Open line to a brotherly boss

I BELIEVE in Buddha, I believe in Christ,'' says Alex Lau, drilling me with his eyes for emphasis. ''I don't lose sleep at night because of anything I've done.'' Alexander Man-sin Lau's name card is crowded with businesses on both sides - of the card and the Pacific. Real estate developer, manufacturer, restaurateur, trader.

But in Chinatown, he is known as the president of the Fukien American Association, a powerful tong that is a cross between an expatriate chamber of commerce and a brotherhood in the Fuzhou community.

Most of the association's 20,000 members are legitimate small businessmen. But some, especially the more senior ones, apparently are not.

''We know for certain that FAA officers are involved in alien-smuggling and [fake] document selling,'' says Bruce Nicholl, co-ordinator of the Immigration and Naturalization Service's violent-gang task force.

Nor is there any doubt, he says, that one of the association's ''offshoots'' is the ultra-violent Fuk Ching, a gang heavily involved in heroin smuggling and debt collection.

In December 1990, gang members called Kin-wah Fong's relatives - after kidnapping him, chaining him to a bed and beating him with hammers - demanding the relatives deliver US$50,000 (HK$386,500) to 125 East Broadway, the FAA's headquarters.