Born to Kill (31 page)

Tinh actually felt sorry for
Anh hai
as he listened to him blame himself for the gang's recent botched robbery attempts. The conversation was also reassuring. For the first time, Tinh was convinced that the gang's leader had not even begun to entertain the possibility there might be a traitor in their midst.

Lan Tran had answered the phone that day and was sitting with
Anh hai
when Tinh spoke to him. If Lan had any serious accusations to make about betrayal, he would have done it then. Tinh figured that the big show Lan was putting on now, storming around the room smacking people and getting in their faces, was mostly a warning, a way of instilling fear in the younger gang members who'd not yet seen Lan Tran in action.

Standing before Tinh Ngo, Uncle Lan adopted a more sober posture. “What about you?” he asked, locking eyes with Tinh. “What do you think?”

“Hey, you know me long time,” answered Tinh coolly, knowing Lan would have to respect his status as a “veteran” gang member. Lan glared at Tinh a few seconds more, then moved on.

In fact, Tinh had known Uncle Lan for nearly two years, but there was much about the BTK's premier hitman that had remained enigmatic, to Tinh and everyone else. Lan was eight or nine years older than most of the gang members, but he seemed even farther removed than that. Most gang members had a vague knowledge of Lan's self-described history as an operative for the deposed South Vietnamese government. Still, even those who knew nothing of his past could tell that he had been through something dark and troubling. It seemed as if much of
Vietnam's recent history—the residue of the war, the refugee boats, the camps, the swath cut by Vietnamese gangs in the United States—had been captured in Lan's haunted eyes and prematurely aged face.

Lan rarely socialized with the other gang members. Instead, he preferred to spend long hours alone in his room at David Thai's sub-urban Long Island home, writing in his journal. Few gang members were aware of it, but Uncle Lan had been chronicling his and the gang's exploits for a number of years. Lan always fancied himself something of a poet and scribe. When he entered the United States in 1982, on his immigration papers he listed his occupation as “writer.” Since then he'd filled numerous spiral notebooks with neat, compact Vietnamese script.

Mostly, Uncle Lan's writings were an account of the BTK's rise to power as the gang members themselves might have seen it. “In New York,” Lan wrote, “there came a gang bearing a terrifying, unbelievable code name … [whose] presence has facilitated and benefited the Vietnamese businesses in Chinatown.” David Thai was referred to with great veneration as “a model example of a young Vietnamese man. Thai is tall and his body is well proportioned. Girls from rich families, meeting him, could not stop themselves from falling in love with Thai.”

Along with giving an “official” version of the gang's history, Lan wrote long, vivid descriptions of his own exploits leading up to his involvement with the BTK. In many of these descriptions Lan portrayed himself as a professional, remorseless assassin.

Known as “Killing Hand,” I always observed the rules of the underworld. This time was my first opportunity in America. Me and my gun played the role. Five terrible bullets found the targets. Things were chaotic, patrons ran helter-skelter from the restaurant. Taking advantage of the situation, I ran. The damn car wouldn't go. I was bewildered…. It's truly destiny. Holding up the .38, I said thank-you and threw it in the snow-covered bush.

Lan Tran himself would later admit that much of his writing was a melding of fact and fiction, an imaginative rendering of his life filtered
through too many Hong Kong gangster movies and further heightened by his own feverish vision of reality. True or not, his writings eloquently expressed the unique combination of romanticism, alienation, and violence that had become a hallmark of young Vietnamese gangsters, from New York to California.

Tonight, snow has fallen thicker than usual. I wandered the street. Each lonely step, I carried with me my feelings. The wind was blowing one gust after another, burning my face. Life here is always related to the present issues. I have never experienced coldness like this before…. Looking down, I see this huge city buried in snow. New York, the infamous city in the underworld which has scared people, has opened itself to me….

As the night progressed, the bar was almost deserted. I was still passionately involved with my newly served beer. All of a sudden, an old white American came to my table. I did not think that patrons here could cause trouble. In reality, this American was standing before me, talking baloney. It turned out that he served in Vietnam, all that baloney. I did not pay attention. Suddenly he pounded his two hands on the table, toppling the beer, sending liquid in all directions. I was mad but didn't answer, bent down to pick up the glass and put it back on the table. He quickly threw the glass to the ground again and insulted me with dirty words. I could not control my temper, felt humiliated when I heard the two words “Viet Nam,” and it was too late for people around to stop me. “Crack,” my chair landed on the head of the white American….

