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.
“Listen to me, you simple fuckers—you can shoot at Mickey Cohen and his Dwarfs all you want. I really do not give a flying shit. But you shot at me and my date, and a copper too, and that pisses me off. Plus, you shot up the front of my partner’s restaurant.”
Potts tried to say something, but it was unintelligible; “mercy” was in there, somewhere. Johnson was whimpering, holding up his blood-smeared hands like this was a stick-up.
“Shut-up,” I said, “both of you…. I don’t care what you or Dragna or any gangster or bent fucking cop does out here in Make-believe-ville. I live in Chicago, and I’m going back tomorrow. If you take any steps against me, or Fred Rubinski, or if you put innocent people in the path of your fucking war again, I will talk to my Chicago friends…and you will have an accident. Maybe you’ll get run down by a milk truck, maybe a safe’ll fall on you. Maybe you’ll miss a turn off a cliff. My friends are creative.”
Through his bloody bubbles, Johnson said, “Okay, Heller…okay!”
“By the way, I have photos of you boys taking pay-offs from a fine cross section of L.A.’s sleazy citizenry. Anything happens to me—if I wake up with a goddamn hangnail—those photos go to Jim Richardson at the Examiner, with a duplicate batch to Florabel Muir. Got it?”
Nobody said anything. I kicked Potts in the ass, and he yelped, “Got it!”
“Got it, got it, got it!” Johnson said, backing up against the hubcap, patting the air with his palms.
“We’re almost done—just one question…. Was Stompanato in on it, or was Niccoli your only tip-off man?”
Johnson coughed, getting blood on his chin. “Ni-Niccoli…just Niccoli.”
“He wanted you to take out the Davis dame, right? That was part of the deal?”
Johnson nodded. So did Potts, who was on his belly, and to see me had to look over his shoulder, puke rolling down his cheeks like a bad complexion that had started to melt.
Just the sight of them disgusted me, and my hand drifted toward my nine millimeter in the shoulder holster. “Or fuck…maybe I should kill you bastards….”
They both shouted “no!” and Potts began to cry again.
Laughing to myself, I returned to the agency’s Ford. These L.A. cops were a bunch of pansies; if this were Chicago, I’d have been dead by now.
In the aftermath of the shoot-out at Sherry’s, various political heads rolled, including Attorney General Fred Howser’s, and several trials took place (Cohen acquitted on various charges), as well as a Grand Jury inquiry into police and political corruption. Potts and Johnson were acquitted of corruption charges, and despite much talk in the press of damning wire recordings in the possession of both sides, no such recordings were entered as evidence in any trial, though Cohen’s lawyer was murdered on the eve of a trial in which those recordings were supposed to figure.
And the unsuccessful attempts on Cohen’s life continued, notably a bombing of his house, which he and his wife and his bull terrier survived without scratches. But no more civilians were put in harm’s way, and no repercussions were felt by either Fred Rubinski or myself.
A few months after Mickey Cohen got out of the hospital, his longtime crony Frank Niccoli—who he’d known since Cleveland days—turned up missing. Suspicions that Niccoli may have been a stool pigeon removed by Mickey himself were offset by Cohen losing $25,000 bail money he’d put up for Niccoli on an unrelated beef.
The next summer, I ran into Cohen at Sherry’s—or actually, I was just coming out of Sherry’s, a date on my arm; another cool, starlit night, around two a.m., the major difference this time being the starlet was a blonde. Mickey and Johnny Stompanato and two more Dwarfs were on their way in. We paused under the canopy.
The rodent grin flashed between five-o’clock-shadowed cheeks. “Nate! Here we are at the scene of the crime—like old times.”
“I hope not, Mickey.”
“You look good. You look swell.”
“That’s a nice suit, Mickey.”
“Stop by Michael’s—I’ll fix you up…on the house. Still owe you a favor for whispering in my ear about…you know.”
“Forget it.”
He leaned in, sotto voce. “New girl?”
“Pretty new.”
“You hear who Didi Davis is dating these days?”
