Who killed the onetime 'godfather' of a notorious Chinatown gang?
LOS ANGELES - Tony Young stepped outside the noodle shop and lit a cigarette.
As he did many afternoons, he was heading to play mah-jongg at the Hop Sing Tong, the 141-year-old Chinatown social club. But he had a gambler's intuition that the tiles would not fall his way.
"Help me play a few hands. Lately, my luck has not been good," Young said to his lunch companion.
The friend declined, and Young headed west on the 10 Freeway from Alhambra to downtown Los Angeles on his own.
He had barely settled in at a table when a man barged in with a knife, slashing one of the mah-jongg players across the neck, then turning on Young, stabbing him seven times.
The Jan. 26 slayings shattered the quiet of Chinatown, where Young, 64, had been a fixture for decades, adapting to the changes around him with canny self-assurance.
Recently, he had been sworn in as president of Hop Sing Tong, a red rose pinned to his lapel as journalists from local Chinese newspapers documented the ceremony. At banquets, he cut a distinctive figure with his shaved head, winsome grin and well-cut suits. When foreign dignitaries visited Chinatown, he was in the receiving line.
But there was another side to Young that dated back to a more troubled time. The FBI had pursued him for years, convinced that he was a leader of the notorious Wah Ching gang, implicated in an armed robbery and at least two murders.
He escaped an extortion charge after a key witness fled the country. He was suspected of plotting to assassinate the Taiwanese president. But only one case against him, for financial crimes, stuck. Like many reputed gang bosses, he was an elusive quarry. He always insisted he was just a businessman.
