Ching Gong, a Hip Sing, had been driven out of Chinatown after being discovered to be a police informer. He had not been seen for two days. There were signs of forced entry through a broken rear window, but no weapon was found. He appeared to be the latest victim of the “one life for every raid” policy of the On Leongs.
In retaliation, fifty-eight-year-old Lee Yu, another of Tom Lee’s cousins and a senior tong member, was felled on Pell Street by a bullet through his head. Lee Yu had been high on the Hip Sings’ hit list because he had had a hand in the attempted murder of Mock Duck and the November Bowery clash and was strongly suspected of having planned the January killing of Huie Fong. His alleged shooter was Dong Fong, the favorite of Frank Moss. As it happened, the Parkhurst Society superintendent, Thomas L. McClintock, was walking with Dong at the time—or so he claimed—and McClintock denied Dong had been involved. The police didn’t buy his story, however, and they arrested Dong anyway.
Although they had no corpse to show for their efforts—Lee Yu didn’t die of his wounds—the Hip Sings were nonetheless jubilant. For the moment, they felt they had the upper hand over their antagonists.
◆ ◆ ◆ ◆ ◆
If the On Leongs were depressed at the latest downturn in their fortunes, March 1905 brought even more ominous news: Mock Duck was back in town.
The fearsome Hip Sing blackguard had left New York late the previous year after his release from the hospital. Some said he had headed for China, but he had actually gone only as far as California. Word on the street when he reappeared was that he had returned with four San Francisco Hip Sing desperadoes in tow and a determination to exact revenge on Tom Lee and company.
Sure enough, a scant three days later death warrants for Tom Lee, Gin Gum, and other senior On Leongs appeared again on several Chinatown walls. And Gin Gum noticed he was being followed. He and Tom Lee asked District Attorney William T. Jerome—a guest at the recent On Leong Chinese New Year celebration—for protection. Immediately, Captain Kear of Elizabeth Street dispatched all the Sixth Precinct’s plainclothesmen to Chinatown.
The New York Telegraph summed up the situation on its front page with some lighthearted doggerel:
When Mock Duck ducked to ’Frisco
Tom Lee was mighty glad;
But now he’s back in town, alack,
And Tom Lee, he is sad.
For Mock Duck is no mocker
When he goes out for blood,
And Tom Lee sees his finish
In a dull and sickening thud.
The Hip Sings were serious. When Chu Gong, the On Leong Tong’s treasurer, was walking down Pell Street at dusk on March 18, three men emerged from the shadows at No. 11, including Mock Duck himself. At the sight of Chu, he beckoned to twenty-seven-year-old Louie Way and thirty-one-year-old Lung Gow, who pulled out their revolvers. Had it not been for timely intervention by a plainclothesman, Chu would have been shot. The two hatchet men were arrested on the spot. Mock Duck, however, managed to disappear.
Tom Lee vanished as well, appearing only, with Gin Gum and Lee Loy, before Magistrate Charles S. Whitman at the arraignment of Louie Way and Lung Gow. The subject turned immediately to Mock Duck, who Lee insisted had masterminded the assault. Tom Lee tarred him as “very much worse than Monk Eastman,” a reference to a colorful and dangerous gangster who led one of the most powerful street gangs in New York and who was, at the time, serving a ten-year sentence for assault at Sing Sing. “He no ’fraid of police, and like killee white man,” the New York Times quoted Lee as saying, in an article the paper tastelessly chose to title “Mock Duck, He Velly Bad.” Mock Duck had never killed a white man, but Lee probably calculated that the authorities would find that far more alarming than if the victim were Chinese.
Louie Way and Lung Gow were held on $2,000 bail, and the following day Mock Duck was arrested at Hip Sing headquarters. Although he was accused only of assault for the Chu Gong incident—a charge that would have permitted his release on bail—District Attorney Jerome decided to indict him once again for the 1900 murder of Ah Fee, an accusation that had resulted in two hung juries and that Jerome himself had finally withdrawn. Jerome didn’t really intend to try him a third time for that crime; the charge was simply a ruse that made it possible to hold him without bail, which the district attorney felt would help keep the peace in Chinatown.
