Our order arrived, and Fred slid out of the booth, saying, “I better circulate.”
“Fred, what, you think somebody’s gonna open up with a chopper in here? This isn’t a New Jersey clam house.”
“I know…. I’m just a nervous old woman.”
Fred wandered off, and Didi and I nibbled at our desserts; we were dragging a little—it was after three.
“You okay?” I asked her.
“What?”
“You seem a little edgy.”
“Really? Why would I be?”
“Having Niccoli sitting over there.”
“No. That’s over.”
“What did you see in that guy, anyway?”
She shrugged. “He was nice, at first. I heard he had friends in pictures.”
“You’re already under contract. What do you need—”
“Nate, are we going to argue?”
I smiled, shook my head. “No. It’s just…guys like Niccoli make me nervous.”
“But he’s been very nice to both of us.”
“That’s what makes me nervous.” Our mistake was using the restrooms: they were in back, and to use them, we’d had to pass near Cohen and his table. That’s how we got invited to join the party—the two Times reporters had taken off, and chairs were available.
I sat next to Florabel, with Niccoli right next to me; and Didi was beside Cooper, the state investigator, who sneaked occasional looks down Didi’s cleavage. Couldn’t blame him and, anyway, detectives are always gathering information.
Florabel had also seen Annie Get Your Gun, and Cohen had caught a preview last week.
“That’s the best musical to hit L.A. in years,” the little gangster said. He was in a snappy gray suit with a blue and gray tie.
For maybe five minutes, the man who controlled bookie operations in Los Angeles extolled the virtues of Rodgers and Hammerstein’s latest confection, aided and abetted by Irving Berlin.
“Can I quote you in my column?” Florabel asked. She was wearing a cream-color suit with satin lapels, a classy d with a hard edge.
“Sure! That musical gets the Mickey Cohen seal of approval.”
Everyone laughed, as if it had been witty—me, too. I like my gangsters to be in a good mood.
“Mickey,” the columnist said, sitting forward, “who do you think’s been trying to kill you?”
“I really haven’t the slightest idea. I’m as innocent as the driven snow.”
“Yeah, but like Mae West said, you drifted.”
He grinned at her—tiny rodent teeth. “Florabel, I love ya like a sister, I can talk to you about things I can’t even tell my own wife.”
Who was not present, by the way.
“You’re in a neutral corner,” he was saying, “like a referee. There’s nothin’ I can do for you, except help you sell papers, and you ain’t got no axes to grind with me.”
“That’s true—so why not tell me what you really think? Is Jack Dragna behind these attempts?”
“Even for you, Florabel, that’s one subject on which I ain’t gonna spout off. If I knew the killers were in the next room, I wouldn’t go public with it.”
“Why not?”
“People like me, we settle things in our own way.”
She gestured. “How can you sit in an open restaurant, Mick, with people planning to kill you?”
“Nobody’s gonna do nothin’ as long as you people are around. Even a crazy man wouldn’t take a chance shooting where a reporter might get hit…or a cop, like Cooper here.”
I was just trying to stay out of it, on the sidelines, but this line of reasoning I couldn’t let slide.
“Mickey,” I said, “you really think a shooter’s going to ask to see Florabel’s press pass?” Cohen thought that was funny, and almost everybody laughed—except me and Cooper.
Several at the table were nibbling on pastries; Didi and I had some more coffee. At one point, Niccoli got up to use the men’s room, and Didi and I exchanged whispered remarks about how cordial he’d been to both of us. Florabel, still looking for a story, started questioning the slender, affable Neddie Herbert, who had survived a recent attempt on his life.
Herbert, who went back twenty years with Cohen, had dark curly hair, a pleasant-looking grown-up Dead-End Kid with a Brooklyn accent. He had been waylaid in the wee hours on the sidewalk in front of his apartment house.
“Two guys with .38s emptied their guns at me from the bushes.” Herbert was grinning like a college kid recalling a frat-house prank. “Twelves slugs, the cops recovered—not one hit me!”
“How is that possible?” Florabel asked.
