Hatchet Men: The Story of the Tong Wars in San Francisco’s Chinatown (34 page)

What we do know of Little Pete is that he was a strange admixture of East and West. He was a well-to-do businessman, yet a boss of Chinatown crime. He was both respected and hated but also genuinely liked by many. His passing posed a problem to law-abiding members of both races. Should they attend ceremonies honoring a business magnate who doubled as the rackets’ boss of Chinatown?

When Little Pete was killed he got the entire front page of the
Call,
including three line drawings and six headlines or subheads. The story of his life was told in thumbnail fashion in a welter of uppercase type which festooned page One:

Little Pete Murdered by His Enemies

CHINESE HIGHBINDERS ASSASSINATE THE MOST FAMOUS OF LOCAL MONGOLIANS

GRAND JURY BRIBER SHOT DOWN BY SEE YUP ASSASSINS

KING OWYANG, THE CHINESE VICE-CONSUL SAID TO BE NEXT ON LIST OF DOOMED SAM YUPS

THE GREAT LEADER KILLED IN BARBERSHOP FOR PRICE SET ON
His
HEAD

NOTORIOUS VICTIM WAS ONCE MILLIONAIRE, RACE-JOBBER, IMPORTER OF SLAVES AND THE MAN WHO GAVE CHRIS BUCKLEY THE TITLE OF BUND WHITE DEVIL

Little Pete enjoyed neither a long nor an honorable life. But it was an exciting one. He was born in Kow Gong, about ten miles out of Canton, in 1864, and came to San Francisco when he was ten years old. In his early teens he became an errand boy for a Sacramento Street shoe factory. Hard working and ambitious, Pete was also loyal to his family; when he was making only $10 a month as a shoestore clerk he contributed part of his wages to the support of his relatives, including an aged mother in Canton. By attending the Sunday school of the Methodist Chinese Mission as well as a grammar school (and some say high school too), Pete learned to be fluent and proficient in the English language. He joined the Sam Yup Company and while still a youth became involved in Chinatown and city-wide politics. Although a young man of taste, breeding, grace and gentility amounting almost to delicacy, his was a ruthlessly materialistic philosophy. His story was Horatio Alger, Dupont Gai style, but with sinister overtones.

As interpreter for the Sam Yup Company, Little Pete was privy to all sorts of business information which could make a smart man into a powerful and rich man. Handsome, intelligent and always immaculate in appearance, he became so well-liked by the Caucasians with whom he did business that he was Mr. Chinatown to them. He was perhaps the most thoroughly Americanized Chinese of his day, despite his fondness for Chinese costume and theatre and his retention of his queue. He was a great lover of American methods, and these helped him to get ahead in the Quarter. He took excellent care of his health and was bright eyed and clear skinned—the direct antithesis of the sallow, tubercular (and possibly leprous) coolie of sand-lotter tradition. Pete dressed richly and well; his Oriental clothing was expensive and in the best of taste. He appeared to indulge in none of the vices for which his countrymen were condemned at the time. Little Pete combined Oriental cunning and sagacity with Occidental friendliness and business acumen.

In short, the cultured, Westernized Little Pete would seem to have been the ideal man to lead Chinatown toward a better day; to integrate it and its people into American life. Unfortunately Little Pete had a serious flaw in his diamond-hard character. He did not know the difference—or at least he cared to draw no distinction—between good and evil. He knew what was legal and what was illegal, but instead of a true sense of right and wrong, Pete had only an egocentric philosophy. What was good for Little Pete was
good.
This ambition, power hunger and superpragmatic philosophy would lead him to success. But it would also drag him to an untimely death on the floor of a barber shop. When his time came, at thirty-three, the people of Chinatown were ready to forgive him for his sins. His success story and his personal charm and charity had made him their idol.

Pete saved his money until he had accumulated what he needed and then borrowed a few hundred dollars more on his good name. The diligent young Sam Yup was obviously an excellent credit risk. Had he not become a broker, landing both goods and persons (including many illegal immigrants and prostitutes) in San Francisco while still only a very young man? With this capital Little Pete established himself in the shoe business with his uncle Fong Yuen, his brother Fong Shun, and some forty employees. To fool his Caucasian customers, many of whom belonged to the union-labor class, Pete gave his shoes the brand name of F. C. Peters & Company. San Franciscans who were in on the joke—F. (Fong) C. (Ching) Peters—named him Little Pete because of the Occidental pseudonym he had chosen. He built up a big wholesale business and hired a white bookkeeper and white salesmen to sell his shoes from Puget Sound to San Diego. He paid his help the highest salaries in the business. Within a very short time he was independently wealthy. But he was not content; he began to conduct several lucrative gambling dens on the side. He married Chun Li and took very good care of her and the three children she bore. Although still only a youth, Little Pete came to be looked to for legal counsel and general advice by the whole Chinese community. This was a rare honor in a society in which, traditionally, young people—even bright young people—must defer to their elders for wisdom and advice.

