“Any suspects, Captain? Find a weapon? How long has she been dead? Can we also get inside to get a photo of the body?”
Lees was surprised by the young reporter’s last question. “Also? We have not allowed any person to come inside this crime scene, Boscombe. You know the rules. Nobody allowed in until we’ve gathered all evidence and questioned all possible witnesses.”
“But there was a reporter inside earlier. I passed him on my way here. His name is Kwong. George Kwong. He’s a reporter for The Oriental. He told me he got a picture of the white prostitute who was killed on Sacramento. His smile was wider than a Cheshire Cat’s. When I got here, your man already had the rope up.”
Lees knew that name. Kwong. Yes, that was the name of the leader of the Sam Yup Company, Andrew Kwong. Andrew also owned part interest in The Oriental, so that would explain how his son, George, got the job. Kwong was one of the Christian converts who got money from the Methodist Church to publish the only newspaper allowed in Chinatown. As the leader of the businessmen’s company, he was probably the wealthiest Chinaman in San Francisco.
“As to your first three questions, Boscombe, no, no, and we won’t know until the coroner gets here.” Lees stepped past the gathered reporters, who were shouting out questions to him, which he ignored. From experience, Lees knew that no matter how he would answer the questions put to him, they would, most of the time, get transformed into something outrageous, to attract readership for their papers. Besides, Cook would certainly give them enough nonsense to fill their papers for weeks.
“I can see the headlines already, Dutch. INNOCENT CAUCASIAN DAMSEL MUTILATED BY BARBAROUS CHINESE RELIGIOUS CULT, or some such balderdash.” Lees spat into the gutter. “However, I do want to meet with the Six Companies’ leaders to investigate what they know about this murder—especially Andrew Kwong and his son, George. How did George get wind of this murder before anybody else? Why would that Christian rag want to promote the killing of a white woman?”
All around them, the noise of the Chinatown streets permeated the evening’s glow, as the wispy fog began to creep across the pavement ahead, like the premonition of some curse beginning to cast its spell over the entire City by the Bay.
All of Chinatown and soon, most likely, most of Guangdong Province would be aware of the murder investigation. Kid Cook had taken it upon himself to arrest fourteen of the leaders of the Tongs. He had taken them to Sheriff Connolly’s station, so Captain Lees was not informed until one of his detectives, Danny Carey, was over there because his best informer, Li Wong, had been arrested, and he discovered Wong was locked inside the jail on Kearny Street. Lees knew the history of the Sheriff's Department, as it arose out of what Lees saw as the lawless system of the 1840s and 50s that saw the Vigilance Committee mobs taking it upon themselves to hang men.
In fact, in December 1852, Lees’ citizen arrest of the Spaniard, Jose Forner y Brugada, for the stabbing death of the Mexican, Jose Rodriguez, led to the first “legal” hanging in San Francisco. It also led to Lees’ appointment to the police force by then-Sheriff Colonel Jack Hays. Lees watched, along with thousands of other San Franciscans, as Hays cut the rope which upheld the drop of the Spaniard’s body up on Russian Hill. Lees could still hear the collective screams of joy and hatred from that crowd in his dreams.
Isaiah Lees saw many other hangings over the years, and from the very first, he knew they would turn into a vicious way to appease the public’s hatred and thus were not just. Lees was correct. The newspapers and the Sheriff's Office itself soon began making money from these public hangings, until the Sheriff and his men were called by the liberal press the “enforcers of profitable doom.”
The number of hangings steadily increased each year. Those against Capital Punishment, like Lees and many of the religious and academically inclined folks in the population, spoke out when these hangings took place, but it did little good. Blood vengeance was still in the hearts of many citizens, as a holdover from the frontier and Gold Rush days, and no law was passed to stop these public executions. Even his native England had abolished public executions in 1868, but not in North America.