In a moment of candor, Jerome asserted, “I don’t care as long as the members of that society stick to playing Fan Tan, but when they take to murder then something must be done to stop their practices.” He added, “And for this purpose it is principally that I have had this man arrested.”
Mock Duck’s reemergence gave the newspapers an opportunity to reintroduce him to the reading public. “The vengeful Mock Duck . . . is a short, fat little Chinaman, with a round, smiling face that shows no guile,” the Cleveland Plain Dealer reported, although in surviving photographs Mock Duck always appears slender. “Duck is a mild-mannered Celestial, wearing a pigtail and an enormous diamond ring,” the New York Post declared. “He is only about twenty-six years old,” the New York Times observed, “and is even more youthful looking.”
“I don’t want to kill anybody,” Mock Duck said, in perfect English, from his jail cell after the hearing. “It isn’t true that I came here to kill Tom Lee, and I had nothing to do with the proclamation offering $3,000 for his death. I was not in San Francisco, and I did not bring with me any persons who want to break the law.”
But only after Mock Duck was safely behind bars did Tom Lee emerge from hiding, and then the On Leongs celebrated. Guests were well fed at the Mon Far Low Restaurant downstairs from On Leong headquarters, and nobody left without a cigar.
◆ ◆ ◆ ◆ ◆
The next day, when Frank Moss appeared for Mock Duck at the Court of General Sessions, he and Jerome nearly came to blows. A decade earlier, the two had been colleagues, associate counsels for the Lexow Committee. But since 1903, when they found themselves on opposite sides of a manslaughter trial, enmity had prevailed between them. In the wake of relentless and withering criticism of the district attorney’s office by the Parkhursts, there was now no love lost between the onetime comrades.
Moss filed a motion to discharge Mock Duck from custody, arguing that the murder indictment had been dismissed eleven months earlier at the recommendation of Jerome himself. He did not ask for dismissal of the assault charge but contended it was an offense that certainly warranted bail. Asserting that “Duck is the most inoffensive person in Chinatown,” the ever-loyal Moss went on to say,
A few months ago he was shot twice as he was leaving a gambling house where he had secured evidence. The man who shot him was arrested, but in spite of six witnesses to the crime, he was discharged in the police court. Duck saw that he could not get justice here and went to Chicago, where he lived a decent life. On going away, however, he had forgotten a trunk containing many valuable things, and as he heard that the case in which he was shot was about to be laid before the Grand Jury he decided to come back and testify if wanted and also get his trunk.
Of course, nobody else believed Mock Duck was the upstanding paragon Moss conjured, and Jerome’s response dripped with sarcasm:
This simple, angelic creature, as counsel would have it appear, has been twice tried for murder. The first time the jury stood ten to two for conviction. There are at least ten men who believe he is guilty of murder. It is true that I consented to the dismissal of the indictment charging murder because I had doubts if it would ever be possible to get a conviction. I still have those doubts. But when valuable information is laid before me to the effect that he intended to come back to New York bent on murder, I don’t think one should pick and choose his methods.
Then, unable to resist a dig at the Parkhursts, he went on,
I might add that until a certain society in this city began to “monkey” and “butt in” around with Oriental affair
s we heard of nothing but gambling in Chinatown among the classes there. Since that certain society interfered, plenty of shooting scrapes have been there.
Jerome acknowledged that there would not, in fact, be a third murder trial and offered to dismiss even the assault charge if Mock Duck would agree to leave the jurisdiction. “I want to get him out of town and away from here,” he explained.
The judge refused to discharge the defendant. He even commended Jerome for causing Mock Duck’s arrest, adding that “he has done so to keep peace and quiet in that part of the city.” He fixed bail for the assault charge at $1,000 but did warn that if Mock Duck were not tried on that charge within a reasonable period, he would dismiss it.
