The Sunset Strip-the center of Hollywood’s nightlife-lay near the heart of Los Angeles, or would have if L.A. had a heart. I’m not waxing poetic, either: postwar L.A. (circa late summer 1949) sprawled over some 452 square miles, but isolated strips of land within the city limits were nonetheless not part of the city. Sunset Boulevard itself ran from downtown to the ocean, around twenty-five miles; west on Sunset, toward Beverly Hills-roughly a mile and a half, from Crescent Heights Boulevard to Doheny Drive-the Strip threaded through an unincorporated area surrounded by (but not officially part of) the City of Angels.
Prime nightspots like the Trocadero, Ciro’s, the Mocambo, and the Crescendo shared the glittering Strip with smaller, hipper clubs and hideaway restaurants like Slapsy Maxie’s, the Little New Yorker and the Band Box. Seediness and glamour intermingled, grit met glitz, as screen legends, power brokers and gangsters converged in West Hollywood for a free-spirited, no-holds-barred good time.
The L.A. police couldn’t even make an arrest on the Strip, which was under the jurisdiction of County Sheriff Eugene Biscailuz, who cheerfully ignored both the city’s cops and its ordinances. Not that the L.A. coppers would have made any more arrests than the sheriff’s deputies: the Vice Squad was well-known to operate chiefly as a shakedown racket. A mighty bookmaking operation was centered on the Sunset Strip, and juice was paid to both the county sheriff and the city vice squad. This seemed unfair to Mickey Cohen.
The diminutive, dapper, vaguely simian Cohen was a former Ben “Bugsy” Siegel associate who had built his bookie empire on the bodies of his competitors. Rivals with such colorful names as Maxie Shaman, Benny “the Meatball” Gambino, and Tony Trombino were just a few of the violently deceased gangsters who had unwillingly made way for Mickey; and the Godfather of Southern California-Jack Dragna-could only grin and bear it and put up with Cohen’s bloody empire building. Cohen had the blessing of the east coast Combination-Luciano, Meyer Lanksy, the late Siegel’s crowd-and oldtime Prohibition-era mob boss Dragna didn’t like it. A West Coast mob war had been brewing for years.
I knew Cohen from Chicago, where in the late thirties he was strictly a smalltime gambler and general-purpose hoodlum. Our paths had crossed several times since-never in a nasty way-and I rather liked the street-smart, stupid-looking Mick. He was nothing if not colorful: owned dozens of suits, wore monogrammed silk shirts and made-to-order shoes, drove a $15,000 custom-built blue Caddy, lived with his pretty little wife in a $150,000 home in classy Brentwood, and suffered a cleanliness fetish that had him washing his hands more than Lady MacBeth.
A fixture of the Sunset Strip, Mick strutted through clubs spreading dough around like advertising leaflets. One of his primary hangouts was Sherry’s, a cocktail lounge slash restaurant, a favorite film-colony rendezvous whose nondescript brick exterior was offset by an ornate interior.
My business partner Fred Rubinski was co-owner of Sherry’s. Fireplug Fred-who resembled a slightly better-looking Edward G. Robinson-was an ex-Chicago cop who had moved out here before the war to open a detective agency. We’d known each other in Chicago, both veterans of the pickpocket detail, and I too had left the Windy City PD to go private, only I hadn’t gone west, young man.
At least, not until after the war. The A-1 Detective Agency-of which I, Nathan Heller, was president-had (over the course of a decade-and-change) grown from a one-man hole-in-the-wall affair over a deli on Van Buren to a suite of offices in the Monadnock Building rife with operatives, secretaries and clients. Expansion seemed the thing, and I convinced my old pal Fred to throw in with me. So, starting in late ’46, the Los Angeles branch operated out of the Bradbury Building at Third and Broadway, with Fred-now vice president of the A-1-in charge, while I of course kept the Chicago offices going. Only it seemed, more and more, I was spending time in California. My wife was an actress, and she had moved out here with our infant son, after the marriage went quickly south. The divorce wasn’t final yet, and in my weaker moments, I still had hopes of patching things up, and was looking at finding an apartment or small house to rent, so I could divide my time between L.A. and Chicago. In July of ’49, however, I was in a bungalow at the Beverly Hills Hotel, for whom the A-1 handled occasional security matters, an arrangement which included the perk of free lodgings.
Like Cohen, Fred Rubinski attempted to make up for his homeliness with natty attire, such as the blue suit with gray pinstripes and the gray-and-white silk tie he wore, as he sat behind his desk in his Bradbury Building office, a poolcue Havana shifting from corner to corner of his thick lips.
“Just do it as a favor to me, Nate,” Fred said.
I was seated across from him, in the client chair, ankle on a knee. “You don’t do jobs for Cohen-why should I?”
Fred patted the air with his palms; blue cigar smoke swirled around him like a wreath. “You don’t have to do a job for him-just hear him out. He’s a good customer at Sherry’s and I don’t wanna cross him.”
“You also don’t want to do jobs for him.”
A window air conditioner was chugging; hot day. Fred and I had to speak up over it.
“I use the excuse that I’m too well-known out here,” my partner said. “Also, the Mickster and me are already considered to be cronies, ’cause of Sherry’s. He knows the cops would use that as an excuse to come down on me, hard, if suddenly I was on Mickey Cohen’s retainer.”
“But you’re not asking me to do this job.”
“No. Absolutely not. Hell, I don’t even know what it is.”
“You can guess.”
“Well…I suppose you know he’s been kind of a clay pigeon, lately. Several attempts on his life, probably by Dragna’s people…. Mick probably wants a bodyguard.”
“I don’t do that kind of work anymore. Anyway, what about those Seven Dwarfs of his?”
That was how Cohen’s inner circle of lieutenants/strong-arms were known-Neddie Herbert, Davy Ogul, Frank Niccoli, Johnny Stompanato, Al Snyder, Jimmy Rist, and the late Hooky Rothman, who about a year ago had got his face shot off when guys with shotguns came barging right into Cohen’s clothing shop. I liked my face right where it was.
“Maybe it’s not a bodyguard job,” Fred said with a shrug. “Maybe he wants you for something else.”
I shifted in the chair. “Fred, I’m trying to distance myself from these mobsters. My connections with the Outfit back home, I’m still trying to live down-it’s not good for the A-1…”
“Tell him! Just don’t insult the man…don’t piss him off.”
