L.A. Noir Part 12

Mickey Cohen wasn't the only Angeleno in New York City that May 19. It just so happened that LAPD intelligence head James Hamilton was also visiting Gotham. (Parker would later deny sending him east to shadow Cohen, insisting instead that his intelligence head was in New York on vacation.) Hamilton tuned in to the evening broadcast. What he saw appalled him. The American Broadcasting Company was allowing-no, encouraging-Mickey Cohen, a known criminal, to slander Chief Parker and himself on national television. Moreover, despite concluding the interview with a statement that Cohen's views on the LAPD were exclusively his own, Mike Wallace had made comments that seemed to endorse Mickey Cohen's a.s.sessment of the police. An angry Hamilton immediately called Chief Parker in Los Angeles to tell him what was happening. He also called ABC to deliver a warning: Pull the program from your Los Angeles station or prepare to be sued.

The Mike Wallace Interview was scheduled to air on the West Coast in less than three hours. ABC had only a short interval of time during which to make a decision. Executives immediately contacted Wallace producer Ted Yates, who in turn told Wallace about the problem they'd run into. Together, Yates and Wallace hurried over to Cohen's suite at the Ess.e.x House to confer with him about Hamilton's threats. Mickey had just stepped out of the shower. He greeted his visitors calmly, clad in nothing but a towel. was scheduled to air on the West Coast in less than three hours. ABC had only a short interval of time during which to make a decision. Executives immediately contacted Wallace producer Ted Yates, who in turn told Wallace about the problem they'd run into. Together, Yates and Wallace hurried over to Cohen's suite at the Ess.e.x House to confer with him about Hamilton's threats. Mickey had just stepped out of the shower. He greeted his visitors calmly, clad in nothing but a towel.

Wallace and Yates explained their problem as Cohen listened calmly. At the end of their presentation, Cohen made his p.r.o.nouncement.

"Mike, Ted, forget it," he said decisively. "Parker knows that I know so much about him, he wouldn't dare sue." So instead, the producers called Parker in Los Angeles and invited him to come on the show next week to defend himself. Parker indignantly refused, saying he had no intention of debating "an irresponsible character like Cohen." He further warned ABC that if it proceeded with airing the show on the West Coast, it would open itself up to charges of criminal slander. The network disregarded this warning. Instead, a few hours later, Wallace's interview with Cohen aired on the West Coast. At a news conference the next day, Chief Parker announced that he and Captain Hamilton were considering a lawsuit against ABC.

Cohen was unfazed. Soon after the interview with Wallace, Cohen went on the WINS radio station. There he repeated his charges and dared Parker to file suit. Executives at ABC were more worried. Unlike Mickey Cohen, ABC possessed legitimate income and a.s.sets, and Cohen's vituperative comments looked rather shaky in the light of day. The next day ABC offered its "sincere apologies for any personal distress resulting from this telecast." It also decided to withhold the show from the handful of stations that had not yet aired it. Parker was not mollified. He, Hamilton, and ex-mayor Fletcher Bowron responded that they would continue to explore their legal options.

A week later, ABC vice president Oliver Treyz went on the air. With a chastened Wallace standing by his side, Treyz allowed as to how something "profoundly regrettable occurred while Mr. Wallace was questioning Mickey Cohen." ABC, he continued, "retracts and withdraws in full all statements made on last Sunday's program concerning the Los Angeles city government, and specifically, Chief William H. Parker."

ABC's apology did little to a.s.suage the anger of Parker's supporters. From Was.h.i.+ngton, D.C., Senate investigations subcommittee staff director Robert Kennedy delivered a stinging rebuke to ABC.

"Gentlemen," the letter began.

A week ago Sunday, I watched the Mike Wallace show and his guest, Mickey Cohen. I was deeply disturbed.In the investigation that this Committee has been conducting, we have to work closely with police departments throughout the country. I want to say that no department has been more cooperative or has impressed us more with its efficiency, thoroughness and honesty than Mr. Parker's in Los Angeles more with its efficiency, thoroughness and honesty than Mr. Parker's in Los Angeles.Although I do not have a transcript here in Was.h.i.+ngton, it was my impression that Mike Wallace urged Mickey Cohen to name Captain Hamilton as a degenerate. In my estimation, I would consider Captain Hamilton as the best police officer we have worked with since our investigation began....To allow such serious and unsubstantiated charges to be made on nationwide television is grossly unfair and unjust.Very truly yours, Robert Kennedy Chief Counsel Cohen was enraged by ABC's backtracking. From Los Angeles, he issued a statement of his own: "Any retraction made by those spineless persons in regard to the television show I appeared on with Mike Wallace on A.B.C. network does not go for me." Implicit in this response was a challenge-sue if you dare.

Parker dared. On July 8, he sued ABC, Mike Wallace, and The Mike Wallace Interview's The Mike Wallace Interview's sponsors for $2 million. (Captain Hamilton and former mayor Fletcher Bowron also filed million-dollar libel lawsuits.) He did not file suit against Cohen, on the grounds that Mickey claimed to have no a.s.sets and was already deeply indebted to the federal government. ABC's attorneys sought out Mickey, hoping to discover some substance that would support his allegations. But now that ABC was calling on Cohen to show his hand, Mickey abruptly folded. Later, he would mutter only that he'd had incriminating information about Parker pinching a prost.i.tute's a.s.s on a yacht during a policing convention in Miami. Even if this were true, it hardly established that Parker was a bagman for the Shaws in the 1930s. ABC's attorneys realized that it was time to seek a settlement. sponsors for $2 million. (Captain Hamilton and former mayor Fletcher Bowron also filed million-dollar libel lawsuits.) He did not file suit against Cohen, on the grounds that Mickey claimed to have no a.s.sets and was already deeply indebted to the federal government. ABC's attorneys sought out Mickey, hoping to discover some substance that would support his allegations. But now that ABC was calling on Cohen to show his hand, Mickey abruptly folded. Later, he would mutter only that he'd had incriminating information about Parker pinching a prost.i.tute's a.s.s on a yacht during a policing convention in Miami. Even if this were true, it hardly established that Parker was a bagman for the Shaws in the 1930s. ABC's attorneys realized that it was time to seek a settlement.