“Ah, I got a instinct for danger—I didn’t even see them two guys, but I sensed ’em right before I heard ’em, and I dropped to the sidewalk right before they started shooting. I crawled onto the stairway, outa range, while their bullets were fallin’ all around.”
“Punks,” Cohen said.
“If they’da had any guts,” Herbert said, “they’da reloaded and moved in close, to get me—but they weaseled and ran.”
Fred came over to the table, and—after some small talk—said, “It’s almost four, folks—near closing time. Mind if I have one of the parking lot attendants fetch your car, Mick?”
“That’d be swell, Fred.”
I said, “Fetch mine, too, would you, Fred?”
And as Rubinski headed off to do that, Cohen grabbed the check, fending off a few feeble protests, and everybody gathered their things. This seemed like a good time for Didi and me to make our exit, as well.
Sherry’s was built up on a slope, so there were a couple steps down from the cashier’s counter to an entryway that opened right out to the street. Cohen strutted down and out, through the glass doors, with Neddie Herbert and the six-three Cooper right behind him. Niccoli and Stompanato were lingering inside, buying chewing gum and cigarettes. Florabel and her husband were lagging, as well, talking to some woman who I gathered was the Mocambo’s press agent.
Then Didi and I were standing on the sidewalk just behind Cohen and his bodyguards, under the Sherry’s canopy, out in the fresh, crisp night air…actually, early morning air. The normally busy Strip was all but deserted, only the occasional car gliding by. Just down a ways, the flashing yellow lights of sawhorses marking road construction blinked lazily.
“I love this time of night,” Didi said, hugging my arm, as we waited behind Cohen and his retinue for the attendants to bring our cars. “So quiet…so still….”
And it was a beautiful night, bright with starlight and neon, palm trees peeking over a low-slung mission-style building across the way, silhouetted against the sky like a decorative wallpaper pattern. Directly across from us, however, a vacant lot with a Blatz beer billboard and a smaller FOR INFORMATION CONCERNING THIS PROPERTY PLEASE CALL sign did spoil the mood, slightly.
Didi—her shoulders and back bare, her silvery gown shimmering with reflected light—was fussing in her little silver purse. “Damn—I’m out of cigarettes.”
“I’ll go back and get you some,” I said.
“Oh, I guess I can wait…”
“Don’t be silly. What is it you smoke?”
“Chesterfields.”
I went back in and up the three or four steps and bought the smokes. Florabel was bending over, picking up all the just-delivered morning editions, stacked near the cashier; her husband was still yakking with that dame from the Mocambo. Stompanato was flirting with a pretty waitress; Niccoli was nowhere in sight.
I headed down the short flight of steps and was coming out the glass doors just as Cohen’s blue Caddy drew up, and the young string-tied attendant got out, and the night split open.
It wasn’t thunder, at least noGod’s variety: this was a twelve-gauge boom accompanied by the cracks of a high-power rifle blasting, a deadly duet echoing across the pavement, shotgun bellow punctuated by the sharp snaps of what might have been an M-1, the sound of which took me back to Guadalcanal. As the fusillade kicked in,
I reacted first and best, diving for the sidewalk, yanking at Didi’s arm as I pitched past, pulling her down, the glass doors behind me shattering in a discordant song. My sportcoat was buttoned, and it took a couple seconds to get at the nine millimeter under my shoulder, and during those slow-motion moments I saw Mickey get clipped, probably by the rifle.
Cohen dropped to one knee, clawing at his right shoulder with his left hand, blood oozing through his fingers, streaming down his expensive suit. Neddie Herbert’s back had been to the street—he was turned toward his boss when the salvo began—and a bullet, courtesy of the rifle, blew through him, even as shotgun pellets riddled his legs. Herbert—the man who’d just been bragging about his instincts for danger—toppled to the sidewalk, screaming.
The Attorney General’s dick, Cooper, had his gun out from under his shoulder when he caught a belly-full of buckshot and tumbled to the cement, yelling, “Shit! Fuck!” Mickey Cohen, on his knees, was saying, I swear to God, “This is a new goddamn suit!”
