Along with her exotic appearance, Sophia had an eye for business. Almost immediately after her arrival in Chinatown in late 1989, Thai moved her from the back rooms at the parlor—where young women administered hand jobs, fellatio, and whatever else was required to satisfy a customer in need—to the front, where she served as bookkeeper and madam.
For a while, David and Sophia lived together in a modest split-level house on Round Swamp Road in Old Bethpage, Long Island, a middle-class suburb not far from the city limits. For security reasons, David tried to keep the whereabouts of his house a secret as long as he could. But there were always gang members coming and going. Once the location became common knowledge to a dozen or so BTK members, David moved, this time to another split-level home in Hicksville, another anonymous Long Island suburb.
For some time now, Thai had been thinking about taking advantage of the BTK’s criminal connections beyond New York state. It was at Amigo’s funeral, when nearly two hundred Vietnamese mourners showed up from locations throughout the eastern United States, that Thai first began to think seriously about the gang’s potential for expansion. Mobility had always been one of the BTK’s more distinguishing features. With none of the family and community ties that kept Chinese gangsters local, Vietnamese gang members were free to roam, their common language providing immediate entrée to Vietnamese underworld circles throughout the country.
It had become clear to David Thai that in Chinatown, the BTK could extort, rob, and kill, but they would never be Top Dog. They were Vietnamese, doomed to be outcasts forever.
The realization had been painful, but illuminating. The time had arrived for the BTK to leave the confines of Chinatown, to take their act on the road.
Already, Anh hai had been laying the groundwork. In Bridgeport, Connecticut, a mid-sized industrial city ninety miles north of Manhattan, a BTK emissary named Phat Lam had established roots. Earlier that summer, Thai had begun visiting Phat Lam on a semi-regular basis, and together they opened a massage parlor. Thai had even sent Sophia to Bridgeport to oversee the business.
Phat Lam made a list of Asian restaurants, gambling joints, and massage parlors in the Bridgeport area, many of which seemed like easy prey. A handful of BTK gangsters with faces unfamiliar to local police could hit these establishments and be out of town in a few days.
The prospects looked good to David Thai. Only this time he would not entrust the planning and execution of the robberies to his more amateurish gang brothers. Lately, they seemed to be chalking up a high casualty rate with diminishing returns.
The time had come for David to fully utilize the skills of Lan Ngoc Tran, a mysterious, slightly older gang member. Born and raised in the coastal town of Hue, Vietnam’s ancient imperial capital, Lan Tran had lived through the heaviest years of the war. It was an experience he and David Thai shared in common, one that made their relationship stronger and more intimate than the sometimes remote affiliations Thai had established with his younger, rank-and-file gang brothers.
Most gang members knew little about Lan Tran’s past, though they referred to him respectfully as Bac Lan, or “Uncle Lan.” The story most of them had heard was that after the fall of Saigon in 1975, young Lan Tran had stayed in South Vietnam to become a freedom fighter. Supposedly, he followed Communist leaders to their homes, where he robbed and killed them. Once, he took part in the bombing of a Communist office building in downtown Ho Chi Minh City, as Saigon was rechristened after the war. After serving a few months in jail, where he was hung by his feet and whipped, Lan escaped South Vietnam and made his way to the United States.
In America, Lan Tran was a transient, living briefly in Texas, California, Toronto, and Georgia before finally settling in New York in the mid-1980s. Even then, Lan Tran came and went so often that, initially, some BTK members didn’t know he was in the gang.
Others who had known Lan for a long time gave him credit for coining the gang’s moniker. Supposedly, while riding the subway one day with three young gang brothers, Lan had nodded toward a huge subway station poster for a Hollywood movie. The advertisement depicted an American soldier in Vietnam with the words “Born to Kill” scrawled on his helmet.
“What, Bac Lan?” asked one of the gang members. “What is it?”
“Here,” Lan supposedly remarked, pointing to the slogan. “From now on, this is what we call the gang.”
Whatever its origin, the name stuck.