The point of view conveyed by Uncle Lan in his writings was an accurate reflection of how the others saw him: the alienated loner whose life in the underworld was guided by a strict code of honor. To Tinh Ngo and the other BTK gang members, Lan was a near mythical figure. His reputation was enhanced by the fact he was pure Vietnamese, not
Viet-Ching
, like many of the others. He had been born and raised in
Hue, Vietnam's ancient imperial capital. In the United States, he was a well-traveled criminal who had reputedly given the Born to Kill gang its catchy name. If David Thai was the BTK's mandarin leader, Lan Tran was its dark prince, the highly disciplined, cold-blooded gangster that most of the gang's lesser members could only pretend to be.

Like the others, Tinh started out worshiping Uncle Lan. But his feelings for the elder gangster had gone through an evolutionary process. Now that he had begun to come out from under the dark cloud of the gang, Tinh saw clearly what a trap Lan Tran's life had become. Lan was the most irrefutable kind of killer. He believed he was killing for a cause, in this case the cause of brotherhood. And by setting himself up as the truest and most devoted gang member, he'd sealed his fate. Prison or death were the only avenues left.

Tinh felt sorry for Lan, but his sympathy was tempered by a harsh reality: He knew that Lan was crazy. And he knew that if his betrayal of the BTK ever came to light and somebody had to put a bullet in his head, the triggerman would most assuredly be Uncle Lan, who would no doubt carry out his assignment with the same ardor—and the same literary flair—he'd employed on all the other occasions.

Their confidential informant may not have been overly concerned by Lan's drunken accusations of betrayal, but Dan Kumor and the other investigators were. As far as they knew, this was the first time the issue of betrayal had been brought into the open by one of the gang's ranking members.

Their concerns intensified a few days later when they learned that Lan had barged into the Sunset Park safe house early on a Saturday morning and rustled Tinh out of bed.

“Timmy,” said Uncle Lan, “Timmy, wake up. Let's go find some money.”

Tinh got up from his mattress on the floor and pulled on some clothes. He had no choice but to go with Uncle Lan as they drove to the gang's safe house in Belmore, Long Island, a thirty-minute drive on the Long Island Expressway. During the drive, Lan told Tinh they were going to rob the same leather-goods store in Copiague they'd missed earlier.

When they arrived at the house in Belmore, Tinh sat at the kitchen table and tried to gather his thoughts. He was barely awake. There was no way he was going to be able to notify Kumor, Oldham, or anybody else. Once again, he was about to embark on a robbery with his fellow gang members. Only this time, there wasn't a damned thing he could do about it.

Fifteen minutes later, David Thai showed up with Sophia. “Forget it,”
Anh hai
told Lan, Tinh, and the others. “I just check it out. That store isn't even open today.”

Tinh breathed a sigh of relief.

Later, when he told Kumor and Oldham what had happened, they became more worried than ever that David Thai or Lan Tran was suspicious. The gang's leaders had given Tinh very little advance notice of robberies in the past; this time, they'd given him none at all.

And there was more. Later that same day, David Thai had taken Tinh into the apartment's main bedroom to show him a new cache of weapons he'd recently scored. From a suitcase under the bed,
Anh hai
had produced his pride and joy, a brand new Tech-9 semi-automatic machine gun.

“Haven't had a chance to use it yet,” said David, “but I'm looking forward to it.”

All of which made the investigators very uneasy. Ever since Tinh had gone back out on the street, they'd had to scramble to keep up with the amount of criminal planning his life as a BTK member involved. So far, they'd been lucky. Tinh's status as an informant had not been discovered, nor had he been forced into any crimes that might later compromise his standing as a government witness. But after only nine weeks of working undercover, Tinh had been through a number of close calls, and it seemed only a matter of time until his luck ran out.

For some time, Kumor had known that he and Oldham and probably Tinh were going to have to take a trip to Georgia. Tinh's story of the shooting at the jewelry store in Doraville had given the investigators important leads that needed to be followed up on. They would have to check with the local authorities in Doraville, and also with cops in Chattanooga, Tennessee, where, Tinh informed them, a couple of BTK gangsters had committed an additional violent robbery.

