Born to Kill (2 page)

Tinh Ngo, for one, could not help but feel a near overwhelming sense of pride. And he knew they owed it all to one man: David Thai, known to the gathering as
Anh hai
. Literally,
anh hai
meant “number two brother.” In Vietnamese families,
anh hai
was second only to the father; he was the wisest and most esteemed brother of all.

Standing at the head of the crowd, directly in front of Amigo's grave, David Thai exuded authority. At thirty-four, he was ten to fifteen years older than most of the gang's rank-and-file
sai lows
, or “little brothers.” Where many young Vietnamese were awkward and unpolished in public, David was regal. His handsomeness and smooth demeanor were exceeded only by his seemingly genuine concern for the welfare of his gang brothers.

To Tinh,
Anh hai
was a prince. He and the others willingly entrusted their futures to David Thai. And they would continue to do so, no matter how many home invasions, bombings, cold-blooded killings, and other outrageous acts of mayhem he asked them to commit.

A soothing summer breeze rustled the treetops, sending the aroma of incense wafting through the cemetery. A crew of grounds keepers siphoned water from the open grave with a gas-powered pump, then readied the casket to be lowered into the earth.

“Who those people?” whispered Tinh, to no one in particular.

A number of nearby gang members looked to see what Tinh was talking about. In the distance, three young males approached, bearing flowers. They wore black sunglasses, just like everyone else, and long black overcoats that fluttered gracefully in the wind. Although they were not readily familiar to Tinh or the others, they were definitely Asian, perhaps Chinese-Vietnamese. Many of the mourners were themselves
Viet-Ching
—ethnic Chinese born in Vietnam—so this was no great cause for alarm.

These strangers, however, were unusually purposeful as they neared the crowd, walking in unison. When they got to within twenty feet of the mourners, they abruptly came to a halt.

Tinh was one of the first to dive for cover. He saw the lead stranger toss his bouquet of flowers aside. The other two seemed to throw theirs in the air. All three produced guns that glistened in the midday sun.

The harsh, staccato rhythms of automatic gunfire rang out, decimating the afternoon calm. At first, many in the crowd seemed to think
it was fireworks, a common sound at Vietnamese and Chinese ceremonies. Then a couple of the mourners went down, struck by bullets. “Where's the gun!?” a gang member shouted. “Who fire!?” shouted another.

Utter pandemonium ensued, with people screaming and scurrying for cover. The leader of the grounds crew, a beefy African American, dove headfirst into Amigo's open grave. Many of the mourners crawled behind tombstones for protection. The gunmen used an Uzi submachine gun and a .12-gauge pump-action shotgun, spraying the gathering with no specific target in mind.

Tinh saw one of the mourners take a bullet in the hand; another was hit in the leg. A lone gang member pulled out a handgun and returned fire while fleeing through the cemetery, toppling tombstones. Later, the gang members would curse themselves for not having been properly armed, but who could have guessed rival gangsters would dare to seek retribution on such hallowed ground? Earlier, perhaps, on the already bloodstained streets of Chinatown, but not here, where even your worst enemies are supposed to have the right to peacefully bury their dead.

The sound of gunfire echoed sporadically through the cemetery. Peering from behind a small tombstone, Tinh saw one of the gunmen getting closer and closer. He knew he had to make a run for it.

Tinh fled past dozens of mourners lying on the ground, some who had been hit, some pretending they were dead, hoping the gunmen would pass them by. He snaked his way through rows of tombstones until he arrived at the chain-link fence, where more gang members were frantically trying to escape. Both male and female mourners clawed at the fence, tearing their clothes and lacerating their flesh on the sharp metal.

A few made it over, running along the shoulder of the highway to safety. Dozens more collapsed in the excitement and exhaustion of the moment. It seemed as if a good half hour had passed, but it was more like sixty seconds when the gunfire finally subsided, to be replaced by the sound of approaching sirens. In all the confusion, the gunmen vanished as mysteriously as they had arrived.

When Al Kroboth got there, the cops had already begun rounding up what was left of the mourners. A strapping six feet five inches tall,
Kroboth was the cemetery's head grounds keeper and director of security. He was also a veteran of the Vietnam War. For nearly three years Kroboth had traversed the jungles and rice fields of Indochina. He'd seen plenty of combat and eventually spent fifteen months in a cage as a prisoner of the North Vietnamese.

