Davies, so the Examiner won’t be going down that road; the only place you’ll see Dagwood is on the comics page.”
“I appreciate this, Nate,” the Hat said, jotting down Lake’s name. “Please do continue keeping your ear to the ground.”
“Oh, I will-and if I hear hoofbeats, you’ll be the first.” I stood. “Now, I know you and Eliot have a lot to talk about, where the Kingsbury Run case is concerned. So I’ll leave you boys to it.”
Eliot said to me, “I’ll catch up with you this afternoon.”
“See you,” I said.
The Hat nodded goodbye, and I exited.
My car was parked down the block, on North Spring Street. I was in something of a daze, wondering if I could crack this thing before my pal Fat Ass put the Short girl and me together, back in Chicago, when I realized someone had fallen in step alongside me.
He was a handsome Italian in a powder-blue suit and a pastel-yellow tie and brown moccasin-style loafers- fairly big guy, muscular, dark curly hair, with a tan so dark it verged on black. Almost too good-looking to be a hood.
Almost.
“Mr. Heller,” he said, in a mellow baritone.
My car was within sight.
“Yeah?”
“My name’s Stompanato. Johnny. We got a mutual friend.”
We were just walking along, amid businessmen and clerks and lawyers and legal secretaries and tourists and other pedestrians, gliding by the Hall of Justice, Hall of Records, and State Building.
“What mutual friend would that be?”
“Mr. Cohen.”
Now we were at the Buick.
“I know Mickey a little,” I allowed.
Johnny Stompanato was smiling, a handsome guy, beautiful features, pleasant. I wondered whether that was a revolver or an automatic bulging under his left arm; the bulge in his trousers would have been of more interest to the females in the crowd.
“Well,” Stompanato said, “Mr. Cohen thinks highly of you, and wondered if you’d had breakfast yet.”
“Actually, I grabbed a doughnut, earlier.”
“Mr. Cohen said to tell you he has fresh-squeezed orange juice and his cook makes a killer omelet.”
That was an interesting choice of adjectives.
“Is this an invitation, or a demand?” I asked. I had my own bulges, after all.
“Simply an invitation.” This guy was smooth. “Your partner Mr. Rubinski suggested to Mr. Cohen that you two might share a conversation, while you was in town.”
“Where are you parked, Johnny? May I call you Johnny?”
“Sure, Nate. Right behind you-the Caddy?”
“Should have known. Can I follow you, or do I have to ride along?”
“Follow me, by all means. I’ll keep the speed down, keep you in my rearview mirror.”
I trailed the dark blue Caddy down Sunset to the exclusive suburb of Brentwood, adjacent to Santa Monica and the Pacific Ocean, home to many movie stars and other celebrities, including one Mayer Harris Cohen, AKA Mickey, the pint-size Capone who controlled bookie operations in Los Angeles.
Cohen did not live in a mansion, just a slightly oversize white Cape Cod cottage hugged by flowers exploding with color, surrounded by a wide, manicured lawn basking in the sunshine. This was the home every returning G.I. longed for, for his bride and himself, the postwar dream exemplified. Of course, Cohen’s World War Two service had been limited to home-front black marketeering, since as a felon he couldn’t serve.
No walls and no guard gate for celebrity gangster Cohen-though Stompanato stopped at a squawk box on a pole at the mouth of the wide driveway, checking in. I slid the Buick up next to the Caddy, parked right in front of triple garage doors. The only indication that this home belonged to a celebrity-particularly of the underworld stripe-was the floodlights on telephone-style poles surrounding the estate; after dark this place would be lit up like night football, and the lawn was big enough to field a game, at that.
I followed Stompanato to the front door, which opened as we got there, a middle-aged colored maid in full livery waiting for us. The maid peeled away and Stompanato did the honors, leading me across plush pile carpeting through a series of lavishly appointed rooms with gleaming woodwork and indirect lighting, each decorated in bold tones of a single color: a green room, a blue room, a mauve room, a pink room. From upholstery to the telephones, from the wallpaper to the fresh-cut flowers perched on the French Provincial furniture, one color at a time prevailed.
“Morning, Mrs. Cohen,” Stompanato said to a petite redhead in the pink room, nodding to her, not introducing me.
Mickey Cohen’s wife wore a pink top and blue slacks as she sat curled up on a sofa reading Better Homes and Gardens — the perfect little woman to go along with the dream cottage. And in that outfit, she could move from the pink room to the blue one with impunity.
“Morning, Johnny,” she said in a distracted monotone. Her heart-shaped face had pretty, Shirley Temple-ish features, highlighted by huge dark green eyes; her expression was blank, in a stunned, recently poleaxed manner.
Before long, Stompanato led me into a bedroom that broke the pattern by risking two tones-tan and cream. This was apparently the master bedroom, though there was no indication a woman shared these conspicuously male quarters. From a large bathroom off to the left came the machine-gun tattoo of a shower-in-progress.
Stompanato stuck his head into the steamy room. “Boss! Mr. Heller’s here!”
A raspy second tenor echoed back: “Great! Fine! Thanks!”
A few awkward seconds slipped by. Then, just making conversation, Stompanato said to me, “I, uh, understand you was a Marine?”
“Yeah. You too?”
He nodded, the curly locks staying perfectly in lacquered place. “Tarawa.”
I said, “Guadalcanal.”
“Semper fi, mac,” he said, extending his hand, which I shook. “Pleasure.”
I nodded, wondering if we’d be shooting on the same side in the next war.
The big double bed had a cream-color spread with a grandiose MC monogram; one wall was a mirrored closet, another had recessed shelving arrayed with more brands of men’s colognes and creams than the May Company’s men’s toiletries department. Along one windowed wall, its exotic-plant-patterned drapes drawn, a comfy-looking love seat squatted next to a corner phone stand, over which staggered a few photographs of Mickey’s fishing escapades… including the hood posing next to a marlin bigger than he was. Which didn’t necessarily make it a very big marlin.
In one corner was a much smaller version of the double bed, duplicate mattress, duplicate monogrammed spread, except labelled TC. Stretched out on it, looking up at me suspiciously, was an ugly little bull terrier.
“That’s Tuffy,” Stompanato said. “Don’t try to pet him.”
“No problem,” I said.
Stompanato said, “Mrs. Cohen has her own bedroom. Mirrors and walk-in vault for furs and jewels. Real feminine boudoir-you oughta see it.”
Apparently he had.
Before long, the hairy, squarely built little Cohen, possessor of perpetual five-o’clock shadow, stepped from the shower stall, emerging from behind the moisture-streaked door with a towel wrapped around him, sarong-style. His black thinning hair flat to his egg-shaped skull, Cohen had the same broad forehead as his terrier, same pugnacious chin, similar flat blunt nose. The major difference lay in the eyes-the dog’s big brown eyes radiated intelligence.
“Hey, Heller,” Cohen said good-naturedly, giving me a glance, stepping up to the big mirror at a counter where a small army of toiletries stood at attention, waiting for commands. “Looks like we’re both still alive.”
“Luck on our part,” I said, “bad marksmanship on theirs.”
