L.A. Noir (22 page)

Stoker got the number anyway, by waiting outside the telephone exchange office and striking up an acquaintance with one of its female operators. After a week of dating, he had Allen’s private number. A contact at the phone company provided a home address. But even though he now knew where Allen lived, he still couldn’t prove she was orchestrating a call girl ring—until Jimmy Vaus appeared.

During his pursuit of Marge, Stoker had talked quite a bit with Vaus. He’d learned about Vaus’s background as a sound engineer and his Army service. He’d heard about Jimmy’s preacher daddy back in Oklahoma and about the religious radio program Vaus was hoping to launch in L.A. He’d also seen Vaus’s enthusiasm for uncovering vice—and his unusual talents. So when Vaus dropped by Central Division one night and asked if he could go out with Stoker and his partner, it seemed natural to stop by Brenda Allen’s spacious apartment at Ninth and Fedora Streets. There Stoker explained the problem he was having in trying to apprehend her. Stoker was delighted when Vaus responded that listening in on Allen’s phone conversations was no problem at all. In fact, they could do so the very next night.

The following evening, Stoker, his two partners, and Vaus went back to Allen’s apartment, this time with the appropriate wiretapping gear. One of
the policemen picked the locks and then the men were in. No one had thought to bring a flashlight, so Vaus lit a match. The fact that they had illegally broken into a private residence without a court order and were now about to tap a phone line—a felony offense—seemed not to trouble the men at all. They located the telephone box, found the pair of terminals that connected to Allen’s apartment, and tapped the line. Vaus had brought a lineman’s handset so that they could listen in.

They didn’t have to wait long for the first call. It was a woman’s voice.

“Hi, Brenda, this is Marie. If anything breaks tonight call me and I’ll go on it.”

“Okay,” Allen answered coolly. “What’ll you be wearing?”

“I’ll have on a full-length mink coat,” the woman replied. “I’ll be waiting for your call. Bye.”

A few minutes later, a man called. “Got anything good tonight?”

“We’ve got some mighty nice books,” Allen answered. “The heroine in one you’d like to read is a beaut! She has long black hair and is about five foot three and would make your reading most—enjoyable.”

“Where can I get that book?” the man asked.

“On the corner of Sunset and La Brea. There is a picture on the front cover of a gal in a long mink coat. How about being there about nine o’clock?”

Stoker was thrilled. He now understood Brenda Allen’s modus operandi. As calls poured in throughout the night, he also began to understand the size of her business. In fact, Allen was getting so many phone calls that the policemen in the basement were overwhelmed. Some system of recording the numbers Brenda was calling was needed. So Stocker turned to Vaus. Could he come up with something?

He could. The next night, Vaus returned with his “impulse indicator.” Within three hours, Sergeant Stoker and his partners had the numbers of twenty-nine johns.

They returned the following night, to listen in… and collect more phone numbers. Then something odd happened. Allen dialed a number that struck Stoker as vaguely familiar. Suddenly it hit him. Allen had just dialed the confidential number of the administrative vice squad downtown. Incredulous, Stoker listened as Allen left a message for a Sergeant Jackson. A few minutes later, Sergeant Jackson called Allen back.

“Honey, I just came into the office and got your message. How’s business?” Jackson asked. He then proceeded to discuss how he planned to slip away from his wife the following day to see Allen. A few minutes later, Allen called another man, to whom she complained bitterly about having to see Jackson.

When Stoker got back to the station, he discovered that “Sergeant Jack
son” was Sgt. Elmer Jackson, right-hand man to administrative vice squad head Lt. Rudy Wellpott. From what Stoker had overheard, it sounded like Allen had ensnared Jackson on orders from some unnamed third party, who was probably attempting to manipulate Jackson for some sinister purpose. The next day Stoker called Jackson and told him what he’d overheard. Jackson seemed startled. He assured Stoker that he’d have nothing more to do with Brenda Allen.

Meanwhile, Jimmy Vaus was getting nervous. Wiretapping night after night was risky. Crowded into the basement with Stoker and his partners, Vaus thought they “sounded like a firemen’s brigade.” To minimize the danger of detection, Vaus ran a line from the apartment house down the street to Stoker’s car, where they could listen in. But the night after Stoker’s conversation with Jackson, the new system didn’t seem to be working. There were no calls coming in. As Vaus fiddled with his equipment, he felt a hand grab his arm. He looked up—straight into the face of Brenda Allen. Allen had followed the wire to the police listening post.