COHEN, meanwhile, was dealing with another problem: the wrath of his coreligionists. Ever since the idea had surfaced in the press that Cohen would convert to Christianity, Jews from across the country had been calling Michael's Greenhouses to urge Mickey against betraying his people. On the evening of Wednesday, May 22, Cohen attended the Graham campaign. But he did not come forward to be harvested for Christ, meeting privately instead with W. C. Jones and Jimmy Vaus after the rally. The meeting reportedly was stormy. Jones berated Mickey for continuing to a.s.sociate with his gangster friends. Cohen responded by angrily declaring, "If I have to give up my friends to be a Christian, I'm pulling out. I renounce it right now." Then he stormed out. With that, Mickey's Manhattan adventure came to an end.

Just days after his anticlimactic appearance at Madison Square Garden, Cohen was served with a subpoena by the FBI and flown to Chicago, where he was forced to testify at the trial of Outfit leader Paul Ricca, whom federal authorities were attempting to deport to Italy. Cohen had nothing to say. While he was more than ready to talk about himself, the old taciturnity rea.s.serted itself when the topic turned to other gangsters. Everywhere he went, Cohen was shadowed by officers of the LAPD intelligence division. But Cohen professed to have nothing but scorn for Chief Parker's efforts to shadow and intimidate him. When, at some point the evening before his flight back to Los Angeles, Mickey slipped his LAPD security detail, he personally telegrammed Chief Parker to inform him of his flight number and arrival time in L.A. It was Cohen's personal little "f.u.c.k you."

MICKEY arrived back in Los Angeles in late May. In an attempt to stem the tide of bad news, he immediately announced that Ben Hecht had begun work on his life story, now t.i.tled The Soul of a Gunman The Soul of a Gunman. It was clear that Mickey intended to do everything he could to continue his PR blitz (despite a report from Walter Winch.e.l.l that Cohen's compatriots in the underworld were getting fed up with Mickey "The Louse" Cohen's clamoring for public attention). But back in L.A., Cohen found that an unpleasant new reality awaited him. Where previously Mickey had been shadowed, he was now actively hara.s.sed. His first weekend back, two alert patrolmen saw Cohen stop his car at the corner of Santa Monica Boulevard and Western and walk over to a newsstand to buy a paper. A line of cars behind him started honking as the light changed. So the two officers went over and gave him a ticket. Cohen protested that he'd simply stopped behind a stalled car and stepped out to get a paper while the lady in the car in front of him tried to restart her engine. He refused to sign the citation. So the two officers hauled him in and booked him, on charges of causing a traffic jam. Cohen vowed to fight the charges.

"They can't get away with stuff like this," he fumed to the reporters who had rushed over when they heard that Cohen had been arrested (in riding breeches and full equestrian attire). "This is some more of Bill Parker's stuff."

Los Angeles-area law enforcement was just getting started. Prosecutors decided to throw the book at Cohen on the traffic jam charges. That summer he was convicted-and fined $11. He vowed to appeal the decision. The following month, Beverly Hills police arrested Cohen as he was tucking into a ham-and-eggs breakfast (at 2:30 p.m.) at one of his favorite restaurants. The charge was failing to register as an ex-felon. (The Beverly Hills munic.i.p.al code limited convicted felons to five visits to Beverly Hills every thirty days.) Police hauled Cohen, "screaming epithets," into Chief Anderson's office for questioning. A scuffle ensued, and Anderson ordered that Cohen be charged with disorderly conduct as well. A. L. Wirin and the ACLU stepped forward to defend him, arguing that the registration requirement was unconst.i.tutional. A Beverly Hills munic.i.p.al court judge agreed and threw out the charges against Cohen. A jury later acquitted Cohen on the remaining charge.

Mickey's courtroom successes didn't extend to his business ventures. Exotic plants apparently were not, in fact, "a tremendous racket"-at least, not to someone who had never managed (or bothered) to figure out which plant was which. That summer, Cohen announced that he was leaving the green house business.

"I didn't know a plant from a boxing glove," he confessed to the press, "but I would have made a go of it if those cops had left me alone. We couldn't go into the greenhouse without their hot breath wilting the plants."

Henceforth, Mickey would focus his business endeavors in an area where he was an acknowledged expert-ice cream. Together with his sister and brother-in-law (and investors from Las Vegas), Cohen was preparing to open the Carousel ice cream parlor in Brentwood. He also announced that he would be focusing on his book with Hecht and on a movie spin-off, The Mickey Cohen Story The Mickey Cohen Story. Whispers of a huge movie deal soon filled the press. Cohen attorney George Bieber claimed that Cohen had been offered $200,000 in cash and 80 percent of profits but that Cohen was holding out for 20 percent of gross box office receipts. Beiber also predicted that Hecht's book would bring in $500,000 to $700,000.

Back in New York City, Mike Wallace wasn't entertaining visions of the silver screen. Instead, he was trying to save his job. ABC's promises to back Wallace through controversies were now forgotten. Instead, John Daly, the head of the network news division, stepped forward to deal with the man he saw as a loose cannon. A minder was a.s.signed to vet the script before every show and to monitor Wallace's performances on the set-"a balding, humpty-dumpty kind of guy," as Ramrus recalled him. He was also humorless. Typical of the petty obstacles the show now faced was the minder's reaction to a proposed question for the architect Frank Lloyd Wright: Wallace: Mr. Wright, I understand you designed a dream home for Arthur Miller and Marilyn Monroe. As an architect, what do you think of Marilyn Monroe's architecture? Mr. Wright, I understand you designed a dream home for Arthur Miller and Marilyn Monroe. As an architect, what do you think of Marilyn Monroe's architecture?

"Objection," came the response from the minder. "Indecent question."

"What's indecent?" replied Wallace and Yates, innocently. The answer, of course, was the thought that had arisen in the mind of the minder.

