Part 12 (1/2)

Mickey Cohen wasn't the only Angeleno in New York City that May 19. It just so happened that LAPD intelligence head James Hamilton was also visiting Gotham. (Parker would later deny sending him east to shadow Cohen, insisting instead that his intelligence head was in New York on vacation.) Hamilton tuned in to the evening broadcast. What he saw appalled him. The American Broadcasting Company was allowing-no, encouraging-Mickey Cohen, a known criminal, to slander Chief Parker and himself on national television. Moreover, despite concluding the interview with a statement that Cohen's views on the LAPD were exclusively his own, Mike Wallace had made comments that seemed to endorse Mickey Cohen's a.s.sessment of the police. An angry Hamilton immediately called Chief Parker in Los Angeles to tell him what was happening. He also called ABC to deliver a warning: Pull the program from your Los Angeles station or prepare to be sued.

The Mike Wallace Interview was scheduled to air on the West Coast in less than three hours. ABC had only a short interval of time during which to make a decision. Executives immediately contacted Wallace producer Ted Yates, who in turn told Wallace about the problem they'd run into. Together, Yates and Wallace hurried over to Cohen's suite at the Ess.e.x House to confer with him about Hamilton's threats. Mickey had just stepped out of the shower. He greeted his visitors calmly, clad in nothing but a towel. was scheduled to air on the West Coast in less than three hours. ABC had only a short interval of time during which to make a decision. Executives immediately contacted Wallace producer Ted Yates, who in turn told Wallace about the problem they'd run into. Together, Yates and Wallace hurried over to Cohen's suite at the Ess.e.x House to confer with him about Hamilton's threats. Mickey had just stepped out of the shower. He greeted his visitors calmly, clad in nothing but a towel.

Wallace and Yates explained their problem as Cohen listened calmly. At the end of their presentation, Cohen made his p.r.o.nouncement.

”Mike, Ted, forget it,” he said decisively. ”Parker knows that I know so much about him, he wouldn't dare sue.” So instead, the producers called Parker in Los Angeles and invited him to come on the show next week to defend himself. Parker indignantly refused, saying he had no intention of debating ”an irresponsible character like Cohen.” He further warned ABC that if it proceeded with airing the show on the West Coast, it would open itself up to charges of criminal slander. The network disregarded this warning. Instead, a few hours later, Wallace's interview with Cohen aired on the West Coast. At a news conference the next day, Chief Parker announced that he and Captain Hamilton were considering a lawsuit against ABC.

Cohen was unfazed. Soon after the interview with Wallace, Cohen went on the WINS radio station. There he repeated his charges and dared Parker to file suit. Executives at ABC were more worried. Unlike Mickey Cohen, ABC possessed legitimate income and a.s.sets, and Cohen's vituperative comments looked rather shaky in the light of day. The next day ABC offered its ”sincere apologies for any personal distress resulting from this telecast.” It also decided to withhold the show from the handful of stations that had not yet aired it. Parker was not mollified. He, Hamilton, and ex-mayor Fletcher Bowron responded that they would continue to explore their legal options.

A week later, ABC vice president Oliver Treyz went on the air. With a chastened Wallace standing by his side, Treyz allowed as to how something ”profoundly regrettable occurred while Mr. Wallace was questioning Mickey Cohen.” ABC, he continued, ”retracts and withdraws in full all statements made on last Sunday's program concerning the Los Angeles city government, and specifically, Chief William H. Parker.”

ABC's apology did little to a.s.suage the anger of Parker's supporters. From Was.h.i.+ngton, D.C., Senate investigations subcommittee staff director Robert Kennedy delivered a stinging rebuke to ABC.

”Gentlemen,” the letter began.

