KEY POINTS:
They say Frank Quon "runs" Los Angeles' Chinatown.
And if even half of what they say about the nightclub owner is true, then fugitive Nai Yin Xue should never show his face here again.
"I want him caught. Hell yeah, I want him caught," said Mr Quon, 76,
as he presided over a floor of clubbers dancing to a hip-hop DJ in the early hours of Saturday morning.
Mr Quon said the last confirmed sighting of Xue in the district was tainting the image of the streets where he was born.
Mr Quon started hustling on the streets here as an 8-year-old, selling flowers and parking cars.
Nowadays his clientele at the Jazz Star are clubbers from all over the city wearing sunglasses inside and cheesecutter caps at deliberately wonky angles.
He told the Herald to use the word "influential" to describe his position in the Chinatown community.
The Chinese whispers about Xue's destination since he checked out of the Royal Pagoda hotel on Monday have seen him lying low in the Chinese suburbs of the city, driven over the border to Mexico, flown over to the big Chinese community in New York or growing a moustache and a beard and flying back out of the United States to Hong Kong.
Mr Quon had his own spin: Xue could have simply blended into Chinatown.
Asked if somebody could be protecting Xue, Mr Quon replied: "Not me."
The Herald has learned Xue lived here for a short time in 2000, in a studio above a pharmacy near the historic Broadway Gate.
He threw a party in the Golden Dragon restaurant across the road. The motel he chose on fleeing here is just across the road.
While it is hard to imagine Xue wanting to stay near the one square mile of Chinatown, it has a sleepy feel, contrary to what many would expect.
It encompasses four main streets and contains an estimated 9000 people. Bar the nightclubs and restaurants, it is well and truly shut down by 6pm. Rather than a hub, it has a hollow feel, like much of the rest of the city.
Before the Chinese, it was home to the Italians. It is an ideal place for transition for the new immigrants and travellers - or fugitives.
Mr Quon has lived through the transitions himself since his parents built the building holding the Jazz Star in 1941. It has been a soda fountain, an arcade, a coffeeshop, a five-star restaurant and now, two nightclubs - jazz downstairs, hip-hop upstairs.
He has had only a couple of breaks from Chinatown; some time in the homeland and serving in the Army in the Korean War.
He has now handed control to son Tony, but still comes in with brother Wally, 85, to keep an "eye on things".
Mr Quon reiterated that he did not want Xue around Chinatown. The Herald asked if that meant he would use his "influence" to make sure nobody was hiding him here.
"Oh, sure, I'll do my duty as a citizen of Chinatown. But I'm not in the underworld - not any more."
