Befriend and Betray Read online

  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 th
e 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 w
eren’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.