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.
