______
If you wear a disguise long enough, it eventually becomes part of you, another skin, so much so that not only do others define you by it but you don’t know how to be yourself without it.
I’d been playing the tough guy for as long as I could remember. Growing up with no real family to speak of; signing up for the Marines and heading out to Vietnam; surviving in New West. Still, I wondered whether the tough guy was the real me or just layers and layers of scar tissue. Upon leaving prison, I was determined to find out, to discover whether there was a different person lurking under the streetwise, suspicious, standoffish and much too serious hood I saw reflected in every mirror and window.
A good way to give myself time to figure this out: go to university. While in prison I had taken a few correspondence courses, history and psychology mostly, and not only enjoyed them but passed. So, soon after finding a place to live in East Vancouver, I enrolled at Simon Fraser University. My parole officer was only too happy to assist me in applying for student loans and grants, and they proved sufficiently generous to survive on quite well.
Everything was in place for me to remodel or at least reimagine myself, which I set about doing—but only to a certain degree. I made a few new friends at university and started chasing a different, straighter kind of girl. Still, I kept one foot on the street. I studied Hung Gar kung fu at one school and taught full-contact Kempo at another. Rubbing shoulders with no-goodniks is pretty inevitable at these places. I also spent hours at a pool hall, sometimes making a few bucks but usually just hanging out. Occasionally I’d get in on a poker game in the back of the place. More often, though, I’d play poker at a social club, Ukrainian or Russian I think. I’d always played poker—as a kid, as a Marine, as a prisoner—and I’d got pretty good at it. If I won, I tended to take home a hundred or two; if I lost, it usually wasn’t more than twenty-five or forty dollars. So, along with government loans and grants, poker and pool helped subsidize my life as a student. As did the odd middling job.
One time an acquaintance needed a storage facility for a bunch of fur coats he’d stolen from a store in a local mall. He’d hidden in a neighboring business at closing time and then just smashed through the Gyproc wall during the night. The place he’d stashed them at first was damp, and he was worried the high-end coats would suffer. I let him use my cupboard for a couple of weeks; when he came to retrieve them, he left me one for my services. I turned around and sold it for $2,500.
In general, though, I kept my nose clean. After all, I was still on parole and had no interest in finding myself back inside. During my third undergraduate year, one of my friends from university introduced me to his girlfriend. They were having a tumultuous relationship. Ray was a wannabe tough guy and Liz was a young campus feminist, flush with the fervor of the times. The worse their relationship got, the better friends Liz and I became. When they finally went their separate ways, she and I got together.
By then Liz’s family had taken me in as a stray. I had a linguistic connection with Louise, her mother. She came from a francophone family. But my real bond was with Liz’s stepfather, Frank, a tough Irish guy who had been a semi-pro boxer before settling down. He was the first person I ever told about my time in Vietnam and what I’d done there. Part of our bond may have stemmed from a shared difficulty with Christmas—me, because of what happened in that ville on Christmas morning, 1970; him, because when he was a young teenager he and his siblings had found their father dead in an armchair when they went down to open their presents.
After Christmas 1976, I cashed my grant check but stopped going to classes. I was about a semester short of graduating but had never really been in it for the diploma. I had been specializing in criminal psychology, meaning my classmates were destined to become the social workers and parole and classification officers of tomorrow. Having recently finished my parole, I’d certainly had my fill of corrections system functionaries.
A few weeks after my release from prison, I dropped in on a mixed martial arts club recently taken over by an acquaintance of mine. As I watched a class train, I struck up a conversation with another spectator, who turned out to be named Joseph Jack “Hobo” Mah. In the months that followed, our paths crossed regularly at different clubs, tournaments and the like. Occasionally we’d go for coffee; sometimes we’d work out and spar casually together. He became something of a friend, if not a particularly close one.
In many ways we couldn’t have been more different. Even if we were about the same height, he was built like a fire hydrant and had about seventy pounds on me—he probably weighed almost two hundred. And Hobo was all about bringing attention to himself, whether it was the long ponytail he wore down his back, his expensive clothes and fancy car, his fifty-dollar tips to waitresses or his outgoing, back-slapping persona.
Initially we never discussed any involvement in crime, past or present. Still, it had become evident to me after a certain amount of hanging out with him that Hobo was a crook of some sort—he just had too much swagger, too much money and no obvious source of income. But the subject was never broached until early 1976, after I had begun practicing Choy Li Fut kung fu. Throughout these years I was studying tae kwon do—I loved all its flashy jumping and kicking—eventually reaching sixth-degree black belt. But I had switched kung fu disciplines, dropping Hung Gar, which is well suited for taller people with a longer reach, for Choy Li Fut, a much more explosive style good for a person my size.
Hobo had been doing Choy Li Fut since he was a child, so it was only natural that when I took up the discipline we began spending more time together. He never explicitly stated his criminal business; rather, he just began acknowledging it in offhand comments.
“How’re things going?” I’d ask.
“Not bad,” he might answer. “Except there’s this asshole who bought an ounce off me two weeks ago and still hasn’t paid. I’m having to chase him all over for my money.”
Eventually I realized he was a heroin trafficker. And gradually Hobo began making overtures to me to partner up with him. At first he only proposed a marginal involvement—backing him up, say, on a collection he was doing or laying a beating on an errant debtor. I always passed, saying I wasn’t interested in finding myself back in the can. The more I declined, however, the harder Hobo came at me, proposing ever greater involvement, ever more directly. This meant an invitation, first, to get in on particular heroin deals and, later, to be involved in all his operations as a full partner.