A week ago Sunday, I watched the Mike Wallace show and his guest, Mickey Cohen. I was deeply disturbed.In the investigation that this Committee has been conducting, we have to work closely with police departments throughout the country. I want to say that no department has been more cooperative or has impressed us more with its efficiency, thoroughness and honesty than Mr. Parker's in Los Angeles more with its efficiency, thoroughness and honesty than Mr. Parker's in Los Angeles.Although I do not have a transcript here in Was.h.i.+ngton, it was my impression that Mike Wallace urged Mickey Cohen to name Captain Hamilton as a degenerate. In my estimation, I would consider Captain Hamilton as the best police officer we have worked with since our investigation began....To allow such serious and unsubstantiated charges to be made on nationwide television is grossly unfair and unjust.Very truly yours, Robert Kennedy Chief Counsel Cohen was enraged by ABC's backtracking. From Los Angeles, he issued a statement of his own: ”Any retraction made by those spineless persons in regard to the television show I appeared on with Mike Wallace on A.B.C. network does not go for me.” Implicit in this response was a challenge-sue if you dare.

Parker dared. On July 8, he sued ABC, Mike Wallace, and The Mike Wallace Interview's The Mike Wallace Interview's sponsors for $2 million. (Captain Hamilton and former mayor Fletcher Bowron also filed million-dollar libel lawsuits.) He did not file suit against Cohen, on the grounds that Mickey claimed to have no a.s.sets and was already deeply indebted to the federal government. ABC's attorneys sought out Mickey, hoping to discover some substance that would support his allegations. But now that ABC was calling on Cohen to show his hand, Mickey abruptly folded. Later, he would mutter only that he'd had incriminating information about Parker pinching a prost.i.tute's a.s.s on a yacht during a policing convention in Miami. Even if this were true, it hardly established that Parker was a bagman for the Shaws in the 1930s. ABC's attorneys realized that it was time to seek a settlement. sponsors for $2 million. (Captain Hamilton and former mayor Fletcher Bowron also filed million-dollar libel lawsuits.) He did not file suit against Cohen, on the grounds that Mickey claimed to have no a.s.sets and was already deeply indebted to the federal government. ABC's attorneys sought out Mickey, hoping to discover some substance that would support his allegations. But now that ABC was calling on Cohen to show his hand, Mickey abruptly folded. Later, he would mutter only that he'd had incriminating information about Parker pinching a prost.i.tute's a.s.s on a yacht during a policing convention in Miami. Even if this were true, it hardly established that Parker was a bagman for the Shaws in the 1930s. ABC's attorneys realized that it was time to seek a settlement.

COHEN, meanwhile, was dealing with another problem: the wrath of his coreligionists. Ever since the idea had surfaced in the press that Cohen would convert to Christianity, Jews from across the country had been calling Michael's Greenhouses to urge Mickey against betraying his people. On the evening of Wednesday, May 22, Cohen attended the Graham campaign. But he did not come forward to be harvested for Christ, meeting privately instead with W. C. Jones and Jimmy Vaus after the rally. The meeting reportedly was stormy. Jones berated Mickey for continuing to a.s.sociate with his gangster friends. Cohen responded by angrily declaring, ”If I have to give up my friends to be a Christian, I'm pulling out. I renounce it right now.” Then he stormed out. With that, Mickey's Manhattan adventure came to an end.

Just days after his anticlimactic appearance at Madison Square Garden, Cohen was served with a subpoena by the FBI and flown to Chicago, where he was forced to testify at the trial of Outfit leader Paul Ricca, whom federal authorities were attempting to deport to Italy. Cohen had nothing to say. While he was more than ready to talk about himself, the old taciturnity rea.s.serted itself when the topic turned to other gangsters. Everywhere he went, Cohen was shadowed by officers of the LAPD intelligence division. But Cohen professed to have nothing but scorn for Chief Parker's efforts to shadow and intimidate him. When, at some point the evening before his flight back to Los Angeles, Mickey slipped his LAPD security detail, he personally telegrammed Chief Parker to inform him of his flight number and arrival time in L.A. It was Cohen's personal little ”f.u.c.k you.”

