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

In February 1974, Patty Hearst, the granddaughter of William Randolph Hearst, was kidnapped from her apartment in Berkeley by one of the decade’s most bizarre criminal terrorist groups, the Symbionese Liberation Army. Founded by an escaped African American convict who had adopted the nom de guerre “Cinque” (after the leader of the 1839 slave ship rebellion on the Amistad), the SLA espoused a strange blend of Maoist terrorism and Black Power ideology. In the early 1970s, the group assassinated a popular African American Berkeley school superintendent. Several members were convicted and incarcerated for the killing. Hearst was originally seized in order to facilitate a hostage exchange. But two months after her kidnapping, the story took a bizarre twist: Hearst took part in a bank robbery—as an SLA member. The video footage of Patty Hearst—who had adopted the name Tania—was a news sensation. The Bay Area was now too hot for the SLA. So Cinque decided to go south to his hometown of Los Angeles. That’s when Patty’s father Randolph called Mickey Cohen.

Mickey Cohen had always revered William Randolph Hearst.

“He was a benefactor for me throughout my career and when I needed him,” Mickey would later explain, perhaps in reference to the Hearst papers’ favorable coverage of Mickey during the Al Pearson beating trial. “There was nothing the Hearst people could call on me for that I would refuse or not attempt to do.”

So when Randolph Hearst called Mickey (at the recommendation of the San Francisco Chronicle’s crime reporter) and asked if he’d be willing to use his contacts in the underworld to locate Patty, Cohen was happy to oblige. Calling on certain acquaintances in the African American “sporting world,” Cohen soon made contact with some figures who might—or might not—have been SLA members or associates. A half dozen meetings ensued, all of them preceded by elaborate, multicar evasive maneuvers intended to throw off any cops who were trailing Cohen. Mickey was frankly jittery at the early meetings. Although he respected SLA members for their skill as lamsters, Cohen didn’t get the underground anti-Vietnam War movement. The SLA guys, in turn, viewed Cohen as a “square” because he didn’t drink and had never tried drugs. After a while, though, things got chummy. So chummy that Cohen felt a deal was within reach. Through his reporter-contact at the Chronicle, Cohen summoned Patty’s parents down from San Francisco to L.A.

They met over dinner at Gatsby’s. Patty’s mother was nervous, probably because the maitre d’ came over early to inform them that they were being monitored by men from the LAPD intelligence division. She told Mickey that she was worried that her daughter might now be so committed to the SLA that she would not return to her parents’ custody willingly. That didn’t seem to concern Mickey. But what Catherine Hearst said next did.

“We may be making a mistake bringing Patty back,” Mrs. Hearst continued quietly. “We may be bringing her back to do thirty, forty years in prison.”

That was it for Mickey.

“Lookit,” he told them, “if the situation is such that you folks don’t know whether she’s going to go to prison or not, I don’t want no part of it.” It was against Cohen’s code of ethics to send a lamster to prison. Cohen was done with the Hearsts.

“I don’t want to be rude,” he told them, “but I got to beg off this thing.”

Mickey’s muscle days were over. But as the threat of violence that had long been associated with him dissipated, he now became what, arguably, he’d long wanted to be—a celebrity. When he went to the fights, real celebrities like Frank Sinatra, Sammy Davis Jr., and Redd Foxx would come over to say hello. (Mickey appreciated the fact that Sinatra always greeted him with a kiss on the cheek and the more formal “Michael.”) Although Cohen’s tips were sadly reduced (“I maybe used to tip a barber twenty dollars, I maybe tip five dollars now”), he still wore tailor-made clothes and luxurious robes. He still dined at restaurants such as Chasen’s, Perino’s, and Mateo’s, even though it now took him four or five hours to get dressed to his standards. At theaters such as the Shubert, Cohen was a fixture on opening night. His sources of income remained mysterious. (His attorneys had won a settlement from the government for failing to protect Cohen in prison; however, the government had reclaimed most of the money as payment owed it for overdue taxes.) Friends like Frank Sinatra once more kicked in “gifts” to tide him over. Rumor had it that Cohen had resumed bookmaking.