The Parolee and the Biker: Strange Tales from the Salon Chair

I first met the prison parolee and the Mongol biker in the spring of 2012.

In a hair salon.

I’d just moved to Vegas from out-of-state and, you know how it goes when settling into a new city, you need a doctor, dentist, car mechanic and, maybe most important of all, someone to cut your hair.

My realtor had mentioned the shop. She was smart and outspoken, smoked a lot of cigarettes. I took her suggestion.

The place wasn’t far from the airport, along a busy drag within 15 minutes from my house. The owner’s name was Marco and he was a short guy with a raspy voice who laughed at his own jokes.

Tim was his assistant. He was thin and kept his white hair in a flowing ponytail. He wore blue jeans and a black leather vest. Tim didn’t say much; Marco did the talking.

The more I sat in that chair, the more I learned about both.

What followed is a tale of gain and loss, about meeting colorful people and watching them suddenly vanish from your life — just like that, questions asked, but no answers given.

You don't mourn, exactly, because you really weren’t exactly friends, but you feel the loss nonetheless.

Maybe it's just a thing with Vegas, or other transient places. I've got a scrapbook of friends who have moved away, leaving me behind. Sure, it pangs, but losing almost-friends can also knock you off your stride.

In the early days, I got curious when Marco made some little aside about prison life, something about surviving or getting along or getting what you need to survive there. He’d clip and talk and laugh, like it wasn’t any big deal.

One day, I asked him, and he told me the story.

He had taken his boat, “Underestimated,” a 47-foot Fountain craft, out onto Lake Mead one night 15 years before. At the time, Fountain powerboats were considered the Rolls Royces of the water world. Marco's top-of-the-line version, which featured three 800-horsepower engines, sold for $400,000.

After a day of drinking, Marco took a passel of buddies out for a little midnight ride. Going full-throttle, an estimated 80 miles an hour, Marco's boat hit some shallow rocks.

The boat ran aground, killing four people including his wife, and injuring three others.

At age 44, as part of a deal struck with prosecutors, he’d pleaded guilty to four counts of manslaughter.

He went to prison for 12 years.

Now Marco had served his time. He still loved to boat but he’d since quit drinking. Who was I to judge? I just figured I'd do all the driving, in case we ever got together.

I eventually gleaned Tim's story as well. He was a motor head kid who’d grown up in California’s Central Valley. He’d gotten married and divorced and lived with his son. He didn’t trust women much. He was also a member of the Mongols motorcycle gang.

So there I was, a Barney-Fife-like journalist, getting my locks shorn by an ex-con, my hair washed by a motorcycle gang member. No catty comb-twirlers in this shop.

My stylist guys were tough guys. I figured it all added to my all-important street cred.

Then strange things began happening.

I’d been away for several months and called Marco for an appointment.

A woman answered. When I asked for Marco, she hesitated, like she was about to tell me something I had to keep secret.

Marco was dead.

How? I asked.

He’d apparently gotten an infection in his leg and ignored friends’ advice to see a doctor.

I was speechless. Marco had cut my hair for years; now I’d have to find someone else.

Just before I hung up, the woman said, “Tim has taken over the shop. Would you like to make an appointment with him?”

Yes, I did.

When I was back in the chair, Tim told me he'd urged Marco to get medical help, but the man was stubborn.

Tim had once cut hair full-time but had agreed to become Marco's apprentice. He'd learned a lot and specialized in coloring women’s hair. They lined up to see him. 

Me, I just had the usual trim of my receding locks, with the occasional blonde highlights.

As the months passed, I got to know Tim better. He told me stories about raising a son as a single father, about the weekend jaunts he took on his bike with the other members of his club.

But we had an unspoken agreement: I wasn’t to ask any details about the Mongols, because he couldn’t tell me. He was sworn to secrecy.

Still, we’d laugh and tell jokes and trade observations about life and about women. I was older than Tim, but not by much. Surrounded by women cutters and their female clients, we were the odd men out.

And that’s just how we liked it.

I’d see Tim maybe once every three months, so there was usually lots to catch up on. One day, I was taken aback by his looks. He’d cut his long hair. He’d lost a lot of weight. He looked gaunt, unhealthy.

Then he told me: He’d contracted lung cancer.

He’d gone through one regimen of chemo, with more to come. Still, always the rebel, he refused to quit smoking, riding his black Harley to work ever day.

Frankly, I worried about him. He said that cancer had taught him some lessons about life — what shit to worry about, what shit to let go.

Each time I left the shop, I’d give him a long, deep embrace, a man hug you’d give to your father or an old friend. I liked Tim's spunk. He’d fought cancer like a Mongol in a barroom brawl. And he was winning. Still, who knew if I’d ever see him again?

Tim continued to get better, but he wasn’t the same man. For starters, he said he was leaving his motorcycle group. He gave up managing Marco's old shop and took a series of individual chairs in other shops.

His son graduated high school and joined the army. Though he was never effusive with his emotions, I knew Tim was proud of that kid.

He also met a woman. They were on, and then mostly off. She was the jealous type, and while Tim gave her no reason to doubt him, he was too tired to play games. So they fought, a lot.

I never knew when I came in whether he was still in a relationship, or newly single.

We always talked about getting together for a beer, but never got around to it.

We’d just trade the news when we met — me in the chair, with Tim circling, clipping, always clipping. 

I told him about another local haircutter I’d interviewed, a guy who went by the single name Cadillac. An inmate himself, he’d once cut hair on Death Row at a Georgia prison and came to respect those men who faced death with dignity.

Tim was impressed. It was his kind of story.

Then COVID came and Tim gave up his chair. He cut from home for a few months, and got a new gig at a hip place in suburban Henderson.

The last I saw him was last May, He cut my hair. I took my wife there. She liked Tim. She thought he was a gentleman, the quiet type.

I could learn something from Tim, she said.

Last fall, I returned to Vegas after a few months in San Francisco.

I called the old number. The recording said a voice mail had not been set up.

Strange.

I called his last salon. He’d only worked there a short time and the woman on the phone didn’t even remember him.

We were Facebook friends, so I reached out to a few people about his whereabouts.

Nobody knew.

So, Tim is gone, poof, just like that. It’s been months now.

Maybe he just moved away without telling anyone, or worse.

My wife can’t understand why I even care. Just get another stylist, she says.

But I do care. 

The way I see it, a cool character had come into my life. We had things to say to each other. I respected the hell out of him. We were different, but the same.

People just don’t vanish from people’s lives like that, do they?

I called Tim's old number today.

Nobody answered.