Lan was just five feet four, with a slight, almost emaciated frame, and clothing that hung from his body as if from a wire hanger. He sometimes changed his appearance. One month his hair was wild and spiky, with a yellow streak, the next short and neatly combed. His eyes were always the same: sad and squinty. His perennially jaundiced pallor made him look frail and harmless. But David Thai knew better.
Lan was a true killer, Thai told his gang brothers. A real professional. He was the ideal person to spearhead the BTK’s first foray beyond the familiar confines of New York City into the dark American night.
“You watch Uncle Lan,” David advised Tinh Ngo and others. “You listen to what he have to say. Lan don’t fuck around. When he got a problem during a robbery, he take care of it right away.”
At the time, Anh hai’s gang brothers didn’t really know what he was talking about.
Within a few short weeks, his words would seem like prophecy.
Chapter 6
“Do as I say, or else you die!” warned Lan Ngoc Tran.
He was standing inside the Bang Kok Health Spa, a small, neatly organized massage parlor in downtown Bridgeport. Lan’s English was heavily accented, but the message was loud and clear. Two young women in the reception area of the parlor cowered in a far corner. Near the door, Chin Suk Ruth, the proprietor, gasped with fear.
“Open the door! Let my guys in! Now!” ordered Lan, his 9mm pressed to the back of Chin Suk Ruth’s skull. Because he had been alone, Ruth had allowed Lan entry, no questions asked. Now she walked to the front desk and carefully pressed a buzzer, allowing Kenny Vu and a gang member named Tung Lai to enter.
“You got any customer in back!?” Lan Tran asked, barking at the proprietor as if it were an interrogation.
Although Chin Suk Ruth had come to the United States from her native Korea more than twelve years ago, she found it hard to speak clear, concise English with a gun pointed squarely at her head. “Yes, yes,” she stammered. “American customer somewhere back there.”
Lan nodded to Kenny Vu and Tung Lai to check the back. Tung Lai soon reemerged with a large, slovenly American with unruly black hair and a droopy mustache.
“Sit down,” said Lan to the American, gesturing toward a sofa against the wall.
“Can’t I just go?” the American asked, his eyes wide with fear.
“No. Nobody hurt you,” answered Lan. “We not here for you. Just sit.” The fat American plopped down on the couch.
The two girls were told to sit next to the American and keep their heads lowered. Lan Tran began rifling through the drawers of the reception desk until he found a pair of pliers, which he used to snip the extension cord on the telephone. Then he ripped the cord out of the wall.
“Where you keep safety box!? Where you keep money!?” Lan barked at Chin Suk Ruth.
She was nearly overcome with fear. “We n-n-not have m-m-money,” Ruth stuttered.
Tung Lai, the youngest of the robbers, stepped forward and slapped the thirty-eight-year-old woman across the face with an open hand, screaming, “You lie, motherfuck!”
Dazed from the blow, Chin Suk Ruth staggered to the desk and took out a metal box, which she opened with a small key. Inside was $1,800 in cash. Lan Tran quickly stuffed the money in a canvas bag he was holding.
One at a time, Tung Lai led the girls to the back rooms. “You give us money, jewelry, everything!” he commanded. When one of the girls protested, Chin Suk Ruth could hear her being smacked around, her cries echoing down the long hallway.
Meanwhile, in the reception area, Lan Tran
grabbed everything of value he could find—a VCR, two expensive leather jackets, credit cards, and other personal belongings. When he spotted a twenty-dollar bill that had been shellacked onto the wall for good luck, he carefully sliced it off with a pocket knife.
After ransacking the entire establishment for seven or eight minutes, the three robbers gathered everyone in the front room again. “You call police, you make big mistake,” warned Lan Tran, a rictus grin on his face. “We come back here and fuck you up, every one a you!”
Then they were gone.
It took Lan and his crew barely ten minutes to drive through the streets of Bridgeport back to the house at 223 Wayne Street. It was just after 9:30 P.M. David Thai and his girlfriend, Sophia, were there waiting when they arrived.
“Good,” said David. “That was fast. How much you get?” He gathered the bags of loot and handed them to Phat Lam, who disappeared into a bedroom to count the proceeds.