For the most part, Wallace just brushed aside objections of this sort and did what he wanted to do. Still, the new regime was demoralizing. Although ABC eventually settled Parker's suit for $45,000, ABC's insurer, Lloyd's of London, took a dim view of the controversy. It insisted that henceforth a lawyer monitor every show, complete with cue cards. When Wallace approached a controversial subject, the attorney (who sat just outside the range of the camera) would hold up a "BE CAREFUL" cue card. The most dangerous conversational forays resulted in "STOP" "STOP" or or "RETREAT "RETREAT" cards. This was no way to run a TV show whose entire point was to be daring and provocative, and it took its toll. That December, ABC had another brush with a libel lawsuit after Wallace guest Drew Pearson charged that Senator John F. Kennedy's Pulitzer Prize-winning Profiles in Courage Profiles in Courage had been ghostwritten. In the spring of 1958, Philip Morris announced that it would not be renewing its sponsors.h.i.+p of had been ghostwritten. In the spring of 1958, Philip Morris announced that it would not be renewing its sponsors.h.i.+p of The Mike Wallace Interview The Mike Wallace Interview. Wallace's days as a national TV personality seemed numbered. The following fall, Wallace left ABC and returned to local television on Channel 13, a station even smaller than his old employer, Channel 5. Not until 1963, when Wallace managed to convince CBS News president d.i.c.k Salant to take a chance on him, did Wallace get another job at a network, this time as the host of a radio interview program and the anchor of the new CBS Morning News CBS Morning News. In 1968, Wallace finally got another shot at a show that offered to make him a national media star. That program was 60 Minutes 60 Minutes.

MEANWHILE, back in Was.h.i.+ngton, D.C., Robert Kennedy was puzzling over a question. In keeping with Hamilton's suggestions, the investigations subcommittee had taken a close look at the behavior of Teamsters Union officials in the Pacific Northwest. They had uncovered disturbing evidence of stolen funds, including evidence that implicated Teamsters president David Beck. They had also discovered that Kennedy's friends in the New York press had been right: Certain unions-the Operating Engineers, the Hotel and Restaurant Employees, and, again, the Teamsters-did have long histories of involvement with organized crime. There was also evidence that tied emerging Teamster leader Jimmy Hoffa to organized crime figures in Detroit, Cleveland, St. Louis, Minneapolis, and Chicago. As he considered these connections, Kennedy found himself mulling over a larger question: Was the Mafia a national, coordinated criminal enterprise, or did the phrase simply refer to the hierarchy of Italian organized crime in any given area? On November 13, 1957, Kennedy put that very question to his old acquaintance Joseph Amato, a Mob specialist with the Bureau of Narcotics.

"That is a big question to answer," Amato replied. "But we believe that there does exist today in the United Sates a society, loosely organized, for the specific purpose of smuggling narcotics and committing other crimes.... It has its core in Italy and it is nationwide. In fact, international."

The very next day, Kennedy and the world received definitive proof that Amato was right when New York state police decided to investigate an unusually large gathering of luxury cars and limousines at the home of Joseph "Joe the Barber" Barbara outside the little town of Apalachin (p.r.o.nounced "Apple-aykin") in western New York. When the state police officers arrived, Barbara's guests leapt into their cars and fled-running straight into a state police roadblock. Other gangsters ran into the woods, including (most likely) James Lanza from San Francisco, Sam Giancana of Chicago, Tommy Lucchese of New York City, and Joseph Zerilli of Detroit. Fifty-eight men were arrested. Only nineteen of the men (all of whom were Italian) were from upstate New York. The rest of the guests appeared to have come from cities all across the country and even from as far away as Cuba. John Scalisi had come from Cleveland. Santos Traficante had come from Havana. James Lanza had come from San Francisco. Frank DeSimone (the Dragnas' longtime attorney, now the family boss in his own right) had come from Los Angeles. Twenty-three of the men came from New York City and northern New Jersey, including Joseph Profaci, Joseph Bonanno, and Vito Genovese. All told, the group's members had been arrested 257 times, with more than a hundred convictions for serious offenses such as homicide, armed robbery, trafficking in narcotics, and extortion. In their pockets the police found $300,000 in cash.

It was clear that New York state police had stumbled across what appeared to be a board meeting of the Mafia. Newspapers across the country trumpeted the arrests. As astonis.h.i.+ng as the fact that a ma.s.sive international crime organization existed (and was meeting at some wiseguy's house in upstate New York) was the list of legitimate businesses these men controlled. They included "dress companies, labor organizations, trucking companies, soft drink firms, dairy products, coat manufacturers, undertaking parlors, oil companies, ladies' coat factories, real estate projects, curtain, slip cover and interior decorating, s.h.i.+ps, restaurants, night clubs, grills, meat markets. Also vending machine sales, taxi companies, tobacco distributors, awning and siding firms, automotive conveying and hauling firms, importers of food and liquor, grocery stores and food chains, labor relations consulting firms, cement firms, waste paper removal, strap manufacture, liquor and beer distributors, textiles, s.h.i.+pping, ambulances, baseball clubs, news stands, motels, hotels, and juke boxes," to name just a few. In short, the underworld had burrowed deeply into the fabric of American business.

Back in Was.h.i.+ngton, Robert Kennedy had a simple question: Who were these men? Seven years earlier, the Kefauver Committee had introduced Americans to gangsters Joe Adonis and Frank Costello (whose nervous hands were famously televised during the Kefauver Committee's hearings in New York). But names such as Vito Genovese were unfamiliar. Kennedy's first reaction, naturally enough, was to turn to the Federal Bureau of Investigation. When the bureau failed to produce dossiers on these figures, Kennedy personally paid the director a visit, barging in (without an appointment) and demanding that the bureau provide the McClellan Committee with everything it had on this collection of hoods. Hoover was forced to reveal the humiliating truth. The bureau (in Kennedy's words) "didn't know anything, really, about these people who were the major gangsters in the United States." Disgusted, Kennedy and his aides turned instead to the FBI's minnow-sized rival, the Bureau of Narcotics, which was able to offer investigators a wealth of information on the activities of the men arrested in Apalachin. There was also one police department whose knowledge stood out-the LAPD.

