by Alex Caine
The only time I screwed up was by saying yes to a friend, another French guy who also worked in the kitchen. One day he was called for a visit and, being an IV drug user, he asked me to take his works—an eyedropper with a needle at the end of it—back to G unit with me when I went. It was serious contraband, but I still said yes. On the way out of the kitchen, the guards did a spot search and found the homemade syringe. I was charged for contraband and appeared in front of the disciplinary board. The norm for such an offense was fifteen days in the hole on reduced rations. It was obvious that I wasn’t a junkie and I’d never had any previous trouble, so the board wanted to know whom I was covering for. I wouldn’t say and they sentenced me to thirty days on reduced rations.
If the purpose of prison is to break your spirit, the purpose of the hole is to crush it completely. Not once in thirty days did they let me out of the windowless cell; not once did they turn off the light. The only indication of what time it was, whether it was even day or night, was the delivery of the meals and of the blanket and book that were given to me at about four o’clock every afternoon and taken away every morning.
Even keeping track of time by the meals was confusing: reduced rations meant seven slices of bread for breakfast, lunch and supper, and one real meal every second day. I used some of my bread as a calendar, putting a large crumb in the corner once a day. The surplus bread served another purpose: we were allowed a towel, so I would wrap uneaten slices in it to make a pillow. It was the only comfort available; there was no mattress to sleep on, just a raised cement slab.
From a psychological standpoint, the hole—which wasn’t in the basement but rather on the fifth and top tier of G unit—served as a test that people responded to in very different ways. Time spent in there offered two basic activities: exercise and daydreaming—and you can only do so much exercise. So daydreaming took on a whole new significance. I avoided dwelling on memories, especially of Vietnam; that could have led to trouble. Instead, like many others in the hole, I just created fantasy lives for myself, peopling them with whomever I wanted and directing the action as I saw fit. But I kept my imagination under control and tried not to get too carried away, erring on the side of exercise and then more exercise. Not like some people I’d heard of in the hole: they hadn’t wanted to leave when their time was up. They’d become more interested in the lives in their mind than the one behind bars.
Everyone in the prison knew how much time I’d been given in the hole, and they were counting off the days almost as assiduously as I was. Their motives were different, however: they wanted to see if I buckled. It was prison practice that once half your time in the hole was done, you would receive a slip of paper every second day. It arrived on days when you didn’t get a real meal. Written in the first person, it said that you realized you had made a mistake and asked the warden to release you early with a promise to behave. All you had to do was sign it and you would be out. It was very tempting, of course, but I knew that I wouldn’t get the same respect from the rest of the prisoners if I signed it. So I didn’t. Instead, I just did more exercise—sit-ups and push-ups were measured in sets of a hundred at a time—and also invented games for myself.
As luck would have it, my thirty days were up on a Sunday, which meant that I had to wait until the next day to get out. Still, they did give me my tobacco and regular meals for the day. When I finally did leave the hole and went into the yard again, many people who had ignored or barely tolerated me before now stepped up to chat or just say hi. I had risen several ranks up the prison’s social register. One guy in particular, doing two life sentences plus eighteen, became a good friend. My elevated status relieved a lot of the regular prison stress since I didn’t have to spend so much time watching my back.
While I was inside, a government program geared toward modernizing incarceration policy recalculated the sentences of all federal prisoners according to a new set of criteria. It meant most had a year or so taken off their time, including me. As a result, a bit less than a year and a half into my sentence I faced the parole board. I answered all their questions and, sure enough, it seemed pot had gone down a few notches in the serious crime department. Two weeks after my hearing, I got a letter from the parole board setting a release date of just a few days later.
I was given $120, a new suit with sleeves of different lengths, a small suitcase with my old clothes in it and a bus ticket to downtown Vancouver. It was October 20, 1972.
“I’ll keep your cell open, asshole,” said the guard who opened the last prison door for me. There was no malice in his voice.
“Fuck you,” I said, smiling.
We were both just playing our roles.
CHAPTER TWO
Hobo and the Triad
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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 d
one 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, ther
e 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.