Our first week on Walden, Johnny Stompanato, strongman for gangster Mickey Cohen and boyfriend of Lana Turner, was stabbed to death around the corner. As the sirens wailed, my father woke to have a “looky-loo” in just his bathrobe behind the yellow tape that wrapped the crime scene. He knew who Stompanato was because mobsters fascinated him almost as much as movie stars. When he’d lived in New York, he used to sneak into open-casket viewings at the Campbell Brothers Funeral Home to peek at whichever Genovese capo had recently been clipped.
