November ’51: adios Mickey, pack a toothbrush and don’t forget to write. Before catching the McNeil Island Express, the Mickster informs his number two man, Morris Jahelka, that he (Mo) will remain titular boss of Kingdom Cohen, which Mickey has “long-term loan” divested to various legit, non-criminal businessmen that he trusts, to be quietly run by out-of-town muscle on a drastically scaled-down basis. Mickey may come off like a vicious buffoon, but Mrs. Cohen’s little boy has a head on his simian shoulders.
Are you on our wavelength so far, dear reader? Yes? Good, now listen even more closely.
Mickey languishes in his cell, living the prison life of Riley, and time goes by. The Mick gets percentage fees from his “franchise holders,” funneled straight to Swiss bank accounts, and when he’s paroled he’ll get “giveback fees” and have Kingdom Cohen returned to him on a platter. He’ll rebuild his evil empire and happy days will be here again.
Such is the power of the ubiquitous Mickey C. that for several years no upstart gangsters try to crash his lulled-down, on-siesta rackets. Jack “The Enforcer” Whalen, however, a well-known thug/gambler, somehow knows of Mickey’s plan to let sleeping dogs snooze while he’s stuck in stir and the police are gratefully twiddling their thumbs with no mobster nests to swat. Whalen does not attack the diminutized Kingdom Cohen–he simply builds up a rival, strictly bookmaking kingdom with no fear of reprisals.
Meanwhile, what has happened to some of the Mickster’s chief goons? Well, nebbish-like Mo Jahelka keeps triplicate sets of books for the franchise holders, whiz at figures that he is, and Davey Goldman, stuck in stir with his boss, walks Mickey Cohen, Jr., around the McNeil Island yard. Abe Teitlebaum, Cohen muscle goon, owns a delicatessen that features greasy sandwiches named after Borscht Belt comedians, and Lee Vachss, Mr. Icepick To The Ear, sells patent medicine. _Our_ favorite Mickey misanthrope, Johnny Stompanato (sometimes known as “Oscar” because of his Academy Award–size appendage), nurses a long-term case of the hots for Lana Turner, and may have returned to his old pre-Cohen ways: running blackmail/extortion rackets. Assuming that Whalen and Mickey don’t collide upon the Mick’s release, things look hunky-dory and copacetic, don’t they? Gangland amity all around?
Perhaps _no_.
Item: in August of 1954, John Fisher Diskant, an alleged Cohen franchise holder, was gunned down outside a motel in Culver City. No suspects, no arrests, current disposition: the case reposes in the open file of the Culver City P.D.
Item: May 1955: two alleged Cohen prostitution bosses, franchise holders both–Nathan Janklow and George Palevsky–are gunned down outside the Torch Song Tavern in Riverside. No suspects, no arrests, current disposition: the Riverside County sheriff says case closed due to lack of evidence.
Item: July 1956: Walker Ted Turow, known drug peddler who had recently stated his desire to “push white horse very large and become a bonaroo racketeer” is found shot to death at his pad in San Pedro. You guessed it: no clues, no suspects, no arrests, current disposition with the LAPD’s Harbor Division: open file, we’re not holding our breath.
Now, dig it, children: all four of these gang-connected or would be gang-connected chumps were shot dead by three-man trigger gangs. The cases were barely investigated because the respective investigating agencies considered the victims lowlifes whose deaths did not merit justice. We wish we could say that ballistics reports indicate that the same guns were used for all three shootings, but they weren’t–although .30-30 ripples pistols were the killers’ M.O. all three times. And we at _Hush-Hush_ know that no interagency effort has been launched to catch the killers. In fact, we at _Hush-Hush_ are the first even to connect the crimes in theory. Tsk, tsk. We _do_ know that Jack Whalen and his chief factotums are alibied up tight as a crab’s pincer for the times of the killings and that Mickey C. and Davey G. have been questioned and have no idea who the bad boys are. Intriguing, right, dear reader? So far, no overt moves have been made to take over siesta time Kingdom Cohen, but we have word that Mickey minion Morris Jahelka has packed up and moved to Florida, scared witless . .