Hobo was a member of an international Triad, the Sun Yee On, and had been assigned—or had simply taken up—the task of enlarging its eastern Canadian distribution operations. He needed someone who knew the East, ideally spoke English and French (for the rich Montreal market), and had criminal contacts. Hobo was aware I had done jail time, so in his eyes I fit the bill—all the more so because he trusted me and we shared a common interest. The fact that I had declined his overtures so often and over such a long period—a couple of years passed between his first proposal to do a bit of business together and his suggestion that we become partners—just made him sweeten the offer.
By mid-1977, every time we got together he would tell me more about his business problems. He’d complain about a shipment that needed to get to L.A., a collection that had to be made or a big buy for which he required backup. Invariably these laments ended with a variation on the same theme: “I could really use the help of a full-time partner on this . . .”
We were at a bar one evening when the ultimatum came.
“You’ll have to decide,” he told me. “Either you’re in or you’re out.”
“Well, if that’s the case,” I answered, “I guess I’m out.”
“That puts me in an awkward position,” Hobo replied in an uncharacteristically cold voice. “What am I supposed to do now? You know way too much.”
“Deal with it,” I said, closing the book on the subject for the evening.
I knew, however, that Hobo wouldn’t leave it at that for long. I had learned that his easy smile and jovial facade were just packaging for a ruthless businessman who didn’t let anyone get in his way. He could turn serious in a heartbeat, and although he was heavyset, his reflexes were lightning fast. He was in your face at the drop of a hat, the smile only a fading impression. Hobo, I understood, would soon push his case again. And if I refused him once more, I would be courting serious danger.
By the time Hobo gave me the ultimatum, Liz and I had moved in together. At first we lived in an apartment not far from downtown. Then, in the summer of 1977, an apartment her parents rented in their house came open and we moved in. The move brought me even deeper into Liz’s family and made me feel that a straight, regular life was not only possible for me but what I really wanted. In this way, Hobo’s ultimatum was a direct threat. The night after he leveled it, I discussed things with Liz.
“What would a regular guy do in this situation?” I eventually asked her. I already knew the answer but wanted to hear it anyway.
“He would call the cops!” Liz said immediately.
Still, it was an agonizing decision. I saw snitches and stool pigeons as the lowest of the low, selling out their own to get themselves off the hook or make a few dollars. I lay in bed awake all night thinking. Liz had gently worked the argument, knowing she couldn’t push too hard. Nonetheless, by nine the next morning I was reaching for the phone.
But whom to call? I didn’t know any narcs, so I just dialed the general number of the RCMP and asked to be connected to the drug squad.
“Gary Kilgore,” said the voice. “Can I help you?”
I told him the story over the phone, Kilgore methodically questioning me on every detail. When I finally hung up, I thought it was done. The police, I imagined, would launch an investigation and soon bust Hobo. I went to work and lay low for the next couple of days, avoiding Hobo’s calls. Then, on the third day, Kilgore called back. He came straight to the point.
“We’d like to sit down with you and discuss your story some more,” he said.
Within a day or two I was in a hotel room rented for the occasion by the RCMP, facing four Mounties in bad suits and full of false bonhomie. Kilgore was the one who stood out, largely thanks to his red hair and height. He told me that when they had run Hobo’s name through the system, the bells had gone off.
We went over all the same questions again, and then another time. I realized that I knew more than I thought. Names and locations took on new meaning. They’d ask me if I had met such-and-such a person and I would be able to answer, “Yes, he’s Hobo’s cousin,” or “Yes, he owns a grocery store on Hastings.” The whole conversation was taped.
As our meeting was wrapping up, they asked me what I expected as a reward for this information. I was taken by surprise, and a bit insulted: I felt bad enough about snitching on Hobo; being paid would only make me feel sleazier. I told the Mounties that I made a decent living and I didn’t want anything.
Maybe they could do me a favor then, they asked. Did I have charges pending?
No, I told them, I did not. “I discussed the situation with my girlfriend and we decided this was the right thing to do,” I said, not for the first time.
They finally seemed to get the message. They thanked me, there were handshakes all around and I went home. Still, I was left with the feeling that at least two of the cops didn’t believe my motivation. I didn’t give a shit, though. Again I thought it was over and done with.
Frank had got a good contract to renovate an old house, so I was busy and didn’t see much of Hobo. On the few occasions we did get together, he was cool and relaxed, not pressuring me in any way. I, on the other hand, had had my interest piqued. Even if I had no expectation of seeing Kilgore and the Mounties again, I found myself asking questions I’d normally have kept to myself. Hobo took my curiosity the wrong way; thinking he had finally convinced me to get involved in his criminal ventures, he happily answered all the questions.
Two or three weeks later, Kilgore called again. He was a lot friendlier and asked if I could meet once more at the same hotel. Sure, I said.
We went over the basics again, though this time I supplemented them with information I had gleaned over the past two or three weeks. Then Kilgore came to the point: the Mounties couldn’t find a way to break into the gang and they needed my help.
“If you could take a few weeks off work, we’ll cover your lost wages,” he said. “Nothing more—we won’t be paying you to rat out your friend.”
I agreed then and there to give it a shot. Liz was less than thrilled about the new gig, but she knew she had helped get me into it so she had no choice but to support me.
The investigation had no specific direction at first. I kept working with Frank for the most part, hanging around afterward with Hobo, meeting other Triad members and crooks. My reports helped the Mounties develop a portrait of the Triad’s organization and activities. In this way I met Tommy Fong, one of the most senior members of the Sun Yee On in Canada and the godfather of the Red Eagles, a street gang then responsible for extracting “tribute” to the Triad from as many Chinese store owners as possible in Vancouver.
