American Gangster

by Mark Jacobson

  The image of the Chinese schoolgirl was changing, too. Overnight they entered the style show on the subway. A lot of the fashion—airblown hairstyles, mucho makeup, and tiny “Apple jacket” tops—came from the Puerto Ricans. Classy tweezed Oriental eyebrows produced a new “dragon lady” look. Openly sexual, some of the Hong Kong girls formed auxiliary groups. Streaking their hair blond or red to show that their boyfriends were gangsters, they were “ol’ ladies,” expected to dab their men’s wounds with elixirs swiped from Chinese apothecaries. Who can blame them? More than half of Chinatown’s women work in the three-hundred-odd garment factories in the area, buzzing through the polyester twelve hours a day, trying to crack a hundred dollars a week. Hanging with the bad kids risked an occasional gang bang, but it was a better risk than dying in a sweatshop.

  It seemed only a matter of time before the youth gangs would get into dope, especially since drug dealing has been the key staple of the Chinese underworld for centuries. The present-day version of the Chinatown connection dates back to the end of the Chinese civil war in 1949. Several Nationalist units were cut off in the poppy-rich area known as the Golden Triangle near the Burmese/Thai/Laotian border as the rest of Chiang Kaishek’s army fled to Taiwan. A large smuggling route was then established, with the Nationalist government reaping the benefits. This was not unprecedented, as many historians cite Chiang’s involvement with the notorious dope-peddling Shanghai-based Green Gang during the 1920s.

  According to the federal Drug Enforcement Agency, with Mao’s take-over on the mainland, several KMT officials with drug-selling connections soon found their way to New York, where they eased into the On Leong power structure. It wasn’t long after that, the DEA says, that the On Leong people went across Canal Street to strike a bargain with Italian organized crime. Soon a new adage was added to Mafia parlance: “If you want the stuff, get yourself a good gook.”

  The connection—which is believed to be kept running by a manager of an On Leong restaurant who is also believed to be the only Chinese ever admitted to the Carlo Gambino crime family—works well. While most of the country is flooded with Mexican smack, in New York the percentage of Golden Triangle poppy runs high. The dope money is the lucrative tip of Chinatown’s pyramid crime structure. DEA people say the gangs are used as runners to pick up dope in the Chinese community in Toronto and then body-carry it across the border. But they may play a greater role. Chinese dope hustlers have always felt on uneasy ground when dealing with flashy uptown pushers. Now, however, street sources say the gutterwise gangs are dealing directly with black and Puerto Rican dealers.

  Then again, junk has always been an issue in Chinatown. Even now you can walk by the senior citizen home on East Broadway and see eighty-year-old Chinese men and women who still suffer from the effects of long-ago opium addiction and live out their lives on methadone. They’re probably the oldest addicts in America. The specter of the opium days is still horrifying down here, where landlords continue to find ornate pipes in basements.

  That’s why the sight of fourteen-year-old Eagles nodding on Mott Street during the smack influx of the early ’70s was so galling to the old men. It was a final indiscretion, a final lack of discipline. Actually, the Eagles had been tempting fate for some time. They insulted tong elders in public. They extorted from restaurants they were supposed to be protecting. They mugged big winners outside of the gambling houses. It was playing havoc with the tong’s business as usual. Often the old men threatened to bring in sharpshooting hit men from Taiwan to calm the kids down.

  So in 1974, when Quat Kay Kee, an aging street hustler looking for a handle in the tong hierarchy, told the On Leong of a new and remarkable gang leader, the old men were ready to listen. Nicky Louie and his Ghost Shadows were not only tougher than the Eagles, but they knew how to do business. To show their style, Nicky and his top gun, Philip Han (known as Halfbreed), supposedly put on masks and pulled off a ballsy submachinegun holdup at the Eagle-guarded gambling house in the local VFW post, knocking off a pair of sentries to boot.

  Soon after, in another gambling house, a drunken Eagle poured a water glass of tea down the brocade jacket of an On Leong elder. The word came down: the tong was formally withdrawing its support of the Eagles; the Shadows could make their move. A few nights later, the 4:00 a.m. quiet on Mott Street was broken by Shadows honking the horns of their hopped-up cars. They rode around the block, screeching their tires. The Eagles tumbled out of bed clutching their pieces. The shooting woke up half the neighborhood. Amazingly, no one was injured. But the change had come. The Eagles fled to Brooklyn. And Nicky Louie was pacing back and forth on Mott Street.

