by Alex Caine
There were fewer Mounties accompanying us to Asia on this trip—perhaps ten or twelve—but there was more of a party atmosphere on the plane over. We already had these bad guys in the bag, we all felt. How could we have known that the Lord Guan Yu, god of the Triads, was looking out for his own?
Our instructions from Al were to check into the Sheraton Hotel, where we’d stayed on our previous visit, and then phone him in Vancouver. He would then make the arrangements for us to meet up with Yu.
Pineault checked us in at the desk while I lounged in the lobby. When he was done, I joined him at the elevators and he handed me my key. While we were unpacking our stuff, Scott went out to change C$20,000 into Hong Kong dollars. Instead of converting the money at the hotel—which offered a rate of HK$4.5 for C$1—he went to a private exchange operation. There he got almost HK$6 for a single Canadian dollar. In his notes, of course, he wrote up the hotel rate. After all, the money would be used up for a drug buy, so who would know? And who would get hurt?
He told us of his financial finagling when he got back to the room and promised to take us all out for an expensive dinner with the proceeds. Then we got down to business. The tape was set up and I made the call to Al in Vancouver. He answered promptly.
“Hey, we’re here,” I said. “I’m in room 425.”
“Tomorrow afternoon at two p.m.,” was all he said before hanging up.
The next day, we were all ready by 1:30 p.m., so we sat down to wait. And wait. Two o’clock came and went, 2:10, 2:30, still nothing. I called Al back.
“Hey, what’s the deal?” I asked.
“The deal is off,” Al announced. “I’ll talk to you when you get back.” Again he hung up. I called again and he didn’t answer.
To say the mood was somber after Al Lim’s announcement would be an understatement, especially after everyone’s cockiness on the flight over. We had barely arrived and already the trip was a waste. The only thing to do seemed to be to return to Vancouver, seriously chastened—and utterly confused.
Soon enough, however, intel from the local police had tracked down Phillip Yu booking a flight to Taiwan. He was scheduled to stay overnight and head to Vancouver the next day. The Mounties called a meeting. Tens of thousands of dollars had been spent on this trip and there would be no payoff. Clearly, they needed a plan, or at least a good excuse to give the bosses back home for returning empty-handed. My input wasn’t solicited. This time I went sightseeing.
Back at the hotel in the evening, I called Scott and was told we were leaving for Taiwan in the morning to chase down our elusive friend. We would meet at 7 A. M. hours to discuss the plan, he said. I arranged for a wake-up call and tried to sleep. Nothing was happening in that department, though, so I called Pineault and he dropped by. I told him that I had misgivings about chasing a guy who didn’t want to sell to us. He said that was because I didn’t know the plan and that everything would be clear to me in the morning. He watched a movie with me and went back to his room.
There was no meeting the next morning. Instead, Scott simply came to my room shortly before seven and said it was time to go. That didn’t clear things up, nor did anything that followed. Four of us—Pineault, Paterson, a Brit who I assumed worked for the RHKP and myself—flew the three hundred miles or so to Taiwan in a small chartered plane. Once in Taipei, we were taken straight to a downtown hotel—the Brit had our passports and we hadn’t even had to go through customs. We all went for breakfast, and conversation around the table was just general chitchat. Nobody mentioned what we were doing there.
Dealing with cops, I had learned by then, was not all that different from dealing with criminals or Marine Corps officers. Direct questions were best avoided and most everything was discussed on a need-to-know basis. If they had something they wanted you to know, they’d tell you.
After eating and lounging a little, with no mention of checking in, Scott announced that we had a plane to catch. Back we went to the airport and back to Vancouver. I never heard why we took the useless side trip to Taiwan. Months later, however, when I was testifying at the preliminary inquiry for charges that stemmed from our investigation, I got an indication of what the Mounties’ game was.
