Getting their cooperation was problematic, to say the least. Although most elders had never been directly linked to the criminal rackets or the gangs, they supported a system of commerce in which the tongs and the gangs played an important role. If a well-known restaurateur and CCBA member was having a labor problem, gang members might be used to harass picketing employees. In fact, nobody liked to talk about it much, but it was common knowledge that a sizable portion of Chinatown’s labor pool was composed of illegal immigrants smuggled into the United States by gangsters. A number of prominent tong bosses who were also CCBA members were believed to be key players in the smuggling process.
Given the symbiotic relationship between Chinatown’s business community and the criminal element, the elders had never been out front on the issue of gang violence. For years, most elders refused to admit publicly that gangs existed at all, much less that they were a problem. This attitude had prevailed for so long that even most of Chinatown’s social activists had come to believe the gang situation could never be seriously addressed.
As a community veteran, Virgo Lee knew what he was up against. Which made him doubly surprised as he continued flipping through his Rolodex, calling virtually every community and business leader he was on speaking terms with. His idea for a joint community/city government/ law enforcement meeting was being met not with terseness, as he expected, but with general acceptance. Even when Lee emphasized that this would be a public gathering attended by members of the Chinese-language press, and not a secret closed-door meeting, no one hung up on him.
By late afternoon nearly two dozen community leaders, including some of the most powerful businessmen in Chinatown, had pledged their willingness to take part in the meeting.
The director of Asian affairs was astounded. The prospect of the community’s most powerful forces coming together to officially acknowledge the gang situation was unprecedented. To Lee, it was as startling an indication as any underworld shootout could have been that the current wave of gang activity represented something new, something even the most revered and powerful leaders in Chinatown felt had moved beyond their control.
The most reluctant participant in Virgo Lee’s plan for a high-powered summit meeting on gang violence was none other than the New York City Police Department.
“Why should we be negotiating with gangsters?” one high-ranking lieutenant bluntly asked Lee when the subject of the meeting was broached.
“Hey,” answered Lee. “If you have evidence any of these people are engaged in criminal activity, then arrest them. Otherwise, you’re going to have to deal with these people because of who they are and who they represent.”
One reason for police reticence when dealing with community elders was the still-smoldering memory of Chan Tse-Chiu, a legendary tong leader better known as Eddie Chan. In the late 1970s, after an especially violent period of gang warfare, Chan emerged as a key force in the Asian community. With impressive financial power and friends in high places, Chan was a classic example of the type of Chinatown power broker who frustrated lawmen most—outwardly respectable, close to powerful politicians, and thoroughly corrupt.
Theoretically, the cops should have liked Eddie Chan. He was, after all, one of them. Chan first come to New York from Hong Kong, where he had served for many years as a detective sergeant with the Royal Hong Kong Police. In the early 1970s, a corruption scandal forced five notorious police sergeants to flee the colony, though not before they amassed a small fortune from gambling, extortion, prostitution, loan-sharking, and other criminal rackets. As rich exiles in Taiwan and later Canada, the former police officers became known as the Five Dragons. Though his name had not yet surfaced in the ongoing corruption probe, Eddie Chan also fled Hong Kong at the time of the scandal. In New York’s Chinatown, he became known as the Sixth Dragon.
A stout, balding, moon-faced man with a Fu Manchu mustache, Eddie started slowly in New York, first by opening a small jewelry and antiques store. Then he bought a funeral parlor, two or three restaurants, a vegetable market, and several buildings in Chinatown and Little Italy. When young gangsters from the Ghost Shadows inevitably tried to shake Eddie down, he invited them to lunch. Seated around a restaurant table, the lead gangster asked Chan, “You used to be a police officer in Hong Kong, right?”
“That’s right,” answered Eddie.
“Well, you arrest a friend of ours one time. He was tortured and crippled, so now you owe us money.”
