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

“Dragna was inactive at the time, and for years had no organization at all,” Mickey later recalled. “[A]nything he wanted done he came to me for.” As far as Mickey was concerned, organized crime in Los Angeles was “a happy family.” As for the possibility that robbing Morris Orloff and being an all-around punk might have rubbed Dragna and the Italian gangsters surrounding him the wrong way, Cohen dismissed it out of hand: “I was the guest of honor at his daughter’s wedding!”

Mickey was mistaken—dangerously so. Bugsy represented New York. But Dragna had closer ties to Chicago. Although the twin capitals of the underworld generally cooperated on matters of importance, there were areas of friction. Siegel’s 1942 decision to force Los Angeles bookmakers to subscribe to his wire service was one of them. At the time, most big bookies in Los Angeles were using James Ragan’s Chicago-based Continental wire services—and paying a cut to Jack Dragna and Johnny Roselli, the Chicago Outfit’s man in Los Angeles, for protection. Siegel didn’t care. Instead, he sent Mickey Cohen to wreak havoc on the office of the Chicago wire’s L.A. manager, Ragan son-in-law Russell Brophy. Even Mickey felt a little leery about this assignment. When he arrived at Brophy’s main office downtown and was told Johnny Roselli was on the phone—and that he wanted to speak to Mickey—Cohen was less enthusiastic still. He knew firsthand what kind of tactics the Chicago Outfit employed. So he ducked the request. Instead, he gave the phone to his partner Joe Sica. (“I figured Italian to Italian, you know.”)

“Lookit, Johnny says that whatever we’ve done is done, but he don’t want this office busted up,” Sica reported.

Which, of course, was precisely what Cohen and Sica had been sent to do.

“Tell him that I’m sorry, but this office is going up for grabs completely,” Mickey replied. “Just tell him that, and hang the phone up.”

Sica did. Then he and Mickey “tore that fucking office apart.” Mickey beat up Brophy, hurting him so badly that Mickey decided to go on the lam. He fled to Phoenix. There he was greeted like a conquering hero by Siegel.

“You little son of a bitch,” Siegel said. “You remind me of my younger days.”

Mickey hid out in Phoenix for six months. Somehow (Mickey was never clear exactly how) Siegel managed to square the Brophy assault with the authorities, clearing the way for Cohen’s eventual return to Los Angeles. Smoothing matters over with Jack Dragna and Johnny Roselli was a more difficult matter. After a period of dormancy, Dragna was gearing up his operations. Worse, he had opted to do so by partnering with a Los Angeles underworld figure, Jimmy Utley, whom Cohen viewed as “an out-and-out stool pigeon for the DA and attorney general’s office.” It aggravated Mickey, and an aggravated Mickey Cohen was a dangerous man, as Utley was about to discover.

One day soon after his return from Phoenix, Mickey sauntered out of Champ Segal’s barbershop on Vine and saw Utley talking with one of the LAPD’s toughest police officers, E. D. “Roughhouse” Brown, in front of Lucey’s Restaurant. Mickey had long suspected that Utley was a “stool pigeon” for Brown—an informer. But if Utley was concerned about this, he didn’t show it. After “Roughhouse” left, Utley waved to Mickey and Joe Sica. So Cohen and Sica walked over—and laid into Utley, pistol-whipping him “pretty badly”—in front of an estimated one hundred people.

Utley took it bravely. Despite being badly hurt, when police arrived on the scene, he insisted that he wasn’t able to identify his assailants.

Jack Dragna was less understanding. He immediately got hold of Siegel and demanded a meeting with Cohen. Siegel summoned his protege to a meeting that very night, and this time, Mickey came.

“I didn’t break his ass, just with my hands,” Mickey claimed, by way of self-defense. “He was talking to a fucking copper!”

Even Siegel was exasperated by this.

“What the fuck’s wrong with ya?” Siegel exploded. “Don’t ya know ya got to do business with these coppers? Ya wanna be a goddamn gunman all your life?”

10 L.A. Noir

“If you’re going to gamble that kind of money own the casa.”

—20th Century Fox chairman Joseph Schenck to Hollywood Reporter owner Billy Wilkerson