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

With Mickey on the loose, every day seemed to bring a new humiliation for Los Angeles area law enforcement. But the LAPD was also squeezing Cohen. Mickey had demonstrated his clout by sparking the scandal that led to Chief Horrall’s ouster, but in General Worton, Cohen had arguably found a cure that was worse than the disease. It wasn’t that Cohen felt fundamentally threatened by Worton; Mickey was convinced that the general “knew little or nothing of the workings of this office.” However, since Chief Horrall’s forced retirement, the LAPD had gone all out to make Mickey’s life miserable. Constant surveillance made it difficult for Mickey to do business. A grand jury had begun to investigate Cohen’s (protected) gambling operations in Glendale. There were reports that the FBI had also begun an investigation. But the worst blow of all had come from a small outfit convened at Gov. Earl Warren’s behest the previous summer, the Special Crime Study Commission on Organized Crime. Although the state legislature had been careful to make the commission as toothless as possible (for example, denying its four investigators subpoena power), the commission had an asset whose tenacity could not be easily blunted—chief counsel Warren Olney III.

      OLNEY CAME from one of California’s most distinguished families. His grandfather was one of the founders of the Sierra Club; his father had been a justice on the California Supreme Court. Olney himself was one of Governor Warren’s closest and most valued associates. He was also something of an authority on interstate gambling and the racing wire. As the head of the California attorney general’s criminal division in the late 1930s (when Warren had been the state attorney general), Olney had begun to investigate bookmaking in California, with a particular focus on Moses Annenberg’s Nationwide News Service. At first, Olney had struggled to figure out what was so important about the wire service. But after three days at Reno’s Bank Club, it came to him. The tout sheets, the hot tips, the fluctuating pari-mutuel prices, the odds at the gate, the conditions of the track—all of that was really just a distraction. Bookies needed the wire so that they could quickly roll $2 bets from one race into $2 bets on the next race. Most gamblers weren’t reading the Daily Racing Form, looking for an inside edge. They were betting on race after race just like gambling junkies played slots.

“Bookmaking has nothing to do with horse races,” Olney concluded. “It’s a strict lottery—nothing more than that.” The wire delivered the information that made it possible to place bet after bet, hour after hour.

This system was generating immense amounts of money for Mickey Cohen. According to LAPD estimates, in mid-1949, Mickey had about five hundred bookmakers paying for protection (typically, $40 per week for every telephone in their operation plus $5 a week per agent). Even if the average bookie had only two telephones, this would have generated more than $160,000 a month. In exchange for such princely sums, Mickey provided attorneys and bail money for bookmakers unfortunate enough to be arrested. This service was famously speedy. In one notorious case, vice squad officers arrested a bookmaker at 3:05 p.m. only to be presented twenty-six minutes later with a bail bond and a writ of habeas corpus, signed by a judge and duly executed, ordering them to release the arrested bookie. Cohen also provided insurance against clients who engaged in “past posting”—placing bets after the race was over—in the form of a menacing visit to bettors who tried to cheat. After these visits, bettors rarely persisted in their claims.