  A relationship was forged. For the most part, Nicky’s Shadows have been model rulers during their stay on Mott Street. “I’m a businessman, and I know how to stay in business,” Nicky once told Neal Mauriello. The gang takes its cut and protects the status quo. Would-be neighborhood reformers have learned to be fearful of visits from gun-wielding gang members; one lawyer who spoke out against the Chinatown establishment woke up the next morning to find Mott Street plastered with wall posters telling him to get out of town.

  It is a strange reign of terror that could flourish only in a limbo-land like Chinatown. One hundred years of neglect have distorted the links to the lo fan power. The cops and tongs have maintained a nonaggression pact well oiled with palm grease. One On Leong insider says, “Those guys are crooks. I was pit boss at a gambling house and gave two hundred a week to the same sergeant for two years.” It goes on. Fifth Precinct cops are not allowed to make gambling arrests unless they actually see money on the table. But since the chance of a lo fan getting into a Chinese gambling house unnoticed is akin to a snowcone in hell, they might as well not bother. “When you do raid the houses, it’s almost like they’ve been tipped,” says one detective. “By the time you get through all the trick doors, there’s no one there but a couple of one-hundred-year-old men smoking cigarettes.”

  For years there was only one Chinese cop, the fabulous Johnny Kai. Kai walked a thin line between American and Chinese law and did a good job for both. Today, however, with the Chinese making up the majority of the Fifth’s constituency and youth crime skyrocketing, there is still only one Chinese cop on the beat, Barry Eng, who once said with a straight face, “Of course, everyone knows the associations disowned the youth gangs a long time ago.”

  One thing that Nicky Louie makes fairly clear is that he is not interested in talking to reporters, especially this reporter. No, he says, when approached in front of 56 Mott Street, he is not up for a little yum cha to discuss his life and times. Avoiding eye contact, he claims to speak “no English!” For sure he doesn’t want his picture in the paper. In fact, he says, he doesn’t even know who the fuck this Nicky Louie is and, in any event, he is not him. So maybe you should get the fuck away, like now.

  Not that you could blame the Ghost Shadow for wanting to keep a low profile. The past several months have been a kind of hell for the gang leader. It was only a few Saturdays ago that he reportedly saw an old Eagle enemy gesturing in his direction from across the street. Nicky was being fingered. He stood like a freeze frame, looking at the two strangers drawing down on him. One had a Mauser, the other a Colt .38. The first gunshot whistled by his ear and broke him out of his trance. He ran down Mott, pushing aside the tourists and the old ladies, turning down Canal until he was safe, panting against a wall.

  That afternoon haunted Nicky. Battling Paul Ma made sense. But these unknown hitmen had no reason to shoot except money.

  It was scary; things were getting out of control. Eagle Yut Wai Tom had been convicted—the first gang kid to be sent up for murder. Word was around that Tom had cracked up when he got to Rikers Island. The cops were doing a suicide watch on him. Quat Kay Kee, Nicky’s old sponsor at On Leong, had been flipping out, too. Shot at in the Wiseman Bar on Bayard Street by a group of Eagles wearing ratty wigs they had bought from a hasidic shop on East Broadway, Quat railed that he’d tell all. H
e managed to compose himself just before the drug cops got there with their tape recorders.

  Being a Chinatown warlord was a tough gig. To keep up their street army, the Shadows had been forced to recruit younger and younger kids. But what exactly do you say to a fourteen-year-old when you’re a twenty-two-year-old legend? The young Shadows were griping about their wages. In the early part of the year some of the kids had broken away from Nicky to ally themselves with the scuzzy Wah Chings. For a couple of nights in January, they had actually succeeded in pushing Nicky off the street. It took all of his negotiating prowess to fix things again.

