Falling for a Hells Angel

When a mild-mannered book editor with a sheltered background breaks into a world of outlaw bikers, the excitement is alluring, but the violence is never far behind.

Photo by Fredrik von Erichsen / AP Images

The rocks hitting my window woke me from a deep sleep. I sat up with a start.

I pushed my window open and looked around.

“Jill, Jill, it’s me, Angela. Let me in.” She stood below, her bicycle thrown in the yard’s rock garden. It was about two a.m.

Angela, whose name, like the others in this story, has been changed, hadn’t returned my voicemails in over a month. She didn’t have a cell phone or email account. The last time I had seen her was for breakfast at Ole’s, an old-time pancake house on Alameda’s main street, the East San Francisco Bay city where I lived. I had met her there with her boyfriend, Pancho, who was over thirty years older — a huge and imposing man of over 300 pounds, with long black hair and a mustache, dressed in the largest flannel shirt and jeans I had ever seen, the scowl on his face making me feel like he was not happy — with the restaurant, the food, me — or Angela, who, at thirty-three, could have passed for his much-younge…