The two former associates left court without speaking. Outside the courtroom, Jerome ran smack into Gin Gum and Tom Lim, a high-ranking Hip Sing. It was fortuitous, because the exasperated district attorney had a message for both tongs. He grabbed Lim’s embroidered shirt with one hand and hooked a finger of the other through Gin Gum’s buttonhole and announced, “I am very glad to see you, gentlemen, and particularly glad to see you together in peace. Now listen to me for a few moments.
“Please tell the head men of your societies or gangs or tongs or whatever you call them, that I want to see them, and that they had better accede to my request. That is, I mean—I callee and they comee. I am going to send for them a week from Wednesday or Thursday. Keep that date in mind so that there can be no excuses. Tell them that they have got to come to an agreement to stop that shooting fest that has been going on in Chinatown.
“Then, when we have had our little talk, you will have to put a stop to some of your gay practices. Play Fan Tan by all means. That is none of my business. It is wrong, of course, but it is up to the police to look after it. But don’t murder. It goes beyond the line I have drawn. You must stop that kind of thing yourself, or I will stop it. I shall not call in the police. No, I shall send a few of my own men over to Chinatown. There won’t be any great number of arrests made, either, but I promise you that there will be a great number of Chinese in that region who’ll discover that this world is not all peace and joy. Have you understood?”
William T. Jerome, associate counsel to the Lexow Committee and later New York County district attorney, ca. 1905.
They said they had. Then they left the building, like the two attorneys, without a word to each other.
It took five days, but Mock Duck was finally bailed out of the Tombs. And, surprisingly, not by his Hip Sing brethren, nor by the Parkhursts, but by a white poultry dealer who supplied Chinatown restaurants, probably including the one of which he was a co-owner. The merchant put up $1,000 and Mock Duck was once again at liberty. Given Jerome’s comments at the discharge hearing, many thought he might seize the opportunity and leave the city.
◆ ◆ ◆ ◆ ◆
Jerome wasn’t the only one fed up with the shooting in Chinatown. Although gambling there was a fact of life, that certainly didn’t mean most Chinese took the killings with equanimity. Law-abiding residents suffered when Chinatown was not at peace. Most merchants would have been delighted to see betting stopped entirely; the trouble it brought was bad for business. And according to some, it siphoned money out of Chinatown and demoralized the population.
“These shops pay money to gambling society, and where does all the money go to? It goes to someone uptown—I know not where—who helps to keep gambling going on,” one of them complained to a New York Globe reporter. He was surely correct, although it’s hard to pinpoint precisely who, apart from the police, was receiving it. Tom Lee hadn’t spent so much effort cultivating Tammany higher-ups for nothing. Inspectors and officials further up the food chain were benefiting from Chinatown vice as much as the local police were.
An equally critical Chinese described the problem from a different angle in a letter to the police commissioner, William McAdoo. Although it was written in halting English, its thrust was clear. The writer was protesting arbitrary and corrupt behavior of police detectives on the take. The note read,
At present time the Detective of Chinatown terrorize and arrest every Chinaman by they feel alik [sic]. I know so many Chinamen victim by them and take their money away if refuse arrest follow one Chinamen reading a letter in his room they grab him and arrested and took away and other one was reading a book in 12 Pell St. They go in the room brake [sic] the draw [sic] and take all the money away and other one they don’t like his face get arrested if you give them money let go. The month of March about a hundred case like this. This is real hell treat worse then [sic] dogs. If you don’t remove them they be rich men sure the police men alright [sic], but the detective is real thief black mailer and bruet [sic] and cruel. I am swear to God what I saying is true.
McAdoo released the letter without naming its author, but he defended his men with the claim that it was impostors, and not true police detectives, who were shaking down the Chinese. “Of course any man with a badge has every opportunity in the world to take advantage of these poor creatures down there,” he protested. “They do not know the difference between a policeman and a blackmailing faker.”