The rifle snapping over the shotgun blasts continued, as I stayed low and checked Didi who was shaking in fear, a crumpled moaning wreck; her bare back was red-pocked from two pellets, which seemed not to have entered her body, probably bouncing off the pavement and nicking her—but she was scared shitless.
Still, I could tell she was okay, and—staying low, using the Caddy as my shield—I fired the nine millimeter toward that vacant lot, where orange muzzle flash emanated from below that Blatz billboard. The safety glass of the Caddy’s windows spiderwebbed and then burst into tiny particles as the shotgunning continued, and I ducked down, noting that the rifle fire had ceased. Had I nailed one of them?
Then the shotgun stopped, too, and the thunder storm was over, leaving a legacy of pain and terror: Neddie Herbert was shrieking, yammering about not being able to feel his legs, and Didi was weeping, her long brunette hair come undone, trailing down her face and her back like tendrils. Writhing on the sidewalk like a bug on its back, big rugged Cooper had his revolver in one hand, waving it around in a punch-drunk manner; his other hand was clutching his bloody stomach, blood bubbling through his fingers.
I moved out from behind the Caddy, stepping out into the street, gun in hand—ready to dive back if I drew any fire.
But none came.
I wanted to run across there and try to catch up with the bastards, but I knew I had to stay put, at least for a while; if those guys had a car, they might pull around and try to finish the job. And since I had a gun—and hadn’t been wounded—I had to stand guard.
Now time sped up: I saw the parking lot attendant, who had apparently ducked under the car when the shooting started, scramble out from under and back inside the restaurant, glass crunching under his feet. Niccoli ran out, with Stompanato and Fred Rubinski on his tail; Niccoli got in the Caddy, and Cohen—despite his limp bloody arm—used his other arm to haul the big, bleeding Cooper up into the backseat. Stompanato helped and climbed in back with the wounded cop.
Fred yelled, “Don’t worry, Mick—ambulances are on the way! We’ll take care of everybody!”
And the Caddy roared off.
Neddie Herbert couldn’t be moved; he was alternately whimpering and screaming, still going on about not being able to move his legs. Some waitresses wrapped checkered tablecloths around the suffering Neddie, while I helped Didi inside; she said she was cold and I gave her my sportjacket to wear.
Florabel came up to me, her left hand out of sight, behind her; she held out her right palm to show me a flattened deer slug about the size of a half dollar.
“Pretty nasty,” she said.
“You get hit, Florabel?”
“Just bruised—where the sun don’t shine. Hell, I thought it was fireworks, and kids throwing rocks.”
“You reporters have such great instincts.”
As a waitress tended to Didi, Fred took me aside and said, “Real professional job.”
I nodded. “Shotgun to cause chaos, that 30.06 to pinpoint Cohen…only they missed.”
“You okay, Nate?”
“Yeah—I don’t think I even got nicked. Scraped my hands on the sidewalk, is all. Get me a flashlight, Fred.”
“What?”
“Sheriff’s deputies’ll show up pretty soon—I want a look across the way before they get here.”
Fred understood: the sheriff’s office was in Jack Dragna’s pocket, so their work might be more cover-up than investigation.
The vacant lot across the street, near the Blatz billboard, was not what I’d expected, and I immediately knew why they’d chosen this spot. Directly off the sidewalk, an embankment fell to a sunken lot, with cement stairs up the slope providing a perfect place for shooters to perch out of sight. No street or even alley back here, either: just the backyards of houses asleep for the night (lights in those houses were blazing now, however). The assassins could sit on the stairs, unseen, and fire up over the sidewalk, from ideal cover.
“Twelve-gauge,” Fred commented, pointing to a scattering of spent shells in the grass near the steps.
My flashlight found something else. “What’s this?”
Fred bent next to what appeared to a sandwich—a half-eaten sandwich….
“Christ!” Fred said, lifting the partial slice of white bread. “Who eats this shit?”
An ambulance was screaming; so was Neddie Herbert.
“What shit?” I asked.
Fred shuddered. “It’s a fucking sardine sandwich.”
The shooting victims were transferred from the emergency room of the nearest hospital to top-notch Queen of Angels, where the head doctor was Cohen’s personal physician. An entire wing was roped off f the Cohen party, with a pressroom and listening posts for both the LAPD and County Sheriff’s department.
