Born Under a Bad Sign

By Max Razo

Book Review

A born-agains harrowing autobiography retraces his path from an emotionally impoverished childhood, through a successful criminal career and, finally, to the redemption of the confessional. Razo assures his reader that his story will be unembellished, with no false modesty or undue embarrassment, and after the first few pages, its clear he will keep his word. Razo begins his meditation with his earliest memories of growing up working-class in the dusty, sunny atmosphere of post-war San Diego. Despite the citys burgeoning diversity and sense of opportunity, his veteran fathers American Indian heritage runs the family into trouble and teaches Razo some early lessons on the harsh realities of American culture. Though his family does help keep him in school for a while, his mother and father are over-extended with Razo and his five sisters. Though the emotions run hot between his mother and fatherusually it seems between rage and a begrudging commitmentthere is little feeling left over for the children. Razo doesnt shirk from any topic and provides some unique insights into the awkward presexuality that develops between the members of such a large cloister of siblings, especially when there is only one male to go around. Its a brave choice and makes good on Razos promise of full disclosure. Through the machinations of poverty, prison, drugs and kung fu, Razo eventually impresses a major player with his martial arts and so finds himself one of Hells Angels and on his way toward an illicit seven-figure salary. These years arent overworked with analysis, and even when some regret seeps in, it seems a bit half-hearted (he was having fun, after all). The ragged emotions of such a life, though familiar territory in fiction and nonfiction alike, are still made interesting by their sheer detail and a narrative voice that isnt polished enough to hide the authors hell-bent and engaging character. Razos life is colorful to be sure, and he was even a successful off-roading champion for a spell, but the real interest is Razos unlikely negotiations of the mortal pitfalls of the drug trade amid so many murderedand murderousfriends. Skeptical readers will conclude the author was saved more by a plea deal than by holy intervention, but its Razos storyand there is no doubting that hes told it as he lived it.

A harrowing, willful account of a life led hard and fast.

-Kirkus Discoveries

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Sep 19, 2009
• ISBN: 9781462808632

Book preview

Copyright © 2009 by Max Razo.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

This book was printed in the United States of America.

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Contents

INTRODUCTION

CHAPTER 1

Don’t Tell Me What Love Can Do!

CHAPTER 2

The Family Grows, and Racism Rears Its Ugly Head

CHAPTER 3

Trouble at Home and in the Streets

CHAPTER 4

Close Call Again—Sample of My Fate

CHAPTER 5

Discovery

CHAPTER 6

Learning the Ropes

CHAPTER 7

My New Family and The Brotherhood of Eternal Love

CHAPTER 8

CHAPTER 9

The New Beginning . . . Busted Again!

CHAPTER 10

Starting Over . . . My Friend is Murdered

CHAPTER 11

Born Again!

CHAPTER 12

The Hell’s Angels

CHAPTER 13

I Make My Rounds

CHAPTER 14

Unauthorized Harley Parts

CHAPTER 15

Murder on I-15

CHAPTER 16

CHAPTER 17

The Beginning of the End

Mother . . . Danzig

CHAPTER 19

On a Roll . . . Mickey Thompson

CHAPTER 20

The Death of Jimbo

CHAPTER 21

CHAPTER 22

The Betrayal

CHAPTER 23

CHAPTER 24

The Change . . . God Speaks; I Listen and Trust

CHAPTER 25

The Unit . . . Witness Protection

CHAPTER 26

Ground Zero . . . The Ephedrine-Reduction Process

CHAPTER 27

Getting Out

CHAPTER 28

Looking Back

CHAPTER 29

The Way I See It

Songs for the Chapters

DEDICATION

This book was inspired by my Creator. I would like to dedicate this book to all who have met untimely deaths… Freddy Jones

Paul Parrial

Gary Robles

Ronald Mitchell aka Snake A-Boo

John Woody Woodroffe

Ernie Henderson

Braddah IZ

MY POPS MAX RAZO SR

To the Co- Driver who met his death in Mexico off

road racing,

Who gave me the wins in 1986.

Jimbo

Hideous Hank Patoues

Fat Ray Piltz

Jason The Chief

MY WIFE & KIDS

GOD!!

