Born to Kill Read Free Page A

in the national media. Since the perpetrators were not yet known, accounts tended to focus on the targets of the shooting: the Vietnamese. Few journalists could resist the angle that these gangsters, born in a country brutalized by a shameful war, appeared to respect no one—not even the dead. Forevermore, the shooting at Rosedale Memorial Park Cemetery would be remembered as a defining event, the moment at which the idea of Vietnamese gangsters in America entered the national consciousness.
    Truth was, the problem had been brewing for some time. Across America, the face of organized crime was changing, and the old-world courtesies of the past no longer applied. The underworld was now an ethnic polyglot, with a new generation of gangsters taking over where the Irish, the Jews, and the Italians left off. Only now, a new ingredienthad been added to the melting pot: a nihilistic, unconscionable type of violence that harked back to a dark, troubling era in American history. An era when U.S. soldiers stormed hamlets and bamboo huts in places like Danang, Khe San, and Nha Trang while terrified, wide-eyed children cowered in dark corners.
    To those throughout mainstream America who took the time to acknowledge what was happening, it was as if their worst fears were being realized. U.S. foreign policy had come home to roost, and the untidy residue of the Vietnam War had taken on yet another ugly, unexpected permutation.
    For Tinh Ngo and the others who had become identified with the gang known as Born to Kill, the consequences were even more immediate. For years, they had struggled to survive, to find their place within a society that did not seem to want them. For a time they drifted aimlessly, like small sampans on a large, turbulent ocean. Eventually, they banded together in cities and small towns throughout the United States, and they had begun to pursue their own unique version of the American dream.
    Theirs was a brotherhood born of trauma, sealed in bloodshed. A brotherhood that had first begun to coalesce many months earlier in the bustling restaurants, pool halls, and back alleys of New York City’s Chinatown.

PART ONE
    The Gang
    W hen men lack a sense of awe,
    there will be disaster.
    â€”L AO -T ZU               
The Tao-te Ching
(sixth century B.C. )

Chapter 1
    T he group of five young males stood in the dingy second-floor hallway of an old industrial building, banging on a door.
    â€œWho’s there?” asked a middle-aged woman on the other side.
    â€œIt’s me, Tommy. Tommy Vu,” answered one of them. Behind him, the others waited anxiously, puffing on cigarettes, staring at the floor.
    The woman looked through a peephole, then slid back the latch on the door’s cast-iron, dead-bolt lock. When she opened the door, a pale golden light from the hallway streamed into the front room of her small, unadorned massage parlor.
    Tommy Vu entered, followed by the other youths. All were in their late teens or early twenties. Dressed mostly in black, with assorted punk hairstyles and glaring tattoos, they swaggered and blew streams of cigarette smoke in the air, exhibiting the general demeanor of bad boys on the prowl. Normally, the woman—an experienced madam—would have been worried at opening the door to a handful of such raffishyouths. It was one o’clock in the morning, and it wouldn’t have been the first time her establishment—located at 59 Chrystie Street on the outskirts of Chinatown—was robbed by gangsters. But the woman recognized Tommy. Many times he had come to her massage parlor as a customer and enjoyed the ministrations of her stable of young females.
    Seated around the room on an upholstered sofa and matching chair, a half dozen smooth-skinned Korean and Malaysian ladies looked expectantly toward the young men. A few of the women straightened their tight-fitting dresses and sought to catch the boys’ attention