“I said you would make the hit!” he told Cohen. “Why the hell didn’t you go to Montreal?”
“Those Canuck Mounties got a line on me. I was getting hot. I thought the best thing for me to do was to get the hell out of town. What good would it have been for me to get picked up?”
“Okay, okay,” Siegel shouted. “I’ll call Weiss and tell him the story. You sure Greenberg is in Montreal?”
“Yeah. First class info.”
Siegel called Weiss and relayed Cohen’s information. Weiss decided to make the hit himself and took a train to Montreal.
Now, Greenberg was no dunce. He knew from his own experience in the mob that anyone who threatened to talk, whether he did so or not in the end, signed his death warrant. He had to move fast. The day before Weiss arrived in Montreal, Greenberg flew the coop. He went to Detroit. The mob there called New York and was told to keep Big Greenie on hand. “We’ll send a couple of boys out there.”
Weiss called Siegel and told him Greenberg was in Detroit.
“Good,” Siegel said. “I’ll send Cohen and another man there today. He won’t miss this time.”
The Detroit mob was too cordial to Greenberg. He figured they must have checked with New York. He decided to blow town and go to Los Angeles! Cohen and Greenberg must have passed each other somewhere west of Chicago.
Cohen returned to Los Angeles. He was fuming. “What the hell kind of wild goose chase are you sending me, Ben? Every time I go to where you tell me Greenberg is, he isn’t!”
Siegel laughed. The situation had its humorous side. “Cool off, Mickey. Greenberg blew in town a couple of days ago. We’ve got him lined up.”
“What now?” Cohen asked.
“I’ve got Whitey Krakow casing Greenberg. He’ll set him up and we’ll take him.”
Krakow’s report was to the effect that Greenberg stayed put. He was holed up in an apartment house near suburban Bel Air. The only time he went out was for a nightly drive to get a newspaper. On the evening of November 22, Thanksgiving Eve, Big Greenie went out for his newspaper.
Siegel and Frankie Carbo were parked in Siegel’s Cadillac at the corner of Yucca Street. Another car with two men in it was parked a half block from Siegel’s Caddy. One of the men in the second car was Allie Tennenbaum. The other man in the car was never named. The grapevine said it was Cohen.
Greenberg drove into Yucca Street and parked. It was the end of the road.
Tennenbaum was driven to San Francisco, where he took a plane back to New York.
Bugsy Siegel and Frankie Carbo were indicted for the Greenberg killing. Lepke Buchalter and Mendy Weiss were also indicted.
Siegel was a wild man in jail. He cursed Weiss day and night. However, he couldn’t allow his vast business enterprises to fall so he named Jack Dragna and Mickey Cohen to handle things. Cohen now made headway.
He opened up half a dozen handbooks and ran a floating crap game. He also cut himself in on other operations. At this time he met arid wooed LaVonne Weaver, a beautiful redheaded Hollywood model, and moved his bride into a ritzy apartment. He was on his way. He sought out the movie crowd, starlets, stars, directors, producers, wined and dined them. He was a big shot and reveled in it. What he didn’t know was that the movie crowd despised him. He was too crude, too loud, too brazen.
The Greenberg murder case fizzled and Siegel and Carbo were released. Siegel was called to New York for a conference. He told Dragna and Cohen to keep things running. Smoothly. No more rough stuff for a while.
Dragna, an old-line Sicilian chief, stuck in Cohen’s craw. Dragna wanted things run peacefully, just as Siegel ordered but Cohen was all for the hustle, to move things, move up, take in everything he could. Joe and Freddy Sica, two tough hoods, Mafia oriented, kept peace between the two chiefs. The brothers had, for some reason, become close to Cohen, probably because they felt he was a comer and Dragna a has been although the Sicas were on Dragna’s payroll.
Mickey Cohen now began building up his own mob. He brought Frankie Niccoli, Happy Meltzer, Hooky Rothman, a junkie, and a dozen other tough hoods. Mickey used his connections with the Mayfield Mob of Cleveland to increase his hold on Los Angeles. Dragna knew he could not fight against such strength. Men like Louis Rothkopf, Big Al Polizzi, Gameboy Miller, Mushy Wexler, and Tommy McGinty had connections with all the mobs, from coast to coast. Why they backed Cohen and what they saw in him remains a mystery to this day.
Mickey Cohen kept the lines hot to the Hollenden Hotel in Cleveland, headquarters of the Mayfield Mob. Tony Milano, a very shrewd and intelligent member of the mob censured Cohen. In a confidential conversation with Forrest Allen of the Cleveland Press, Milano was openly critical of Cohen.
“Mickey,” Milano said, “gets himself in trouble, and he gets others into a mess by using phones on every occasion. He can’t write very well, or not at all, so he just grabs a phone and calls everybody in town. I gave my boys orders to stay away from him. He’s big trouble.”
Cohen moved away gradually from Jack Dragna and built his own territory in Los Angeles and Hollywood, a territory he held as inviolable. He was ruthless enforcing his mandates with beatings, mayhem, and the gun. On May 15, 1945, Cohen murdered Maxie Shaman.
Cohen’s story was that Shaman, a bookie, came into his paint store which Cohen used as a front for his betting and gambling operations, and threatened to kill him. Shaman reached for his gun but Cohen beat him to it, shooting him three times with a .38 pistol. Cohen turned himself into the police.
He said, “The guy just went nuts. He tried to muscle me. I don’t know what the hell got into him.”
Cohen never was known as a guy with a lightning draw but here he wanted everyone to believe he was a regular Billy The Kid, Doc Holliday, and Johnny Ringo all rolled into one.
The truth is that Maxie Shaman’s brother Joe, another bookie, had laid off $15,000 worth of horse bets with Cohen. The horses won and Cohen refused to pay off. Joe demanded his money or else and Cohen beat him up. Joe Shaman came back the second time and demanded his money and Cohen shot him. Maxie Shaman, a little tougher than his brother, then came to the paint store and argued with Cohen about the payoff. Maxie threatened to call the boys in Chicago and tell them about the welsh. That was when Cohen shot and killed him. Maxie Shaman didn’t have a gun on him. After Cohen shot him he put another gun in Shaman’s hand.
The coroner’s jury recommended that Cohen be tried for murder, but the district attorney felt there was insufficient evidence to gain a guilty verdict and Cohen was released. The verdict went to Cohen’s head. He now felt that he could get away with anything.
A short time later, Cohen and Joe Sica worked over Russell Brophy, West Coast representative for Continental Press, the racing wire service controlled by Ragen, Brophy’s father-in-law. Cohen and Sica beat Brophy unmercifully with their fists. Brophy charged them with the beating. Cohen and Sica were convicted of assault and paid their fines.
At this time, Bugsy Siegel turned over all his Los Angeles holdings, in escrow, to Jack Dragna and Mickey Cohen and went to Las Vegas, where he wanted to open a sumptuous hotel and gambling casino. It was to become the first of the fabulous hotels on the Strip, the famous Flamingo. It was to be Siegel’s swan song.
As soon as Siegel left Los Angeles, Cohen turned his attention to strengthening his position and holdings. He invited Louis “Babe” Triscaro, who was to become a valued lieutenant of teamster Boss Jimmy Hoffa in Ohio, and “High Pockets.” Farrinaci, a member of the Mayfield Road mob to visit him in his home. He also invited Louis Rothkopf and his wife Blanche. Blanche and LaVonne became close friends, and that friendship brought Rothkopf and Cohen closer.