Prologue

CHANG APANA’S BULLWHIP, ON DISPLAY AT THE HONOLULU POLICE DEPARTMENT MUSEUM (Photo by author)

ON A BALMY July night in 1904, a wiry wraith of a man sauntered alone through the dim alleys of Honolulu’s Chinatown. A mere five feet tall, with intense shoulders and a ramrod-straight back, the man was wearing a Canton-crêpe blouse, threadbare trousers, and a Panama hat. A pair of dark glasses obscured the scar above his eye. His upper lip, blackened by burnt cork, gave the impression that he needed a shave. From a distance, he was unmistakably Chinese, barely distinguishable as he walked among the shuffling throng of his countrymen.

The hot, southerly Kona weather, which had piled the breakers high along the coast and sapped the spirit out of every living being, had departed the island by sundown. A gentle trade wind blowing in from the northeast had brought renewed energy to the city. A local boy was plucking soft tunes on his ukulele, perhaps down on the moonlit beach not far below the street, fringed with coconut palms and licked by the lazy surf. When the serenade paused, a cock mynah gave out a clear-throated cry, ruffling its plumage beneath the canopy of a perfumed night.

Under the sickle moon, the Chinaman reached the corner of Smith Street in the heart of Chinatown. He slowed his pace on the darkened street, where shops and restaurants displayed clapboard signs scrawled in his native language. They had shut their doors much earlier, except for one nondescript building where he saw a glint of light escaping through an upstairs window. A faint smile flickered at the corners of his mouth. He drew a deep breath; the night air was a strange mélange of odors that lingered from the oil of woks and the salty tang of the Pacific wind.

Through the unlit front gate he stepped cautiously inside the building and passed by the doorman undetected. He did the same at the next three doors, each guarded by someone, each leading him deeper into what seemed like a maze of Chinese boxes.

Climbing up the rickety stairs to the second floor, he turned and faced a room packed with gamblers, all Chinese, huddling over games of fan-tan, pai gau, craps, and mah-jongg. The air was a mix of smut and smoke, the den ringing with curses, jeers, and the sound of clicking dice and mah-jongg tiles.

He observed the ballyhoo through his dark lenses. Someone at the mah-jongg table looked up and immediately recognized the face of the infamous cop, whose name elicited shudders from the spines of Honolulu criminals.

“Chailow!”

Before the Cantonese cry for “cop” dropped to the ground, a five-foot bullwhip had uncoiled like a hissing rattlesnake from the detective’s waist. One crisp snap of the whip and the entire room froze like a gambling-hall diorama under glass. Only clouds of cigarette smoke still wavered, the afterthoughts of exploded firecrackers, not sure where to settle in the deafening silence.

Many there had already heard of, and some had even tasted, the might of this unusual weapon wielded by the former rough-riding paniolo (cowboy). Resisting arrest would be futile, even though they knew he had, as usual, brought no backup. His whip had spoken, louder than any law or gun.

Telling them the jig was up, the Chinaman, known to the locals as “Kana Pung,” lined up the gamblers, forty in all, and marched them out of the room and down to the police station on Bethel Street. Not a single shot was fired.¹

Kana Pung’s real name was Chang Apana. An officer of the Honolulu Police Department, he would later acquire a more fascinating moniker: Charlie Chan. His colorful exploits, like the bravado on this July night, would one day draw the attention of mainland novelist Earl Derr Biggers. From 1925 onward, a total of six novels and forty-seven films, in addition to radio programs, newspaper comics, and countless faux-fortune-cookie witticisms, would make Charlie Chan, Apana’s fictional double, one of the most enduring cultural icons of twentieth-century America.