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

With Mickey on the: Warren was backed up by five high-powered commissioners: former U.S. ambassador to Russia Adm. William H. Standley; former Union Pacific president William M. Jeffers; mining magnate Harvey Mudd; Gen. Kenyon Joyce, onetime deputy president of the Allied Control Commission for Italy; and Gerald H. Hagar, Oakland, past president of the Star Bar. “Warren Picks First of Crime Commissions: Jeffers and Mudd Among Those Named Under New State Law,” Los Angeles Times, October 22, 1947.

“Bookmaking has nothing to …”: Fox, Blood and Power, 288.

This system was: California Special Crime Study Commission report, January 31, 1950.

Olney realized that there: Special Crime Study Commission report, March 17, 1949, 72, 79-80.

The interruption of the: Special Crime Study Commission report, March 7, 1949, 16-25.

Mickey accepted the fact: In fact, by the late 1940s, Anthony Milano, under-boss of the Mayfield Street gang during Mickey’s Cleveland days and brother to Cleveland mob boss Frank Milano, lived virtually around the corner from Mickey, in an imposing private residence off Sunset Boulevard. Ostensibly, Milano was now the president of an eastern bank (a six-year-sentence stint in the federal penitentiary in Leavenworth evidently posing no obstacles to a career in finance). In practice, the LAPD noted that he was in contact with Mickey on an almost daily basis. Special Crime Study Commission report, January 31, 1950, 29-30.

Ovid Demaris’s book The Last Mafioso, which presents Jimmy Fratianno’s perspective on the period, suggests that Mickey was genuinely surprised by efforts to rub him out. Not everyone agrees. Rob Wagner’s Red Ink, White Lies argues that Cohen rejected Syndicate demands to share his underworld profits, thus triggering an entirely predictable gang war (229).

The trouble started: Cohen, In My Own Words, 95-100. There are multiple accounts of exactly what happened with the photographs. See also Jennings, “The Private Life of a Hood,” conclusion, October 11, 1958, 114.

Rist and his associates: “Bowron Asks Grand Jury Action in Police Scandal, Two Officers Suspended; Cohen Posts $100,000 Bail,” Los Angeles Times, March 23, 1949, 1.

In the world of: Mickey’s experiences in Cleveland contributed greatly to his multicultural precociousness. In the early thirties, the Cleveland underworld had been divided between two essentially cooperative groups, the Italian May-field Road gang, run by “Big Al” Polizzi, and the Jewish Cleveland Syndicate, whose leaders included Louis Rothkopf, Moe Dalitz, and Morris Kleinman. These two groups worked together closely in what was known as the Combination. Interestingly, during his days in Cleveland, Mickey had worked primarily with the Italian gangsters, particularly Mayfield Road gang underboss Tony Milano. Demaris, The Last Mafioso, 8-9.

Far from responding gratefully: Demaris, The Last Mafioso, 24.

Chapter Fourteen: The Evangelist

“He has the making …”: “Jigs and Judgments,” Time, July 23, 1951.

“A few nights”: Vaus, Why I Quit… Syndicated Crime, 71-72.

By November 1949, everyone: “Heaven, Hell & Judgment Day,” Time, March 20, 1950.

Suddenly, Vaus found himself: Los Angeles Times, November 8, 1949; Vaus, Why I Quit… Syndicated Crime, 71-76.

It was with some: Life, January 16, 1950; “Portrait of a Punk,” Cosmopolitan.

It is difficult to know how much financial pain Mickey was really feeling. In an article written several months after Vaus’s visit with Cohen, one of the most astute observers of the Southern California scene, lawyer/journalist Carey McWilliams, estimated that Mickey was receiving payoffs in the amount of $427,000 a year. Given the fact that the state public utility commission had effectively choked off the wire service that was once the most profitable part of Mickey’s portfolio, that number seems high. Columnist Florabel Muir, who was close to Mickey and had excellent sources in the underworld, believed that Cohen was under real financial pressure. Of course, Mickey had other activities—extortion, slot machines, perhaps narcotics—which undoubtedly helped offset at least some of the pain.

“Mickey lifted his hand”: See Cohen, In My Own Words, 106-107, for an account of the meeting. Sensitive to charges that he had considered betraying his faith, Cohen plays down the conversion angle. Compare Cohen’s account with Graham’s, “The New Evangelist,” Time cover story, October 25, 1954.

At 4:15 a.m. on February: Lewis, Hollywood’s Celebrity Gangster, 137; Demaris, The Last Mafioso, 40.

Police later estimated that: Leppard, “Mr. Lucky Thrives on Borrowed Time,” Los Angeles Herald-Express, December 3, 1959.