Polo Marin

I want to thank my wife Terry, and my entire family who supported me, and in the Chemo therapy in which I am about to take part in and to Delores my cousin whom was put in a wheel chair because of my actions!

Also to P.O.D whose songs helped me to see how I felt and helped me to see I’m in fact I am a Messenjah for God and one of his Warriors, Even if it cost me everything! And know I will never deny his sacrifice, even if I Die tonight!

INTRODUCTION

Hi, my name is Max. By writing this book, I hope to figure out how I got this far in my life and how I can reconcile with myself and others for the wrongs I have done. With some help from Dr. Phil or anyone else who’ll listen, I hope to make sense of it all. My life has been unusual, to say the least. As you will see, I have chosen some extreme paths and unknowingly surrounded myself with people who have taken advantage of me. Day after day, year after year, I put myself in shocking and horrific situations, many of which could have been the end of me. I hope to find peace and, with some guidance from Dr. Phil, find out how and why I sabotaged my life in such an extreme way.

Throughout my life, I have met killers, thieves, psychopaths and everybody in between. I’ve always wondered why I was so loyal to these people. Why did I set myself up for the fall? I developed the so-called rescuer syndrome time and time again, using all of my resources to support and give to everyone I met only to have them take it as a sign of weakness or stupidity. All the while, I watched the disturbing and hurtful moves they made against me. I’m not sniveling about the things that happened in my life, but does the full blame fall squarely on me, or have the situations in my life dictated its ebbs and flows?

There are many lives out there that have played out like mine, but how many have been written down? This one has. This is the story of what I mistakenly took for an ordinary life, a life full of road blocks and obstacles. My journey has taught me the very survival skills I have used and still use every day. It is a story about the need to be accepted and the desire to find a happy place; I wonder if anyone really understands to what extremes some people actually go to achieve these things.

This is my story, a story of the paths I took to find places of acceptance. By writing this book, I am putting myself in extreme danger. The threat of retaliation from the individuals this book will expose is very real! My life is already in danger, but this book will probably reignite some old issues that have been on the back burner till now. The stories I tell will have articles to back them up. I have not sensationalized any of these events. I have simply related how it happened and how I felt before and after.

I can already hear these so-called tough guys talking shit about how I’m a fucking rat and a weak punk. I say to these so-called tough guys, "Quit being

Max Razo the tough guy and expose the bullshit you’ve justified because you have a beef with society. Snitch tough guy. Are you man enough? Are you man enough to change your life, to make a commitment to an unseen entity? I didn’t save my ass from any time! I did my sentence and a majority in the main line! I fought for my existence in the joint and lived up to my choices. Could you, tough guy?"

I did what I did for reasons of survival. I did these things to cut all ties to all the people that trusted me: from drug suppliers, whom I’ve never fucked, to killers who counted on my silence. I put my life into one prayer, into an entity that I saw and heard in a vision. The choice I made wasn’t an easy one; it went against everything I believed in with all my heart. Try that, Mr. Tough Guy Biker! Try that, Mr. Drug Dealer!

After telling these stories to people I’ve met and seeing the look on their faces, it shocks me to think that the life I led wasn’t a normal life after all. When I think back, it sometimes scares the shit out of me. I’ve since made a total commitment to change. I’ve relied on my beliefs to help me change, and I have given my whole human living being to blind faith, to an invisible entity. No, this isn’t another book about a criminal coming to God. This is a book about a man who really sought after the truth! Full trust in what I believe has given me direction and taken care of my family and myself, and this is my way of giving back. It is my hope that someone, somewhere, will learn from this book and the events of my life. As vulgar as this book may seem, give it to a kid who needs it. There are plenty of people in the world whose struggles are similar to mine. In my mind, I have always felt that (I) we (was) were was just born under a bad sign. This is my story.

CHAPTER 1

Don’t Tell Me What Love Can Do!

I was born on September 17, 1951, at Mercy Hospital in San Diego, California. I lived the first five years of my life in an area known to native San Diegans as shell town. Early childhood was pretty eventful. I went to St. Jude’s Catholic School for first grade and was a pretty mischievous boy. I used to steal matches from the pews at the church. I’d hide till the priest walked by and then grab the box of stick matches that sat by the devotional candles. I used to play around by lighting them and making little fires. Well, one day I got a hair up my ass and did something unadvisable. I walked over to an old model-A pickup, opened up the gas tank lid, and lit a match to look into the tank. The vapors ignited, and a flash of flames shot out and burnt off all my eye lashes and eyebrows! I ran home in horror and thought the truck was going to blow. Of course, I now know that if it was going to explode, it would have happened right then and there.