Captain Lees had learned a little bit about Taoism from the Chinese. To the Chinese, morality was not as clearly dichotomized as it was in America. In fact, the symbol of balance in Taoism, the taijitu, or yin-yang, stood for the paradoxical concept of the harmony of dualistic forces in the universe. In other words, whereas in the West, the Judeo-Christian Bible wrote about a Creator God who was all-powerful and vengeful against those of His creations that went against His Laws; in the East, there had been no creation, as such, and so the universe was not seen in a mechanistic way, wherein Nature becomes something to be challenged and overcome for humans to survive.
No, to the Chinese, life was to be constantly seen in its totality, consisting of both dynamics of existence—neither one good or bad—but simply the complete manifestation of “suchness.” Thus, morality becomes, as Shakespeare once perceived in his line from Hamlet’s soliloquy, quite subjective, “Why, then, 'tis none to you, for there is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so.” To the Chinese, morality was always a matter of individual perception, but to Westerners, and therein existed the paradox, morality was always determined by the Law.
Lees had learned to work with both the good and bad members of Chinatown. To the Sheriff’s Department, the Tongs were always the bad men, never to be trusted. One of the biggest Tongs was the San Ho Hui, or Triad Society, alias the Hung Society and the Society of Heaven and Earth. Originally a secret, revolutionary political organization in the Seventeenth Century opposed to the Manchu dynasty, in San Francisco it became something akin to a Chinese version of the Sicilian Cosa Nostra.
To Connolly, and to many San Franciscans, the San Ho Hui had evolved into a hydra-headed mass of warring Tongs, each fighting for its piece of the opium, gambling, protection, and yellow slave trades. To Lees and his men, however, the San Ho Hui also were protectors of the male population in Chinatown, who could not fight for themselves.
In fact, Lees knew, there were many white investors who made money off the same “sinful” enterprises, but they were protected by the Judeo-Christian laws, which sheltered them from punishment. Why was it any less moral to make millions of dollars of profit from the almost slave labor provided by the Chinese workers, as the railroads did, than it was to make money from gambling? As for prostitution, some free-love suffragists were saying that a marriage contract did not give a man permission to have sexual intercourse with his wife by force, and yet the courts would not dare accuse a husband of such a deed as forced coitus!
To the Chinese, on the other hand, a paid prostitute was not much different than a wife who was owned by her master husband. While the husband could go to prostitutes to seek his sinful pleasures, the woman was kept prisoner inside her Victorian mansion, a slave to the patriarchal culture. Of course, the Chinese kept their women submissive with foot binding and other inhuman practices, but they saw prostitution as a way to provide solace to their all-male workers, who were never allowed to visit or to socialize with white women in America.
Lees knew better. There were Tongs he could work with to keep the overall peace, and they were much more valuable to him outside than they were locked-up. He also believed it was a better use of his time to follow the leads he had already uncovered in this case, especially the one that pointed to George Kwong, the son of Andrew Kwong, head of the Sam Yup Company. However, Captain Lees knew there was no such thing as cornering a man of his reputation. It would cause an immediate response from the entire community.
Therefore, Lees was going to arrange a meeting with all of the Six Companies leaders at one time so that suspicions would not be raised. If and when he got enough evidence to make an accusation or arrest, all of the leaders would be informed so that possible violence might be averted. Of course, Kid Cook and his arrests of Tong leaders had already placed all of Chinatown on high alert, and this w
as not good for Lees and his investigation.
Once back at the Office of Detectives on Kearny, Captain Lees told Detective Vanderheiden to arrange the meeting with the leaders of the Six Companies in the morning. Before retiring to his apartment on Montgomery Street, Lees did a thorough search through his photographic records of arrested and convicted felons.
There were seven who had listed their occupation as “butcher,” but none of them had a sexual assault or other such conviction. Two were arrested for larceny, one for assault, and four for drunken vagrancy. Only one was Chinese. Lees decided to delegate the questioning of these seven to one of his detectives, of which there were five, not including him and his partner. Perry O’Brien would probably be the best candidate, as he was not working on a case presently.
