King Larry

by James D. Scurlock

  Neither age nor the plane crash had tempered Hillblom’s neuroses or his virility. He was still carting around huge bottles of vitamins and obsessing over certain kinds of foods, usually fruit. “At one point he was obsessed with papaya until he read in a magazine that it reduced your sex drive.” Jim laughs. “I ran into him in the airport lounge after that and he came running up to me: ‘Don’t eat the papaya!’” But Hillblom also loved fried chicken. The KFC on Roxas was one of his favorite restaurants. He drank gallons of strong Vietnamese coffee. And Hillblom was borderline obsessed with tuna fish sandwiches made with canned tuna drowned in heavy mayonnaise.

  “One morning,” Jim remembers, “I woke up late. Hillblom was on the phone but when he saw that I was up he offered me a plate of greasy tuna fish sandwiches. Anyway, I took a sandwich and then he poured me some coffee, but he wouldn’t get off of the phone. When he finally hung up, he turned to me and said, ‘Bonderman and I just bought America West Airlines.’”

  Jim was impressed. Like most of Hillblom’s friends, he knew that Larry was rich, but not that rich. David Bonderman was one of the most successful investors in the world. His buyout of Continental Airlines had made it the top-performing stock on the New York Stock Exchange that year. If Larry was on a first-name basis with someone like that, investing together and giving advice, Jim thought, they must be on the same level: billionaire.

  So when, a few days later, Hillblom turned to him, smiled, and said, “You wanna see something really different?” Jim’s response was automatic.

  “Hell, yes,” he replied. How often, he told himself, do you get that kind of offer from a billionaire?

  Jim followed Hillblom down the elevator to the lobby, then stepped out onto Roxas Boulevard and into an small, beat-up taxi that Hillblom had evidently rented for the occasion. Instead of heading to Makati or Del Pilar Street, as usual, the taxi ferried them to the outskirts of Manila, down a dirt road and up to a small building that had a single San Miguel beer sign outside. Jim’s excitement evaporated. Maybe, he thought, this was another one of Hillblom’s practical jokes, taking him to a dive bar that no haole in his right mind would enter.

  Sure enough, the first thing Jim noticed when they walked inside was that he and Hillblom were the only Americans. Worse, perhaps, there were only two drink options: a Coke for sixty cents and a beer for eighty cents. Then the girls paraded out from a back door onto a pathetic stage. “I thought that they looked eleven years old, tops,” Jim says. But the girls immediately ran over to Larry, eyes lit up, all smiles. “We missed you!” a few of them purred in pubescent voices. “We wrote you letters but didn’t have your address!’”

  A mama-san, maybe one of the girls’ mothers, materialized, but Hillblom already knew the price: twenty bucks per girl. A bargain by Manila standards, which explained Hillblom’s excitement. Jim watched as his friend chose four or five. His turn was up next and the mama-san focused a familiar dragon smile on his face. He chose the oldest-looking one—maybe fourteen or fifteen, he guessed. Then he followed Hillblom and his entourage into the back. Each chose a small private room furnished with a single couch, as they always were.

  Jim finished with his girl first and returned to the bar for another drink. An hour or so later, Hillblom emerged from the backroom and Jim followed him outside to the waiting taxi. On the way home, neither man said a word.

  Jim shakes his head. He knows how it sounds. “People in the States don’t understand what goes on out here,” he protests to an invisible judge. “There’s a very different attitude about sex. What happens is that the parents borrow money and then the daughters have to pay off the debt by working. I know that Larry’d bought several girls out of slavery, but after the plane crash, these girls were repossessed immediately by their mothers and ended up back at work. Who knows what’s happened to them all since?”

  It is, of course, a rhetorical question. Jim knows that I have no intention of trolling Manila in search of a lone San Miguel sign long since faded by multiple typhoons—if it exists at this point. Any trace of Larry or his girls has long been washed away. There is, however, one place where Hillblom’s trail remains fresh, a country where Hillblom had once hoped to build a third empire, a country steeped in guilt and mystery.

