by John Buntin
“Honey, I just came into the office and got your message. How’s business?” Jackson asked. He then proceeded to discuss how he planned to slip away from his wife the following day to see Allen. A few minutes later, Allen called another man, to whom she complained bitterly about having to see Jackson.
When Stoker got back to the station, he discovered that “Sergeant Jack son” was Sgt. Elmer Jackson, right-hand man to administrative vice squad head Lt. Rudy Wellpott. From what Stoker had overheard, it sounded like Allen had ensnared Jackson on orders from some unnamed third party, who was probably attempting to manipulate Jackson for some sinister purpose. The next day Stoker called Jackson and told him what he’d overheard. Jackson seemed startled. He assured Stoker that he’d have nothing more to do with Brenda Allen.
Meanwhile, Jimmy Vaus was getting nervous. Wiretapping night after night was risky. Crowded into the basement with Stoker and his partners, Vaus thought they “sounded like a firemen’s brigade.” To minimize the danger of detection, Vaus ran a line from the apartment house down the street to Stoker’s car, where they could listen in. But the night after Stoker’s conversation with Jackson, the new system didn’t seem to be working. There were no calls coming in. As Vaus fiddled with his equipment, he felt a hand grab his arm. He looked up—straight into the face of Brenda Allen. Allen had followed the wire to the police listening post.
Allen unleashed a stream of invective at the policemen. Then she coolly informed Stoker that he was “biting off more than he could chew.” Soon thereafter, Stoker was transferred to Newton Division, where he was assigned to work narcotics. Allen’s display of power disgusted him; nonetheless, Stoker resolved to have nothing more to do with vice. Instead, he concentrated on studying for the upcoming sergeants’ exam, which he aced. In early 1948, he made sergeant—and, to his surprise, was transferred back to the Central Division vice squad. Once again, he was loaned out to Hollywood Division. There he learned that Brenda Allen had opened a brothel—just across the city line, off the Sunset Strip.
Stoker had no intention of letting a jurisdictional inconvenience stop him from making a good arrest. Where the city ended and the county began was famously confusing along the Strip. He decided to go ahead with the raid—and then plead ignorance if he got into trouble. But first, Stoker needed proof about what was happening in Allen’s new establishment. Stoker called a friend, a sporty young executive at “a big Los Angeles firm,” and asked him if he’d like to patronize Hollywood’s most glamorous call house—on urgent city business. The young executive graciously agreed to help out. After calling Allen’s exchange, receiving a call back, and answering her questions, he was invited over. Four beautiful girls were produced for his selection. At the end of the evening, the executive announced his intention to become a regular. He also asked Allen if he could bring some friends from the office on his next visit. The two “friends” Stoker had in mind were rookie officers at Hollywood vice.
But now that the raid was ready, Stoker’s commanding officer hesitated. He told Stoker that he needed to offer the sheriff’s vice squad the chance to make the raid first. When Stoker called on Capt. Carl Pearson, county vice squad commander, Pearson paused, as if he was uncertain about how to react to the news of Stoker’s imminent raid. Then he suggested that Stoker talk to Chief of Police Horrall’s confidential aide on vice matters, Sgt. Guy Rudolph. A meeting was arranged at the offices of private investigator Barney Ruditsky. There Stoker was surprised to encounter an old friend, Jimmy Vaus.
Vaus had recently stopped working for Stoker, explaining that he was too busy starting his new electronics business. But it now emerged that he’d set up a wiretapping substation at Ruditsky’s offices—for Sergeant Rudolph. Rudolph told Stoker that Allen was under surveillance and that it was only a matter of time until arrests were made. Stoker agreed to delay his raid. He thought no more about Vaus’s presence at this meeting. Nor did Sgt. Rudolph look into Vaus’s background. It was a fateful mistake. Had the police bothered to investigate Vaus’s past, they would have discovered that the pudgy, eager-to-please minister’s son with the cherubic face was also a petty criminal, a thief, and a hustler. In short, he was just the sort who might be willing to sell what he knew about the Brenda Allen-administrative vice squad connection to someone else who might be interested in it—someone like Mickey Cohen.
“THE HEART is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked,” said the prophet Jeremiah. “Who can know it?”