MICKEY arrived back in Los Angeles in late May. In an attempt to stem the tide of bad news, he immediately announced that Ben Hecht had begun work on his life story, now t.i.tled The Soul of a Gunman The Soul of a Gunman. It was clear that Mickey intended to do everything he could to continue his PR blitz (despite a report from Walter Winch.e.l.l that Cohen's compatriots in the underworld were getting fed up with Mickey ”The Louse” Cohen's clamoring for public attention). But back in L.A., Cohen found that an unpleasant new reality awaited him. Where previously Mickey had been shadowed, he was now actively hara.s.sed. His first weekend back, two alert patrolmen saw Cohen stop his car at the corner of Santa Monica Boulevard and Western and walk over to a newsstand to buy a paper. A line of cars behind him started honking as the light changed. So the two officers went over and gave him a ticket. Cohen protested that he'd simply stopped behind a stalled car and stepped out to get a paper while the lady in the car in front of him tried to restart her engine. He refused to sign the citation. So the two officers hauled him in and booked him, on charges of causing a traffic jam. Cohen vowed to fight the charges.

”They can't get away with stuff like this,” he fumed to the reporters who had rushed over when they heard that Cohen had been arrested (in riding breeches and full equestrian attire). ”This is some more of Bill Parker's stuff.”

Los Angeles-area law enforcement was just getting started. Prosecutors decided to throw the book at Cohen on the traffic jam charges. That summer he was convicted-and fined $11. He vowed to appeal the decision. The following month, Beverly Hills police arrested Cohen as he was tucking into a ham-and-eggs breakfast (at 2:30 p.m.) at one of his favorite restaurants. The charge was failing to register as an ex-felon. (The Beverly Hills munic.i.p.al code limited convicted felons to five visits to Beverly Hills every thirty days.) Police hauled Cohen, ”screaming epithets,” into Chief Anderson's office for questioning. A scuffle ensued, and Anderson ordered that Cohen be charged with disorderly conduct as well. A. L. Wirin and the ACLU stepped forward to defend him, arguing that the registration requirement was unconst.i.tutional. A Beverly Hills munic.i.p.al court judge agreed and threw out the charges against Cohen. A jury later acquitted Cohen on the remaining charge.

Mickey's courtroom successes didn't extend to his business ventures. Exotic plants apparently were not, in fact, ”a tremendous racket”-at least, not to someone who had never managed (or bothered) to figure out which plant was which. That summer, Cohen announced that he was leaving the green house business.

”I didn't know a plant from a boxing glove,” he confessed to the press, ”but I would have made a go of it if those cops had left me alone. We couldn't go into the greenhouse without their hot breath wilting the plants.”

Henceforth, Mickey would focus his business endeavors in an area where he was an acknowledged expert-ice cream. Together with his sister and brother-in-law (and investors from Las Vegas), Cohen was preparing to open the Carousel ice cream parlor in Brentwood. He also announced that he would be focusing on his book with Hecht and on a movie spin-off, The Mickey Cohen Story The Mickey Cohen Story. Whispers of a huge movie deal soon filled the press. Cohen attorney George Bieber claimed that Cohen had been offered $200,000 in cash and 80 percent of profits but that Cohen was holding out for 20 percent of gross box office receipts. Beiber also predicted that Hecht's book would bring in $500,000 to $700,000.

Back in New York City, Mike Wallace wasn't entertaining visions of the silver screen. Instead, he was trying to save his job. ABC's promises to back Wallace through controversies were now forgotten. Instead, John Daly, the head of the network news division, stepped forward to deal with the man he saw as a loose cannon. A minder was a.s.signed to vet the script before every show and to monitor Wallace's performances on the set-”a balding, humpty-dumpty kind of guy,” as Ramrus recalled him. He was also humorless. Typical of the petty obstacles the show now faced was the minder's reaction to a proposed question for the architect Frank Lloyd Wright: Wallace: Mr. Wright, I understand you designed a dream home for Arthur Miller and Marilyn Monroe. As an architect, what do you think of Marilyn Monroe's architecture? Mr. Wright, I understand you designed a dream home for Arthur Miller and Marilyn Monroe. As an architect, what do you think of Marilyn Monroe's architecture?

”Objection,” came the response from the minder. ”Indecent question.”

”What's indecent?” replied Wallace and Yates, innocently. The answer, of course, was the thought that had arisen in the mind of the minder.