  Thirty-Two

  Vietnam

  Traveling to Vietnam is not difficult but it is not effortless, either. First, you must send your passport to the Vietnamese Embassy in Washington in order to secure a visa, which is good for only thirty days, and trust that the U.S. Postal Service will deliver it back by the day of your flight. Vietnam Airlines flights may not be booked over the Internet but only through a handful of government-sanctioned travel agencies. Since these do not accept credit cards, you must deposit the cost of your ticket into the travel agency’s bank account or send them certified funds and hope that they send you a paper plane ticket in return, which you are forbidden to lose. If you jump through these hoops, however, upon arrival at the Ho Chi Minh City Airport, a tiny old man in a blue uniform will wave you through customs with barely a nod, into an oppressive, smoggy heat. And you will be slightly amazed that your iPhone works perfectly—an unexpected windfall of information that, in my case, includes a flurry of texts that I am in the wrong place. My interview is one more flight away, in Dalat.

  A few hours later, I am sharing a taxi with a U.S. Army veteran who is probably close to Hillblom’s age, had he lived. The man tells me how he came to realize, ten years ago, that he preferred Vietnam to America. He’s on his way home to his Vietnamese wife and children, having spent several days viewing what he says are amazing Buddha statues in neighboring Cambodia. When I drop Larry Hillblom’s name, the man nods knowingly, then asks what happened to the girl in the photograph. Of course I know who he’s talking about, and I tell him that I hope to find out. He jokes that he’ll buy me a drink at Larry’s Bar if I do. Then he recites his phone number, which I dutifully punch into my iPhone.

  At first glance, Dalat is an endless honeycomb of tiny hotels constructed around a small lake where newlyweds take paddleboat rides as their elders, mostly women, stroll a walking path dotted with a few tourist restaurants. (It is the third place where Hillblom lived that is known as a “honeymoon capital.” I’ve been counting.) A two-lane road cuts past the small lake and through the city; a half mile up a modest hill, the taxi turns off at a cobblestone driveway, passes a vintage Citroën limousine, and finally stops in front of the Palace Hotel, a colonial-era hunting lodge with a sprawling lawn that slopes back down to the lake. After checking in, I’m escorted to a large room decorated with antiques and Persian carpets. The bathroom boasts an enormous claw-foot tub. Before heading to the restaurant on the first floor, I spelunk the sprawling basement christened Larry’s Bar, where clusters of expatriates are eating pizza and drinking beer beneath portraits of Hillblom and Nick Faldo, the famous golfer. When a young woman offers me a drink, I find it difficult to look away from Larry’s face in order to politely decline. I have a meeting scheduled with her new boss in a moment, upstairs. . . .

  “He told me that he came to Vietnam because of the girls, but I thought I saw Larry’s anti-Americanism at work,” attorney Barry Israel tells me a few minutes later, motioning toward a rather ornate seat in the Palace Hotel’s empty formal dining room. “On a plane once, Larry showed me a picture of a gorgeous girl—his Vietnamese teacher—that he was madly in love with. He hadn’t slept with her yet. I know he’s fucked a few girls here at the hotel.”

  Israel is the kind of man you encounter in airport business-class lounges: wire-rimmed glasses, wrinkled oxford shirt and business-casual slacks, doughy hands. Only a few months ago, Israel negotiated the sale of all of Hillblom’s Vietnam properties, including the Palace Hotel, to a Chinese investor group called Red Dragon. He has lived in Asia for a decade now—by choice or maybe by necessity, having developed an appetite for Asian women that he credits with ending his first marriage. But Israel seems almost fated to be connected to Hillblom forever
. Despite the settlement of People of Micronesia v. Continental Airlines more than a quarter century ago, a $70 million default judgment from the federal district court on Saipan remains on Israel’s credit report. That stubborn bit of Hillblom’s legal handiwork was, Israel tells me with a laugh, discovered by his banker the last time he refinanced his mortgage.

