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

The LAPD wasn’t the only law enforcement outfit tracking Cohen. So were agents from the Treasury Department. Mickey had resolutely refused to pay the federal government any of the back taxes he owed. He justified his inaction by claiming to be broke. When questioned about his new Cadillac and his lavish wardrobe, Cohen replied blandly that he enjoyed only what his friends gave (or loaned) him. Given Cohen’s history of extortion, this seemed more than a little suspicious. So FBI headquarters instructed the Los Angeles office to put Cohen under surveillance. In short order, Cohen had a discreet complement of G-men with him on his nocturnal nightclub outings. What they witnessed confirmed the bureau’s suspicions. Cohen, they reported, was routinely dropping $200 or $300 a night and generally spending money at a rate that only the most lucrative greenhouse in the world could provide.

The LAPD intelligence division was likewise uncovering evidence that Cohen was less reformed than he was letting on to his friend Ben Hecht. One source informed the division that Mickey was attempting to strong-arm a local linen business. The LAPD also heard rumors that Cohen, along with his old pal the great lightweight boxer Art “Golden Boy” Aragon, was fixing fights. LaVonne even called off the divorce and got back together with Mickey. Everything pointed to a full-fledged return to the life of crime.

      IN THE FALL OF 1956, the LAPD gained another ally in its fight against organized crime: the thirty-year-old chief counsel of the Senate subcommittee on investigations, Robert Kennedy.

By 1956, the Kennedys were one of America’s best-known families. Bobby’s maternal grandfather, John F. (“Honey Fitz”) Fitzgerald, had been mayor of Boston, as well as a congressman. Father Joseph was one of the country’s most powerful businessmen, a prominent Wall Street investment banker, ex-ambassador to the Court of St. James, a former movie magnate (and Gloria Swanson’s lover), and a high-end bootlegger. The oldest son, Joe Jr., whom Joe Sr. had been grooming for the presidency, had been killed during the Second World War; in 1946, the Navy had recognized his sacrifice by naming a destroyer after him. His brother Jack had stepped in and commenced on a remarkable rise to prominence. His Harvard College thesis, While England Slept, was published and became a best-selling book. During the war, he served on a PT boat. When it was cut in half by a Japanese destroyer, Lieutenant Kennedy kept his head and saved most of his men, a feat of bravery that won him a Navy and Marine Corps Medal (and a front-page story in the the New York Times). In 1946, he was elected to the House of Representatives from his grandfather’s old district (after Joe Sr. bought out the incumbent). In 1952, Jack was elected to the U.S. Senate. Earlier that year, in 1956, Jack wrote another best-selling book, Profiles in Courage.

In comparison, Bobby had struggled. An indifferent student, he bounced from school to school before landing at Milton Academy. He got into Harvard, but his grades there weren’t good enough to continue on to the business or law school, so he went to the University of Virginia law school instead. Upon graduating (in the middle of his class), he went to work on his brother’s successful Senate campaign, where he distinguished himself with his dogged hard work. Kennedy then worked briefly for perhaps the most notorious committee in the history of the U.S. Senate—Joseph McCarthy’s Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations—before joining Arkansas senator John McClellan’s Senate Subcommittee on Investigations as its chief counsel and staff director. There Kennedy and his boss, Senator McClellan, hit upon another subject—governmental corruption. This was an issue that provoked distinct unease in urban Democrats, many of whom were indebted to municipal machines. But Bobby brushed away such reservations. His first target would be New York City. There he discovered the world of the Irish NYPD—and the underworld.

      KENNEDY’S FIRST STEP as staff director of the investigations subcommittee was to approach the Federal Bureau of Investigation for assistance. He was startled to learn that the FBI knew virtually nothing about corruption or organized crime at the city level. It simply wasn’t within the bureau’s jurisdiction, he was told. So he turned instead to the federal Bureau of Narcotics, the precursor to today’s Drug Enforcement Administration. Two agents, Angelo Zurelo and Joseph Amato, took Bobby under their wing. They explained to Kennedy that much of the crime in New York (including, contrary to popular myth, the narcotics trade) was organized and controlled by the Sicilian mafia. They also introduced Kennedy to their partners in the New York Police Department’s intelligence division, an outfit whose personnel consisted of largely Irish detectives straight out of a Damon Runyon story.

It was love at first sight.