Certainly not Jimmy Vaus. Parts of his story were true: He was a preacher’s son, and he did enjoy being with lawmen. Unfortunately, the self-taught electronics wizard also couldn’t seem to stay clear of the law. In the years leading up to World War II, Vaus had been convicted of robbing a man in Beverly Hills—of $14. He had also been arrested for impersonating a police officer. He ran into similar difficulties during the war. Indeed, only his proficiency with a new technology called radar prevented him from being dishonorably discharged for misusing Army funds.
Two facts about Vaus’s character eluded his LAPD interlocutors. The first was his avarice. The second was his growing sense of resentment. Vaus had developed marvelous eavesdropping tools for the police: a fake cane that, when pressed against a door, could detect what was said on the other side; a telescoping rod that could attach a tiny mike to a hotel room window several stories up; a remote wiretapping device that allowed police to monitor conversations from several miles away. However, he hadn’t made any money from these endeavors. At first, the excitement and gratitude shown by the police (plus, no doubt, the thrill of playing policeman) was enough. Vaus was even flown to Washington, D.C., to teach a class on eavesdropping at the FBI. But after a while, Vaus began to feel aggrieved by the lack of payments. As he later put it, “The thrill of the chase was marred by the penny-pinching of the officials.”
Not that Vaus reserved his electronic talents exclusively for the LAPD. He also worked closely with Barney Ruditsky on sensitive assignments for clients such as Errol Flynn (who had a problem with underage girls). So when Harry Grossman in Ruditsky’s office called Vaus in late 1948 and told him “there’s a fellow I want you to meet” with a business proposition, Vaus was naturally curious.
“Who is it?” he asked
“Mickey Cohen,” Grossman replied.
“Mickey Cohen!”
Even then it was a name Vaus knew. His first thought was one of pleasure that someone so important would want to see him.
“Where am I supposed to meet him?” asked Vaus.
“In his haberdashery around the corner from our office.”
“Tell him I’ll drop over.”
Vaus quickly had second thoughts. What if the meeting with Mickey was some kind of trap? Or worse still, what if Vaus’s work for the police department had infringed on one of Mickey’s enterprises and Mickey knew about it?
VAUS HAD NEVER BEEN in Michael’s Haberdashery before. Stepping in, he was dazzled. “The walls were of highly polished walnut and most of the merchandise was behind sliding doors,” wrote Vaus soon after the initial meeting. “Only a few ties, with a silk sheen, lay on the counter. A luxurious robe on a model and a pile of finely woven shirts indicated the garments for sale—at fabulous prices.”
A clerk, “tailored to the nth degree,” was watching Vaus closely, pencil-thin eyebrow raised. Vaus felt intensely conscious of “my not-too-fat wallet.”
“I’m Jimmy Vaus,” he said.
A quick phone call later, and Vaus was being escorted into the rear of the store, to Mickey Cohen’s private office.
A steel-plated door separated Cohen’s office from the haberdashery. Once again, Vaus was struck by “the lavish, expensive fittings.”
“There was a beautiful television set in one corner suspended from the ceiling,” Vaus later recalled. “The lighting was indirect. Toward the back was a circular desk.” There, beneath a huge picture of President Franklin D. Roosevelt, in a large swivel chair, sat Mickey Cohen.
Vaus
was impressed: “He was short, stocky and solidly built. His tailoring was exquisite and his grooming impeccable. Not a hair was out of place. His eyes flashed, sizing one up, and then shifted to something else.”
Eyeing Vaus coldly, the great man finally spoke.
“Vaus, I understand that you’re the man who planted a microphone in my home for the police department. Is that right?”
It was with great relief that Vaus denied this allegation. “I don’t even know where you live!” he responded.
“If there were a microphone in my home, do you think you could locate it and take it out for me?” Mickey asked, sounding slightly less severe.
“Mr. Cohen, you’ve got me all wrong,” Vaus responded. “I’m in the business of putting them in, not of taking them out.”
