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

Mickey’s romance with Candy Barr was similarly ill fated. Early in the summer of 1959, she broke up with Mickey. She promptly married her hairdresser in Las Vegas. Without Cohen’s high-priced lawyers throwing up delays, the law quickly closed in on Candy Barr. Soon after her nuptials, she was deported to Texas to begin her prison term.

Inwardly, Mickey grieved. Outwardly, he soldiered on. He soon found a new flame—a twenty-two-year-old stripper at the Largo named Beverly Hills. Reached by an intrepid Los Angeles Times reporter at noon on October 1 (Mickey was still in his pajamas and visibly sleepy), Cohen confirmed that he and Miss Hills would soon be wed. Their honeymoon was to take place in Miami, where the future Mrs. Cohen would be appearing at the Clover Club. That engagement fizzled too. By late fall, Cohen had a new love, a nineteen-year-old former carhop named Sandy Hagen, whom Cohen had “discovered” at a drive-through.

On December 2, 1959, Cohen and Hagen were having dinner at Rondelli’s, an Italian restaurant in Sherman Oaks that was one of Mickey’s favorite hangouts. (Cohen was widely assumed to be the stealth owner.) With them were Cohen’s new canine companion, bulldog Mickey Jr., and the usual scrum of henchmen (including Candy Barr and Beverly Hills’s manager). At about 11:30 p.m., Jack “The Enforcer” Whalen walked in. Whalen was probably the biggest bookmaker in the Valley at the time. As his nickname suggested, the six-foot, 250-pound Whalen was also one of the toughest. He and Mickey had something of a beef. Whalen had recently beaten up Fred Sica, one of Cohen’s top men. That night “The Enforcer” was out trolling bars for delinquent borrowers, one of whom he spotted in a telephone booth in the cafe. Whalen walked over, grabbed the man, and proceeded to knock him around.

This was not a respectful way to conduct yourself in a rival gangster’s restaurant, but Whalen didn’t seem worried by Mickey’s presence. In fact, he strolled over to Cohen’s table afterward. What happened next is unclear. Words were exchanged; a punch may (or may not) have been thrown at one of Cohen’s associates. One thing was clear though. Two shots were fired. One slammed into the ceiling. The other hit Whalen right between the eyes. Cohen got up to go wash his hands. Then he called his doctor. Then he called the fire department. Next he called the newspapers. Finally, someone called the police. By the time two patrolmen in a radio car arrived at 12:10 a.m., Whalen was dead. The policemen were disturbed to see that someone had tidied up the area around Cohen’s table, a mere six feet from where the body lay. They promptly locked the doors and began to question everyone in the restaurant. Deputy Chief Thad Brown himself questioned Cohen.

Cohen’s account of what had happened was vague.

“A man walked in and punched a little man at the next table,” Cohen told Brown. “I never saw either before. Shots rang out. I thought someone was shooting at me, and I ducked.” That was all Cohen had to say. The following day, he elaborated further—in an exclusive column for the Herald-Express—on the night at Rondelli’s, claiming, with wild implausibility, that he’d never seen “the boys who approached the table next to him” and that he hadn’t seen what happened after the shooting because he was taking off Mickey Jr.’s bib. (“You gotta wear one when you eat linguine.”)

The police weren’t buying it. For one thing, Cohen’s Cadillac was gone. Mickey said Sandy Hagen had taken it home, but Hagen didn’t have a driver’s license. There was also the fact that Mickey had called quite a few people before contacting the police. Chief Parker himself soon arrived to take personal control of the investigation, but Cohen wouldn’t talk to him. Outside, reporters pressed the chief about whether Cohen was a suspect.

“Obviously, he is,” Parker replied. “This killing occurred at Cohen’s headquarters. He was less than six feet away. We knew that the victim was going there to square a gambling beef. Then Mickey’s car just happened to vanish, off the lot.” Nonetheless, with no evidence tying Cohen to the shooting, he wasn’t immediately booked. Instead, some thirty policemen were dispatched to round up all known Cohen henchmen for questioning.

The police then got a lucky break. Three pistols were recovered from the trash behind the restaurant. One was registered to the late Johnny Stompanato. A clearer connection to Cohen would have been hard to imagine. Police booked Cohen and four associates on charges of murder. But try as he might, Parker could find no physical evidence (such as fingerprints on the murder weapon) that tied Cohen to the shooting. None of the guns in the trash can were the murder weapon. After two nights in custody, Mickey was released on bail.