“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
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
“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!”
