Hatchet Men: The Story of the Tong Wars in San Francisco’s Chinatown (36 page)

That same year of 1895, the police heard a rumor that Pete was behind the murder of Chew Ging, a member of the Suey Sing tong. The tong claimed that Little Pete had hired a decoy named Do Ming, who was actually arrested for the murder, in order to get the heat off the real killer whose identity was unknown. They were probably right; the police had to let Do go for lack of evidence. Undoubtedly the real assassin made his escape.

Besides the Suey Sings, Little Pete had other rivals and enemies. Lee Gee and Lee Hoy were competitors in the slave-girl trade, and from him they picked up the custom of forging Revenue Agent B. M. Thomas’s name to revenue stamps on opium. Another rival, though not really an enemy, was Chen Hen Shin, alias Chin Tan Sun or Big Jim. He ran gambling dens in Chinatown and Oakland and owned banks, restaurants and other property in San Francisco plus property in China. Big Jim was even better off financially than Pete (Pete’s income had fallen off during his stretch in Folsom), and was often described as a millionaire. He was the inventor of the “no-see-’um” lottery. His Chinatown office had a blind, windowless face on the street—the facade being broken only by a small aperture. Money was pushed through this hole by customers and tickets pushed back out by a hidden cashier. The buyer never saw the vendor, and thus could not identify him in court. One May evening the department decided to put an end to Big Jim’s operation. A detective pushed some money through the opening. When the hand came out with the tickets, the officer snapped one of a pair of handcuffs over its wrist and hung on. He braced himself against the building but the hand got away. There must have been a half-dozen men pulling on the unfortunate member. Big Jim courteously returned the detective’s property, pushing the manacles gingerly through the opening after they had been worked off the trapped teller’s wrist.

Expositions and the slave trade were not Little Pete’s only hobbies. When he was thirty-one he became a horseracing fan and enjoyed the easy money he made at it. He took in $100,000 within a few weeks. He would bet up to $6,000 a day and would seldom lose any large amount on any one race. His profits came to be enormous, even after he had greased the palms of innumerable fixed jockeys, bookmakers, hostlers and stableboys of all categories. It was no surprise, therefore, that Pete developed a sure-fire system of picking winners, even in a closely matched race of favorites. He generously shared his track knowledge with others, giving his friends good tips on the horses. A typical race fixed by Pete was the one in which all the experts had figured Wheel of Fortune as a sure thing. But Pete put his money on a horse named Rosebud. Miraculously—or so it seemed—the judgment of the green track fan from Chinatown proved to be superior to that of race-goers of many years’ standing. Rosebud came in well ahead of the favorite—ridden by Pete’s good friend Jockey Chorn.

It was not until March, 1896, that bookmakers and public alike realized that they were being systematically plundered at the Bay District track. They could not figure out just who was responsible or how it was being done. They did not yet suspect the Chinese newcomer. But Pete, if he did not know horses, knew people and their weak points. He had made “arrangements” with as many as ten jockeys. It was Jockey Arthur Hinrichs, a mild-looking, blue-eyed lad from St. Louis, who informed on Pete. Hinrichs was an artist in the saddle and a demon finisher in the stretch, but he ratted on Pete, claiming that he was not getting his share; he was probably panicky because he had double-crossed his fixed comrades of the track. In a race in which Pete had selected Jerry Chorn to win, the greedy Hinrichs declined to lay back. Instead, he whipped up his 10-to-1 shot and came home in first place past a startled Chorn. Hinrichs had $800 of his own money on the nose of his own mount. The other jockeys were so bitter about his double-dealing that he thought it best to hire a bodyguard.

Finally Hinrichs’s nerve deserted him entirely and he confessed to Tom Williams, president of the Jockey club. Hippolyte Chevalier, Chorn and Hinrichs usually rode the three fastest horses in any race, so Pete “fixed” all three possible winners, arranging in advance who would come in first. Because he knew that suspicions would be aroused if he was seen talking to the horsemen, he used Dow Williams as a gobetween, telling him the horse chosen to win on a particular day and having the trainer whisper the password to the jockeys at the last moment.

Tales of Pete’s big winnings had begun to spread even before Hinrichs confessed, but he laughed them off, saying each time, “I backed two or three in the race but only won a trifle.” Elated at his success, Little Pete tried his hand at bookmaking, but was only partially successful. One or two of the horses laid up in his book as “dead ones” suddenly revived and his book lost heavily.