With me on board now, Hobo began setting up a major deal that would provide us with enough heroin to expand into new markets eastward, and even into the U.S. beyond just L.A. He had always been in the middle of the food chain, buying his heroin from an importer who had brought it into Canada. Now he was eager to buy it where it was cheaper—directly from Hong Kong—and have it brought in by mule.
In mid-1978, Hobo finalized the details and laid them out to me. It was clear he was going to teach me to swim by throwing me straight into the deep end. Since he was on probation, I would be the one going to Hong Kong to complete the purchase of a first, sample shipment. If things went smoothly, we would make a bigger buy and then do regular business for as long as everyone was happy. Ultimately, he planned to buy ten pounds per month.
My assignment from Hobo excited the Mounties—the case would go international and could put feathers in a lot of caps. But soon a major kink developed. Gary Kilgore and I had become reasonably good friends and we worked well together. Then one day, without any notice, he was gone, put back in uniform and instructed not to talk to me. Another handler, Sergeant Scott Paterson, was brought in, and the transition was less than smooth.
Paterson was inclined to give orders, and I suppose I was inclined to question them. When I did, he didn’t want to discuss my point of view. “From now on, you’ll do things my way!” he announced one day.
My response was simple. “If that’s how it is, goodbye,” I said, and went home. The trip to Hong Kong was about a week away. But that was the Mounties’ problem. I’ve always had a stubborn streak, and now I was prepared to show it to the RCMP.
I was prepared to be just as hardheaded with Paterson.
The phone rang pretty much as soon as I got home. I told Liz to tell whoever it was that I wasn’t in. After two or three days the Mounties got the message: I wasn’t bluffing. So they ordered Kilgore to phone me and change my mind. He didn’t tell me why he’d been so abruptly yanked. Instead, he pulled out the predictable speech: “The case is more important than personalities . . . We’ve put so much work into it . . . Don’t blow it just because of some asshole.” That kind of thing. Still, I went back. After all, I’d been contemplating my options and they weren’t encouraging. I would have had one seriously grumpy Hobo had I backed out of the Hong Kong trip.
I was utterly out of my element in Hong Kong, and loved it. I’d get up early in the morning and make my way to the only McDonald’s in the city, a trip that involved a ferry ride across Victoria Harbor and a long walk through streets crowded with hawkers and market stalls and merchants opening up their stores for another long day. The noise and smells and bustle and strangeness were so far removed from Hull that I had the urge to call someone in Quebec—anyone, perhaps Pete—just to say “Hi, I’m in Hong Kong!” I didn’t.
Just as well—officially, my brother was here with me. The Mounties had brought me in a partner as a backup, Corporal Jean-Yves Pineault. We didn’t look anything alike; he had almost a foot on me and was balding. I also only met him two days before leaving for Hong Kong. Still, the Mounties thought it best that we pretend to be brothers. At the time I didn’t think it was a bad idea. It would allow me to credibly justify why he was there if he made any screw-ups. I also thought his size might come in handy.
Pineault and I were the undercover contingent. Backing us up were sixteen—count ’em, sixteen—other Mounties for security, support, surveillance, what have you. Many of them treated it like a taxpayer-funded junket (they brought their wives over or met them in Hawaii once the trip wrapped up). After all, what good is a Canadian surveillance squad going to be in the strange, twisting streets of Hong Kong? And since this was now a joint case with the Royal Hong Kong Police, there was more than enough backup to begin with.
The RHKP was a truly colonial affair. The inspectors—the RHKP equivalent of staff sergeants—were all white Brits. The Chinese, meanwhile, were relegated to rank-and-file positions and were not much trusted by their bosses. Of course, the Mounties were being entertained by the Brits, whose prejudices manifested themselves again when they were told I wasn’t a cop. They pretty much ignored me afterward. That was fine.
After acclimatizing to Hong Kong for a couple of days, we got down to business. Hobo had arranged for me to negotiate a deal with his fellow—but much more senior—Sun Yee On Triad member, Rocky Chiu. Rocky spoke no English, so we made contact through Davey Mah (no relation to Hobo), a lower-level, English-speaking gangster who had lived in Canada for several years before being deported.
When I called him, Davey acted as if we were old friends and I got the distinct feeling he was talking for someone else’s benefit. He would come to the hotel that afternoon, he told me. At two o’clock there was a knock on my door. The two Chinese men standing in the hall when I opened it couldn’t have been more different, but at least they weren’t pretending to be brothers. The tall younger man—Davey—had a huge smile on his face and immediately entered and gave me a big hug. Rocky, short, well fed and unsmiling, just stood there. I feared another hug, so I tried to pre-empt it by sticking out my hand. I didn’t need to worry. Rocky wasn’t the hugging type.
After introductions—Davey still pretending that he and I went way back—we sat down with Pineault and the discussions began. Rocky didn’t want any incriminating words uttered, so we used a pad and pen to write down figures, and words such as heroin or kilogram. After reaching a tentative deal on weight and price, we arranged to continue discussions about the delivery and scheduled another meeting for the next day. Further talks, Rocky said, would take place outside the hotel. Before our guests left, Pineault and I pretended to flush all the notes down the toilet. Thanks to a little sleight of hand, however, we saved them for the RHKP, who filed them away for court.
Rocky and Davey came by at ten o’clock the next morning to pick us up. The team was in place to follow us and, as if he knew he was being tailed, Rocky was soon driving wildly, turning here, doubling back there, until he came to a garage. He opened it by remote and, inside, parked next to a second car. He and Davey got out of the one car and straight into the other. Pineault and I followed. We were immediately off again.
Rocky drove us up and up a winding road, the houses farther and farther apart, until we were in open country—the New Territories, I later learned. Finally, Rocky pulled off to the side of the road and we all got out of the car. I had been certain for a while that the surveillance team had lost us and we were now on our own, but I didn’t anticipate the reaction from my partner. After Rocky and Davey started walking up a dirt trail, Pineault said to me in frantic French, “We have to make a run for it now!”