I got up, smoothing out my suit. “Fred, I was raised right. I hardly ever insult homicidal gangsters.”
“You’ve killed a few, though.”
“Yeah,” I said from the doorway, “but I didn’t insult them.”
The habidashery known poshly as Michael’s was a two-story brick building in the midst of boutiques and nighteries at 8804 Sunset Boulevard. I was wearing a tan tropical worsted sportcoat and brown summer slacks, with a rust-color tie and two-tone Florsheims, an ensemble that had chewed up a hundred bucks in Marshall Field’s men’s department, and spit out pocket change. But the going rates inside this plush shop made me look like a piker.
Within the highly polished walnut walls, a few ties lay on a central glass counter, sporting silky sheens and twenty-five buck price tags. A rack of sportshirts ran seventy-five per, a stack of dress shirts ran in the hundred range. A luxurious brown robe on a headless manikin-a memorial to Hooky Rothman?-cost a mere two-hundred bucks, and the sportcoats went for two-hundred up, the suits three to four. Labels boasted: “Tailored Exclusively for Mickey Cohen.”
A mousy little clerk-a legit-looking joker with a wispy mustache, wearing around five cee’s worth of this stuff-looked at me as if a hobo had wandered into the shop.
“May I help you?” he asked, stuffing more condescension into four words than I would have thought humanly possible.
“Tell your boss Nate Heller’s here,” I said casually, as I poked around at the merchandise.
This was not a front for a bookmaking joint: Cohen really did run a high-end clothing store; but he also supervised his other, bigger business-which was extracting protection money from bookmakers, reportedly $250 per week per phone-out of here, as well. Something in my manner told the effete clerk that I was part of the backroom business, and his patronizing manner disappeared.
His whispered-into-a-phone conversation included my name, and soon he was politely ushering me o thee rear of the store, opening a steel-plated door, gesturing me into a walnut-paneled, expensively-appointed office.
Mayer Harris Cohen-impeccably attired in a double-breasted light gray suit, with a gray and green paisley silk tie-sat behind a massive mahogany desk whose glass-topped surface bore three phones, a small clock with pen-and-pencil holder, a vase with cut flowers, a notepad and no other sign of work. Looming over him was an ornately framed hand-colored photograph of FDR at his own desk, cigarette holder at a jaunty angle.
Standing on either side, like Brillcreamed bookends, were two of Cohen’s dark-eyed Dwarfs: Johnny Stompanato, a matinee-idol handsome hood who I knew a little; and hook-nosed Frank Niccoli, who I knew even less. They were as well-dressed as their boss.
“Thanks for droppin’ by, Nate,” Cohen said, affably, not rising. His thinning black hair was combed close to his egg-shaped skull; with his broad forehead, blunt nose and pugnacious chin, the pint-sized gangster resembled a bull terrier.
“Pleasure, Mickey,” I said, hat in my hands.
Cohen’s dark eyes flashed from bodyguard to bodyguard. “Fellas, some privacy?”
The two nodded at their boss, but each stopped-one at a time-to acknowledge me, as they headed to a side door, to an adjacent room (not into the shop).
“Semper fi, Mac,” Stompanato said, flashing his movie-star choppers. He always said this to me, since we were both ex-Marines.
“Semper fi,” I said.
Niccoli stopped in front of me and smiled, but it seemed forced. “No hard feelings, Heller.”
“About what?”
“You know. No hard feelings. It was over between us, anyway.”
“Frank, I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
His hard, pockmarked puss puckered into an expression that, accompanied by a dismissive wave, implied “no big deal.”
When the bodyguards were gone, Cohen gestured for me to sit on the couch against the wall, opposite his desk. He rose to his full five six, and went to a console radio against the wall and switched it on-Frankie Laine was singing “Mule Train”…loud. Then Cohen trundled over and sat next to me, saying quietly, barely audible with the blaring radio going, “You can take Frankie at his word.”
At first I thought he was talking about Frankie Laine, then I realized he meant Niccoli.
“Mick,” I said, whispering back, not knowing why but following his lead, “I don’t know what the hell he’s talking about.”
Cohen’s eyes were wide-he almost always had a startled deer look. “You’re dating Didi Davis, right?”
Didi was a starlet I was seeing, casually; I might have been trying to patch up my marriage, but I wasn’t denying myself the simple pleasures.
“Yeah, I met her a couple weeks ago at Sherry’s.”
“Well, Nate, she used to be Frankie’s girl.”
Cohen smelled like a barber shop got out of hand-reeking heavily of talcum powder and cologne, which seemed a misnomer considering his perpetual five o’clock shadow.
“I didn’t know that, Mick. She didn’t say anything….”
A whip cracked on the radio, as “Mule Train” wound down.
Cohen shrugged. “It’s over. She got tired of gettin’ slapped around, I guess. Anyway, if Frankie says he don’t hold no grudge, he don’t hold no grudge.”
“Well, that’s just peachy.” I hated it when girls forgot to mention their last boyfriend was a hoodlum.
Vaughn Monroe was singing “Ghost Riders in the Sky” on the radio-in full nasal throttle. And we were still whispering.
Cohen shifted his weight. “Listen, you and me, we never had no problems, right?”
“Right.”
“And you know your partner, Fred and me, we’re pals.”
“Sure.”
“So I figured I’d throw some work your way.”
“Like what, Mick?”
He was sitting sideways on the couch, to look at me better; his hands were on his knees. “I’m gettin’ squeezed by a pair of vice cops-Delbert Potts and Rudy Johnson, fuckers’ names. They been tryin’ to sell me recordings.”
“Frankie Laine? Vaughn Monroe?”
“Very funny-these pricks got wire recordings of me, they say, business transactions, me and who-knows-who discussing various illegalities…I ain’t heard anything yet. But they’re trying to shake me down for twenty gee’s-this goes well past the taste they’re gettin’ already, from my business.”
Now I understood why he was whispering, and why the radio was blasting.
“We’re not talking protection,” I said, “but straight blackmail.”
“On the nose. I want two things, Heller-I want my home and my office, whadyacallit, checked for bugs…”
“Swept.”
“Huh?”
“Swept for bugs. That’s what it’s called, Mick.”
“Yeah, well, that’s what I want-part of what I want. I also want to put in my own wiretaps and bugs and get those two greedy bastards on my recordings of them shakin’ me down.”