Kroboth surveyed the damage: A medevac helicopter had landed in the middle of the cemetery, and the injured were being loaded on stretchers to be taken to a nearby hospital in Newark that specialized in gunshot wounds. Seven people had been hit, dozens more trampled while fleeing the barrage of gunfire or badly cut while attempting to scale the metal fence. Medical personnel and local police tended to the others—one hundred or so young Vietnamese still traumatized by the sudden fury of the attack. As the chopper drifted skyward and the remaining wounded moaned in pain, Kroboth couldn't help but be reminded of battlefields he'd seen a long time ago, in a country most of these mourners called home.

At the Linden police station, New Jersey cops struggled to understand what were, to them, nearly indecipherable accents and names, though most of the names were probably fictitious anyway. Of the nearly one hundred mourners brought in for questioning—including Tinh Ngo—only two carried identification. The cops scratched their heads and made phone calls, trying to find out whatever they could about a group of gangsters they hadn't even known existed until today.

In the days that followed, the cemetery shootout would become a popular news item, receiving fervid coverage locally and in the national media. Since the perpetrators were not yet known, accounts tended to focus on the targets of the shooting: the Vietnamese. Few journalists could resist the angle that these gangsters, born in a country brutalized by a shameful war, appeared to respect no one—not even the dead. Forevermore, the shooting at Rosedale Memorial Park Cemetery would be remembered as a defining event, the moment at which the idea of Vietnamese gangsters in America entered the national consciousness.

Truth was, the problem had been brewing for some time. Across America, the face of organized crime was changing, and the old-world courtesies of the past no longer applied. The underworld was now an ethnic polyglot, with a new generation of gangsters taking over where the Irish, the Jews, and the Italians left off. Only now, a new ingredient
had been added to the melting pot: a nihilistic, unconscionable type of violence that harked back to a dark, troubling era in American history. An era when U.S. soldiers stormed hamlets and bamboo huts in places like Danang, Khe San, and Nha Trang while terrified, wide-eyed children cowered in dark corners.

To those throughout mainstream America who took the time to acknowledge what was happening, it was as if their worst fears were being realized. U.S. foreign policy had come home to roost, and the untidy residue of the Vietnam War had taken on yet another ugly, unexpected permutation.

For Tinh Ngo and the others who had become identified with the gang known as Born to Kill, the consequences were even more immediate. For years, they had struggled to survive, to find their place within a society that did not seem to want them. For a time they drifted aimlessly, like small sampans on a large, turbulent ocean. Eventually, they banded together in cities and small towns throughout the United States, and they had begun to pursue their own unique version of the American dream.

Theirs was a brotherhood born of trauma, sealed in bloodshed. A brotherhood that had first begun to coalesce many months earlier in the bustling restaurants, pool halls, and back alleys of New York City's Chinatown.

PART ONE

The Gang

W
hen men lack a sense of awe,

there will be disaster.

—L
AO
-T
ZU
              
The Tao-te Ching
(sixth century
B.C.
)

Chapter 1

T
he group of five young males stood in the dingy second-floor hallway of an old industrial building, banging on a door.

“Who's there?” asked a middle-aged woman on the other side.

“It's me, Tommy. Tommy Vu,” answered one of them. Behind him, the others waited anxiously, puffing on cigarettes, staring at the floor.

The woman looked through a peephole, then slid back the latch on the door's cast-iron, dead-bolt lock. When she opened the door, a pale golden light from the hallway streamed into the front room of her small, unadorned massage parlor.

Tommy Vu entered, followed by the other youths. All were in their late teens or early twenties. Dressed mostly in black, with assorted punk hairstyles and glaring tattoos, they swaggered and blew streams of cigarette smoke in the air, exhibiting the general demeanor of bad boys on the prowl. Normally, the woman—an experienced madam—would have been worried at opening the door to a handful of such raffish
youths. It
was
one o'clock in the morning, and it wouldn't have been the first time her establishment—located at 59 Chrystie Street on the outskirts of Chinatown—was robbed by gangsters. But the woman recognized Tommy. Many times he had come to her massage parlor as a customer and enjoyed the ministrations of her stable of young females.