I had a good friend by the name of Albert Lee in those early days. He lived across the street and had a sister named Elsie. Their father was a doctor. Our neighborhood was a mix of Chinese, Filipino, Native American, black and white people. It was a diverse neighborhood ethnically, but I never heard a prejudice word. I never knew what a nigger, speck, or wetback was and never heard those terms used.

I had five sisters and one more, I was told—one my mother had from another life. My father was a hardworking man who spent four years fighting the Japanese with the 161 Infantry 25 Division Army. He was at Schofield barracks in Honolulu when Pearl Harbor was bombed. My father was a Pearl Harbor survivor. My mom was younger than him by thirteen years. We were a typical Native American, Hispanic mixed family. My pops was born in San Diego on April 4, 1918. My grandfather was born there as well in 1886, and my whole family has been there since.

My pops went to a local school about one block away from where we lived. It was called Emerson Elementary. He was a young Indian boy who never wore shoes to school until he got into high school. Life was rough for my parents, growing up in the depression and having to fight WW II and the Korean War. My father went to Korea and was sent home because my grandma was sick. Weeks later, his whole outfit was killed. He had acquired enough points, and the army asked him if he wanted to be reassigned or retire. It was a no-brainer; he quit.

He told me once when he was a bit drunk about how he was brought up for a field commission in Guadalcanal; the captain wanted to raise him up to a major. He went before his commander by the captain’s recommendation. The commander told him, We don’t give darkies that rate, and he was turned down. He was a tough man and had two brothers, Trini and Uncle Babe. Trini died when I was eight years old. My uncle Baby was a professional boxer who was well-known in California and Mexico. Trini was the oldest, and my father was second oldest.

One day when I was four years old, my mom dressed me up in my suit. My pops called me outside, and we walked to this big black car that was waiting out in front of our house. He opened the back door and told me to get in. As I sat down, I noticed this pretty white box next to me. My father got into the front seat, turned around, and said, Look in the box. I opened the box and saw this pretty little doll dressed up in a little outfit. He then said, That’s your brother. I closed the lid after a few minutes and tried to process what was going on. I don’t remember my mom being pregnant, or I didn’t understand what it was, anyway. I think I was told we were going to have an addition to our family, but I don’t really recall. All I know is that I felt death. I think what took place plays a part in my life, and I believe it might have to do with some kind of fear. My family told me later that my baby brother’s name would have been Victor. The story also tells how my father’s younger brother Babe talked my grandfather into kicking us out of our house, which, in fact, was his to do with as he pleased. It made my mother so upset that he would do that. The strain from that issue, she claims, killed my brother. Well one thing was for sure; we had to move out. I can still see this beautiful white satin box and how precious he looked lying there.

I was pretty hardheaded when I was five. I was so early on my first day of school that the school room was completely empty. I just picked out a seat and sat for a while. It seemed like forever, so I stepped outside. When I came back in, all the seats were taken. I was very shy and had felt humiliated, so I just went home. My mom asked me why I was home so early, and I told her that there was no school. She called up the school and asked the nuns to get me to go back. I held out until they bribed me with candy. The first thing I remember from school was the nuns showing us posters hanging on an easel—one was the devil, which appeared ugly and hideous; the other was Jesus. Those were my first moments in a Catholic school.

I didn’t always realize it, but I now feel that my mother was too young to have so many children. They didn’t know about postnatal syndrome back in 1956, but she must have had it. I remember, in the early years before I was school age, sitting in a high chair that was placed by a window sill. I remember eating a dead fly. I can still taste that bitter taste today, and I’m fifty-six years old! I also remember my older sister being thrown to the wall when she was four or five years old. She was a few years older than me, and I just remember seeing her mouth bleeding. These images would haunt me for a lifetime. The anger and frustration I felt, or whatever it was, would, in the years to come, raise its ugly head many times.