“Good idea-create a standoff.”
He twitched a smile, apparently pleased by my approval. “You up for doing that?”
“It’s not my speciality, Mick-but I can recommend somebody. Guy named Vaus, Jim Vaus. Calls himself an ‘electronics engineering consultant.’ He’s in Hollywood.”
Tdark eyes tightened but retained their deer-in-the-headlights quality. “You’ve used this guy?”
“Yeah…well, Fred has. But what’s important is: the cops use him, too.”
“They don’t have their own guy?”
“Naw. They don’t have anybody like that on staff-they’re a backward bunch. Jim’s strictly freelance. Hell, he may be the guy who bugged you for the cops.”
“But can he be trusted?”
“If you pay him better than the LAPD-which won’t be hard-you’ll have a friend for life.”
“How you wanna handle this, Nate? Through your office, or will this, what’s-his-name, Vaus, kick back a little to you guys, or-”
“This is just a referral, Mick, just a favor…I think I got one of his cards….”
I dug the card out of my wallet and gave it to Cohen, whose big brown eyes were dancing with sugarplumbs.
“This is great, Nate!”
I felt relieved, like I’d dodged a bullet: I had helped Cohen without having to take him on as a client.
So I said, “Glad to have been of service,” and began to get up, only Cohen stopped me with a small but firm hand on my forearm.
Bing Crosby was singing “Dear Hearts and Gentle People” on the radio-casual and easygoing and loud as hell.
“What’s the rush, Nate? I got more business to talk.”
Sitting back down, I just smiled and shrugged and waited for the pitch.
It was a fastball: “I need you should bodyguard me.”
“Jesus, Mick, with guys like Stompanato and Niccoli around? What the hell would you need me for?”
He was shaking his head; he had a glazed expression. “These vice cops, they got friends in the sheriff’s office. My boys been gettin’ rousted regularly-me, too. Half the time when we leave this place, we get shoved up against the wall and checked for concealed weapons.”
“Oh. Is that what happened to Happy Meltzer?”
“On the nose again! Trumped-up gun charge. And these vice cops are behind it-and maybe Jack Dragna, who’s in bed with the sheriff’s department. Dragna would like nothin’ better than to get me outa of the picture, without makin’ our mutual friends back east sore.”
“Hell, Mick, how do you see me figuring in this?”
“You’re a private detective-licensed for bodyguard work. Licensed to carry a weapon! Shit, man, I need somebody armed standin’ at my side, to keep me from gettin’ my ass shot off! Just a month ago, somebody took a blast at me with a shotgun, and then we found a bomb under my house, and…”
He rattled on, as I thought about his former bodyguard, Hooky Rothman, getting his face shot off, in that posh shop just beyond the metal-lined door.
“I got friends in the Attorney General’s office,” he was saying, “and they tell me they got an inside tip that there’s a contract out on yours truly-there’s supposed to be two triggers in from somewheres on the east coast, to do the job. I need somebody with a gun, next to me.”
“Mickey,” I said, “I have to decline. With all due respect.”
“You’re not makin’ me happy, Nate.”
“I’m sorry. I’m in no position to help out. First off, I don’t live out here, not fulltime, anyway. Second, I have a reputation of mob connections that I’m trying to live down.”
“You’re disappointing me….”
“I’m trying to get my branch office established out here, and you and Fred being friends-you hanging out at Sherry’s-that’s as far as our relationship, personal or professional, can go.”
He thought about that. Then he nodded and shrugged. “I ain’t gonna twist your arm…. Two grand a week, just for the next two weeks?”
That might have tempting, if Cohen hadn’t already narrowly escaped half a dozen hit attempts.
“You say you got friends in the Attorney General’s office?” I asked.
“Yeah. Fred Howser and me are like this.” He held up his right hand, forefinger and middlefinger crossed.
If the attorney general himself was on Cohen’s pad, then those wire recordings the vice cops had might implicate Howser….
“Mick, ask Howser to assign one of his men to you as a bodyguard.”
“A cop?”
“Who better? He’ll be armed, he’ll be protecting a citizen, and anyway, a cop to a hoodlum is like garlic to a vampire. Those triggers’ll probably steer clear, long as a state investigator is at your side.”
Cohen was thinking that over; then he began to nod.
“Not a bad idea,” he said. “Not a bad idea at all.”
I stood. “No consulting fee, Mick. Let’s stay friends-and not do business together.”
He snorted a laugh, stood and went over and shut off the radio, cutting off Mel Torme singing “Careless Hands.” Then he walked me to the steel-lined door and-when I extended my hand-shook with me.
As I was leaving, I heard him, in the private bathroom off his office, tap running, as he washed up-removing my germs.
I had a couple stops to make, unrelated to the Cohen appointment, so it was late afternoon when I made it back to the Beverly Hills Hotel. Entering my bungalow-nothing fancy, just a marble fireplace, private patio and furnishings no more plush than the palace at Versailles-I heard something…someone…in the bedroom. Rustling around in there.
My nine millimeter was in my suitcase, and my suitcase was in the bedroom. And I was just about to exit, to find a hotel dick or maybe call a cop, when my trained detective’s nose sniffed a clue; and I walked across the living room, and pushed the door open.
Didi Davis gasped; she was wearing glittery earrings-just glittery earrings, and the Chanel Number Five I’d nosed-and was poised, pulling back the covers, apparently about to climb into bed. She looked like a French maid who forgot her costume.
“I wanted to surprise you,” she said. She was a lovely brunette, rather tall-maybe five nine-with a willowy figure that would have seemed skinny if not for pert breasts and an impertinent dimpled behind. She was tanned all over. Her hair was up. It wasn’t alone.
“I thought you were working at Republic today,” I said, undoing my tie.
She crawled under the covers and the sheets made inviting, crinkly sounds. “Early wrap…. I tipped a bellboy who let me in.”
Soon I was under covers, equally naked, leaning on a pillow. “You know, I run with kind of a rough crowd-surprises like this can backfire.”
“I just wanted to do something sweet for you,” she said.
And she proceeded to do something sweet for me.
Half an hour later, still in the bedroom, we were getting dressed when I brought up the rough crowd she ran with.
“Why didn’t you mention you used to date Frank Niccoli?”
