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

From the start, Parker put the LAPD at the Kennedys’ disposal. At the opening reception on Sunday, Jack Kennedy, Bobby and Ethel, and Ted and Joan appeared, escorted by fifteen white-helmeted police officers and a thirty-person plainclothes detail. (In contrast, Senate Majority Leader Lyndon Baines Johnson, his wife Lady Bird, and their two daughters were left to greet the crowd on their own, assisted only by volunteer “Johnson girls” handing out long-stemmed roses as a band played the Johnson campaign song, “Everything’s Coming Up Roses.”) In general, though, security was light. There was no Secret Service protection. The Kennedy campaign asked that just one officer be assigned full-time to Jack. That proved insufficient. Well-wishers hemmed him in everywhere, stopping him to introduce themselves, to shake hands, to say hello. These encounters were sometimes quite frightening: on two occasions, enthusiastic supporters nearly tore off Kennedy’s coat. Eventually, the campaign asked for backup. Parker upped the detail to four. Instead of mingling with the delegates, Kennedy’s unit started to move him through freight elevators and basement kitchens.

The LAPD also proved to be useful during the convention. On Wednesday, July 13, 1960, some six hundred supporters of Adlai Stevenson, the Democratic Party’s nominee in 1952 and 1956, swarmed the Figueroa Street entrance of the Sports Arena, where the convention was being held. Although Stevenson insisted that he was not interested in being the party’s candidate, his supporters were determined to nominate him. So they settled on the desperate stratagem of blockading the convention and then charging the floor, with the hope that they would be able to take control of the convention proceedings. The police quickly intervened, rushing forces to the entrance in order to break the blockade.

When Kennedy cinched the nomination, Parker was pleased. Yet despite Parker’s genuine admiration for the Kennedy brothers, there were things about the family that made him uneasy. Several months after the convention, Parker went to visit his younger brother Joe and his sister-in-law Jane. One evening after dinner, the topic turned to the Kennedys. Bill made a fleeting comment, that “he would never believe” the things the Kennedys were involved in. Joe would later speculate that Bill spurned a job with the administration in Washington because he did not care to associate with the likes of the actor Peter Lawford and his good friend, Frank Sinatra.

Sinatra, whom Parker regarded as being “totally tied to the Mafia,” was clearly a sore point. Relations between the LAPD and the entertainer had been strained since at least February 1957, when three LAPD officers had burst into Sinatra’s Palm Springs house—at 4 a.m.—to serve the entertainer with a subpoena to appear before a congressional subcommittee investigating Confidential magazine, a scandal sheet that specialized in extorting money from celebrities with skeletons in their closets.

Exactly what kind of intelligence Parker had on the Kennedys is unknown. Once—just once—Joe picked up on a passing, uncomplimentary allusion to Kennedy-Hollywood skulduggery and expressed his doubts.

“Gee, you know, I just don’t understand how that could be true, Joseph told his brother.”

“Joe, you don’t hear anything about what’s really going on,” Parker replied.

      BY ALL ACCOUNTS, the department did a superb job during the convention. Hailed by the Los Angeles Times editorial board for its good work, Parker was later feted at the Biltmore Bowl by nearly nine hundred leading citizens. His standing had never been higher. On November 8, 1960, Sen. John F. Kennedy was elected to be the thirty-fifth president of the United States. Less than two weeks later, while out golfing with a New York Times reporter, the president-elect casually let drop that he was considering appointing his thirty-five-year-old brother to be the next attorney general of the United States. The response was immediate—and negative. Bobby had never been a practicing lawyer. Most recently, he had been Jack’s presidential campaign manager—hardly the nonpartisan background many hoped for in the nation’s top lawman. An editorial in the New York Times warned against nepotism in high office. “Wise men” such as Supreme Court Justice William Douglas also criticized the prospective appointment. Privately, even JFK was doubtful. But Joe Sr. insisted that Jack needed his brother at the Justice Department precisely because he was the ultimate loyalist. Joe Sr. also wanted Bobby at Justice to protect the president from the one person in government best positioned to do JFK harm—J. Edgar Hoover. On December 16, the president announced the appointment, with his brother at his side, in front of Blair house.