Allen unleashed a stream of invective at the policemen. Then she coolly informed Stoker that he was “biting off more than he could chew.” Soon thereafter, Stoker was transferred to Newton Division, where he was assigned to work narcotics. Allen’s display of power disgusted him; nonetheless, Stoker resolved to have nothing more to do with vice. Instead, he concentrated on studying for the upcoming sergeants’ exam, which he aced. In early 1948, he made sergeant—and, to his surprise, was transferred back to the Central Division vice squad. Once again, he was loaned out to Hollywood Division. There he learned that Brenda Allen had opened a brothel—just across the city line, off the Sunset Strip.

Stoker had no intention of letting a jurisdictional inconvenience stop him from making a good arrest. Where the city ended and the county began was famously confusing along the Strip. He decided to go ahead with the raid—and then plead ignorance if he got into trouble. But first, Stoker needed proof about what was happening in Allen’s new establishment. Stoker called a friend, a sporty young executive at “a big Los Angeles firm,” and asked him if he’d like to patronize Hollywood’s most glamorous call house—on urgent city business. The young executive graciously agreed to help out. After calling Allen’s exchange, receiving a call back, and answering her questions, he was invited over. Four beautiful girls were produced for his selection. At the end of the evening, the executive announced his intention to become a regular. He also asked Allen if he could bring some friends from the office on his next visit. The two “friends” Stoker had in mind were rookie officers at Hollywood vice.

But now that the raid was ready, Stoker’s commanding officer hesitated.
He told Stoker that he needed to offer the sheriff’s vice squad the chance to make the raid first. When Stoker called on Capt. Carl Pearson, county vice squad commander, Pearson paused, as if he was uncertain about how to react to the news of Stoker’s imminent raid. Then he suggested that Stoker talk to Chief of Police Horrall’s confidential aide on vice matters, Sgt. Guy Rudolph. A meeting was arranged at the offices of private investigator Barney Ruditsky. There Stoker was surprised to encounter an old friend, Jimmy Vaus.

Vaus had recently stopped working for Stoker, explaining that he was too busy starting his new electronics business. But it now emerged that he’d set up a wiretapping substation at Ruditsky’s offices—for Sergeant Rudolph. Rudolph told Stoker that Allen was under surveillance and that it was only a matter of time until arrests were made. Stoker agreed to delay his raid. He thought no more about Vaus’s presence at this meeting. Nor did Sgt. Rudolph look into Vaus’s background. It was a fateful mistake. Had the police bothered to investigate Vaus’s past, they would have discovered that the pudgy, eager-to-please minister’s son with the cherubic face was also a petty criminal, a thief, and a hustler. In short, he was just the sort who might be willing to sell what he knew about the Brenda Allen-administrative vice squad connection to someone else who might be interested in it—someone like Mickey Cohen.

      “THE HEART is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked,” said the prophet Jeremiah. “Who can know it?”

Certainly not Jimmy Vaus. Parts of his story were true: He was a preacher’s son, and he did enjoy being with lawmen. Unfortunately, the self-taught electronics wizard also couldn’t seem to stay clear of the law. In the years leading up to World War II, Vaus had been convicted of robbing a man in Beverly Hills—of $14. He had also been arrested for impersonating a police officer. He ran into similar difficulties during the war. Indeed, only his proficiency with a new technology called radar prevented him from being dishonorably discharged for misusing Army funds.

Two facts about Vaus’s character eluded his LAPD interlocutors. The first was his avarice. The second was his growing sense of resentment. Vaus had developed marvelous eavesdropping tools for the police: a fake cane that, when pressed against a door, could detect what was said on the other side; a telescoping rod that could attach a tiny mike to a hotel room window several stories up; a remote wiretapping device that allowed police to monitor conversations from several miles away. However, he hadn’t
made any money from these endeavors. At first, the excitement and gratitude shown by the police (plus, no doubt, the thrill of playing policeman) was enough. Vaus was even flown to Washington, D.C., to teach a class on eavesdropping at the FBI. But after a while, Vaus began to feel aggrieved by the lack of payments. As he later put it, “The thrill of the chase was marred by the penny-pinching of the officials.”