According to Police Captain Thomas S. Duke, Little Pete was the founder of the new fighting tong, the Gee Sin Seer, before he was even of age. There is confusion here, too, for Pete admitted tong membership in court but stated he was a member of the rival Bo Sin Seer. In either case, the men he recruited were young toughs of the criminal class who were a world apart from their cultivated leader, with his native intelligence and dignity, but they were dedicated and dangerous. Pete’s tong machinations were soon so successful that tribute began to pour in. Hatchet men who were jealous of his success formed rival secret societies and bided their time to topple the new King of Chinatown.

Enmity festered, particularly between the Gee Sin Seer and Bo Sin Seer tongs. Finally the headmen of the latter society decided that the only way to conquer their bitter rival was to eliminate the gentlemanly and rich leader of it. Word of the plot reached Pete’s ears, for he was close to every shoot and tendril of the Chinatown grapevine. He took immediate action. One of his precautions was to hire Lee Chuck, the deadliest
boo how doy
in San Francisco, as his bodyguard.

On July 23, 1886, Detective William Glennon was tipped off that an attempt was about to be made to kill Lee Chuck in order to clear the way to Little Pete. The detective obligingly warned the highbinder to be on his guard. Lee Chuck grunted his thanks for the warning and told Pete. The latter secured an extra heavy coat of mail for them both. These bulletproof vests of steel chains weighed thirty-five pounds each. Hatchet men then stalked hatchet men for the next several months in a cat-and-mouse game. On October 28, Lee Chuck finally ran into his executioner, face to face. It was Yen Yuen of the Bo Sin Seer tong. The two pigtailed highbinders exchanged angry words preliminary to Teaching for their pistols. Little Pete had chosen well. While Yen was still tugging at the weapon in his waistband Lee Chuck was firing five rounds into his body, killing him instantly.

Officer John B. Martin, who was later to be chief of police, rushed to the scene of the vendetta when he heard the close-spaced fusillade. Lee Chuck was already in flight, but Martin pounded after him in scalding pursuit. Suddenly Lee Chuck stopped, turned, and aimed his pistol at Martin’s chest. The officer saw the muzzle of the gun bearing down on him; he had no time to draw and aim his own weapon as he ran. There was not even time to dodge. But miraculously the gun failed to explode. The sixth cartridge, after five perfect ones, was a dud. Lee Chuck snapped the hammer twice, then Martin collided with him, grappling for his gun arm. He was about to overpower the hatchet man when he saw that with his free hand Lee Chuck had extracted a second revolver and was cocking it to fire into Martin’s side as the two men struggled. As the hatchet man’s finger squeezed the trigger Officer Maurice J. Sullivan ran up and tore the weapon from his grasp. The two policemen snapped the cuffs on Lee Chuck and hustled the armored highbinder down to headquarters.

At this point Little Pete made the first of only two major mistakes of his career. (The second one would prove fatal.) Shortly after his bodyguard was arrested, Pete—perhaps bereft of his usual common sense and in a fit of panic because he was unprotected—approached Policemen Burr Love and Con O’Sullivan in the back room of a saloon at Clay and Stockton Streets. He offered them $400 each to help Lee Chuck. Next he hunted up Officer Martin himself and offered him $400 to perjure himself at the trial and give testimony favorable to the gunman. Pete wanted Martin to say that several men had attacked Lee Chuck and that the latter had fired in self-defense. To Pete’s surprise and consternation, Martin was indignant. Instead of quietly pocketing the graft, as Pete had been sure he would do, Martin reported the bribe attempt to the Chief. Stewart Menzies, foreman of the Grand Jury, secured a warrant for Pete’s arrest. On August 5, 1886, Little Pete was indicted by the Grand Jury for attempted bribery of officers of the police department.

Pete quickly rounded up a number of shysters, the best in town, and was not above hiring an honest lawyer or two for prestige and for their skill. One of these was Hall MacAllister whose bronze effigy still stands facing MacAllister Street from a sidewalk pedestal opposite one wing of city hall. MacAllister was astonished at Pete’s plea. The King of Chinatown told his counselors, “Now I will tell you, gentlemen, I’m no lawyer and that’s why I retain you. But I do know that I stand alone against two policemen who will swear I offered them four hundred dollars. Therefore, I will not be believed. Now, I want you to go on the stand and confess that I not only offered them the money but that they took it.” MacAllister and the other lawyers told him such a plan was out of the question. But the clever Chinese insisted. “Gentlemen, you are not as well acquainted with the police department as I am. They have been blackmailing every Chinaman in Chinatown for years, and it is not a question of right or wrong with them, it is ‘how much money do we get?’” Pete managed to convince his attorneys. They did it his way.

