Tall, shapely Brenda Allen had just about everything a girl needed to become a successful prostitute. A teetotaler with a hint of Southern drawl, she had a mind like a cash register, and she hadn't been in love since she was 21 (about 15 years ago by latest reckoning). For all of that, Brenda had a little trouble getting along. Every year or so she found herself in a brush with the law for practicing her profession.
But about two years ago things suddenly changed. Brenda had moved into Los Angeles, installed herself as the madam of a call house and found plenty of prosperity. As business improved she shifted from the tacky Fedora Street neighborhood to plushier headquarters on Hollywood's Sunset Strip, later moved on to swanky Harold Way. Some of Hollywood's shiniest names became her steady customers. Brenda felt so secure that she even took a quarter-page ad in a film directory published by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences; it was a nice refined ad —just a couple of pictures of her, her name and phone number.
Conversation Piece. Things might have gone along that way indefinitely if a nosy young vice squad sergeant named Charles Stoker hadn't got interested in Brenda's affairs. A tap was installed on Brenda's line and Stoker began to record some lively conversations. One was by another sergeant on the vice squad named Elmer Jackson, who called the city hall from Brenda's atelier. Another time Sergeant Jackson called to apologize to Brenda for a sheriffs' raid. Stoker reported his wiretap findings to a confidential aide of Chief of Police C. B. Horrall, then raided Brenda's place.
Brenda was outraged. It wasn't going to jail that bothered her so much as being double-crossed. She promised the raiders that she was going to get even in a big way. Chief Horrall wasn't worried: "Los Angeles is the cleanest city in California."
Two months ago, however, a county grand jury got wind of the Stoker recordings. The whole story burst across every front page in town. Triumphantly released from jail for a grand jury appearance, Brenda swept in, neat and businesslike in a tailored suit and dark glasses, began to tell all. $50 per Girl. She minced no words. Ever since she had moved into the upper brackets of her profession, she said, she had been paying $50 a week to her old friend Sergeant Jackson for every girl in her employ. And, she added with a vengeful slap at her persecutor, she had also paid off wiretapping Sergeant Stoker to the tune of $100 a week. Although they denied it, Sergeants Stoker and Jackson, along with six other cops, were shifted to the sticks. But that didn't stop the hue & cry. Last week Police Chief Horrall, whom honest Mayor Fletcher Bowron has frequently praised as the best police chief to be found anywhere, retired. As his successor Mayor Bowron picked a man whom he thought even Brenda couldn't faze: Major General William A. Worton, who served as chief of staff of the Marines' III Amphibious Corps at Okinawa.