The Lisboa turns over millions a day! That’s how come Ray can afford to lose so much.
—RUDY DIAZ
The Tomakazu restaurant was exactly where the Chink had described it—on the second floor of a glass and marble building that took up half the 700 block of Thurlow. Location, location, I thought, strolling the chichi strip in Vancouver’s Asian tourist heart. The 10,000 square feet of retail space beneath the Tomakazu housed a line of astronomically pricey boutiques, packed with platoons of shop-happy Japanese wearing tour-company badges. Within blocks were all the big-name hotels—the Four Seasons, the Vancouver, the Meridien—the latter owned by Stanley Ho.
I had a coffee across the street and plotted my next move. I needed to find out more about Ray Chau. There were some cops who might tell me. They basically moved through town like spooks, collecting information on likely targets for an investigation. I made a call, then another. A couple of days later a meeting was arranged for me in the Wong Kee restaurant on Broadway, where I shared a bowl of sweet and sour MSG with a spook I would wind up working with on stories about everything from Asians and Russian Jews to retired senior cops who worked for both. This was my first meeting with him, however, and I’d been warned he’d probably cover his ass by writing me up as an informant. That meant the usual criminal-cop info exchange rate would apply—a ton for him, an ounce for me—with me feeling like a snitch the whole way.
Over lunch, I took him through the entire Steve epic—Goldstone 1989 to the Tomakazu—but he pretended only passing interest, wordlessly sipping his soup and barely glancing at the paperwork I’d worked so long and hard to put together. After it occurred to me that he just might be up to speed on all this, I told him something that he didn’t know. If he did know it, Ray Chau wouldn’t still be in Canada. Back in February 1990, Steve had offhandedly mentioned that Ray had an old heroin conviction he’d neglected to declare when he immigrated to Canada. “That’s from Wong himself,” I said.
He finally graced me with a monosyllable—“Sure.”
“I’ll bet it’s still undisclosed,” I added.
“It might be productive,” he said. Sip. Sip. Sip.
“So can you tell me something about Ray?”
My spook smirked. “Oh right—that’s why you’re here.” He licked his finger and opened his pad.
Ray’s full Chinese name was Ray Kam Wing Chau, born August 10, 1949, in Hong Kong. The same immigrant registered as the owner of Kouzins Security, the bodyguard firm that had employed Steve to protect visiting Triad bosses. Ray had moved to Canada in 1988, the same year he’d married a woman whose full maiden name was Patsy Cheuk Ying Chan.
“All right, I’m positive that’s the Patsy Chan Steve went to meet,” I said.
“Could be.”
“So where does the family connection to Stanley Ho come in?” I asked.
My spook smiled. “Stanley who.” No question mark. He closed his pad. “You’re the first journalist I’ve ever talked to.”
“Obviously, but you still kissed me on the first date,” I jived him. “When can I see you again?”
Mr. Personality gave me his pager number. “See what else you can get me.”
“Tonight we connect the dots, baby!” I told Leslie on Saturday night, in a Thurlow Street parking lot. I holstered my minirecorder, we walked up the stairs to Red Robin, and turned right into the Tomakazu.
The restaurant was L-shaped, with a dozen tables covered by silky gold cloth, bamboo light fixtures above each, Japanese prints on the walls, and a karaoke stage at the apex of the L. As we stood at the cashier waiting to be seated, Leslie almost jumped into my arms when someone shouted, “Mr. Gould!” I spun around to see a pretty Japanese hostess of about 20. “Jesus—Wendy!” I yelled in delight.
“Are you digging up dirt here for an article?” Wendy whispered, conspiratorially.
“Only if they serve dirt,” I cracked.
I introduced Leslie to Wendy Akune, a student of mine when I had taught high school in the British Properties—one of the brightest kids in any of my classes, and a big fan of my gang articles. I wasn’t surprised when she told me she was now a criminology major at Simon Fraser University.
“Wendy, do you know Ray, the owner?”
“Actually I just met him last Saturday,” she said, still sotto voce. She picked up a couple of menus and held them to her chest. “I only started two weeks ago, so I didn’t know who he was. He came in and bought drinks for everybody. He doesn’t come in that often. He came in at two-thirty in the morning and stayed till four o’clock.”
