by David Bishop
“That oughta kill the tobacco industry, you think?”
“I don’t know,” Johnny retorted. “I’m reading that our Congress is discussing a bill to establish an export corporation to buy surplus tobacco and sell it overseas.”
“Why the hell should the government get into buying and selling a dangerous product?”
Johnny blew out a couple of smoke rings. I watched one rise until its shape lost its crispness, the evening wind scattering the remains.
“Look at me,” Breeze said. “I told you about the study and its conclusions to be reported and here I am smoking. Each of us thinks we are above it somehow. That it doesn’t apply to us, just to everyone else.”
“Yeah, but why the government?”
“Tobacco’s a big business, which means big donations for political campaigns. The party that doesn’t play ball with tobacco could lose the vote in the south.”
“Johnny, may I ask you a personal question?”
He nodded. “No guarantee I’ll answer, but go ahead.”
“Why are you in the rackets? I mean, you’re not one of the thick-headed thugs. You’re a smart guy. Self-educated mostly from what I’ve read. You gotta know you’re headed for a bad ending, one way or another.”
“I’ll give ya a short answer. To paraphrase what a reporter claims Willie Sutton said when asked why he robs banks, ‘Banks is where the money is.’ ” The world’s got plenty of people. A few less won’t change anything other than setting me up for life. When I have enough, it’ll be quitting time.”
“And how much is enough? And when is the right time?”
“Ah, Mr. Kile, those are the real questions, aren’t they?”
Right then, Frances walked through Dave’s Famous Door and out into the parking lot. Callie came out a few strides behind. Frances took Johnny’s arm and tugged her man toward his car.
Aside from being a coldblooded and ruthless killer, Johnny Breeze was an interesting man. Short on conscience, but long on brains. It’s what gave him the edge over his prey. Thin lines separated those who wouldn’t kill from those who, given the necessary circumstance, would do so, and still again from the few like Johnny who saw dropping a life as a means of picking up a paycheck.
Callie looked at me with sad eyes. She took my hand and put her other hand on top of my shoulder. The pressure suggested she was fighting to stay on her feet, struggling to retain control of herself. We watched them drive away. Callie headed toward our car, but I stopped her.
“I know you feel lousy, honey. I understand, but we have some people to thank or you would have never gotten this chance to talk with your sister.”
Callie pursed her lips and nodded. “Can we go down and walk on the beach after that?”
“I’d like that.”
Chapter Sixteen
Near the edge of the tide, Callie and I sat on a sun bleached log the surf had tossed up on the beach for our use. We stirred our feet in the sand while she told me what she and Frances had talked about.
“Without Mr. Cohen I would not have gotten to talk with Frances. I don’t understand, Matt. The papers make Cohen out to be a mean and vicious killer, a criminal without compunction.”
“Mickey, I suspect, is a deeper man than what he lets others see. His purposes are served by his subscribing to the image the public holds of him. We all do that to varying degrees. His being friends with Reverend Billy Graham suggests there may be more to Mickey than meets the eye.”
“Or, that Reverend Graham desperately wants to believe that everyone has a better part of themselves hidden away.”
“Life is complicated, Callie. So are people. Mickey will kill for profit or revenge or even to do a favor, that’s what kept Johnny in line tonight. Mickey also sees himself as a standup guy. If he likes you, he helps you. And he expects you to help him in return.”
“What does Mickey Cohen expect you to do for him?”
I told Callie about carrying Mickey’s offer to Tony Cornero.
“But that was before tonight. What else is he going to expect?”
“Your guess is as good as mine. We could find out tomorrow, or years from tomorrow. He won’t forget I owe him a favor and he won’t waste it.”
After walking a good distance, kicking at the surf now and then, Callie stopped and looked up. “It’s been said that the day you die, your name is written on a cloud. Do you think that’s true? That up there, somewhere, when Frances dies there will be such a cloud?”