One year earlier, the LAPD intelligence division had bugged a room of Conrad Hilton's Town House hotel, where up-and-coming Teamsters leader Jimmy Hoffa was meeting with three residents of Chicago. At the time, Hoffa was in the middle of a heated campaign for the presidency of the Teamsters Union. According to an LAPD memo on the meeting (which later turned up in the files of the Chicago Crime Commission), the men in question included Marshall Caifano, who oversaw Chicago Outfit activities in Los Angeles, and Outfit boss Murray Humphreys. The memo stated in no uncertain terms that "a member of the Executive Board is being taken before these men singly, and they are advising members of the Executive Board in no uncertain terms that Hoffa is to be the next President of the Teamsters Union." Sure enough, that fall Hoffa was elected president of the Teamsters.

The news from Apalachin-and the LAPD intelligence division's ability to tie Hoffa and the Teamsters to the Chicago Outfit-caused Kennedy to reconsider the depths of the corruption he had uncovered. The McClellan Committee had begun its work in 1956 by focusing on dishonesty and corruption in the clothing procurement program of the military services. That, in turn, had led to the discovery that gangsters such as Albert Anastasia and Johnny Dio had become deeply involved in both the textiles unions and the textiles business. Apalachin had revealed an even broader horizon of organized crime, one in which the underworld preyed upon entire industries and whole communities.

"The results of the underworld infiltration into labor-management affairs form a shocking pattern across the country," Kennedy wrote one year later in his best-selling book The Enemy Within The Enemy Within. "[T]he gangsters of today work in a highly organized fas.h.i.+on and are far more powerful now than at any time in the history of the country. They control political figures and threaten whole communities. They have stretched their tentacles of corruption and fear into industries both large and small. They grow stronger every day."

Parker himself couldn't have put it better. As Kennedy realized what a profound danger organized crime posed to the American way of life, he grew even more appreciative of the work the LAPD was doing. He also began to seriously consider Chief Parker's idea of creating a national clearinghouse for intelligence information. Naturally, in the course of their work together Parker and Hamilton told Robert Kennedy all about the activities of Mickey Cohen. Not surprisingly, Robert Kennedy decided that he wanted to meet this Mickey Cohen in person-and nail him.

21.

The Electrician.

"[W]hat's the meaning in the underworld or the racket world when somebody's 'lights are to be put out?'"-Robert Kennedy to Mickey Cohen, 1959 BY LATE 1958, Mickey Cohen was back in the rackets. His target was Los Angeles's lucrative vending machine market. His modus operandi was pure muscle-threatening vending machine owners with bodily harm if they didn't pay him for protection. As word spread that Cohen was back in business, old friends resurfaced, asking favors of the sort that Cohen had once dispensed so freely. Among them was Columbia Pictures boss Harry Cohn.

Cohn had the temperament of a first-cla.s.s gangster. "Bullying and contemptuous" (other common descriptions include "profane," "vulgar," "cruel," "rapacious," and "philandering"), an ardent admirer of Benito Mussolini (whose office he re-created for himself on the Columbia lot and whose picture he proudly displayed even after after the Second World War), Cohn delighted in the fear his presence could create. the Second World War), Cohn delighted in the fear his presence could create.

But in 1958, Cohn had a five-foot, seven-inch, 125-pound, 37-23-37 problem that all his swaggering and bullying couldn't resolve. Her stage name was Kim Novak. Novak was Columbia Pictures's-and Hollywood's-biggest star. Cohn had nurtured her career for years, grooming the young model as a successor to Rita Hayworth, purchasing the inevitable set of nude photos from a "modeling" session in the actress's youth, and carefully protecting her image. His efforts had borne fruit. In 1957, Novak had smoldered as Frank Sinatra's old flame in The Man with the Golden Arm The Man with the Golden Arm. The chemistry between the two had been so hot that they'd paired up again in Pal Joey Pal Joey.

Novak's s.e.x appeal was not confined to the silver screen. Marilyn Monroe, 20th Century Fox's screen siren, was almost a parody of the blonde bombsh.e.l.l. (It's no surprise that breakthrough movies such as Gentlemen Prefer Blondes Gentlemen Prefer Blondes and and How to Marry a Millionaire How to Marry a Millionaire cast her in comic roles.) Novak made a different impression. The alabaster-skinned beauty with the deep-set hazel eyes, platinum silver hair, and Slavic features projected a sleepy, "come hither" sensuality. And come hither they did. Frank Sinatra and Aly Khan were among the many men linked romantically to Novak during this period. There was an undeniable glamour (and great publicity) to having Columbia's leading lady chased by some of the most eligible men in the world. But at some point in early 1958, Novak seems to have begun a relations.h.i.+p that Harry Cohn had never antic.i.p.ated. That relations.h.i.+p was with Sammy Davis Jr. cast her in comic roles.) Novak made a different impression. The alabaster-skinned beauty with the deep-set hazel eyes, platinum silver hair, and Slavic features projected a sleepy, "come hither" sensuality. And come hither they did. Frank Sinatra and Aly Khan were among the many men linked romantically to Novak during this period. There was an undeniable glamour (and great publicity) to having Columbia's leading lady chased by some of the most eligible men in the world. But at some point in early 1958, Novak seems to have begun a relations.h.i.+p that Harry Cohn had never antic.i.p.ated. That relations.h.i.+p was with Sammy Davis Jr.

Sammy Davis Jr. was black. He was also a Broadway star, having recently completed a triumphant turn in the musical Mr. Wonderful Mr. Wonderful. Davis was one of the more interesting figures of the era. He came from a venerable African American vaudeville family on his father's side. (His mother was Puerto Rican.) In addition to his prodigious musical and dancing gifts, he was a gifted raconteur and a talented photographer. He was also Jewish, having converted after a terrible auto accident in 1954 that cost him an eye. This didn't boost his standing much in Cohn's eyes. The Columbia Studio mogul hated the fact that his alabaster s.e.x G.o.ddess was involved in a romantic relations.h.i.+p with a one-eyed African American entertainer-so much so that he went to Manhattan mob boss Frank Costello with a request. Cohn wanted the Mob to end Davis's relations.h.i.+p with Novak, using whatever means proved necessary. So Costello called Cohen (at a private number on a secure phone).

"Lookit, ya know that Harry Cohn?" Costello asked Cohen, according to Cohen's later account of their conversation.

Mickey said that he didn't know Cohn personally but that he knew of him.

