IN A SNAPSHOT of him standing in front of the Brooklyn Bridge in 1992, he looks like any fresh-faced computer programmer or junior lawyer. With his large round glasses, flyaway hair and open-neck shirt, even at 28 he could pass as a young student posing for a keepsake picture in front of an American landmark.
But Steven Wong is a ruthless Hong Kong-born member of the 14K triad, a manipulative gang leader, an accused drug smuggler. He is also 'dead', having 'died' the year the photo was taken, in a traffic accident in the Philippines, somewhat conveniently just weeks before his trial in Vancouver for trafficking heroin and after taking out a million-dollar insurance policy on his life - money which was never claimed.
His urn may be buried in a Vancouver cemetery, but today the mobster is believed to be as alive as the source of all this information: the Brooklyn-born, Vancouver-based investigative journalist Terry Gould. For 10 years from 1993, Gould pursued Wong around the Pacific rim, jumping from Hong Kong to Macau, the Philippines to Cambodia - his obsession to catch up with the gangster stemming from a loathing based on witnessing his antics at enticing young schoolboys into his gang in Vancouver years before. But it also came from a kind of affection, and even some sort of connection.
Gould's grandfather had been a Jewish mobster in New York who had killed himself - or perhaps been bumped off - in 1953, and Gould himself had grown up surrounded by gangsters in Brooklyn and had spent time in Manhattan's Chinatown where a young Wong first witnessed the trappings of gangsterism as a young immigrant fresh from Hong Kong.
Gould's account of his 10-year quest and expose of Wong will be published next month across the US and UK in his book Paper Fan (Thunder's Mouth Press). Speaking from his home in Vancouver in a rumbling drawl that belies his relentless nature, Gould, 55, recalls the impression the mobster made on him when they met several times two years before Wong disappeared. 'As a personality, he had this irrepressible sociability - that was part of his charm,' he says. 'I mean, there was a reason he was able to maintain his army around him. It wasn't just terror. He had an affable nature - great sociability.'
Sure, Gould stresses, Wong could turn in a second and put a bullet in your head, if nettled. 'But if you weren't aware that he was possibly manipulating you, you could feel that underneath there was a sincerely likeable guy,' he says. 'So I mean if you could separate the criminality from the personality you could almost like ... I mean I did like him, you know? He was an affable fellow.'