  For months he’d let it be known that he was tired of being a youth-gang leader, but the tong gave little indication that they’d allow him to move up in the organization. Quitting was out of the question. First of all, he knew too much and had far too many enemies. It wouldn’t be enough to leave Chinatown, or even New York City. Anyplace there was On Leong—like Toronto or Chicago—or Hip Sing, which is just about everywhere, he’d be known and fair game. Anyway, if he did get out, what was waiting? He knew lots of ex-gang guys who’d “retired” and now broke their humps for their families in the old restaurant grind.

  Ironically, it was the old men who provided Nicky and the other gang kids with an escape from street-fighting. Despite Chinatown’s traditional reluctance to look for outside help, poverty money is beginning to find its way down here. Funding scams may not be as venerable as gambling houses, but in a modern world, there must be modern hustles. People had been telling the old men about a Harlem incident in which the hak guey youth gangs had given up their arms. The federal government had laid a sizable chunk of cash on groups promising to reform the kids. The old men saw an opening; if they could get the gangs to call “peace,” they could get the uptight merchants off their backs as well as pick up a large grant.

  The plan was laid out to Nicky. He liked it and promised to set it up. He contacted Eagle Paul Ma and Dragon Mike Chen—who hated each other more than they both hated Nicky—and got them to say “Cool.”

  Next step was to make it respectable. The gangs contacted one of the old Continentals, now a well-known Chinatown social worker, and told him they wanted to give up their evil ways. The worker, eager to be known as the man who stopped Chinatown gang warfare, went for it. Everything was set.

  But somewhere along the line, Nicky began to forget that it was all a scam. Suddenly he liked the idea of “reforming,” learning English for real and getting a decent job. And he wasn’t the only one. Around lo tow, guys were still packing rods, but they also were talking about what they’d do when they went “legit.”

  The first “peace” meeting was at the Kuo Wah Restaurant on Mott Street. Kids embraced each other, saying it was crazy for Chinese guys to kill other Chinese guys. Nicky sat down with Paul Ma. They’d been trying to wipe each other out for years; but now they spent hours reminiscing about their favorite extortion spots on Mott Street.

  The old men were flabbergasted. What a double cross! If these kids were on the level, then the whole vice structure could go down the tubes. Then again, it could be a trick. The gangs might be pulling a power play to cut Chinatown up for themselves. Either was disaster. After that the tongs did everything they could to sabotage the peace. They spread mistrust among the merchants; they tried to bribe the gang leaders. The old men unsuccessfully tried to cancel the press conference formally announcing the “peace.” But, on August 12, Nicky and the other gang leaders read their joint statement. They didn’t expect to be forgiven, but then again they weren’t apologizing. They had become wiser; being a gangster wasn’t so great. Other kids shouldn’t get into it. It was moving; several of the old family association leaders wept. Even Nicky looked a little misty.

  But time had run out on Nicky’s peace: the old Toy Shan forces of secrecy and mistrust were working overtime. The merchants, brutalized so often, never believed the gangs were sincere and offered no support. The social service agencies failed to come up with concrete programs. The cops offered a ten-day amnesty period for the gang kids to turn in their guns, nothing else. “Oh yeah,” said one Shadow. “I’m gonna turn in my gun so they can do a ballistic and fingerprint check on it? Sure.” No weapons were turned in.

  Of course, it is not possible to know if Nicky was ever truly sincere about declaring peace in Chinatown. The cops, cynics that they are, said, “They might have called it peace, but they spelled it ‘p-i-e-c-e.’” Still, no one disputes the fact that three weeks went by without anyone getting shot at around Mott and Bayard. Nicky must have known it was over the night the Eagles ripped off a restaurant at the other end of Mott Street. He ran over to find Paul Ma and see what was up. An Eagle told him that Paul was “out” and laughed. After that, Nicky kicked chairs in a Mott Street rice shop. Gang members say the sear was back in his eye. By then it was just a matter of time. Within the next week the Shadows, Eagles, and Dragons were shooting at each other; the two-month-long war would prove to be the bloodiest in Chinatown history.

  The tongs, fearing total loss of control, responded to the madness by calling in some old friends from across Canal Street. According to the Chinese newspapers, a couple of Shadows walked into the wrong restaurant at the wrong time. Five smashnoses imported from Mulberry Street were waiting for them. Reportedly the kids wound up in a meat grinder, their remains dumped into a plastic bag and driven to Newark.