“That sounds about right—he’s a midnight man,” I said. I inclined my head towards an empty table beside the karaoke stage. “We’re gonna sit over there. Don’t make a big deal about it, but if Ray comes in, just gimme the high sign.”
“Sure, but you might be able to tell,” she said, as she walked us to the table. “He’s a very important-looking guy. I could tell he was the owner just from the way he carries himself. He’s not a tall guy, though; he’s kinda short in fact—”
“Gangsters are generally short, Wendy,” I instructed her. “Like movie actors. You’ll learn that in criminology.”
Wendy pulled back our chairs. I opened the menu and said to it: “How about his wife, Patsy? Ever meet her?”
“No, I haven’t met Patsy but—”
Her eyes moved to the left and she shut up.
An Asian fellow of about 50, his long hair tied back in a ponytail, was watching us from the east wall of the L. He was bent over a table, his hands affably on the shoulders of a seated Chinese couple. The way he laughed and moved on to the next table, not at all shy about putting his paws on customers, told me he was some kind of saurian mâitre d’. He was definitely glancing at us with fixed interest all the while he beamingly jabbered.
“Who’s he?” I smiled to Wendy, as if I were asking about the teriyaki.
Wendy smiled back and said she’d get our waitress, then whispered, “Entertainment director.”
“She looked really nervous just then,” Leslie said, eyes above the menu, holding it high like a book. “I hope you’re not getting her into trouble.”
“For what, talking to customers? She’s a hostess, it’s her job.”
“I don’t mean her job,” Leslie replied. “She trusts you. You shouldn’t use a coincidence to put her in jeopardy.”
“God forbid,” I said, and I meant it.
I drank some water, chewed a Nicorette. The subject of jeopardy, I knew, was on Leslie’s mind. Increasingly, in the last year, I’d been roping her into my research on various stories. My face was becoming fairly well known and she was terrific cover in public places: she had a great body that drew men to her, a sweet bunny face that brought out the tender side of killers and cons—made them jabber when they should shut up—and a PR exec’s ability to flatter and manipulate. And then there was that cabby side to Leslie that allowed her to gossip with gang tarts in the ladies’ room, my tape recorder in her purse. I don’t want to imply I forced my wife into being my accomplice. I was winning awards, making money—she figured maybe I’d soon be earning enough for her to quit her job and devote herself to painting nudes at a bohemian studio on the east side of Chinatown. A night out with me now and then for research purposes seemed worth it to her.
There was something else, too. As long as she didn’t have to deal with panic buttons and cops camping downstairs, Leslie, at 43, liked the frisson of visiting the gangster milieu with me. She may have despised the foul-mouthed tacky bad guys, but she got a thrill playing Nora to my Nick.
“I know that guy from somewhere,” I said, staring at the entertainment director.
Leslie glanced at him. “He does look familiar.”
His black shirt was open three buttons, showing heavy gold chains. I sized up the rest of him: black jacket and pants, gold on both wrists and five of his fingers. In other words, the Chinese underworld costume, although as I tried to recall where we’d met I didn’t feel any constriction in my stomach. It couldn’t have been a bad encounter. Then I remembered—another nice break. “I should buy a lottery ticket tonight,” I said to Leslie.
I raised my chin at him and he shouted across the room, “I’m looking and I’m looking and I know that guy, but who is he?!” not meaning anything threatening by it, because Rudy Diaz was, at all times, loud and hyperactively friendly. I swung my arm for him to come on over and, when he got to us, shook his hand, introduced Leslie, and reminded him where we’d all met—an Asian-run nightclub, three years ago. He was the lounge singer, and I’d interviewed him. At the time, I’d been looking into the Lotus gang’s control of the entertainment industry, but Rudy hadn’t known that. He had sincerely thought I was impressed by his version of “Climb Every Mountain.”
“Right, right!” Rudy said. “You know, after that I was looking through Vancouver but I’m not in it.”
“Sometimes it’s hard for Terry to convince the editor to fit everybody in,” Leslie told him, and I thought, That’s it, kid. What a team.
“Because right after I was trying to buy that place. I figured, man, I could use the publicity!”
“Didn’t happen?” Leslie asked.
“Well, the owner wanted $300,000, just for the lease!” Rudy told her.
“There was some trouble there I heard, good thing you didn’t,” I said, not faking it, because I was truly glad he hadn’t bought in. Rudy, I believed,was just a hapless straight Joe trying to get by in the middle of guys who played by the wiggliest of rules.