"Well, lookit," Costello continued. "There's a matter come up-the guy's all right, and he's done some favors for us back here, and I want ya to listen to him out, to make a meet with him, make a meet with him for whatever he wants and go along with him in every way ya can."

Soon thereafter, Cohn called Cohen to discuss what was bothering him-the Davis-Novak relations.h.i.+p. After several fairly circ.u.mspect conversations, Mickey finally asked Cohn point-blank what he wanted. Cohn replied that he wanted Sammy Davis Jr. "knocked in" (i.e., "rubbed out"). In Cohen's later recounting of this story, he indignantly refused, telling Cohn, "Lookit, you're way out of line. Not only am I going to give ya a negative answer on this, but I'm going to give ya a negative answer that you better see this doesn't happen."

There's another more plausible version of the story. According to Davis biographer Gary Fishgall, Mickey Cohen visited Sammy in Las Vegas to deliver a warning and offer advice. The warning was that someone was about to put a contract out on his head. The advice was to dump Kim Novak and go find himself a nice black girl to marry. Panicked, Davis promptly called Sam Giancana in Chicago to plead for help. Giancana replied that there was only so much the Outfit could do on the West Coast. A fearful Davis broke off the relations.h.i.+p with Novak and abruptly married showgirl Loray White. Harry Cohn died one month later (of natural causes).

Whatever version is true, Sammy Davis Jr. apparently felt nothing but grat.i.tude toward Mickey. When Cohen was hauled into court on April 4, 1958 (Good Friday), for a.s.saulting a waiter who had annoyed him at a party for Davis at Frank Sinatra and Peter Lawford's Villa Capri restaurant, the entertainer came forward as a witness for the defense. (He testified that the waiter had spilled coffee on Cohen and made a rude remark.) So did another guest with a long and curious relations.h.i.+p with Mickey Cohen, the actor Robert Mitchum. Public violence, high-profile arrests, celebrity alibis-to a recently relapsed gangster hungry for publicity, things could hardly get better. But later that night, they did. At 9:40 p.m., Cohen a.s.sociate Johnny Stompanato was stabbed to death in the home of then-girlfriend Lana Turner.

Turner, thirty-eight, was one of Hollywood's best-known (and most frequently married) actresses. According to Turner's FBI files, she was also one of the most s.e.xually voracious. As a result, it's no surprise that she soon shacked up with Stompanato, thirty-two, a celebrity in his own right among adventuresome Hollywood actresses. "The most handsome man that I've ever known that was all man," Cohen called him. But it wasn't Stompanato's good lucks that made him Hollywood's most notorious gigolo. Rather, it was his legendary "endowment." To Mickey, though, Stompanato was kind of like a kid brother. As soon as he heard the news of Stompanato's death, he raced over to Turner's house in Beverly Hills. Attorney Jerry Giesler intercepted Cohen outside.

"If Lana sees you, she's going to fall apart altogether," Giesler told Cohen. Instead, he sent him over to the morgue to identify Stompanato's body.

In fact, Turner was terrified of Cohen. Wild rumors quickly spread. "LANA FEARS COHEN GANG VENGEANCE," cried one tabloid. The ident.i.ty of the supposed killer quickly emerged-Lana's fourteen-year-old daughter, Cheryl Crane. Supposedly, she had stabbed Stompanato with a kitchen knife when she walked in on him beating her mother.

Cohen didn't believe it. Stompanato wasn't the toughest of Cohen's henchmen, but he was a former Marine. Mickey couldn't believe that a mere girl could have killed him with a knife. He suspected that Lana herself was probably the killer. Cohen wanted to see justice done.

In this, he was virtually alone. Neither prosecutors nor the public seemed upset that Johnny Stompanato was dead. The general att.i.tude was, Good riddance. Press accounts portrayed Stompanato as a swarthy abuser who had preyed upon the fair Turner. This offended Mickey, who believed that Stompanato and Turner genuinely loved each other. Cohen resolved to set the record straight.

The day after Stompanato's death, his apartment at the Del Capri Motel in Westwood was mysteriously sacked. A week later, love letters from Turner to Stompanato appeared in the Herald-Express Herald-Express, just as the trial of Cheryl Crane was beginning. The letters left little doubt of Turner's affection for Stompanato, whom she addressed as "daddy love" in notes signed "Tu Zincarella" (your gypsy). But this time, the resurgent gangster was out of touch with the public. The publication of private letters was seen as unseemly, and the press read them for evidence that the affair was winding down.

Cohen was puzzled by this hostile reception. But he didn't dwell on it. Perhaps he didn't care all that much about Johnny either. Or maybe he was distracted by his latest discovery, a thrice-married, hazel-eyed Marilyn Monroe look-alike named Liz Renay.

Renay was a sometime stripper (44DD-26-36) as well as an aspiring painter and occasional poet who had left New York after boyfriend Tony Coppola's longtime boss, Albert Anastasia, was rubbed out in 1957. Friends such as "Champ" Segal in New York told Renay to look up Mickey. When she did, Renay was pleasantly surprised: "His hands were soft, his nails fastidiously clean and polished. His touch was more like a caress. He wasn't at all what I expected him to be." The two hit it off and soon became a couple (though Renay would later claim that in private Mickey always "stopped short"-out of respect for Renay's boyfriend in New York). In March 1958, Life Life magazine featured a photo spread of the two of them eating ice cream sundaes at the Carousel. This was too much for LaVonne. Escorting starlets to nightclubs was one thing-that was practically part of a Hollywood gangster's job description. Flirting around town and eating ice cream with a rather notorious young woman was quite another. That June, LaVonne and Mickey returned to divorce court. This time the split was final. As alimony, Cohen agreed to pay LaVonne a dollar a year. magazine featured a photo spread of the two of them eating ice cream sundaes at the Carousel. This was too much for LaVonne. Escorting starlets to nightclubs was one thing-that was practically part of a Hollywood gangster's job description. Flirting around town and eating ice cream with a rather notorious young woman was quite another. That June, LaVonne and Mickey returned to divorce court. This time the split was final. As alimony, Cohen agreed to pay LaVonne a dollar a year.