“If it isn’t true it ought to be. But let’s not get ahead of ourselves. Frances isn’t dead and there is nothing that says she soon will be.”
We kept walking, stepping into the easy waves that circled around as they ran out of thrust before sliding back to the sea. Once there, these dying wet embers will be re-energized to again approach our feet. Neither of us said anything further, but we both knew her sister was with a guy in a business where the grim reaper was a coworker.
* * *
NEWSFLASH, SPECIAL EDITION
Trouble on the High Seas - May, 1939
Tony Cornero won in court and he and his crew are back on the Rex doing business for your dining and gambling pleasure—the Rex was beyond the jurisdiction of California and Los Angeles law. But, those who had their sights set on ending Cornero’s operation had more arrows in their quiver.
Earlier today, District Attorney Fitts took steps to prevent you and me from reaching the Rex. Fitts has choked off the water taxi service operated from the Santa Monica Pier. So, except for the best swimmers among us plus the few of us with a sufficient boat of our own, we aren’t able to get to the Rex. I have learned that Cornero will, in the morning, tow the S.S. Rex to a spot off Redondo Beach and be back in business tomorrow night or the night following.
Good night Mr. and Mrs. Los Angeles and all the gambling ships at sea… . Good Luck, Suckers. Matt Kile
* * *
The month of May came to a close without anything highly newsworthy other than my winning twenty-five thousand dollars on the Santa Anita Handicap. The tip from Cohen had come through like a sure thing. That was newsworthy, but not something I wanted to put in my column. I quietly added my haul to my bank account. There was a little pang of guilt, but I reasoned that had I not made the bet nothing different would have happened other than I wouldn’t have held a winning ticket.
Am I rationalizing? You bet.
Do I have the twenty-five large? You bet.
Then I went by to have some ice cream with the Mickster and thank him for the tip. He said he might have another in a few weeks. I didn’t say no, but I wouldn’t bring it up again. Yeah, I was playing a little game with myself. Reasoning that if I didn’t solicit these tips or participate in arranging these things, I somehow held onto an inch more of innocence. Each of us must decide which lines we will cross in pursuit of worldly riches. The line about getting a tip on a maybe-fixed horserace was apparently a line I was willing to cross. I would never be proud of doing so, but I was enriched by doing so. That’s life, I guess.
The haul from the race already won would buy a nice home, if the need for one came up. I rented and that was good enough as long as I was the only consideration. But that part of my story is far from over.
Callie and I continued to spend a lot of time together, and her father and I got better acquainted. On the job, I covered the ending of the Captain Earle E. Kynette attempted murder trial. Kynette got two years to life. To me, the sentence seemed light, but convicting a police detective of corruption in the form of attempted murder is, in itself, a major conviction.
As summer slid into fall the recall of Mayor Frank Shaw looked more and more like a sure thing. Then on September sixteenth 1938, the voters did recall Mayor Frank Shaw, the first mayor of a major American city to be removed for corruption. About ten days later, the voter’s choice, former Judge Fletcher Bowron, took the oath of office as the thirty-fifth mayor of Los Angeles.
Two months later, James Two-gun Davis left as Los Angeles Chi
ef of Police. Davis had been appointed by Mayor Shaw as a political favor to the Chandler family who owned and operated the Los Angeles Times. Much of the corruption within the LAPD swirled around Chief Davis and the special squads he created to help Chandler and others in the business community control union organizers, and discourage minorities from moving into Los Angeles. James Davis, during his tenure as police chief had, among other offenses, dispatched over one hundred police officers far outside their Los Angeles jurisdiction to turn away indigents who tried to cross the borders to enter California, if they could not provide proof of California residency.
At that point, the only remaining major official in Los Angeles who carried over from the Shaw administration was Los Angeles District Attorney Buron Fitts.