  This got the gangs’ attention. Except for a few gun violations, the cops say Chinatown’s been quiet for the past few weeks. However, reports of gang extortions in local Massapequa and northern New Jersey Chinese restaurants have begun to come in.

  But in fanning out of Chinatown, the gangs broke a New York City rule: Don’t mess with the rich white people. Someone goofed when they rubbed out the young couple who ran the Szechuan D’or on East Fortieth Street. It mobilized whole armies of uptown cops. Determined to strike Chinese crime at its root, the police have shut down the gambling and extortion rackets in Chinatown. This has caused widespread panic. Word is, big gamblers walk around in a daze at the OTB, trying to latch on to private pi gow games uptown. Nicky and the Shadows, seeing no percentage in hanging around for the onslaught, split for greener fields in the On Leong–run towns of Toronto and Chicago.

  No one, of course, expects this to last. Balances of power are constantly shifting downtown. Just the other day the cops busted Flying Dragon Mike Chen with a 12-gauge shotgun and 150 rounds of ammunition hidden in the ceiling of his apartment. Paul Ma, Philip Han, and Big Benny Ong are on their way to the slammer. And some even say that the good people at Hip Sing could stage a takeover in Benny’s absence.

  But much more remains the same. Go tonight to a restaurant on Mott Street and look out the window. Across the street you’re likely to see a good-looking skinny guy in a green fatigue jacket pacing back and forth. Nicky Louie is back in town, vigilant as ever. Look into his eyes and wonder what he’s thinking. But, then, remember … it’s Chinatown.

  8

  From the Annals of Pre-gentrification: Sleaze-Out on East Fourteenth Street

  A case study from before the invention of the two-thousand-dollar studio apartment. Back in 1977, the so-called Summer of Sam, soon after the near bankruptcy of the city, there were many contenders for the title of “sleaziest street corner in New York.” Fourteenth Street and Third Avenue was closest to my home, and I like to walk to work. Now East Fourteenth Street is “redeveloped.” Jullian’s, once the most picturesque pool hall in the city, is now an NYU dorm. Ditto the Academy of Music. The Gramercy Gym, where fighters good and bad trained, is long gone. So is the studio where Bettie Page took her famous bondage pics. This is called progress. Even if it is a perverted nostalgia to long for the bad old days when the city’s major thoroughfares were lined with nodding junkies, it is hard to dismiss the lingering (loitering?) feeling that something has been lost. From the Village Voice, 1977.

  All the popcorn pimps, penny-ante pross, nickel-and-dime pill-pushers, methadone jun
kies, and doorway-living winos felt the hawk wind as it blew down East Fourteenth Street. It’s late October, the time of the year when one night, all of a sudden, you know you better break out the warmer coat. Except that on East Fourteenth Street, who has a warmer coat? One creep—a downer-selling vermin—knows the raw of it all. He stands in front of the pizza joint on Fourteenth and Third Avenue, begging for eye contact. “Robitussin, man, Robitussin.” Robitussin? “Robitussin,” he croaks. He’s selling cough syrup. Over-the-counter cough syrup.

  It is enough to stop you in your tracks. “Robitussin, man? Don’t you got no Luden’s or Vicks VapoRub?” I mean: Two-dollar Placidyl is low enough. But Robitussin? “You have got to be kidding.”

  The creep’s voice squeaks up a couple of octaves, his scarred-up head sags. He says, “Just trying to get over. This gonna be a rough winter.”

  It’s always a rough winter at Fourteenth Street and Third Avenue. Rough for the blond junkie and his girlfriend. They told the people at the metha-done center on Second Avenue and Twelfth Street that they were going out of town. Back to Ohio to visit the chick’s parents. The methadone people gave them a week’s supply of bottles. It sounded like a good plan since the blond guy and his girlfriend weren’t going nowhere except to Fourteenth Street to sell the extra shit. But they got into a pushing match with some of the Spanish guys drinking Night Train Express at the L train entrance. The methadone bottles fell down the stairs. A scuffle broke out, then the cops were there. One thing led to another, and soon the blond junkie and his girlfriend were back at the drug center trying to explain why they weren’t in Ohio. Now they’re on “permanent release,” which means no more state-issue methadone. You can see the two of them out on the street, scratching and begging, looking for a taste, any taste.