[dropcap]A[/dropcap]t an hour past midnight on Aug. 31, 1950, two Texas Rangers woke the boss of the Los Angeles underworld from a deep sleep to give him a simple choice:  go home or go to jail.

Mickey Cohen had hoped to slip into the Lone Star State, conduct a little business and slip back out unnoticed.  But the trip did not go according to plan for the West Coast mobster.

Meyer Harris Cohen was born in 1913 into an Orthodox Jewish family in Brooklyn.  Looking for a way to keep Mickey and his...