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

“I think it can be done,” Vaus replied. In fact, he’d already been working on just such a device, which Vaus dubbed “the impulse indicator.” But it was Officer Stoker who got to it first. His target was not the bookmaking racket but rather the so-called Queen Bee of Hollywood, Hollywood madam Brenda Allen.

      PROSTITUTION IN HOLLYWOOD has always been a dynastic affair. Brenda Allen had started out as a streetwalker on West Sixth Street between Union and Alvarado Streets. At some point, Allen caught the eye of Anne Forrester, the Combination’s favorite madam. Allen was a quick understudy, and when Forrester went to jail, Allen took over the high-end prostitution racket. Her particular field of innovation was the call girl. Rather than risk running a “bawdy house,” Allen used a telephone exchange service to manage her 114 girls. It was a lucrative business. Allen’s meticulous ledgers would later reveal takes of as much as $2,400 a day, of which half, the traditional split between madam and girl, went to her.

Charles Stoker had first heard of Brenda Allen when she was a plain streetwalker named Marie Mitchell plying her business downtown. He’d been startled when he returned from the war and learned that she’d become the town’s top madam. The brazenness—and cleverness—of her current arrangements aggravated him, and caused him no end of trouble. Whenever he’d arrest another prostitute, she’d complain bitterly, “Why are you arresting me while Brenda is running full-blast?”

Stoker decided he would try to take down Allen. But even finding her was a challenge. The number of the telephone exchange Brenda used was well known. Obviously, the exchange had Allen’s private number. If he could get it, he could go to the phone company and get an address. But when Stoker approached the telephone exchange service and asked for Allen’s number, it told him to produce a court order. So he went to the DA’s office, where he was “politely but firmly given the brush off.”

Stoker got the number anyway, by waiting outside the telephone exchange office and striking up an acquaintance with one of its female operators. After a week of dating, he had Allen’s private number. A contact at the phone company provided a home address. But even though he now knew where Allen lived, he still couldn’t prove she was orchestrating a call girl ring—until Jimmy Vaus appeared.

During his pursuit of Marge, Stoker had talked quite a bit with Vaus. He’d learned about Vaus’s background as a sound engineer and his Army service. He’d heard about Jimmy’s preacher daddy back in Oklahoma and about the religious radio program Vaus was hoping to launch in L.A. He’d also seen Vaus’s enthusiasm for uncovering vice—and his unusual talents. So when Vaus dropped by Central Division one night and asked if he could go out with Stoker and his partner, it seemed natural to stop by Brenda Allen’s spacious apartment at Ninth and Fedora Streets. There Stoker explained the problem he was having in trying to apprehend her. Stoker was delighted when Vaus responded that listening in on Allen’s phone conversations was no problem at all. In fact, they could do so the very next night.

The following evening, Stoker, his two partners, and Vaus went back to Allen’s apartment, this time with the appropriate wiretapping gear. One of the policemen picked the locks and then the men were in. No one had thought to bring a flashlight, so Vaus lit a match. The fact that they had illegally broken into a private residence without a court order and were now about to tap a phone line—a felony offense—seemed not to trouble the men at all. They located the telephone box, found the pair of terminals that connected to Allen’s apartment, and tapped the line. Vaus had brought a lineman’s handset so that they could listen in.

They didn’t have to wait long for the first call. It was a woman’s voice.

“Hi, Brenda, this is Marie. If anything breaks tonight call me and I’ll go on it.”

“Okay,” Allen answered coolly. “What’ll you be wearing?”

“I’ll have on a full-length mink coat,” the woman replied. “I’ll be waiting for your call. Bye.”

A few minutes later, a man called. “Got anything good tonight?”

“We’ve got some mighty nice books,” Allen answered. “The heroine in one you’d like to read is a beaut! She has long black hair and is about five foot three and would make your reading most—enjoyable.”

“Where can I get that book?” the man asked.

“On the corner of Sunset and La Brea. There is a picture on the front cover of a gal in a long mink coat. How about being there about nine o’clock?”

Stoker was thrilled. He now understood Brenda Allen’s modus operandi. As calls poured in throughout the night, he also began to understand the size of her business. In fact, Allen was getting so many phone calls that the policemen in the basement were overwhelmed. Some system of recording the numbers Brenda was calling was needed. So Stocker turned to Vaus. Could he come up with something?