Meanwhile, Cohen and Hecht were making progress with his life story. On July 7, Walter Winch.e.l.l reported that The Soul of a Gunman The Soul of a Gunman was finished and that Mickey Cohen had already begun selling shares in a future feature film based on his memoirs. According to Winch.e.l.l, a Los Angeles psychiatrist had already invested $30,000 in the project. It soon emerged that a number of other people had made significant investments as well. Now that his client had the prospect of legitimate income at hand, Cohen attorney George Bieber approached the Internal Revenue Service with a proposal to settle Cohen's tax problems for $200,000. Under Bieber's proposal, the government would get the first $50,000 in revenues from Cohen's life story; Cohen would get the second $50,000; and the IRS would collect the rest of the royalties until Mickey's debt was paid. Treasury agent Guy Mc-Cown expressed an interest in the deal. was finished and that Mickey Cohen had already begun selling shares in a future feature film based on his memoirs. According to Winch.e.l.l, a Los Angeles psychiatrist had already invested $30,000 in the project. It soon emerged that a number of other people had made significant investments as well. Now that his client had the prospect of legitimate income at hand, Cohen attorney George Bieber approached the Internal Revenue Service with a proposal to settle Cohen's tax problems for $200,000. Under Bieber's proposal, the government would get the first $50,000 in revenues from Cohen's life story; Cohen would get the second $50,000; and the IRS would collect the rest of the royalties until Mickey's debt was paid. Treasury agent Guy Mc-Cown expressed an interest in the deal.

Then Mickey made a misstep. On September 20, 1959, writer Dean Jennings published the first installment in what proved to be a withering four-part series about Cohen in the Sat.u.r.day Evening Post Sat.u.r.day Evening Post. Ent.i.tled "The Private Life of a Hood," the article detailed Cohen's luxurious lifestyle-a lifestyle the author estimated required about $120,000 a year-at precisely the moment Cohen was denying that he had any earned income. Jennings's article also infuriated the writer Ben Hecht, who felt that by talking to Jennings, Cohen had cannibalized their proposed book. Angrily, Hecht informed Cohen that the collaboration was off. Mickey was upset (though he still harbored hopes for a lucrative movie deal).

On the whole, though, Chief Parker's problems were more acute. Cohen was reconst.i.tuting his power and hiding large sources of income from the IRS, even as he prepared to negotiate a deal that would remove the threat of federal monitoring and prosecution. Recent court decisions made it harder than ever to catch Cohen in the act. In October 1958, the state supreme court came out with yet another ruling, People v. McShann People v. McShann, that required the police to produce confidential informers in narcotics cases for cross-examination by the defense. The LAPD, warned Parker in reply, was being disarmed just as "the criminal cartels of the world" were preparing another "invasion."

"It won't be long," Parker warned, "until the Costello mob moves in here and turns this city into another Chicago."

But Cohen was not home free yet. While his attorney was seeking a deal, the Treasury Department was opening a new investigation into Cohen's finances. Investigators quickly homed in on Liz Renay. In early 1958, prosecutors in New York interrogated her about her ties to Anastasia-and her relations.h.i.+p with Mickey. Cohen was nonchalant about the prospect of prosecutors questioning the statuesque actress about their relations.h.i.+p.

"Anything she says is good enough for me," he told the Los Angeles Times Los Angeles Times. He even invited Chief Parker and Captain Hamilton to join them for dinner when Renay got back. "But I don't think they'd pick up the tab," he quipped. "That's a thousand-to-one shot."

The questioning of Renay continued. The U.S. attorney's office in Los Angeles convened a grand jury to investigate Mickey's lavish lifestyle. That fall, the federal grand jury summoned Renay to appear before them. She arrived at the federal courthouse resplendent in an outfit the Los Angeles Times Los Angeles Times described as "a tight-fitting royal blue jersey dress." described as "a tight-fitting royal blue jersey dress."

"Her red hair was set in a swirling pile," continued the anonymous scribe. "Her eyes which she said are green with brown polka dots, were dramatized by long glossy lashes and blue-shadowed eyelids." When confronted with questions about her underworld a.s.sociates, Renay took the Fifth. The LAPD and the IRS seemed to have run into yet another roadblock in their effort to take down Mickey Cohen and his Syndicate a.s.sociations. Fortunately for Chief Parker, though, he had another, even more powerful ally he could call upon-Robert Kennedy.

In March 1959, Robert Kennedy subpoenaed Cohen to testify before the McClellan Committee in Was.h.i.+ngton, D.C. Cohen's lawyer was Sam Dash, who would later win fame as the chief counsel of the Senate Watergate Committee. Dash took his client to meet Kennedy for the first time the day before the hearings. Cohen arrived aggrieved. He felt that he "already had a beef" with Kennedy, thanks to the stingy $8-a-day per diem authorized by Kennedy's staff. (Mickey was spending $100 a night to stay at the Was.h.i.+ngton Hilton.) Nonetheless, when Kennedy asked Cohen if he was going to answer questions at the Senate hearing tomorrow, Mickey said that he would try.

"Lookit, I'm going to answer any question that won't tend to incriminate me," he replied.

The next day, Cohen appeared as a witness-along with New Orleans crime boss Carlos Marcello ("a beautiful person, a real gentleman," according to Mickey). Kennedy began by establis.h.i.+ng Cohen's moral character-namely, that he was an effete clotheshorse who had spent "$275 on his silk lounging pajamas, $25,000 for a specialty built bulletproof car and at one time had 300 different suits, 1,500 pairs of socks and 60 pairs of $60 shoes." Kennedy then noted that despite such lavish expenditures Cohen had declared only $1,200 in income in 1956 and $1,500 in income in 1957.

Cohen was upset about being questioned "like an out-and-out punk" by this "snotty little guy." So when Kennedy started to ask him more pointed questions about his finances, Cohen took the Fifth, declining to answer on the grounds that by doing so he might incriminate himself. Cohen's only laugh came when Kennedy asked if it was true that Cohen had gone zero for three in his professional boxing career (with three knockouts). (It wasn't. His professional boxing record seems to have been six wins, eleven losses, and one draw.) Frustrated by Cohen's stonewalling, Kennedy called Cohen back into the hearings the next day. "I have been given to understand that you are a gentleman," he told Cohen pointedly before the cameras.

"Well, I consider myself a gentleman yeah," Cohen replied.