It was November 3, 1990, and most of Thai’s BTK road crew had arrived at the house in Bridgeport the day before. A few, including Kenny Vu, Tung Lai, and Phat Lam, had been living there off and on for months. As the designated dai low in Connecticut, Phat Lam was responsible for paying rent, stocking the house with food, and making sure everyone was accounted for.
Despite its seemingly innocent, suburban appearance, the split-level, wood-shingled abode on the outskirts of town was, in fact, a thriving bordello. For the last few months, Sophia had been serving as the house madam. David made sure there were always plenty of working girls on the premises by shuffling women back and forth between Bridgeport and his massage parlor in New York City. The bordello was closed while the BTK was using the place as a safe house.
That night, everyone in the house was given $200 from the robbery proceeds, whether they had been in on the heist or not. “Next time,” said Thai, “we get maybe twice this much.”
Over the next few days, Thai’s BTK crew ventured out on more robbery attempts. The most ambitious, a planned shakedown of a large Laotian wedding reception, fell through when the gang members realized the reception hall was across the street from the Bridgeport police department. But it would take more than one little derailed robbery to slow them down. They had a long list of Asian establishments waiting to be hit. Some would work out, some wouldn’t. The important thing was to keep moving.
For young Vietnamese gangsters looking to ply their trade, Bridgeport was a hospitable place, nestled on the northern banks of Long Island Sound. The city’s modest skyline was dominated by cranes and silos. Once a proud factory town, until all the factories closed down and sent their workers packing, Bridgeport was suffering a fate familiar to many mid-sized American cities. Unemployment rose every year and municipal funds slowed to a trickle. About the only thing that remained healthy in Bridgeport was the crime rate, which meant the city’s over-burdened police force wasn’t likely to pay too much attention to a group of Vietnamese criminals who preyed only on other Asians, many of whom never reported the crimes anyway.
One week after the Bang Kok Health Spa robbery, Lan Tran walked into a small Laotian restaurant and take-out joint on Main Street, near downtown Bridgeport.
“Don’t move! Get down!” Lan shouted at the owner of the Vientiane Restaurant after pulling his 9mm from inside a zippered bag. At first, the restaurant owner was confused. How could she not move and get down at the same time?
Uncle Lan was dressed in a slick, disco-style gray suit, his spiked black hair sculpted with heavy mousse. Tattoo-laden Kenny Vu stood behind Lan, wearing dark sunglasses and holding a .38. Outside, in front of the restaurant, Little Cobra stood guard with a .357 tucked inside his black leather jacket.
The owner, her husband, and her niece were all forced to lie down on the floor. In the kitchen the owner’s cousin, who was the head cook at Vientiane, was chatting on the phone. Lan Tran grabbed the receiver from his hand and ripped the cord from the wall. The cook got down on the floor without even being asked.
Lan cleaned out the cash register while Kenny Vu snatched an expensive-looking bracelet, earrings, and a necklace from the women on the floor. When they headed for the door, Lan pulled back the slide on his gun, chambering the round in the breech, which made a loud metallic noise. “Stay down,” cautioned Lan, “and maybe you live.” Then he and Kenny scuffled out the door.
Back at the house on Wayne Street, Tinh Ngo had just arrived from New York City, and David Thai was angry. “Timmy, what happen to you?” Thai demanded to know. “Why you get here so late? The robbery almost done now.” Tinh had been given instructions to pick up Nicky in Chinatown and drive to Bridgeport in time to help with the Vientiane Restaurant robbery.
“I was speeding and the police stop me, Anh hai,” explained Tinh.
As Tinh spoke, Lan Tran and the others walked in the door.
“How did it go?” David Thai asked Lan.
Lan Tran shrugged, as if to say, “No problem.”
Thai beamed with admiration at the cool and efficient way Uncle Lan conducted his duties, terrifying shopkeepers and restaurant owners without even breaking a sweat.
“Okay, everybody. Listen up,” instructed Anh hai.
While Sophia toiled in the kitchen preparing dinner, the gangsters gathered in the living room. Kenny Vu and Little Cobra, still pumped up from the robbery they had just pulled off with Uncle Lan, set their guns aside.