Not that Vaus reserved his electronic talents exclusively for the LAPD. He also worked closely with Barney Ruditsky on sensitive assignments for clients such as Errol Flynn (who had a problem with underage girls). So when Harry Grossman in Ruditsky’s office called Vaus in late 1948 and told him “there’s a fellow I want you to meet” with a business proposition, Vaus was naturally curious.

“Who is it?” he asked

“Mickey Cohen,” Grossman replied.

“Mickey Cohen!”

Even then it was a name Vaus knew. His first thought was one of pleasure that someone so important would want to see him.

“Where am I supposed to meet him?” asked Vaus.

“In his haberdashery around the corner from our office.”

“Tell him I’ll drop over.”

Vaus quickly had second thoughts. What if the meeting with Mickey was some kind of trap? Or worse still, what if Vaus’s work for the police department had infringed on one of Mickey’s enterprises and Mickey knew about it?

      VAUS HAD NEVER BEEN in Michael’s Haberdashery before. Stepping in, he was dazzled. “The walls were of highly polished walnut and most of the merchandise was behind sliding doors,” wrote Vaus soon after the initial meeting. “Only a few ties, with a silk sheen, lay on the counter. A luxurious robe on a model and a pile of finely woven shirts indicated the garments for sale—at fabulous prices.”

A clerk, “tailored to the nth degree,” was watching Vaus closely, pencil-thin eyebrow raised. Vaus felt intensely conscious of “my not-too-fat wallet.”

“I’m Jimmy Vaus,” he said.

A quick phone call later, and Vaus was being escorted into the rear of the store, to Mickey Cohen’s private office.

A steel-plated door separated Cohen’s office from the haberdashery. Once again, Vaus was struck by “the lavish, expensive fittings.”

“There was a beautiful television set in one corner suspended from the
ceiling,” Vaus later recalled. “The lighting was indirect. Toward the back was a circular desk.” There, beneath a huge picture of President Franklin D. Roosevelt, in a large swivel chair, sat Mickey Cohen.

Vaus was impressed: “He was short, stocky and solidly built. His tailoring was exquisite and his grooming impeccable. Not a hair was out of place. His eyes flashed, sizing one up, and then shifted to something else.”

Eyeing Vaus coldly, the great man finally spoke.

“Vaus, I understand that you’re the man who planted a microphone in my home for the police department. Is that right?”

It was with great relief that Vaus denied this allegation. “I don’t even know where you live!” he responded.

“If there were a microphone in my home, do you think you could locate it and take it out for me?” Mickey asked, sounding slightly less severe.

“Mr. Cohen, you’ve got me all wrong,” Vaus responded. “I’m in the business of putting them in, not of taking them out.”

Mickey again fixed a cold gaze on him. Then he reached into his pocket and pulled out a “reel-sized roll” of hundred-dollar bills—the biggest wad Jimmy Vaus had ever seen. In a slow, deliberate motion, Cohen peeled off one C-note, then a second, then a third. Visions of hand-painted ties, tailored suits, and “chromium accessories for my car” floated through Vaus’s mind. Before he knew it, he was on his way to the Cohen abode, accompanied by Cohen lieutenant Neddie Herbert.

When he entered the house, Vaus had to pause to catch his breath. The contrast between the lifestyles of the gangster and the policeman left him dumbstruck:

Confronted with such opulence, Vaus’s moral faculties, which were clearly weak to begin with, failed him entirely. “It would have been very hard to persuade a man that it was wrong to have the money sufficient to buy these creature comforts,” Vaus concluded. He rushed back to his workshop and spent the night feverishly tinkering with an ultrasensitive pickup coil and a high-gain amplifier that he hoped would be capable of detecting the tiny electromagnetic current of a small bug. The following day Vaus returned to the Cohen abode on Moreno Avenue. After carefully sweeping the house, he detected a small electrical current. A carpenter was called in to cut a hole in the floor. Vaus lowered himself into
the space under the house and soon found a microphone and amplifier connected to a wire. He disconnected it with a sickening feeling, for he knew that as he did so someone at the listening end was hearing their bug go dead—and that that person was a cop. Instead, he thought about what he’d buy with Mickey’s money.