A New York Sun reporter went to Chinatown to find the writer. Although he was unsuccessful, he did happen on one English speaker who summed up the situation beautifully. “The detectives who do the thieving and holding up are not fakers,” he said flatly, putting to rest McAdoo’s lame defense.
The trouble has been going on for many years. Whenever a policeman-detective needed money he would pretend to raid a gambling house. Everybody must give him money or be arrested. If he got his money—he always got his money—then nobody was arrested and was the wiser, because people down here are apart from the rest of the world and nothing is said.
But then came the quarrel between the societies. The police worked with the gamblers. The other society, which is all cutthroats, tried to get a share of the money. . . . The Parkhurst Society took sides with the cutthroats. There has been nothing but terror here. It is as the man in the letter says—nothing but hell. Peaceable men like myself who wish that all the members of the societies could be taken out to the ocean and drowned—we dodge bullets.
Now all this is good for the detectives. They have excuses for many raids. In every raid they catch a lot of Chinamen from out of town, laundrymen mostly, who have come in for one night’s social pleasures among their own people. They eat, they play cards. Is it a crime to play cards with your friends? Not unless you are a Chinaman. The detectives break in. Unless you pay them money, you go to the police station. The Magistrate knows you are a liar, because you are a Chinaman. So he will punish you anyway. Why not pay the policeman and save time and trouble? That is how it works.
Like the letter writer, the speaker more or less exonerated the uniformed police, reserving his invective for the detectives. And he described a more direct form of graft than had previously been described. As he told it, some police detectives had taken to extorting money straight from their victims, without any need for a middleman. These were damning accusations that surely contained much truth. Police corruption was a part of daily life in Chinatown. The letter should have given pause to anyone inclined to place blame solely at the feet of the Chinese immigrants. There were others with a strong, vested interest in maintaining the status quo.
A New York Post reporter found Tom Lee on the steps of On Leong headquarters dressed in a mustard-colored herringbone overcoat and puffing on a cigar. He asked his view of the letter. As reported, Lee replied in broken but serviceable English.
“You think it was written by a member of the Hip Sing Tong?”
“Not think at all; know him,” said Lee.
“And it is not true?”
“Him damned true.”
“Explain what you mean, Tom,” said the reporter.
“Very simple to explain him. Twenty, maybe fifteen years ago, Chinaman play him domino game, not make trouble f
or anybody. Policeman on Mott Street go him home play with baby. No shoot Italian man, no shoot Tom Lee. Then come highbinder. Me good ’Melican citizen, good Christian, but highbinder not American citizen. Bad Chinaman; plenty bad. He make plenty trouble very soon. No work, no washing. Him grafter.
“Me work very hard, sell tea much plenty. Presently come highbinder: ‘Tom, you give ten dollar.’ I give him. Presently: ‘Tom, you give twenty dollar, me start laundry.’ Him damn big liar. Never start laundry, just grafter. Pretty soon me get mad. No more ten dollar, twenty dollar. Then he begin shoot revolver. Kill white man, white woman; kill more white man, bring Mock Duck here.
“Mock Dock, him king grafter. Make policeman grafter, too. Him work together. Make domino game good graft, everything graft. Him policeman learn business pretty damn quick. . . . Mock Duck hide self; very much afraid Mr. Jerome. Him snake; come wiggle on tummy, shoot ’em revolver at ol’ Tom Lee, kill ’em two white men. Him bad man. Him frighten decent Chinaman, graft him until decent Chinaman give him up business.”
“But how would you stop the police graft, Tom?” the reporter interjected.
“Kill ’em Mock Duck, or put ’em Sing Sing twenty years. . . . Very bad man, Mock Duck, but him not too big for Mr. Jerome.”
Chapter 8
The Chinese Theatre Massacre
At a quarter to eight in the evening of April 23, 1905, what appeared to be a wedding procession rolled up Mott Street from Chatham Square and halted opposite the Church of the Transfiguration. Twelve closed, horse-drawn coaches led the way, followed by a large automobile. The only thing that seemed missing was a carriage for the bride.
Tong Wars Page 13