I stayed away. Didi’s wounds were only superficial, so she was never admitted, anyway. Cohen called me from the hospital to thank me for my “quick thinking”; all I had done was throw a few shots in the shooters’ direction, but maybe that had kept the carnage to a minimum. I don’t know.
Neddie Herbert got the best care, but he died anyway, a week later, of uremic poisoning: gunshot wounds in the kidney are a bitch. At that point, Cohen was still in the hospital, but rebounding fast; and the State Attorney’s man, Cooper, was fighting for his life with a bullet in the liver and internal hemorrhaging from wounds in his intestines.
Fred and I both kept our profiles as low as possible—this kind of publicity for his restaurant and our agency was not exactly what we were looking for.
The night after Neddie Herbert’s death in the afternoon, I was waiting in the parking lot of Googie’s, the coffee shop at Sunset and Crescent Heights. Googie’s was the latest of these atomic-type cafes popping up along the Strip like futuristic mushrooms: a slab of the swooping red-painted structural steel roof rose to jut at an angle toward the street, in an off-balance exclamation point brandishing the neon googie’s, and a massive picture window looked out on the Strip as well as the nearby Hollywood hills.
I’d arrived in a blue Ford that belonged to the A-1; but I was standing alongside a burgundy Dodge, an unmarked car used by the two vice cops who made Googie’s their home away from home. Tonight I was wasn’t taking pictures of their various dealings with bookmakers, madams, fellow crooked cops or politicians. This was something of a social call.
I’d been here since just before midnight; and we were into the early morning hours now—in fact, it was after two a.m. when Lieutenant Delbert Potts and Sergeant Rudy Johnson strolled out of the brightly illuminated glass-and-concrete coffee shop, into the less illuminated parking lot. Potts was in another rumpled brown suit—or maybe the same one—and, again, Johnson was better-dressed than his slob partner, his slender frame well-served by a dark gray suit worthy of Michael’s habidashery.
Hell, maybe Cohen provided Johnson’s wardrobe as part of the regular pay-off—at least till Delbert and Rudy got greedy and went after that twenty grand for the recordings they’d made of Mick
ey.
I dropped down into a crouch as they approached, pleased that no other customers had wandered into the parking lot at the same time as my friends from the vice squad. Tucked between the Dodge and the car parked next to it, I was as unseen as Potts and Johnson had been, when they’d crouched on those steps with their shotgun and rifle, waiting for Mickey.
Potts and Johnson were laughing about something—maybe Neddie Herbert’s death—and the fat one was in the lead, fishing in his pants pocket for his car keys. He didn’t see me as I rose from the shadows, swinging an underhand fist that sank six inches into his flabby belly.
Like a matador, I pushed past him, while shoving him to the pavement, where he began puking, and grabbed Johnson by one lapel and slammed his head into the rear rider’s side window. He slid down the side of the car and sat, maybe not unconscious, but good and dazed. Neither one protested—rkiking fat one, or the stunned thin one—as I disarmed them, pitching their revolvers into the darkness, where they skittered across the cement like crabs. I checked their ankles for hideout guns, but they were clean. So to speak.
Potts was still puking when I started kicking the shit out of him. I didn’t go overboard: just five or six good ones, cracking two or three ribs. Pretty soon he stopped throwing up and began to cry, wallowing down there between the cars in his own vomit. Johnson was coming around, and tried to crawl away, but I yanked him back by the collar and slammed him into the hubcap of the Dodge.
Johnson had blood all over his face, and was spitting up a bloody froth, as well as a tooth or two, and he was blubbering like a baby.
Glancing over my shoulder, I saw a couple in their twenties emerging from Googie’s; they walked to the car, on the other side of the lot. They were talking and laughing—presumably not about Neddie Herbert’s death—and went to their Chevy convertible and rolled out of the lot.
I kicked Potts in the side and shook Johnson by the lapels, just to get their attention, and they wept and groaned and moaned while I gave them my little speech, which I’d been working on in my head while I waited for them in the parking lot.
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