As the gang leader spoke, Eddie calmly arranged his chopsticks, salt shaker, teacup and other table implements to indicate that he was a high-ranking member of a well-known Hong Kong triad. Although the gang youths were impressed enough to suggest Eddie forgo payment, the next day Chan gave them $2,000 anyway. Clearly, Eddie Chan knew the game and was willing to play by the rules.
In 1978, Chan’s wealth and triad connections got him elected president of both the local On Leong tong and its national chapter—the largest Chinese fraternal organization in the United States. In just three years, Chan had achieved a stature equal to that of Benny Ong, the Godfather, who was then serving time for his bribery conviction.
Unlike Uncle Benny, who tried to keep a low profile, Chan assumed his role as community leader with a flair for the limelight. He wore suits hand-tailored to fit his sumo-wrestler physique, rode around in a chauffeured Rolls-Royce owned by the On Leong, and was a featured attraction at Chinese civic and political functions. He also became vice president of the United Orient Bank, located on the ground floor of the four-story, pagoda-style On Leong headquarters at Canal and Mott streets.
Along with his flashy personal style and lucrative business ventures, Chan was known as a man who had mastered the art of guon xi, the cultivation of influential connections. He became friendly with and contributed to the campaigns of a number of local politicians, among them Mayor Edward I. Koch and Congresswoman Geraldine Ferraro. In 1984, he contributed generously to the reelection campaign of President Ronald Reagan.
Chan’s facade of respectability began to crumble in 1983, when a triad leader in Hong Kong first identified him as a major organized-crime figure in the States. Other revelations followed. An indicted Chinese criminal in the United States told federal investigators that Chan “controls the activities of New York criminal gangs through his influence as leader of the On Leong tong.” Canadian authorities reported that the head of a prominent triad in Toronto had made a secret trip to New York to slip Chan $130,000 in cash.
Late in 1984, amid rumors that Chan’s United Orient Bank was in trouble because of these and other criminal allegations, Chinatown depositors withdrew $6 million in the space of a few days. In a stunning turn of events, Chan was forced to resign as vice president and director. Federal investigators suspected Chan had been using the bank to launder money for triad gangsters and heroin dealers. Before he could be questioned, Chan did what he had done earlier when he got into trouble in Hong Kong—he disappeared. Some say Eddie currently lives in Singapore or Taiwan. Other sightings have been reported in Manila, Paris, and the Dominican Republic.
The NYPD and the Jade Squad had been onto Eddie Chan from the start. But attempts at an investigation were always stymied by Chan’s veneer of political respectability and civic high-mindedness. When everyone’s worst suspicions about Chan were finally confirmed, an attitude took hold in law enforcement circles that all rich business leaders in Chinatown were triad gangsters in disguise.
The fallout from Eddie Chan’s short but heady reign also deeply embittered the CCBA, for entirely different reasons. Business and community leaders in Chinatown felt the case of Eddie Chan—a prominent CCBA member—was being used by the cops and city government to indulge in age-old racist stereotypes. Not all CCBA members were gangsters, they argued—though few non-Asians listened.
For Chinatown’s elders to now be willing to sit down with representatives of city government and the NYPD, Virgo Lee knew, had to be because they saw it in their own self-interest to do so. Since th
e meeting he proposed would be focusing not on traditional tong-associated gangs but rather on the BTK, the elders were being given a rare opportunity to take the high ground. Since they weren’t being directly implicated, they could condemn gang violence and conveniently blame the entire problem on the Vietnamese.
There was another, even more obvious consideration, one that Lee stressed often when making his initial pleas to community elders. “You know and I know,” he told them, “that all this gang activity has to stop; it only brings unwanted attention to Chinatown, which is not good for business.”
This was an argument the business leaders could get behind. Nothing meant more to the kiu lings—the “big shots” who comprised the bulk of the CCBA—than the opportunity to exercise their rights as capitalists, free of unwanted attention from meddlesome outsiders.