Mickey again fixed a cold gaze on him. Then he reached into his pocket and pulled out a “reel-sized roll” of hundred-dollar bills—the biggest wad Jimmy Vaus had ever seen. In a slow, deliberate motion, Cohen peeled off one C-note, then a second, then a third. Visions of hand-painted ties, tailored suits, and “chromium accessories for my car” floated through Vaus’s mind. Before he knew it, he was on his way to the Cohen abode, accompanied by Cohen lieutenant Neddie Herbert.
When he entered the house, Vaus had to pause to catch his breath. The contrast between the lifestyles of the gangster and the policeman left him dumbstruck:
No cop had a home this luxurious. It had obviously been decorated by a professional—only they would be this bold in their color combinations. Lemon-yellow, shades of mauve and bold tones of blue harmonized with the gleaming woodwork and indirect lighting.
Confronted with such opulence, Vaus’s moral faculties, which were clearly weak to begin with, failed him entirely. “It would have been very hard to persuade a man that it was wrong to have the money sufficient to buy these creature comforts,” Vaus concluded. He rushed back to his workshop and spent the night feverishly tinkering with an ultrasensitive pickup coil and a high-gain amplifier that he hoped would be capable of detecting the tiny electromagnetic current of a small bug. The following day Vaus returned to the Cohen abode on Moreno Avenue. After carefully sweeping the house, he detected a small electrical current. A carpenter was called in to cut a hole in the floor. Vaus lowered himself into the space under the house and soon found a microphone and amplifier connected to a wire. He disconnected it with a sickening feeling, for he knew that as he did so someone at the listening end was hearing their bug go dead—and that that person was a cop. Instead, he thought about what he’d buy with Mickey’s money.
Neddie Herbert was delighted with Vaus’s work. He asked him to stay so he could show Mickey the bug. Two hours later, when Cohen appeared, Vaus explained where and how he’d found the listening device. Mickey pulled out the roll again and peeled off a few more C-notes—a bonus for his good work. Then he offered Vaus a job.
It was a delicate moment.
Even the covetous wiretapper understood that working for both the LAPD and the city’s top organized-crime boss would be a dicey proposition. But when Cohen explained what he had in mind—no lawbreaking, just consulting work—Vaus decided that working for the police and for the city’s leading gangster need not be mutually exclusive. After all, was removing a bug placed illegally in Mickey Cohen’s house really worse than nabbing some poor john by helping the vice squad mike his hotel room? Or breaking into a basement to plant an illegal bug? So he took the job—and took on a double life.
For eight months, Vaus pulled it off. Indeed, he thrived. With Mickey’s backing, Vaus opened an electronics shop in the same Sunset Strip complex that housed Cohen’s haberdashery and Cohen henchman “Happy” Meltzer’s jewelry shop. Of course, it didn’t last. By early 1949, Mickey had become fed up with what he saw as efforts by the vice squad to extort money from him. When police arrested “Happy” Meltzer, Cohen decided to hit back. His tool was Jimmy Vaus.
Vaus had told Cohen about the wiretaps he had done for Sergeant Stoker and about the conversations he’d overheard between Sergeant Jackson and Brenda Allen. Now he offered to help Mickey secure recordings he could use against the police. Vaus’s idea was that Cohen should arrange a meeting with Lieutenant Wellpot and Sergeant Jackson at which he, Vaus, would record their extortion attempt. Mickey agreed at once. Soon after Meltzer’s arrest, he contacted Jackson and Wellpott and asked to meet the two officers in his car, just off the 9000 block of Sunset. Jackson and Wellpot arrived in good spirits, presumably because they expected Mickey to agree to a payoff. They left angry when he didn’t. Mickey, however, was delighted. Thanks to Vaus’s efforts, Cohen now had clear evidence that the LAPD was trying to blackmail him—or so he believed. Now Mickey decided to put this evidence before the public—by bringing Vaus and his incriminating tapes to light at Meltzer’s trial, which was set to commence on May 5, 1949.
Chief Horrall’s boys had pushed Mickey Cohen too far, and now they would pay.
MICKEY COHEN wasn’t the only person stalking Chief Horrall and the corrupt clique around him. So was Bill Parker.
