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

Bugsy Siegel and Mickey Cohen, on the other hand, couldn’t have been luckier. Mayor Bowron had shut down first the Combination and then Tony Cornero. Los Angeles’s homegrown criminal underworld had scurried off to Las Vegas. The Los Angeles underworld was now Siegel’s to command. What made the situation even sweeter was that as his influence was growing, his identity as a notorious eastern gangster remained virtually unknown. It wasn’t until a wiseacre NYPD detective decided to give the Los Angeles DA’s chief investigator a scare that the LAPD awoke to the fact that its nightmare of “eastern gangsters” moving into the city had already come true. The struggle for control of Los Angeles was about to move into a new phase, one that would put Bugsy Siegel and his top lieutenant, Mickey Cohen, in direct conflict with the LAPD.

9 Getting Away with Murder (inc.)

“Men who have lived by the gun do not throw off the habit overnight.”

—Florabel Muir

DISTRICT ATTORNEY Buron Fitts was in a tricky position. Angelenos were in a reforming mood—and Buron Fitts was the antithesis of reform. In 1936, Fitts had won reelection after essentially purchasing 12,000 votes along Central Avenue. (The Hollywood Citizen-News later reported that the underworld had spent $2 million—more than $30 million in today’s dollars—to fund Fitts’s campaign.) Knowing of his vulnerability on issues of corruption, when the Raymond bombing scandal broke, Fitts had acted with uncharacteristic vigor, ultimately convicting Joe Shaw on sixty-three counts of selling city jobs and promotions. Still, with a tough reelection campaign approaching, Fitts needed to do more. So in 1939, Fitts sent his chief investigator, Johnny Klein, to Manhattan. New York City district attorney Tom Dewey had made a name for himself by prosecuting gangsters. Klein’s brief was to learn what he could about eastern gangsters who might be trying to infiltrate the City of Angels.

A former Hollywood fur salesman, Klein was not known as the savviest of investigators. When he arrived at NYPD headquarters on Centre Street to examine the department’s gangster files, one of the detectives decided to have a little fun with him. He pulled forth a mug shot of Benjamin Siegel—taken in Dade County, Florida, where Siegel had been arrested for speeding.

“Now there’s an outstanding citizen named Bugsy Siegel,” the detective told the DA’s investigator.

“Never heard of him,” Klein replied.

“You never heard of him? Why, Johnny, this guy is one of the worst killers in America, and he’s living right in your backyard.” The detective continued, “Dewey wants this guy and would give anything to lay hands on him.”

Bugsy Siegel was one of the worst killers in America—the FBI would later credit him with carrying out or participating in some thirty murders—but his whereabouts were hardly a secret. Every crime reporter in New York knew that Siegel was actually in New York at that very moment, staying at the Waldorf-Astoria (where he had lived for much of the 1920s, two floors below “Lucky” Luciano). And it had been a long time since Bugsy Siegel was running around indiscriminately knocking people off. Nonetheless, Klein promptly telegrammed the news of this discovery back to Los Angeles. The DA’s office immediately sent a raiding party to Siegel’s Beverly Hills residence—along with a reporter from the Los Angeles Examiner, which was delighted to have another gangster to crusade against.

The next day the Examiner broke the story in typical Hearst style, portraying Siegel as a Dillinger-esque outlaw on the run. To those familiar with the Syndicate’s operations, the Examiner’s portrayal was laughable. Still, Siegel’s cover was blown. The timing couldn’t have been worse. Siegel had just launched an effort to sign up L.A.’s bookies for a new racing wire, the Trans-American news service. His unmasking threatened to complicate these efforts, as well as the broader effort to organize Los Angeles along eastern lines. Furious, Siegel called the Los Angeles papers. If he was really an outlaw wanted by DA Dewey, then why was he visiting New York City, unmolested, at that very moment? Siegel’s consort, the Countess di Frasso, was also upset, so much so that she drove to San Simeon to make a personal appeal to William Randolph Hearst to stop the Examiner from further besmirching Siegel’s name. These efforts floundered, for Siegel was, of course, a notorious gangster. With uncharacteristic delicacy of feeling, a despairing Siegel decided to resign from his beloved Hillcrest Country Club (though no one dared ask him to). He also decided to leave town for a bit. So he set off for Rome with the Countess di Frasso, leaving Mickey Cohen as his surrogate.