Inside SEAL Team Six(15)

“Don’t do that,” she warned. “The police are looking for you and your friends.”

“I’ll be okay.”

“No,” the girl said. “Let us give you a ride.”

I climbed in the backseat. As the car approached the entrance, police officers emerged from the bar. I ducked down, waited for them to drive off, then I got out of the car.

The two bouncers standing in front recognized me immediately and put their hands on my shoulders.

One of them said, “Get out of here, right away. But thanks so much for what you did.”

The second bouncer put in, “That big asshole is like public enemy number one around here. He’s been terrorizing this town for years. They put him in an ambulance.”

“Really?”

That’s when it hit me: I might have killed him. But I remember thinking that if I did, I didn’t feel bad.

He was a scumbag, a menace to society who got what was coming to him.

That incident was just one more example of how the scene around me was turning darker and more violent. The drugs that kids were taking got stronger. Guys I knew were starting to get hooked on heroin and cocaine. Girls I dated were turning to prostitution to pay for their drugs.

A quiet Flat Rat kid I knew and liked and who had been trying to stay out of trouble went out into his backyard one day, cut both his wrists, and shot himself in the head with a shotgun.

Not long after, Nicky, the Hells Angel I looked up to, got out of prison for stealing a police car and running over a cop. He returned to the one-bedroom apartment he shared with his father and brother and asked them both to sit with him at the kitchen table.

He said, “Dad, you’ve always hated me. We’ve never gotten along.”

As his father and brother watched anxiously, Nicky started putting bullets in his mouth. Then he pulled a .38 out of his pocket and said, “I should blow you both away.”

Finally, Nicky said, “To hell with you both,” put the pistol in his mouth, and pulled the trigger.

I was shocked and deeply saddened by both deaths.

By the time I was finishing high school, kids I knew were stealing air conditioners out of their parents’ homes to buy drugs. My own younger brother, Ricky, joined a car-theft ring and became addicted to cocaine.

And it kept getting closer to home. Just after I graduated from high school, my parents held a big party at my house. Hundreds of our friends showed up. The streets outside were jammed with parked cars and motorcycles.

People young and old were dancing, drinking, and having a good time. My parents told jokes and made people laugh.

As the party was winding down, two girls I knew asked me if I could drive them home. Before I left, a friend of mine said she was cold, and I let her borrow my black leather motorcycle jacket.

While I was gone, three punks from a rival gang in nearby Milford, Connecticut, showed up at the party, roughed the girl up, stole my jacket, and left.

When I returned home, around three in the morning, I was told what happened and I immediately tore off on my motorcycle to go after them. Two fellow Flat Rats known as the Monaco brothers followed me.

The Monaco brothers and I drove all over but couldn’t find them. When we returned to my house hours later, the three punks from Milford pulled into my driveway.

“Unbelievable!” I got off my bike and walked up to the driver’s side of the car. Two of the Milford punks got out of the passenger side holding baseball bats. The guy wearing my jacket was sitting in the passenger seat with the window down. Before he had the chance to get out, I punched him in the mouth.

Then I grabbed the bat he was holding and charged after the other two, who ran off.

It wasn’t a big deal. But I’d recovered my jacket and made a point—don’t mess with me, or the Flat Rats.

I hoped it was over. But a couple days later, Mrs. Monaco was standing in a phone booth in a strip-mall parking lot when some guys from the Milford gang saw her and stabbed her to death.

It was an ugly, horrible, senseless act of retaliation.

I said to myself, The hell with this place. I’ve got to get out of here.

When I invited my parents to come to my high school graduation, they’d asked if I was going to get a diploma. I barely squeezed through, graduating near the bottom of my class. But I was graduating, and moving on. Class of ’76.

Wanting to improve my chances of finding a decent career, I decided to go to Mattatuck Community College, in Waterbury, Connecticut. I remember going with my dad to register for classes and buying a T-shirt that read TUCK U.

I thought it was cool. My dad wished I had selected a different one.

But for first time in my life, he seemed proud of me, his first son. My parents were even more pleased when I made the dean’s list the first semester.