Judge Dennis J. Toohy and the jury heard the polished, slender young Chinese address them in perfect English on January 7, 1887. “Yes, gentlemen, I paid those officers a bribe but it was honestly done, as I asked them to take the money and only testify to the truth. The truth is all that I wanted of them, and I thought four hundred dollars would be enough for them to tell that, but it was not. They came back for more money, and when I refused their demands they not only convicted my friend but arrested me.” Little Pete proved himself to be an astute judge of human nature. The jury disagreed on the 18th and was dismissed, and Little Pete was released on $5,000 bail pending a new trial.

This second trial was held on May 16. Testimony closed on the 24th and was argued before the jury on the following day. Chief Crowley, Sergeant Thomas W. Bethell, and Detective William Glennon all testified to the bad reputation Pete bore, and Crowley related that Policeman Martin had reported the bribery attempt immediately and in complete detail. Both Martin and Love denied, with some heat, that they had ever accepted any money from Pete or any other Chinese.

Proof that Little Pete had labored long and hard in preparing for his second trial was soon evident, but it was revealed in an unexpected quarter. A prosecution subpoena brought in a surprise witness. He was Gus Williams and his temporary abode was Point San Quentin where he was resting from the strenuous life of a professional burglar. Little Pete’s emissaries had approached him while he was still “outside” and had offered him money to swear that he saw Martin taking a bribe from the defendant. He was only too willing and dutifully jotted down fictitious memos of dates and places—all furnished by Little Pete—where he had supposedly been a witness to the paying off of Martin. Unfortunately for him and for Pete, his burgling proclivities landed him in the State penitentiary. To say that his word was discredited would be understatement. On the other hand, Pete rounded up a number of Chinese who testified to his sterling character.

Finally Little Pete himself appeared, testifying in his own behalf. He had little to say other than that he was twenty-three years old and had been in San Francisco for thirteen years. He was not as glib as he had been in the earlier trial, and admitted that both he and Lee Chuck were members of the Bo Sin Seer tong. Presumably this was to disavow any hatred for this tong. It was, after all, a Bo Sin Seer—Yen Yuen—who had been shot down by his bodyguard who was also a Bo Sin Seer. It was all in the family. Pete denied all allegations made against him, categorically, and swore that it was the Bo Sin Seer’s rival, the Gee Sin Seer tong, which had desired Lee Chuck’s death. This was a real tangle. Captain Duke insisted that Pete had been the founder of the Gee Sin Seer and that both he and Lee Chuck were members. Pete claimed membership in the rival tong. Thus he and his hatchet man were comrades of the murdered Yen Yuen.

About four in the afternoon of the 27th, the jury shuffled into court, yawning, unkempt and bleary of eye. The sleepy foreman reported that they were unable to agree after more than twenty-five hours of continuous argument. No verdict was possible, he said. The jury differed on a question of fact. Nonsense, insisted Judge Toohy. He did not think it proper to discharge them yet; he sent them back to consider the case further. They were to render a sealed verdict or to remain locked up for another night. At 5:15 they were back. The foreman again announced that agreement was utterly impossible no matter how long Toohy might choose to keep them out. The judge discharged the panel and set a date for Little Pete’s third trial. He admitted Pete to $5,000 bail again and the weary jury of nine for conviction and three for acquittal trudged out.

At this time Foreman Stewart Menzies of the Grand Jury heard that incriminating papers belonging to Pete were in the safe of a business house on Montgomery Street. Word of this had leaked out when Pete, in jail, tried to get one of his attorneys to use the documents to lever Boss Buckley into action. Pete wanted Buckley to get him off. He had paid the acknowledged boss of San Francisco $4,500 in advance for just that. Pete had little use for the blind boss, and when it appeared that Buckley might double-cross him, the keen-eyed Chinatown boss was ready and willing to drag him along to prison too. Buckley became frightened and promised to return the money. But Attorney Mowry obtained a search warrant and rounded up two detectives and a locksmith, and the latter drilled the safe open. The men were in the act of extracting the papers when one of Pete’s stable of attorneys, Henry H. Lowenthal, walked in. He demanded to know by what right they had broken into Ung Sing & Company’s safe. Lowenthal scouted out the sheriff and his deputies and got them aligned with him—and Pete—in a civil war of the law-and-order bodies of the city against the police department and the Grand Jury. The legality and propriety of the search and seizure of the documents was hotly argued for days, and accusations, counteraccusations and contempt charges were hurled back and forth in broadsides. As the papers passed through so many hands, filching was carried on and many of the prized documents disappeared forever. The Grand Jury tried to persuade the Sam Yup Company to turn over all of Little Pete’s business papers but the company refused. The officers said that they were afraid that Buckley would buy up the court and send them all to jail.