  “When I first started coming here,” Israel tells me, “they knew where I was and when I was coming. The police once knocked on my door and demanded to know if I had a girl in my apartment. I did, and she was arrested. Dalat is very racist. It’s the Deep South and we’re the blacks. Larry had to be brought to Dalat in the trunk of a car the first time because it was still sealed. The government thought that he was CIA. But Larry eventually hooked himself to a pretty powerful guy here who died three years ago.”

  By all accounts, Hillblom was the first private American investor in Vietnam, though doing business in a communist country would have been adventurous enough without violating your country’s Trading with the Enemy Act. Most banks would not finance projects in a place where private enterprise is considered public property, or where the law is, by definition, agnostic. (“How do you swear in a witness in a country that does not believe in the Bible?” an attorney will ask me later.) Vietnam was especially challenging. Shut off from trade with the world’s economic engine, the government lacked capital. The deal offered foreign investors was therefore that the government provided the land and sometimes the buildings, but the investor had to put up all of the cash for only a percentage of the business. The terms of Hillblom’s Dalat deal, for example, were 50/50; Hillblom put in $20 million in cash and the government contributed land and buildings valued at another $20 million. Each got a 50 percent stake in the properties, though Larry was solely liable for any cost overruns. The split for the Riverside Apartments he built on the Saigon River was much better, at 80/20. Phan Thiet, the last property he purchased—an unfinished hotel sitting on a huge plot of land roughly 120 miles north of Saigon that he hoped to turn into a golf resort—was divided 70/30. In his excitement to snap up three prime properties, Hillblom signed deals that he knew were less than optimal. According to Israel, he must have assumed that he could fix them later.

  “He bought Dalat for corporate retreats,” Israel says of Hillblom’s master plan. “Riverside Apartments for housing staff, and Phan Thiet for tourists. He saw Vietnam as virgin territory and Ho Chi Minh as a central hub. He was twenty years ahead of its time. He got properties no one will ever get again in Vietnam. The property in Phan Thiet is one half of the city. The Riverside complex is the most valuable property in Ho Chi Minh City and is next to the international school, which turned out to be very lucky because he built a lot of one-bedroom apartments. The properties here are the center of the city.”

  Over four years, Hillblom would spend $120 million of his own money in Vietnam and see only two of his projects—the hotel in Dalat and its golf course—through to completion. He would fly out the entire board of directors of Continental Airlines, including David Bonderman, to try to convince them to fly their jumbo jets into the country—something that has yet to happen. Finally, he would summon Patrick Lupo, hoping to convince DHL’s chairman to build a massive Asian hub at the Ho Chi Minh City Airport.

  “I’m sure at this time,” Lupo explains, “DHL must have just been a complete nuisance to him, because there was some issue I had and he rang up one day and said, ‘How are things going?’ And I said, ‘Terrible.’ I ran through this litany of woes. ‘You think you’ve got problems?’ Larry goes, referring to the golf course in Vietnam. ‘I’ve got fungus on my greens!’

  “In other words,” Lupo continues, “‘I couldn’t give a shit about DHL’s problems.’ DHL really became just a marquee, a cardholder for him.”

  But fungus was the least of Hillblom’s problems in Vietnam. Ten thousand ponderosa pine trees that he imported from California for the golf course in Dalat simply refused to grow. Theft was rampant. Staircases had to be rebuilt multiple times because the local carpenters did not understand how to build them. Hillblom became so frustrated at times that he would order the construction workers out of their earthmovers and bulldozers and do the job himself. But the Vietnamese were becoming just as disgusted with him. At one point, a fistfight broke out at a meeting with angry provincial leaders as delays ate into their promised profits. It was as though Hillblom had finally found a place impervious to his charisma, his wealth, or his carefully choreographed dog and pony shows. Trotting out Ousterhout and the other doctors, then the Continental Airlines board, then DHL’s chairman did little to sway the provincial governments in his favor if his lease payments were late. Nor did the economic arguments that had won over the legislatures of Hong Kong, the CNMI, and even the United States work here. Even Joe Waechter, brought in to oversee all of the Vietnam projects in February 1994—the month it became legal for him to enter the country—could not fix Hillblom’s most expensive and most intractable mess.