I asked him why he didn’t buy this place, and he said it was even more money. “So get Ray and Patsy to help out,” I advised. “Except they’re not getting along, I heard.” I said it just like that, because with Rudy you could.
“No, they’re not,” he said.
“Are they still living together?”
“Yeah, they’re still living together. But I don’t know what the arrangements are. I’m not gonna ask! Sometimes, you should see Ray when he gets drunk—you know how he is when he gets drunk.”
“Yeah, yeah.” I waved my hand in despair, as if I’d endured that experience once too often.
“Poor Patsy,” Leslie said.
“One time he got so drunk, I thought he was gonna tear the place down. You know, Ray’s the black sheep’a the family. He’s got one bad habit: he loves to gamble.”
“Well, in Macau, what else is there?” I said. “And if he’s tied in with the Lisboa—”
“Up to date, last year, he lost eight million. Eight million!”
“In Macau?”
“Not in Macau. Here! Hockey, baseball, football. One time he walks in, he’s very depressed. I say, ‘What’d you do, you lost again?’ He says, ‘Yeah.’ I said, ‘There’s ten games today, which one did you play?’ He says, ‘All of ’em.’”
“You know who his bookie is, don’t you—André Ouellette,” I guessed. “The guy who used to own the Three Greenhorns?”
“Yeah, yeah, yeah! It’s the same guy!”
With that kind of action, I knew it had to be. A French Canadian, André Ouellette was not a made Mafia guy, but he had the Montreal mob’s license to run their bet-and-loan operation out on the West Coast. I happened to have been introduced to André by his braggart lawyer, Richard Israels, the top organized crime counsel in town, who’d scored 11 murder acquittals in a row, including one for André. In fact, Israels used to represent the Chink before the Chink had decided he could get good service from Hogan and Sacks, for one-quarter the price.
“Gambling’s not my thing. I know it,” Rudy was saying. “I went four times to the race track in Hong Kong—I lost. The odds are always with the house, not with you. I go to the racetrack, I bet one horse, I lose, that’s enough. Ray says, ‘Come on, come on, there’s still four more races.’ I say, ‘Enough—why give it to them? Give it to me!’”
“Patsy doesn’t gamble though,” I supposed.
“I mean,” I guessed again, “she’s always mad at him for that, but—”
“Yeah, they were in love at one time. But something happened to Ray. I don’t know. You know, I met Ray in ’67, when I started out over there. Then I left in ’73. And I didn’t see him. Then, about five or seven years ago, I saw him. I said, ‘Ray, what’re you up to?’ He said, ‘My mother kicked me out.’ I said, ‘Why?’ He said, ‘I lost money in the casino.’ I said, ‘How much ya lose?’ He says, ‘One point five.’ I said, ‘In a year? That’s not bad.’ He said, ‘No, one day.’ I said, ‘Ah shit!! That would kill ya!’ One point five million in one day!”
So his mother’s the connection, I thought. “Well, Stanley Ho’s the third-richest man in Asia,” I remarked, thinking, If Ray’s mother is in Ho’s family, one point five wouldn’t kill him.
“If you ask me, he’s the richest,” Rudy said.
“Ahead of Li and Cheng Yu-tung?”
“Apparently he’s even looking at Vegas. Ray plays down in the Mirage. I went down there and saw where they got that volcano show. I was impressed! How long that show runs? Twenty minutes? You know how much it costs? Even for Vegas?”
I was wondering when Vegas would come into the picture.
“And those guys that run those tigers there! Those guys get seventeen million a year!” He was talking about Siegfried and Roy.
“Chicken feed compared to the Lisboa,” I told him, bringing the subject back to where I wanted it.
“Well, the Lisboa turns over millions a day!” Rudy said. “That’s how come Ray can afford to lose so much. One time, when George was still working here, I went looking for Ray. I said, ‘Where’s Ray?’ George says, ‘Don’t bother him.’ I say, ‘Why?’ He says, ‘His mother’s in town.’ I say, ‘So?’ He says, ‘He’s begging! Ten, fifteen days is a good time to come back.’”
I tried to telepathically communicate a question I wanted Leslie to ask: Ray Chaus mother—what’s the connection? Out loud I said: “You should get Ray to introduce you to Stanley Ho.”