Even if I’d agreed, it was too late. By then two other Chinese had appeared out of nowhere and fallen in behind us.
“Do something and I’ll shoot you myself,” I answered in a voice that was a lot more calm than I felt. “If they wanted us dead, we’d be dead already.”
The narrow trail turned and twisted its way through scrubby forest up the hill. Finally, we rounded a corner and came into an open area where four more Chinese men leaned on shovels near a VW van. At their feet were two freshly dug holes that looked a lot like graves.
The urge to fight or flee seized me. I started to plan a move. We could take Rocky and Davey out and maybe two of the shovel guys. I wondered if Pineault would run or stand and fight. Although he was inexperienced, he was still a Mountie, so I had to give him the benefit of the doubt. But it was useless—my legs started to wobble as we approached. Still, the men did nothing. No words were exchanged. Rocky and Davey just kept walking past the diggers and we followed. Soon the whole line of us had filed by. A little bit farther along the path, Rocky picked a place on the crest of the hill and sat down. The two fellows in the rear dropped out of sight.
Our discussions from the day before resumed. Needless to say, we worked things out. Pineault and I didn’t drive too hard a bargain and we soon had a deal. On the return trip down the hill, we passed the clearing and the van was gone, the holes filled in. The empty graves had been a warning or a bluff. Nothing was ever mentioned, but it had had its effect.
Pineault and I would buy one pound of high-grade heroin as a sample on this trip and arrange its shipment back to Vancouver. If everything went well with the sample, we’d return to Hong Kong for the first of Hobo’s recurring monthly orders. This would be delivered to Canada by Vietnamese boat people Rocky said he “owned.” They’d be provided with false passports and serve as disposable mules.
Back at the hotel room, I gave Rocky $7,500, half the money for the sample. The rest was to be handed over on delivery, which Davey told us would happen on Friday, three days later. But on Wednesday there was a knock on my door. A young Asian girl, who couldn’t have been more than sixteen or seventeen, was standing out in the hall, looking terrified. She handed me a manila envelope and ran toward the elevator. When she was gone, I called the adjacent room and the team came in through a door that connected their room with mine. Scott opened the envelope and, sure enough, it contained a plastic bag of heroin.
The phone rang. It was Davey, saying he’d be by tomorrow for the rest of the money. Early the next morning, before ten, he came and collected the other $7,500. He asked me if I wanted to take in some sights that day and then enjoy some of the nightlife before going home. Having spent so much time in Vancouver, I think he missed the Western ways and speaking English. I knew that the cops had a reception to go to, given by the Royal Hong Kong Police. I passed on the sightseeing but told Davey I’d meet him at nine o’clock and let him be my guide through the underbelly of Hong Kong.
He certainly knew his way around. I don’t think I’ve had an evening of such concentrated sleaze since; I’d definitely never had one before. From one tiny and smoky back alley bar to another—gambling, live sex shows, full-contact fighting. I loved it, but needed a very long shower afterward.
We returned to Vancouver a day or two later, at least those of us who didn’t stop off for a Hawaiian vacation. One of the first things I did after unpacking was to phone Hobo’s parents. I knew from the cops that during my time away he had been picked up and was back in prison. The police cited a parole violation for the arrest, but the real reason had to do with the pound of heroin we were bringing back. The RCMP couldn’t let him have it—and move it—but if he was free, we couldn’t keep it from him without blowing the operation. He’d given me his parents’ number to call if he didn’t answer his own phone, and sure enough they told me that he was in prison.
A day or two later I was talking to Hobo through a thick glass barrier. He’d taken his seat with his usual bounce and swagger, and he looked healthy and fit. His hair was done in a long braid down his back and he wore pressed prison greens; clearly he wasn’t at the bottom of the jailhouse ladder. He gave me a big smile and said he believed the breach-of-probation charge was just harassment.
“My lawyer’ll have me out soon,” he said confidently.
In oblique language, without mentioning any incriminating words or details, I told him about the results of the trip. He was happy to hear the deal had gone well. Hobo indicated that he had never met Rocky Chiu but had spoken to him by phone on several occasions. He added that Rocky’s main areas of expertise were money lending and gold and people smuggling; heroin was a relatively new product for him.
Then Hobo put his palm against the glass. On it was written the name Al Lim and a phone number. With his other hand he pointed to me and then put his hand to his ear, indicating that I should call Al. Clearly, he had decided it was Al who would move his heroin for him. I quickly memorized the number. The proceeds, Hobo added, should be given to his sister, Lucy, though he wanted some deposited in his prison account if his lawyer didn’t get him out as quickly as he expected.
After fifteen minutes or so, I excused myself and left. I couldn’t wait to breathe the outside air.
My understanding of entrapment was pretty old-school: to cause or facilitate a crime and then arrest someone else for it. To me, for a crime to be a crime, it would have to have happened with or without my involvement. So if I were to phone Al Lim and sell him the heroin and then police were to bust him with it, would it be entrapment? I was mulling that over when I stopped at the nearest pay phone and called Scott Paterson, my main handler. Relations with Scott had much improved. He’d learned not to treat me as he might a criminal informant; I’d learned that he, like many cops, tended to see things in a rigid, hierarchical way.
I reported the details of my visit with Hobo. Scott said he would call me after he checked out Al Lim, but his first move was to call the prison and flag Al’s name so he would not be allowed to see Hobo or be contacted by anyone inside the prison.
