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

This was not a respectful way to conduct yourself in a rival gangster’s restaurant, but Whalen didn’t seem worried by Mickey’s presence. In fact, he strolled over to Cohen’s table afterward. What happened next is unclear. Words were exchanged; a punch may (or may not) have been thrown at one of Cohen’s associates. One thing was clear though. Two shots were fired. One slammed into the ceiling. The other hit Whalen right between the eyes. Cohen got up to go wash his hands. Then he called his doctor. Then he called the fire department. Next he called the newspapers. Finally, someone called the police. By the time two patrolmen in a radio car arrived at 12:10 a.m., Whalen was dead. The policemen were disturbed to see that someone had tidied up the area around Cohen’s table, a mere six feet from where the body lay. They promptly locked the doors and began to question everyone in the restaurant. Deputy Chief Thad Brown himself questioned Cohen.

Cohen’s account of what had happened was vague.

“A man walked in and punched a little man at the next table,” Cohen told Brown. “I never saw either before. Shots rang out. I thought someone was shooting at me, and I ducked.” That was all Cohen had to say. The following day, he elaborated further—in an exclusive column for the Herald-Express—on the night at Rondelli’s, claiming, with wild implausibility, that he’d never seen “the boys who approached the table next to him” and that he hadn’t seen what happened after the shooting because he was taking off Mickey Jr.’s bib. (“You gotta wear one when you eat linguine.”)

The police weren’t buying it. For one thing, Cohen’s Cadillac was gone. Mickey said Sandy Hagen had taken it home, but Hagen didn’t have a driver’s license. There was also the fact that Mickey had called quite a few people before contacting the police. Chief Parker himself soon arrived to take personal control of the investigation, but Cohen wouldn’t talk to him. Outside, reporters pressed the chief about whether Cohen was a suspect.

“Obviously, he is,” Parker replied. “This killing occurred at Cohen’s headquarters. He was less than six feet away. We knew that the victim was going there to square a gambling beef. Then Mickey’s car just happened to vanish, off the lot.” Nonetheless, with no evidence tying Cohen to the shooting, he wasn’t immediately booked. Instead, some thirty policemen were dispatched to round up all known Cohen henchmen for questioning.

The police then got a lucky break. Three pistols were recovered from the trash behind the restaurant. One was registered to the late Johnny Stompanato. A clearer connection to Cohen would have been hard to imagine. Police booked Cohen and four associates on charges of murder. But try as he might, Parker could find no physical evidence (such as fingerprints on the murder weapon) that tied Cohen to the shooting. None of the guns in the trash can were the murder weapon. After two nights in custody, Mickey was released on bail.

Six days later, on December 8, a Cohen lackey named Sam LoCigno presented himself (along with two attorneys) at Deputy Chief Thad Brown’s office with a startling confession: LoCigno claimed that he was the person who’d shot Whalen. LoCigno insisted that the shooting had been an act of self-defense. Whalen had approached the table, said “Hello, Mr. Cohen,” and then slugged one of the men at the table, George Piscitelle, before turning on LoCigno, saying, “You’re next.” Only then, LoCigno claimed, had he opened fire. LoCigno said that Mickey Cohen had urged him to turn himself in. (Cohen himself later told the press, modestly, that he had “induced” LoCigno to turn himself in “to save the taxpayers’ money.”)

Brown called in Chief Parker, who joined the interrogation. Brown and Parker quickly poked holes in LoCigno’s story. When Parker asked LoCigno where the gun he’d shot Whalen with was, he replied, “I don’t know.” He was equally fuzzy in his response to other important questions. Parker and Brown weren’t surprised. The intelligence division had long ago pegged LoCigno as nothing more than a “flunky and errand boy” for Cohen. Both felt certain that the man responsible for the shooting was Mickey himself. But try as they might, police were unable to find witnesses to make that case. Although Rondelli’s had been crowded with customers at the time of the killing, no one seemed to have seen anything—with the exception of a one-eyed horse bettor who’d had eighteen highballs before the shooting started. He fingered Candy Barr’s manager as the gunman. Instead, police focused on a more promising witness, a prostitute who claimed that Cohen ordered the killing, allegedly shouting, “Now, Sam, now!” just moments before the gun was fired. Unfortunately for the prosecution, however, on the witness stand, the prostitute acknowledged that she’d only heard this secondhand, from an off-duty maitre d’. That was hardly enough to override LoCigno’s confession.