by Jack Webb
This growing, changing file which the underworld would gladly buy for $1,000,000 is secured in a ceiling-to-floor safe made of heavy steel and always under guard of Intelligence detectives.
In other ways, too, LAPD’s Intelligence men continued the drive toward the prevention of big, organized crime. They saw to it that word got out to other cities that Los Angeles was a “hot town” for alien hoods. And locally, they followed the individual, rather than the crime.
At the first false step, Intelligence tipped off Robbery or Homicide, and the pinch was made. For the underworld, it was aggravation all the time.
Finally, the word went out, “L.A. is closed,” and the locals, musclemen and gang leaders, vice overlords and major gamblers, went into obscurity. There was still crime everywhere, as there always is in a big city, but LAPD felt confident that organized crime had been purged.
But before that happy day arrived, Intelligence along with other LAPD units had to perform two pieces of major surgery.
Tony Brancato and Tony Trombino were out of Kansas City. They hadn’t quite made the big time, but they were ambitious and they had a record of serious accomplishment behind them.
At the moment, Brancato was out on bond while fighting extradition to Las Vegas. He was wanted there for questioning in a $35,000 stickup at the Flamingo casino. In Los Angeles, he was suspected of having taken part in four murders, and he had won national honors by being named to the FBI’s list of “Ten Most Wanted” criminals.
Trombino had a record of narcotics violations and muscle jobs. Only two months previously, he had beaten a Los Angeles rap for receiving stolen property.
Tonight, the two Tonys enjoyed a spaghetti dinner prepared by Trombino’s wife, Mary, and then went riding in Trombino’s car. Sometime after eight p.m., they picked up a friend. At least, they thought he was a friend because they let him sit in the back seat behind them. On a fashionable residential street not far from the Sunset Strip in Hollywood, they parked and talked.
Probably about money. They had pressing bail and legal fees. Trombino puffed on a cigar, and jingled forty cents, which was all he had. Brancato had the same amount, a quarter, a dime and a nickel, plus a $10 bill folded in his pants pocket. So they probably talked it all over with their friend.
But, sadly, he wasn’t their friend. In the dark he quietly drew a .38-calibre pistol and put two slugs into the back of Trombino’s head, a third into his shoulder. Brancato, too stunned by the roar of the gun to move, got it next, and a piece of brain tissue splattered the back seat. The killer fled.
Within an hour, Chief Parker was personally directing one hundred detectives on an all-night search for the murderer. As men wearied, new ones were thrown into the investigation; and for the next ten days the Los Angeles underworld was shaken out from top to bottom. Witnesses by the dozen—party girls, businessmen, loafers, movie bit players, musclemen and grifters—were questioned and re-questioned. Five hoodlums and gamblers were booked on suspicion.
Day and night, Hamilton’s Intelligence teams were rounding up friends and suspected business associates of the late Tonys’, checking out whispered leads, scouring every dive in town. When an eyeball witness said he had seen a man running across the street after the shots were fired, the police hauled four of the suspects back to the scene. Then, while the witness watched from a hidden vantage point, the detectives made them run across the street. He couldn’t positively identify any of them.
With all its sources, Hamilton’s division ran into silence every time a lead seemed promising. And with all its powers, the Los Angeles County Grand Jury encountered the same frightened wall when it called twenty-two witnesses in an independent probe. The reason was inadvertently blurted by slim, red-haired Mary Trombino, now left with an eleven-months-old son to support.
Mary was a pathetic figure as she wept and trembled on the witness stand. Gently a grand juror asked if she was afraid to tell the truth.
“Oh, no sir,” Mary sobbed. “As far as I’m concerned, life ended for me when my husband was shot. But something might happen to my baby.”
To Hamilton, it was clear enough, though he couldn’t prove it. The two Tonys had been killed by the Mafia, and under the ancient code of this Sicilian thuggee band, not even relatives of its victims could accept help from the law. Il morte solo non ritorna, the Mafia warned all, good and evil alike. Il dimenticato ritornara.
Only the dead do not return; he who has forgotten will return.