For the most part, Wallace just brushed aside objections of this sort and did what he wanted to do. Still, the new regime was demoralizing. Although ABC eventually settled Parker's suit for $45,000, ABC's insurer, Lloyd's of London, took a dim view of the controversy. It insisted that henceforth a lawyer monitor every show, complete with cue cards. When Wallace approached a controversial subject, the attorney (who sat just outside the range of the camera) would hold up a ”BE CAREFUL” cue card. The most dangerous conversational forays resulted in ”STOP” ”STOP” or or ”RETREAT ”RETREAT” cards. This was no way to run a TV show whose entire point was to be daring and provocative, and it took its toll. That December, ABC had another brush with a libel lawsuit after Wallace guest Drew Pearson charged that Senator John F. Kennedy's Pulitzer Prize-winning Profiles in Courage Profiles in Courage had been ghostwritten. In the spring of 1958, Philip Morris announced that it would not be renewing its sponsors.h.i.+p of had been ghostwritten. In the spring of 1958, Philip Morris announced that it would not be renewing its sponsors.h.i.+p of The Mike Wallace Interview The Mike Wallace Interview. Wallace's days as a national TV personality seemed numbered. The following fall, Wallace left ABC and returned to local television on Channel 13, a station even smaller than his old employer, Channel 5. Not until 1963, when Wallace managed to convince CBS News president d.i.c.k Salant to take a chance on him, did Wallace get another job at a network, this time as the host of a radio interview program and the anchor of the new CBS Morning News CBS Morning News. In 1968, Wallace finally got another shot at a show that offered to make him a national media star. That program was 60 Minutes 60 Minutes.

MEANWHILE, back in Was.h.i.+ngton, D.C., Robert Kennedy was puzzling over a question. In keeping with Hamilton's suggestions, the investigations subcommittee had taken a close look at the behavior of Teamsters Union officials in the Pacific Northwest. They had uncovered disturbing evidence of stolen funds, including evidence that implicated Teamsters president David Beck. They had also discovered that Kennedy's friends in the New York press had been right: Certain unions-the Operating Engineers, the Hotel and Restaurant Employees, and, again, the Teamsters-did have long histories of involvement with organized crime. There was also evidence that tied emerging Teamster leader Jimmy Hoffa to organized crime figures in Detroit, Cleveland, St. Louis, Minneapolis, and Chicago. As he considered these connections, Kennedy found himself mulling over a larger question: Was the Mafia a national, coordinated criminal enterprise, or did the phrase simply refer to the hierarchy of Italian organized crime in any given area? On November 13, 1957, Kennedy put that very question to his old acquaintance Joseph Amato, a Mob specialist with the Bureau of Narcotics.

”That is a big question to answer,” Amato replied. ”But we believe that there does exist today in the United Sates a society, loosely organized, for the specific purpose of smuggling narcotics and committing other crimes.... It has its core in Italy and it is nationwide. In fact, international.”

The very next day, Kennedy and the world received definitive proof that Amato was right when New York state police decided to investigate an unusually large gathering of luxury cars and limousines at the home of Joseph ”Joe the Barber” Barbara outside the little town of Apalachin (p.r.o.nounced ”Apple-aykin”) in western New York. When the state police officers arrived, Barbara's guests leapt into their cars and fled-running straight into a state police roadblock. Other gangsters ran into the woods, including (most likely) James Lanza from San Francisco, Sam Giancana of Chicago, Tommy Lucchese of New York City, and Joseph Zerilli of Detroit. Fifty-eight men were arrested. Only nineteen of the men (all of whom were Italian) were from upstate New York. The rest of the guests appeared to have come from cities all across the country and even from as far away as Cuba. John Scalisi had come from Cleveland. Santos Traficante had come from Havana. James Lanza had come from San Francisco. Frank DeSimone (the Dragnas' longtime attorney, now the family boss in his own right) had come from Los Angeles. Twenty-three of the men came from New York City and northern New Jersey, including Joseph Profaci, Joseph Bonanno, and Vito Genovese. All told, the group's members had been arrested 257 times, with more than a hundred convictions for serious offenses such as homicide, armed robbery, trafficking in narcotics, and extortion. In their pockets the police found $300,000 in cash.

