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

In truth, Mickey probably amused Capone as much as he impressed him. Mickey had already befriended Al’s little brother Mattie, an avid boxing fan. Cohen had also attracted a measure of attention because, with his broken nose and a nasty, twisting scar under his left eye, he actually looked a lot like a miniature Al Capone. He also dressed like Capone (“admiring the guy as much as I did, I may have tried to copy his ways,” Mickey admitted later), heightening the “Mini-Me” effect. Court jester or respected junior gunman, it hardly mattered. Mickey had Capone’s blessing and that was enough to open the doors of the Chicago underworld. He began to learn how professional criminals really worked.

“I soon found there were lots of older guys willing to teach me about how to grow up and be good at a particular piece of work I wanted to get to know about,” Mickey would say later, with discreet imprecision.

Chicago was also a revelation in another way. As his friend the writer Ben Hecht would later put it, “Before coming to Chicago, Mickey knew there were numerous crooks like himself on the outskirts of society. He did not know, however, that there were ten times as many crooks in the respectable seats of government.” Chicago, a city where everything seemed part of the fix, would be Mickey Cohen’s model—and dream—for L.A.

6

Comrade Bill

“With few exceptions, no protection is afforded to the police chiefs in this country. And to this neglect, more than to any other cause, may be attributed the alliance of politics, police and crime.”

—Berkeley police chief August Vollmer, 1931

WHILE MICKEY COHEN was befriending members of the Capone family, patrolman Bill Parker was struggling to advance in the Los Angeles Police Department in his own unyielding fashion. He would not pay a bribe for a cheat sheet to the civil service exam; he would not curry favor with the politicians; he would not turn a blind eye to infractions that many other officers in the department saw as routine. It was a hard way to get ahead. But Parker was also surprisingly hard to get rid of.

After his early heroics, Parker was transferred into a dead-end job at the property division. It didn’t work. Parker was too nosy.

“There were some irregularities in the handling of confiscated autos,” Parker later recalled (adding, with characteristic self-confidence, “I was too intelligent to conceal things from”).

He was soon transferred to Hollenbeck Division, which was responsible for patrolling Mickey Cohen’s old neighborhood of Boyle Heights, perhaps the “wettest” part of Los Angeles. By 1931, many police officers had lost their enthusiasm for enforcing Prohibition, which was clearly on the way out. (Its formal repeal would come two years later, in 1933.) Not Bill Parker. He immediately set out to make as many arrests as possible. Puzzled, local bootleggers were soon approaching him to ask what he wanted.

“I don’t want anything,” Parker angrily replied. “You’re on one side of the fence, and I’m on the other.” Soon thereafter, Parker was summoned to the office of the division inspector.

“Parker,” he said, “what division would you like to work in?”

“What do you mean?” he replied, even though he knew full well what was happening. The liquor mob was moving him out.

“I mean,” the inspector continued, “if you happened to want a transfer, where would you like to go?”

“Hollywood Division,” Parker replied. Soon thereafter, he was transferred there.

Hollywood was Los Angeles’s fast growing vice hot spot. But vice arrests were not exactly encouraged in his new division. Parker soon chafed at other patrolmen’s “do nothing” attitude. So one night he decided to protest the policy of nonenforcement by parking directly across the street from a Hollywood house of ill repute in an effort to scare the johns away. The madam was irate, as well she might be. By one estimate, some 500 brothels were employing an estimated 2,200 prostitutes—and paying for police protection on a regular basis. Why should she, a dues-paying madam, be singled out by law enforcement? So out she stormed.

“Listen, you stupid fuck,” the madam yelled at Parker. “You’re ruining my business by hanging around here.”

“That’s the general idea,” he replied.

“What’s the next move?” she asked.

“The next move is to put you in jail,” he said.

By the end of the week, Parker had been transferred again.