Born to Kill (6 page)

A hardened, headstrong youth, Thai survived in the Big City by bouncing from job to job, working as a waiter and busboy in Manhattan restaurants. For a time, he washed dishes in the kitchen of the Rainbow Room, a plush, upscale eatery on the top floor of the sixty-five-story RCA building in midtown. There, Thai would gaze out the window at the bejeweled expanse of New York City and the surrounding area, an aching reminder of just how far from home and hearth he had been cast.

The pressures of maintaining a steady income were brought to bear in 1978, when Thai met and married Lan Pham, a nineteen-year-old fellow refugee from the city of Danang. They had met when David briefly attended New York University, where Lan Pham was also a student. Within months, Lan became pregnant with their first child. They both dropped out of school and moved into a cramped studio apartment in Hell's Kitchen, a notoriously rough Manhattan neighborhood.

Being a busboy or waiter was okay if you had only yourself to support. But to be an adequate provider, a young man with a family needed something more.

Since arriving in New York, David had spent a considerable amount of time in Chinatown. At first, it had been merely to soak in the familiar sights, smells, and cuisine of a thriving Asian community. Before long, David was making daily trips to Canal Street to explore the economic possibilities.

In New York's Chinatown, there was no such thing as an independent operator. For a young person hoping to get started in a business that could be deemed illegal or even criminal, there was an elaborate protocol that had to be followed, one that often began with membership in a youth gang.

Sometime in 1983, David Thai became a member of the Flying Dragons, one of Chinatown's largest gangs. The Dragons controlled an area of the city near Pell Street, in central Chinatown. Dozens of restaurants, grocery stores, and other commercial ventures were located in the district. Since the early 1970s, the Flying Dragons had served as both plunderer and defender of the region and had engaged in frequent turf wars with their primary rivals, the Ghost Shadows, another strong Chinatown gang.

Because he was Vietnamese, David Thai knew he would never amount to much as a Dragon. There were few Vietnamese in Chinatown in the early 1980s. David and a handful of others were allowed to form a smaller unit known as the Vietnamese Flying Dragons, but they were cut off from the gang's more lucrative rackets. Established Chinese gangsters tended to view the Vietnamese as “coffee boys,” using them to run errands or, in some cases, commit the more dangerous and violent crimes that might result in jail time or death.

David wasn't a very active member of the Dragons. Although he took part in a few robberies, he was never arrested and never did time in prison. He didn't seem to have much interest in the dirty hands-on work of being a gangster. Although few people knew it at the time, his criminal affiliations were a purely practical consideration; mostly, he was creating a base for his future ambitions.

In late 1987, Thai began positioning himself to branch off on his own. The time was right. After years of allowing the gangs to rage virtually uncontested, law enforcement had cracked down. The previous year, the rival Ghost Shadows had been hit with a massive racketeering
indictment that sent twenty-one of its members off to prison. A few months later eight members of the United Bamboo, a Chinatown gang with strong ties to the Taiwanese government, were convicted on similar charges. Chinatown's traditional gang structure had never been weaker.

Weaned on Saigon's thriving black-market economy, Thai knew an opportunity when he saw one. Already, he had established an impressive economic foundation with his budding counterfeit watch business on Canal Street. All he lacked was manpower.

As Thai's watch business grew, word spread throughout the pool halls, coffee diners, and skating rinks where young Vietnamese gathered that there was a businessman on Canal Street who took care of his own. Vietnamese kids who were new to New York, or who had recently deserted their foster homes or just gotten out of prison, came to Thai for assistance. “Mr. Thai, I have nowhere to live,” they would say. “Mr. Thai, I need money for food.” Usually, David freely offered money and advice, seemingly with no strings attached.

In some cases, Thai's benevolence may well have been genuine. David had been around Chinatown long enough to know that the Vietnamese were not always welcomed with open arms. These sentiments were based, in part, on deep-rooted animosities between the Chinese and Vietnamese that went back centuries. Some of it also had to do with fear: The Vietnamese were the product of a violent, war-torn country, and some Chinese believed them to be similarly violent, unstable people. Mostly, though, prejudice against the Vietnamese was class-based. They were simply the most recent Asian immigrant group to arrive in Chinatown, and were therefore on the low end of the pecking order.