She was fastening a nylon to her garter belt, long lovely leg stretched out as if daring me to be mad at her. “I don’t know-Nate, you and I met at Sherry’s, after all. You hang around with those kind of people. What’s the difference?”
“The difference is, suppose he’s a jealous type. Niccoli isn’t your average ex-beau-he’s a goddamn thug. Is it true he smacked you around?”
She was putting on her other nylon, fastening it, smoothing it; this kind of thing could get boring in an hour or two. “That’s why I walked out on him. I warned him and he said he wouldn’t do it again, and then a week later, he did it again.”
“Has he bothered you? Confronted you in public? Called you on the phone?”
“No. It’s over. He knows it, and I know it…now you know it. Okay, Nate? Do I ask you questions about your ex-wife?”
Didi didn’t know my wife wasn’t officially my ex, yet; nor that I was still hoping to rekindle those flames. She thought I was a great guy, unaware that I was a heel who would never marry another actress, but would gladly sleep with one.
“Let’s drop it,” I said.
“What a wonderful idea.” She stood, easing her slip down over her nyloned legs, and was shimmying into her casual light-blue dress when the doorbell rang. Staying in a bungalow at the Beverly Hills, incidentally, was the only time I can recall a hotel room having a doorbell.
“I’m not expecting company,” I told her, “but stay in here, would you? And keep mum?”
“I need ut my make-up on-”
The bell rang again-pretty damn insistent.
I got my nine millimeter out of the suitcase, stuffed it in my waistband, slipped on my sportjacket and covered it. “Just sit down-there’s some magazines by the bed. We don’t need to advertise.”
She saw the common sense of that, and nodded. No alarm had registered in her eyes at the sight of the weapon; but then she’d been Niccoli’s girl, hadn’t she?
I shut her in there and went to answer the door.
I’d barely cracked the thing open when the two guys came barging in, the first one in brushing past me, the second slamming the door.
I hadn’t even had a chance to say, “Hey!” when the badge in the wallet was thrust in my face.
“Lieutenant Delbert Potts,” he said, putting the wallet away. He was right on top of me and his breath was terrible: it smelled like anchovies taste. “L.A. vice squad. This is my partner, Sergeant Rudy Johnson.”
Potts was a heavy-set character in an off-the-rack brown suit that looked slept in; hatless, he had greasy reddish-blond hair and his drink-reddened face had a rubbery softness. His eyes were bloodshot, his nose as misshapen as a blob of putty somebody had stuck there carelessly, his lips thick and plump and vaguely obscene.
Johnson was thin and dark-both his features and his physique-and his navy suit looked tailored. He wore a black snapbrim that had set him back a few bucks.
“Fancy digs, Mr. Heller,” Potts said, prowling the place, his thick-lipped smile conveying disgust. He had a slurry voice-he reminded me of a loathsome Arthur Godfrey, if that wasn’t redundant.
“I do some work for the hotel,” I said. “They treat me right when I’m out here.”
“You goin’ back to Chicago soon?” Johnson asked, right next to me. He had a reedy voice and his eyes seemed sleepy unless you noticed the sharpness under the half-lids.
“Not right away.”
I’d never met this pair, yet they knew my name and knew I was from Chicago. And they hadn’t taken me up on my offer to sit down.
“You might re-consider,” Potts said. He was over at the wet bar, checking out the brands.
“Help yourself,” I said.
“We’re on duty,” Johnson said.
“Fellas-what’s this about?”
Potts wandered back over to me and thumped me on the chest with a thick finger. “You stopped by Mickey Cohen’s today.”
“That’s right. He wanted me to do a job for him-I turned him down.”
The bloodshot eyes tightened. “You turned him down? Are you sure?”
“I have a real good memory, Lieutenant. I remember damn near everything that happened to me, all day.”
“Funny#8221; That awful breath was warm in my face-fishy smell. “You wouldn’t kid a kidder, would you?”
Backing away, I said, “Fellas-make your point.”
Potts kept moving in on me, his breath in my face, like a foul furnace, his finger thumping at my chest. “You and your partner…Rubinski…you shouldn’t be so thick with that little kike.”
“Which little kike?”
Johnson said, “Mickey Cohen.”
I looked from one to the other. “I already told you guys-I turned him down. I’m not working for him.”
Potts asked, “What job did he want you for?”
“That’s confidential.”
He swung his fist into my belly-I did not see it coming, nor did I expect a slob like him to have such power. I dropped to my knees and thought about puking on the oriental carpet-I also thought about the gun in my waistband.
Slowly, I got to my feet. And when I did, the nine millimeter was in my hand.
“Get the fuck out of my room,” I said.
Both men backed away, alarm widening their seen-it-all eyes. Potts blurted, “You can be arrested for-”
“This is licensed, and you clowns barged into my room and committed assault on me.”
Potts had his hands up; he seemed nervous but he might have been faking, while he looked for an opening. “I shouldn’ta swung on ya. I apologize-now, put the piece away.”
“No.” I motioned toward the door with the Browning. “You’re about to go, gents…but first-here’s everything you need to know: I’m not working for Cohen, and neither is Fred.”
The two exchanged glances, Johnson shaking his head.
“Why don’t you put that away,” Pott said, with a want-some-candy-little-girl smile, “and we’ll just talk.”
“We have talked. Leave.”
I pressed forward and the two backed up-toward the door.
“You better be tellin’ the truth,” Potts said, anger swimming in his rheumy eyes.
I opened the door for them. “What the hell have you been eating, Potts? Your breath smells like hell.”
The cop’s blotchy face reddened, but his partner let out a sharp, single laugh. “Sardine sandwiches-it’s all he eats on stakeouts.”
That tiny moment of humanity between Johnson and me ended the interview; then they were out the door, and I shut and nightlatched it. I watched them through the window as they moved through the hotel’s garden-like grounds, Potts taking the lead, clearly pissed-off, the flowering shrubs around him doing nothing to soothe him.
In the bedroom, Didi was stretched out on the bed, on her back, head to one side, fast asleep.
I sat nex gentsher, on the edge of the bed, and this woke her with a start. “What? Oh…I must’ve dropped off. What was that about, anyway?”
“The Welcome Wagon,” I said. “Come on, let’s get an early supper.”
And I took her to the Polo Lounge, where she chattered on and on about the picture she was working (with Roy Rogers and Dale Evans) and I said not much. I was thinking about those two bent cops, and how I’d pulled a gun on them.