"Well, you sure haven't been a gentleman before this committee," Kennedy chided. "I see you're not going to answer any questions, but at least you could have answered that you respectfully respectfully declined to answer the questions because they may tend to incriminate you." declined to answer the questions because they may tend to incriminate you."

"That you respectfully?" respectfully?" Cohen replied, incredulous. "I'll be glad to do that-if I remember." Cohen replied, incredulous. "I'll be glad to do that-if I remember."

Then Kennedy switched gears. "Now off the record-you say you're a gentleman and all that. Let me ask you a question, and it has nothing to do with what we're here for concerning coin-operated machines, but what's the meaning in the underworld or the racket world when somebody's 'lights are to be put out'?"

It was a trick question. Cohen himself stood accused of having threatened one cigarette vending machine operator by informing him that he'd gotten a $50,000 contract to "put his lights out.'" His answer was quick in coming.

"Lookit," Mickey replied innocently, "I don't know what you're talking about. I'm not an electrician."

The audience laughed. Flus.h.i.+ng bright red, Kennedy jumped up and headed for Mickey. But Senator McClellan grabbed Kennedy by the shoulder, to Cohen's great disappointment.

"I would have torn him apart [and] kicked his f.u.c.kin' head," Cohen said later. Instead, he and Fred Sica, highly pleased with themselves, flew up to New Jersey to visit Sica's eighty-year-old mother, who greeted Cohen by saying, "Mickey, my boy. Jimmy was supposed to get the lamp fixed, but I told him to wait for you. You fix it. You're an electrician."

To celebrate the thumb in the eye to Kennedy, the next day Cohen called the Cadillac dealers.h.i.+p in Beverly Hills and ordered a new El Dorado Biarritz black convertible. Its list price was approximately $10,000-more than six times Cohen's declared income that year.

22.

Chocolate City.

"We are all members of some minority group."-Chief William Parker.

THE POLITE WORD was "Negro"-long "e," long "o." Bill Parker couldn't p.r.o.nounce it correctly. Try as he might, Parker kept shortening his vowels, producing (in his odd, pseudo-Bostonian accent) something more like "nigra." The effect was jarring. When black people first heard Parker speak about race, they sometimes thought he was using the slur "n.i.g.g.e.r." When Vivian Strange, one of the few black women in the department in the early 1950s (and a fellow Roman Catholic), pointed out the chief's p.r.o.nunciation problem, Parker was embarra.s.sed. He did his best to correct himself, even going so far as to tape himself and play back his words: nigra, nigra, neegro. Parker's lack of familiarity with the word pointed to a larger challenge: Like many white Angelenos, Parker simply didn't know much about black people.

Nothing in Parker's life had prepared him to relate to African Americans. When Parker's paternal grandfather had first arrived in the Black Hills, Deadwood had been a polyglot mining camp, filled with adventurers from Wales to Nanjing, including a number of African Americans. But by the time Parker was born in 1905, that had changed. Deadwood's Chinatown, once the largest between San Francisco and the Mississippi River, had vanished; even the Chinese cemetery had been emptied of its bodies. The raucous, polyglot mining camp had given way to George Hearst's more organized Homestead Mining Company. Deadwood had become white.

The Los Angeles Parker moved to in 1922 had a similar complexion, albeit on a larger scale. Of its 520,000 residents, only about 15,000 were black. Most African American residents lived east of Main Street. The oldest black neighborhoods were near downtown, south of the rail yards along Central Avenue. By the 1920s, another sizable African American community had formed in nearby Watts. Most were drawn to the area by construction jobs building two major lines of Henry Huntington's Pacific Electric streetcar system-the north-south line from downtown L.A. to Long Beach and an east-west line from Venice to Santa Ana. When the lines were completed, they simply stayed, creating a mixed black-Latino area known as Mudtown.

As the 1920s progressed, the influx of African Americans to the Watts area accelerated. In 1926, Watts was incorporated into Los Angeles, in part to prevent the emergence of an independent, majority-black city. Three years later, the Supreme Court upheld the legality of racially restrictive housing covenants designed to keep West Slauson Avenue white. African Americans were slowly being confined to the south-central area. The upside of this concentration was political power. Unlike African Americans in the Jim Crow South, black Angelenos were never denied the right to vote. As a result, as soon as the early 1920s, black voters were seen as an important voting bloc. A handful of black Political bosses soon emerged. Unfortunately, this was not a wholly positive development. These figures weren't just ward bosses; they were also crime lords. Instead of improving Central Avenue, many used their clout to create zones of protected vice. Said one police officer in the 1930s, "I know the payoff men, I know the go-betweens; but what can I do when it's sanctioned by the city's politicians?"

The situation satisfied no one. Law-abiding residents felt ignored by the police. In turn, the police came to a.s.sociate Central Avenue-and African Americans in general-with crime and vice. When politics demanded a crackdown, Central Avenue was an easy target. The result was a strained relations.h.i.+p between African American residents and the police.

As a policeman, Parker didn't have much firsthand experience in dealing with black people. Only about 2 percent of the force was African American, a percentage that roughly reflected that of the population as a whole. Although he'd worked in the Central Division as a young policeman, his recollections of his early days as a patrolman seem largely devoid of black people. (In contrast, his stint as a sergeant in Hollenbeck in the early 1930s clearly did affect his perception of Latinos.) Had Los Angeles remained a city with only a small African American population, this might not have mattered much. But it did not. For at the same moment that Bill Parker was s.h.i.+pping out to join the U.S. Army, Los Angeles was becoming a major destination for African Americans.

The primary draw was jobs. The need to arm America's forces in the Pacific had transformed Los Angeles into a major industrial center. But L.A. also seemed to offer blacks an escape from the Jim Crow South, at least at first glance. African Americans responded to this new opportunity by migrating west by the thousands. In 1941, the year before Bill Parker left Los Angeles to join the U.S. Army, Los Angeles's African American population numbered approximately 70,000 residents. By the time he returned, Los Angeles had become a city with the largest African American population west of St. Louis, with an African American population of more than 125,000.

