Джеймс Эллрой: White Jazz

All I have is the will to remember. Time revoked/fever dreams — I wake up reaching, afraid I’ll forget. Pictures keep the woman young .

L.A., fall 1958 .

Newsprint: link the dots. Names, events — so brutal they beg to be connected. Years down — the story stays dispersed. The names are dead or too guilty to tell .

I’m old, afraid I’ll forget:

I killed innocent men .

I betrayed sacred oaths .

I reaped profit from horror .

Fever — that time burning. I want to go with the music — spin, fall with it .

L.A. Herald-Express , 10/17/58:

Yesterday, a spokesman for the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Los Angeles announced that Federal agents are probing the “gangland infiltrated” Southland prize fight scene, with an eye toward securing grand jury indictments.

U.S. Attorney Welles Noonan, former counsel to the McClellan Rackets Committee, said that Justice Department investigators, acting on information supplied by unnamed informants, are soon to question colorful Los Angeles “mob fringe character” Mickey Cohen. Cohen, now thirteen months out of prison, is rumored to have attempted contract infringement on a number of local prizefighters. Currently being questioned under hotel guard are Reuben Ruiz, bantamweight contender and regular attraction at the Olympic Auditorium, and Sanderline Johnson, former ranked flyweight working as a croupier at a Gardena poker establishment. A Justice Department press release stated that Ruiz and Johnson are “friendly witnesses.” In a personal aside to Herald reporter John Eisler, U.S. Attorney Noonan said: “This investigation is now in its infancy, but we have every hope that it will prove successful. The boxing racket is just that: a racket. Its cancerous tentacles link with other branches of organized crime, and should Federal grand jury indictments result from this probe, then perhaps a general probe of Southern California mob activity will prove to be in order. Witness Johnson has assured my investigators that boxing malfeasance is not the only incriminating information he has been privy to, so perhaps we might start there. For now, though, boxing is our sole focus.”

Some skepticism greeted news of the prize fight probe. “I’ll believe it when the grand jury hands down true bills,” said William F. Degnan, a former FBI agent now retired in Santa Monica. “Two witnesses do not make a successful investigation. And I’m wary of anything announced in the press: it smacks of publicity seeking.”

Mr. Degnan’s sentiments were echoed by a source within the Los Angeles District Attorney’s Office. Queried on the probe, a prosecuting attorney who wishes to remain anonymous stated: “It’s politics pure and simple. Noonan’s friends with [Massachusetts Senator and presidential hopeful] John Kennedy, and I’ve heard he’s going to run for California Attorney General himself in ’60. This probe has to be fuel for that run, because Bob Gallaudet [interim Los Angeles District Attorney expected to be elected to a full term as DA ten days hence] might well be the Republican nominee. You see, what a Federal probe implicitly states is that local police and prosecutors can’t control crime within their own bailiwick. I call Noonan’s grand jury business a political steppingstone.”

U.S. Attorney Noonan, 40, declined comment on the above speculation, but a surprise ally defended him with some vigor. Morton Diskant, civil liberties lawyer and Democratic candidate for Fifth District City Councilman, told this writer: “I distrust the Los Angeles Police Department’s ability to maintain order without infringing on the civil rights of Los Angeles citizens. I distrust the Los Angeles District Attorney’s Office for the same reason. I especially distrust Robert Gallaudet, most specifically for his support of [Fifth District Republican Councilman] Thomas Bethune, my incumbent opponent. Gallaudet’s stand on the Chavez Ravine issue is unconscionable. He wants to evict impoverished Latin Americans from their homes to procure space for an L.A. Dodgers ballpark, a frivolity I deem criminal. Welles Noonan, on the other hand, has proven himself to be both a determined crimefighter and a friend of civil rights. Boxing is a dirty business that renders human beings walking vegetables. I applaud Mr. Noonan for taking the high ground in combatting it.”

U.S. Attorney Noonan responded to Mr. Diskant’s statement. “I appreciate his support, but I do not want partisan political comments to cloud the issue. That issue is boxing and the best way to sever its links to organized crime. The U.S. Attorney’s Office does not seek to supersede the authority of the LAPD or to in any way ridicule or undermine it.”

Meanwhile, the boxing probe continues. Witnesses Ruiz and Johnson are in protective custody at a downtown hotel, guarded by Federal agents and officers on loan from the Los Angeles Police Department: Lieutenant David Klein and Sergeant George Stemmons, Jr.

“Hollywood Cavalcade” Feature, Hush-Hush Magazine, 10/28/58:

Dig it, hepcats: Meyer Harris Cohen, the marvelous, benevolent, malevolent Mickster, has been out of Federal custody since September, ’57. He did 3 to 5 for income tax evasion; his ragtag band dispersed, and the former mob kingpin’s life since then has been one long series of skidmarks across the City of the Fallen Angels, the town he used to rule with bullets, bribes and bullspit bonhomie. Dig, children, and smell the burning rubber of those skids: off the record, on the Q.T. and very Hush-Hush.

April, ’58: former Cohen henchman Johnny Stompanato is shanked by Lana Turner’s daughter, a slinky 14 year old who should have been trying on prom gowns instead of skulking outside Mommy’s bedroom with a knife in her hand. Too bad, Mickster: Johnny was your chief strongarm circa ’49–’51, maybe he could have helped curtail your post prison tailspin. And tsk, tsk: you really shouldn’t have sold Lana’s sin-sational love letters to Johnny — we heard you raided the “Stomp Man’s” Benedict Canyon love shack while Johnny was still in the meat wagon on his way to Slab City.

More sin-tillating scoop on the Mickster:

Under the watchful eye of his parole officer, Mickey has since made attempts to straighten up and skid right. He bought an ice cream parlor that soon became a criminal haven and went bust when parents kept their children away in droves; he financed his own niteclub act, somnambulistic shtick at the Club Largo. Snore City: bum bits on Ike’s golf game, gags about Lana T. and Johnny S., the emphasis on “Oscar,” the Stomp Man’s Academy Award size appendage. And — Desperation City — the Mickster salaamed for Jesus during Billy Graham’s Crusade at the L.A. Coliseum!!!! The chutzpah of Mickey renouncing his Jewish heritage as a P.R. ploy!!!! For shame, Mickster, for shame!!!!! And now the scenario darkens.

Item:

Federal agents are soon to scold Mickey for infringing on the contracts of local prizefight palookas.

Item:

Four of Mickey’s goons — Carmine Ramandelli, Nathan Palevsky, Morris Jahelka and Antoine “The Fish” Guerif — have mysteriously disappeared, presumably snuffed by person or persons unknown, and (very strangely, hepcats) Mickey is keeping his (usually on overdrive) yap shut about it.