Whatever the reasons for their ostracism, Thai knew that his fellow Vietnamese could not rely on Chinatown's traditional support structure. At the time, there were no Vietnamese business associations or Vietnamese banks. Most social-service agencies catered to the Chinese, where only traditional Mandarin or Cantonese dialects were spoken. Since there were no residential areas where Vietnamese passed along apartments from one generation to the next, finding, much less being able to afford, a place to live seemed insurmountable.

David Thai was hardly a blithe village benefactor, however, doling
out favors solely to promote the edification and advancement of his people. First and foremost, he was a gangster on the rise. As such, his compassion carried a price tag. To most young men who received an indulgence from Thai, it was simply understood that they owed him one. If David needed someone to frighten a merchant on Canal Street into purchasing only his product, his brothers were there. If Vietnamese gangsters beholden to Thai ventured out on their own, robbing a restaurant, massage parlor, or jewelry store, they kicked a percentage of their take up the chain of command, either to their local
dai low
or directly to David.

Thai's reputation was so great that even youngsters who were not criminally inclined were intrigued by the prestige and power the gang offered. David's expanding fraternity promised something no young Vietnamese male was going to find anywhere else in American society—a feeling of belonging. For those like Tinh Ngo who had suffered through the worst of the refugee experience, this was no small matter.

Sometime in late 1988, Thai called his first sit-down, a gathering of people considered to be high-ranking members of a gang then known mostly as the Canal Boys. At a modest dim sum restaurant on Broadway just off Canal Street, approximately twenty young Vietnamese feasted on soy-stewed pork buns, moo-shu pancakes, lotus pastries, and other delicacies. Blackeyes was there, as was Eddie Tran, the young gang member who'd thrown a bomb into the police van on Elizabeth Street. Also in attendance was twenty-year-old Vinh Vu, known to all as Amigo, the gang's popular Canal Street underboss.

“Think of what we have here as a business, not a gang,” Thai urged, standing before his ragged, upstart crew.

Little of importance was discussed at this small gathering, but for those in attendance it was a point of considerable pride. Relationships were solidified and egos stroked.

Within months, however, whatever prestige gang members acquired from that meeting was quickly surpassed by word of an upcoming one that promised to be even more important. This gathering would involve not only high-ranking gang members in and around Chinatown, but virtually every aspiring Vietnamese gangster throughout New York City and the entire surrounding region.

It would be the first official gathering of the gang known as Born to Kill.

Young Tinh Ngo arrived at the plush, upscale Japanese restaurant in midtown Manhattan feeling as if a butterfly were loose in his stomach. It was a balmy evening late in June 1989, just three weeks after Tinh met David Thai for the first time, and he was nervous. With Tinh were members of his Brooklyn crew—Tommy Vu, Kenny Vu, and Vinnie, a gang member who had just recently moved into their Coney Island apartment.

For such a momentous occasion, the boys had donned their most fashionable clothing. They wore loose-fitting linen sports coats with matching black pants, fashionable collarless shirts buttoned to the neck, black leather loafers without socks, and of course, black sunglasses that usually remained on even indoors.

Located on West Thirty-sixth Street, far from Chinatown, the restaurant had been chosen for its anonymity. Since it wasn't Vietnamese or Chinese, presumably the meeting could be held in secret. Still, it had to be Oriental, a place that served food familiar and agreeable to the gang members' palates.

When Tinh entered the restaurant, he was amazed by what he saw. Inside a spacious front room, a dozen tables were filled with gang members seated five or six to a table. Apparently, the entire place had been reserved for tonight's event. The food was spread out smorgasbord style, with gang members helping themselves to sushi, tempura, and heaps of Japanese noodles—all at David Thai's expense.