As Isaiah Lees leaned back in his chair with his feet on the desk, he thought about what questions he would ask of these leaders, and he remembered yet another connection to the victim. Mary McCarthy had previously been a member of the Methodist Mission for Wayward Women. He knew the woman, Rachel Benedict, the appointed head of that mission. She would need to be interviewed as well.
Finally, he also realized, Andrew Kwong received the money for his newspaper, The Oriental, from the Methodist Church in San Francisco. With those dots connected, the Kwongs became even more suspect. Was there perhaps some rivalry between father and son which had caused one of them to murder young Mary McCarthy?
Lees knew he needed to find out who had visited McCarthy the evening of her murder. Was it one of the Kwongs or some other member of the Six Companies? Did McCarthy perhaps begin to blackmail one of her clients? She was, after all, a freelance whore.
Of course, at this stage of the investigation, this client might have been anybody, and his hunch that this person was connected to Chinatown might be wrong. One thing was certain. The inscrutable way the Chinese could keep what white men called a “poker face,” would be an added difficulty when he questioned them all at their meeting.
Chapter 2: Portia of the Pacific
Baldwin Hotel, California Street, San Francisco, February 13, 1884.
Clara Shortridge Foltz, age thirty-five and mother of five, was visiting her lover, Charles Gunn, age twenty-nine and a bachelor, when she was kidnapped by four Chinese men. Missus Foltz had met Mister Gunn four years earlier, when she was serving as the first woman appointed Clerk of the California State Assembly in Sacramento. She had noticed the rather short but handsome young man with a full black beard standing in the front of the audience, smiling at her, as she spoke about women’s suffrage to the mostly approving gathering.
Charles attempted to stop the men from stealing his woman from the hotel room by shouting at the top of his voice to attract attention, but these men quickly formed a human arrow, with one man in front and three behind. They lifted the tall Missus Foltz above them so that she was resting upon their hands in a vertical position, and they stormed out of the room, down the stairs, and out into the noisy hubbub of California Street.
Some passersby momentarily stopped and watched the strange procession, a woman in a fancy blue dress being carried by small but wiry men dressed in what looked like black pajamas. However, the Chinese were so fast and so efficient at dodging and weaving through the crowd that they were soon running down a side alley and out of sight. Poor Mister Gunn was left in the dust, standing on the sidewalk, waving his fist in anger.
All that Clara Foltz could think of as she was being whisked down the alley, headed toward Chinatown, was that her youngest daughter, eight-year-old Virginia, would have loved riding up in the air on the hands of four men. Clara herself was not unpleased with the experience, as these men were so competent at carrying her that she felt no discomfort. Somehow, after giving birth to five children beginning at age sixteen, in the rural wilds of Iowa, this experience did not seem dangerous at all.
After all, she deduced, with her superior legal mind, these men were probably looking for female companionship during this horrendous economic downturn, beginning in 1882, and the possibility of pregnancy was out of the question. As a “free love” advocate, Clara had procured the latest contraceptive. A gold wishbone stem pessary, an intra-cervical device. As long as she did not panic, and kept her wits, she could survive this bump in the road, as her grandmother used to call life’s adversities.
As her entourage was clambering down the stairs inside a Chinatown building, the bumps became a bit much, granted, but the room into which they ultimately took her was quite large and filled with beautiful Asian decorations. Paper lanterns of almost every shape and size were lit, and, as they lifted her and let her slide—feet first—to the floor, she saw a row of stern-faced Chinese males staring back at her from behind a rectangular wood table of about twelve to fourteen feet in length and three feet high.
Clara was relieved that her body was not going to be plundered for sexual gratification. One of her first political allies was the Workingmen’s Party of California, which grew out of the anti-railroad sentiment in the 1870s and which became an advocate for, among other issues, women’s suffrage. Her discussions with its leader, Denis Kearney, had made her quite wary of these foreigners, employed by people like Leland Stanford, who took jobs away from American workers. She believed all the anti-Chinese rhetoric, and she surmised that these men in front of her were in direct communications with the Manchu profiteers back home.