Time, as a five-year-old, had no meaning or dimension. We had a dog named Blackie. I played with him and fed him. I always ate half of the Skippy dog food before giving it to him. I played with him for hours on end. One day I remember playing with him by throwing water on him and watching him run away. I did it one time, and he ran out into the street and was hit by a car. I kept the guilt for killing him for the years to come.

Time might have had no dimension, but my imagination was very good at that age. I would eat spinach after watching Popeye and try to do superhuman things, only to fail. I would see the commercials for PF Flyers tennis shoes and think I was five times faster when I ran. TV played a big roll in my life, and it still does. I loved watching Rin Tin Tin, Circus Boy, Sky King, Hopalong Cassidy, Let’s Pretend with Uncle Russ and The Johnny Downs Show. The last two were local TV shows aired in San Diego in the 50s and 60s.

It was mid-1956 when we had to move out of our home because of what Uncle Babe did. My father found a group of track homes in an all white new housing area, and we all went to go see it one day. All we saw was an empty lot with a few new homes built next to it. New homes in the late fifties and early sixties cost $14,500. Sounds inexpensive, but it was big money considering my father brought home $67 a week. He had to work two jobs to afford our living costs.

The day came when we finally moved into our new home located in Paradise Hills. It was a beautiful name, but we were soon to find out that the name didn’t fit. Two weeks after we moved in, three of our neighbors decided that they didn’t want to live by an Indian and moved out. Welcome to our new world; it’s called racism. Kids and adults alike spray painted the side walks, writing things like leave wetbacks, taco benders, chili chokers and a lot of other racial slogans. I didn’t understand what was going on because I was so young. I didn’t understand why they hated us so much.

My mom and a woman by the name of ‘Winnie’ soon went to war. Every day, they’d step outside and call each other a bitch before giving each other the finger and slamming their doors. I saw this ritual go on for years. My old man had the balls to invite Winnie over to our house for New Year’s Eve, and man, did the fur fly! I fought many battles with the kids on the block and in surrounding areas. They would stand in front of our house and call my mom racial names and demand that we leave the neighborhood. I’d get so mad that I would charge right into them, swinging at them like a windmill. Of course, it upset the hell out of my mom. I didn’t fear anyone yet, but in a few years, that would change.

At five years old, I used to walk home a good three miles from school with my sisters. We all went to Paradise Hills Elementary School, where Mr. Oliver Cline was the principle. It was a pretty good school. I finished my first year and moved into the first grade. It was about that time that the doctors noticed that I had a heart murmur. It scared my mom to death; one son was dead already, and another would be if it got worse. I didn’t give a shit. I played hard, and nothing would have changed that. I found out later in life that my father was told, not asked, by my mom not to encourage me to play sports because of the murmur.

My father’s way of discouragement was not verbal. I knew that he kept a baseball glove in the closet that looked like an old Babe Ruth glove. It had a baseball in it, so I asked if he wanted to play catch. He said, Sure, meet me out front. Remember, I was just six years old. He gave me the glove and told me to stand down a ways. He threw it pretty hard and hit me right in the fucking chest. I cried, and he yelled out, Fuckin’ pussy!That was the first and last time I ever asked my father to do something with me.

If I wasn’t working with him in the yard, I was out playing Army. I had a couple of friends named Howard Keithly and Chuck Hertwig who were my Army buddies. We’d play Army till the sun went down. I loved being Audrey Murphy and Sergeant Saunders, a.k.a. Vic Marrow. Chuck had a big brother named Billy Hertwig. What an asshole! This guy was pure evil. He talked us young boys and girls into going to a newly built house’s garage. He shut the door and told us to pull our pants down. He was nine, and we were six. He called it the nasty club. We all fell for it so we dropped our draws and danced around a big pile of sawdust in the middle of the garage. He didn’t drop his draws. All of a sudden he started heaving large amounts of sawdust at our private parts and opened the garage door real fast. He was laughing like Satan all the while. We all tried to put our pants on, but he just kept throwing sawdust in our faces. I remember not being able to breath! I ran home and kept silent. Can you imagine telling your parents you were in the Nasty Club? This guy would grow up to be a real asshole and, later on, become a heroin addict and a navy drop out. His dad was a master chief in the navy stationed on the Kitty Hawk.