When Hinrichs confessed, Williams called a meeting of the board of stewards. After hearing the evidence, that body directed that the California Jockey club expel Chorn, Chevalier and Pete from the tracks for conspiracy and fraud, and refuse permission to Hinrichs to ride in any races. Pete’s bribes ruined a number of reputations and probably lives. Hinrichs, Chevalier and Chorn were ruined as jockeys.

Supposedly Pete was
tabu
at all tracks after this, but following his death, James B. Ranier, a trainer, came forward to reveal that the track boycott on Pete had never been effective. He said:

I understand that someone got hold of part of the story so I thought it best to make a clean breast of it. After Pete got ruled off, I operated for him on the race track, and while he was not betting heavily—only a hundred or two at a time—he was working in other ways. At his suggestion I bought three horses. I bought them at a good price on the condition that the people in whose names they stood would go on racing them in their colors but at my orders... If Fete had lived only a week longer the bookkeepers out on the track next Saturday would not have had sufficient money to pay their carfares home. We would have cleaned up at least two hundred thousand dollars. Why, I gave his widow eighteen hundred dollars today—the proceeds of one winning on one of our horses on Friday in Oakland… Pete’s play was this. He gave me a note or power of attorney six months ago, saying “Anything this man does or says for me I will stand by.” Well, I always had some money on hand to treat the “push” and the jockeys and I would put up champagne for the high-toned ones and perhaps steer them into good feminine company. Then when my man was mellow I would suggest he wasn’t riding for his health and that all I wanted him to do was to ride one race for me—he to get fifty percent of the money. They all knew Little Pete would divide fairly .. .

One crackerjack jock came into town, and when I broached the proposition to him and showed him Little Pete’s note he was a little leery. He said he never did business with any but the principals. “Very well,” I said... I took him to Chinatown and got Pete and introduced them… when I next saw the jockey... he said, “It’s all right. Whenever you want me to ride for you just give me the word.”

I tell you, we have five of them—the jockeys—sure. It was the greatest thing ever done. There was no playing for place, but just straight money. The names of the jockeys are known everywhere and the alleged owners of the horses are some of the biggest people on the turf.

I have documentary evidence of what I saw, including some interesting letters. My arrangement with Little Pete was to be paid for running expenses and wages for the time being. We were looking for the big cleanup on Saturday. When that came I was to have fifty percent of the total profits… and I would have got it sure. Pete was square….

With Lee Chuck in the insane asylum after being released from Folsom, Little Pete had to look for a new bodyguard. He chose well in selecting Ed Murray. The strapping Murray was to be his shadow and the start of a vogue among highbinders. Pete’s idea was that any hatchet man would think twice before gunning down a white man to get at his Chinese enemy. If one did, he just might have a lynch mob of
fan kwei
after him. The killing of whites would certainly mean an end to the casual attitude of the public which permitted Chinatown crime to flourish. White bodyguards for the Mandarins, as Chinese big businessmen and bosses came to be called, became quite a fad.

C. H. Hunter later replaced Murray as Pete’s bodyguard. And on the evening of January 23, 1897—exactly eleven years to the day after Detective Glennon warned Lee Chuck of the plot on his life—Little Pete made his second major mistake. His first had been to try to bribe Officer Martin in the Lee Chuck case. His second—and last—was to let his Chinese bodyguards off for a pre-Chinese New Year’s revel and to separate himself briefly from Hunter.

From his home upstairs over his shoe factory Pete sent Hunter on an errand, saying “I’ll go downstairs and get shaved while you are gone.” Hunter advised him not to be so rash but Pete laughed. “That’s all right, I’ll take care of myself.” It was about 9:05 P.M. Pete proceeded downstairs, secure in his own building and with his bodyguard only a few blocks away on a ten-minute errand. He walked through the ground floor and turned into the barbershop next door. In the meantime Hunter sauntered down to the New Western Hotel to pick up a copy of the
Sporting World
so that Pete could learn the results of the day’s races. He passed within a few feet of two young men idling against the corner of a building; he may even have brushed against them. Once he was well past, the two loungers separated themselves from the black shadows, straightened up, and reached inside their blouses and drew out pistols. They hurried to the doorway of the barbershop. Their long, patient tailing of Pete had paid off at last.

An unarmed, unguarded King of Chinatown had taken a straight chair in the shop, only four feet from the front door. For the first time in months—perhaps years—Pete was briefly defenseless. The timing of the shadowy figures was perfect. In the shop with Pete were two barbers, and one other customer who was having his head shaved.

