A Bright and Guilty Place: Murder, Corruption, and L.A.'s Scandalous Coming of Age Read Online Free PDF

prosecuting more than 300 cases a month—burglary, robbery, grand theft auto, drunk driving, narcotics, assault, possession of a still, and murder cases, an increasing number every year. Crime in the 1920s, like pretty much everything else in L.A., was out of control. The LAPD simply couldn’t cope, leaving many crimes undetected or unpunished. The murder rate more than tripled in the decade, rising to more than sixty a year. The upright and debonair Dave Clark knew that he’d be busy each morning when he strode into the lobby of the new Hall of Justice, the heels of his shining oxfords ringing on the marbled floors.
    A courtroom is a theater, and L.A. had already known some star performers, notably Earl Rogers, who defended Clarence Darrow against jury-tampering in 1911, and was described by Darrow himself as “the greatest trial lawyer of his day.” Rogers was a showman, a flamboyant and mesmerizing orator who, in his entire career, lost only three cases. He was also a reckless drinker and a womanizer, and died at age fifty-one in 1922, the year Dave Clark entered the law. Rogers was a legend, and perhaps for a young lawyer like Dave Clark, something of a role model. But Rogers’s courtly, theatrical style already belonged to the past. Clark was something else again—leaner, harder, with a persona that seemed designed for the camera, not the stage. A 1926 photograph of the D.A.’s staff, taken just after the move into the new Hall of Justice, features Clark prominently; he’s taller than everybody else, more tanned, and much better dressed—in a slick tailored suit with a silk tie tight at his neck, an immaculate white handkerchief folded in the outside breast pocket, that flyer’s pin on his lapel. He has a pencil moustache and a gorgeous quality about him. Reporters likened him to John Barrymore, to John Gilbert, and later to Clark Gable.
    On the morning of July 6, 1928, Dave Clark rose early, kissed his wife Nancy on the cheek, left their home in West Hollywood, got into his Model T Ford, and turned onto Wilshire Boulevard, heading downtown. He had a big day ahead. District Attorney Asa Keyes (pronounced to rhyme with “eyes”) had given Clark important jobs before, but none as big as the one that faced him today, when he would begin prosecution of racketeer and bootlegger Albert Marco, called “L.A.’s Capone” by the Daily News .
    “Marco’s just a goon to me,” Clark told the News , ridiculing the idea that the gangster might be given special consideration. “No stone will be left unturned and he will be sent to San Quentin.”
    “Tough words characterize this ice-cool prosecutor,” wrote Gene Coughlin, a top writer on the News . Like many L.A. reporters of the day, Coughlin had served his apprenticeship in Chicago. He was friendly with Lionel Moise who, it’s been said, taught Ernest Hemingway his trade on the Kansas City Star. Certainly Moise provided Hemingway, and Coughlin too, with a hard-drinking, hard-fighting journalistic persona that they adopted as their model. Coughlin was working the Marco story under instruction from News owner Manchester Boddy who had assumed control of the fledgling tabloid (L.A.’s first) in 1926, and immediately decided that the paper needed a circulation-boosting crusade. Vice, and Albert Marco in particular, became a target. “Albert Marco is loud, brash, and plumply complacent,” wrote Coughlin in his gleeful and lurid way. “The whole of Los Angeles trusts that ‘Debonair Dave’ will rid our city of this menace.”
    It was a scorching summer day; by noon the temperature would reach 90 degrees. Crowds packed the Superior Court and jammed the corridors outside, barring what little breeze there was from the Hall of Justice. Charlie Chaplin, who loved a good trial, was given a numbered ticket so he could claim a seat. Albert Marco sauntered in and posed for photographers. “Seated beside his counsel Marco paid scant attention to the proceedings, glancing