It was clear that New York state police had stumbled across what appeared to be a board meeting of the Mafia. Newspapers across the country trumpeted the arrests. As astonis.h.i.+ng as the fact that a ma.s.sive international crime organization existed (and was meeting at some wiseguy's house in upstate New York) was the list of legitimate businesses these men controlled. They included ”dress companies, labor organizations, trucking companies, soft drink firms, dairy products, coat manufacturers, undertaking parlors, oil companies, ladies' coat factories, real estate projects, curtain, slip cover and interior decorating, s.h.i.+ps, restaurants, night clubs, grills, meat markets. Also vending machine sales, taxi companies, tobacco distributors, awning and siding firms, automotive conveying and hauling firms, importers of food and liquor, grocery stores and food chains, labor relations consulting firms, cement firms, waste paper removal, strap manufacture, liquor and beer distributors, textiles, s.h.i.+pping, ambulances, baseball clubs, news stands, motels, hotels, and juke boxes,” to name just a few. In short, the underworld had burrowed deeply into the fabric of American business.

Back in Was.h.i.+ngton, Robert Kennedy had a simple question: Who were these men? Seven years earlier, the Kefauver Committee had introduced Americans to gangsters Joe Adonis and Frank Costello (whose nervous hands were famously televised during the Kefauver Committee's hearings in New York). But names such as Vito Genovese were unfamiliar. Kennedy's first reaction, naturally enough, was to turn to the Federal Bureau of Investigation. When the bureau failed to produce dossiers on these figures, Kennedy personally paid the director a visit, barging in (without an appointment) and demanding that the bureau provide the McClellan Committee with everything it had on this collection of hoods. Hoover was forced to reveal the humiliating truth. The bureau (in Kennedy's words) ”didn't know anything, really, about these people who were the major gangsters in the United States.” Disgusted, Kennedy and his aides turned instead to the FBI's minnow-sized rival, the Bureau of Narcotics, which was able to offer investigators a wealth of information on the activities of the men arrested in Apalachin. There was also one police department whose knowledge stood out-the LAPD.

One year earlier, the LAPD intelligence division had bugged a room of Conrad Hilton's Town House hotel, where up-and-coming Teamsters leader Jimmy Hoffa was meeting with three residents of Chicago. At the time, Hoffa was in the middle of a heated campaign for the presidency of the Teamsters Union. According to an LAPD memo on the meeting (which later turned up in the files of the Chicago Crime Commission), the men in question included Marshall Caifano, who oversaw Chicago Outfit activities in Los Angeles, and Outfit boss Murray Humphreys. The memo stated in no uncertain terms that ”a member of the Executive Board is being taken before these men singly, and they are advising members of the Executive Board in no uncertain terms that Hoffa is to be the next President of the Teamsters Union.” Sure enough, that fall Hoffa was elected president of the Teamsters.

The news from Apalachin-and the LAPD intelligence division's ability to tie Hoffa and the Teamsters to the Chicago Outfit-caused Kennedy to reconsider the depths of the corruption he had uncovered. The McClellan Committee had begun its work in 1956 by focusing on dishonesty and corruption in the clothing procurement program of the military services. That, in turn, had led to the discovery that gangsters such as Albert Anastasia and Johnny Dio had become deeply involved in both the textiles unions and the textiles business. Apalachin had revealed an even broader horizon of organized crime, one in which the underworld preyed upon entire industries and whole communities.

”The results of the underworld infiltration into labor-management affairs form a shocking pattern across the country,” Kennedy wrote one year later in his best-selling book The Enemy Within The Enemy Within. ”[T]he gangsters of today work in a highly organized fas.h.i.+on and are far more powerful now than at any time in the history of the country. They control political figures and threaten whole communities. They have stretched their tentacles of corruption and fear into industries both large and small. They grow stronger every day.”