No retaliation followed my encounter with the two vice squad boys. They had made their point, and I mine. But I did take some precautionary measures: for two days I tailed the bastards, and (with my Speed Graphic, the divorce dick’s best friend) got two rolls of film on them receiving pay-offs, frequently in the parking lot of their favorite coffee shop, Googie’s, on Sunset at Crescent Heights. I had no intention of using these for blackmail purposes-I just wanted some ammunition, other than the nine millimeter variety, with which to deal with these bent sons of bitches. On the other hand, I had taken to wearing my shoulder-holstered nine millimeter, in case things got interesting.
And for over a week, things weren’t interesting-things were nicely dull. I had run into Cohen at Sherry’s several times and he was friendly-and always in the company of a rugged-looking, ruggedly handsome investigator from the Attorney General’s office, sandy-haired Harry Cooper…which rhymed with Gary Cooper, who the dick was just as tall as.
Mick had taken my advice-he now had an armed bodyguard, courtesy of the state of California. His retinue of a Dwarf or two also accompanied him, of course, just minus any artillery. Once or twice, Niccoli had been with him-he’d just smiled and nodded at me (and Didi), polite, no hard feelings.
On Tuesday night, July 19, I took Didi to see Annie Get Your Gun at the Greek Theater; Gertrude Niesen had just opened in the show, and she and it were terrific. Then we had a late supper at Ciro’s, and hit a few jazz clubs. We wound up, as we inevitably did, at Sherry’s for pastries and coffee.
Fred greeted us as we came in and joined us in a booth, Didi-who looked stunning in a low-cut spangly silver gown, her brunette hair piled high-and I were on one side, Fred on the other. A piano tinkling Cole Porter fought with clanking plates and after-theater chatter.
I ordered us up a half-slice of cheesecake for Didi (who was watching her figure-she wasn’t alone), a Napoleon for me, and coffee for both of us. Fred just sat there with his hands folded, prayerfully, shaking his head.
“Gettin’ too old for this,” he said, his pouchy puss even pouchier than usual, a condition his natty navy suit and red silk tie couldn’t make up for.
“What are you doing, playing host in the middle of the night?” I asked him. “You’re an owner, for Christ’s sake! Seems like lately, every time I come in here, in the wee hours, you’re hovering around like a mother hen.”
“You’re not wrong, Nate. Mickey’s been comin’ in almost every night, and with that contract hanging over his head, I feel like…for the protection of my customers…I gotta keep an eye on things.”
“Is he here tonight?”
“Didn’t you see him, holding court over there?”
Over in the far corner of the modern, brightly-lighted restaurant-where business was actually a little slow tonight-a lively Cohen was indeed seated at a large round table with Cooper, Johnny Stompanato, Frank Niccoli and another of the Dwarfs, Neddie Herbert. Also with the little gangster were several reporters from the Times, and Florabel Muir and her husband, Denny. Florabel, a moderately attractive redhead in her late forties, was a Hollywood columnist for the New York Daily News.
Our order arrived, and Fred slid out of the booth, saying, “I better circulate.”
“Fred, what, you think somebody’s gonna open up with a chopper in here? This isn’t a New Jersey clam house.”
“I know…. I’m just a nervous old woman.”
Fred wandered off, and Didi and I nibbled at our desserts; we were dragging a little-it was after three.
“You okay?” I asked her.
“What?”
“You seem a little edgy.”
“Really? Why would I be?”
“Having Niccoli sitting over there.”
“No. That’s over.”
“What did you see in that guy, anyway?”
She shrugged. “He was nice, at first. I heard he had friends in pictures.”
“You’re already under contract. What do you need-”
“Nate, are we going to argue?”
I smiled, shook my head. “No. It’s just…guys like Niccoli make me nervous.”
“But he’s been very nice to both of us.”
“That’s what makes me nervous.” Our mistake was using the restrooms: they were in back, and to use them, we’d had to pass near Cohen and his table. That’s how we got invited to join the party-the two Times reporters had taken off, and chairs were available.
I sat next to Florabel, with Niccoli right next to me; and Didi was beside Cooper, the state investigator, who sneaked occasional looks down Didi’s cleavage. Couldn’t blame him and, anyway, detectives are always gathering information.
Florabel had also seen Annie Get Your Gun, and Cohen had caught a preview last week.
“That’s the best musical to hit L.A. in years,” the little gangster said. He was in a snappy gray suit with a blue and gray tie.
For maybe five minutes, the man who controlled bookie operations in Los Angeles extolled the virtues of Rodgers and Hammerstein’s latest confection, aided and abetted by Irving Berlin.
“Can I quote you in my column?” Florabel asked. She was wearing a cream-color suit with satin lapels, a classy d with a hard edge.
“Sure! That musical gets the Mickey Cohen seal of approval.”
Everyone laughed, as if it had been witty-me, too. I like my gangsters to be in a good mood.
“Mickey,” the columnist said, sitting forward, “who do you think’s been trying to kill you?”
“I really haven’t the slightest idea. I’m as innocent as the driven snow.”
“Yeah, but like Mae West said, you drifted.”
He grinned at her-tiny rodent teeth. “Florabel, I love ya like a sister, I can talk to you about things I can’t even tell my own wife.”
Who was not present, by the way.
“You’re in a neutral corner,” he was saying, “like a referee. There’s nothin’ I can do for you, except help you sell papers, and you ain’t got no axes to grind with me.”
“That’s true-so why not tell me what you really think? Is Jack Dragna behind these attempts?”
“Even for you, Florabel, that’s one subject on which I ain’t gonna spout off. If I knew the killers were in the next room, I wouldn’t go public with it.”
“Why not?”
“People like me, we settle things in our own way.”
She gestured. “How can you sit in an open restaurant, Mick, with people planning to kill you?”
“Nobody’s gonna do nothin’ as long as you people are around. Even a crazy man wouldn’t take a chance shooting where a reporter might get hit…or a cop, like Cooper here.”
I was just trying to stay out of it, on the sidelines, but this line of reasoning I couldn’t let slide.
“Mickey,” I said, “you really think a shooter’s going to ask to see Florabel’s press pass?” Cohen thought that was funny, and almost everybody laughed-except me and Cooper.