Intelligence came close enough to the central mystery to believe that a Mafia court in the Midwest had handed down the double death decree. As in any uncivilized court, the defendant does not appear before the Mafia or enjoy the right of either counsel or appeal. Once the Tonys were thus sentenced in absentia, a Mafia representative was summoned from Los Angeles and told what had to be done. He was responsible for seeing that Mafia “justice” was carried out.
One of the principal suspects in the “Two Tonys” murders was Jimmy (“The Weasel”) Fratianno, who has been dubbed by many as the Mafia enforcer in Los Angeles.
Shortly before the two Tonys’ sudden deaths, The Weasel had held several mysterious meetings with them. His alibi was suspiciously thin under police grilling, and he gave a sketchy time sequence of his movements that night. Intelligence couldn’t nail him for the murders, but thereafter he was never out of their sight.
Two years later The Weasel tried to move in on an oil field developer, threatening him with death if he didn’t receive part of the businessman’s royalties. But Intelligence moved faster, and with the victim’s consent made a tape recording of The Weasel’s conversation.
In wild and obscene language, Fratianno made his demands and warned of “the power of those people” who were backing him up. Their influence, he said, reached to the highest places and could command almost any result. Unfortunately for The Weasel, “those people” couldn’t influence LAPD or the courts, and he was tucked away in San Quentin for extortion.
Jimmy (Squeaky) Utley was an old-time carnival hustler who had come to Los Angeles in the mid-1920’s; and, through years of subservience to the rackets bosses, had gradually risen to success. He joined up with the ousted police chief of a desert community to run a bingo and gambling club. He had been a partner in the notorious gambling ship Lux which had operated briefly off the coast of Los Angeles. He had a hand in the abortion and narcotics rackets, and sometimes in behalf of the underworld he tried to dabble in city politics. He was powerful and dangerous and knew it. He referred respectfully to himself as “the little giant.”
So long as Squeaky remained at large, drugs, vice, and gambling would have a common directing overlord. Almost worse, Squeaky represented the local underworld as liaison man with the big mobsters. He had never lost his old-time carny respect for the rich and powerful. Whenever an outsider sought a friend or a foothold in Los Angeles, Squeaky obligingly held open house for him.
Adding it all up, Captain Hamilton decided that Squeaky should be put on ice. But how? Despite numerous arrests, the slippery “little giant” had been convicted only once, on a charge of possessing and selling dope. Maybe that was it. In highly unorthodox police fashion, Hamilton went to work.
Through his own mysterious channels, the captain made contact with a suave French soldier-of-fortune who sometimes hired out to big-city police as a professional decoy. Hamilton put it up to him. Though Intelligence men would always remain as close as possible, he was to work strictly on his own, and gain Squeaky’s confidence. Then, with Intelligence definitely on hand, he would make the kill—a narcotics buy from Squeaky.
Slowly, over a period of months, the Frenchman won his way into the good graces of Squeaky. They met more than thirty times and began moving together socially. The Frenchman was deferential toward “the little giant,” and Squeaky warmed to the treatment.
Through electronic devices, Intelligence eavesdropped on almost all their conversations. The Frenchman’s car was mined with tape-recording equipment a
nd often one of Hamilton’s G-2 detectives was hidden in the trunk compartment.
It was slow, unproductive going. Squeaky never went to a meeting without backtracking to make sure that he wasn’t being followed. He never entered his apartment without double-checking whether it had been wired in his absence. Even to his new friend, he was reserved on dangerous subjects like dope and rackets.
Finally, the Frenchman told him he had a problem. He had to lay hands on a heroin supply. A lot of it and fast. Squeaky backed off. Heroin is TNT, he told his friend. The men who handled it were very touchy. But, he promised, he would ask around.
Alone, Squeaky set up a meeting with Jack Dragna, alias Antonio Rizzoti, the .45-calibre rackets king of the area. The California Crime Commission had called him “the Capone of Los Angeles,” and the Kefauver crime probers tabbed him as the California boss of the Mafia. Dragna’s nod could put the Frenchman in possession of heroin—and Intelligence in possession of Squeaky.
