he exaggerates, that in no way did Billy Queen ever break the law when he worked as an undercover officer.
Perhaps. But Billy Queen was the only one there. Of his superiors at the bureau, he simply said: "The boss don't know. The boss don't want to know."
In any event, for the 28 months of his life as Billy St. John, Billy Queen was given a medal and a $2,000 bonus - the same size bonus, he said, as the agent who put together the office Christmas party.
The gang then had about 350 full-fledged patch-wearing members, a small fraction of the nationwide membership of the rival Hell's Angels. Born of the ruthless mentality of the Latino gangs of East Los Angeles, the Mongols pushed the Angels out of the city.
The gangs' long-simmering war occasionally makes its way to the mainstream consciousness, as it did in the shooting-and-knifing brawl that left three bikers dead and dozens injured three years ago at a casino in Laughlin, Nev.
Mr. Queen talked about the close calls, when a group of Mongols took him out to an orange grove for shooting practice. It was there, miles from anywhere, that a hard man named Red Dog asked him how long he had attended the police academy.
"I thought it was over right there and then," Mr. Queen said, laughing again. "I thought they made me. I thought I was never going to see my kids again."
Red Dog told him to turn and walk a spell and set up some cans for target practice. Billy Queen was sure they were going to use his skull for target practice. In the end, it was all a bluff, an initiation stunt.
Mr. Queen holds deep affection for certain men in the gang. The psychoanalytic term is internalization; the pop-psychology term may well be the Donnie Brasco syndrome, reflecting the experience of another agent, who infiltrated the Bonanno crime family.
He talked about one man in particular, Rudy Martinez, known as Rocky, whom he sent away on a narcotics conviction. He absent-mindedly called Rocky a friend and flinched when he was reminded that he had sent Rocky to prison.
Rocky, said Mr. Queen, was an everyman, snared in the electricity of bad circumstances, a person drowning as he tried to deal with his children, a mortgage and responsibility. Rocky, Mr. Queen said, succumbed to the animal within and gave his life over fully to the Mongols.
"I feel bad about Rocky," he said. "I watched his pursuit of nothingness. I wanted to tell him."
The women sitting next to him at the outdoor cafe overheard his recollections, appearing both appalled and attracted. He either barely noticed as one woman leaned in close, or completely noticed her, willing to provide a little show.
"So me, I'm going to live my life not being afraid of the shadows," he said with extra emphasis. "I mean what can they do? Kill a cop? That would be the end of them, and they know it."
He laughed that queer laugh again.
Copyright 2005 The New York Times Company |