By then we’d learned why the meeting in Hong Kong had been so abruptly canceled. Criminals are as superstitious as anyone, and Asian criminals much more so, especially when it comes to numerology. My room number—425—was about as bad an omen as possible. Four is what the Chinese call an enhancer. If it’s matched with a good number, it makes that number extra lucky; if it’s with a bad one, it’s that much worse. Meanwhile, Triads use numeric codes to differentiate the ranks and roles played by people within a gang. Few are as bad as a twenty-five, which refers to someone who is a spy within and against the gang. In fact, calling someone “twenty-five” was common slang in Hong Kong, designating the person as a traitor or simply untrustworthy.
Thanks to all my martial arts training and hanging out with Hobo and company, I knew what twenty-five meant. But when Pineault gave me my room key, and for the rest of that trip and afterward, I didn’t put it together. Phillip Yu sure did, however.
The police didn’t know this was the reason Yu was a no-show at the Sheraton by the time we went to Taiwan. They did, however, know that his blowing us off didn’t look good. So, in the official accounting of the case, they alleged that Yu had moved the meeting to Taiwan. And we only went there to create a paper trail to back up this version of events.
I only figured this out when, at the preliminary inquiry, I was asked why we had turned down the Yu deal in Taiwan and put it off to negotiations in Vancouver. I skirted the issue in court, testifying vaguely that I was not the one making the decisions and did not question my instructions.
The day after our return from Taipei, the team reconvened at a hotel in downtown Vancouver. From the room we met in I called Al Lim and pretended to be furious with him. I demanded that he and Phil provide me with an elbow—a pound of heroin—that afternoon. I also told him someone would have to reimburse me for my expenses. Al, to my surprise, agreed to come by my hotel room with Phil.
Twenty minutes after the appointed time, they still hadn’t showed. Scott came into the room. “Okay, guys, write your notes. It’s over. We took them down on the way here.”
In what the cops had pretended to be a routine traffic stop, they’d found a pound of heroin in the trunk of Al and Phil’s car. They were promptly charged with a number of things, including the ounce they had given us at the Knight & Day.
“Doesn’t that blow our cover?” I asked Scott.
He said that they had sealed the indictment on the ounce while we finished the Hobo operation.
The man in question was still in prison, stewing. I visited him the next day and asked if he had heard from Al. He hadn’t. I told Hobo that I had given Al the stuff and still hadn’t heard back or got any cash from him.
“Don’t worry,” he said. “You can trust Al.”
Yeah right, I thought.
As it turned out, however, I was almost as deluded about my associates as he was about his. I thought I could trust the Mounties.
With Al and Phil busted, everyone realized that we had to wrap things up, and soon. We already had Hobo several times over—at least for conspiracy—but the RHKP, it seems, wanted more evidence at their end. That meant one more trip to Hong Kong.
Since Hobo was still in prison, I took charge of phoning Davey Mah to make arrangements for our next trip. He was happy to hear from me—clearly the money we’d paid for the sample pound was making him and Rocky pine for more.
Still, no one was eager to get on the next flight. It had been a pretty action-packed and jet-setting couple of weeks, and we all agreed a bit of downtime would do us good without jeopardizing the case.
For a few weeks back in Vancouver I got to know Liz again. She had dealt well with my increasing absorption in the case over the preceding months, but wasn’t unhappy that it seemed to be coming to a close.
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nbsp; We arrived in Hong Kong on the morning of Tuesday, September 19. Because it was the takedown trip, the brass went straight into meetings and I was again left to my own devices. I was cautioned against wandering around town; someone might see me and, as far as Davey and Rocky knew, we weren’t arriving until tomorrow. I stayed in the tourist area and called it an early night.
On Wednesday morning, I phoned Davey Mah and told him we were ready to go. He immediately said that he and Rocky would pick us up in half an hour. I was a bit surprised by his rush; still, I agreed to meet them in the lobby.
There were no hugs this time, barely a hello. Rocky, who was in the driver’s seat, looked straight ahead, saying nothing. We were soon flying down the expressway, then turning and weaving through narrow streets. Davey asked to see our passports. This was getting very unsettling. I showed him mine and demanded an explanation. He said the entry stamp was yesterday. “So?” I challenged him.
