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

Kennedy had come to offer the hoodlum one last opportunity to turn state’s witness for the government. “How the hell are you going to live fifteen years in this goddamn chicken coop?” he asked Cohen.

“Don’t worry about me,” Cohen replied. Then he proceeded to the shower.

Compared to Alcatraz, Atlanta was “paradise.” Cohen could listen to the radio and read the newspaper—even watch television from time to time. He slowly adjusted to prison hours—waking up at five thirty or six, going to sleep early, when lights went out. To stay in shape, “I did a lot of shadow boxing and knee bends.” He thought about appeals strategies and wrote letters to his attorneys. He engaged in “shop talk” with “certain guys from Philadelphia, Chicago, and New York.” He also made nice with other inmates.

“[Y]ou say hello to everybody, particularly if you’re somebody with a name. See, if you don’t, they’ll say, ‘Who the hell does that son of a bitch think he is? He thinks he’s a big shot?’” From such small slights, shocking violence could sometimes erupt.

Cohen was playing it smart. But sometimes, even the smartest card player gets dealt a bad hand. That’s what happened to Mickey on August 14, 1963, when a deranged inmate, Estes McDonald, escaped from medical supervision. After scaling a chain-link fence and crossing the prison yard, he found Mickey Cohen inside watching TV—and viciously brained him with a three-foot-long lead pipe. By the time prison authorities restrained McDonald, Cohen was a bloody heap, his skull visibly indented. It took him six hours to regain consciousness. It was another two days before prison doctors were confident that Cohen would survive. Prison authorities tried to put a happy face on the situation for Sandy Hagen and Cohen family members, but the damage done was severe. Mickey’s legs were partially paralyzed. His arms were essentially useless. His voice was slurred. Cohen had to beg the prison bull for a special allotment of six rolls of toilet paper a day, simply to dry the tears that now rolled down his cheeks spontaneously, uncontrollably.

In October, Cohen was transferred to a special medical facility in Springfield, Missouri, for brain surgery. It was only partially successful. Cohen was still unable to walk following the operation and could use only one arm. Cohen was sent to Los Angeles for therapy—under armed guard. As a result of intensive physical therapy there, considerable progress was made. By the end of his time in Los Angeles, Cohen was able to move with the assistance of a walker. Progress was rewarded with a transfer back to Springfield. There, for most of the next eleven months, he was kept in solitary confinement, ostensibly for his protection. Cohen responded by filing a $10 million lawsuit against the government for negligence in allowing the convict who had attacked him to escape.

In March 1964, Cohen’s old friend Ben Hecht wrote the gangster a sympathetic letter. “Dear Mickey,” it began.

You are not in the only jail there is. There is another jail called “old age” in which I am beginning to serve time. Like you, I am not allowed to complain or protest—Rose won’t stand for it.

I hope they let you look at television so that you can keep up on the shenanigans that the “holier than thous” continue to commit and perform. I was going to write a letter to Attorney General Kennedy about you—I inquired of a friend of his how he might react to such a letter. I was told he would react loudly and angrily rant against it

If there is such a thing as “Good luck” in the place where you are, I hope you find it.

Sincerely, Ben Hecht

Hecht died one month later. Cohen seemed trapped in a living death. Disconsolate, he wrote the faithful Sandy Hagen, telling her that she should wait for him no more.

“I may never come out of here alive, and the best I’m going to come out is terribly crippled,” he wrote. “I won’t be in no position to be any good to you or anyone else.”

Ever obedient, Hagen complied with Mickey’s instructions. She married and disappeared from the newspapers, never to be found again. Cohen was now truly alone.