But Dragna was too wily. He took a ride in Squeaky’s Cadillac and asked a few questions. Who was this Frenchman? Where did he come from? And then he rasped the question Squeaky should have asked himself: Who knows him?
Squeaky’s answers didn’t convince Dragna, and “the little giant” had to admit to his French friend that he wasn’t such a giant after all. He just couldn’t put him in touch with the right people. He couldn’t sell him anything personally.
Chagrined, the Frenchman reported back to Captain Hamilton that their long campaign to trap Squeaky had failed. Then he disappeared from Los Angeles.
A few months later, the Frenchman returned. His professional pride had been bruised by the fiasco, and now he wanted another go at Squeaky. At his own time and expense, too, he added with Gallic spirit.
On a day’s notice, the Frenchman moved into a luxurious house in San Fernando Valley, fast-talking the landlady into waiting for her rent. Impatiently he stood by while Hamilton’s men wired the house and set up listening posts nearby. Then he dialed Squeaky’s private number and exclaimed, “Mon ami! I return!”
Once again, Squeaky, the Frenchman and the Intelligence agents went into their minuet. It was a re-play of the earlier campaign. Squeaky was charmed, Squeaky wanted to be helpful—but he never stepped over the line. With their earphones and tape-recording equipment, G-2’s eavesdroppers amassed great quantities of conversation, but not one incriminating fact.
This time, humiliated beyond expression, the Frenchman left Los Angeles, never to return.
It had been almost two years now since Hamilton pushed the button on Squeaky. His men were still following him, day and night, noting several suspicious addresses and questionable meetings but coming up with nothing criminal.
One night, when he was about ready to admit defeat, Hamilton got a jubilant phone call. An Intelligence team had shadowed Squeaky to an address in Long Beach. It was one of the suspect places. Homicide was notified, and Lieutenant Herman Zander of that division joined up.
Outside, the detectives waited an hour, two hours, then three hours. Squeaky didn’t emerge. So they walked in as a customer walked out. The house was an abortion mill, and Squeaky was standing in the middle of it.
Jimmy (The Little Giant) Utley went to state prison for the term prescribed by law.
II
Unlike most officers, they are chosen partly for their looks. Almost to a man, they seem so young and innocent. And they dress the part. The day shift (ten a.m. to six p.m. ) goes uniformed in blue jeans, checked shirts, straw hats, and boots. The night swing (seven p.m. to three a.m.) wears blue slacks, sports shirts, loafers; no hats.
To cover the city’s 454 square miles, there are only a handful of them: thirty-three policemen, one policewoman, four sergeants, one lieutenant, two civilians and Captain Charles Stanley. They enjoy the status of a division which is responsible only to the Chief of the Bureau of Administration and Chief Parker himself. They hit anywhere in the city and they outrank any division men on their specialty.
They are the officers of the Administrative Vice Squad which oversees all police vice enforcement and steps in whenever a division lets sex or gambling get out of hand.
“The public thinks we stink,” says one baby-faced Ad Vice man. “Some of our colleagues agree. The public doesn’t think we’re sporting. Some police officers don’t think we’re even cops.”
Captain Stanley agrees that his men carry a scarlet V on their foreheads. “Vice men have a bad public reputation,” he says unhappily. “The work we do is scorned. The public thinks we are just a bunch of bulls sneaking around to break up somebody’s friendly Friday night poker game.”
In a locality as traditionally, determinedly tolerant as a big city, the sidewalk bookie and the street corner floozie neither shock nor outrage the taxpayer. Even the courts often seem to express the tacit opinion that the police should be worrying about more important criminality. Girl and gambler are given toss-off fines of $10 to $25 and virtuous admonitions to go forth and sin no more. Dope pushers who peddled marihuana and “benny” pills to high school students have been jailed for months rather than for years.
When there is a big vice crackdown, the public knowingly speculates about the other pinches that might have been made at the same time. Maybe, just maybe, money passed hands. And when for awhile there are no pinches at all, it’s not because the Ad Vice men can’t get the evidence. Money did pass hands.
