L.A. Noir: The Struggle for the Soul of America's Most Seductive City

“Her red hair was set in a swirling pile,” continued the anonymous scribe. “Her eyes which she said are green with brown polka dots, were dramatized by long glossy lashes and blue-shadowed eyelids.” When confronted with questions about her underworld associates, Renay took the Fifth. The LAPD and the IRS seemed to have run into yet another roadblock in their effort to take down Mickey Cohen and his Syndicate associations. Fortunately for Chief Parker, though, he had another, even more powerful ally he could call upon—Robert Kennedy.

In March 1959, Robert Kennedy subpoenaed Cohen to testify before the McClellan Committee in Washington, D.C. Cohen’s lawyer was Sam Dash, who would later win fame as the chief counsel of the Senate Watergate Committee. Dash took his client to meet Kennedy for the first time the day before the hearings. Cohen arrived aggrieved. He felt that he “already had a beef” with Kennedy, thanks to the stingy $8-a-day per diem authorized by Kennedy’s staff. (Mickey was spending $100 a night to stay at the Washington Hilton.) Nonetheless, when Kennedy asked Cohen if he was going to answer questions at the Senate hearing tomorrow, Mickey said that he would try.

“Lookit, I’m going to answer any question that won’t tend to incriminate me,” he replied.

The next day, Cohen appeared as a witness—along with New Orleans crime boss Carlos Marcello (“a beautiful person, a real gentleman,” according to Mickey). Kennedy began by establishing Cohen’s moral character—namely, that he was an effete clotheshorse who had spent “$275 on his silk lounging pajamas, $25,000 for a specialty built bulletproof car and at one time had 300 different suits, 1,500 pairs of socks and 60 pairs of $60 shoes.” Kennedy then noted that despite such lavish expenditures Cohen had declared only $1,200 in income in 1956 and $1,500 in income in 1957.

Cohen was upset about being questioned “like an out-and-out punk” by this “snotty little guy.” So when Kennedy started to ask him more pointed questions about his finances, Cohen took the Fifth, declining to answer on the grounds that by doing so he might incriminate himself. Cohen’s only laugh came when Kennedy asked if it was true that Cohen had gone zero for three in his professional boxing career (with three knockouts). (It wasn’t. His professional boxing record seems to have been six wins, eleven losses, and one draw.)

Frustrated by Cohen’s stonewalling, Kennedy called Cohen back into the hearings the next day. “I have been given to understand that you are a gentleman,” he told Cohen pointedly before the cameras.

“Well, I consider myself a gentleman yeah,” Cohen replied.

“Well, you sure haven’t been a gentleman before this committee,” Kennedy chided. “I see you’re not going to answer any questions, but at least you could have answered that you respectfully declined to answer the questions because they may tend to incriminate you.”

“That you respectfully?” Cohen replied, incredulous. “I’ll be glad to do that—if I remember.”

Then Kennedy switched gears. “Now off the record—you say you’re a gentleman and all that. Let me ask you a question, and it has nothing to do with what we’re here for concerning coin-operated machines, but what’s the meaning in the underworld or the racket world when somebody’s ‘lights are to be put out’?”

It was a trick question. Cohen himself stood accused of having threatened one cigarette vending machine operator by informing him that he’d gotten a $50,000 contract to “put his lights out.’” His answer was quick in coming.

“Lookit,” Mickey replied innocently, “I don’t know what you’re talking about. I’m not an electrician.”

The audience laughed. Flushing bright red, Kennedy jumped up and headed for Mickey. But Senator McClellan grabbed Kennedy by the shoulder, to Cohen’s great disappointment.

“I would have torn him apart [and] kicked his fuckin’ head,” Cohen said later. Instead, he and Fred Sica, highly pleased with themselves, flew up to New Jersey to visit Sica’s eighty-year-old mother, who greeted Cohen by saying, “Mickey, my boy. Jimmy was supposed to get the lamp fixed, but I told him to wait for you. You fix it. You’re an electrician.”

To celebrate the thumb in the eye to Kennedy, the next day Cohen called the Cadillac dealership in Beverly Hills and ordered a new El Dorado Biarritz black convertible. Its list price was approximately $10,000—more than six times Cohen’s declared income that year.

22

Chocolate City

“We are all members of some minority group.”

—Chief William Parker