Pineault then decided to start chattering. We had taken a day to set up our part of the deal, he explained, transfer the cash, that kind of thing. Before he dug us any deeper, I cut him off.
“It’s none of your fucking business when we came,” I told Davey.
He asked why I had lied.
“I didn’t lie,” I said. “I told you that we were now ready to see you. You think I’d advertise that we were moving all that cash? What the fuck is the matter with you?”
He explained things to Rocky. It was hard to tell if the boss bought it or not. I looked out the window as if the question was settled. No one spoke until we arrived at a harbor quay. We left the car and got into a small outboard, which took us five or ten minutes across the water to a group of boats tied together with planks running between them. Davey explained that these were the Vietnamese boat people under Rocky’s protection. We got off our boat and walked from boat to boat across the planks toward the center. The water was green and murky with garbage and raw sewage floating on the surface. I had no intention of jumping into that swill unless my life depended on it.
The boat in the middle of the floating village was large and wide for a junk. It had car tires tied all around it acting like bumpers. I saw no cabin, just a large open space with walls and a canopy made of split, interwoven bamboo. The floor was covered in red and white tiles—it looked almost like a dance floor, I thought. A table surrounded by four chairs was in the middle of the room. A Chinese man with what looked like an AK-47 in his hands stood in the corner, staring straight ahead. This was no bluff.
After we sat down, Davey looked me straight in the face. “We got word from Canada saying you guys were cops. Are you?”
I took the offensive, standing up, pushing the table toward them, outraged at the accusation. “You say that, we have a right to know who it is!” I roared.
Rocky was looking at Davey, who quickly translated what I had said. After Rocky nodded, Davey said, “My friend Joey Howden.”
Uh-oh, I thought. I knew Howden from prison. He was a smooth, handsome and tough-as-nails career criminal. In Vancouver he had joined up with a crew run by another hood called Bobby Johnson; their main business was heroin.
Davey continued: “Howden’s crew has a cop on the inside who told them, and Howden told us because he’s Hobo’s friend!”
I sat down, lifted both my hands and forced a smile.
“Let’s see if I got this straight,” I said. “A crooked cop told Howden and it got to you?” Davey nodded but seemed confused. I knew I had him. “But he hasn’t told Hobo? Who’s there in Vancouver and is supposed to be Howden’s friend?”
I had to exploit the fact that Hobo hadn’t raised any doubt about us himself. I hadn’t told Davey and Rocky that Hobo was locked up, and I had to hope they didn’t know.
“Why hasn’t Hobo got word to you? Have you heard complaints from Hobo? If this is just an excuse ’cause you guys can’t produce, then just say it—don’t insult us with that garbage.”
Davey was speaking rapid Chinese to Rocky. I got up again. Now that I had them confused, I had to keep them on the defensive and make sure their greed for our green overcame their suspicions.
“Fuck this shit,” I said. “I thought you guys had it together! As for Howden, I’ll take care of that piece of shit when I get home.”
Finally Davey said the magic words: he apologized and added that he hoped the deal would go on. I grabbed the life preserver Davey had just tossed us and my tone changed. “I can’t really blame you, I’d want to know too if someone calls from across the ocean telling me shit like that.”
Pineault never said a word throughout the whole confrontation. He and Rocky had sat like spectators at a play. Eventually, though, Rocky waved his hand and the bodyguard with the AK disappeared behind the bamboo curtain. I had so much adrenaline pumping through me that my hands started to shake. Pineault noticed and took over the negotiations when we finally started talking business. We’d already agreed to buy ten pounds for something like one million Hong Kong dollars, half up front, half upon delivery by Rocky’s boat-people couriers to Canada. The discussions that day all revolved around process and the transfer of the first installment of cash. We told them we’d give them the cash once we saw the ten pounds and tested it. Finally, the details were sorted out to everyone’s satisfaction. The transaction would go ahead the next day at 1:00 p.m. at the hotel.
