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

^* Annenberg purchased the General News Bureau from Chicago gambler Mont Tennes in 1927, just a few years before states such as California began to legalize horse racing and permit pari-mutuel on-track betting to bolster state revenues. The result was a huge boom in horse betting—and a vast new business for Annenberg (who also owned the Daily Racing Form). Just how big became evident after federal prosecutors indicted Annenberg for income tax evasion and began to dig into his businesses. Prosecutors were startled to discover that the General News Service (later renamed the Nationwide News Services, after another wire service Annenberg purchased) was AT&T’s fifth largest customer. (Moore, The Kefauver Committee, 18.)

^* Hill herself was not there; she had left town several days earlier after a spat with Siegel and gone to Paris. (Jennings, We Only Kill Each Other, 189-90.)

PART THREE The Enemy Within

12

The Double Agent

“The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked. Who can know it?”

—Jeremiah

WIRETAPPER JIMMY VAUS couldn’t decide whether he wanted to be a cop or a crook—so he tried to be both. In doing so, he set off on a path that led directly to Mickey Cohen.

Vaus first started working for the LAPD almost by accident. In 1946, Vaus was managing a “quiet, high-class” apartment building in Hollywood for a friend while pursuing his true passion: tinkering with electronics. Tenants at the building had started complaining about a dark-haired, well-dressed girl named Marge, whose apartment was frequented by an unusually large number of “men-friends.” Marge was a B-girl downtown who made her living by tricking customers into buying her (watered-down) drinks. It seemed she was now also turning tricks on the side. So Vaus called the LAPD’s Hollywood station, which promptly sent over a young vice squad officer, Charles Stoker.

Vaus explained the problem of Marge and her many “friends” to Stoker and his partner. Stoker knew the type. “Anyone visiting her now?” he asked.

Indeed there was. Vaus gave the officers her apartment number and retreated to his office. A half hour later, Stoker reappeared.

“There’s someone in there with her, all right,” he reported. “We could hear them talking but we couldn’t hear what they were saying. We think we might hear better from outside. Do you have a ladder we could use?”

He did. Ladder supplied, Vaus returned to his office. A few minutes later, the officers were back again.

“I’m afraid we’re stymied, Mr. Vaus,” Stoker informed him. “There doesn’t seem to be any way we can either see or hear what’s going on, and in absence of evidence, we can’t act.”

Vaus was incredulous. “You mean, the vice squad doesn’t have equipment that will enable you, in a case like this, to hear what is going on behind closed doors?” he asked.

“Nope, there’s nothing like that in the Department,” Stoker replied, “in a tone of voice,” Vaus would later recall, “that implied I’d asked him if he’d bought the license plates for his transplanet rocket ship.”

Vaus explained that it would be a simple matter to get officers the proof they needed. All he had to do was plant a concealed microphone in the room and connect it by wire to a recording device outside. Indeed, Vaus modestly continued, he’d be happy to put together such a system himself to help the officers obtain the evidence they needed against Marge.

“Come back tomorrow night, I’ll have it set up and you can listen in,” Vaus said.

Wiring Marge’s room was a snap. When Stoker returned the following night, he was able to overhear Marge discussing prices with a customer. He promptly arrested her. Word of Sergeant Stoker’s new friend soon spread to other vice squad units.^* About a week after the arrest of Marge, one of the senior officers from the administrative vice unit downtown approached Vaus with a question. Could he develop a variant on a wiretap that would allow the police to listen in on conversations and also determine what telephone number had been dialed? In other words, the officer explained, “Joe Doaks walks into a drugstore, uses a particular telephone to dial a number and says, ‘Joe, I’ll take two dollars on horse number four in the fifth race today at Rockingham.’ Could the officer working on such a case hear the conversation and know the number that had been dialed?”

The implications of the request were obvious. If the police could tap phone lines and determine whom calls were being made to, they could then pinpoint the locations of bookmakers across Los Angeles. That would give the police a big edge on the underworld.