Nothing came up on Lim in the system and none of the cops working Chinatown knew anything about him. So, not knowing what to expect, Scott ordered “close surveillance” when Pineault and I got together with Al a day or two later at the rundown Knight & Day restaurant on the southern edge of Chinatown.
He had to be the most unassuming drug dealer I had ever met. Tallish and thin, he was in his late twenties but still looked like a high-school geek with his black-rimmed glasses, his hair parted on the side and a blue nylon jacket. This, I thought, is the guy who can move a major quantity of heroin? I’d have had him pegged for a waiter or a clerk in an electronics store.
Al’s skittishness reinforced my impression. So I did my best to put him at ease, asking him if he came to the restaurant often and that kind of thing. Eventually I told him I’d seen Hobo in prison and that he was anxious to get out. Al didn’t seem to be into small talk, and if he knew about the sample pound of heroin that Hobo wanted me to give him he made no mention of it. Instead, he surprised me by declaring that Hobo was out of the picture and launched into the Triad’s new plans for eastward expansion, and Pineault’s and my involvement in it.
Both he and Hobo worked directly for Tommy Fong, the godfather of the Red Eagles gang, Al said. Tommy had decided that dealing with Hobo was too dangerous for everybody, at least while he was in jail. We had nothing to worry about, he continued, provided that from now on Pineault and I dealt with them directly and stayed away from Hobo. There was no choice in the matter. He did assure us that they would “take care of Hobo’s interests,” but I didn’t believe a word of it. Still, it was clearly an opportunity to expand the investigation, maybe even target someone as high up the Triad ladder as Tommy Fong.
Pineault was generally a silent sidekick, though I was always afraid he’d put his foot in it. I told him in French to play along but not to badmouth Hobo or commit to anything in case it was a test.
Al then said that we were to go back to Hong Kong to do business with a man named Phillip Yu. But, he added, if we wanted to meet Yu first, we could: he happened to be in Vancouver at the moment. It wasn’t at all clear how Al’s new plan was supposed to work. Was Yu going to be our supplier or a partner? Did he live in Canada or Hong Kong? Would we still be dealing with Rocky and Davey? The only thing crystal clear was that Hobo was out. I told Al, yes, I would like to meet Yu, and we agreed to get together two days later back at the Knight & Day.
Later that evening, at the debrief in a hotel room with Scott and a contingent of other Mounties, Pineault and I wrote our notes and the debate started. Should we forget about going to Hong Kong and take down Lim and company on conspiracy charges as soon as possible? Should we go to Hong Kong and open up a whole new front to the investigation? Everyone had a different opinion. Finally I told them that I was going home and to phone me with instructions. By the next morning the only thing they’d managed to agree on was that Pineault and I should go ahead with meeting Yu.
So Friday evening found us back in the restaurant, in the same booth, waiting for Al and our new playmate. I watched them come in, assessing Phil as he walked toward us. Now here was a gangster! Mid-length leather benny, black silk shirt, dress pants and well-polished boots. Shortish hair slicked right back. Not big—he and I weren’t far apart in height and weight—but he sure acted big. It all made for a menacing look. As he came toward our table, his eyes surveyed the room, checking all the booths and looking at everyone but us.
Paterson had run Yu through the system; he was, as they say, “well known to police.” But it was all suspicions, no convictions. Smart and dangerous, I thought—this should be interesting. I tried to mirror Yu’s attitude, and any warmth disappeared from my face. He stared at me, I stared back, and we let Al and Pineault do the talking. My input amounted to a simple yes or no when required. Yu said even less, just nodding when absolutely necessary.
Phil was going to either supply us with heroin directly or be a conduit to another supplier—but the deal would only happen in Hong Kong. Pineault finally came out with the $64,000 question: “How do we know you can produce?” Al looked at Phil and Phil nodded. Al took a package from his pocket and passed it under the table to Pineault, who put it away. It turned out to be an ounce of number-three heroin—coarse and tan-colored, almost like rice. It was the same-quality product as the pound I’d bought from Rocky. The Chinese, at that time, sold it that way, not bothering with the last step in the refining process, which would have bleached it to a fine white powder.
Phil then stood up, nodded goodbye with his hands in his pockets and headed out. Al, saying he would phone me to confirm everything, scurried to follow. But the understanding was clear: Phil was leaving for Hong Kong within the next couple of days and we would see him there.
Once the product in the package checked out to be heroin, I thought that was that: we had them cold on conspiracy and more—takedown ahead. So I was surprised when Scott phoned the next day to tell me the trip to Hong Kong was on. His rationale: it would keep Al quiet and thus safeguard the Hobo deal and, more importantly, it might allow us to get Tommy Fong upon our return. We were leaving in four days.
There were fewer Mounties accompanying us to Asia on this trip—perhaps ten or twelve—but there was more of a party atmosphere on the plane over. We already had these bad guys in the bag, we all felt. How could we have known that the Lord Guan Yu, god of the Triads, was looking out for his own?
Our instructions from Al were to check into the Sheraton Hotel, where we’d stayed on our previous visit, and then phone him in Vancouver. He would then make the arrangements for us to meet up with Yu.
Pineault checked us in at the desk while I lounged in the lobby. When he was done, I joined him at the elevators and he handed me my key. While we were unpacking our stuff, Scott went out to change C$20,000 into Hong Kong dollars. Instead of converting the money at the hotel—which offered a rate of HK$4.5 for C$1—he went to a private exchange operation. There he got almost HK$6 for a single Canadian dollar. In his notes, of course, he wrote up the hotel rate. After all, the money would be used up for a drug buy, so who would know? And who would get hurt?
He told us of his financial finagling when he got back to the room and promised to take us all out for an expensive dinner with the proceeds. Then we got down to business. The tape was set up and I made the call to Al in Vancouver. He answered promptly.