In every metropolitan city, the vice cop is scorned and suspect. But you have to know something of Los Angeles’ lingering, purple past to understand his particular plight in what is sometimes called the City of the Angels.
The rambunctious tradition was planted at the dawn of the century when the crude flicker industry arrived in town. Colonel William N. Selig’s cinema cowboys fired their blanks up and down Hollywood boulevard, the shooting crews caused traffic jams and confusion, and the good people hung out signs, No Dogs or Actors Allowed.
From the beginning, the police couldn’t quite cope with the eccentricities and excesses of Hollywood. As the movies became the major industry, the situation only worsened. Wild Hollywood parties, wild drinking, wild dope orgies became commonplace, and the police couldn’t have stopped them if they had tried.
But they didn’t particularly try, so they were marked by the public as either stupid, Keystone or grafting cops.
When to most of America dope was a remotely awful thing, the California State Board of Pharmacy listed five hundred movie people as addicts. In the crazy Twenties, dope was smart in Hollywood. Before a party in his mansion, one film luminary emptied the big sugar bowl and refilled it with cocaine as a practical joke. Another needled his ace leading man into the morphine habit when his natural stamina ebbed.
Occasionally, there was a scandal and a temporary cover-up. For three years the idol who had made fifty-two box office hits in seven years, suffered from morphine addiction and simultaneous blackmail. Courageously, he went “cold turkey” for two months and then one day collapsed on the lot in the middle of shooting a scene.
“One moment he had been the smiling and upright hero on the set,” an eyewitness later reported. “Then, in the bat of an eye, he began to drool and stagger.”
He was taken to a remote mountain cabin while his studio announced he was suffering from “Klieg-eyes.” A month later, he died and the scandal could not be suppressed. In the United States Senate, a debate on the League of Nations was interrupted as Senators warned Hollywood to clean up or face federal action. For a while discretion ruled, but not for long.
During a two-year period, a director and a director’s mistress died violently, the idol succumbed to his brave withdrawal attempt, and a one-time Ziegfeld beauty now a cocaine addict, killed herself in Paris. On Broadway, they put out all the lights for the night between 46th Street and Columbus Circle in her memory, and again Hollywood sobered momentarily.
But the reform was transitory. Hollywood remained the place where you ordered sex, dope, and Prohibition whisky
By telephone, where bookies were protected on the movie lots (so that shooting schedules would not be interrupted by frequent phone calls to the horse parlors). Unlike many other sections of the country, Los Angeles had no long-standing social traditions of its own. Thus, for thirty years, what the stars did was accepted as the local mores.
And the police stood by.
Occasionally an honest cop revolted. During the 1930’s, Captain Carey M. Buxton, then a rookie, was ordered to check on a complaint in the tenderloin district. The place was a house rather than a home, and the madam brusquely told the young officer to get out. She was paying her weekly protection money “downtown,” she said, and if Buxton didn’t go, maybe he would be transferred.
The officer went, but only as far as his police car. He sat parked in front of the house all day, thus discouraging a number of potential visitors. The following day he was put on another beat.
Even more recently, in the 1940’s, Jim Fisk, now an inspector in LAPD’s Traffic Bureau, blew his stack over the “Guarantee Finance Company,” a pseudo loan agency, which fronted for a $6,000,000 bookmaking ring. Guarantee operated in territory policed by Los Angeles County, which was snugly beyond Fisk’s jurisdiction.
One day, in a burst of righteous anger, Fisk stepped over the line, crashed through a skylight into the bookies’ huge telephone room. He knew he couldn’t make any arrests, so he did the next best thing. He tore up all the betting slips and wrecked the equipment.
For Fisk, there were no reprisals, and his spectacular raid put the heat on “Guarantee.” When the California Crime Commission seized its books, “juice” payoffs of $108,000 for protection were disclosed. The joint was padlocked.
But for the most part, even sincere police action was frustrated. Information was sought through paid informants, and the gamblers and bawds retaliated by hiring lookouts to flash early warnings. The raiders’ battering-ram was met by the barricaded iron door, and the bookies devised counter-security measures to beat the newfangled wiretap.