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

Dragna took the news poorly. It hardly mattered. Dragna had important connections back East himself (according to Cohen, he was related to Tommy “Three-Finger Brown” Lucchese), but Siegel was a peer of the realm, an equal to anyone in the Syndicate. Mickey Cohen would later describe him as “one of the six tops … right up with Capone.” Dragna stepped aside. Others were not so deferential.

One who declined to defer to an interloper from back East was Eddy Neales, the thirty-three-year-old owner of the Clover Club, a high-rolling Hollywood nightclub and casino just west of the Chateau Marmont above the Sunset Strip. The handsome half-Mexican, half-Caucasian Neales cut a dashing figure; the Clover Club was the gambling spot in a city that loved to test fortune at the tables. Neales also had a booming bookmaking business, thanks to California’s decision to legalize pari-mutuel betting at racetracks in 1933.^* By 1937, Neales was reputedly handling about $10 million a year in bets.

Neales didn’t rely on his personal popularity to protect his operations. Milton “Farmer” Page, a major figure in the Combination, was a silent partner. Neales and partner Curly Robinson were also paying a small fortune in protection money to the Los Angeles sheriff’s department, which had jurisdiction over the Sunset Strip. So it was perhaps understandable that when Siegel approached Neales and Robinson and informed them that he was looking to make a major investment in their club, they demurred. A confrontation appeared to be inevitable. Siegel recognized that he needed more muscle. So Siegel put out a call for talent. Cleveland and Chicago had just the person for the job, Mickey Cohen.

      COHEN had outstayed his welcome in Chicago. At one point, he and his associates got permission from the Capone gang to open a blackjack game in the Loop. When that wasn’t lucrative enough, he decided to open a craps game, despite the fact that dice games were strictly off limits in downtown Chicago. Capone accountant Jake “Greasy Thumb” Guzik personally flew in from Miami to tell Cohen to wind up his craps game. Mickey declined. Several nights later, as Mickey was standing in front of his favorite haberdashery shop, a large black car turned the corner … and opened fire. Mickey hesitated. He was wearing a beautiful new camelhair coat, and he hated the thought of ruining it by “flattening out” in the gutter. If the Capone gang had been serious, he figured he’d probably already be dead. Still, he didn’t want to take any chances—or seem disrespectful. Into the slush he went.

Mickey was living like a man who didn’t value life. Whenever he needed a buck, he’d heist a store—sometimes two or three in a day. He developed a mania for cream-colored Stetson hats, which he’d purchase for $50, wear for a few days, and then discard. When he wanted a new hat, out came the gun. When holdups alone failed to keep Mickey in new hats and flossy suits, he reopened his craps game in the Loop. He made enemies casually. In early 1937, Mickey got into a beef with a former slugger for Chicago’s Yellow Cab company. One day Mickey ran into the man in a restaurant and pistol-whipped him. After getting drunk, the man tracked down Mickey and stuck a gun in his back. Cohen spun around, got his hand on the rod, but wasn’t able to wrest the firearm away from his would-be assailant. So the two men decided to go to a coffee shop to talk matters over, each with a hand firmly on the gun. They sat down at the counter. An instant later, Mickey smashed a sugar dispenser over the man’s head.

“His head split open like a melon and blood flew all over the joint,” Mickey noted later, with evident satisfaction. As the coffee shop erupted in screams, Cohen dashed down to the cellar to dispose of the gun. But the cops found the weapon and arrested him for attempted murder.

There was, of course, an easy way out: Mickey could tell the police that the gun wasn’t his and that he’d acted in self-defense. Fingering someone for the cops, however, was something Mickey just wouldn’t do. He clammed up. But for the last-minute intervention of Pop Palazzi, the Capone gang’s Chicago counselor, Cohen might well have gone to prison. Instead, he was told to leave town. He went to Detroit. There he learned that Bugsy Siegel was looking for muscle in Los Angeles. Detroit wanted Mickey to go there to help out—and to keep an eye on Bugsy. So did Cleveland. And so in 1937, Mickey returned to his old hometown.