One of them was newspaper columnist Florabel Muir, who had been lingering inside over the morning paper as Mickey’s party exited. Muir (who frankly admitted to hanging around Mickey in hopes that some shooting would start) now charged outside, into the gunfire. One of Cohen’s top thugs, Neddie Herbert, had been hit and was lying wounded on the ground. Special Agent Cooper was staggering about, clutching his stomach with one hand and waving his pistol with the other. Then Muir saw Mickey, “right arm hung limp, and blood spreading on his coat near the shoulder” running toward Cooper. With his one good arm Cohen grabbed the sagging six-foot-tall lawman and stuffed him into Niccoli’s Chrysler. Cohen piled in as well, and the Chrysler zoomed off—to the Hollywood Receiving Hospital. Thanks to Mickey’s quick reaction, Cooper lived. The more seriously wounded Herbert wasn’t so fortunate; he died four days later. Mickey himself escaped with only a shoulder wound. Florabel Muir got her exclusive, along with a sprinkling of buckshot in her bottom.
Later that night, policemen found automatic Savage and Remington shotguns in the empty lot across the street from Sherry’s. A ballistics test determined that the buckshot slugs used were standard-issue police riot-control shells. Muir also noted with interest that the deputy sheriffs who seemed so diligent in ensuring that Cohen’s crew was firearms-free had vanished a few minutes before the shooting.
The papers, of course, were thrilled. “The Battle of the Sunset Strip!” the press dubbed it. But who was behind the hit? Mayor Bowron blamed Manhattan crime boss Frank Costello. Others pointed to Jack Dragna, a local Italian crime boss who’d reluctantly accepted direction from Bugsy Siegel but who was known to dislike Mickey. Sergeant Stoker, the former vice officer turned county grand-jury witness, claimed the triggerman was LAPD. Cohen himself was confused by the attack. But Mickey did know one thing: He could deal with an underworld rival like Dragna. But in order to thrive as a crime lord in Los Angeles, Mickey needed a friendly—or at least tolerant—chief of police in office.
For the moment, that was impossible. In the wake of Chief Horrall’s ouster, Mayor Bowron had appointed, on an emergency basis, a no-nonsense former Marine general named William Worton to run the department. One of Worton’s first acts was to reconstitute the LAPD’s intelligence division. Its top target: Mickey Cohen. Fortunately for Cohen, Worton was only a temporary appointment; civil service rules required the Police Commission to hire from within the department. That meant Cohen would have a chance to put a more friendly man in the position, and the diminutive gangster already knew exactly who he wanted: Thaddeus Brown, a former detective who’d headed the homicide department before winning promotion to deputy chief of patrol in 1946.
Brown was a big teddy bear of a man, enormously popular with the department’s detectives and well regarded by the underworld, too. As chief of detectives, Brown insisted on knowing every detective’s confidential sources. As a result, he had a wide range of acquaintances. He saw the underworld’s denizens as human beings, not evil incarnate. As a result, Cohen had something of a soft spot for the man the papers called “the master detective.” Brown had another, even more influential backer in Norman Chandler, the publisher of the Los Angeles Times. The support Norman could offer was not purely rhetorical. The Chandler family had long maintained a special—almost proprietary—interest in the LAPD. Indeed, for more than two decades the city’s dominant newspaper had made it clear that a voice in police affairs was the sine qua non of the paper’s political support. It was widely known that Norman Chandler controlled three of the Police Commission’s five votes—and that Chandler expected them to vote for Thad Brown as chief.
In short, Brown’s ascension seemed inevitable. However, it was not automatic. The Police Commission could not simply vote to promote the “master detective.” Since 1923, the chief of the LAPD had been chosen under the civil service system. As a result, applicants for the top position had to take an elaborate civil service exam, composed of a written test and an oral examination. The results of the written test typically accounted for 95 percent of the total score; the oral exam plus a small adjustment for seniority contributed the other 5 percent. Candidates then received a total score and were ranked accordingly. The Police Commission was allowed to choose from among the top three candidates.
To no one’s surprise, Thad Brown got the top score. What was surprising was who came in second: Deputy Chief William H. Parker, the head of the Bureau of Internal Affairs. A decorated veteran of the Second World War, wounded in Normandy during the D-day invasion, Parker had helped to denazify municipal police forces in Italy and Germany as the Allies advanced. He now wanted to purge the LAPD of corruption—and Los Angeles of organized crime—in much the same way. Mickey Cohen was determined to make sure that Parker never got that chance.
“I had gambling joints all over the city,” Mickey later explained, “and I needed the police just to make sure they ran efficiently.” Bill Parker would not make things go smoothly.
One of the things that any crime lord needs is a line on the Police Commission, and Cohen had it. His contacts there assured him that three of the five commissioners—Agnes Albro, Henry Duque, and Bruno Newman—favored Brown. That left only Irving Snyder and Dr. J. Alexander Somerville, the sole African American police commissioner, in favor of Parker. Mickey was convinced that “the fix” was in and that Brown would be the next chief of police. The only obstacle Brown faced, Cohen’s connections informed him, was that Brown’s selection might be seen as a personal triumph for the little gangster. On their advice, Cohen decided to leave town for the actual decision-making period—“just to blow off any stink that could possibly come up.” Along with his sometime bodyguard Johnny Stompanato (who was also known as one of Hollywood’s most notorious gigolos) and his Boston terrier, Tuffy, L.A.’s underworld boss set off on a leisurely road trip to Chicago.
Cohen arrived in Chicago to shocking news. The day before the Police Commission vote, Brown-supporter Agnes Albro had unexpectedly died. The following day, the commission had voted to name Bill Parker the next chief of police. The battle for control of Los Angeles was about to begin in earnest. Though Mickey didn’t know it, it was a fight Bill Parker had been preparing for his entire life.
2
The “White Spot”
“Wherein lies the fascination of the Angel City! Why has it become the Mecca of tourists the world over? Is it because it is the best advertised city in the United States? Is it that it offers illimitable opportunities for making money and eating fruit? Hardly that. After all the pamphlets of the real estate agents, the boosters’ clubs, the Board of Trade and the Chamber of Commerce have been read, something remains unspoken—something that uncannily grips the stranger”
—Willard Huntington Wright, 1913
BEFORE IT WAS A CITY, Los Angeles was an idea.
Other cities were based on geographical virtues—a splendid port (San Francisco, say, or New York), an important river (St. Louis), a magnificent lake (Chicago). But nothing about the arid basin of Los Angeles (other than its mild weather) suggested the site of a great metropolis. So the men who built Los Angeles decided to advertise a different kind of virtue: moral and racial purity. Los Angeles, a settlement founded in 1781 as a Spanish pueblo, was reenvisioned as “the white spot of America,” a place where native-born, white Protestants could enjoy “the magic of outdoors inviting always… trees in blossom throughout the year, flowers in bloom all the time” as well as “mystery, romance, charm, splendor,” all safe among others of their kind. It was an image relentlessly promoted by men like Harry Chandler, owner and publisher of the Los Angeles Times and one of Southern California’s most important real estate developers, and it worked. By 1920, Los Angeles had surpassed San Francisco to become the largest city in the west. There was just one problem with this picture of Anglo-Saxon virtue. It wasn’t true. Far from being a paragon of virtue, by the early 1920s, Los Angeles had become a Shangri-la of vice.