Denis Kearney’s political party was established in response to high unemployment and was in sympathy with the nation-wide railroad strike of 1877. The group held its meetings next to City Hall, in a spacious vacant area called the "Sand Lot." At the first meeting, members passed resolutions supporting the striking railroad workers, calling for an end to government subsidies of railroad companies and to military intervention against strikers, insisting on an eight-hour day, a confiscatory tax on wealth, and women’s rights.
The crowd became agitated against the Chinese immigrants and went on a rampage that lasted three nights, killing several Chinese, destroying Chinese laundries, and raiding the wharves of the Pacific Mail Steamship Company, which transported Chinese immigrants to America. The rioters burned adjacent lumberyards and hay barns, but were unable to burn the company’s steamships.
As Clara stared at these Chinese, she observed them. There were six sitting behind the long table, and all but one wore the silk robes, round hats, wispy facial hair and long queues down the back. They looked the same as the men she had seen so often in the newspapers, both in photographs, and exaggerated in the political cartoons of the editorial pages. The one who was wearing a western suit, with white shirtsleeves and tie, seated in the center position, addressed her in well-spoken English.
“I am very sorry for your rude transport, Madame Foltz. You see, we have been rushed into taking rather extreme measures. Let me introduce you to my compatriots, from your far left, and continuing down the line, we have Li Youchin of the See Yup Company, Wong Suh Woo of the Ning Yuen Company, and my name is Andrew Kwong of the Sam Yup Company.”
Her host turned toward the gentlemen on his left and continued, “Next, we have Yueng Sheng of the Yeung Wo Company, Al Soo-Hoo of the Hop Wo Company, and Stephen K. Fong of the Hip Kat Company.” Each one of the men bowed deeply as he was introduced.
“Thank you for your introductions, Gentlemen, but as you are certainly aware, you are presently classified as kidnappers under the law. I suggest you explain the grave importance of this imposition upon my personal freedom and safety, as I cannot guarantee I will not prosecute you all when this is over.” Clara was surprised that her voice sounded clear and confident. She may well have been addressing the California Supreme Court, if it weren’t for those four rather ominous henchmen and escorts, who were still standing closely around her.
“I am happy to hear you mention the law, Madame Foltz. The main reason you have been brought here, under less than auspicious circumstances, is to retain you as our attorney. Fourteen members of our community have
been arrested, and we have no means to defend them. I attended the trial you prosecuted in December 1880. I was impressed by your argument to the jury of all men about the guilt of the accused, Mister Wheeler. You told them that you believed Mister Wheeler’s defense was not acceptable because he was trying to blame the victim, the sister of his wife, with whom he was having a love affair. He said he killed her and stuffed her body inside a trunk because she had asked him to do so. The victim was, Wheeler’s attorney said, too embarrassed because a rival lover had found out about her relations with Wheeler, and she wanted to die.”
Clara smiled. She remembered the case well, as she and her female attorney friend, Laura deForce Gordon, were the first women ever to try a murder case in a court of law. The publicity surrounding the case was good for her practice, even though the same basic prejudices existed at the time. Many believed that women could never argue to an all-male jury because they would “seduce them” with their sex and feminine emotions. The prejudices she knew so well continued because of the legally established concept that a woman was a child, incapable of adult reason, and when she married, her civil rights merged into the protective custody of her overlord and master, her husband.
Oh yes, Clara knew personally about such “protective” husbands. Her Civil War veteran husband, Jeremiah Foltz, had abandoned her and her five children for a young woman in San Jose. To protect herself from society’s harsh judgement against “sinful, abandoned women,” she lied. She told everyone that her husband had died, and she was now a widow. At every turn, it seemed, Clara had to fight the male establishment to pursue her calling.
“Madame Foltz? Did you hear me?”
Andrew Kwong was talking to her. Clara cleared her throat.
“Yes, I did win that case, even though it was adjudicated a mistrial because of another attorney who brought forth unacceptable evidence. However, I might add, the Defendant Wheeler was later retried and was hanged.”
Chinawoman's Chance Page 2