“No.”
“That State’s Attorney cop—Cooper!”
I smiled. “Hadn’t heard that.”
“Yeah, he finally got the bullet removed outa his liver, the other day. My doc came up with some new treatment, makes liver cells replace themselves or somethin’…. All on my tab, of course.”
My date tightened her grip on my arm; maybe she recognized Cohen and was nervous about the company I was keeping.
So I said, “Well, Mick, better let you and your boys go on in for your coffee and pastries…before somebody starts shooting at us again.”
He laughed heartily and even shook hands with me—which meant he would have to go right in and wash up—but first, leaning in close enough for me to whiff his expensive cologne, he said, “Be sure to say hello to Frankie, since you’re in the neighborhood.”
“What do you mean?”
Actually, I knew he meant Frankie Niccoli, but wasn’t getting the rest of his drift….
Cohen nodded down the Strip. “Remember that road construction they was doin’, the night we got hit? There’s a nice new stretch of concrete there, now. You oughta try it out.”
And Mickey and his boys went inside.
As for me, my latest starlet at my side, I had the parking lot attendant fetch my wheels, and soon I was driving right over that fresh patch of pavement, with pleasure.
AUTHOR’S NOTE
Most of the characters in this fact-based story appear under their real names; several—notably, Fred Rubinski, Didi Davis, Delbert Potts and Rudy Johnson—are fictional but have real-life counterparts. Research sources included numerous true-crime magazine articles and the following books: Death in Paradise (1998), Tony Blanche and Brad Schreiber; Headline Happy (1950), Florabel Muir; Hoodlums—Los Angeles (1959), Ted Prager and Larry Craft; The Last Mafioso (1981), Ovid DeMaris; Mickey Cohen: In My Own Words (1975), as told to John Peer Nugent; Mickey Cohen: Mobster (1973); Sins of the City (1999), Jim Heimann; Thicker’n Thieves (1951), Charles Stoker; and Why I Quit Syndicated Crime (1951), Jim Vaus as told to D.C. Haskin.
Original publication:
“Kaddish for the Kid,” Private Eyes (1998)
“The Blonde Tigress,” Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine (2008)
“Private Consultation,” Justice for Hire (1990)
“The Perfect Crime,” Raymond Chandler’s Phillip Marlowe: A Centennial Celebration, 1988 (story originally featuring Marlowe, revised to feature Heller in Kisses of Death, 2001)
“House Call,” Mean Streets (1986)
“Marble Mildred,” Eye for Justice (1988)
“The Strawberry Teardrop,” The Eyes Have It (1984)
“Scrap,” The Black Lizard Anthology of Crime Fiction (1987)
“Natural Death, Inc.,” Diagnosis Dead (1999)
“Screwball,” The Shamus Game (2000)
“That Kind of Nag,” Murder at the Racetrack (2006)
“Unreasonable Doubt,” And the Dying is Easy (2001)
“Shoot-out on Sunset,” Mystery Street (2001)
Photo
Credit: Bamford Studio
Max Allan Collins has earned fifteen Private Eye Writers of America “Shamus” nominations, winning for his Nathan Heller novels, True Detective and Stolen Away, and receiving the PWA life achievement award, the Eye. His graphic novel, Road to Perdition, which is the basis of the Academy Award-winning film starring Tom Hanks, was followed by two novels, Road to Purgatory and Road to Paradise. His suspense series include Quarry, Nolan, Mallory, and Eliot Ness, and his numerous comics credits include the syndicated Dick Tracy and his own Ms. Tree. He has written and directed four feature films and two documentaries. His other produced screenplays include “The Expert,” an HBO World Premiere. His coffee-table book The History of Mystery received nominations for every major mystery award and Men’s Adventure Magazines won the Anthony Award. Collins lives in Muscatine, Iowa, with his wife, writer Barbara Collins. They have collaborated on seven novels and numerous short stories, and are currently writing the “Trash ’n’ Treasures” mysteries.
Chicago Lightning : The Collected Nathan Heller Short Stories Page 33