"Mickey said, 'Fine, well, fine, thank you, guys' and gave 'em 25 bucks apiece for a tip, you know. Well, my guy takes Mickey aside and says, 'Lookit, I'll be back in here once a week and take care of it. You know, there's a lot of bugs in televisions and stuff you have to work out.' "
Mickey had to think his lavish tips were why the repairman was so eager to get into his TV every week.
OK, so the bug couldn't hear much when Mickey's TV was on, and it was on all the time. But O'Mara sensed that their mission might be measured by small victories, and it was a small victory, for sure, to be able to say, a half-century later . . . and that's how Mickey Cohen wound up paying for his own bugging.
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paul.lieberman@latimes.com
Times researcher Maloy Moore and former researcher Tracy Thomas contributed to this series.
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(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX)
CAST OF CHARACTERS
WILLIE BURNS
A World War II gunnery officer, he helped form the Gangster Squad.
MICKEY COHEN
The dapper former boxer came to town as muscle for Bugsy Siegel and emerged as Los Angeles' most high-profile mobster of the 1940s and '50s.
JACK DRAGNA
A Sicilian immigrant who ran Los Angeles' Mafia family, Dragna fought Cohen for control of local rackets.
JIMMY 'THE WEASEL' FRATIANNO
Rounded up in an early Gangster Squad roust, Fratianno was allowed to stay in L.A. and became the mob's top hit man.
C.B. HORRALL
Became police chief in the 1940s and formed the Gangster Squad, then retired during the LAPD vice scandals of 1949.
CONWELL KEELER
The squad's original bug man, Keeler knew Navy experts whose eavesdropping systems did not require telltale wires.
JACK O'MARA
One of the squad's original members, he took out-of-town hoodlums into the hills for "a little heart-to-heart talk," and became obsessed with proving Cohen a killer.
JACK WHALEN
A dashing figure who played polo at an elite military academy, he eyed a Hollywood career but instead became Jack the Enforcer.
JERRY WOOTERS
Barely surviving World War II when his plane was shot down, Wooters joined the Gangster Squad and forged a secret alliance with Whalen.
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ABOUT THIS SERIES
In 1992, Times staff writer Paul Lieberman took a call from a reader who said a piece about the LAPD's Organized Crime Intelligence Division had failed to mention its roots in a unit formed after World War II, the Gangster Squad. Asked how he knew, the man said, "Well, I was on it."
Within days, Lieberman was in the San Gabriel Valley living room of long-retired Sgt. Jack O'Mara. Over time, he tracked down nine other squad members. One, the unit's first bug man, shared what he knew only after a decade of persistence. All the interviews were on the record.
The interviews were checked against thousands of pages of documents: a trial transcript from archives in Sacramento, criminal files in Perris, Calif., grand jury transcripts from the Black Dahlia case and reports from Gov. Earl Warren's Organized Crime Commission.
More than 100 others were interviewed, including attorneys for Bugsy Siegel and Mickey Cohen and two former members of Cohen's entourage, one of whom was present on the night Jack "the Enforcer" Whalen was shot.
More recently, Whalen's surviving relatives, including his 91-year-old sister, agreed to be interviewed.
Monday in the California section: The gangster and the newspaper columnist.