At approximately 9:10 P.M. the two hatchet men, fedoras pulled low over their faces, strode into the barbershop. At the exact moment that Hunter was fumbling with a handful of coins to pay the newspaper vendor at the New Western Hotel, a pistol shot echoed in the barbershop, followed by three more. Smoke and the smell of cordite filled the room. The men spun on their heels and were gone. In the rear of the shop barbers Wong Chong and Won Chick Cheong were emptying basins of water. They saw nothing.

Hunter came hurrying up the hill, pistol in hand, but he was too late. Much too late. He stared in disbelief at the crumpled form on the blood-soaked floor of the barbershop. Two of the assassins’ bullets had torn into Pete’s head and a third into his chest. Hunter was out of a job, and some Chinese was richer by the price ($3,000) on Little Pete’s head.

Reporters questioned Hunter the next morning. “Of late,” said the bodyguard, “I’d been contemplating giving up my job because of Pete’s recklessness and his often expressed contempt of the value of my service. There is no more danger of my being hurt than there is of you being hurt,’ he would say. But several times men tried to get the drop on Pete. Only last week a man rubbed up against me to see if I had a weapon. I gave him a shove, and four other men showed hostility. I had to hit one on the head with my revolver before he would quit.” Hunter added, “In spite of this, the fact that a price was on his head worried him, and of late he was rather ill tempered.” Hunter could tell them no more.

Even before the Chinatown squad sped to the murder scene Special Officer George Welch arrived. He had been quick enough to see two men flee from the doorway of the barbershop. He pursued them as they ran into Waverly Place. (Waverly was also known as Ho Boon Gai—Fifteen Cent Street—because that was the cost of “haircuts” [shaving] in the many barbershops which lined the street.) Policeman Murty Callinan came up at that moment and Welch pointed to No. 123 Waverly into which the duo had fled. The two officers entered the building, and Callinan arrested two men, Chin Poy and Wing Sing, upon Welch’s identification. In their room Callinan found a chest containing a box of loose pistol cartridges, a dagger with a three-edged blade, and two pairs of homemade “brass” knuckles made of solder.

Sergeant John Mooney and his Chinatown posse arrived shortly after Callinan. Mooney himself picked up the murder weapon—a modern Colt Storekeeper revolver. He found that four chambers were emptied. Mooney had officer Myler arrest the barber Wong Ching as a witness before he could drop from sight. Within a few moments Mooney was joined by Sergeant Wollweber and fourteen more men. Wollweber had his men frisk all the curious Chinese who pushed up close to the barbershop to peer inside; not a weapon was found on anyone. The lone customer, Wong Lung, was detained for questioning although he insisted that he had seen nothing. He was marched off to city prison.

At California Street Station the two suspects were given a thorough grilling. They denied any complicity in, or even knowledge of the crime. In fact they swore that they were unaware of the murder until arrested and that they had neither heard the shots nor left their room that evening. Wing Sing affected a
no-sabe
attitude but Chin Poy was glib enough. He told his interrogators that he was a cook who had just arrived from Portland two weeks earlier and had been hired by an insurance agent who was living in a local hotel until he could secure a new home. Of Wing Sing, Chin Poy said that he had come to San Francisco from an Alaskan cannery about a month earlier. The police thought that Wing was very well dressed for an ex-laborer. He did not resemble the coolie type of cannery worker who drifted into Chinatown each winter.

Attorneys secured the release of the barber witness on a writ of
habeas corpus
but the two men from the North were held. The arsenal found in their room, together with Welch’s identification of them as the men he saw fleeing the barbershop area, was damning. They were formally charged with murder. It soon became obvious that the department had the wrong men.

An anonymous merchant told a reporter that he had spoken to Pete just before the murder and that the latter had winked slyly at him and showed him $2,000 in gold—the result of a “good business deal.” The informant said the deal was the framing of an honest man for the murder of a Suey Sing while the real culprit, probably a Wah Ting San Fong tong hatchet man, got away. The talkative merchant insisted that Pete was killed by Suey Sings intent on evening up the score. Then, too, Little Pete’s nephew Chung Ying was reported boarding the steamer
China
in Hong Kong to come to San Francisco to find his uncle’s real murderers. The best evidence that the real murderers had escaped was the
chun hing
posted by Pete’s widow after the arrest of the suspects. It offered a reward of $2,000 for the capture and conviction of the murderers of Little Pete.