“My father had passed and my brother was taking care of mom and my youngest brother, who was severely handicapped. My brother dealt heroin. He never wanted me to follow in his footsteps, but I did. I loved my brother. He got his heroin from the Pagans and they’d crash at the house [an old South Baltimore rowhome], usually about six at a time. I was a black belt by the time I was 18 and they wanted me to teach them. I just couldn’t. It would have been a stain on the art. I could never teach a violent criminal my teacher’s art. They understood, but only so much. When my brother passed I had to deal with a new supplier, the guy across the river who supplied the [Baltimore City Police] Lieutenant with his heroin.”

When I began writing the Sunset Saga, I needed a meathead action hero, who I named Jay Bracken. I based him on Dante, a man I have known since he was six years old, who at 8 KO’d a 300-plus pound man, and decked an entire bar full of rednecks at age 30. When writing the Saga I decided that the only really interesting aspect of Dante’s life that hadn’t happened, is that he had not been recruited as a heavy hitter for a motor cycle club, for he and his brother rode Harleys.

Then, one Saturday at my oldest son’s house, Dante informed me that he had joined a well-known motor cycle club and had been patched in immediately based on his fighting ability, assigned by the president to coach the members. Dante’s idea of coaching was full-contact sparring, which he thought would be no problem, since he was the smallest club member, with the average member towering over him and heavily built. What occurred was a comedy out of the sports show Pros versus Joes as giant, tattooed bikers lurched around Dante’s garage gym moaning, cringing, falling and folding.

After he did a round with each of the assembled giants, he finally said, “You guys need to come at me like I just raped your mothers.”

After the next round he had to say, “You guys don’t like your mothers very much.”

The president, a massively muscled brute of much repute, even refused to spar with Dante in a private session out of fear of hidden cameras that might expose him on video as a pussy.

Dante assured me that his club was a posing organization that was stocked with cops who fenced stolen goods to the other members—basically making the cops the only real active criminals in the club—and that when the non-police members were inclined to crime they would seek recruitment from a major league club like the Hell’s Angels. He assured me that not one of the 100 plus bikers in this club could fight.

One night while working at the supermarket as a part time grunt, two members of Dante’s club were drunk and shopping at 2:30 a.m., intimidating my boss and some coworkers, though Steevo just sneered at them and Big Tony laughed. I took one of my Harm City business cards and wrote on the back of it my phone number and asked them to give this to their best fighter, who I’d meet in any form of combat they preferred at their club house and I’d come alone. Of course, I was that guy’s coach, and I was certain that Dante would put his arm around me and introduce me as his coach. I calmly approached these two drunks and said something I cannot recall that was meant to be a friendly indication that I had my boss’s back if anything went down.

They took the card, read it and addressed me kindly, assuring me that they were just joking around. Dante never said anything about getting that card so I doubt he did.

It amazed Dante, in a meeting after this occurred, that, “These young rich girls want to come to our club hose and blow us. You’ve got these girls whose fathers have given them everything and they want to get in their nice car and come over to our club house, on their knees sucking our dicks.”