Parker himself couldn't have put it better. As Kennedy realized what a profound danger organized crime posed to the American way of life, he grew even more appreciative of the work the LAPD was doing. He also began to seriously consider Chief Parker's idea of creating a national clearinghouse for intelligence information. Naturally, in the course of their work together Parker and Hamilton told Robert Kennedy all about the activities of Mickey Cohen. Not surprisingly, Robert Kennedy decided that he wanted to meet this Mickey Cohen in person-and nail him.

21.

The Electrician.

”[W]hat's the meaning in the underworld or the racket world when somebody's 'lights are to be put out?'”-Robert Kennedy to Mickey Cohen, 1959 BY LATE 1958, Mickey Cohen was back in the rackets. His target was Los Angeles's lucrative vending machine market. His modus operandi was pure muscle-threatening vending machine owners with bodily harm if they didn't pay him for protection. As word spread that Cohen was back in business, old friends resurfaced, asking favors of the sort that Cohen had once dispensed so freely. Among them was Columbia Pictures boss Harry Cohn.

Cohn had the temperament of a first-cla.s.s gangster. ”Bullying and contemptuous” (other common descriptions include ”profane,” ”vulgar,” ”cruel,” ”rapacious,” and ”philandering”), an ardent admirer of Benito Mussolini (whose office he re-created for himself on the Columbia lot and whose picture he proudly displayed even after after the Second World War), Cohn delighted in the fear his presence could create. the Second World War), Cohn delighted in the fear his presence could create.

But in 1958, Cohn had a five-foot, seven-inch, 125-pound, 37-23-37 problem that all his swaggering and bullying couldn't resolve. Her stage name was Kim Novak. Novak was Columbia Pictures's-and Hollywood's-biggest star. Cohn had nurtured her career for years, grooming the young model as a successor to Rita Hayworth, purchasing the inevitable set of nude photos from a ”modeling” session in the actress's youth, and carefully protecting her image. His efforts had borne fruit. In 1957, Novak had smoldered as Frank Sinatra's old flame in The Man with the Golden Arm The Man with the Golden Arm. The chemistry between the two had been so hot that they'd paired up again in Pal Joey Pal Joey.

Novak's s.e.x appeal was not confined to the silver screen. Marilyn Monroe, 20th Century Fox's screen siren, was almost a parody of the blonde bombsh.e.l.l. (It's no surprise that breakthrough movies such as Gentlemen Prefer Blondes Gentlemen Prefer Blondes and and How to Marry a Millionaire How to Marry a Millionaire cast her in comic roles.) Novak made a different impression. The alabaster-skinned beauty with the deep-set hazel eyes, platinum silver hair, and Slavic features projected a sleepy, ”come hither” sensuality. And come hither they did. Frank Sinatra and Aly Khan were among the many men linked romantically to Novak during this period. There was an undeniable glamour (and great publicity) to having Columbia's leading lady chased by some of the most eligible men in the world. But at some point in early 1958, Novak seems to have begun a relations.h.i.+p that Harry Cohn had never antic.i.p.ated. That relations.h.i.+p was with Sammy Davis Jr. cast her in comic roles.) Novak made a different impression. The alabaster-skinned beauty with the deep-set hazel eyes, platinum silver hair, and Slavic features projected a sleepy, ”come hither” sensuality. And come hither they did. Frank Sinatra and Aly Khan were among the many men linked romantically to Novak during this period. There was an undeniable glamour (and great publicity) to having Columbia's leading lady chased by some of the most eligible men in the world. But at some point in early 1958, Novak seems to have begun a relations.h.i.+p that Harry Cohn had never antic.i.p.ated. That relations.h.i.+p was with Sammy Davis Jr.

Sammy Davis Jr. was black. He was also a Broadway star, having recently completed a triumphant turn in the musical Mr. Wonderful Mr. Wonderful. Davis was one of the more interesting figures of the era. He came from a venerable African American vaudeville family on his father's side. (His mother was Puerto Rican.) In addition to his prodigious musical and dancing gifts, he was a gifted raconteur and a talented photographer. He was also Jewish, having converted after a terrible auto accident in 1954 that cost him an eye. This didn't boost his standing much in Cohn's eyes. The Columbia Studio mogul hated the fact that his alabaster s.e.x G.o.ddess was involved in a romantic relations.h.i.+p with a one-eyed African American entertainer-so much so that he went to Manhattan mob boss Frank Costello with a request. Cohn wanted the Mob to end Davis's relations.h.i.+p with Novak, using whatever means proved necessary. So Costello called Cohen (at a private number on a secure phone).