All this hullaballoo cast a still darker shadow over my pal, Tony Cornero. Mayor Bowron had run on a cleanup the city ticket and generally the word was that he meant it. While former Mayor Frank Shaw was clearly corrupt, the city now had a mayor who would work with D.A.Fitts and Earl Warren in the state capitol to rid the seas along California of the infamous gambling ships. The debate over the authority or lack of authority for California to declare these ships as illegal operations under the laws of California dominated the news as Christmas 1938 approached and the nation rolled into the New Year of 1939.
Is Santa Monica Water a Bay or a Bight? That is the Question.
Tony Cornero and his lawyers claim that the waters that come into Santa Monica constitute a bight which, without getting too technical, is the curve in a shoreline. Thus if the shore curves the water of the ocean is just that: ocean. California Attorney General, Earl Warren, Los Angeles Mayor, Fletcher Bowron, and others claim the same waters are a bay which is a low indentation in the shoreline. Thus, if the shoreline is indented, the land continues to exist below the water. This take on it includes the position that the true ocean begins only beyond the submerged shore and out to that point is subject to California laws and regulations.
Then there are those who say that bay and bight are synonymous and mean the same thing. Thus, the waters off Santa Monica are not one or the other but, in essence, both.
These machinations have done little to dampen the enthusiasms of the loyal patrons of the Rex. Through it all, business on the ship remains strong, but Tony Cornero is spending more and more time of his days in Los Angeles Superior Court.
Common sense tells me one cannot catch ocean fish inside the shoreline of the state, nonetheless, that is the argument. The authorities contend that an imaginary line must be drawn from the bay’s northern headland to the southern headland, with that imaginary line, despite it being submerged, constituting the legal shoreline of California. This means the three-mile jurisdictional line is three miles beyond that line or roughly six miles off the dry shore of Santa Monica.
I know this all seems to be dancing on the head of a pin. Nonetheless, the dance is on and the two lead dancers: Tony Cornero and California Attorney General Earl Warren each plans to define our dance ticket.
To summarize all this semantical mumbo jumbo: If Cornero is right, California’s three-mile jurisdiction begins at the dock on the Santa Monica dry shore. If the attorney general is judged correct, the three-mile border of California authority begins at that submerged imaginary line. With that outcome, Cornero and other gambling ship operators would need to move and re-moor their floating gambling dens six plus miles from Santa Monica’s dry shore, a distance too far for water taxis to comfortably ferry gamblers to ships which would then be anchored in less predictable waters.
This legal entanglement, which is far from over despite Cornero’s most recent victory, will ultimately either remove the law’s efforts to interfere with these ships or effectively shut them down. Tony Cornero and the other gambling ship operators will flourish or flounder. It also means that you and I will either have or not have the option to gamble on those ships.
We call our fair city, the City of Angels, yet it can only be so if angels are also jungle animals. For, like beasts, the powers among us often lie in wait, snarling now and again to remind us they are close, then charge when they determine it is in their interest to do so. Their eyes are now fixed on Tony Cornero.
The beast remains on its haunches.
In the final analysis, people have always gambled and, likely, people will always gamble. When you remove Tony Cornero and a few lesser gambling ship operators from the picture, at issue is whether or not those of us disposed toward gambling will be free to do so lawfully on the gently swaying decks of ships. Should the court give the attorney general and our mayor the jurisdiction they seek, the ships will no longer be a viable gambling venue. If so, the gamblers among us will be left to wager only in onshore games controlled by the mob. In backrooms behind restaurants, upstairs over warehouses and in private hotel suites arranged through payments to hotel owners or managers.
I may be too simple, but to me the preferences of a free population, not laws, should decide whether or not each of us gambles. This is, of course, only this man’s opinion. What I do know is that operating a gambling business should not put a man in jail in one jurisdiction, while making him the guest of honor at a Chamber of Commerce luncheon in another.
