Tea had been victimized twice before when his store was located in Boston’s Chinatown. As recently as October, gang members made off with about $110,000 in jewelry. Scared and frustrated, Tea had moved away and relocated in Lowell. When the gang discovered where he’d gone, they vindictively targeted him again. However, they had no way of knowing that instead of glass cases, Tea would equip this store with a new unbreakable plastic. As the hammers bounced off the counters, the gang grew frustrated, and one of the members smashed Tea’s wife, Mon Ly, with his gun instead. She suffered a fractured skull, but survived. The eight assailants took off without any loot. Police captured them a short distance away.
The robbery had not been sanctioned by Sky Dragon, and he was not happy that Ay-yat was freelancing with his own criminal enterprise, or that innocent people were getting hurt, which meant the heat from police would intensify. Sky Dragon had run a mostly bloodless regime in Chinatown, in part because he knew he could get away with it. He hated his time in jail and had vowed never to go back. Now, he had a loose cannon working for him, and it made him nervous. So, he cut ties with Ay-yat. It was meant to be a punishment and a warning to others, but Ay-yat saw it as an opportunity. He formed his own gang, known as the Ah Sing Boys, and continued his string of robberies, home invasions, and murders. During his reign of terror, he would frequently cross paths with John Willis.
“As far as Ay-yat,” John Willis says, “he is a good brother of mine. He is like an older brother to me, and yes, he is a very dangerous man!”
SKY DRAGON was arrested again in January of 1989, for gambling, of all things.
Sky Dragon was playing the popular Asian games of chance, pai gow and mahjongg, inside the gambling den at 32 Oxford Street. It was the den for high rollers, and twenty-three of them were arrested when police burst in and broke up the games. There was $21,506 in cash on the table where Sky Dragon was playing. It was a rare bust of routine gambling. Police could break into nearly two dozen such dens on any night of the week, but they seldom bothered. Gambling was part of the culture. There was little effort to hide it, and the community never asked for the anti-gaming laws to be enforced.
“This isn’t who we’re looking for,” then–Police Superintendent Joseph Saja said. “We try to concentrate on the gambling where organized crime is involved.”
Sky Dragon spent the night in jail, but was freed on bail at his arraignment the next day. It’s unlikely Sky Dragon would have received jail time for an infraction as insignificant as gambling, but he felt like the heat was on, and he wasn’t willing to take any chances. So, he paid his $50 fine and left immediately for Hong Kong, where he spent the better part of the next two years running a bean sprout business. It was a sincere effort to return to legitimacy, and it might have rung the death knell for Ping On.
Instead, infighting and the struggle for power went on for years, until finally one man would stand on top: Bai Ming, aided by John Willis.
ASLENDER IRISHMAN with cheeks reddened by the cold and eyes watering from the wind rapidly shoveled snow from the sidewalk along Tyler Street in Boston’s Chinatown. Neither his green jacket nor his thin gloves were qualified to adequately protect him from the latest winter snowstorm. The only sounds he heard were his own heavy breathing and the rhythmic scraping of his shovel against the cement. Three inches of snow had already fallen and three more were still to come. The Irishman looked up through the flurries and watched a blue Toyota sedan drive slowly by him. It was notable because of the dark-tinted windows, and because it was the first car he’d seen in over two hours. The Irishman checked his watch and noted it was just after 4:00 A.M.
He blew once into his cupped hands in a feeble effort to warm them up, and returned to work. The blue Toyota circled the block and made another pass down Tyler Street. This time the car drove even more slowly. The Irishman couldn’t see who was in the car, but he was certain someone inside it was watching him. Uneasily, he ducked his head, turned up his collar, and began shoveling even more rapidly. His wish that the Toyota would vanish came true.
Some fifteen minutes later the Irishman had reached the doorway of a Chinese-Vietnamese after-hours social club at 85A Tyler Street. Just then two police cars pulled up. Their blue lights were flashing, but the sirens were off. The policemen jumped out of the cars with guns drawn and swung open the door to the social club. The Irishman peered inside and saw five bodies slumped over with their heads lying flat on a table. More police arrived and each time the door swung open, the Irishman saw a little more clearly. There were playing cards and money on the table, and the men were covered in blood. The Irishman heard the shouts from the policemen and the call for an ambulance. And what he learned is that he had stumbled upon what would forever be identified as the Tyler Street Massacre. He took a few steps backward before turning on his heels and hastening away. He shivered as he walked, but not so much from the cold as from the thought of his narrow escape. Did the blue Toyota with the dark-tinted windows hide the face of a killer? And if the windows hadn’t been tinted, thus allowing the Irishman to see inside, would he have been victim number six that night?
JOHN WILLIS had had breakfast with victim number one the morning before the Tyler Street Massacre. On January 11, 1991, he sat in a corner booth at Dong Khanh on Harrison Avenue and enjoyed a bowl of pho, a Vietnamese rice noodle soup served with a rare steak cooked in hot water. Across the table sat his good friend and breakfast companion, Dai Keung, a man whom Sky Dragon had attempted to kill a few years earlier simply because Dai Keung wanted to receive payment of a $30,000 debt from Sky Dragon in Sky Dragon’s own Kung Fu restaurant, which was an obvious and intentional show of disrespect.
“Have I died?” Sky Dragon bellowed.
Sky Dragon was equally upset with a former Ping On member named Chao Va Meng, who also asked to receive a payoff inside the Kung Fu restaurant. Sky Dragon ordered two hit men to kill Dai Keung and Chao Va Meng, demanding that they “shoot them in the testicles until they burst.” The assassins failed in their attempt despite firing thirty shots at Keung and Meng as they walked through a Tyler Street parking lot. John was aware of the tension between Sky Dragon and Dai Keung, but Sky Dragon was hiding out in Hong Kong, and Dai Keung was an amiable gangster who frequently flew to and from San Francisco. When he was in town, he usually found time for John.
“He treated me like a brother,” John says. “We hung out in gambling places. He was a pretty crazy guy. He ran around with another guy named Peter. They fought with machine guns in California. California was more aggressive. A lot of fighting.”
Unbeknownst to John, that aggression was becoming bicoastal. Dai Keung’s gang boss in San Francisco, Peter Chong, was making plans to take over Asian organized crime from Boston and New York to San Francisco and everywhere in between. His intention was to form an umbrella organization called Tien Ha Wui, or “Whole Earth Society.” If successful, the Whole Earth Society would put Sky Dragon, or those vying to replace him in his absence, out of business. It appears Chong sent Dai Keung to Boston to establish a foothold there. It also appears that Dai Keung was the first killed, and the primary target of the Tyler Street Massacre. Furthermore, Hun Suk, Sky Dragon’s most trusted lieutenant, is alleged to have been one of the shooters.
It’s quite possible Dai Keung was attempting to get close to John, because John had established himself as Bai Ming’s right-hand man immediately upon his return from New York. John’s rapid ascendance in the gang occurred when he exhibited fierce loyalty to his brothers. Despite knowing the FBI had him under surveillance, John