”Lookit, ya know that Harry Cohn?” Costello asked Cohen, according to Cohen's later account of their conversation.

Mickey said that he didn't know Cohn personally but that he knew of him.

”Well, lookit,” Costello continued. ”There's a matter come up-the guy's all right, and he's done some favors for us back here, and I want ya to listen to him out, to make a meet with him, make a meet with him for whatever he wants and go along with him in every way ya can.”

Soon thereafter, Cohn called Cohen to discuss what was bothering him-the Davis-Novak relations.h.i.+p. After several fairly circ.u.mspect conversations, Mickey finally asked Cohn point-blank what he wanted. Cohn replied that he wanted Sammy Davis Jr. ”knocked in” (i.e., ”rubbed out”). In Cohen's later recounting of this story, he indignantly refused, telling Cohn, ”Lookit, you're way out of line. Not only am I going to give ya a negative answer on this, but I'm going to give ya a negative answer that you better see this doesn't happen.”

There's another more plausible version of the story. According to Davis biographer Gary Fishgall, Mickey Cohen visited Sammy in Las Vegas to deliver a warning and offer advice. The warning was that someone was about to put a contract out on his head. The advice was to dump Kim Novak and go find himself a nice black girl to marry. Panicked, Davis promptly called Sam Giancana in Chicago to plead for help. Giancana replied that there was only so much the Outfit could do on the West Coast. A fearful Davis broke off the relations.h.i.+p with Novak and abruptly married showgirl Loray White. Harry Cohn died one month later (of natural causes).

Whatever version is true, Sammy Davis Jr. apparently felt nothing but grat.i.tude toward Mickey. When Cohen was hauled into court on April 4, 1958 (Good Friday), for a.s.saulting a waiter who had annoyed him at a party for Davis at Frank Sinatra and Peter Lawford's Villa Capri restaurant, the entertainer came forward as a witness for the defense. (He testified that the waiter had spilled coffee on Cohen and made a rude remark.) So did another guest with a long and curious relations.h.i.+p with Mickey Cohen, the actor Robert Mitchum. Public violence, high-profile arrests, celebrity alibis-to a recently relapsed gangster hungry for publicity, things could hardly get better. But later that night, they did. At 9:40 p.m., Cohen a.s.sociate Johnny Stompanato was stabbed to death in the home of then-girlfriend Lana Turner.

Turner, thirty-eight, was one of Hollywood's best-known (and most frequently married) actresses. According to Turner's FBI files, she was also one of the most s.e.xually voracious. As a result, it's no surprise that she soon shacked up with Stompanato, thirty-two, a celebrity in his own right among adventuresome Hollywood actresses. ”The most handsome man that I've ever known that was all man,” Cohen called him. But it wasn't Stompanato's good lucks that made him Hollywood's most notorious gigolo. Rather, it was his legendary ”endowment.” To Mickey, though, Stompanato was kind of like a kid brother. As soon as he heard the news of Stompanato's death, he raced over to Turner's house in Beverly Hills. Attorney Jerry Giesler intercepted Cohen outside.

”If Lana sees you, she's going to fall apart altogether,” Giesler told Cohen. Instead, he sent him over to the morgue to identify Stompanato's body.

In fact, Turner was terrified of Cohen. Wild rumors quickly spread. ”LANA FEARS COHEN GANG VENGEANCE,” cried one tabloid. The ident.i.ty of the supposed killer quickly emerged-Lana's fourteen-year-old daughter, Cheryl Crane. Supposedly, she had stabbed Stompanato with a kitchen knife when she walked in on him beating her mother.

Cohen didn't believe it. Stompanato wasn't the toughest of Cohen's henchmen, but he was a former Marine. Mickey couldn't believe that a mere girl could have killed him with a knife. He suspected that Lana herself was probably the killer. Cohen wanted to see justice done.