Two years earlier, in 1947, Mickey Cohen had become Los Angeles’s most prominent underworld figure. Standing five-foot-five in his custom-made elevator shoes, the pudgy, squat-legged former prizefighter was now as much a part of the local color as movie stars, palm trees, and smog. Having grown into a figure of immense fascination to the public, his exploits were constant headline-makers. L.A.’s Capone – he seemed able to get away with murder. Many assassinations were ascribed to him, and in the past year alone, there had been multiple heavily publicized attempts on his life. Cunning, ruthless, and flamboyant, at thirty-five, Mickey Cohen was at the center of an ongoing underworld war and major political upheaval.

Police, political figures, and members of the underworld had all heard the story: Cohen was again slated for assassination. The local Mafia wanted him dead, while another rival offered an apartment house as compensation for accomplishing the deed. A cadre of rogue cops had vowed to kill him, and members of his own gang were eager to displace him. Threatening to end the careers of an array of LAPD brass and prominent officials, he was scheduled to appear before a grand jury investigating police corruption.

After dining with a lobbyist considered to be California’s political kingmaker, Mickey turned up at Sherry’s. It was common knowledge the no-frills, smoke-filled restaurant was his favorite last-round hangout. Resplendent in an impeccably tailored pigeon gray suit, he settled into his regular spot, booth #12. Back to the wall, he sat surrounded by members of the press. The journalists he entertained were following him, anticipating high drama. While satisfying his addiction to chocolate ice cream, Mickey held court, kibitzing with them in his unique patois of fractured grammar and four-syllable words. Florabel Muir, the veteran newswoman who had become his covert advocate, asked him if it was dangerous to be clubbing.

“Not as long as you people are around,” the mobster told her. “Even a crazy man wouldn’t take a chance shooting where a reporter might get hit.” Knocking wood, he added, “You’re too hot.”

It was nearing 4 a.m. when plans for his exit began. Flanking the exit were plainclothes police, a sergeant from LAPD’s Gangster Squad, and Special Agent Harry Cooper, the high-ranking state officer who, in a stunning move, had recently been assigned – by California’s attorney general – as Cohen’s bodyguard. Seeing the lawmen at the door, journalist Muir jokingly said to them, “What are you standing out here for? Trying to get yourself shot?”

Given an all-clear signal, Cohen and his party, accompanied by a phalanx of bodyguards from both sides of the law, moved onto the neon-lit Strip. Muir lagged behind, stopping to buy the morning edition of the Examiner. As she picked up the paper, the journalist heard a volley, then another. Looking out the door, what she saw unfolded like a movie.

A few feet away, a screaming man and young woman lay sprawled on the sidewalk. As the fusillade continued, she watched Cohen, blood darkening the shoulder of his jacket, shout commands. Then the state officer was hit. Clutching his stomach, Special Agent Cooper was still gripping his revolver as Cohen’s men struggled to pull him into a car. The wounded mob boss took charge, hoisting the hulking cop into the back seat as the big sedan roared into the night.

This was the sixth of eleven attempts on the Hollywood mobster’s charmed and violent life. Nearly thirty years later, at the end of nearly sixty years of crime, Mickey Cohen would die peacefully in his sleep, outliving many formidable assassins and all his prominent enemies, as well as his legendary sponsors, Bugsy Siegel, Frank Costello, and Lucky Luciano, as the most brazen and colorful gangster of them all.