We shook hands and headed back to the edge of the floating village, where our boat was waiting to take us ashore. The trip back was silent and strained. Rocky and Davey dropped us off at the hotel. Once in the lobby, Pineault said, “What a couple of maroons.” We both laughed a little more than necessary.
I wasn’t, however, laughing once we were doing the debrief up in an RCMP suite and Paterson let me know how Davey Mah had got the goods on us.
Howden’s boss, Bobby Johnson, was accountable to two groups, it seemed: the Palmer brothers, who supplied him with his product (and who in turn got it from the Dubois mob from Montreal who got it from the Cotronis and the Mafia); and the RCMP. The Palmers supplied the drugs to Johnson’s outfit; the Mounties let them sell it. The former, Johnson paid in cash; the latter, in information.
The Mounties had long had visions of Johnson allowing them to work their way to the top—possibly all the way to Montreal—and were in deep with him. By 1978 their nasty and complicated relationship was already several years old. But Bobby Johnson was proving to be more of a liability than anything else. After signing on as an informant, he, Howden and a third member of their crew had spent a year in jail for the torture and murder of another drug dealer. The trio had been released on appeal. Still, the Mounties hadn’t cut Johnson loose—maybe he knew too much incriminating information about them. But his participation in the murder meant that he could never testify for the Mounties. So now they wanted Johnson to introduce an operative—an actual RCMP agent, I was led to believe—who could work his way up the ladder and eventually testify.
The scenario the police came up with could have been an elegant piece of infiltration; instead, it almost got us killed. The idea was to have Johnson pretend the operative was a crooked cop who could provide inside information on police investigations. That made for a hitch, however: to prove he was the real deal, the guy would have to deliver the details of a real undercover operation to Johnson’s criminal associates, something that, ideally, would soon culminate in a high-profile bust. Guess which one they chose?
The mistake in the RCMP’s planning was a big, stupid one. They blithely assumed that just because Johnson’s crew got their heroin through Montreal and Europe, they didn’t have any dealings with Asian criminals. Obviously, Howden and Davey Mah were good friends and Howden had been aware that two guys had gone to Hong Kong to do a deal with him.
“You win some, you lose some,” was all Paterson had to say about our close call. “Anyway, you guys came out okay.”
It would be fifteen years before I fully trusted a Mountie handler again.
If Pineault was angry, even som
ewhat concerned, that the Mounties had almost got him killed, he wasn’t showing it. Instead, he was happily in my hotel room reading a newspaper at 12:50 the next day, waiting to finish off what, for me at least, had become a very unpleasant operation.
The plan was simple enough. We were to have the down payment of HK$500,000 in another room somewhere in the hotel. Likewise, Rocky and Davey were to have the ten pounds of heroin in another room. We would give them the key to the money room; they would give us the key to the drugs room. While Davey and Pineault made sure that the other side was good for its word, Rocky and I would sit on either side of a table with a single, loaded handgun between us. One gun, two people—a guaranteed recipe for messiness if either side didn’t fulfill its side of the deal.
The RHKP had done its homework and got information that Rocky’s crew would have about a dozen people fanned out in the hotel and two getaway vehicles waiting at different exits outside. That was one reason the brass decided not to take them down as they arrived. Another was the building of a solid case beyond simple conspiracy charges. It was almost certain that Rocky and Davey would not arrive with the drugs; those would be brought to the hotel by a third party. But if they were to hand us a key to a room containing the heroin, it should be sufficient to get the pair on possession.
The plan was that ten minutes after Rocky and Davey arrived in our room, Scott and the boys would come through the front door while a British tactical squad working on behalf of the RHKP came through the door connecting our room to the one next door. Those ten minutes would give us enough time to collect some incriminating talk on the wire and allow the dozens of undercover police around the hotel to isolate the members of Rocky’s crew.