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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.”