“Tomorrow,” said David, “we go back to New York. I want everybody get plenty of rest in next few days. Then we take long trip. Drive maybe twenty hours. We do couple a robberies somewhere else.”
“But we here only one week,” interjected Tung Lai.
“I know,” replied Anh hai. “This how we gonna do it now. This new BTK. We keep moving. This way, they never catch us doing any crimes.”
Later that night, Sophia finished cooking a large pot of pho and the gang members sat around watching a Hong Kong gangster video on TV.
David pulled Tinh aside. Whatever ire he might have been feeling toward Tinh earlier had passed. “Here, Timmy,” he said, handing Tinh $300. “This for you. For gas.” David rested his hand on Tinh’s shoulder and spoke in a grave, conspiratorial tone. “Remember. Not tomorrow but next day, meet on Canal Street and I have somebody out there to give you directions and everything, to go. This job a big one, Timmy. Big fucking job. Understand?”
Tinh nodded and stuffed the cash in his pocket. He was flattered that David was speaking to him directly, as if he were on a par with Uncle Lan. “Yes, Anh hai,” Tinh reassured his boss. “I be there for you.”
Three days later Tinh and the others were on the road once again, heading south along Interstate 85, which cut through the flat, industrial expanse of the eastern United States. Tinh piloted a Monte Carlo Supersport registered to David Thai’s brother, with Nicky riding shotgun. Tinh’s eyes were fixed on the taillights of a 1990 Oldsmobile driven by Tung Lai. In the car with Tung Lai were Kenny Vu and a gang member known as Black Phu. The two-car caravan proceeded at a brisk pace, stopping only for gas and food, as they hurried to their rendezvous with David Thai, Lan Tran, Little Cobra, and others who had already arrived in the small Southern town of Gainesville, Georgia.
By embarking so quickly on another out-of-state sojourn, the BTK had adopted a ritual familiar to young Vietnamese gangsters throughout the United States. Even before David Thai’s New York gang had begun to establish itself on Canal Street, Vietnamese criminals were making their presence felt in a surprising variety of geographic locales. Unlike the BTK, most of these gangs were not operating out of a huge, thriving community like New York City’s Chinatown. Most had no set base of operation. Secure in their knowledge that, as Vietnamese, they would hardly be noticed by most Americans, they roamed from state to state, city to city, preying on hardworking immigrants who were themselves existing on the fringe of American society.
On the loose in the country’s vast, rambling terrain, the BTK and other Vietnamese criminals were, in a way, mimicking the kind of
gangsterism first pioneered during the years of the Dust Bowl and the Great Depression. Legendary bandits like Pretty Boy Floyd and John Dillinger had also been intoxicated by the seemingly limitless possibilities afforded by a huge landscape divided into differing states, with separate criminal justice systems and law enforcement departments that were, if not downright hostile toward one another, sometimes less than cooperative.
Rootlessness has obvious advantages for all sorts of criminals operating in the United States, from bank robbers to serial killers. But for Vietnamese gangsters, the motivating factors were more than just practical. For most, their lot in life had been predetermined. As the residue of an unpopular war and the byproduct of refugee camps half a world away, they had no real roots to begin with. Like Tinh Ngo, most had lived unsettled lives, bouncing from foster family to foster family. Even other Vietnamese, those who were able to live quiet, law-abiding lives, saw these troubled, transient youths as lost and lonely souls. Bui doi—“the dust of life”—they were called by the older, more established Vietnamese, who both sympathized with and feared the young gangsters in their midst.
By 1990, more than half a million Vietnamese refugees had arrived on United States soil since the fall of Saigon fifteen years earlier. The first to arrive were those lucky enough to get out before or soon after Communist troops rolled into central Saigon. By airlift and by sea, more than one hundred thousand Vietnamese had been transferred to safe havens in Hong Kong, the Philippines, and other locations throughout Southeast Asia where there was an American military presence. By the late 1970s, the Americans were long gone and the method of emigration became more horrific. In a three-year period, from 1977 to 1979, nearly three hundred thousand refugees fled as “boat people,” a path later followed by Tinh and many of his BTK brothers.
American Gangsters Page 75