Kumor figured there would never be a better time for the trip to
Georgia than right now. Removing Tinh from the scene would alleviate, if only temporarily, the danger of discovery and the pressure to participate in BTK crimes. Also, by retracing the gang's steps in Georgia—something the investigators were going to have to do eventually anyway—they would be accumulating evidence crucial to securing a federal indictment against the BTK.

Already, Bill Oldham had made a phone call to the Doraville police department. That was when the investigators learned that Odum Lim, the Cambodian jewelry store owner shot in the head and left for dead, had not perished.

Despite three excruciating weeks spent in a Doraville hospital recovering from his wounds, Odum Lim counted himself among the luckiest people on earth. The .38-caliber bullet fired into his head at close range by Lan Tran had entered near his right temple at a slight downward angle, grazed his skull, wormed its way along his right cheek bone, and exited out the side of his face. Lim lay in a pool of blood spilling from twelve stab wounds and a gaping head wound. But he had stubbornly refused to die.

On the phone, Oldham asked a captain with the Doraville police if they'd had any luck with their investigation into the robbery and shooting.

“Well,” answered Detective Captain Cliff Edwards, a fourteen-year veteran, “as a matter of fact, yeah.”

Edwards had gotten to know Odum Lim well since the day he arrived at the Sun Wa Jewelry Store to find him lying in a pool of blood on the sidewalk. Later, when the local newspaper reported that Lim had survived the shooting, Edwards insisted on putting his hospital room under twenty-four-hour guard. He didn't want any gangsters coming back to finish the job.

The Doraville detective told Oldham that one month after the shooting, the mother of one of his fellow officers had clipped an article out of a Colorado newspaper about a robbery perpetrated by Vietnamese gangsters. According to the story, six armed criminals had stormed into a Catholic church in Wheat Ridge, Colorado, robbing some thirty parishioners during Sunday mass.

When Edwards called Colorado, he was informed that six suspects had been arrested in nearby Colby, Kansas, just across the border.
Kansas state police sent Edwards fingerprints and photos of the six Vietnamese males they had in custody. Edwards took the photos over to the Lim's jewelry store, which was located less than a mile from the Doraville police station.

Odum Lim had only recently been released from the hospital and was still angry. Determined to see the people who'd robbed his store, terrorized his family, and shot him in the head brought to justice, he picked out three of the photos.

Detective Edwards did not feel good about the identifications. He had a feeling that, given his zealous desire to see the perpetrators punished, Odum Lim's judgment might have been skewed. Edwards seriously doubted the identifications would stand up in court. But he wasn't about to admit that to some New York City detective who refused to even identify himself by name over the phone.

“We've got the robbers identified,” Edwards assured Oldham. “They're in custody out in Colorado right now, and I'm gonna move for an indictment.”

“Don't do it,” Oldham bluntly warned. “Those are not your people.”

Edwards was startled. “Well, who the hell are you? Where you comin' from?”

“Look, that's all I can tell you right now. I'm working a federal case here in New York. I'm NYPD. I'm not bullshitting you. Believe me, those people you're getting ready to indict are not your robbers. I know who your robbers are.”

“Oh, yeah?”

“Yeah. Myself and an ATF agent are gonna be down there soon. I'll fill you in when we get there.” Then Oldham hung up.

A couple weeks later, on the morning of June 10, 1991, Oldham, Kumor, and Tinh Ngo arrived at Atlanta International Airport after a comfortable ninety-minute flight from New York City. It was a sultry summer day, with temperatures in the high eighties, and the sky was a cloudless, crystalline blue.

It had been nearly eight months since Tinh made the long drive along I-80 with the rest of the BTK road crew into the heart of the Deep South. In that time, Tinh had done his best to repress his recollections of the events surrounding the shooting at the Sun Wa Jewelry store.
Since signing on with Kumor, Oldham, and company, he'd been forced to unearth many of them. But there was much that remained hazy. He remembered that he and the other gang members had stayed in a town called Gainesville, which he knew to be about fifty miles outside of Atlanta. He remembered the drive from Gainesville to the jewelry store where the robbery and shooting took place. But he did not remember the exact location of the store, nor was he certain he could find the precise house in Gainesville where he and the other gangsters had stayed.