Several at the table were nibbling on pastries; Didi and I had some more coffee. At one point, Niccoli got up to use the men’s room, and Didi and I exchanged whispered remarks about how cordial he’d been to both of us. Florabel, still looking for a story, started questioning the slender, affable Neddie Herbert, who had survived a recent attempt on his life.
Herbert, who went back twenty years with Cohen, had dark curly hair, a pleasant-looking grown-up Dead-End Kid with a Brooklyn accent. He had been waylaid in the wee hours on the sidewalk in front of his apartment house.
“Two guys with .38s emptied their guns at me from the bushes.” Herbert was grinning like a college kid recalling a frat-house prank. “Twelves slugs, the cops recovered-not one hit me!”
“How is that possible?” Florabel asked.
“Ah, I got a instinct for danger-I didn’t even see them two guys, but I sensed ’em right before I heard ’em, and I dropped to the sidewalk right before they started shooting. I crawled onto the stairway, outa range, while their bullets were fallin’ all around.”
“Punks,” Cohen said.
“If they’da had any guts,” Herbert said, “they’da reloaded and moved in close, to get me-but they weaseled and ran.”
Fred came over to the table, and-after some small talk-said, “It’s almost four, folks-near closing time. Mind if I have one of the parking lot attendants fetch your car, Mick?”
“That’d be swell, Fred.”
I said, “Fetch mine, too, would you, Fred?”
And as Rubinski headed off to do that, Cohen grabbed the check, fending off a few feeble protests, and everybody gathered their things. This seemed like a good time for Didi and me to make our exit, as well.
Sherry’s was built up on a slope, so there were a couple steps down from the cashier’s counter to an entryway that opened right out to the street. Cohen strutted down and out, through the glass doors, with Neddie Herbert and the six-three Cooper right behind him. Niccoli and Stompanato were lingering inside, buying chewing gum and cigarettes. Florabel and her husband were lagging, as well, talking to some woman who I gathered was the Mocambo’s press agent.
Then Didi and I were standing on the sidewalk just behind Cohen and his bodyguards, under the Sherry’s canopy, out in the fresh, crisp night air…actually, early morning air. The normally busy Strip was all but deserted, only the occasional car gliding by. Just down a ways, the flashing yellow lights of sawhorses marking road construction blinked lazily.
“I love this time of night,” Didi said, hugging my arm, as we waited behind Cohen and his retinue for the attendants to bring our cars. “So quiet…so still….”
And it was a beautiful night, bright with starlight and neon, palm trees peeking over a low-slung mission-style building across the way, silhouetted against the sky like a decorative wallpaper pattern. Directly across from us, however, a vacant lot with a Blatz beer billboard and a smaller FOR INFORMATION CONCERNING THIS PROPERTY PLEASE CALL sign did spoil the mood, slightly.
Didi-her shoulders and back bare, her silvery gown shimmering with reflected light-was fussing in her little silver purse. “Damn-I’m out of cigarettes.”
“I’ll go back and get you some,” I said.
“Oh, I guess I can wait…”
“Don’t be silly. What is it you smoke?”
“Chesterfields.”
I went back in and up the three or four steps and bought the smokes. Florabel was bending over, picking up all the just-delivered morning editions, stacked near the cashier; her husband was still yakking with that dame from the Mocambo. Stompanato was flirting with a pretty waitress; Niccoli was nowhere in sight.
I headed down the short flight of steps and was coming out the glass doors just as Cohen’s blue Caddy drew up, and the young string-tied attendant got out, and the night split open.
It wasn’t thunder, at least noGod’s variety: this was a twelve-gauge boom accompanied by the cracks of a high-power rifle blasting, a deadly duet echoing across the pavement, shotgun bellow punctuated by the sharp snaps of what might have been an M-1, the sound of which took me back to Guadalcanal. As the fusillade kicked in, I reacted first and best, diving for the sidewalk, yanking at Didi’s arm as I pitched past, pulling her down, the glass doors behind me shattering in a discordant song. My sportcoat was buttoned, and it took a couple seconds to get at the nine millimeter under my shoulder, and during those slow-motion moments I saw Mickey get clipped, probably by the rifle.
Cohen dropped to one knee, clawing at his right shoulder with his left hand, blood oozing through his fingers, streaming down his expensive suit. Neddie Herbert’s back had been to the street-he was turned toward his boss when the salvo began-and a bullet, courtesy of the rifle, blew through him, even as shotgun pellets riddled his legs. Herbert-the man who’d just been bragging about his instincts for danger-toppled to the sidewalk, screaming.
The Attorney General’s dick, Cooper, had his gun out from under his shoulder when he caught a belly-full of buckshot and tumbled to the cement, yelling, “Shit! Fuck!” Mickey Cohen, on his knees, was saying, I swear to God, “This is a new goddamn suit!”
The rifle snapping over the shotgun blasts continued, as I stayed low and checked Didi who was shaking in fear, a crumpled moaning wreck; her bare back was red-pocked from two pellets, which seemed not to have entered her body, probably bouncing off the pavement and nicking her-but she was scared shitless.
Still, I could tell she was okay, and-staying low, using the Caddy as my shield-I fired the nine millimeter toward that vacant lot, where orange muzzle flash emanated from below that Blatz billboard. The safety glass of the Caddy’s windows spiderwebbed and then burst into tiny particles as the shotgunning continued, and I ducked down, noting that the rifle fire had ceased. Had I nailed one of them?
Then the shotgun stopped, too, and the thunder storm was over, leaving a legacy of pain and terror: Neddie Herbert was shrieking, yammering about not being able to feel his legs, and Didi was weeping, her long brunette hair come undone, trailing down her face and her back like tendrils. Writhing on the sidewalk like a bug on its back, big rugged Cooper had his revolver in one hand, waving it around in a punch-drunk manner; his other hand was clutching his bloody stomach, blood bubbling through his fingers.
I moved out from behind the Caddy, stepping out into the street, gun in hand-ready to dive back if I drew any fire.
But none came.
I wanted to run across there and try to catch up with the bastards, but I knew I had to stay put, at least for a while; if those guys had a car, they might pull around and try to finish the job. And since I had a gun-and hadn’t been wounded-I had to stand guard.
