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

The timing of Cohen’s accusation was potentially explosive. Incumbent mayor Fletcher Bowron was up for reelection on June 1. The mayor had based his entire reelection campaign on his record of keeping Los Angeles’s underworld “closed” and the city government clean. Now Mickey was claiming that he had evidence that would show that senior police officials were on the take. Fortunately for Mayor Bowron, most of the city’s newspapers strongly supported his reelection. So did the county grand jury impaneled every year to investigate municipal wrongdoing. A mistrial was hastily declared. Cohen’s allegations received only light coverage. Mayor Bowron was handily reelected. Only then did the Los Angeles Daily News break the story: BIG EXPOSE TELLS VICE, POLICE LINK: INSIDE STORY TELLS BRENDA’S CLOSE RELATIONS WITH THE POLICE, BY SGT. CHARLES STOKER!

It turned out that Vaus’s contact on the Hollywood vice squad, Sgt. Charles Stoker, had gone before the criminal complaints committee of the county grand jury the day before Cohen and Vaus showed up in court with the wire recordings. There Stoker had told the committee about overhearing Brenda Allen’s conversations with Sergeant Jackson. It then emerged that Sgt. Guy Rudolph, confidential investigator for the chief of police, had gotten wind of Jackson’s connection to Allen fourteen months earlier and had asked police department technician Ray Pinker to set up another wiretap. But that investigation had mysteriously stalled, and the recordings had then disappeared.

Spurred by these revelations and by Cohen’s charges, the county grand jury opened an investigation. In mid-June it began subpoenaing police officers. Chief Clarence B. Horrall insisted that he had never been informed of the allegations swirling around the vice squad; high-ranking officers stepped forward to insist that he had been. Brenda Allen volunteered that Sergeants Stoker and Jackson had both been on the take. The head of the LAPD gangster squad abruptly retired. Every day brought a new revelation. The Daily News revealed that the LAPD had broken into Mickey’s house in Brentwood and installed wiretaps. Columnist Florabel Muir accused Mayor Bowron of personally authorizing the operation and implied that the transcriptions were being used for purposes of blackmail. Shamefaced, Mayor Bowron and Chief Horrall were forced to concede that they had OK’d a break-in. What was worse was that no charges against Cohen had come of it. On June 28, Chief Horrall announced his retirement. One month later, the grand jury indicted Lieutenant Wellpot, Sergeant Jackson, Asst. Chief Joseph Reed, and Chief of Police C. B. Horrall for perjury. Cohen had won his bet—if he could survive to collect.

      JUST A FEW WEEKS LATER, Mickey was driving home to his house in Brentwood for dinner with his wife, LaVonne, and the actor George Raft. Mickey had outfitted his $150,000 home at 513 Moreno Avenue with the most advanced security gear of the time, including an “electronic eye” that could detect intruders and trigger floodlights. The goal was to illuminate anyone who approached the house. But of course the security system also illuminated him when he got home in the evening. This was a serious problem when there was a hitman hiding in the empty lot next door, as there was that night.

As Mickey started to swing into his driveway and the lights came on, the gunman opened fire, pumping slugs into Mickey’s car. Mickey dropped to the floorboard. Without looking over the dashboard, he wrenched his blue Caddy back onto the road and floored it. He made it about two blocks before beaching the car on a curb. Fortunately, the gunman was gone. So Mickey went home. Despite bleeding from cuts inflicted by the shattered glass, Mickey waved off the questions about what had happened and insisted on proceeding with dinner—New York strip and apple pie, Raft’s favorite. The actor would later say that Mickey had looked “a little mussed up.”

Cohen didn’t report the matter to the police. (Why advertise his vulnerability further?) The attack might never have come to light but for a tip from Cohen’s auto-body shop to the police… and Mickey’s decision to commission a $25,000 armored Cadillac and test it at the police academy firing range. When the press broke the story, Cohen replied nonchalantly, “Well, where else? You can’t test it [by opening fire]… on the street for Christ’s sake!” Posed before his massive new armored car, the sad-eyed, five-foot-three-inch gangster (five-foot-five in lifts) looked like nothing so much as Mickey Mouse. Gangsters in other cities marveled about Mickey’s good luck—and sniggered about L.A.’s “Mickey Mouse Mafia.”