It was early in the afternoon of October 17, 1990, when the group of thirty people began to gather at One Police Plaza, the NYPD’s drab, twelve-story headquarters just a few blocks from Virgo Lee’s City Hall office in lower Manhattan. It was a brisk fall day, with billowing cumulus clouds hovering in the sky amid various shades of gray—a somber tableau that seemed to fit most everyone’s mood.
That morning, the police commissioner’s office had issued a press release containing additional information about the Reade Street homicides. The three victims were identified as Yu Kim Ly and Phong Thien Nguyen, both seventeen, and Bang Nhu Nguyen, age sixteen. Characterized by the police as low-ranking BTK members, they had been drinking at the Sinta Lounge. Witnesses claimed that one of the BTK members may have used a rival gangster’s cellular phone without permission, while another made the fatal mistake of asking his wife to dance. As far as the cops could tell, these were the only reasons the three youths had been marched outside and brutally executed.
The senselessness of the killings gave an added impetus to the meeting, as the business leaders and law enforcement personnel took their seats in a medium-sized conference room on the eleventh floor at police headquarters.
“I think we all know why we’re here,” began Virgo Lee, standing before the group. “Given all that has happened in recent months, clearly something has to be done. The mayor has voiced his concerns to me. But we need the cooperation of community leaders if we hope to get control of this gang activity.”
Lee introduced Chief of Detectives Joseph Borrelli, who was there representing the police commissioner’s office. Borrelli had been one of the high-ranking officers who initially balked at participating in the meeting. Now that he was here, he made his remarks in a perfunctory manner, imploring the community leaders to encourage victims of crime in Chinatown to come forward, particularly those whose businesses were located in BTK territory on Canal Street.
Because of his long criminal history and alleged underworld affiliations, Benny Ong had not been invited to the meeting. Even Virgo Lee had to admit Uncle Benny’s presence would have been a bit much. Nonetheless, there were others present with similarly controversial reputations. Manson Lau, president of the Fukienese American Association, presided over a tong that police believed had become a haven for members of the Fuk Ching gang. Also present was Paul Lai, adviser-for-life to the Tsung Tsin Association. Headquartered in a building at 1 Catherine Street, it was the Tsung Tsin Association whose illegal gambling casino had only recently been rousted and robbed by the BTK.
Paul Lai was the first community representative to speak. Standing before the group, the elegant, fifty-eight-year-old tong leader expressed his concerns for the community’s “image,” which was dependent on the appearance of a safe, crime-free environment where New Yorkers and tourists alike could shop and dine comfortably.
“This trouble with the gangs is not good for the livelihood of our citizens,” said Lai.
Other community members rose to put prepared statements on the record. Even those whose reputations remained unfettered by alleged links to Chinatown’s criminal underworld voiced concerns similar to Lai’s. The current situation was bad for their image, they reiterated, and therefore bad for business.
Near the end of the meeting, a slight, soft-spoken businessman with a wispy mustache addressed the group. Cambao de Duong, leader of the Greater New York Vietnamese-American Community Association, was a relative newcomer to Chinatown. The people de Duong represented—respectable Vietnamese citizens attempting to establish themselves within New York’s entrenched Asian community—were among those most directly affected by the gang problem.
Struggling to articulate his concerns in halting, heavily accented English, de Duong spoke of the unique difficulties faced by young Vietnamese refugees. Most came from families that had been shattered by traumatic circumstances, he reminded the gathering. In America, these boys were thrown into schools at a level commensurate with their age, not their educational abilities. Many were humiliated by the experience, and sought refuge and a sense of self-worth through the gang, where their desire to be accepted made them vulnerable to manipulation by the older, more hardened criminals among them.
“Where are the social programs and community centers that might help these youths feel they have a place in the community?” asked de Duong. “We are quick to condemn the youths for choosing crime. What do we offer as an alternative?”