Now time sped up: I saw the parking lot attendant, who had apparently ducked under the car when the shooting started, scramble out from under and back inside the restaurant, glass crunching under his feet. Niccoli ran out, with Stompanato and Fred Rubinski on his tail; Niccoli got in the Caddy, and Cohen-despite his limp bloody arm-used his other arm to haul the big, bleeding Cooper up into the backseat. Stompanato helped and climbed in back with the wounded cop.
Fred yelled, “Don’t worry, Mick-ambulances are on the way! We’ll take care of everybody!”
And the Caddy roared off.
Neddie Herbert couldn’t be moved; he was alternately whimpering and screaming, still going on about not being able to move his legs. Some waitresses wrapped checkered tablecloths around the suffering Neddie, while I helped Didi inside; she said she was cold and I gave her my sportjacket to wear.
Florabel came up to me, her left hand out of sight, behind her; she held out her right palm to show me a flattened deer slug about the size of a half dollar.
“Pretty nasty,” she said.
“You get hit, Florabel?”
“Just bruised-where the sun don’t shine. Hell, I thought it was fireworks, and kids throwing rocks.”
“You reporters have such great instincts.”
As a waitress tended to Didi, Fred took me aside and said, “Real professional job.”
I nodded. “Shotgun to cause chaos, that 30.06 to pinpoint Cohen…only they missed.”
“You okay, Nate?”
“Yeah-I don’t think I even got nicked. Scraped my hands on the sidewalk, is all. Get me a flashlight, Fred.”
“What?”
“Sheriff’s deputies’ll show up pretty soon-I want a look across the way before they get here.”
Fred understood: the sheriff’s office was in Jack Dragna’s pocket, so their work might be more cover-up than investigation.
The vacant lot across the street, near the Blatz billboard, was not what I’d expected, and I immediately knew why they’d chosen this spot. Directly off the sidewalk, an embankment fell to a sunken lot, with cement stairs up the slope providing a perfect place for shooters to perch out of sight. No street or even alley back here, either: just the backyards of houses asleep for the night (lights in those houses were blazing now, however). The assassins could sit on the stairs, unseen, and fire up over the sidewalk, from ideal cover.
“Twelve-gauge,” Fred commented, pointing to a scattering of spent shells in the grass near the steps.
My flashlight found something else. “What’s this?”
Fred bent next to what appeared to a sandwich-a half-eaten sandwich….
“Christ!” Fred said, lifting the partial slice of white bread. “Who eats this shit?”
An ambulance was screaming; so was Neddie Herbert.
“What shit?” I asked.
Fred shuddered. “It’s a fucking sardine sandwich.”
The shooting victims were transferred from the emergency room of the nearest hospital to top-notch Queen of Angels, where the head doctor was Cohen’s personal physician. An entire wing was roped off f the Cohen party, with a pressroom and listening posts for both the LAPD and County Sheriff’s department.
I stayed away. Didi’s wounds were only superficial, so she was never admitted, anyway. Cohen called me from the hospital to thank me for my “quick thinking”; all I had done was throw a few shots in the shooters’ direction, but maybe that had kept the carnage to a minimum. I don’t know.
Neddie Herbert got the best care, but he died anyway, a week later, of uremic poisoning: gunshot wounds in the kidney are a bitch. At that point, Cohen was still in the hospital, but rebounding fast; and the State Attorney’s man, Cooper, was fighting for his life with a bullet in the liver and internal hemorrhaging from wounds in his intestines.
Fred and I both kept our profiles as low as possible-this kind of publicity for his restaurant and our agency was not exactly what we were looking for.
The night after Neddie Herbert’s death in the afternoon, I was waiting in the parking lot of Googie’s, the coffee shop at Sunset and Crescent Heights. Googie’s was the latest of these atomic-type cafes popping up along the Strip like futuristic mushrooms: a slab of the swooping red-painted structural steel roof rose to jut at an angle toward the street, in an off-balance exclamation point brandishing the neon googie’s, and a massive picture window looked out on the Strip as well as the nearby Hollywood hills.
I’d arrived in a blue Ford that belonged to the A-1; but I was standing alongside a burgundy Dodge, an unmarked car used by the two vice cops who made Googie’s their home away from home. Tonight I was wasn’t taking pictures of their various dealings with bookmakers, madams, fellow crooked cops or politicians. This was something of a social call.
I’d been here since just before midnight; and we were into the early morning hours now-in fact, it was after two a.m. when Lieutenant Delbert Potts and Sergeant Rudy Johnson strolled out of the brightly illuminated glass-and-concrete coffee shop, into the less illuminated parking lot. Potts was in another rumpled brown suit-or maybe the same one-and, again, Johnson was better-dressed than his slob partner, his slender frame well-served by a dark gray suit worthy of Michael’s habidashery.
Hell, maybe Cohen provided Johnson’s wardrobe as part of the regular pay-off-at least till Delbert and Rudy got greedy and went after that twenty grand for the recordings they’d made of Mickey.
I dropped down into a crouch as they approached, pleased that no other customers had wandered into the parking lot at the same time as my friends from the vice squad. Tucked between the Dodge and the car parked next to it, I was as unseen as Potts and Johnson had been, when they’d crouched on those steps with their shotgun and rifle, waiting for Mickey.
Potts and Johnson were laughing about something-maybe Neddie Herbert’s death-and the fat one was in the lead, fishing in his pants pocket for his car keys. He didn’t see me as I rose from the shadows, swinging an underhand fist that sank six inches into his flabby belly.
Like a matador, I pushed past him, while shoving him to the pavement, where he began puking, and grabbed Johnson by one lapel and slammed his head into the rear rider’s side window. He slid down the side of the car and sat, maybe not unconscious, but good and dazed. Neither one protested-rkiking fat one, or the stunned thin one-as I disarmed them, pitching their revolvers into the darkness, where they skittered across the cement like crabs. I checked their ankles for hideout guns, but they were clean. So to speak.
Potts was still puking when I started kicking the shit out of him. I didn’t go overboard: just five or six good ones, cracking two or three ribs. Pretty soon he stopped throwing up and began to cry, wallowing down there between the cars in his own vomit. Johnson was coming around, and tried to crawl away, but I yanked him back by the collar and slammed him into the hubcap of the Dodge.
Johnson had blood all over his face, and was spitting up a bloody froth, as well as a tooth or two, and he was blubbering like a baby.