“Hey, we’re here,” I said. “I’m in room 425.”
“Tomorrow afternoon at two p.m.,” was all he said before hanging up.
The next day, we were all ready by 1:30 p.m., so we sat down to wait. And wait. Two o’clock came and went, 2:10, 2:30, still nothing. I called Al back.
“Hey, what’s the deal?” I asked.
“The deal is off,” Al announced. “I’ll talk to you when you get back.” Again he hung up. I called again and he didn’t answer.
To say the mood was somber after Al Lim’s announcement would be an understatement, especially after everyone’s cockiness on the flight over. We had barely arrived and already the trip was a waste. The only thing to do seemed to be to return to Vancouver, seriously chastened—and utterly confused.
Soon enough, however, intel from the local police had tracked down Phillip Yu booking a flight to Taiwan. He was scheduled to stay overnight and head to Vancouver the next day. The Mounties called a meeting. Tens of thousands of dollars had been spent on this trip and there would be no payoff. Clearly, they needed a plan, or at least a good excuse to give the bosses back home for returning empty-handed. My input wasn’t solicited. This time I went sightseeing.
Back at the hotel in the evening, I called Scott and was told we were leaving for Taiwan in the morning to chase down our elusive friend. We would meet at 7 A. M. hours to discuss the plan, he said. I arranged for a wake-up call and tried to sleep. Nothing was happening in that department, though, so I called Pineault and he dropped by. I told him that I had misgivings about chasing a guy who didn’t want to sell to us. He said that was because I didn’t know the plan and that everything would be clear to me in the morning. He watched a movie with me and went back to his room.
There was no meeting the next morning. Instead, Scott simply came to my room shortly before seven and said it was time to go. That didn’t clear things up, nor did anything that followed. Four of us—Pineault, Paterson, a Brit who I assumed worked for the RHKP and myself—flew the three hundred miles or so to Taiwan in a small chartered plane. Once in Taipei, we were taken straight to a downtown hotel—the Brit had our passports and we hadn’t even had to go through customs. We all went for breakfast, and conversation around the table was just general chitchat. Nobody mentioned what we were doing there.
Dealing with cops, I had learned by then, was not all that different from dealing with criminals or Marine Corps officers. Direct questions were best avoided and most everything was discussed on a need-to-know basis. If they had something they wanted you to know, they’d tell you.
After eating and lounging a little, with no mention of checking in, Scott announced that we had a plane to catch. Back we went to the airport and back to Vancouver. I never heard why we took the useless side trip to Taiwan. Months later, however, when I was testifying at the preliminary inquiry for charges that stemmed from our investigation, I got an indication of what the Mounties’ game was.
By then we’d learned why the meeting in Hong Kong had been so abruptly canceled. Criminals are as superstitious as anyone, and Asian criminals much more so, especially when it comes to numerology. My room number—425—was about as bad an omen as possible. Four is what the Chinese call an enhancer. If it’s matched with a good number, it makes that number extra lucky; if it’s with a bad one, it’s that much worse. Meanwhile, Triads use numeric codes to differentiate the ranks and roles played by people within a gang. Few are as bad as a twenty-five, which refers to someone who is a spy within and against the gang. In fact, calling someone “twenty-five” was common slang in Hong Kong, designating the person as a traitor or simply untrustworthy.
Thanks to all my martial arts training and hanging out with Hobo and company, I knew what twenty-five meant. But when Pineault gave me my room key, and for the rest of that trip and afterward, I didn’t put it together. Phillip Yu sure did, however.
The police didn’t know this was the reason Yu was a no-show at the Sheraton by the time we went to Taiwan. They did, however, know that his blowing us off didn’t look good. So, in the official accounting of the case, they alleged that Yu had moved the meeting to Taiwan. And we only went there to create a paper trail to back up this version of events.
I only figured this out when, at the preliminary inquiry, I was asked why we had turned down the Yu deal in Taiwan and put it off to negotiations in Vancouver. I skirted the issue in court, testifying vaguely that I was not the one making the decisions and did not question my instructions.
The day after our return from Taipei, the team reconvened at a hotel in downtown Vancouver. From the room we met in I called Al Lim and pretended to be furious with him. I demanded that he and Phil provide me with an elbow—a pound of heroin—that afternoon. I also told him someone would have to reimburse me for my expenses. Al, to my surprise, agreed to come by my hotel room with Phil.
Twenty minutes after the appointed time, they still hadn’t showed. Scott came into the room. “Okay, guys, write your notes. It’s over. We took them down on the way here.”
In what the cops had pretended to be a routine traffic stop, they’d found a pound of heroin in the trunk of Al and Phil’s car. They were promptly charged with a number of things, including the ounce they had given us at the Knight & Day.
“Doesn’t that blow our cover?” I asked Scott.
He said that they had sealed the indictment on the ounce while we finished the Hobo operation.
The man in question was still in prison, stewing. I visited him the next day and asked if he had heard from Al. He hadn’t. I told Hobo that I had given Al the stuff and still hadn’t heard back or got any cash from him.
“Don’t worry,” he said. “You can trust Al.”
Yeah right, I thought.
As it turned out, however, I was almost as deluded about my associates as he was about his. I thought I could trust the Mounties.
With Al and Phil busted, everyone realized that we had to wrap things up, and soon. We already had Hobo several times over—at least for conspiracy—but the RHKP, it seems, wanted more evidence at their end. That meant one more trip to Hong Kong.
Since Hobo was still in prison, I took charge of phoning Davey Mah to make arrangements for our next trip. He was happy to hear from me—clearly the money we’d paid for the sample pound was making him and Rocky pine for more.