“He asked me, but I’ll tell ya something—” Rudy raised his eyebrows with an exhausted, out-of-my league expression “—Ray’s mother and Stanley Ho are partners in another casino in Macau, bigger than the Lisboa. But the thing is, they went public. So George invested two hundred grand. In less than a year, he got back eighty in dividends. But I didn’t have two hundred grand—if I did, you think I’d think twice about it? When it comes to gambling and you own it, you can’t lose.”
“So is Ray’s mother Stanley Ho’s sister?” Leslie asked.
“No, see, Ray’s mother is Stanley Ho’s right arm. In business. Not through blood. Because when Stanley Ho is behind you, you can’t lose. Because when people find out who your connection is—” He began peeling imaginary millions off his palm. “‘How much you want? Whatever you like, whatever you like!’ It’s sad but that’s how it works.”
“Yeah, it is sad,” I agreed. “You know—guanxi.” The Chinese word for good connections. “So is Ray coming in tonight?”
“I don’t think tonight. He’s at a party upstairs by the beach watching the fireworks.”
“Can you get us invited?” Leslie asked.
“Naa, this one’s private,” Rudy said.
“Well, if he’s drinking I hope he stays away from the balcony,” Leslie joked.
“Ha ha ha ha!” Rudy slapped her back. “Hey, come on, come on you guys.” He pulled us up by the arms, dragged us to the stage. “Whaddaya wanna sing?”
“How about ‘Climb Every Mountain’?” Leslie asked me.
I had another meal at the Wong Kee—and this time I told the waiter to hold the radioactive MSG. Over tame wonton, my spook seemed to like Ray’s connection to André Ouellette. “You can confirm that with Rudy,” I said. “If Ray’s a slow pay on the millions that Rudy says he lost, he’s in trouble.”
“Did you talk to André?”
“His lawyer. Israels was bullshitting with him about it and André says he doesn’t think Ray’s mother will ever cover it. I wouldn’t be surprised if Ray’s got some investments out there.”
My spook gave me one of his disinterested shrugs. “That’s old news.”
Jeez, I thought, is this ever frustrating!
“Okay, I’ll break a confidence and give you something else,” I said, although I’d already broken the confidence and given the information to Unit One, as well as to Dan Foley, the head of San Francisco’s Gang Task Force. “When I was standing there with Chuck, Ray Sam’s wife walked out.” The woman had left the building about a half hour after Chuck’s girlfriend, carrying herself like an aristocrat and getting into a chauffered car. “You know who Ray Sam is?”
I guessed he didn’t because I was able to hold his eyes.
“Ray Sam is Vincent Jew’s second-in-command. Of the Wah Ching gang. Chuck told me Vincent Jew and Ray Sam were up here that morning, swimming with Chuck in the pool. Then they went fishing out on Pender Island, stayed in Pender Harbor.”
“You shoulda told me that before.”
“I have to be very careful with informant information,” I said evenly.
My spook licked his finger, opened his pad, and started to write.
I waited. He looked up.
“So—we were talking about Ray’s mother,” I said. “Stanley’s right arm—in business, not through blood.”
He turned back a few pages—finally.
Fong Ngo Lam was her name, and she lived at Road House #5, Ocean Court, Clearwater Bay, Kowloon, Hong Kong. Administrator of Shun Tak Enterprises, Stanley Ho’s Hong Kong-based corporation, and partner in Ho’s Sociedade de Turismo e Diversões de Macau, STDM for short. STDM owned the casinos in Macau, a substantial share of its real estate, and the jetfoil ferry service between Hong Kong and Macau; Shun Tak’s portfolio included international shipping, real estate, television, and the aviation industry.
Would Ho or Ray’s censorious mother be aware of Steve’s existence? I wondered. It didn’t seem likely to my spook: a guy like Steve would have been operating several tiers down, serving the kinds of Triad characters who ran the rackets alongside Ho’s legitimate empire. One of the rackets was heroin, and the “old news” was that Ray was a suspected big league heroin trafficker. “Take Wong and times him a few times.”
“You got Ray’s address for me?” I asked.
My spook gave me a thin smile, meaning, I presumed, he wanted something for it.
“All right, well, it’s Patsy I’m interested in anyway. I know people that know her.”
“That’s a good way to work it. Let me know what you come up with.”
He looked at the bill but I took it. “You get the next one,” I said.