Glancing over my shoulder, I saw a couple in their twenties emerging from Googie’s; they walked to the car, on the other side of the lot. They were talking and laughing-presumably not about Neddie Herbert’s death-and went to their Chevy convertible and rolled out of the lot.
I kicked Potts in the side and shook Johnson by the lapels, just to get their attention, and they wept and groaned and moaned while I gave them my little speech, which I’d been working on in my head while I waited for them in the parking lot.
“Listen to me, you simple fuckers-you can shoot at Mickey Cohen and his Dwarfs all you want. I really do not give a flying shit. But you shot at me and my date, and a copper too, and that pisses me off. Plus, you shot up the front of my partner’s restaurant.”
Potts tried to say something, but it was unintelligible; “mercy” was in there, somewhere. Johnson was whimpering, holding up his blood-smeared hands like this was a stick-up.
“Shut-up,” I said, “both of you…. I don’t care what you or Dragna or any gangster or bent fucking cop does out here in Make-believe-ville. I live in Chicago, and I’m going back tomorrow. If you take any steps against me, or Fred Rubinski, or if you put innocent people in the path of your fucking war again, I will talk to my Chicago friends…and you will have an accident. Maybe you’ll get run down by a milk truck, maybe a safe’ll fall on you. Maybe you’ll miss a turn off a cliff. My friends are creative.”
Through his bloody bubbles, Johnson said, “Okay, Heller…okay!”
“By the way, I have photos of you boys taking pay-offs from a fine cross section of L.A.’s sleazy citizenry. Anything happens to me-if I wake up with a goddamn hangnail-those photos go to Jim Richardson at the Examiner, with a duplicate batch to Florabel Muir. Got it?”
Nobody said anything. I kicked Potts in the ass, and he yelped, “Got it!”
“Got it, got it, got it!” Johnson said, backing up against the hubcap, patting the air with his palms.
“We’re almost done-just one question…. Was Stompanato in on it, or was Niccoli your only tip-off man?”
Johnson coughed, getting blood on his chin. “Ni-Niccoli…just Niccoli.”
“He wanted you to take out the Davis dame, right? That was part of the deal?”
Johnson nodded. So did g. I kick, who was on his belly, and to see me had to look over his shoulder, puke rolling down his cheeks like a bad complexion that had started to melt.
Just the sight of them disgusted me, and my hand drifted toward my nine millimeter in the shoulder holster. “Or fuck…maybe I should kill you bastards….”
They both shouted “no!” and Potts began to cry again.
Laughing to myself, I returned to the agency’s Ford. These L.A. cops were a bunch of pansies; if this were Chicago, I’d have been dead by now.
In the aftermath of the shoot-out at Sherry’s, various political heads rolled, including Attorney General Fred Howser’s, and several trials took place (Cohen acquitted on various charges), as well as a Grand Jury inquiry into police and political corruption. Potts and Johnson were acquitted of corruption charges, and despite much talk in the press of damning wire recordings in the possession of both sides, no such recordings were entered as evidence in any trial, though Cohen’s lawyer was murdered on the eve of a trial in which those recordings were supposed to figure.
And the unsuccessful attempts on Cohen’s life continued, notably a bombing of his house, which he and his wife and his bull terrier survived without scratches. But no more civilians were put in harm’s way, and no repercussions were felt by either Fred Rubinski or myself.
A few months after Mickey Cohen got out of the hospital, his longtime crony Frank Niccoli-who he’d known since Cleveland days-turned up missing. Suspicions that Niccoli may have been a stool pigeon removed by Mickey himself were offset by Cohen losing $25,000 bail money he’d put up for Niccoli on an unrelated beef.
The next summer, I ran into Cohen at Sherry’s-or actually, I was just coming out of Sherry’s, a date on my arm; another cool, starlit night, around two a.m., the major difference this time being the starlet was a blonde. Mickey and Johnny Stompanato and two more Dwarfs were on their way in. We paused under the canopy.
The rodent grin flashed between five-o’clock-shadowed cheeks. “Nate! Here we are at the scene of the crime-like old times.”
“I hope not, Mickey.”
“You look good. You look swell.”
“That’s a nice suit, Mickey.”
“Stop by Michael’s-I’ll fix you up…on the house. Still owe you a favor for whispering in my ear about…you know.”
“Forget it.”
He leaned in, sotto voce. “New girl?”
“Pretty new.”
“You hear who Didi Davis is dating these days?”
“No.”
“That State’s Attorney cop-Cooper!”
I smiled. “Hadn’t heard that.”
“Yeah, he finally got the bullet removed outa his liver, the other day. My doc came up with some new treatment, makes liver cells reple themselves or somethin’…. All on my tab, of course.”
My date tightened her grip on my arm; maybe she recognized Cohen and was nervous about the company I was keeping.
So I said, “Well, Mick, better let you and your boys go on in for your coffee and pastries…before somebody starts shooting at us again.”
He laughed heartily and even shook hands with me-which meant he would have to go right in and wash up-but first, leaning in close enough for me to whiff his expensive cologne, he said, “Be sure to say hello to Frankie, since you’re in the neighborhood.”
“What do you mean?”
Actually, I knew he meant Frankie Niccoli, but wasn’t getting the rest of his drift….
Cohen nodded down the Strip. “Remember that road construction they was doin’, the night we got hit? There’s a nice new stretch of concrete there, now. You oughta try it out.”
And Mickey and his boys went inside.
As for me, my latest starlet at my side, I had the parking lot attendant fetch my wheels, and soon I was driving right over that fresh patch of pavement, with pleasure.
AUTHOR’S NOTE
Most of the characters in this fact-based story appear under their real names; several-notably, Fred Rubinski, Didi Davis, Delbert Potts and Rudy Johnson-are fictional but have real-life counterparts. Research sources included numerous true-crime magazine articles and the following books: Death in Paradise (1998), Tony Blanche and Brad Schreiber; Headline Happy (1950), Florabel Muir; Hoodlums-Los Angeles (1959), Ted Prager and Larry Craft; The Last Mafioso (1981), Ovid DeMaris; Mickey Cohen: In My Own Words (1975), as told to John Peer Nugent; Mickey Cohen: Mobster (1973); Sins of the City (1999), Jim Heimann; Thicker’n Thieves (1951), Charles Stoker; and Why I Quit Syndicated Crime (1951), Jim Vaus as told to D.C. Haskin.