Still, no one was eager to get on the next flight. It had been a pretty action-packed and jet-setting couple of weeks, and we all agreed a bit of downtime would do us good without jeopardizing the case.
For a few weeks back in Vancouver I got to know Liz again. She had dealt well with my increasing absorption in the case over the preceding months, but wasn’t unhappy that it seemed to be coming to a close.
We arrived in Hong Kong on the morning of Tuesday, September 19. Because it was the takedown trip, the brass went straight into meetings and I was again left to my own devices. I was cautioned against wandering around town; someone might see me and, as far as Davey and Rocky knew, we weren’t arriving until tomorrow. I stayed in the tourist area and called it an early night.
On Wednesday morning, I phoned Davey Mah and told him we were ready to go. He immediately said that he and Rocky would pick us up in half an hour. I was a bit surprised by his rush; still, I agreed to meet them in the lobby.
There were no hugs this time, barely a hello. Rocky, who was in the driver’s seat, looked straight ahead, saying nothing. We were soon flying down the expressway, then turning and weaving through narrow streets. Davey asked to see our passports. This was getting very unsettling. I showed him mine and demanded an explanation. He said the entry stamp was yesterday. “So?” I challenged him.
Pineault then decided to start chattering. We had taken a day to set up our part of the deal, he explained, transfer the cash, that kind of thing. Before he dug us any deeper, I cut him off.
“It’s none of your fucking business when we came,” I told Davey.
He asked why I had lied.
“I didn’t lie,” I said. “I told you that we were now ready to see you. You think I’d advertise that we were moving all that cash? What the fuck is the matter with you?”
He explained things to Rocky. It was hard to tell if the boss bought it or not. I looked out the window as if the question was settled. No one spoke until we arrived at a harbor quay. We left the car and got into a small outboard, which took us five or ten minutes across the water to a group of boats tied together with planks running between them. Davey explained that these were the Vietnamese boat people under Rocky’s protection. We got off our boat and walked from boat to boat across the planks toward the center. The water was green and murky with garbage and raw sewage floating on the surface. I had no intention of jumping into that swill unless my life depended on it.
The boat in the middle of the floating village was large and wide for a junk. It had car tires tied all around it acting like bumpers. I saw no cabin, just a large open space with walls and a canopy made of split, interwoven bamboo. The floor was covered in red and white tiles—it looked almost like a dance floor, I thought. A table surrounded by four chairs was in the middle of the room. A Chinese man with what looked like an AK-47 in his hands stood in the corner, staring straight ahead. This was no bluff.
After we sat down, Davey looked me straight in the face. “We got word from Canada saying you guys were cops. Are you?”
I took the offensive, standing up, pushing the table toward them, outraged at the accusation. “You say that, we have a right to know who it is!” I roared.
Rocky was looking at Davey, who quickly translated what I had said. After Rocky nodded, Davey said, “My friend Joey Howden.”
Uh-oh, I thought. I knew Howden from prison. He was a smooth, handsome and tough-as-nails career criminal. In Vancouver he had joined up with a crew run by another hood called Bobby Johnson; their main business was heroin.
Davey continued: “Howden’s crew has a cop on the inside who told them, and Howden told us because he’s Hobo’s friend!”
I sat down, lifted both my hands and forced a smile.
“Let’s see if I got this straight,” I said. “A crooked cop told Howden and it got to you?” Davey nodded but seemed confused. I knew I had him. “But he hasn’t told Hobo? Who’s there in Vancouver and is supposed to be Howden’s friend?”
I had to exploit the fact that Hobo hadn’t raised any doubt about us himself. I hadn’t told Davey and Rocky that Hobo was locked up, and I had to hope they didn’t know.
“Why hasn’t Hobo got word to you? Have you heard complaints from Hobo? If this is just an excuse ’cause you guys can’t produce, then just say it—don’t insult us with that garbage.”
Davey was speaking rapid Chinese to Rocky. I got up again. Now that I had them confused, I had to keep them on the defensive and make sure their greed for our green overcame their suspicions.
“Fuck this shit,” I said. “I thought you guys had it together! As for Howden, I’ll take care of that piece of shit when I get home.”
Finally Davey said the magic words: he apologized and added that he hoped the deal would go on. I grabbed the life preserver Davey had just tossed us and my tone changed. “I can’t really blame you, I’d want to know too if someone calls from across the ocean telling me shit like that.”
Pineault never said a word throughout the whole confrontation. He and Rocky had sat like spectators at a play. Eventually, though, Rocky waved his hand and the bodyguard with the AK disappeared behind the bamboo curtain. I had so much adrenaline pumping through me that my hands started to shake. Pineault noticed and took over the negotiations when we finally started talking business. We’d already agreed to buy ten pounds for something like one million Hong Kong dollars, half up front, half upon delivery by Rocky’s boat-people couriers to Canada. The discussions that day all revolved around process and the transfer of the first installment of cash. We told them we’d give them the cash once we saw the ten pounds and tested it. Finally, the details were sorted out to everyone’s satisfaction. The transaction would go ahead the next day at 1:00 p.m. at the hotel.
We shook hands and headed back to the edge of the floating village, where our boat was waiting to take us ashore. The trip back was silent and strained. Rocky and Davey dropped us off at the hotel. Once in the lobby, Pineault said, “What a couple of maroons.” We both laughed a little more than necessary.
I wasn’t, however, laughing once we were doing the debrief up in an RCMP suite and Paterson let me know how Davey Mah had got the goods on us.
Howden’s boss, Bobby Johnson, was accountable to two groups, it seemed: the Palmer brothers, who supplied him with his product (and who in turn got it from the Dubois mob from Montreal who got it from the Cotronis and the Mafia); and the RCMP. The Palmers supplied the drugs to Johnson’s outfit; the Mounties let them sell it. The former, Johnson paid in cash; the latter, in information.
