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

When Cohen returned, he found his old pal the columnist Drew Pearson on the line. Needless to say, it was highly unusual for the warden of a federal prison to put a newspaper columnist through to an inmate.

“We’re going for [Vice President Hubert] Humphrey for president,” Pearson informed him, “and I’ll assure you that if he becomes our president, you’re going to be given a medical parole.”

This sounded good. Naturally, though, Mickey wanted to know why Pearson was willing to do such a tremendous favor.

“I’m gonna use you again in the campaign against Nixon,” Pearson informed him. When Nixon first ran for the U.S. Senate in 1950, his campaign manager and attorney, Murray Chotiner, had asked Mickey Cohen to raise $75,000 for the campaign, a considerable sum in those days. Cohen responded by throwing a fund-raiser at the Knickerbocker Hotel. Said Cohen later: “It was all gamblers from Vegas, all gambling money, there wasn’t a legitimate person in the room.” Cohen had told Pearson about it. Now the columnist wanted to go public with the information.

Cohen was amenable. He’d long since soured on Nixon, whom he considered to be a “rough hustler, like a goddamn small-town ward politician” who dressed like “maybe… a three-card Monte dealer” and was an anti-Semite to boot. “Go ahead if that’s the way to go,” Cohen replied.

A series of accusatory columns by Pearson duly appeared. Mickey was ecstatic. Pearson assured him that a medical parole was simply a matter of time.

“I got a definite promise from LBJ that one way or another, if Humphrey wins or loses, you’re going to get a parole or a medical parole at least,” Pearson assured him. News of the payoff spread throughout Washington. Rival columnist Jack Anderson ran a story saying that President Lyndon Johnson was considering a Cohen pardon as a reward for “dirt” Cohen had provided to Drew Pearson on Richard Nixon.

Cohen wrote brother Harry to let him know that “the fix was in.” It wasn’t. Humphrey lost, and LBJ left office without granting Mickey a medical parole. Mickey didn’t even bother to ask his old acquaintance Richard Nixon. There was nothing for Cohen to do but serve out the remainder of his sentence.

      ON JANUARY 6, 1972, Mickey was released from the Springfield federal penitentiary. Despite extensive physical therapy for nearly a decade, Mickey still needed help with the most basic tasks, such as getting dressed and standing up. Age, ice cream, and, of course, his nearly fatal braining with the lead pipe had made Mickey an old man. But life beckoned still. The night before his release, Cohen bade good-bye to such dear friends as Johnny Dio. “Before you leave a prison after eleven years of being incarcerated,” he said later, “the most exciting day is the day before.”

Once again, a crowd of reporters gathered for Cohen’s release. The frumpy little man who emerged wearing a white T-shirt, windbreaker, and rolled-up chinos bore little resemblance to the suave prisoner who had entered prison a decade earlier. “To hell with this rotten joint,” Cohen muttered, as he was helped to brother Harry, who’d come to pick him up—in a brand-new white Cadillac. Their first stop was Hamby’s restaurant in downtown Springfield, where Mickey gorged himself—two orders of ham and eggs, three glasses of fresh-squeezed orange juice, and a Danish pastry. Then he got a shave, a haircut, a massage, and a manicure. As always, he left a tip that was “extraordinary … particularly for a small town.” Then he went to a hotel and showered “for a couple of hours, I guess.”

From Springfield, Mickey and Harry, along with a young man named Jim Smith, who suddenly appeared in the capacity of caretaker, drove to Hot Springs, to visit bootlegger Owney “The Killer” Madden’s widow and soak in the waters. (Owney had passed away during Mickey’s time in the joint.) Cohen hoped that the hot springs would help him “correct my walking at least forty to fifty percent, anyway.” Instead, several weeks of hydrotherapy weakened him badly. The food, however, was marvelous. The manager of the Arlington Hotel “still remembered me from my heydays” and made sure Mickey got plenty of Italian cuisine.

“They brought out big silver things full of food, and the chef himself was out there dishing it out—every kind of pasta, every kind of chicken, veal, everything you could imagine,” Cohen recalled.

Then it was on to New Orleans, to see Carlos Marcello. (“We talked about the old times, among other things.”) Only then did Mickey Cohen return to Los Angeles.

What he found there stunned him. The Sunset Strip he had once known was gone. Its elegant nightclubs were shuttered. Teenage punks and rock ‘n’ roll had taken over what had once been Hollywood’s grandest boulevard. Elegance was no more. Broads now walked around “with skirts up to their neck.” Harry and Cohen caretaker Jim Smith tried to explain the fashion for miniskirts and, well, the sixties, but it was hard to understand. Even crime was bewildering and different.