Washington Confidential 8 – Mortimer · Verses Across
Literature · Crime, Thrillers & Mystery
Washington Confidential 8Part 1 · CHINATOWN CHIPPIES
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Literature · Crime, Thrillers & Mystery
Washington Confidential 8
Part 1 · CHINATOWN CHIPPIES
MortimerEnglish
Sam Wong, an owner of the China Clipper, Quonsett Inn, the Dragon and other popular restaurants, was indicted on a $250,000 tax fraud. The government charged he gave most of it to two blondes--sisters--who lived with him. The case was tried in Baltimore. (Note: Though Washington is the nation’s capital, it is merely part of the Maryland Internal Revenue collection district.)
When the case was called, the courtroom filled with poker-faced orientals. The government called some, the defense called others, including Wong, whom it put on the stand.
But not one Chinese witness testified coherently. They gave their names, addresses, and so on, muttered and mumbled irrelevant replies. Even the defendant remained mute after being put on the stand by his own attorney.
The lawyers had read Chicago Confidential, in which these reporters revealed that Chinese will have no truck with American courts or American law. So they gave a copy to the court and D.A., hoping the judge and jury would realize the impossible position in which the defense legal battery was placed. It did no good. Wong got a year. The blondes weren’t Chinese--and they convicted him.
Some go to Chinatown for chop suey and chow mein. We will write about those who seek other delicacies.
Washington’s Chinatown is neither as large as Frisco’s, as colorful as New York’s, nor as odoriferous as Boston’s. You will see no ancient, pajama-clad women on its streets, and only a few young slant-eyed Sadies.
Chinatown is a mere three or four blocks on H Street, beginning in a block about 8th and extending barely to 5th. It’s almost all neon-lighted restaurants, with the shops of a few wholesale merchants and traders sandwiched in between. H is a typical wide Washington street with set-back buildings. If it weren’t for the garish Chinese characters on the illuminated signs and windows, and the pale yellow-faced men with sad old almond eyes sprawling on the stoops, you’d think you were anywhere but in a Chinatown.
As in all Chinese quarters, various locations and various businesses are divided between the tongs. Only two operate in the East, though there are scores in California.
The On Leongs are dominant here, though not in the nation, through an alliance with the Hip Sings, cemented many years ago, when they drove the competing organizations back to the West Coast. Then they turned on their ally. After a series of bloody wars, they established themselves as the top dogs, with the Hip Sings the poor cousins.
The tongs are, primarily, trade and benevolent associations. Their membership is comprised of certain families or immigrants from certain villages in Canton. When the authorities clamped down on tong wars in the 1930’s, the tongs began to enforce their decrees and decisions by peaceful means, which include trade and social boycott.
According to members of the Chinese colony in Washington, there are only 500 of them, but these figures are far out of line with our count of at least 7,500. There are hundreds of Chinese restaurants and laundries in the town. Chinese always underestimate their population, as do Negroes. But with them there are more concrete reasons. Three-fourths are entered illegally, through many subterfuges, such as forged birth and marriage certificates, as well as actual body-smuggling over the Mexican and Canadian borders and from the West Indies. The price of entering a Chinese now is $5,000, as against a modest $1,000 twenty years ago. The fee is paid the smugglers by the Chinaman’s tong or family society, for whom he then works to pay it off. Nowadays most of this illegal entry is by air.
Chinese are cagey at census time, because if the rolls show anywhere near as many in the country as there are, the difference in numbers between those here and the ones on record would be so startling, it would cause an investigation and wholesale deportation. Another reason is that they are on a gentlemen’s agreement quota basis with agents of the Federal Bureau of Immigration and Naturalization. When an agent runs across a group of illegally-entered Chinese, he gets practical about the whole matter.
If he turned them all up at once, he’d get a pat on the back from his superior, then have to go on a new job next week. But if he reports only one every two weeks, he doesn’t have to do another lick of work for months. So the agent makes a deal with the head of the tong, who delivers the unfortunate Chinese at set intervals, and thus everyone is happy: the government because it gets the Chinese, the agent because he can loaf, and the wealthy Chinese laundry and restaurant owners, who are not suddenly faced with labor shortages.
Washington’s Chinatown is important beyond its numerical strength because it acts as a lobby for Chinese all over the country, regardless of tong affiliation, and for Chinese merchants and enterprises all over the world. There are not enough Chinese voters in the country to enable them to influence elections, but they make up for lack of numbers by intelligence, ingenuity, wealth and Oriental cunning developed by centuries of intrigue with no qualms of honor owed the white man.
Communists never overlook a trick. They quickly took advantage of the Chinaman’s unique possibilities. Many Chinese are vulnerable because they have relatives in the old country. Thus they are subject to pressure. Many are technical law-breakers or illegal entrants, so the Reds, with their influence in high places, can threaten effectively. Chinese societies make swell “drops” for the transmission of messages and intelligence, and are being used, an angle not yet brought out publicly.
They’ll tell you it isn’t so, but some of the recent tong fighting is a war between Nationalists and Communists.
Chinatown, only a few blocks from the White House, the Capitol and the center of the business and commercial life, is a focal point for all, whites as well as Orientals, visitors and natives. In this town, where almost everything shutters by midnight, the Chinese propensity for staying up all night and sleeping most of the day has brought about several phenomena. Unless you are welcome at a bottle club, there is no late place to go to in Washington except Chinatown. Most of the restaurants there are open all night, selling food. More than a few serve liquor after 2 A.M., if they know you, in a tea-pot.