Good night Mr. and Mrs. Los Angeles and the gambling ships at sea… . Good Luck, Suckers. Matt Kile
Chapter Seventeen
In October, after having been cleared on the felony charge of bookmaking, Tony moved the Rex out of raiding range. He had the ship towed twelve miles into the Catalina Channel, far enough to keep Fitts away from his ship. The problem was it also kept the gamblers away, or most of them. The twelve mile ride was long and often cold in choppy seas. Seasick gamblers were not happy gamblers. Business fell off.
* * *
Tony quickly realized he had to get closer to shore for gamblers to return in sufficient numbers. So, early in 1939, he had the Rex towed back to his former spot, or close to it, a little over three miles off Santa Monica dry shore. Water taxi service resumed upon his return. The argument in favor of the water taxis was that they were serving foreign commerce because the Rex was in international waters beyond California’s three-mile jurisdiction. It was an old argument, but one not yet totally rejected by the state courts.
* * *
Near the end of March, the city’s new mayor, Fletcher Bowron, called me in to ostensibly remake the offer for Tony The Hat to come to work for the city. The offer was essentially the same one D.A. Fitts had made to Tony the year before. The differences were that Tony would now be working for the Mayor not the D.A., that the Mayor had a new and full term of office, and that he was offering a salary double what Fitts had been prepared to offer Tony. Another important difference was that Tony’s situation had become more problematic. The wolves were now at Tony’s front door.
I again carried the offer to Tony. He again shut it down. Tony was determined he would prevail when it got to court. He had won there before. And, frankly, Tony loved pulling the tails on these pompous bastards and he wasn’t going to give up the theater of it all.
* * *
“What’s the status on Bowron’s efforts to get Cornero to walk away from his gambling ship and join the mayor’s staff?”
“Mr. Cohen, I told you never to call me at the office.”
“I need to know, damn it, if Cornero is going to play ball with the mayor. And what the mayor plans to do.”
“Listen, I’ll meet you tonight at eight at the next-to-the-last place on the list I gave you. Get us a table in the bar. I’ll get there after you.”
The next thing Mickey Cohen heard was the dial tone. He had been hung up on. He didn’t like that. Not one damn bit. The lady was an important conduit into the mayor’s trusted inner circle and he paid through the nose for the information he got from this source. He’d do what he had been told, but he didn’t have to like it, and he didn’t.
* * *
I had never been made aware of anything which connected Mayor Bowron to the gangster
s. Still, I felt uneasy about the way the mayor expressed his determination to stop Tony and the other operators of the gambling ships while displaying much less determination and persistence with respect to stopping onshore gambling. Oh, sure, he gave speeches. Spoke of his commitment to rid the city of corruption. Noble words, but all the action, at least at this point in time, seemed directed toward the ships. Organized crime was likely cheering on State Attorney General Earl Warren, Los Angeles Mayor Fletcher Bowron, and Los Angeles District Attorney Buron Fitts.
If the politicians did sink the ships, the gamblers of Los Angeles would be driven into the welcoming arms of the mob’s gambling dens. Now, that doesn’t mean the politicians are dirty and in concert with the mob, but it does follow that organized crime would clearly benefit by what our current crop of politicians were attempting to achieve.
* * *
Callie had called earlier and invited me to her place. After all the on-the-town meals we had shared she was offering a home-cooked meal. “Something simple and uncomplicated,” she said. “The kind of meal I doubt you eat often seeing you’re a bachelor, and the way your column requires you to run around town most nights.”
I accepted enthusiastically. I could not recall my last home-cooked meal. Certainly, that was true if I ignored my own feeble attempts to prepare them. Cooking was something I always wanted to get better at, but, I confess, I never really made the effort. I had been invited several times to the homes of the publishers or editors on the local papers. They were fine meals and pleasant evenings. Still, theses were business dinners designed to get better acquainted, offer me employment directly for the paper in return for their exclusive right to my column, or to encourage me to treat a given news event in a manner which better fit with their editorial positions or alliances they might have with whomever.