The assemblage sat in silence as he made his plea. De Duong, of course, was attempting to address large social issues, perhaps even broaden the discussion to get at the root causes of Chinatown’s long tradition of gang activity. Most of the others at the meeting were concerned simply with protecting their own interests. The Chinese business leaders nodded and listened attentively, but given the tangled relationships that sometimes made strange bedfellows of Chinatown’s criminal element and its business leaders, nobody seemed anxious to talk about root causes.
After an hour or so, the meeting broke up. There had been no acrimony. Virgo Lee went home happy, believing there was reason to hope that the gathering—the first of its type among these people on this particular subject in the long history of Chinatown—was a significant first step toward making the community more open, more democratic.
For the business leaders and tong bosses who attended the meeting, the possible benefits were less grandiose. The fact that the elders had been willing to sit down with the Caucasian power structure was an unprecedented acknowledgment on their part that the problem did exist. They had been willing to make that concession for a larger gain, although that larger gain, like many things in Chinatown, was not exactly what it seemed to be.
To the tong bosses and some business leaders who participated in the meeting, the motive was simple. A pesky gang of unschooled newcomers was turning Chinatown on its head, and the elders had been unable to alleviate the problem, no matter how violent things got. For those with “alleged” connections to the community’s traditional underworld structure, the meeting would be deemed successful only if it fulfilled its ultimate purpose as a further marshaling of forces against the ranks of the BTK.
“Three of our boys get murdered and they have a meeting to discuss violence committed by us!?” David Thai exclaimed to Tinh Ngo and others during an afternoon visit to the Brooklyn safe house. The World Journal and Sing Tao Jih Pao, Chinatown’s two largest newspapers, both reported that the high-powered summit meeting at One Police Plaza had been held primarily to discuss “the growing problem of BTK violence.” Without even finishing the articles, Thai threw the newspapers across the room.
As far as he was concerned, the press coverage of the meeting continued a trend that had begun around the time of the cemetery shooting. Even though the ceremony had been held to mourn the murder of a cherished BTK member, and even though it was BTK members who were the victims of the graveside fusillade, these events were presented as further examples of Vietnamese gang violence in Chinatown.
Now this. In a way, it reconfirmed a self-image that Thai and his BTK minions had always cultivated—that of eternal outsiders in a strange, hostile land. The cops hated them. The Ch
inese resented them. Now the city of New York wanted them to serve as scapegoats for all the violence that occurred in the Asian community.
Even though David seethed with a sense of injustice, he knew there was little he could do. Thai had been around Chinatown long enough to know how unusual it was for such a meeting to have taken place. He suspected that some sort of strange, nefarious power play was under way, with the BTK being used as a pawn.
Already, Anh hai had begun to distance himself from his Canal Street operations. In the months leading up to the meeting at NYPD headquarters, Thai was rarely seen at Pho Hanoi, or the massage parlor at 300 Canal Street, or most of the other Chinatown locations he previously frequented.
In fact, much had changed in David Thai’s personal life since the BTK emerged as Chinatown’s most notorious new criminal scourge. Among other things, he had suffered a fate not unfamiliar to other obsessive, super-ambitious men on the make: His wife left him.
Thai had been spending so much time hatching schemes with his gang brothers, either on the phone or during visits to the numerous BTK safe houses around New York, New Jersey, and Long Island, that his wife had begun to doubt his commitment to her and their two children.
“You have two families,” she admonished David. “One on the street and one at home.”
Whatever disappointment Thai may have felt at his wife’s departure was tempered by the fact that he quickly acquired a new, far more understanding female companion. Among the seven or eight immigrant women imported to work as prostitutes in Thai’s massage parlor on Canal Street was an alluring Malaysian named Kim Yee Ngoh. Born in Kuala Lampur, Malaysia’s capital city, she went by the name Sophia in the States. Just twenty-two years old, she was five feet one and barely one hundred pounds. She had lovely almond-shaped eyes, silky black hair, and a head-turning smile that could be both innocent and seductive.
American Gangsters Page 74