In August 1947, Parker finally made inspector and was moved first to Hollywood Division and then to the San Fernando Valley bureau—far removed from the power centers in the department. But Bill Parker wasn’t entirely contained. As one of the few lawyers in the department and as the architect of Section 202, Parker was a natural choice to serve as the prosecutor for the personnel bureau in trial board hearings. It was a position that gave Parker access to some of the most sensitive information in the department. He soon ran across the name of a certain sergeant—Charlie Stoker. Stoker (along with several members of Hollywood vice) had been involved in an altercation at the Gali-Gali cocktail lounge in Hollywood. A few months later, Stoker received a call from Parker, who wanted to meet with him. Stoker knew the inspector only by reputation—“a highly ambitious man,” thought Stoker. Stoker, who was Catholic, also knew that Parker was known for looking out for Catholics on the force. So he agreed. But when the two men met, it wasn’t the Gali-Gali cocktail lounge Parker wanted to discuss. It was the Hollywood vice squad.
Stoker allowed as to how he’d seen some questionable behavior.
Parker wasn’t surprised. The entire unit was riddled with corruption, he told Stoker. He then proceeded to run down a list of specific instances of drunkenness, brutality, and extortion. Parker further informed Stoker that he intended to do everything he could to see that the current squad was dismissed. If Stoker was willing to testify to malfeasance on the squad, Parker allegedly promised he would see to it that Stoker headed the next Hollywood vice squad.
Stoker felt uneasy about betraying fellow officers, even ones who might have broken the law. Parker, Stoker concluded, “was a man compounded out of sheer ruthlessness, a man who would ride rough shod over anyone who got in the way of his becoming Chief of Police.” But he had to concede “that much of what [Parker] had told me about the vice, gambling and pay-off picture in Los Angeles was true.”
Nonetheless, he ducked the request, saying that he could not testify to anything about which he personally was not 100 percent certain, particularly if it concerned other officers. But Stoker would not stay silent for long.
The trial of “Happy” Meltzer began on May 5. Meltzer’s defense, as presented by lead defense attorney Sam Rummel, was simple: “We will prove,” declaimed Rummel, “that for a period of one and a half years before Meltzer’s arrest, Lieutenant Rudy Wellpot and Sergeant Elmer V. Jackson kept up a constant extortion of Mickey Cohen.” The Meltzer case, he charged, was “a frame-up” that resulted from Cohen’s refusal to pay off a shakedown demand. Rummel then went on to relate a lengthy and seemingly fantastical story of late-night meetings between Cohen and Jackson in the backs of cars parked off the Sunset Strip, car chases through Beverly Hills, and B-girl payoffs down on Main Street.
As sensational as it sounded, Rummel’s opening statement wasn’t particularly strong. But when Rummel announced that “sound engineer J. Arthur Vaus�
�� had recordings that would tie Sergeant Jackson to the notorious Hollywood prostitute Brenda Allen and substantiate the defense’s charges that the police had tried to extort money from Cohen, the county grand jury took notice. It decided to open an investigation into the matter—after the upcoming mayoral elections.
Several weeks before the election, Parker called again and requested another meeting. Stoker agreed. After some throat-clearing about how they were both Catholics and both World War II veterans, Parker got to the point: What did Vaus know about the Brenda Allen investigation in Hollywood?
Stoker then told Parker his story—without, however, revealing that he had already spoken to the grand jury. According to Stoker, Parker listened encouragingly and then told the sergeant what he knew. There were several sources of corruption in the police administration, he said. One, controlled by Sgt. Guy Rudolph, Chief Horrall’s confidential aide, had the lottery and the numbers rackets. A second source of corruption was Captain Tucker, commander of the elite “Metro” division, which, according to Stoker’s account of his conversation with Parker, focused on milking Chinatown and L.A.’s prostitutes for the police department and for the city council. Finally there were Assistant Chief of Police Joe Reed, Lieutenant Wellpot, and Sergeant Jackson. Stoker claimed that Mayor Bowron was clean but also “a stupid ass, who had no idea what was going on.”
Why was Parker (allegedly) telling him this?[12] Stoker claimed that Parker wanted him to go to the grand jury and present his own information—and Parker’s—to them. With an election just weeks away, Parker continued, when the news leaked, Mayor Bowron would be forced to oust Chief Horrall and Assistant Chief Reed. Everyone knew “damned good and well” that he would be the logical man to step into Horrall’s shoes.