One day, Billy shot arrows through my friend Howard’s prize watermelon and it rotted. My buddy Howard was really upset, poor kid. Howard told on Billy, and Billy retaliated by making a concoction of Dr no and bleach and throwing it on Howard’s head. The shit really hit the fan then! Billy got in a shitload of trouble. He would be one of many enemies I would have in times to come.

When I was six, we had a new addition to our family, Yvonne. She was now the baby. It was my oldest sister Elizabeth, then Beverly, then me, and now, Yvonne. Beverly was the one targeted by my mom as an example for punishment. She would punish her constantly, and later in life, I would feel guilty for not being able to stop it.

Life went on. At that age, the world looked pretty big, especially when you were walking home from school by yourself. I guess my parents had faith that I could find my way. One day I was walking home from my first grade class at Paradise Hills Elementary School and was about a mile away from home walking up Allegany Street on the final big hill when a blue pick up truck with a utility box mounted on the back stopped next to me. The driver was this dishwater blonde dude in his early twenties. He reached over, opened the passenger door, and said, Hey kid, you want to make a lot of money? I said, How? He said, Let me suck your dick! I noticed that he had a pistol on the seat, and his hand was on it! I started to run as fast as I could. The hair on my neck was standing up, and I was running home faster than I had ever run. When I looked back, he had made a U-turn and had driven away. I was so scared.The weird thing is that I never told my parents.Till this day, I don’t understand why. From that moment on, I walked home other ways and was always terrified that I’d see that fucker again. Later on in life, fate would tie me into his family. Small world, isn’t it?

Racism was something I never really understood when I was growing up. It probably had a lot to do with how my life turned out. It was probably a major turning point, one that would dictate the wild roller-coaster ride for which I was headed. I think it instilled a drive for wanting to fit in, just wanting to be accepted. Lots of situations from childhood came up that would ultimately dictate my thinking process and my decision-making process.

I was very sexually orientated when I was young. A lot of focus was made on my penis. I grew up with five girls; what did you think would happen? They always wanted to see it, along with their friends. Most writers would never write about some of the things I write about in this book. It’s taboo in our culture, and that’s sad! How can one heal without taking it out of the closet? It seems to me that when parents never talk about these things or give us direction in the social-sexual situations with which we grow up, we develop a distorted view of how to feel about these issues and how to deal with them. If you never deal with it, that distorted view can be the way you deal with things in your adult life since you never really know the so-called right way. There was no real incest, but border line stuff, just a lot of focus on body parts. This focus from others would also create another drive that would haunt me for years to come.

At the time, I thought growing up in my family was ordinary. There wasn’t kissing and hugging nor were there times when my parents would tell us they loved us. There was really no direction given to us in any manner. There was sibling jealousy and rivalry. There were times of great violence and frightening acts from my mom. She would single out my sister Beverly then call us all in and make us watch in horror as she verbally attacked her and hit her repeatedly in the face with her hard-sole shoe. She yelled at her to put her hands down and hit her repeatedly two to three times. Sometimes, we all had to stand before the man and get our issue; sometimes, it was just Beverly. It’s funny how we never said a word to our dad.The failure to be able to rescue my sister from humiliation and pain was another ordeal that would haunt me in both my young and adult life. It would later give me what they call rescuer’s syndrome, a condition that would cause the demise of a few of my marriages.

There were times when my mother was so enraged with jealousy that she would slap the newspaper out of my dad’s hands just because there was a women’s under garment ad on the page. She would just go on slapping and yelling. One night, he got so fed up with that bullshit that he grabbed his double-barreled shotgun. We watched in horror as he dropped two rounds in the chambers, handed it to her, and told her to shoot him. What a trip that was. The man had had enough! I yelled out to all my sisters to get to our bedroom, now! For some reason, I took charge of them, and they listened. We all huddled together on a bed, and they cried while I tried to convince them that it would be fine. My mom didn’t have the balls to shoot, and the cops were called. It freaked her out that he did that. All I heard him say in a direct manner was just shoot me, and shut the fuck up. That’s my pops! The cops just took away the shotgun. He would get it back, and we would go hunting rabbits as usual.

He was the best marksman I have ever seen. I was the go-and-fetch boy. We would go to the local canyon, where he would sit on a small hill. As he shot the rabbits, he would direct me to the exact point where they were. I would pick them up and tie their back legs with a string.