The Mounties had long had visions of Johnson allowing them to work their way to the top—possibly all the way to Montreal—and were in deep with him. By 1978 their nasty and complicated relationship was already several years old. But Bobby Johnson was proving to be more of a liability than anything else. After signing on as an informant, he, Howden and a third member of their crew had spent a year in jail for the torture and murder of another drug dealer. The trio had been released on appeal. Still, the Mounties hadn’t cut Johnson loose—maybe he knew too much incriminating information about them. But his participation in the murder meant that he could never testify for the Mounties. So now they wanted Johnson to introduce an operative—an actual RCMP agent, I was led to believe—who could work his way up the ladder and eventually testify.
The scenario the police came up with could have been an elegant piece of infiltration; instead, it almost got us killed. The idea was to have Johnson pretend the operative was a crooked cop who could provide inside information on police investigations. That made for a hitch, however: to prove he was the real deal, the guy would have to deliver the details of a real undercover operation to Johnson’s criminal associates, something that, ideally, would soon culminate in a high-profile bust. Guess which one they chose?
The mistake in the RCMP’s planning was a big, stupid one. They blithely assumed that just because Johnson’s crew got their heroin through Montreal and Europe, they didn’t have any dealings with Asian criminals. Obviously, Howden and Davey Mah were good friends and Howden had been aware that two guys had gone to Hong Kong to do a deal with him.
“You win some, you lose some,” was all Paterson had to say about our close call. “Anyway, you guys came out okay.”
It would be fifteen years before I fully trusted a Mountie handler again.
If Pineault was angry, even somewhat concerned, that the Mounties had almost got him killed, he wasn’t showing it. Instead, he was happily in my hotel room reading a newspaper at 12:50 the next day, waiting to finish off what, for me at least, had become a very unpleasant operation.
The plan was simple enough. We were to have the down payment of HK$500,000 in another room somewhere in the hotel. Likewise, Rocky and Davey were to have the ten pounds of heroin in another room. We would give them the key to the money room; they would give us the key to the drugs room. While Davey and Pineault made sure that the other side was good for its word, Rocky and I would sit on either side of a table with a single, loaded handgun between us. One gun, two people—a guaranteed recipe for messiness if either side didn’t fulfill its side of the deal.
The RHKP had done its homework and got information that Rocky’s crew would have about a dozen people fanned out in the hotel and two getaway vehicles waiting at different exits outside. That was one reason the brass decided not to take them down as they arrived. Another was the building of a solid case beyond simple conspiracy charges. It was almost certain that Rocky and Davey would not arrive with the drugs; those would be brought to the hotel by a third party. But if they were to hand us a key to a room containing the heroin, it should be sufficient to get the pair on possession.
The plan was that ten minutes after Rocky and Davey arrived in our room, Scott and the boys would come through the front door while a British tactical squad working on behalf of the RHKP came through the door connecting our room to the one next door. Those ten minutes would give us enough time to collect some incriminating talk on the wire and allow the dozens of undercover police around the hotel to isolate the members of Rocky’s crew.
At 12:58 there was a knock on the door. I looked through the peephole and saw Davey looking back at me. I nodded to Pineault and he hit the timer on his watch. In they came, looking like Mutt and Jeff. Davey immediately put his finger to his lips and Rocky turned on the TV and cranked up the volume. Pineault gave up his seat for Rocky and sat on the bed.
I leaned against the dresser next to Davey. Each of us was very nervous but doing his best to hide it. When Rocky sat down, the bottom of his shirt opened and I saw the grip of the gun.
I started chattering to Davey about a ring I had bought recently, trying both to cut the tension and to use up time. Suddenly ten minutes seemed like an eternity and, this being my first takedown, I was imagining everything going wrong, especially after the events of the day before. I asked if he thought the ring was real gold. He looked at it and then passed it to Rocky. After some Chinese, Davey gave it back and said it was. Then we got down to business. Rocky took out his key while I took out ours and we exchanged them.
Davey wrote on a pad: When will you be back and get more?
I wrote down Next month, or something like that, and we exchanged notes back and forth.
At one point Pineault said, “Une et demi.” There were only ninety seconds left to kill. We moved into position. I made sure Davey was between me and Rocky. Pineault edged over on the bed, in position to hit the floor—as the RCMP instructs its undercovers to do in a takedown—but also in a position where he might jump Rocky if there was a screw-up.
I was shaking hands with Davey when, in a burst of sound and fury, the front door swung violently open. Unfortunately, none of us had noticed that the front door opened to the left while the connecting door opened to the right. The doors were so close it was impossible to fully open both of them at the same time. Scott, to his credit, led the charge, his three-man team close behind him. But before he was fully inside the room, the lead tactical squad guy crashed his door against the front door and Scott was pushed back. The rest of Scott’s team couldn’t see what was happening and continued to push in from the hallway. That caused Scott to trip and fall into the room. As he hit the floor, his .38 snub went off, the bullet exploding the mirror over the bed. True to his training, Pineault hit the floor. Scott’s team thought he had been shot.
In the confusion, I saw Rocky start to get up and reach for his gun. I still had Davey’s hand in mine, so I yanked him toward me with my right arm and simultaneously kicked him as hard as I could in the chest area. When the kick landed, I let go of his hand and he flew into Rocky, knocking him down.
It was then my turn to hit the floor, which I did. The precaution was hardly necessary: the guys were in and Scott had regained his composure. Pineault and I were whisked into the other room while Rocky and Davey were being cuffed. The door shut behind us. There was no point protecting our cover. The investigation was over.