  Dinner with Israel is off the record. The conversation first orbits around Washington, D.C., because he is still a political junkie, a pedigree that dates back to his days working for Clark Clifford, then shifts to Israel’s wife, Tam, whom he introduces as the most beautiful woman in Dalat. Tam is also very ambitious; they are developing property together, largely because as an American, Israel, like all foreigners, is forbidden from personally owning property here. The next morning, a chauffeured Ford Escape with tiny television sets mounted in the front headrests rolls up the driveway, and I join Israel in the backseat. The SUV maneuvers in and out of morning traffic, then climbs slightly until the clusters of tiny hotels are replaced by forest dotted with provincial villas. Then the forest breaks and lush valleys appear below us on either side. When I tell Israel that, of all the places Hillblom lived, this feels by far the most like Larry, and that Larry’s Bar actually gave me chills the day before, Israel nods appreciatively.

  “Dalat is the San Joaquin Valley of Vietnam,” he explains. “There’s a huge amount of produce grown here and flowers are the biggest export. The soil is incredibly fertile. The Vietnamese, ironically, are the most entrepreneurial people on earth. It’s all small businesses.”

  A moment later, our driver turns down a long driveway with a massive iron gate, where a young Vietnamese woman in a flowing, brilliant white wedding gown is being photographed on the front lawn. Beyond that, maybe a hundred yards, sits a four-story colonial-style château that you might expect in the leafy suburbs outside of Paris. As a guard waves us through, Israel cautions against wandering the grounds; the forest surrounding the villa is peppered with land mines from the war, he says. My eyes are drawn to a couple of rusted artillery stations on the driveway’s edge, still pointed outward.

  “This was one of Bao Dai’s summer palaces,” Israel says as we circle the building’s exterior. Bao, a puppet of the French government, has become a symbol of the evils of colonialism and the people’s determination to govern themselves. His old villa appears neglected, despite the millions of Hillblom’s fortune that have been heaped upon it. The plaster is peeling in places and the green shutters seem ready to fall off at any moment. At one point, Hillblom envisioned this villa becoming a gleaming Las Vegas–style casino, but the government refused to invest any cash and by then he had run out. So instead, Hillblom made Villa Number One his frat house. “You know,” Israel says suddenly, returning to the reason that Hillblom gave for coming here in the first place, and inadvertently referencing the photo, “Be Lory was conceived here.”

  I nod my head. I had no idea.

  Thirty-Three

  The Photo

  Outside, only a few feet from the storefront, dozens of Japanese and German luxury sedans are emulsified amid one of the relentless rivers of Honda scooters that propel this city while the three of us—two Vietnamese whom I have met only this morning and myself—sit comfortably around a Formica desk inside a small travel office. All eyes are fixated on a small Sony Trinitron televisio
n as a VHS tape flickers to life, revealing the rolling lawn of the Palace Hotel Dalat, familiar from my visit there several months earlier. Except that this time, the lawn is full of people, mostly grim-faced communists in dress shirts and dark slacks but also children and a few familiar faces: Joe Lifoifoi, Joe Waechter, Po Chung, and Carl Gutierrez, then the governor of Guam and a close Hillblom friend.

  He appears roughly a minute in, dressed in a dark blue suit with a pressed white shirt and no tie. (Suits always hung too loosely on Larry Hillblom, as though he had not grown into them yet.) He mingles with a few guests, then strides to a podium planted in the grass, in front of the grand veranda where I enjoyed breakfast the morning Israel showed me the villa. The cameraman pans jerkily across the lawn, where the guests are settling into wooden folding chairs. Hillblom is awkward but clearly happy, almost serene. His leg is not shaking; he no longer parts his hair with his pinkie or beats his forehead with a fist. He apologizes for his soft voice—on account of the plane accident, he explains, which occurred only six months before. He draws the microphone a bit closer as the camera zooms out to a two-shot, revealing a beautiful young Vietnamese woman dressed in the traditional two-piece satin dress known as ao dai. The woman is a translator. She dutifully repeats his apology, then turns to him and bows her head slightly.