Seated around the room on an upholstered sofa and matching chair, a half dozen smooth-skinned Korean and Malaysian ladies looked expectantly toward the young men. A few of the women straightened their tight-fitting dresses and sought to catch the boys' attention with shy smiles and coquettish glances. Tommy and his companions seemed preoccupied, and they avoided eye contact.

A security person stepped forward—a Chinese male in his thirties. “Hey, these guys look kind of young.” Turning to Tommy, he asked, “You got some ID?”

Tommy sniffled. “Yeah. This my ID.” He pulled a 9mm from inside his jacket and stuck it in the guy's face.

With that, all hell broke loose.

“Get down! Everybody! On the floor!” shouted Blackeyes, the tallest of the group, immediately assuming the role of leader.

“Cooperate!” commanded Kenny Vu, Tommy Vu's brother. “Cooperate or we will kill you.” All five of the young hoodlums waved handguns in the air.

The girls immediately dropped to the floor. The security guy also lay flat on his belly. Blackeyes instructed Tommy Vu, Kenny Vu, and a member of the crew named Andy to check the back rooms. Then he turned to Tinh Ngo, who seemed to be almost cowering in the background. “Timmy, you check basement. See who down there,” he ordered.

Holding a .22-caliber pistol, his face moist with perspiration, Tinh didn't even try to hide his nervousness. This was his first armed robbery, and as the others began rounding up the employees and customers, he froze in his tracks.

“
Go!
” barked Blackeyes.

Tinh headed out the front door and down the hallway to the rear of the building. He descended a set of steep, rickety stairs, not knowing what to expect, his gun pointed straight ahead.

He had already convinced himself that if the occasion arose, he would try not to shoot anybody. Tinh hadn't had much experience with
guns. In recent months, he had carried a weapon during numerous muggings of people in subway stations, but mostly just for show. Often the gun wasn't even loaded. In his apartment, he would stand in front of a mirror, whip out a gun, and pull the trigger, just like in the old movie Westerns. But he had never actually fired a loaded weapon, much less into the body of a living human being.

He was told not to worry. Blackeyes and the others had robbed many massage parlors before. “We just go in, take the money, say bye-bye,” Blackeyes explained.

Robbing a massage parlor wasn't like robbing a legitimate establishment. Thinly veiled houses of prostitution, the parlors were big juicy chickens just waiting to be plucked. There was always plenty of loose cash on the premises. And since it was an illegal business, the owners weren't likely to call the police and file a report. About the only thing you needed to worry about was the possibility that the parlor was under the protection of a rival gang, in which case there were likely to be armed security guys hidden somewhere on the premises.

Tinh crept slowly down the dank basement hallway. From somewhere, he could hear the sound of a television playing a Chinese-language program. He came to an open doorway and peered inside. A man stood facing the TV. At roughly six feet tall, he looked like a giant to Tinh, who was short and small-boned and had a blank, wide-eyed face that made him look about fourteen, though he was actually three years older than that.

Sensing trouble, the man's head turned; his and Tinh's eyes met.

Without hesitation, Tinh ran, darting down the hallway, up the stairs, and back into the massage parlor. “Blackeyes,” he gasped, still winded from the run, “somebody down there. Big Chinese guy.”

“Yeah?” said Blackeyes. “Okay, I take care of it. You help the others.”

Tommy, Kenny, and Andy had already gathered the employees and patrons in the front room. With Tinh's assistance, they began taking the girls one by one to the small massage rooms that lined a back hallway, forcing them to produce cash, jewelry, and other hidden valuables. Tinh noticed his companions were waving their guns around, cursing and treating the girls roughly.

“Move, bitch!” Tinh shouted, imitating the others. “Give us the
money!” He saw the fear in the girls' faces and felt the pure adrenaline rush of doing something dangerous, something he knew was wrong. It reminded him of the terror that had been wrought by robbers and rapists on the refugee boats during his long, horrific voyage out of Vietnam. Tinh's heart beat fast and the hair on the back of his neck tingled. For a change, he knew what it felt like to be the one instilling fear rather than recoiling in its wake.