The city did not take this change particularly well. The torrent of countrified newcomers shocked black and white Angelenos alike and created serious problems for local authorities. The first and most acute problem was housing. There wasn't any, particularly at a time when even middle-cla.s.s African Americans couldn't legally purchase a home in most of the Los Angeles basin. So the newcomers crowded into the only residential district that was available, Little Tokyo-the previous residents of which had been relocated to interior concentration camps up and down the coast. Soon, the area had a new name-Bronzeville. Little Tokyo had suddenly become Los Angeles's most fearful slum. It also became a center of crime. The understaffed, wartime LAPD responded poorly, with the slap of the blackjack and the crack of the truncheon. Officers policed African American neighborhoods with a heavy hand. Respect was mandatory-for officers, not residents. White officers demanded to be addressed as "Sir"-or else. (Tales of black men who were beaten and booked for drunkenness after some perceived slight were a common feature of black papers like the California Eagle California Eagle and the and the Los Angeles Sentinel.) Los Angeles Sentinel.) Black officers were, by some accounts, even rougher. According to white veterans of the 77th Street Division, black residents often requested "white justice" out of fear of what black officers might mete out. Black officers were, by some accounts, even rougher. According to white veterans of the 77th Street Division, black residents often requested "white justice" out of fear of what black officers might mete out.*

African Americans weren't the only minority group that often found itself at the receiving end of a policeman's baton. In 1942, L.A. county sheriff's deputies and the LAPD responded to the brutal murder of a twenty-two-year-old Latino farmworker at the Sleepy Lagoon reservoir by rounding up more than six hundred Latino youths. Many were severely beaten during their interrogations. After a flagrantly unfair trial (during which the counsel for the defense were denied the right to communicate freely with their clients), twelve of the youths were convicted of murder and another five of a.s.sault. The convictions were later overturned on appeal, and prosecutors declined to retry the case.

Los Angeles even experienced something very much like a pogrom. In the summer of 1943, a handful of Chicano youths got into a fight with a group of servicemen on sh.o.r.e leave who'd been messing with their girlfriends. Three days later, servicemen responded with a five-day rampage through downtown and East L.A., during which time hundreds of Chicano youths, particularly those wearing "zoot suits" (whose long coats and balloon pants were widely a.s.sociated with gang activity) were brutally beaten by military servicemen while the LAPD stood by. The pogrom ended only when the military placed downtown Los Angeles off-limits to all military personnel. Not since the days of the "third degree" had Los Angeles experienced such naked brutality. By 1945, it was clear that culling recent hires who should never have joined the department in the first place and improving race relations would be major challenges. Parker recognized the first challenge but not the second. By the time he faced the latter, it was too late.

WHILE COHEN thumbed his nose at Bobby Kennedy, Chief Parker found himself facing his own judicial inquiry. In the spring of 1959, a Los Angeles munic.i.p.al judge, David Williams, threw out gambling charges against twenty-five African Americans, on the grounds that "the vice squad enforced gambling ordinances in a discriminatory fas.h.i.+on." When a resident wrote the judge to ask why he'd taken it upon himself to nullify the law, Judge Williams essentially accused the LAPD of racist law enforcement.

"I feel that when police officials instruct their subordinate officers to arrest only Negroes on a given charge, it will not be long before their newly-gained power will prompt them to enforce other statutes only against certain other groups," wrote Williams. The recipient of this letter promptly forwarded this provocative response to Chief Parker, who immediately dashed off an angry note to the judge. ("I have no knowledge of any such instruction issued in this Department, either orally or in writing.") Parker demanded that Williams defend himself.

Williams wrote back to say that he found it curious that Chief Parker thought he had the right to interject himself into someone else's private correspondence. Williams then offered a defense for his decision. He noted that over the course of the three preceding years, the only cases prosecutors had brought to him involved raids on Negro gambling games. The only white people he'd seen prosecuted on gambling charges were those swept up in raids on Negro areas. The LAPD's citywide statistics told a similar story. During the years 1957 and 1958, police had arrested 12,000 blacks on gambling charges but only 1,200 whites. Were African Americans really responsible for 90 percent of the gambling in the city of Los Angeles? Williams thought not. He suggested that the city council's police and fire committee look into why so few gambling arrests were made in "white" parts of town, such as the San Fernando Valley, Hollywood, and West Los Angeles.

The spat soon went public. Parker rejoined that blacks made up 73 percent of nationwide gambling arrests (not including bookmaking). The LAPD's arrest rate was slightly higher (around 82 percent) not because the department was more racist, he insisted, but rather because the department was dealing with unusually hardened criminals. At a meeting with the city council soon after Williams first made his remarks, Parker explained that "there are certain courts in certain states in the Deep South where people of a certain race who are accused of crimes of violence definitely can get probation if they go to California."

The black press objected strongly to this explanation. On March 19, the California Eagle California Eagle criticized Parker for "losing his head" over the controversy with Williams. While praising his abilities as an administrator, the paper's editorial board concluded that the chief's shortcomings outweighed his virtues and called on Parker to retire. Of course, nothing came of this request. The city council conducted a cursory investigation of Judge Williams's allegations and then referred them to the Police Commission, which promptly dismissed them as "a personal attack." And so yet another investigation was stillborn. criticized Parker for "losing his head" over the controversy with Williams. While praising his abilities as an administrator, the paper's editorial board concluded that the chief's shortcomings outweighed his virtues and called on Parker to retire. Of course, nothing came of this request. The city council conducted a cursory investigation of Judge Williams's allegations and then referred them to the Police Commission, which promptly dismissed them as "a personal attack." And so yet another investigation was stillborn.

Street-level disrespect wasn't the only thing contributing to police-minority tensions. So too did Chief Parker's principled commitment to follow where the data led him.

One of Parker's first priorities as chief of police had been to make the LAPD more efficient and more data driven. Parker's goal was crime prevention. Like most departments, the LAPD relied on crime mapping (i.e., pins on maps) to track trends and deployed its forces accordingly.

"Every department worth its salt deploys field forces on the basis of crime experience," explained Parker in a 1957 collection of speeches t.i.tled Parker on Policing Parker on Policing. "Deployment is often heaviest in so-called minority sections of the city," he continued. "The reason is statistical-it is a fact that certain racial groups, at present time, commit a disproportionate share of the total crime."