Nearly every Vietnamese person Tinh had ever met on Canal Street was in attendance. Along with rank-and-file gang members, there were
dai lows
from all over the area. Dung Steven, the
dai low
from across the river in Jersey City, was there, as was Jimmy Wong, the new
dai low
in Brooklyn. Michael Lam, the
dai low
in Queens, was there with a person Tinh knew only as Sonny, a
dai low
from the Bronx. The
dai low
in Connecticut, Phat Lam, was also in attendance. The various underbosses were accompanied by members of their crews, some of whom Tinh knew, some of whom he'd never even seen before.

In the back of the restaurant, near the head table, a large banner
had been tacked high on the wall. On the banner was stenciled a coffin with three candles on top and the letters BTK engraved on the side. The purpose of the banner was clear. From here on out, the name Born to Kill, or BTK, would override Canal Boys or any other designation different gang units might have chosen for themselves. The coffin with three candles, which signified no fear of death, would be the gang's logo.

Many gang members would later claim credit for having come up with the gang's name. Everyone knew it originated from a slogan American GIs used to write on their helmets and helicopters during the Vietnam War. Even to a group of youths with little education or appreciation of irony, the name seemed deliciously appropriate. The phrase Born to Kill evoked the appropriate measures of fear and nihilism these young gangsters were trying to project.

Tinh and his crew grabbed one of the last remaining tables, located not far from the entrance. As they served themselves food and ate their meal along with everyone else, an air of excitement filled the room. Just months earlier, many of these same people had been scrounging along Canal Street asking for handouts. For some, the ink on their tattoos had barely dried. Now, here they were, feasting like Mafia chieftains, like important criminals who had arrived at a position of significance and respect.

“I must thank you all for coming,” David Thai noted humbly, standing to speak midway through the meal. For the next ten minutes or so, Thai sounded his usual themes. As Vietnamese, they were embarking on what David liked to call a “journey,” one that would hopefully bring them respect and make them rich. As relative newcomers to the New York area, they would need to band together if they hoped to overcome the powerful forces aligned against them.

With his gang brothers listening in rapt attention, David advised, “
Con kien cong con vua
”—a Vietnamese saying that meant, “By sticking together, the tiny ants can carry the elephant.”

After the meal, David circulated among the gang members, who sipped cognac and smoked expensive French cigarettes. Although few were older than their late teens or early twenties, they behaved as they thought seasoned ganglords should. To those with a sense of history, the evening's gathering may have even had a noble purpose. After all,
centuries ago similar assemblies had been held by Vietnamese mandarins, the natural leaders of a people whom foreigners had repeatedly sought and failed to pacify. David Thai, so poised and seemingly generous, was their new mandarin leader, a man of “higher destiny,” chosen to lead his minions through the travails of life.

Of course, the image of David Thai as a prince presiding over his chosen people had been carefully crafted by Thai himself. It was he who had arranged the meeting and commissioned the banner that hung from the wall. As Thai moved from table to table, working the room like an old-time Chicago ward heeler, he was not only affirming his position as
Anh hai
, the oldest and wisest brother, but as the most powerful business, community, and spiritual leader these young men would ever know.

With Amigo by his side, David chatted amiably with the gang members at Tinh Ngo's table. There were no conditions for joining the gang, said Thai, except for one. “You must sign this agreement,” he explained, pointing to a piece of paper Amigo held in his hand.

The paper outlined the rules of the Born to Kill gang. First and foremost, it stated, gang members would not betray their gang brothers in any way. Second, they would not cooperate with the police. Third, if a member left the gang, he was required to have his tattoo scraped from his skin. New York members who deserted the gang would also have to leave the New York City area. The fourth and final condition, emphasized David, was especially important. Before any criminal act was undertaken by a BTK gang member, it had to be cleared with the local
dai low
.

The paper had already been signed by most of the people in the room. It went around Tinh's table with almost everyone, including Tinh, signing his name after giving the rules a cursory glance. Andy, one of the gang members who had accompanied Tinh on his first armed robbery of the massage parlor on Chrystie Street, demurred. “I just don't see why we have to sign this paper,” said Andy.