There is hectic activity all evening. Most of the white bag-swinging street-hustlers work the neighborhood. Any cab-driver will direct you there if you ask him, “Where can I get a girl?” These self-sellers usually ask $20, but will take what they can get. They go on duty at around 8, and by 10 most have made arrangements. From 10 to about 1 or 2, the restaurants are taken over by respectable people, mostly young couples who stop in for a bite of exotic food after the movies. After 1, when the tarts have completed their rounds, they come back again for more trade. At this time the drunks who have been ejected from the cocktail lounges and night clubs are transported wholesale by cab to Chinatown. Many of the drivers have deals with certain girls and some of these girls have deals with the Chinese restaurants they habitually visit.
Many of the hookers hang out at the Mai Fong.
We could find no Chinese whores in Washington. The proportion of Chinese women to men is one to ten. Any Oriental girl, no matter how homely, can make an attractive marriage. Many Chinese men are married to white women. There are no Chinese waitresses in the Chinese restaurants, except an occasional relative of the owner; they are whites. Few are for sale, but many will help get you one who is.
When the tramps finish their second round with the guys they have picked up at 2, they come back to Chinatown at 5 or 6 in the morning, by which time the waiters, chefs and bartenders, all Chinese, are locking up for the night and ready for a bit of shacking up themselves. Many of the prostitutes live with Chinese men from the restaurants and the gambling joints. These are useful to the Chinese colony, which entertains influential white people lavishly. Many members of Congress, high government officials and influential lobbyists are feted at private parties, where they are served exotic twenty-course meals of raw octopus and lambs’ eyes, washed down by shark’s fin soup. Police Chief Barrett, always accompanied by his aide-de-camp, a lieutenant, is frequently entertained in these private rooms.
Amiable blondes are supplied by the hosts if wanted, and rooms are available down the block, at the Eastern House, a cheap Chinese and white hotel, where federal agents frequently pick up dope-peddlers.
Selling narcotics is another large Chinese industry. Unlike other cities, it is not confined to selling to Chinese. In all other Eastern cities, opium, the favorite Chinese dream-smoke, is peddled by members of the On Leong Tong, who have the cream of everything, won through violence and chicanery.
In other cities, Hip Singers must content themselves with the sale of white stuff--heroin, morphine and cocaine--which is seldom used by Chinese. In Washington, Chinese are among the main retail dope purveyors for the white trade as well as their own people. There are few Puerto Rican and Italian drug passers available. So both tongs sell everything. Junkies cruise Chinatown at all hours of the day and night in search of dope, and can make a buy without any trouble. If anyone stands on a corner and looks sad for more than five minutes, he will be approached by a peddler.
The net result is that, with narcotics as with girls, the Chinese find a potent weapon with which to further the interests of their fellow Orientals all over the country. More than one high government official is on dope, which he procures from Chinese dealers, who in turn have him at their mercy because they control the source and because they have the power of blackmail.
The Chinese import some, obtain the rest from the central Mafia sources in New York, Philadelphia and Baltimore, or directly from abroad, as will be described later. They frequently cooperate with the Mafia in smuggling narcotics and other contraband. It is a matter of record that many Chinese secret societies have worked with their ancient Sicilian counterpart, the Mafia, over the centuries. Both Cantonese and Sicilians are widely dispersed over the world, but each faction is bound together by a common language and secret societies. Chinese societies are remarkable transmission belts. And among Chinese are many natural-born gangsters--sly rather than bold in white men’s countries.
Dope can be hidden in rice, vegetables and even wet-wash. The Chinese societies also provide the Mafia with facilities for transporting contraband money from country to country or from town to town.
There’s hardly a location in Chinatown without some form of gambling going on, quite often open to the street. Almost every restaurant has a game in the rear. Many stores are blinds for the huge wagering that goes on behind. If you came in and asked to buy some article you saw in the window, you’d be laughed at; they are usually dummy props. Huge sums are won and lost in these games, and bankrolls of a hundred or two hundred thousand dollars on the table are not unknown. This is always syndicate money. Sometimes as many as 500 or 1,000 partners all over the country are in the play. These games go on 24 hours a day, without pause. Each syndicate’s players are chosen for their ability as gamblers. They play in teams with others who relieve them.
We saw open gambling in the Fong Wah Co., in Eng Hon, in the On Leong building, and at numbers 601, 603, 606, 607, 608 H Street, in Chinatown.
The police know all about this gambling, but take no action unless white men put in a beef. They explain you can’t make a pinch stick on Chinese: the games they play are not understandable to whites, and it is almost impossible to make an identification of an Oriental, or to get one to testify, for or against.
When the Chinese hook a fat white sucker, the game moves every hour to a different location.
Sixth Street, at H, is the dividing line between Hip Sing and On Leong territory, with the Hip Sings below 6th, the less desirable part of town. The division of businesses gives all restaurants to On Leongs and the laundries to Hip Sings, therefore all chop suey parlors in Chinatown are above 6th Street.
Kwon Seto is the local On Leong boss and one of the most powerful men in Washington. George Moy, secretary of the On Leongs, is the “mayor” of Chinatown. A man named Yee is the real boss. Moy owns the Joy Inn, where an investigator for a crime committee was steered by a District official, then “mickeyed.”
